by Nicole Maggi
Sometimes I hate this world. Sometimes I think I’m not cut out to live in it. Sometimes I think I should go live off the grid in the mountains, foraging for food and writing manifestos about smashing the patriarchy.
But then I remember…as angry as I am, how much angrier must Mellie be? How much more unfair is it for her than for me? How much deeper must she want to escape, where no one can ever hurt her again?
I have to be strong. For her. For everyone like her who needs a friend to hold their hand while they live their worst nightmare coming true.
Maybe by doing that, I can make the earth a little less ugly.
—Lise
March 13
Maybe March 14
Still dark
Dear Ms. Tilson,
I was right.
No one can help me.
Lise tried, but she was wrong.
So much happened tonight that it’s hard to think of it in the right order. My memory of the night is fragmented, sliced in pieces of before and after.
But I’m going to try to write down what I can.
I feel like I need to record it, that tonight was one of the nights you remember for the rest of your life, and I need to write it down so I don’t forget.
I showed up at the Empty Space right at seven. This is the part of the night I want to remember the most. I want to remember how the art surrounded me, filled my senses so much that I could smell it. The artist had traveled across the country, taking photographs of places both forgotten and famous, like an abandoned silo in Iowa juxtaposed with Yellowstone. Then she’d printed the photographs and painted over them, so that each looked like a fantastical version of itself. The images were so vivid it was like I was inside the paintings, part of the art. You know how sometimes people say that art is experiential? I never understood that until tonight. I want to do that with my art, create something so powerful it makes someone have to sit down, as I did when I looked at the photograph/painting of the Big Sur coastline in California. The ocean, cliffs, and sky took my breath away. Someday I want to go there and paint it for myself.
So much happened between then and now. Even though I was at the gallery only a few hours ago, the experience of that art feels far away, like it’s slipping from my fingers. I want to remember it. I need to remember it. Because maybe when this is all over, art will help save me.
I was the first one to arrive, so Rowan introduced me to his mom, Rosemary. He told her about my drawings, but I didn’t have them with me, so Rosemary made me promise to come by to show them to her sometime. Lise showed up a little later, and we made small talk until more people arrived and Rowan’s mom had to schmooze, and Rowan left to help pass out drinks. Then Lise and I slipped out the back door and hiked up the small hill behind the gallery to where a big black SUV with tinted windows was waiting for us.
“You’re not the Mafia, are you?” I asked when I spotted the car.
Lise snorted. “Sometimes I wish we were. Then I wouldn’t feel so vulnerable.” She opened the door, but there was a car seat in the middle of the back seat, so Lise went around to the other side. I took a deep breath and climbed into the car. Lise strapped herself in. “Mellie, this is Daphne. She’s my mom’s driver.”
Daphne twisted in the driver’s seat and gave me a warm smile, revealing a deep dimple on her right cheek. “Hi, Mellie. Hey, Lise. Sorry I had to bring the baby. Dora’s working late tonight.”
My gaze dropped to the cherubic baby asleep in the car seat next to me. She had chubby cheeks that begged to be pinched and long dark lashes that rustled with each breath. “Oooh, I’m so glad you did!” Lise cooed and bent over the car seat. “Hi, Sadie,” she whispered. “Is it sleepy sleepy-dreamy time?”
Daphne laughed and put the car in drive. “Not even Dora and I talk to her like that, Lise.” She navigated the car off the back road and onto Main Street. I could see the Empty Space, bright and festive, with people holding wineglasses milling around on the sidewalk. Daphne took the first right turn away from the gallery and began to twist and turn through narrow back streets on our way to the clinic. I must have looked puzzled, because she made eye contact in the rearview mirror and said, “So no one follows us.”
I nodded and looked over at Lise. She was still fawning over Sadie, stroking her cheek gently with one finger so she didn’t wake her up. I finally looked down at the baby.
She was beautiful.
My heart twisted like a wet rag being wrung out to dry.
I couldn’t stop myself. I reached out and touched the baby’s hand. In her sleep, Sadie opened her fingers and curled them around mine, holding tight.
My breath caught in my throat. Lise looked at me. “It’s okay,” she whispered.
I shook my head. It was not okay. It would never be okay. “I want one,” I whispered. “I want one, someday. Just not this one. Not now, not like this.”
Lise didn’t say anything, just reached across the car seat and took my other hand. I think she knew exactly how I felt. I was silent the rest of the ride, one hand in Lise’s, the other hand in Sadie’s. One hand desperately clutching my present, and the other hoping so hard for the future.
We passed the PCC and hot anger flared inside me. “Bitches,” Lise said and flashed her middle finger at the building. We turned into the Whole Women’s Health Clinic’s parking lot. A big, white van was parked by the road. THE TRUTH MOBILE was painted across its side and big, gold angel wings sprouted from under the words. The back of the van was open, and a man was loading a couple of boxes and a few signs into it.
I stared out the window. “That’s Henry Wickham. He goes to my church.”
Lise groaned. “I call him You Could Die Tomorrow. He’s here all day, every day, talking to women on their way into the clinic, telling them they could die tomorrow, so do they really want this blot on their soul when they meet their maker? He says the same thing to me when I escort.” She squeezed my hand. “Don’t worry, we’re not going in the front.”
As Daphne rounded the building, I turned back to watch Mr. Wickham. I had no idea this is where he spends his days. Does he have a job? I’m pretty sure his wife works. They have three kids, and I remember Mr. Wickham bragging to my father once that his wife has dinner on the table every day at 6:30. Does she support him financially and domestically so he can sit in front of the clinic and shame women all day long?
I didn’t have time to wonder, as we’d arrived at the back of the building. It was very clever. It looked like we were turning off the street, but we were turning into a hidden alleyway behind the clinic that leads directly to a gated underground garage. Daphne swiped an access card, and the gate creaked open. I can sing for you the exact sound of that creak. It’s imprinted in my brain.
Lise jumped out of the car when we stopped, but I couldn’t move. Daphne helped me out of the car, then carefully unlatched the infant carrier seat. We all got onto the elevator. The silence was thick.
I turned to Daphne. “She’s a beautiful baby.”
Daphne looked at me. “You know what makes Sadie such a great baby?”
I raised an eyebrow. “What?”
“Because she was planned. She was wanted.” She went on, waving her hand over her sleeping daughter, “Motherhood is the best job in the world. It’s also the hardest job in the world. For sure, there are happy accidents. But if you’re not ready for motherhood, it will drown you. Hell, it practically drowns you when you are ready for it.” The elevator bumped to a stop on the second floor and dinged as the door opened. “You need to do what’s right for you, and no one else can tell you what that is.”
Daphne, carrying Sadie, and Lise both stepped off the elevator before me, leaving Daphne’s words to sink in for a moment before I followed them. I’d seen firsthand how hard motherhood was. My mother never complains, but sometimes I wish she would. Sometimes I wish she would own up to just how hard
of a job it is.
“Mellie.”
I looked up. A petite woman with short black hair and gray-blue eyes standing just outside the elevator reached out to shake my hand. “I’m Alanna, Lise’s mom. Come on in.”
Inside, the clinic wasn’t anything like I thought it would be. I guess I expected it to be cold and gray and dingy with bloodstains on the floor. That’s the way my father makes it sound. But it wasn’t like that at all. The walls were a soothing green, and the carpet was plush and creamy. Cushy chairs lined the waiting room, with shabby chic end tables covered in magazines and books. A few large prints hung on the walls, one an art deco advertisement for perfume, another a 1950s ad for panty hose, and Rosie the Riveter, proclaiming “We Can Do It!”
Alanna opened the door next to the reception area and gestured for me to follow her. “I’m going to take you into an exam room, ask you some questions, and then we’ll go from there. Okay?”
“Can Lise come?”
“Of course, if you want her to.”
“I want her to.” The instant I said it, Lise was next to me, in step with me and her mom.
“Daphne, can you wait?” Alanna asked.
“I’m good.” Daphne set Sadie’s carrier on the floor and settled in to the chair next to her.
We went through a set of doors behind the reception desk and into a long hallway with more doors leading off it. Here, the atmosphere was a little more sterile, a little more antiseptic, but pristine and comforting in its purity. Everything about this place said We will care for you.
It was a thousand times nicer than the PCC.
I wonder if anyone from the PCC has ever been there. I can’t imagine they have, or they would’ve made their clinic better.
Alanna led me into the first exam room. There was a table covered with paper like any other doctor’s office, but there were also two cushioned chairs and another art deco poster on the wall. “Where do you want me?”
“Anywhere you’re comfortable,” Alanna said.
I sat in one of the chairs and Lise sat in the other. Alanna sat on her rolling stool and wheeled herself close to us. “First, Mellie, I want to assure you that anything you say here is strictly confidential. You can tell me anything you feel comfortable sharing, and it will stay between you and me.”
“Okay.”
Alanna clipped a form onto a clipboard and pulled a pen out of her lab coat pocket. The first questions were easy—full name, date of birth, hospital I was born in, allergies. “First day of last period?”
“December eighth.”
“Did you take a pregnancy test?”
“Yes.”
“And it was positive?”
I nodded. She checked something on the form. “Have you been examined or had an ultrasound?”
I squeezed my eyes shut, the sound of the heartbeat still ringing in my ears. “Yes…at the PCC.”
“You went to the PCC?” Alanna’s eyes flashed, the same way that Lise’s do when she gets riled up. “You don’t have to elaborate. I know what goes on there.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.” She scribbled something on the form, then set the clipboard and the pen on the counter. “Mellie, I need to ask you… Lise told me you were assaulted.”
Assaulted. As if that’s a better word than rape. I wanted her to just say it. RAPE. RAPE. RAPE. But I couldn’t be mad at Alanna. She was simply doing her job, and she was being a lot more caring than those women at the PCC. I hunched my shoulders. “Yes,” I said.
“Do you remember the date?”
“December twenty-first at three thirty in the afternoon,” I said quietly.
Alanna leaned forward. “I’m so sorry that happened to you, Mellie.”
Again, those words. They meant everything to me. It wasn’t that I wanted people to feel sorry for me. I only wanted them to acknowledge that I was surviving something no one should ever have to experience. “It shouldn’t happen to anyone,” I said.
“No, it shouldn’t,” Alanna replied. She met my gaze. “It happened to me too. When I was in college.”
My breath whistled in through my teeth. I looked at Lise. This was not a surprise for her. Like my mother’s abortion, this was part of her family history. Except the way Lise’s mom shared this, there wasn’t any shame. They owned this history with power and truth. Slowly, I faced Alanna again. “You were raped?”
She nodded. “I was at a party. I’d had a lot to drink. A guy cornered me in the hallway, pushed me into an empty room.” She shook her head. “I was too drunk or weak to fight him off. Not that I could’ve anyway, probably.”
“Did you report it?”
“No. I didn’t even know who he was, and I never saw him again.” She clasped her hands together and flexed her fingers. “I have only one regret in this life, Mellie.”
My stomach did a little flip-flop. “What is it?”
“That I spent even one minute thinking what happened to me was my fault.”
Something broke inside me. I keeled forward, my head between my knees, my body shaking. Everything I’d shoved down, far away and out of sight, came to the surface, as if I’d finally been given permission to feel it all.
Because deep down, deep in my bones, I did think it was my fault.
Everything about December 21 is frozen in my mind, like a memory trapped inside a snow globe. I remember everything that happened before three thirty that afternoon. Helping Joanie get dressed, and changing her socks three times until she settled on the pink ones with rainbows. Playing Sorry! with my sisters. Baking Christmas cookies. Washing dishes. The news was on in the kitchen, reporting on the intern who’s accused our president of raping her. “I can’t wait until we get a woman in the White House,” Bethany said to me. We were alone in the kitchen; she would never dare say this if my parents could hear. “We were talking about this in my government class. What would the country look like with a woman in charge?”
I’d thought about this too, secretly to myself. “Maybe men would finally respect women more,” I said. “Maybe they’d realize there’s more to us than just being mothers and wives.” I turned away from the sink to put a clean cookie sheet on the rack to dry and caught sight of HIM in the doorway.
He didn’t say anything, just gave me a grin that only covered half his mouth. I misread that grin. I thought he was privately agreeing with me. I thought he felt the same way, but he couldn’t voice that opinion, not to our family, not in our circle. At three twenty-six, my mother sent me down to the basement to get the towels from the dryer. At three thirty, I learned the truth of that grin, and that a man can do anything he wants.
Now you know.
Just like Lise and Alanna.
I don’t want to waste any more time blaming myself either. I have things to do. I have art to create. I have the Big Sur coastline to see. I have a life to live, and I am not going to give HIM one more minute of it.
In that moment, I replaced the deep-down-in-my-bones belief that what happened was my fault with another one: that I deserved a chance to take control of my life again. That terminating this pregnancy is the right thing to do.
As sure as my brain is not going to waste one more minute on HIM, neither is my body.
When I finally composed myself, Alanna went back into doctor mode and picked up my file. “So, here’s the situation. You’re fourteen weeks pregnant, since we calculate from the date of your last period rather than the exact date of conception. You have a lot of options at this point.”
“I know which option I want,” I said, and for the first time my voice sounded clear as I said it. “I want an abortion.”
“Okay,” Alanna said. “Colorado allows abortions up to thirty-six weeks, unlike other states that ban after twenty weeks, or even six weeks. But even so, your options are a bit more limited. You’re too far along for a medical abortio
n, so you’d need to have a surgical one.”
I felt my forehead furrow. “What does that mean?”
“If you weren’t as far along, you could take a pill that would cause you to miscarry. A lot of women prefer that over surgery when it’s an option. But you’d have to do it at home, which—”
“—is impossible,” I said.
Alanna nodded. “It would be difficult to hide. There’s a lot of bleeding and cramping, and it can go on for a few days. You’ll still have some of that with a surgical abortion, but I think we could cover that better.” She rubbed the bridge of her nose. “But in order to schedule you for a surgical abortion, I need to do an ultrasound.”
My whole body tensed.
Alanna put her hand on my knee. “I know what they probably did at the PCC. Our ultrasound machine here is much more sophisticated. For one thing, it’s not vaginal. And I won’t make you look. And”—she reached down into a cupboard below the counter next to her and pulled out a pair of huge, black, noise-canceling headphones—“you can wear these.”
I stared at the headphones. “Is that—are you allowed to do that?”
A sly little look came over her face. “The law says I have to give you an ultrasound. It doesn’t say you have to hear it.” She handed me the headphones. “The law also says I have to tell you about the side effects of having an abortion. However, freedom of speech allows me to tell you that a lot of what the government makes me say is politically slanted and not true.” She leaned in. “The risk of complications is very small. Surgical abortions are a very safe, very routine procedure. In fact, the chance of having complications that threaten your life later in a pregnancy are much greater than complications from a legal abortion.” She pointed at the headphones. “Now put those on.”
I’d never used noise-canceling headphones before. They really canceled all the noise. Even the noise in my head. I climbed on the table and leaned back while Alanna lifted my shirt and put cold, slimy jelly all over my stomach. I closed my eyes and the world became a blank slate. In that silence it was easy to imagine my life after this was over.