In light of recent events, I’ve decided to share a part of my novella about a woman faced with a decision. Needless to say, I was inspired by forewarned decision by the SCOTUS to federally ban the right to abortion. The years of debate leading up to this horrified me. So I had to write. Enjoy.
The best thing you can do to help a woman faced with such a decision is to give her what she needs.
Abort: Chapter One The Slip
“Being a mother ain’t worth it,” Rachael’s mother told her once over a brunch of baked beans and Vienna sausages. Despite Rachael’s begging all morning, her mother didn’t get out of bed until late that afternoon, and she couldn’t think about fixing food until her first cigarette of the day. When it came to finding something to eat, thankfully there were still donated canned-goods in the cardboard.
“Fathers have it easy.” Her mother was just getting started. Her voice was smoky and heavy, and it forecasted clouds with a chance of rain and thunder. “They can put they hands on you, bust a nut up in you, and leave, but Mothers… we get stuck and suffer all those nine long months. No one understands. They say they do, but it’s a lie. There’s only one person in your shoes. Remember that.”
Her mother shook her head so hard it was like she was trying to shake the brains out her head. Rachael remembered how her mother’s straight black hair merely shivered despite all that shaking. Her mother’s hair was about all she could remember fondly of her. It was as dark and lustrous as midnight. It was the one trait she thought she and her mother had in common.
Her mother was coming to the end of her rant. The thunder was next.
“It’s the pressure that keeps lining up behind you. Ready to push you down, and then BOOM! It’s a long slide to rock bottom. Weeeeeeeeeeeeee!”
Maybe her mother thought this was a joke. She even started laughing, but she laughed for so long and so hard, tears wet her demented smile. It was all actually horrifying to Rachael.
Rachael had to be about 5 years old then. She was too young to understand the inner workings of the human anatomy, but she was old enough to know that she was a female like her mother was a female, and that girls grew up to become mothers. It was their job. Rachael was also old enough to gleam that her mother was particularly bad at that one and only job.
Her mother was a woman more prone to boil from conspiracies and from recalled past transgressions. Rachael didn’t think her mother was always crazy, but that’s where her mother landed, all bruised and broken at the end of her long slide with no one around to kiss her and make it better.
So when her mother spoke these fateful words, there was something about them that felt too vital to forget. Those words found a jagged spot in Rachael’s brain and hooked on tight. And try as she might to tug that memory away, she’d risk tearing her whole damn world apart.
Rachael couldn’t shake those words even after her eventual removal from the home by Child Protective Services. Afterward the removal there was the traumatic stints of foster homes, because her mother did a good job at pushing everyone in their life away and no one wanted to take Rachael on outright.
No matter where Rachael was, those words were never too far behind. They were in her head and weren’t going anywhere. They grew claws and dug in deeper.
She entered the prime of her adolescence like a hungry street cat and soon after that became full and pregnant. She wanted to prove them wrong: her friends, the social workers, and all the therapists they threw at her. She could do it. Parenthood wasn’t a slippery slope.
In times of distress, she went back to those words. “It’s a long slide to rock bottom.”
They’d sneak up on her when she least expected them too. She’d jump and run away from them as fast as she could. And try as she might to avoid them, Rachael would always run back to those words. At times, she could feel herself slipping and clinging to the edges of her own slide.
It was this very mantra that flipped around in her head as she stood in a checkout line that night. She had been on her feet all day. She had just finished changing the soiled bed sheets of one of her clients, and then had to jet over to pick up Noah from his after school program before they charged her late fees.
She was ready to get home. The last thing she wanted to do was go to the grocery store, but Noah had other plans.
He was chill for a bit after she picked him up. He sat quietly in the back seat staring out the windows, probably groggy from his day. Rachael was relishing every bit of that peace and quiet. In that Peace and Quiet, there was freedom from whining geriatrics clients. There was silence from Noah’s motor mouth. Peace and Quiet were friends that actually encouraged her to tune inward to her own needs rather than anybody else’s.
And what was it she wanted? A break from the responsibilities, a life like the glossy faces of those skinny bitches on the covers of the magazines grocery stores were so apt to shove in her face. She wanted to go to the gym and lose the muffin top around her belly button (courtesy of her pregnancy with Noah). She never did get her pre-Noah body back despite paying in advance for a gym membership. She just couldn’t find a way to commit herself to the goal.
So her body stayed the same. She was shaped more like a pudgy circle when she wanted to be an hourglass.
She needed to go to the salon and do something different with her hair. She was too young to have her hair be listless and oily. It’s been too long since she treated herself to a professional wash and dry treatment. She even saved a bit of money for it, but spent it on a night out instead.
But who had time for diets and beauty when you were a single mom of an over-active 8 year old?
Rachael was probably enjoying her Peace and Quiet a bit too much, because just her luck, Noah, ever the clever gnat, piped up from his exhaustion behind her.
“Mommy,” he said innocently enough. When he wanted to, he could sound like an angel. “What’s for dinner?”
Rachael didn’t have time to go shopping that week. She had picked up another client. The bills were getting tight since her last night out.
“We have nuggets in the freezer. I could make those with some instant noodles.”
“I don’t want to eat that again.” He grumbled. From the rear view mirror, she saw him cross his arms. “We ate that yesterday.”
They had pizza and wings from around the corner yesterday, but Noah wasn’t good with time yet, and truth be told, it didn’t matter to him. That wasn’t his point.
In his head, he was gearing up for a company takeover. He was strong-armed with a mashed up facts and his opinions: how much was spent where, what they could’ve done with the money instead, who owed him what plus interest (she had no idea where he got that language from). He was using his business executive voice, which meant he was getting upset.
Rachael didn’t know how he developed this voice (oh she had theories, but they all seemed to point back at her), but when he turned it on, he was a dental drill to her nerves.
“Noahie,” She tried to cut him off. It was too late.
“No!!!! We always eat that! I won’t eat it. I hate noodles! Why can’t we eat something else? Don’t you have money?”
“Noah,” she tried in a more assertive voice. However, it was like screaming against a tidal wave. It was coming no matter what she did. “Things been a little tight this month.”
“You’re lying! I know you’re lying! You had money to drink with Freddie last night!”
It wasn’t last night. That was over the weekend, and that’s why she’s still paying for it, and so what! She and Freddie decided to relax that weekend with some beers and wine. Noah was supposed to be asleep. It was none of Noah’s damn business what she and Freddie did. It wasn’t even all her money! Freddy bought most of the drinks.
Freddie, Government name Fernando Cruz, was her current beau of five months. They met at a bar on a night she was able to pawn Noah off on some paternal relatives. She had moved far away from any remnants of her former life with her mother and the foster care system, but she kept a few cousins around for when she needed some personal time away from Noah. It had been so long since Rachael had any attention from a real man, who wasn’t the elderly or Noah, and she wasn’t going to allow herself to be forced into celibacy.
Freddie wasn’t exactly her type. He was 42 year-old and 17 years Rachael’s senior. Freddie was a stroke away from being one of her patients. He smoked a little too much and his emotions were like a firework. Once lit, it was anyone’s guess what came out. She never really knew what to expect when he was set off, but he treated her nice enough and said the right things. He had a teenager and a school-age boy from two failed relationships. He wasn’t too fat or too skinny. And the cherry on top: he had a job.
In the car, she wanted to turn around and snap on Noah. Tell him to stay out of grown-folk business, until he made his own damn money. She would have screamed it like she was her mother, but Noah would probably fight and yell back. Someone would make a report, and Child Protect Services would be involved in her life again, after she worked so hard to get them out of her life the first time.
With pursed lips, she silently turned into the nearest grocery store. She wasn’t in the mood to argue with Noah. She’d do anything just to shut him up and to get back that peaceful moment they just had.
In the store, Noah asked for everything that caught his eyes. They argued back and forth up and down every aisle. She shut him down repeatedly. He’d reach for something and dumped it in the cart. She’d put it back on the shelf, but he was already putting something else in there.
It was a battle the entire time they were in the store.
So yeah, she wanted out that checkout line as soon as possible.
Finally, at the register, the cashier gave her a woeful look as if they were competing with who had the sadder life.
Rachael started to load the conveyor belt with her food. In front of her, beside the beauty models on the magazines were candy. When groceries stores weren’t trying to shame women into being better looking and better cooks, they were targeting sugar addicts like Noah.
Noah overate. He was more apt to eat a box of cremepies than a bowl of broccoli. Even if she added a bit of cheese to it. He was her beautiful brown skinned dumpling, but he was boarding on obese. The doctors wanted him to lose weight. They recommended diets, and Rachael chuckled at that. They didn’t have to live with him.
She turned to Noah to cut him off before he got started.
But he wasn’t there.
~
She spun around quickly as if there was a possibility that somehow in that small check-out line Noah could’ve gotten lost. The person behind her, a graying older man, jumped back and stepped out of her way, giving her enough room to run out the line.
Rachael wasn’t particularly tall. She stood on her toes and scanned the area up and down. She spotted many children trailing behind shopping carts, happily bouncing next to an adult. None of the kids looked scared and none of them were Noah.
It was funny how the mind called attention to the things it originally shuffled away as unimportant. There were 23 aisles in the store. Noah was wearing a brown sweater with blue jeans tore at the knees (because of course, it’s Noah. He was never the kind of baby that rested easily), and hand-me-down sneakers a little too big for his feet, but he liked them because it made him look older.
Her head felt like it was balancing on the end of a stick. It was constantly moving from side to side scanning everything and everyone, and her thoughts wobbled along with her.
She tried to recall what she and Noah were doing before they got in line. He was nagging her for everything colorful and sugary in the store. His voice had suddenly rivaled that of a tuning fork to her ear. It pierced right into her brain intent on striking her last nerve. She almost covered her ears, but how would the other parents in the store look at her? A grown adult at the mercy of her child?
She had to be the pillar of calm and control, but her blood was boiling. She knew this because every time she closed her eyes, there was heat building between her eyes. It took her longer and longer to open them again. She wanted him gone. She wanted him to shut up before she made him shut up.
She actually told him to shut up. Just like her Mother used to do, she squatted down to his eye level and whispered through her teeth, “Shut up or I’ll shut you up.”
He curled away from that. He pouted and turned his gaze skyward to avoid eye-contact with her.
He was going to give her the silent treatment, and she wasn’t mad about it at all. She didn’t want to see him either. She wished he was somewhere else, far-away from her. She was staring straight ahead, focused on getting out of the store and to not give into Noah’s game.
Did he even make it to the checkout line with her?
“Noah.” She said gently as if she were calling back a cat to her. She repeated his name again, but it trembled out of her. “Noah, where are you?”
She ran back to the checkout line she started in. The cashier wanted to know what she wanted to do with her groceries.
“I don’t care about that right now!” Rachael barked. “Did you see a little boy, about this high, behind me?”
The cashier shook their head limply.
Rachael turned back to the older man behind her with tears threatening to fall. He just shrugged.
The cashier suggested she speak to a manager.
Rachael had no time for that. What she did with every second mattered. She ran back out the line and proceeded to walk briskly up and down the store.
“Noah!” She cried. “Noah!”
It took everything in her not to run. If she ran, it would cause others to think something was wrong or that she was stealing.
Every kid wanders away from their parent in stores as large as this, she told herself. He was just lost, but that rationalization was too close to every parent’s worst nightmare. It only took a second. It always felt like a second whenever any parent talked about it on the nightly news. One minute they were there and the next second they were gone. One minute they were holding the baby carriage and the next it was rolling away from them and into oncoming traffic. One minute they were holding fiercely to your hand and the next, a wave came and swept them away.
Rachael had ignored Noah for a minute. That was 60 seconds. Each second after that, something horrible was happening to Noah.
Someone could’ve taken Noah by luring him with food. She taught Noah those life-saving fundamentals, but Noah’s attention span wasn’t the greatest. Would Noah have followed his kidnapper outside? There were several cars in the lot, but she didn’t recall any vans. Wasn’t it always vans? How much time did she have before the kidnapper took him away and she would never see him again?
Her breathing kicked up and she had to stop to keep herself from tilting over and falling. She could feel herself sliding and was bracing for rock bottom.
She failed. She was repeating the story of her mother, and other relatives, and poor women like her. She wanted to cry and laugh hysterically. At the height of her building hysteria, another emotion revealed itself. A great and surreal relief came over her. Her breathing smoothed and she felt her face relax and go numb.
She understood that if Noah was gone, it would be devastating and yet, she was resigned to that fate. This must’ve been what her mother felt when the State came and took custody. Police officers escorted a social worker into the home and walked Rachael out. Rachael was crying, but her mother stared at the wall blankly. Her face a wall of nothingness. Her mother didn’t have to worry about Rachael anymore.
And soon, Rachael didn’t have to worry about Noah.
Someone tapped her on the shoulder.
“Are you looking for a kid?”
“Yes,” Rachael said foggily, “My son.”
She needed to remind herself that this was her son. This was a part of her, a living breathing extension that could never be undone, lest God (or the State) sever it. She wanted her mother to fight harder to get her back, to not give up, because wasn’t her child worth it?
“There’s a boy in the cereal aisle…” the person said tepidly. “I’m not sure…”
Rachael went off in search of the hot and cold cereals. It made sense. Noah didn’t like cream of wheat or oatmeal, but he loved him some cereal. The sweeter the better. It was one of the things Noah placed into their cart without permission. She put it back and promised to get it another time. Noah called her bluff then.
She made it to the top of the aisle and froze. She hardly moved, but her heart beat kept on climbing.
Noah stood in front of the brightest, colorful box of cereal that claimed to taste of rainbows. There was rainbow-colored cereal grains collected on the floor at Noah’s feet along with the carcasses of opened cereal boxes. It looked like a ravenous raccoon worked its way through several boxes, but in this scenario the raccoon was named Noah.
It was a mess and Noah was oblivious to it. He placed one foot on the second row of the shelving and leapt up until his tiny fingers could poke another cereal box off its ledge.
She couldn’t feel herself breath, but felt the manic thumbing of her heart in her throat. She couldn’t form words yet. She was stuck watching Noah knock another box onto the floor, pick it up, and rip the lid open. He dumped the box aside and was left with a plastic bag of cereal. He pulled at it with both hands like it was a bag of chips. His eyes squinted and his little hands and arms flexed, until POP!
Rachael popped with the bag. She flinched as if it was gun fire.
Cereal showered Noah in dust and rainbows. He didn’t care. He peered inside the remnants of the bag and stuck his fingers inside to fish something out. It was a yellow toy spoon.
“Yuk!” he cried and threw the spoon and the bag aside in anger.
He wanted the red spoon the cereal box promised as a prize. It was his favorite color. The spoons changed color when they were placed in cold milk. She told him this the first time they were in that aisle. She reminded him that that was not what they came down there for and they had plenty of spoons at the house. He was adamant that he didn’t want anything else but that spoon. She told him she’d get it another time and kept walking. He eventually followed after her complaining about his lack of toys, until he was distracted by something else.
He wasn’t kidnapped. He just went back after something he wanted.
She watched as he lifted his foot to the second row. The shelf bent down from his weight. He was gonna do it again! As if he didn’t see her staring at him! As if he didn’t care that passers-by were shaking their heads at him. As if the last three bags he opened and littered the store floor with weren’t enough.
“Noah!” She screamed, and that instant her heart climbed as high as it could go. It reached its ceiling and went tumbling back down where it shattered. She was at a complete and utter loss for words again.
He jumped off the shelf and looked at her. He fiddled nervously with his fingers and then balled them up into fists. His anger worked its way up to his face where tears were beginning to form.
“You never give me anything!” He cried.
The instinct that bubbled in her was shock which quickly gave way to pure primal rage. She saw herself crouching to all fours and pouncing on Noah, beating him until he couldn’t move. Her shoulders curled around her neck preparing her to do just that.
She reigned herself back, yanking hard on the chain of her bullish anger. It was all too much for her. Noah was too much for her. She was lucky she only had him. She couldn’t imagine doing this mothering thing with another one.
A rational thought flashed in her mind like a treat before a dog. It got her attention quick. Her shoulders fell to her side.
Her period was late. Later than usual. Admittedly she was a bit on the heavy size, and according to her doctor this caused her to have irregular periods. She could go months without any spotting and then as if Moses himself intervened, there would be a heavy flow of blood.
She and Freddie had been intimate for a while, quietly falling into each other in the late hours of the night while Noah was asleep. Or when she was feeling friskier, she’d send him a text that she left the apartment door unlocked and she had no panties on.
Freddie didn’t believe in protection, which was fine with Rachael, because she was on the pill (because the doctors said it helped keep her menses regular), but for the life of her, she couldn’t remember the last time she took it. Contraception was costly when bills piled up.
But she could remember her last time with Freddie. It was during one of her frisker moments after several cans of beer and Noah was already fast asleep.
The hairs of her arm stood on end.
She couldn’t be pregnant. She couldn’t afford to be.
“Ma’am is that your boy?” Someone with a name tag tapped her shoulder.
Rachael began apologizing profusely and marched right up to Noah. She stepped on the litter of boxes, cereal grains, and toy spoons. This must have been what soldiers heard when crossing a battlefield strewn with bodies. It wasn’t quite like sand beneath her feet. It was bones cracking.
Noah was about to run until some innocent bystander blocked his way. Once Rachael was close enough, she snatched him up by his shoulder. Her hand swooped down like a hawk and dug into him and wouldn’t let go, even as he kicked and screamed behind her.
“Excuse me, ma’am, what about this mess?” The person called after her.
She didn’t care. She blocked him out. She blocked Noah’s cries out. She dragged Noah to the family planning aisle and grabbed the first pregnancy test she saw. She didn’t have time to be frugal and thoughtful about her decision.
She proceeded to walk out the store still dragging Noah behind her like some kind of fitness test. Noah pulled against her and was beating her hand. At one point, he even sank his teeth into her arm. Her arm was throbbing, but she didn’t dare let him go. She yanked her arm out of Noah’s jaw so fast she heard her muscles pop and his teeth snap shut on each other. It jolted Noah to some normalcy and paused his crying for a moment.
Overhead, someone requested a cleanup in the cereal aisle in the store intercom.
The manager caught up to Rachael and cleared his throat, “Excuse me, ma’am? You can’t just walk out of here.”
She turned, snarled, and squeezed tighter on Noah’s arm. Noah was begging to be let go and apologized for making a mess, apologized profusely for biting her, apologized for the sake of apologizing.
What did the manager see in Rachael’s eyes that made him back steadily away from her?
Maybe that slippery slope to madness. A wild wordless look that warned just as much as it promised violence.
She left the store having not paid for a single thing, with Noah in toe in one fist and the pregnancy test balled in the other.
“I can’t be pregnant,” She told herself to calm her over electrified nerves.
Chapter 2 will be released next week.