Tamsin

by Abigail Strom

  “Don’t want to see her get hurt. I get it. Now please, let’s get back to football. And this time I’m going to kick your ass up and down this field.”

  I don’t, of course. But I make things as hard for Andre as I can, because it’s my job to get him ready for the game on Saturday. The role of a second-string athlete isn’t glamorous, but I take it seriously.

  And between every play, I still can’t stop thinking about Tamsin.

  She’s the girl who was so loud with Oscar the guy next door could hear her. She’s the girl Andre calls a “free spirit” when it comes to sex.

  But she also told me she’s gone cold-turkey on relationships. Why isn’t she dating anymore? Did something happen?

  It’s not just Tamsin’s relationship status that has me thinking. It’s also the stuff she said to me on stage and in the hallway. About abortion.

  I don’t believe anything because someone tells me to. I mean, there are people in my church who think homosexuality is wrong. They don’t condemn the people—“love the sinner, hate the sin”—but they think the behavior is a perversion.

  I think that attitude is a perversion.

  There are plenty of issues where I can see two sides, but gay rights isn’t one of them. One side is right and the other side is wrong. Love is love, and I believe that God smiles down on every couple with the guts to commit to each other for better or worse, richer or poorer, till death do them part.

  It seems obvious to me. And so does the pro-life side of the abortion debate.

  After fertilization, an embryo has its own DNA, right? Distinct from its mother and father? That means it’s a separate, unique being. A human being. And I don’t believe God would let that happen if He didn’t want that embryo to become a baby.

  There’s a bible verse pro-life Christians quote a lot. Jeremiah 1:5.

  Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,

  And before you were born I consecrated you.

  I know that if you’re looking for a passage from scripture to support your political position, you’ll probably find it. No matter what your ideology is. Even the devil can quote scripture for his purpose, and all that.

  But those words are powerful to me. I do believe God knows us even before we’re born. And I don’t believe that we, as mere human beings, have the authority to decide which of God’s consecrated children live or die.

  I believe that abortion is murder.

  But Tamsin said that one in four women will have an abortion in their lifetime.

  One in four.

  If that’s true, then doesn’t that mean at least one woman I know—probably more than one—has had an abortion?

  Maybe I’m dumb, but it honestly never occurred to me that someone I know might have ended a pregnancy.

  Maybe feminists are right about one thing. Maybe women—including pro-life women—have a perspective on abortion that’s very different from a man’s.

  But that doesn’t mean my perspective is worthless. And as I think about all that stuff Tamsin said to me, I want to argue with her about it. I want to make my case, because I believe in it.

  And that’s when I know I’m not dropping Experiments in Drama.

  * * *

  Beeker has a late class, so it’s just me and Trace having dinner tonight—pizza and leftover Chinese. I make the mistake of bringing up abortion, because I was looking for someone who’d be on my side of the debate.

  But I’m starting to think Trace is someone you don’t want on your side. Ever.

  “The whole abortion thing is such garbage,” he’s saying now, as pizza grease drips down his chin. He wipes it off with his sleeve. “It’s just about women who can’t keep their legs closed and their panties on.”

  I try to imagine what Tamsin would say to that.

  “Thanks, man. Thanks for making me think feminists have a point about men. Especially since you slept with at least ten girls last year, and never once complained about them losing their panties.”

  “Well, Jesus. I’m not a fucking idiot. We used protection.”

  I finish my last piece of pizza and sit back on the sofa. ESPN is on the TV, but even though they’re talking college football I’m not paying attention.

  “What if the condom broke? Or something else went wrong? What would you do if you got a girl pregnant? Would you marry her?”

  Trace frowns. There’s a spot of pizza grease at the corner of his mouth, and for some reason it bugs me.

  “Well…yeah. Sure.”

  I pick one of the girls he slept with last year—one I know for a fact he didn’t even like.

  “So Mary Beth Donnelly, then? If you’d gotten her pregnant, you would’ve married her? Promised before God to love, honor, and cherish her? Forever?”

  Trace shrugs. “I guess.”

  I don’t know if I believe him, but I give him the benefit of the doubt.

  “And what if she didn’t want to marry you? What if she wanted to get an abortion? What would you do then?”

  “What do you mean, what would I do?”

  “Well, you don’t believe in abortion, do you? So what would you do?”

  Trace reaches for the last piece of pizza.

  “I don’t know. Try to stop her.”

  “How? There’s no legal way. You can’t get a restraining order or anything.”

  Trace drops the pizza slice back in the box. “The law is never on the father’s side. I’m telling you, the odds are stacked against men in this fucking country. How disgusting is it that a man can’t stop some bitch from murdering his kid?”

  “Some bitch? Aren’t you talking about the mother of your child?”

  “Yeah, but—” He stops and glares at me. “What the hell is this, anyway? Why did you even bring this up?”

  Good question. “Believe it or not, I was looking for some good pro-life arguments before my next drama class. I just went to the wrong place.”

  He points a greasy finger at me. “No, you didn’t. Let me show you.”

  He pulls out his phone and starts scrolling.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Pulling something up on Twitter. There’s a pro-choice group right here at Hart that tweets about this shit. Now they’ve got people all around the country on their threads. I trolled them for a while and they blocked me. So I created this new account for a college girl who ‘isn’t sure’ about the whole abortion issue. Man, it’s fun to watch them trying to indoctrinate me with their bullshit. Here you go. This is from last night.”

  I take the phone he hands me, ignoring the greasy fingerprints on the screen, and look.

  But what if the baby really IS a baby? Doesn’t abortion stop a beating heart?

  That’s a tweet from what I’m guessing is Trace’s sock puppet. He’s named her Lisa, and her avatar is a golden retriever looking at the camera. Her profile reads, I’m a college freshman looking for answers to life’s biggest questions.

  “This is messed up, Trace.”

  “No, it’s hilarious. Read the thread.”

  I scroll up to see what’s above Trace’s tweet. He said this started with a group here at Hart, so I look for familiar faces.

  Yeah, there’s a girl I’ve been in classes with—Mena something. And Hannah from my old dorm. And—

  Tamsin.

  I freeze for a second. Then I read her tweet.

  What if the mother was raped? Is that a gift from God, too?

  I freeze again. There’s a tightness in my muscles, a spasm of nausea in my belly.

  Why did Tamsin ask that question? I look at the tweet above it, which was Trace’s.

  Isn’t every baby a gift from God?

  I said something like that in the hallway after yesterday’s class. I said that if a couple tries not to get pregnant but does anyway, the baby must be part of God’s plan.

  It makes me sick that Trace used that argument as part of his fucked-up Twitter game.

  I don’t want to look at “Lisa’s” reply to Tams
in’s question, but I do.

  The rape isn’t a gift, but the baby is. And most rapes aren’t REALLY rape. Just women changing their minds the next day.

  Oh, God.

  I make myself read Tamsin’s reply, which is pretty restrained, all things considered.

  I don’t know your history or why you would say something like that, but it’s not true.

  And she linked to an article about campus sexual assault.

  I can’t look at Trace. I feel the tension in my muscles that comes before violence—the violence I channel into football. I hand his phone back and get up from the couch.

  “I’ve got to study,” I say, and head for the stairs.

  Trace says something as I’m leaving, but I don’t answer. I need to get away so I don’t punch him in the face.

  After a fight turned ugly back in high school—I ended up breaking a guy’s nose and fracturing his wrist—I decided I wouldn’t ever use my fists in an argument again. Which means I have to turn my back on Trace right the hell now. I need to get away from the guy who could say shit like that about rape. Who could use rape in his stupid trolling campaign. Who could be flip about it, insincere about it, and a fucking douchebag about it.

  Some things aren’t okay, and that doesn’t make me Galahad.

  It makes me a human being.

  Chapter Seven

  Tamsin

  I’m in my dorm room practicing for Experiments in Drama. Professor Washington said she wouldn’t give us advance notice on scene set ups, but I know I’ll be partnered with Daniel and I want to be ready.

  I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours reading about abortion rights and thinking about abortion rights and talking with people online about abortion rights. I’m determined to win the argument once and for all, and I want to do it so convincingly that Daniel actually changes his mind.

  Because in spite of him being pro-life and possibly a religious nut, I think he’s a decent guy. And no decent guy should be handicapped with wrong-headed notions about the abortion debate.

  “That sounds kind of judgmental,” says Claire, when I start my speech to Will with that.

  She, Rikki, Izzy, Mena, Julia, Will, Dyshell, and Sam are in here with me providing moral support—and in the case of Will, dramatic support. He’s not an actor, but I need a stand-in for Daniel and the two of them are close in size.

  Although Daniel, in my private opinion, is a little more muscular.

  Will and I are standing facing each other, and the audience is sitting on the two desk chairs and on the beds—mine and Rikki’s.

  I’m still surprised—and really happy—that Rikki and I are sharing a room again this year. I’d been expecting her to ditch me. We’ve been roommates since we were freshmen, but she and Sam are practically married and I figured the two of them would get a place off-campus at some point.

  But not this year, apparently.

  “I’m not ready for that step yet,” Rikki said. “And anyway, I like living with you,” she added, giving me a hug.

  That’s Rikki for you. Any other girl would jump at the chance to live with her boyfriend, but Rikki knows herself and she knows she isn’t ready.

  Like I said, she has her shit together.

  So we’re sharing a room again. Rikki has a whole tiger theme going on with her decorating (there’s a story behind that, having to do with a sculpture Sam made of her freshman year) and her side of the room is full of tiger posters and tiger figurines and stuffed tigers.

  On my side of the room, punk and goth are a major theme. Vintage vinyl album covers from the Ramones and the Clash, Rocky Horror Picture Show posters, and some of my old vampire outfits from my cosplay days.

  Half of one wall is covered with peacock feather masks, voodoo dolls, and jazz posters from when I went to visit Dyshell and Andre in New Orleans. There’s also some Hamilton stuff (I am a theater major, after all) and photos of friends from here at Hart and back home in San Francisco.

  The only family photo is one of my grandmother.

  “No pictures of your parents?” Rikki asked the first week back, the way she asked freshman and sophomore year.

  “No pictures of my parents,” I answered.

  “You still hate them?”

  “I still hate them.”

  And like she did freshman and sophomore year, she left it at that.

  Rikki’s gotten neater in the last couple years and I’ve gotten messier, and the room is always in a tug of war between the two states. Tonight it’s fairly tidy since I asked everyone to come by. My bed, which Claire and Izzy are sitting on, is actually made for the first time in a week.

  We’ve already chowed down on pizza and breadsticks, and I offered everyone Mezcal as an after-dinner beverage. Izzy and Claire and I were the only takers. Then I explained how the scene would work—for the set-up, I decided to be a pro-choice activist trying to change a pro-lifer’s mind—and made my opening statement to Will (aka Daniel) in which I said he was a decent guy who shouldn’t be handicapped by wrong-headed notions about abortion. Now Claire, sitting cross-legged on the end of my bed, finishes her Mezcal and makes her comment.

  “That sounds kind of judgmental.”

  “Don’t you think his ideas about abortion are wrong-headed?”

  “Sure. But if you start out like that, you’ll put him on the defensive. You said your goal in this scene is to persuade him, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, I’ve learned from experience that when I flat-out tell Will he’s wrong about something, which he often is, he’s not super inclined to listen to me afterward.”

  “That’s true,” Will says, grinning at her.

  “Okay,” I say. “No prologue calling him decent but misguided. I’ll just go right into my arguments. I want you guys to tell me if they’re convincing. I mean, I’m obviously preaching to the choir here, but—”

  Then, suddenly, something occurs to me.

  I turn away from Will and toward the rest of group. They’re sitting there looking expectant.

  “Uh, guys? I didn’t mean to…that is…” I hesitate. “I don’t want to assume that we’re all pro-choice or anything. I mean, I know Rikki is, and Izzy and Mena and Julia and Dyshell and Claire, because we’ve talked about it, but…”

  Sam is sitting with his arm around Rikki. “That just leaves me and Will. The guys.”

  “Well, yes. I don’t think I’ve ever talked about this with either of you. If any of this offends you…”

  Sam shakes his head. “I’m pro-choice. And even if I weren’t, this wouldn’t offend me.”

  That leaves Will. When I turn to look at him he’s just standing there, shifting his weight from foot to foot and looking uncomfortable.

  “I…don’t really know what I am,” he says finally.

  Claire gasps. “You’re not pro-choice?”

  Her eyes are huge as she stares at her boyfriend. She looks shocked, and Will looks miserable as he stares back at her.

  Shit. I only brought this up because I didn’t want to make assumptions, like we all did in Experiments in Drama.

  But now I realize that I have made assumptions. I assumed that none of my close friends…this group that’s like family to me…could possibly be anti-abortion.

  Will drags a hand through his reddish-brown hair. He’s grown it out a little since last year, when he had to quit football after an injury.

  “It’s kind of a personal thing for me,” Will says. “I mean…okay. My mom got pregnant with me when she was eighteen, and it wasn’t planned. Like, big time not planned. Like, my biological father is a giant asshole. He didn’t want anything to do with me or my mom when he found out.”

  I think of my friend in high school.

  “Her parents were pretty upset too. They wanted her to have an abortion. In fact, they told her they’d kick her out of the house if she didn’t.” He takes a breath. “But she had me anyway. Obviously.”

  Claire’s cheeks are pink, which happens to h
er when things get intense.

  “I’m glad your mom had you. Obviously. But she got to make the choice that was right for her. Don’t you think other women should have that same choice?”

  Will doesn’t look any less miserable. “Yes. Or no. I don’t know. I mean, it’s not like I think women should be forced to give birth or something.”

  “But isn’t that the only other option? Either women can choose or they can’t.”

  Mena breaks into the conversation then. She’s British, and I’ve spent the last couple years reminding myself that her accent doesn’t mean she’s smarter than the rest of us—although she’s premed and definitely is smarter than the rest of us. In some things, anyway.

  “I don’t know if we can think of it that way,” she says. “As far as decision-making goes.”

  “What do you mean?” Dyshell asks.

  “Decisions don’t work like that. We can’t think of them as the same thing both before and after they’re made. If you’re talking about the possibility you might not have been born, you’re talking about something meaningless, because you were born. And if you’re talking about a fertilized egg that might have become a person but didn’t, that’s meaningless, too. Because it didn’t happen. And because of the things that did or didn’t happen, peoples’ lives took a certain path. But the paths that weren’t taken don’t have their own reality. Not in this universe, anyway.”

  Every so often Mena goes off on a tangent that I do not get. The one who usually does is Sam.

  “Are you talking a Schrödinger’s Cat kind of scenario?” Sam asks now, sounding interested.

  Will sits down on the floor with his back against the closet door. I follow his cue and sit down with my back against the bookcase. I’m pretty sure neither one of us—or anyone else outside Mena and Sam—knows much about Schrödinger’s Cat scenarios, but Will doesn’t look as tense and bummed out as he did a minute ago, and neither does Claire.

  So I figure letting Mena and Sam make the conversation a little less personal and a little more theoretical—even science nerd theoretical—isn’t a bad thing for a few minutes. And anyway, it’s obvious the scene between me and Will is on hold.