Madame Flora’s
Camilla Grudova
Victoria’s menses stopped. Her nanny looked through her old diaper bustles, the ones that hadn’t been thrown away yet. It had not arrived when it was supposed to. Her nanny checked the diary she kept of Victoria’s menses (‘Light’ ‘Regular’ ‘Thick’ ‘An Odd Smell’). Each sentence was accompanied by a fingerprint of blood, from the moment little Victoria, aged thirteen, held up a bloody hand saying “Nanny I am dying,” to which Nanny replied that the diaper bustle Victoria had always worn was in preparation for such bleeding and that the bleeding was best called blooming and the blood best called flowers by a young lady.
Ladies wore diaper bustles all the time so men wouldn’t know exactly when they were menstruating, it was less obscene that way, the constant taffeta swish swish of the diapers that accompanied women’s movements giving no indication of their cycle. They were large and scented, made out of cotton and plastic. Women past the age of menstruating still wore them, as did little girls, there was no sense of end or beginning. The bustles were reassuring: women would never leak. Women were like eggs made out of marble, not creatures made of meat.
Nanny told Victoria’s mother who told Victoria’s father that Victoria was dreadfully weakened. Victoria’s father called the family doctor who hurried over, and without shock on hearing Victoria’s period had stopped, handed Victoria’s father a bottle of Madame Flora’s saying he saw this affliction all the time in young ladies, it was nothing to worry about.
“It’s such a horror, the idea of flowers from a woman’s body. It seems a shame to bring it back when it has disappeared,” Victoria’s father said with the abstract disgust of a man who had never seen it before.
The doctor laughed. “It is indeed, but a necessity of life.”
The bottle was made of milky green glass, opaque so the liquid inside wasn’t visible.
They all knew of Madame Flora’s. Her advertisements were everywhere, on billboards, and magazines, illustrations of fainted ladies contrasted with ones of ladies dancing, and carrying children. Ladies sitting on half-moons, laughing, bouquets of blossoming flowers. In many shopping arcades there was a mechanical wax girl in a glass box, eternally consuming Madame Flora’s. When the bottle reached her mouth, a blush spread through her wax cheeks. Madame Flora’s was “The Number One Cure for Weakness, Nervous Complaints, Fainting and Dizziness.”
Victoria’s father opened the bottle and took a strong sniff, then another. He stuck his finger in and pulled it out: Madame Flora’s was a dense, dark brown syrup. The bottle label suggested mixing it with tonic water, or putting it in puddings or spreading it on toast with butter.
Victoria’s nanny tried a spoonful herself. The doctor and Victoria’s father looked away with slight disgust.
She spat it into her hand then wiped her hand on her apron.
“Sir, it tastes of … bloo—”
“Nonsense. It’s a one hundred percent herbal mixture, I have read the label and prescribed it to many patients. I would not expect you to know what blood tastes like,” said the doctor.
“I only know sir, from the smell of it.”
Victoria’s father grabbed the bottle and looked for the ingredients, but they weren’t listed.
In small letters on the bottom of the label it said, For Extreme Cases, Please Consider a Vacation at Madame Flora’s Hotel.
The canopy curtains of Victoria’s bed were closed. Nanny opened them. Victoria lay in bed, reading a book of nursery rhymes and smoking. Her long red hair was greasy-looking. Nanny grabbed her cigarette and put it out under her boot.
“Nanny!” Victoria cried.
The doctor and father’s father chuckled.
Nanny prepared a glass of Madame Flora’s in the bedroom kitchenette. Women weren’t allowed in the main kitchens of houses, but the kitchenette was a place where they could prepare light meals—there was an electric tea kettle, and a tiny plastic oven, which used a light bulb and was decorated with flowers, that could warm toast and make little cakes but never burn anything. There were boxes of powders that could be turned into various porridges, tea, malt powder, and seaweed jelly powder, and always a fresh bottle of milk.
Victoria tried to spit out Madame Flora’s but Nanny stopped her. She swallowed with a grimace. “Bring me a crumpet Nanny, and some milk, to chase it down, please Nanny.”
“Be quiet, Victoria,” said her father.
“Bring the child some milk,” said the doctor. “The taste of Madame Flora’s is not delicate.”
Victoria was to be given Madame Flora’s in the morning, at lunchtime, and before bed. She complained that Madame Flora’s gave her fevers and constipation. She rinsed her mouth out after, and often went to the bathroom, sticking two of her fingers down her throat until she vomited it up. “I don’t like iron,” she said to herself. She did everything she could to get Madame Flora’s out of her body. She didn’t miss her menses, the gelatinous clots that reminded her of leeches, the fear of leaks even when she wore chafing rubber underwear under her bustle.
They tried the whole range of Madame Flora’s products. In addition to the tonic, they sold pastilles, pills, powder, boullion squares for soup, and a line of chocolate-covered Madame Flora jelly that looked like Turkish delight but tasted like rust, sulphur and browned flowers.
Victoria poured Madame Flora’s on the crotch of her diaper bustle hoping it would pass, but Nanny knew.
Victoria’s father said he would send her to Madame Flora’s hotel.
“Can’t Nanny come with me to Madame Flora’s?” Victoria asked
“No, she must look after your mother,” her father said, and Victoria was secretly pleased, for she wanted to be away from Nanny.
They took the carriage. Victoria wore a green taffeta dress. Besides her trunk, she had a small black velvet purse. Inside were love letters from her father’s butler and one of her father’s friends. One contained a dried daisy, stuck to the page with horse glue.
Victoria’s mother brought a large tin of wine gums along for the ride, keeping it on her lap. They were all she would eat. The black currant-flavoured ones in particular. Her father brought cold roast beef, a spiral sausage that resembled a round rag rug, and pâté along for himself. He didn’t stop to eat it but let the smell fill up the whole carriage. “I feel so ill I want to die,” Victoria said to herself. Women weren’t allowed to eat meat. The smell of it was intolerably strong.
They had to stop twice, for forty minutes each time, so her father could go to the bathroom. There were men smoking and loitering about outside the men’s public restrooms. On a bench by the bathroom door, there was a man with swollen-looking red legs, his trousers rolled up to reveal them. He was eating potted meat with his fingers and grinning. There was a smell around the place, like burnt mutton, her mother held a handkerchief to her face as they waited. “Why do men take ever so long to toilet,” asked Victoria and her mother told her not to be vulgar, drooling as she spoke because of the wine gums.
Victoria knew the right amount she could piss in her bustle without it leaking or smelling. She did so. There weren’t many public bathrooms for women.
Madame Flora’s hotel overlooked the sea. It was a white building, like most in the town, a popular seaside resort. The words ‘Madame Flora’s’ were written in gold, large letters and there was a billboard on the roof of the hotel with an image of Madame Flora’s tonic surrounded by roses. The main doors were glass with golden bars. The veranda had no chairs, only large potted ferns.