Choice Words Page 10

  there is snow on the ground, browned

  and melted on concrete

  stained by street salt, the [Acer saccharum, Acer glabrum]

  has stopped its bleeding,

  [there is another word for this] and I am no longer looking out my kitchen window but at wikiHow, WebMD, and Homeland Security

  and there is this edge, this something missing

  after one month, I am still bleeding

  I am ever conscious of the sun

  of its drop and of its rise

  [of my circadian rhythms]

  in darkness, I see only the tree’s silhouette

  and not the tree itself

  but of its life I am certain

  but of its life I am certain am I of its leaves, once stuck to summer sap

  but of its life I am certain am I of its leaves, once stuck to the windshields of cars its life I am below my kitchen window

  but of its life I am not a god buried, but a god strewn

  I do not believe in God

  what do I believein in

  in a dead garden, a sapped maple

  in seeing a thing clearly [and knowing absence]

  TUGGING

  SeSe Geddes

  It’s the final moment—the tugging—

  that’s the worst. A sucking deep within the pelvis,

  where the body contracts as if

  to cling to that tiny growth. Everything

  seems to fight for life, the way a moth

  with wings bent and tattered by the cat

  still stretches its proboscis to an offered cap of water.

  The uterus does not easily let go.

  My body’s instinct is deeply woven, dense

  as the bird’s nest the house painter found

  beneath the eaves. He gasped at the eggs

  in their bowl of twigs, cupped it

  in his sunburned, paint-speckled hands, placed it

  back before dusk, but the birds never returned.

  FROM HAPPENING

  Annie Ernaux

  I was seized with a violent urge to shit. I rushed across the corridor into the bathroom and squatted by the porcelain bowl, facing the door. I could see the tiles between my thighs. I pushed with all my strength. It burst forth like a grenade, in a spray of water that splashed the door. I saw a baby doll dangling from my loins at the end of a reddish cord. I couldn’t imagine ever having had that inside me. I had to walk with it to my room. I took it in one hand—it was strangely heavy—and proceeded along the corridor, squeezing it between my thighs. I was a wild beast.

  O’s door was ajar, with a beam of light. I called out her name softly, “It’s here.”

  The two of us are back in my room. I am sitting on the bed with the fetus between my legs. Neither of us knows what to do. I tell O we must cut the cord. She gets a pair of scissors; we don’t know where to cut it but she goes ahead and does it. We look at the tiny body with its huge head, the eyes two blue dashes beneath translucent lids. It looks like an Indian doll. We look at the sexual organs. We seem to detect the early stages of a penis. To think I was capable of producing that. O sits down on a stool. She is crying. We are both crying in silence. It’s an indescribable scene, life and death in the same breath. A sacrificial scene.

  We don’t know what to do with the fetus. O goes to her room to fetch an empty melba toast wrapper and I slip it inside. I walk to the bathroom with the bag. It feels like a stone inside. I turn the bag upside down above the bowl. I pull the chain.

  In Japan aborted embryos are called mizuko—water babies.

  The motions we went through that night came to us naturally. They seemed the only thing to do at the time.

  Nothing about her bourgeois ideals or her beliefs had prepared O to sever the umbilical cord of a three-month-old fetus. Today she may have dismissed this episode as a temporary aberration, an inexplicable moment of chaos in her life. She may also hold anti-abortion views. But it was she, and she alone, who stood by my side that night, her small face crumpled with tears, acting as an improvised midwife in room seventeen of the girls’ dormitory.

  Translated from the French by Tanya Leslie

  SARASWATI PRAISES YOUR NAME EVEN WHEN YOU HAVE NO CHOICE

  Purvi Shah

  Patel, a thirty-three-year-old woman who lives in Indiana, was accused of feticide—specifically, illegally inducing her own abortion—and accused of having a baby whom she allowed to die. The facts supporting each count are murky, but a jury convicted Patel and she was sentenced to twenty years in prison.

  —Emily Bazelon, “Purvi Patel Could Be Just the Beginning,” New York Times Magazine, April 1, 2015

  You had a name no one

  could hold between their

  teeth. So they pronounced

  a sentence. Had you the choice,

  you would pilgrim

  to the Vermilion. It is no

  Ganges, but you could dream for tiger’s

  blood, for eight tributaries to open

  into palms bearing girls unfettered. Before your baby

  was a baby,could it float? Could

  a stillness of breathbe the air asking

  for alchemyas you cast your life as a spell? These days

  the world is lookingfor witches. You had been

  searching for a daybeyond labor, option

  of pleasure, a choice unscripted

  by parents, borders unscripted

  by choices, a passing

  salvation. You had not

  expected this state—punishment

  for a wrung womb. These days

  you mourn:when you are free, you won’t

  be able to bearthe children you

  wanted. In silence, you pronounceyour name as if it came

  from the crucible of river, from the firstthroat broken

  into a cobra of desiccated streams.

  “RECRUITING NEW COUNSELORS” FROM JANE: ABORTION AND THE UNDERGROUND

  Paula Kamen

  CHARACTERS:

  JUDITH ARCANA (married name of Pildes): (1943–) Late twenties. Very intense. Mostly takes over lead role in play after JODY. Her manner is very sensual, as if she is always aware of her body and sexuality. Her clothes, always very loose and sometimes revealing, convey this attitude. Unusually articulate, she speaks with a blend of intelligence and inner passion. Her views are so strong that when she speaks, she states her opinions as if they were proven facts. Jewish.

  MICKI: (1940s–) In early twenties. She is very much into excitement and extremes of counterculture and the revolutionary “scene” of the period, but is always acting in the background. She is one of the few members of The Service who is black and/or working class. From the South Side of Chicago, and a pre-law student at Loyola University. Not knowing if she’ll survive these turbulent years, she lives in the moment, allowing the use of her apartment for the abortions. Grew up Catholic.

  (JUDITH passes the clipboard to MICKI, who fills out her contact info by the end of the scene. MICKI and JUDITH stand to face audience. Lights shift.)

  MICKI: I’d been involved in the Chicago Conspiracy Trial, of “The Chicago Seven,” they were called … I was on the legal defense team. I helped them do research…. [In news footage,] I’m the black female sitting next to Bobby Seal, holding his hand when he’s being gagged and stuff. And I’m holding the notebooks so he can write notes…. So, you know, I’ve demonstrated against the war in Vietnam and, you know, all that kind of stuff. And then … I was somewhere on the North Side a couple years after the trial was over and somebody handed me a leaflet, and I might have read about the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union. (An aside) … My opinion about Heather and the people that she associated with was that they were a bunch of liberals, even though they thought of themselves as radicals or revolutionaries … I didn’t think highly of them at the time. So, I didn’t associate with them, and that’s kind of how you did it in those days … [But] I went up the office [of the Women’s Union] and kind of looked
around, and the first thing that attracted me was the posters because the Graphics Collective was active then. And I was like really intrigued by the art, [the iconic, bold, colorful pictures of women from all races] (We see projected images of art in background), which really spoke to me. And, you know, I had years of Catholic education on holy cards that they give you … usually it was of a mother and child and, I mean, you know, it was totally unfeminist, you know, even if it was a picture of the Virgin Mary … And then there was this stuff, (looking to images) which was just like really revolutionary for me…. I mean, it was just like, it was more of a ‘yeah!’ kind of thing for me where I just … I wanted to be connected to this ….

  JUDITH: I was in my teaching job trying to figure out what was wrong, why everybody hated high school, why my students were so unhappy. And so I asked them. And they told me. And I learned what the public education system really was, and all of those things … and my life was coming apart very dramatically, and I was having this affair, and I wouldn’t eat, and I thought, ‘Ugh! I’m pregnant.’ I called a friend who was a medical student, and he called me back and said, ‘Everyone here [in his medical school] says call this number and ask for Jane.’ So, I called the number, and a woman called me back, and we talked for a very long time. I can’t remember the specifics, but it was a very political conversation, you know. She asked me a lot of stuff about my life, and I was in a mood to tell her, because I was changing in every possible way….

  MICKI: How did I know you were going to ask that question? … For a long time, I was the only [black woman] in the Women’s Union [and the only working-class woman]. I think there were a couple of other black volunteers in Jane … I got my sense of injustice from just being black in this society, and I got my sense of politics from my dad…. He was very involved in his union, and he worked at the steel mills at a time when blacks had the more undesirable jobs. And so he was always, you know, he was always in both the union’s face and management’s face about that, and gained a great deal of respect from black and white steelworkers alike. He worked in the wire mill at Republic Steel for thirty-five years. [When organizing,] I always looked to see what kind of white people they were. Were they white people with class consciousness because they came out of a white working-class background? Or were they people who were faking it, people with long hair and dirty clothes who talked about how they were down with the people? Excuse me, but I take a bath every day. Don’t insult me like that. So I guess from that point on I looked at people based on their practice and their background…. Yeah, it was pretty lonely but you know, I ignored that stuff because of the bigger picture, the bigger social issues that needed to be addressed. And as long as there was one black voice in there, then I felt like I was making a contribution…. I’m sure when I opened the door for people who were coming in, and several of them were black, they were like ‘OK, good. I’m all right. I’ve had [enough of] this all-white thing.’

  JUDITH: And then I found out I wasn’t pregnant, just very, very, very, very late. And so I didn’t need an abortion, which was lucky, and this woman and I, who I called Jane, I guess we agreed that we might talk again at some future time. I was looking for the women’s movement…. And if I had met somebody who was doing employment work about women or daycare work about women, maybe I would have gone that way. I don’t know. But I didn’t. I met these people, and so I went to the meeting and I became a counselor.

  MICKI: People were so desperate for abortions. And again, the issues of whether I was the only black woman or the only whatever, there were women who were dying, there were black women who were dying because of back alley abortions. So I didn’t care what organization was doing it or what color they were. They were somebody who was doing something about the problem, and I wanted to be a person who did something about the problem.

  FROM “BOX SET”

  Sue D. Burton

  For my Great-Aunt Antoinette (Nettie) Bope (1880–1902)

  I.

  Is it true Nettie wasn’t pregnant? But she thought she was—did she try one of those mail-order concoctions? The parsley seed cure? Did it screw up her hormones? Everybody took them. Ads in church bulletins: for blocked menses. But she was seen by doctors. Hoskinson and Cookes. Did they even know how to do a pelvic exam? They inserted implements. Bent spoons. Penholders, wire attached.

  but can’t—

  repeat? 1968. Baltimore. X waiting in a bar. While I go to the doctor’s. To get a “rabbit test.” To get a phone number so somebody could drive me someplace in Pennsylvania. Blindfolded. X had had a few beers by the time I got back to the bar. The doctor’s waiting room was standing-room-only. Thick with smoke.

  II.

  Standing-room-only. Thick. I was twenty-four. Nettie was almost twenty-two. I found her. Loved her. Made her into myself. For years, I had only one newspaper clipping: It is said the girl was taken to the place of a Mrs. Beatty on South Pearl Alley some time ago, and it was claimed she was in a delicate condition at the time. Beatty, no first name. Licensed midwife, whatever that meant in 1902. But in 1902, university-trained doctors (regular doctors) were on a crusade to license themselves. To squeeze out the competition—the irregulars, like Mrs. Beatty. Who diluted the profession. Like me in 1976, apprentice-trained at a women’s health center. For years, I had only one clipping and thought Mrs. Beatty was the abortionist. Nothing in the paper about doctors. You don’t do abortions, do you, Sue, Moo asked me once.

  III.

  No one should do abortions, said the regular doctors. Except themselves. Hospital boards. Yes. No. Checks, boxes. Regulars will regulate. Begottens. Though concerns re preserving the stock. Who is this Antoinette Bope? Frenchified. Farmer’s daughter. Grocery clerk. Convalescing for weeks. Who is the author of her ruin? Cy Stewart? Regular docs? Sudie, don’t brood. A student at Ohio State, Cy Stewart claimed to know a great deal which he could tell about the girl if the press would promise not to use his name, but as he intimated it was reflections on the girl’s character rather than facts in connection with the case at hand, he was informed his story was not wanted. My white dress Emily Dickinson Nettie. Who was hardworking and held in high esteem. Doctors and their boxes. They should’ve let the midwives keep the work.

  BIRTH

  Wendy Chin-Tanner

  THE SCARLET A

  Soniah Kamal

  The following reenactments are based on separate and extensive interviews with students from one high school class in Pakistan. These women agreed to share their experiences under the condition of using pseudonyms.

  Aminah, 1995

  Hours after arriving home in Lahore for summer break from college in America, I told my mother I had to go to the store to buy sanitary napkins, my decoy. I drove to a pharmacy in another neighborhood and purchased two pregnancy tests with cash scrounged up from the insides of old handbags. My boyfriend, Mike, and I had used a condom from a dispensary in the girls’ dorm bathrooms.

  I was pregnant.

  Sarai, my best friend, came over immediately.

  Can you and Mike get married? she asked.

  Sarai was married; the ultimate goal for good girls. I certainly did not want to get married just because I was pregnant. In the Bollywood films I’d grown up on, an unwed pregnant girl always commits suicide to save her family’s honor, but life is not a movie.

  Pre-Mike, I was a virgin in a committed relationship of five years with my Pakistani paramour, Q. One weekend, Q had paid me a visit from his college. Perhaps because five years seemed testimony of everlasting love and because we planned to marry, we had sex. Also what happens in America stays in America and so good Pakistani girls learn the art of subterfuge in order to survive what, in other cultures, are simply rites of puberty: dating, kissing, sex.

  Soon after, I discovered Q was cheating on me. Although Islam forbids premarital sex for both genders, Sarai consoled me that ‘boys will be boys’ and that I was Q’s one true love. This double standard upset me, so I cast off the shackles of purit
y, honor, and reputation and broke up with him. A few months later I’d started dating Mike because if boys could be boys, then why couldn’t girls be girls?

  I had two options: abortion or adoption.

  “I can’t abort,” I told Fatima. “I don’t want to.”

  I was roughly two and a half months gone. My due date was in December, which meant back in college and winter break. I would secretly carry the baby to term while at college, not return to Pakistan during winter break, and, instead, deliver the baby and give it up for adoption. Under this plan, I would not get to keep my child, but I was determined to someday have a relationship.

  I slept soundly for the first time in a long while only to awake the next morning to pandemonium. My sister’s in-laws-to-be had set the wedding date: December. In some cultures, “out of wedlock” and “illegitimate” are archaic terms, but in honor-purity cultures they remain relevant. If I returned to Pakistan in December, unwed and pregnant, the scandal would destroy and taint everyone—friends, extended family, parents; my sister’s wedding could be cancelled.

  But there was no excuse valid enough to miss a sibling’s wedding.

  I had to get an abortion. In Pakistan, premarital sex, let alone being unwed and pregnant, is a crime. Abortion is legal only in order, save the mother’s life and in cases of “necessary treatment,” whatever that means. In Islam, an abortion is legal until the fetus’s organs have formed and “life is breathed into it,” which, according to most Islamic scholars, is around 120 days. I was already nearing ninety days.

  At home, I was dying of guilt. My mother is a doctor. She believes girls who abort are hell bound, doctors who perform/aid abortions are devils, and she will not work with a colleague if she finds out they are “soft” on abortion.