by Lucy Hay
“When you gonna bring us a boy, Dan?” one of his mates Rory declared when Hannah was born.
“I’m the only man of the house!” my father chuckled and sure enough, the twins were next and the last of the Carmichael girls. At that party I had sat on the sofa and watched my father and his cronies sink more beer than we could afford, yet for once my mother wasn’t wearing her sour expression. My father had just come home from a jaunt that had lasted nearly six months and the majority of her pregnancy. I think then she had just been glad to have him back. Not that it lasted long. Dad hadn’t lived at home in years, appearing and disappearing at will: sending money when he could, falling silent when he couldn’t. From time to time, he’d come to the house, his hands in his pockets like a teen, waiting for Mum to take him inside. Sometimes she’d make him a sandwich or a coffee; other times they’d disappear upstairs together for hours. Whatever the case, they were together, yet not together. The same they’d always been, whether they actually lived in the same house or not.
“Dad’s here!” Hannah would exclaim every time, beaming. Each time he came back, Hannah was always sure he would stay, yet surely she could never remember a time in her life he had for any significant amount of time? I barely could.
“Don’t get excited,” I would counsel, before Sal would inevitably cut in cruelly, “He’s not staying, dimwit.”
And sure enough, Dad would give us all a hug, call us his princesses and then be on his way again. At the moment he was living in as a kitchen porter at the Belle View Hotel on Roslin Road, just four streets away from where I was standing now. Yet I knew I would not go and see him and ask his advice. How could I? He had always been there, more or less, but never truly been there for any of us, Mum included. His superficial, dissociative nature could not allow it. I recalled a time I was being bullied at school. Mum had advised me to simply hit back, but this had resulted in an even more savage beating and humiliation from the girl involved, a brutish little bitch called Lorna. She was the type who carried more freckles and puppy fat than the victims she singled out for them, a way of deflecting attention from herself. Feeling unable to report my failure to subdue Lorna to Mum then, I had sought Dad at the house he lived at that time, one down near the seafront. A forty year old living in with some teenage students from the local college, he cut a strange figure, but it was all he could afford. And the students loved him and his neverending supply of weed, of course. He always had enough money for that stuff. So I had knocked on the door and a shirtless boy barely older than myself had answered, plumes of smoke billowing around him. Perhaps no other fresh air had hit the house in days. Behind the boy, I could see the muck of a house not cleaned in months: mouldy plates piled high in the sink, the carpet deep in detritus. My father practically fell out of the doorway and his stoned face lit up at the sight of me.
“Lizzzzz…” He slurred after a short beat, as if he had to think first which of his girls I was. “Come in!”
I just stood there. There was something so pathetic and sad about him, a grown man, standing next to the shirtless boy, surrounded by filth. “I have to go.” I said and simply turned on my heel and walked back up the road. He didn’t call after me and it was never mentioned again. Perhaps Dad did not even remember the encounter. Whatever the case, I knew I could not go to him now.
I looked at my watch. It was roughly an hour and a half since Sal had left me at the bandstand, more than enough time to make it home on the bus and across the two fields to our house. Would she have spilled her guts to Mum? I took my mobile from my pocket, half expecting a text from Mum, with the curt words COME HOME NOW. Mum always wrote in capital letters, as if she didn’t expect to be taken seriously otherwise. I envisaged her, sitting at the long kitchen table, a cigarette smouldering in the ashtray, giving her true feelings away. How many times had I stood before her like that, shame filling my boots, yet defiance rising in my chest? She was a forbidding woman, my mother. Perhaps I would have been too had my children outnumbered me, six to one. Mum was a short woman, even shorter than me (and I was the shortest of all the Carmichael girls, or would be; even the twins were gaining on me at nearly eight years old). Sal and Amanda had taken after our father and Hannah was the tallest of all of us, nearly five ten at only thirteen, gangly and awkward, all arms and elbows. Yet our mother was not just short, but tiny: her hands, her feet, her nose; everything about her was miniature, as if someone had shrunk her with some kind of futuristic ray gun. She was painfully thin, no breasts to speak of, for she favoured cigarettes above food. From a distance she could be mistaken for a skeletal child and it was only up close could you see the age in her eyes, the faded enthusiasm. A shock of frizzy hair stood out from her scalp, which from time to time she would attempt to dye, yet it would always go orange, no matter what the colour said on the box. Lines drew in her lips like a drawstring and she rarely wore make up, the grey pallor of her skin showing the world just how tired she was. And always, always, her catchphrase was the same in response to our protests at cleaning our rooms, helping out with the housework or whatever else we had been asked: “Have I slipped into some kind of parallel dimension where I’m speaking Chinese? Do it!”
Yet despite her standoffish and sometimes cold ways, she was a good mother. Her first thought in the morning was us girls, plus her last one at night. She was up every morning at the crack of dawn preparing packed lunches and dinner was always ready every evening, whether we wanted to eat it or not. There was no faddy eating in the Carmichael house: you got what you were given and you ate it, or you were in for one of Mum’s other catchphrases, “There are starving children in Africa, you know!” Despite her lack of money, Mum searched high and low all year round for the best inexpensive presents for birthdays and Christmas, without resorting to things that had fallen off the back of the lorry.
“We’re down, but not out,” she’d assert and us girls would mouth this behind her back and laugh and not really know what she meant. On Christmas day itself, there was always a turkey on the table, sprouts and roasties and crackers. When one of us came home crying from school, she’d let us go to our rooms first before knocking tentatively on the door and asking what the problem was. If we didn’t want to talk, Mum wouldn’t make us but instead just sit there on the end of the bed and wait. If we still didn’t want to talk, she’d go back to the kitchen and make us a chocolate spread sandwich (usually only allowed at weekends) and deliver it to our rooms without a word, just a pat on the shoulder and that half-smile of hers.
Yet I couldn’t bear the thought of returning home, not yet. I couldn’t stand before my mother and tell her I was pregnant and that I wanted rid of it. Mum had been just nineteen years old when she had me, just a year older than I was now. She had scrimped and saved and sacrificed for me and my sisters, with and without Dad’s help over the years. She was the one true constant in my life and without her, I would be nothing, quite literally. If I told her I wanted rid, surely it would be like me rejecting everything she had ever done for me, including giving birth to me? I couldn’t tell her I wanted an abortion.
Abortion. I had been avoiding that word. “Can’t have this baby” or “getting rid of it” were poor substitutes. Mrs Jenkin-No-S would have had me look up “abortion” in a dictionary no doubt, like she did so many others: “To truly know a word is to be able to define a word!” she would bark. I scrabbled in my bag again, drew out the well-thumbed dictionary I always carried around with me. A pang lanced through my chest as I read the message in the front of the book from my mother: “To Lizzie at Christmas, my little wordsmith”, followed by a selection of kisses. I sighed and turned the pages through the “As” and there it was, “Abort, verb: to terminate before completion; to cease development or die, ie. “to abort a foetus”.”
A foetus. A baby. Oh God.
But I still had to find out more. Having the facts wouldn’t make me less able to do what I needed to do. I didn’t want to be “the pregnant one”. I didn’t want to bring up this
baby all alone, with no money, no prospect of making any or stay in this town a moment longer than I had to. I wanted the future I was meant to have, not the one that was being rewritten for me right now, by chance. And that didn’t make me a bad person!
I walked to the doctor’s surgery. I had made my decision. I needed to find out how to implement it. I took a deep breath and pushed the door inwards…
“…Lizzie!” There was a flash of royal blue and the smell of too much face powder and Mrs. Darby descended on me, pecking my cheek in that bird-like way of hers. Probably three hundred years old, Mrs. Darby always carried a voluminous shopping bag with her and an umbrella, even on the sunniest of days. She also lived across one of the two fields from my house. From time to time Mrs. Darby would drop by unannounced and my mother would always entertain her, pouring tea for the Old Gossip and nodding, eyes glazed over.
“Ill are you, dear?” Mrs Darby tutted, her expression teeming with fake sympathy. Really, the old bag wanted to know why I was there.
“Just picking up a prescription for my Mum.” I said quickly, surprised at how the lie tripped off my tongue so easily. For a moment, my heart lurched: Mrs. Darby couldn’t know the pharmacist in town collected them… could she? But then, there was very little Mrs. Darby didn’t know, it seemed. Winby was a very small town and our own village Linwood beyond it, even smaller.
Yet the lie slipped by Mrs. Darby unnoticed, for she simply patted my arm and said, “Send her my love, won’t you.” And with that, she waddled through the double doors of the surgery. I breathed a sigh of relief, checked the rest of the waiting room – no one I knew, or more importantly, knew my Mum – and approached the counter.
“I need an appointment.” I said nervously.
“When?” The bored-looking receptionist was barely out of her teens. I thought I recognised her from somewhere. Perhaps someone from college’s sister? She wore too much make up, her hair scraped back in a vicious-looking ponytail. Three of her long painted nails on her left hand were missing, just gluey stubs underneath. The wonky clacking on the keyboard set my teeth on edge.
“Today?” I said hopefully.
The receptionist looked at me as if I was insane. “We’re booking for next week.” She drawled.
I felt a surge of panic rise in my chest. “I really need an appointment today.”
The receptionist merely went back to her screen and tapped a few buttons. Long enough to get my hopes up, until: “Nah. We got nothing.” She declared.
I felt those familiar tears well up. “Please.” I said quietly.
“Sorry.” Said the receptionist, clearly not sorry at all.
In a blur, I turned and as a door opened, I was faced with someone else I knew. It was just a girl from college, someone I only knew to say hello to in the corridor. She had A Level Art with me and always sat at the back, texting.
“Lizzie.” She said pleasantly, “I heard you got into the university you wanted. Well done.”
I couldn’t remember the girl’s name. I knew it began with “L”. Laura, maybe? “Thanks.” I stuttered. “Did you?”
“No.” The girl said flatly. “I don’t think my portfolio was good enough, didn’t get in anywhere.”
“That’s a shame.” I said, hardly able to believe these words were forming in my mouth. I had things to deal with!
The girl shrugged. “I’ll try again next year.” She said, optimism painted across her face. I envied her for that. To her, anything seemed possible, when all I had and ever wanted was about to be snatched away from me.
“I have to go.” I mumbled. As I began to turn, the girl caught my arm.
“Are you okay?” she said.
I wanted to say, “Yes, fine,” and breeze away, so she – whoever she was – would never know. I didn’t want to tell a stranger my business. I had barely exchanged twenty words with her in the past. She was just someone I saw and nodded at, no big deal. Yet I was unable to look her in the eye or say anything without my lip quivering, as if she could see into my very soul.
“Come for a coffee with me?” The girl said.
“I don’t have any money for coffee.” I said morosely.
“Doesn’t matter.” She replied. So I found myself in a backstreet cafe with her, staring at dishwater brown coffee in a chipped mug, telling her everything that had happened that morning. “Your sister sounds like a bitch.” The girl said.
“No, she’s not.” I said immediately, almost surprised at my defence of Sal. I probably would have merely agreed twenty four hours ago. But twenty four hours ago my revision-obsessed sister had not dropped everything and come to me when I needed her. And now thanks to me, perhaps she never would again.
“Are you going to wait the week?” The girl enquired, “For the doctor’s appointment?”
“I guess I’ll have to.” I said. The thought made me feel like curling up and dying. How could I live with this for another seven days? Would I lose my nerve? Would I end up having this baby, simply by default?
“No, you don’t have to.” The girl set her bag on the tabletop and searched through it, drawing out her wallet. On it, her name, embroidered: NIKKI. I almost laughed. That wasn’t even vaguely close to Laura. From her wallet, she drew out a bright pink business card and presented it to me. On it, the name of a youth contraception service in a funky font; cartoon eggs and sperm denoted it was serious, yet still “for young people” in a pseudo-comforting manner. “These guys will help you.” Nikki said.
After Nikki had gone, I wandered the streets of Winby looking for the service. I found it, a single door sandwiched between an arcade and a boarded-up ironmonger’s. There was no bright pink paint or funky font here, just a faded name on a buzzer, scrawled in biro. I could never have found it alone; I never knew it was there. I thanked Nikki again, this time in my head. I pressed the button and waited.
“Yes?” A high pitched female voice trilled.
“I need to see someone,” I said, praying she would not ask the inevitable next question, “What for?” Could I really reply, “an abortion”, down this buzzer?
Yet to my relief, the buzzer merely sounded and the door unlocked. I traipsed across the threshold. The hallway was every bit as filthy as that student house my father had lived in, its walls marked, acres of post on the telephone table. A young woman with badly-dyed hair and wearing a hoodie and jeans appeared on the carpet-less stairs and smiled in what she imagined was a reassuring manner.
“Hi, I’m Helen.” She said, “Come on up.”
We ascended the rickety, creaking stairs towards a small white door with a leaded window at the top. Helen opened it and ushered me inside: I had been expecting another filthy, depressing room with scarred white walls, but instead I was faced with leather sofas, a coffee machine, fluffy rugs, as if it was a million miles away from the rest of the building. The walls were a light pink and there were posters in glass frames, all on the subject of contraception: SAFE SEX IS SMART SEX emblazoned on one, but a little too late for the likes of me.
“So, what can I do for you…?” Helen said.
“My name’s Elizabeth.” I said, my mouth dry. Too late, I wondered if I should have given a fake name. But she wouldn’t be able to tell my parents I was there. Would she?
“Elizabeth.” Helen noted my name down on a clipboard and merely waited patiently, that fake “don’t-worry-everything-will-be-fine” smile etched on her face.
“I’m pregnant.” I said and before she could say anything, or before I could talk myself out of it, I quickly followed up with, “Iwantanabortion.”
Saying the words aloud for the first time, I felt myself wince and I half expected her to, as well. Instead, Helen’s face betrayed nothing: she simply noted something down on that clipboard.
“I see,” she said. “Have you discussed this with your boyfriend?”
I could see Mike’s face in my mind’s eye. The blank expression that always maddened me. His neverending well of self belief that he was right an
d everyone else was wrong, especially me. I could hear the tremulous teenage defiance in his voice that always made me cringe as he argued with his father. He was not old enough to take this on board, despite the fact he was older than me; I knew that. And even if he wanted the baby, I didn’t. It was my body and my decision.
“Yes.” I lied.
“And what about your family, Elizabeth?” Helen continued.
Mute, I nodded. I had told Sal, hadn’t I? That much was true at least. My stomach turned itself in knots, I hated all these lies. But it was the only way.
Half an hour later and I had a yet another pink card in my hand, an appointment for the next day at the general hospital noted on it. I stared at it on the bus all the way home. Helen had explained all the options to me. There were two kinds of abortion, medical and surgical. The former was for early pregnancy like mine and involved taking just two pills, a bit like the morning after pill. The baby would be flushed out: gone, just like that. It seemed so easy. Too easy? But then, why should it be hard … As punishment? I had done nothing wrong. I had been caught out, like thousands of other young people. It was my right to do something about it, if I wanted to. And I did.