by Nicole Maggi
We both stared at each other, breathing hard. I had no idea what was going on around us. There could’ve been a riot in that hallway and the two of us would still have been frozen, facing off across a gulf of pro-choice and anti-choice that I don’t think will ever be bridged, at least not in my lifetime. I know with absolute certainty that I am on the right side, but so does she. I will never change my mind…and neither will she.
The whole week has been like this. People haven’t said stuff to my face, but I’ve seen them stare, heard them whisper. Rowan and Cara have formed a shield around me—and so did Mellie when she came back to school on Wednesday. I can’t hide behind them forever. I have to be my own shield.
I don’t want to tell Mom about what’s happening at school. She’s already freaked out and I don’t want to add to that.
But I have a feeling things are only going to get worse.
—Lise
April 27
Dear Ms. Tilson—
Here is a list of the reasons we are moving to New Mexico:
• After that first week, Mom disconnected our phone. Then calls started coming in on the cell phone—hers and mine.
• Every phone call is a variation on the same threat: that my mother will burn in Hell and they’ll make sure she gets there soon. Tell me how someone who calls themselves pro-life thinks it’s fine to threaten to kill someone?
• Almost daily we get a box on our doorstep. We don’t open them. We call Sheriff Newman. One box had thirty-six severed dolls’ heads in it. The last box we got had a bomb. Well, it looked like one and it was ticking. The Wolverton Police Department doesn’t exactly have a bomb squad, but luckily there’s an officer who used to defuse IEDs in Afghanistan and he came over. He took one look at the device and knew it was a fake. But still. SOMEONE PUT A FAKE BOMB ON OUR DOORSTEP.
• I opened my locker last week to find a baby doll hanging from a noose inside it. Besides being creepy, someone broke into my locker. Principal Conway acted concerned, but she said there was no way to find out who did it, and we should just let the matter drop. When Mom tried to call the superintendent about it, his assistant wouldn’t even put her through. Conway and the superintendent, they both think I’m a troublemaker, a rabble-rouser, and now that they know about Mom, they don’t even bother to hide their politics.
• Delia Talbot is waging a personal war against me. My clothes were stolen while I showered after gym class, I was followed around school by her horde of minions whispering “baby killer” behind my back, and Jason Bellows threw red paint at me. Again, Principal Conway has done exactly nothing about this.
• The underground garage at the clinic is no longer safe. Someone figured out how to hack into the control pad and decorated Mom’s parking space with pictures of aborted fetuses (which were all photoshopped; aborted fetuses don’t look like babies, which people should be smart enough to know). A security expert came out to reconfigure the system, but how long before the next hack?
• Sheriff Newman has had an officer stationed outside our house twenty-four-seven since the phone calls and boxes started arriving. But he can’t keep someone there forever. He can’t spare the resources…and it’s not like the mayor’s office is going to increase his budget to protect my mom.
• Oh, yeah. And last week someone came into the clinic with a gun.
I’m sure you heard about that. It made the news.
The man didn’t shoot anyone, which is what everyone has been fixating on. What they should focus on is how someone came into a medical office where women get health care and other hardworking people provide that care, and threatened to kill them all. It was over pretty quickly. Daphne and Jasmine are armed security, and they were able to defuse the situation.
That was the last straw.
Meanwhile, Brandon Talbot is walking around free. Well, not here in Wolverton. He left to do “missionary work” for the church in Africa the week after Mellie told her family what he did to her. I’m sure his dad sent him away, to protect the family from shame. It’s not common knowledge about what happened to Mellie, but Hannah told enough people the truth of her broken engagement, so the story is out there. Still, he’ll never serve time for what he did. I hope fate punishes him some other way.
I know I sound like I’m taking all of this in stride, but it’s because all my anger has taken a new shape. I wear it as my armor. I have my own shield and sword, and I’m going to use it to fight these people, these laws, until things are better for women. Because it feels as if the situation is getting worse. Mayor Rivers may not be elected yet, but he’s already won. He’s running Mom out of town, and the clinic is shutting down. The owners don’t think it’s safe here anymore. They’re going to reopen it somewhere else, but that just means the women here have to travel farther to get their care.
So we’re moving. This is my last entry on my last day of school. I’m going to turn in my journal to you this afternoon.
I don’t want to leave Wolverton. I love it here. I love these mountains and the deep snow that comes in the winter, the flowers that grow on the mountainside in spring. I love Mellie, Cara, Rowan, and Rosemary. I love the red velvet cake at Marie’s and the Christmas lights that are strung up across Main Street in December.
But more than all these things put together, I love my mom, and I need her to be safe.
Moving won’t be all bad. Dad’s girlfriend is going to have a baby. I’m going to have a half-sister. That’s pretty cool. And we’ll only be about an hour away from them, so maybe Dad and I can start to mend what was broken when he left. I think I understand him better now, because I’ve had the same fears as he must’ve had about Mom and her job.
Someday I’m going to come back to these mountains. I’m going to charge down into this valley with my sword and sweep away all the injustice that ever broke my heart. I’m going to leave shining cities on the horizon in my wake. Shining cities full of love and freedom.
Shining cities ruled by women.
—Lise
May 29
Dear Mellie—
It snowed last night and I thought of you. I didn’t think it snowed this late in the year in Santa Fe, but Dad said it can, especially at night when it’s cold and the wind blows down off the mountains. It’s not like Colorado snow, though. Nothing is like Colorado snow.
I loved your last letter—and I love that we’re writing letters to each other. Writing in those journals helped me too, and it’s different to write a letter than an email. Emails are better for forwarding funny BuzzFeed lists or confirming dinner plans. Letters give deeper access to our hearts. I like to think we’re bringing back the lost art of letter-writing, one heartfelt letter at a time.
I think I made a friend! She boards a horse at the stable where I’ve been riding a few times a week, and we’ve been going on rides together. She’s showed me the trails with the best views. She goes to a different school than me, which kinda sucks. It’s hard being “the new girl.”
But I won’t be the new girl forever, and it’s so much better for Mom here. We still have to be cautious, but there are no underground garages, no fake names, no cars with tinted windows. There are still protesters, but the escorts usually outnumber them. I’m escorting here too, and I’ve rounded up some other girls from my high school to join me.
Dad’s girlfriend, Amy, is getting big; the baby is due in September. Last weekend while I was visiting, I felt the baby kick. It was so cool! I could actually see her little foot through the skin of Amy’s belly. She and I went to get mani-pedis together. I know I said she was annoying in my last letter, but I have to amend that. I think what I meant was overeager. She’s definitely a little pushy when it comes to having a relationship with me, but that’s because she wants to create a warm, loving home to bring her daughter into. And I admire that.
Over gelato after our mani-pedis, Amy told me she considered having an
abortion when she found out she was pregnant. I couldn’t believe it. Apparently she wasn’t sure where she and Dad stood at the time, and she wasn’t sure she was ready to be a single parent. I asked if Dad’s opinion influenced her decision in any way. She said, “No, I didn’t tell him about the baby until after I decided to keep it.” Which is exactly what I would’ve done.
I’m so glad she made that decision, because I’m so excited to have a sister, Mellie. I can’t wait to rock the baby to sleep in the middle of the night like you did with Joanie. I’m going to be the best big sister there is. I’m going to be her Hannah.
How is Hannah, by the way? And how is the new apartment?! You barely mentioned it in your last letter, and hello, that’s a big deal. I need details, girl! And how are Cara and Rowan? I hear from them all the time, but I want to know how they are from your perspective. I miss you guys so much that it’s a physical ache, like something has been removed from my insides and I keep searching for it. Texting and FaceTiming every day doesn’t cut it. Mom says I can come up to visit over the summer, so I hope there is a pullout couch for me to sleep on in that apartment.
Maybe someday you can come down here to visit. I know money is tight for you and Hannah, but Mom’s offer to pay for your ticket still stands. It would be so amazing. We could ride horses and roast marshmallows under the stars. You would not believe the night sky here. I’ve never seen so many stars, not even in Colorado where it feels as if you are so high up you can touch them. In New Mexico, it’s like someone has pulled a magical cloak across the sky.
Sometimes when I lie on the back porch and look up at that sky, I think about you and me and how we were once two separate stars in the sky. Now we’re part of the same constellation. Apart, we shine, but together, we’re so much brighter.
Write back soon. And keep shining, my forever friend.
Love always,
—Lise
June 5
Dear Lise,
I almost wrote “Dear Ms. Tilson.” Haha. I already turned that journal in because it was full. I’ve started another one. I think journal writing is second nature now. It’s a product of that particular time in my life. There’s my life BR (Before Rape) and my life AA (After Abortion). The time in between…I can’t name it, but it is its own era, and I can count on two fingers the things that got me through that era: writing in that journal, and you.
I miss you too. SO MUCH. Every day I walk into school expecting to see you. Your locker hasn’t been reassigned, and there’s still a fragment of an old postcard stuck to the edge of the door. The postcard is bright blue with a speck of white, like a wide-open sky stretched over the tip of a snowy mountain. When I pass it, I feel hopeful. I know that sounds weird. But thinking about you always gives me hope. Hope that someday the world will be as you and I want it to be, not how it is.
Things at school have improved; people have moved on from the rumors that swirled around. And summer is almost here; people will forget about it come fall. I told Susanna the truth, because I wanted her to hear it from me instead of whatever lie she was going to hear from Delia. Although Delia has been conspicuously quiet. She leaves me alone and I leave her alone. Anyway, Susanna gave me a huge hug and told me she was sorry I had to go through all that I did. Then she said, “It’s not the decision I would’ve made, but it’s your choice.” I just looked at her and said, “You can never know what decision you’re going to make until you’re in that situation.” I’m glad she knows now…but I’m glad I didn’t tell her before.
Cara, Rowan, and I eat lunch together every day. You wanted to know how they are…What can I say that they haven’t already told you? They miss you like I miss you. I would definitely say Rowan is pining for you. I know you guys pseudo-broke up when you left, but trust me, that boy’s heart is not ready to move on. Besides, what girl could live up to the impossible standard you have set? Cara has been teaching me to sew. We spent last Saturday at the fabric store, and then I made a skirt. The hem is a little uneven and the waist is lopsided, but still—I made it! Oh, and that hem was above my knee. I’ve been wearing a lot of skirts that end above my knees lately. Even Hannah wears shorter skirts now. On days when we both do, we look at each other and giggle like two little girls who’ve stolen the cookie jar and eaten all the cookies.
Hannah is now officially my guardian. Living with her is fun, though it has its ups and downs. We each keep to our own schedule, both of which are insanely busy. Hannah’s gone back to school, and I’m working at the gallery most nights, plus taking private drawing lessons with Rosemary. We have our own rooms at the new apartment (yes, there is a pullout couch), so we can retreat to our separate sanctuaries. It is so different than life at home (our old home), so it’s an adjustment to live in the quiet with one’s own thoughts.
But every couple of days we’ll come together, like we’re starved for each other’s company, and we’ll talk. About everything, about life, about the most mundane things that we now have to think about since we moved out, like who is picking up more toilet paper. Sometimes, rarely, we talk about HIM. He’s a shared pain. What she feels, I feel. Even though he didn’t rape her too, what he did to me he did to her.
I’m still going to the rape survivor group at the community center every week. Even on the nights when I don’t speak, it’s good to sit and listen. To know that someone else went through what I did. To know I’m not alone. It’s funny, I thought after I had the abortion and my family deserted me, I would feel so alone. I think that was part of what I was really afraid of. But the last couple months I’ve felt less alone than I did in my parents’ house. Being surrounded by all those people and unable to be my true self…that was far lonelier.
Speaking of my parents, I haven’t talked to them. Bethany manages to sneak over a couple of times a week. Dad doesn’t know. I think Mom might. I think Mom misses us, or maybe even regrets what happened, but she’s never going to go against Dad. Bethany says that Ruth and Joanie ask about us all the time, and one time Dad yelled, “They’re dead to us!” which made the girls cry.
I cried a little myself when she told me that. Maybe someday I can forgive Mom, but I can never forgive Dad. Not because of what he did to me, but for what he did to your mom. For exposing her. For effectively driving you out of town. For not including her life in the “life” that the “pro-life” movement so zealously believes in.
I miss Ruth and Joanie. The ache for them in my chest comes and goes. Bethany says she’s going to try to bring them to visit sometime. I hope when they’re older, I can tell them my side of the story, and they can decide how they feel for themselves.
I’m still figuring out what comes next in my story, and I’ve realized that’s okay. I don’t need to have the whole story all figured out now, or in the next year or five years or ten years. I’ll probably be figuring it out for as long as I live. I’ve realized that people can change throughout their life—and should change. People can think they’re pro-life and then something happens to them, or to someone they love, and they discover they were pro-choice all along. People can believe they will get married at twenty-two and have babies only to decide that’s not what they want out of life after all. People can start down one path and then go off it, forging a new path no one has ever been down.
What I discovered writing in that journal are my innermost thoughts. I never knew them before. But putting them on paper helped me uncover them. It helped me see me for who I really am, at this moment in time, at this part of my life.
So this is who I am: the Mellie you helped. I am full of flaws that I’m not afraid for the world to see. I’m Mayor Rivers’s daughter, who no longer stands behind him. I still get straight As, but my hemlines have been raised and my hair has been cut above my shoulders and dyed pink. I still go to church on Sunday, but I’ve started attending the Unitarian Universalist church, which has a rainbow flag hanging outside. I don’t do everything right, but I no longer f
eel like I have to. I’ve been through some version of Hell, but I’ve come out the other side.
I’m a survivor.
I’m sixteen, and I’ve had an abortion. There are a whole lot of people in this world who love me, and someday I’ll find someone to love me the same way that Rowan loves you. I can’t change what happened to me, but it’s like everything had to get stripped away so the real me could be revealed, and who I am now is so much more than who I was.
I’ll come to New Mexico this summer. I’m not too proud to let your mom pay for my ticket. We can lie under that big, wide sky. We’ll reach our hands up to the stars and maybe, just maybe, we’ll touch them.
Love,
Mellie
Author’s Note
From every corner of my life, they came to me. They told me their stories in hushed or matter-of-fact tones, over coffee, over drinks, in the beauty salon, through Facebook messages, standing on a lawn watching our children play, in office break rooms.
Women I knew, women I loved and cared for deeply, women who’d had abortions.
People would ask me all the time, “What are you writing now?” I’d be honest and say, “I’m writing a book about abortion.” And inevitably there would be the confession: “I had one.”
So many of these women I knew for a long time, yet I never knew this about them.
And the truth is, someone you know, someone you love, has had an abortion.
Abortion is not, should not be, a political issue. This is an emotional health decision that so many women have to make—and they shouldn’t have to make it in secret or in shame. One woman I spoke with told me I was only the third person—including the father—she’d told about her abortion. Not even her family knew. Imagine not being able to tell your family about the hardest decision you’ve ever made.