My sister can’t get pregnant. She never started bleeding and she can’t get cramps like I do. I think about this as I get out of his bed. It feels like no man will ever want me again. They will all know that I’ve added another tick mark to the mirror in my bathroom. He grumbles something in my general direction. He calls me Brittany, and I don’t even look like a Brittany. A Brittany would have blonde hair, and cherry-colored little lips, and would never wear toe socks with her flip-flops to be cute. I get my shoes and leave.
I don’t live with my mother. She lives with me in the room downstairs. She pretends that when I come home in the morning its because I’ve been out getting coffee or sitting on the patio talking to a friend, but she knows that I’m coming home to use “Dirty Trollope” colored lipstick on the mirror in my bathroom. She counts my birth control pills every week and she says “I just don’t want any illegitimate grandchildren.” I guess that’s why she moved in with me, because I’m the one who can get pregnant.
I only had one real relationship. He said he was a poet, but he didn’t want his work read, only said out loud to music. I think he was a rapper. We used to argue about that a lot. He changed his name often to give himself “character,” like Eminem. He was BJ when I met him and by the time we broke up he had evolved to XYZ. I never hear about him anymore and even if someone tried to tell me about him I wouldn’t know because he’s probably changed his name again.
After my shower, I think that men might not know that there are fourteen tick marks on my bathroom mirror. The next one will be a long tick mark, one that goes across an entire line. Maybe that one will stick.

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