Choice Words Read online

  * * *

  River is gone. River is not gone. She is in my cells. When she died, she was the cradle my body became, not the center that escaped.

  Rocking in that chair, I cradled a still-secret knowledge in the basin of my heart: I was pregnant again. The night we conceived, I knew. The force of it rang my body like a bell. Of course, there’s no medical literature to back me up.

  Every day I reached my mind into the river inside me and asked, Do you want to live?

  No one heard what my child whispered but me.

  ON THAT DAY

  Arisa White

  the uniformed men told us we were coming with them.

  I was too busy getting Kayana ready, I didn’t notice

  I was still in my pajamas, and the hairstyle you did

  the other day needed to be combed.

  You woke up from the anesthesia, took the train half drugged.

  On that day, Jamar, me, and Ibert sat in the air-conditioned police station,

  drinking apple juice. The white cops told us, Better not see you here again.

  They laughed. We imagined Kayana alone in the hospital shaking.

  On the train you fell asleep, opened your eyes

  just before our stop. We wondered where you were

  while rubbing goose bumps down, watching pistachio

  paint peel, listening to our hunger come.

  On that day the apartment was too quiet a place

  for living children, you cried, and we let our minds wander.

  Your head begged for bed. You called

  your best friend on that day and asked her to get us.

  Walked on legs withering beneath you

  to Kayana in the hospital five blocks away.

  Later in Angie’s doorway, Ibert hugged your thighs,

  rested his head between your legs. We shouted,

  Where you been? On that day, without a reply,

  we calmed our excitement to enter your hush.

  NEW RELIGION

  Mary Morris

  Remove the bloody icons

  from your walls.

  Wrap them in white gauze.

  Perform a decent burial.

  Chant gospel,

  play Nina Simone.

  If you must, have an abortion.

  Make the sign of the swan.

  Lay yourself in the sun,

  like a temple on a mountain.

  Be sworn.

  Be sworn in.

  HAIL MARY

  Deborah Hauser

  Anonymous, among women, we wait, sharing a communal grief.

  By tacit agreement, we exchange only furtive glances, denying

  ourselves the comfort of direct eye contact.

  A sterile nurse announces my name. I follow her down

  a hollow hall to a stark room. I strip, lay myself bare

  on the sacrificial altar.

  This thin gown offers no protection against the chill,

  steel table. Feet in stirrups, eyes pinned to the ceiling,

  a water stain contorts into the face of the Virgin Mary.

  My fingers ache to count the long-abandoned beads

  of my first rosary. A gift for my communion, the tiny gold cross

  dangling from a string of iridescent pearls.

  Caressing them, I felt superior. I fell to my knees

  to scoop them up when they broke. Cheap plastic

  beads skittered across the linoleum floor in the First Aid

  aisle of the drugstore, but Mother yanked me to my feet. “Leave

  that junk,” she hissed, pulling me along behind her to the checkout line.

  I try to recall the prayers I used to recite, kneeling at my bed,

  palms pressed tightly together, the nape of my neck glowed

  beneath the heat of his gaze. Hail Mary, Mother

  Mary comes to me. She disappears into the ceiling tile.

  AT ADVENT, THE WAITING ROOM

  Daisy Fried

  We small army say if you turn time

  backwards, Mary goes back to Bethlehem,

  the lowing of the cattle, the comfort of straw.

  Labor’s just as terrible, if not worse, in reverse,

  but then the swelling hurt subsides; her breasts

  grow lighter, de-manufacturing the milk

  that would have fed the god. Mary still

  remembers the strange unraveling. Therefore

  no one ever bears, no one ever

  bears the whole world’s weight alone again.

  FROM A BOOK OF AMERICAN MARTYRS

  Joyce Carol Oates

  “Momma? Why aren’t we leaving?”

  “Why? Because we are not.”

  Dawn was baffled why Edna Mae, and some others, were not leaving the Cleveland County Planned Parenthood Women’s Surgical Clinic. The last of the clinic staff had quickly departed, to a chorus of cries—Murderers! Cowards!

  Edna Mae plucked at the children’s arms. Hurry! Reverend Trucross was leading them.

  Dawn was very tired. Dawn could not comprehend. Where were they going? The clinic was shut for the night. There was no one to pray over, or to harass or threaten. One TV camera crew remained in the street.

  Only a few volunteers remained—fewer than twenty. But these appeared to be members of Reverend Trucross’s church.

  They were led to the rear of the clinic. In the alley behind the clinic where there were trash cans and dumpsters. It was dark here. Flashlights were lighted. Dawn could not see well. The younger children stumbled and whimpered. Edna Mae spoke in a voice trembling with excitement. One of the TV crew was speaking to Reverend Trucross. A pair of headlights flared in the alley and Dawn saw the sharply shadowed faces of volunteers. Mostly they were strangers but there was Edna Mae Dunphy among them. They had the look of persons who did not know their surroundings, where they were or why. Dawn did recognize Jacqueline, a heavyset girl with asthma, from Mad River Junction, of whom it was said that Jesus had “saved” her when her throat had closed up as a younger girl and she’d been unable to breathe. At the Pentecostal church it had happened, dozens of witnesses would testify that Jesus had “breathed” life into Jacqueline and restored her to the world.

  Edna Mae had acquired a flashlight. There was a smell in the alley of rotted fruit, rotted meat. Something sour and rancid. Dawn swallowed hard, not wanting to be sick to her stomach. Edna Mae was reaching for her, gripping her hand with surprising strength. “Dawn! Come with me.”

  She would not come with her mother! She dug her heels into the ground.

  Yet still, somehow her mother pulled her. Who would have thought that Edna Mae Dunphy was so strong.

  In the alley behind the clinic amid the sickening stench they had overturned trash cans to poke in the debris. Boldly they had thrown open dumpster lids to poke inside and to peer with flashlights.

  A cry went up—they had discovered a cache of cardboard boxes in one of the dumpsters. The first was removed and seen to be secured tight by duct tape neatly wrapped. With a knife they cut the duct tape, and opened the box. Inside were five or six Ziploc bags and in each bag a small star-shaped thing … More cries went up, of anguish and jubilation.

  Edna Mae said fiercely, “You see? Babies—that didn’t get born as you did.”

  Though Edna Mae was very frightened, too, Dawn could see, her face was drawn and ashen and her mouth was set in a fixed half-smile like the smile of a mannequin. Her fingers were very cold.

  In the quivering flashlight beam the first of the babies was examined. For (as Reverend Trucross said) you had to determine if indeed the baby was truly dead.

  Though it was clear, the poor thing had never lived. A tiny kitten-sized creature with a disproportionately large head. Its limbs were stunted, and one of its arms was missing.

  Dawn tried to pull away from Edna Mae’s grip. Her heart was beating very fast. She was close to hyperventilating. Yet she could not look away from the tiny, dead baby being removed from the stained Ziploc
bag.

  In a quavering voice Dawn said to Edna Mae, “The babies are dead. They don’t know what you’re doing for them.”

  (Where were Anita and Noah? Dawn hoped they were not near, and that someone was watching over them, for Edna Mae seemed to have forgotten them.)

  Edna Mae looked at Dawn with disgust. “You are so ignorant! It’s pathetic how ignorant you are. Why do we bury the dead?—because they are dead. But their souls are not dead. We are honoring the babies’ souls, not their poor, broken bodies. For shame, you.”

  “But—they never lived …”

  “Of course, they lived! They were all alive, in their mothers’ wombs. As you were alive, before you were born.” Edna Mae spoke to Dawn with a savage sarcasm? Dawn had never heard before in her mother though (it seemed to Dawn) Edna Mae was trembling too, with fear and dread.

  The volunteers exclaimed in shock, pity, horror. Dawn steeled herself against what she might see. Reverend Trucross was praying loudly.

  “Merciful God help us. God who taketh away the sins of the world help us in our rescue of these holy innocents …”

  In the beam of the flashlight another tiny creature was exposed. This one had been shaken out of the Ziploc bag? in which it had been stuck. It was larger than the first baby, fleshy, meat-colored, damp with blood. You could see the tiny curved legs, the tiny fingers and toes, the misshapen head. You could see the eyes that appeared large and were tight-shut. You could see the miniature pouting mouth? that had never cried.

  Other babies appeared to have been dismembered. Their overlarge heads were intact but their bodies had been broken into pieces.

  All lay very still on the ground. It seemed wrong to Dawn, that even a dead baby should lie on the ground.

  Though the eyes of the dead babies were shut tight, tight as slits, and the faces shriveled into grimaces, yet you did expect the eyes to open suddenly. You could not look away from those eyes.

  Dawn begged Edna Mae to let her go.

  “Let you go where? You will wait for me. We are all going home together in the morning.”

  In horror Dawn stood as Edna Mae and the others lifted boxes out of the dumpsters with their bare hands. (At Home Depot, Dawn and her coworkers, unloading merchandise, all wore gloves. And if you did not wear gloves, your supervisor would hand a pair of gloves to you!) Some of the boxes were upside down, all were toppled as if they’d been dumped hastily.

  Carefully the boxes were placed in the rear of a minivan in the alley. The plan was to bury the aborted infants in a consecrated cemetery a few miles away with a proper Christian burial, Christian prayers.

  As Edna May insisted, Dawn helped stack the boxes. She could not breathe for the stench, and was feeling lightheaded.

  (Where was Jesus? Had it been His plan all along, for Dawn to help bury the babies?)

  (He had not warned her beforehand. It had been a terrible shock!)

  (Since the Hammer with the black-taped grip, that had struck the fleeing screaming boys with such power, Dawn had come to respect Jesus in another, unexpected way. Jesus was an ally but you could not take Jesus for granted as an ally; it was that simple.)

  In all, there were fourteen boxes secured with duct tape, retrieved from the dumpsters. In each box, five or six Ziploc bags with aborted babies inside.

  Thrown away like garbage! God have mercy on the murderers.

  TUNNEL OF LIGHT

  Julie Kane

  Those who return report that, at the end

  Of the tunnel of light, there’s a receiving line

  Made up of dead loved ones: relatives, not friends,

  Blocking the gate to whatever lies behind.

  It could be from a lack of oxygen,

  A shared illusion as the brain cells die,

  But it will still feel like it’s genuine,

  No matter if it’s real or one last lie.

  My mother waits there in her spider web:

  No way around except by going through.

  My little lost infant waits in her crib.

  I don’t fear dying, but I fear those two.

  O holy mother, help us to forgive

  Those who killed us and those who let us live.

  LIZARD

  Ulrica Hume

  She bought a stroller for the twins, found it in a slick catalog of things she could not afford. It was from Scandinavia, all black and ergonomic, a two-seater. She assembled it herself, and when the stroller was there before her with its glitzy funereal air, she changed her mind about everything. She ended up at an abortion clinic the following rainy Tuesday.

  Finn, the father of the twins, was not someone she knew well. He was a plumber who had come by that day to fix the bathroom’s leaky drainpipe. Thick red hair, green starburst eyes, a schoolboy’s dimples. She watched him gingerly slide down under the sink. Silence as he scrutinized. Then a long-winded prophecy about couplings and nipples. I have the gift of the gab, he joked, and she laughed along, giving away her power, yet feeling helplessly pretty. As he worked she dusted the plump leaves of her jade plant. Then he called her, Laura my dear, he said, can you fetch me that wrench from my toolbox please. She rummaged through greasy rags and rubber washers, thinking how lovely it was, someone calling to her from another room.

  She gave him the wrench, and he winked a thank-you. See, here’s the problem here, he said. But as she leaned in with fascination, he suddenly swung himself round, next she was pinned to the floor and he was holding the wrench as a weapon. And so it happened: a spreading damp, and she the trembling prey.

  At the abortion clinic, she stared at the bad art on the waiting room wall. Then rain began, a cheerful staccato. She knew all the leaks in the world would remind her of him—a haunting. A conspiracy of unscreamed screams ratcheted up inside her as she let go the twins. After, she was sadly relieved. She stepped lightly.

  Protestors were gathered outside the clinic, with signs bearing fetuses. Thou Shalt Not Kill. They also carried umbrellas. She wondered if their sixth commandment applied to war as well, or just to those who die who are not yet born.

  She came home rattled. Sipped chamomile tea.

  A few weeks went by. She was checking the mail when she noticed something odd on the sidewalk. A discarded cardboard box, stuffed with a blanket. She opened it cautiously.

  Marble eyes—fixed, omniscient, pleading—met her blue ones. A forked tongue teased the space.

  It was a lizard. Probably abandoned for having grown too large. She knew that she must help it.

  She brought the lizard inside and coaxed it out of the box. It emerged majestically, sashaying across her plush carpet, tail swinging.

  The lizard’s skin was a primitive pattern of black, green, white, rose, and beige. She stroked it gently. So much was communicated in that feathery moment: a surreptitious beauty, which she could not trust but had to trust, or let herself be ruined.

  She fed it grapes and scraps of bread. Blew soap bubbles, which it reached for in an ethereal way. Yet how needy it was. Following her around, always at her heels. Its nocturnal wanderings took some getting used to. She could hear it swishing in the dark, prompted by a secret reptilian agenda. It lurked at the edge of things, remembering its clear, clear purpose at the center of it all.

  The first time she took the lizard out in the stroller, she felt a wild sense of pride. The two-seater worked perfectly if the lizard reclined sideways—this was no problem. Since the sun was quite bright, she covered its head with a bonnet.

  Off they went.

  Stares. Unkind words. Such as, Where’d you get that ugly baby? Lots of open mouths. It’s Little Red Riding Hood! one child exclaimed.

  They promenaded as far as the railroad tracks, then back again. It would be like this from now on, she supposed, just them against everyone else. Such sweet rapport they had! The lizard loved to drape itself around her shoulders and cuddle. For hours it did this, in an affectionate wrestler’s hold. The scaly skin against her neck a telling veil of sweetgrass and mo
onwater. Giving her time to think of the twins and who they might have been. The lizard’s lips turning in a fey smile as it snored. Even the cold-blooded have hearts.

  BENEATH THE WORLD: TWO POEMS TO THE CHILD NEVER TO BE BORN1

  Sharon Doubiago

  I.

  I sleep beneath a map of the world.

  The world glows in the dark.

  In the furthest place

  the northern lights

  bear down.

  In the morning I will bear down.

  This thing. This fish

  swollen in the sea, glowing

  beneath love.

  Canada and Alaska yearn over me

  for Asia. China, as if in flight

  flees the map. You must walk

  south to the dead center, the US

  The eyes, the heart, the feet

  must follow

  the drift to the east, antipodes,

  Tierra del Fuego: the delicate

  fire in this painting.

  O island. O little land

  I see your journey

  on my water’s swift current.

  Tomorrow I will open.

  The axis will tilt, the earth will quake

  and he and I,

  two lonely gods,

  will suck you

  from gravity.

  But I hear, little spirit,

  your suck,

  the great song,

  Corazón.

  Your heart

  and the world glow.

  Corazón blue, corazón red,

  corazón negra.

  II.

  Tomorrow I’ll break

  I’ll forsake

  words altogether. I will paint

  with my soul

  the curvature

  of Earth, the tipping of her

  axis, her wobbly