Vonita nodded. She looked around the room. “We hope you are not here because anyone has forced you to come. We are required to tell you that you do not have to go through with this procedure if you don’t want to.”
From beneath lowered lashes, Janine held her breath.
What if she stood up now, and said she was making a mistake? What if she blew her cover and told these women that they needed to think of their unborn children? What if she became their voice?
But she did not, and no woman wavered.
—
IZZY WAS STUCK IN TRAFFIC at a construction zone, so by the time she got to the Center, the trip had taken a half hour longer than it should have. She parked lopsided and grabbed her purse and locked the doors to the car as she was running up the path that led to the Center’s front door. She didn’t even hear the protesters, that’s how frazzled she was.
When she was buzzed inside, a man in scrubs was just settling down in a cluster of women, starting to speak. The woman at the front desk took one look at Izzy and started to laugh. “Sugar,” she said, “take a deep breath. What can I do for you?”
Izzy did. “I am so sorry I’m late,” she began, and she realized that could be interpreted in so many different ways, and that they would all be right.
—
LOUIE CALLED IT THE LAW of Three. Most of what he told these ladies had also been said by Miss Vonita, and he would repeat it to them yet again in the individual doctor-patient sessions that followed. But he also knew that these women were too shell-shocked to be absorbing even a fraction of the information, which is why, by the third time, he hoped that it had sunk in.
There were eleven women in front of him: seven black, two white, two brown. He paid attention to the race of those who came to the Center because for him, the politics of abortion had so much in common with the politics of racism. As an African American male, he could imagine quite easily what was like to not have jurisdiction over your body. White men had once owned black men’s bodies. Now, white men wanted to own women’s bodies.
“I am obligated by the state to tell you some things that are not medically true,” Louie said. “I am obligated to tell you that having an abortion increases your risk for breast cancer, even though there is no evidence to support that.” He thought back, as he always did, to the patient he had treated once who had breast cancer, and who had terminated her pregnancy so that she could pursue treatment. My risk of getting breast cancer is zero, she had said flatly, since I already have it.
“I am obligated by the state,” he continued, “to tell you that with abortion, there are risks of injury to your bowel, bladder, uterus, fallopian tubes, and ovaries; and that if you have injury to your uterus that’s severe enough, we might have to remove your uterus, which is called a hysterectomy. But guess what? Those are the exact same risks that you’ll have if you give birth to a baby. In fact, you’re more likely to have those risks giving birth to a child than having an abortion. Now. Y’all got questions for me?”
A woman’s hand crept up tentatively. “I heard you use knives and scissors to cut up the babies.”
Louie heard this at least every other counseling session. One of the things he wished he could tell women who wanted abortions was to never, ever Google the word. He shook his head. “There are no knives, no scissors, no scalpels.” He made sure to correct her use of the term babies as gently as possible. “If patients wish to see the tissue after it’s removed, they can. And it is disposed of in with respect, in an appropriate legal way.”
She nodded, satisfied. Not for the first time, Louie was amazed that a woman who believed nonsense like this would still be brave enough to schedule an appointment.
He looked into the eyes of each of the women. Warriors, every one of them. Every day, he was reminded of their grit, their courage in the face of obstacles, the quiet grace with which they shouldered their troubles. They were stronger than any men he’d ever known. For sure, they were stronger than the male politicians who were so terrified of them that they designed laws specifically to keep women down. Louie shook his head. As if that could ever be done. If he had learned anything during his years as an abortion doctor, it was this: there was nothing on God’s green earth that would stop a woman who didn’t want to be pregnant.
—
THERE WAS A STUFFED LOBSTER on George’s daughter’s bed. It was red and wore a little white hat like a Victorian baby, and he had won it for Lil at a church fair. He sat in her room, the way he used to every night when he tucked her in, before she told him she could read her own books, thank you very much. She had been seven at the time. He remembered laughing about it with Pastor Mike. He didn’t find it funny now. In retrospect, it seemed like the first step on a path that would ultimately take her so far away from him he couldn’t even see her in the distance.
She had wanted that lobster so bad that he’d paid more than thirty dollars to a huckster to get three baseballs he could pitch into rusty milk cans. The first time he won, he was handed a little stuffed snake the size of a pencil. Damn bait and switch. But Lil had been next to him, clapping every time he got one in, and so he’d traded up until he got to the stuffed animal of her choice. The fact that she still had it after all these years was a testament, he supposed, to what it meant to her.
Or maybe she hadn’t wanted to let go of her childhood any more than he did.
When she was little, every Saturday morning in the summertime they’d drive out in his truck to get crawfish. Lil would curl up next to him on the bench seat, her legs dangling and kicking because her feet were nowhere close to hitting the floor—happy feet, he’d call them. There was a creek that was shallow enough even for a five-year-old, and he and Lil would grab a bucket from the backseat, take off their shoes and socks, and wade in. He taught her how to find the rocks that would make good hiding spots. If you lifted the stones too fast, you would startle the crawfish and stir up the mud so they scurried away. If you lifted the stones slow, you would be able to surprise the crawfish. You could pick it up with your hands then, minding the pincers. If they had a good day hunting, Lil would help him boil them in a broth made of onions, lemon, and garlic. They’d eat them with potatoes and corn on the cob, until they fell asleep in the lazy slant of the afternoon, bellies full and fingers still slick with butter.
Once, Lil had lifted one of the crawfish to find rows of little red eggs stuck underneath her tail. Daddy, she had asked, what’s wrong with her?
She’s gonna have babies, George had explained. So we have to put her back, and let her do just that. You don’t mess with a mama, Lil. She belongs with her babies.
Lil had been quiet for a moment. Daddy, she’d asked. Who messed with my mama?
He had scooped his girl up and out of the water. Let’s get home before the crawdads get out of that pail, he’d said. Because he couldn’t very well tell her, I did.
Now, he lifted the pistol that was cradled in his lap and stood. As he did, the paper he had found on her bedside table fluttered to the floor. He stepped on it as he left the room, his heel landing square across the heading at the top. Medication Abortion authorization and Informed Consent, it read. The Center for Women’s Health, Jackson.
Eight a.m.
WITH A FLOURISH, WREN SET THE PLATE DOWN in front of her father: a fried egg, and a drippy candle stuck into a smile of melon. “Happy birthday to you,” she finished singing. “By the way, that would have been way better if I had a sibling. Harmony sucks when you’re an only.”
“You’re overestimating your singing ability,” her dad grunted.
She laughed. “Someone’s feeling grumpy.”
“Someone’s feeling old as hell.”
She sat down across from him. “Forty is the new twenty,” she told him.
“Says who?”