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 2 The Test
Noah would never understand how good he got it or how much Rachael had to struggle to create their home. It was a cozy 2-bedroom apartment, which was realtor-speak for small, but it was thankfully just in her price range and about all she could afford. It wasn’t elaborately decorated with the latest furnishings. The walls weren’t dingy with cobwebs nested in the corners. It didn’t smell of mold or ashtrays (Rachael had promised never to smoke). The radiators hissed with heat that actually worked. Even on tough days, there was food in the fridge and cupboards. She and Noah had their bedrooms with their own beds to sleep in with actual mattresses, box springs and headboards.
No matter what others had to say about it, it was a Home and more solid than anything she lived in before. She wouldn’t get pulled from this Home without a fight.
So when she returned from the bathroom and sat around the kitchen table with Noah and Freddie, she kept reminding herself that her Home for all its wonders, was simply too small and her money was too tight to risk bringing another life into this world.
She called Freddie on her way home intent on talking this pregnancy scare through with him. Noah was thankfully quietly stewing in the backseat as she vented to Freddie on the other end. Her shoulder and neck tensed as she recounted what had just happened at the market.
She was going to tell him that she grabbed a pregnancy test as she walked out of the store. When that moment came, her throat seized up. She was suddenly choked up and sniffed back tears.
She was scared. She didn’t want Freddie to over react. She didn’t want to be another one of his conquests that he would leave stuck with his child. She didn’t want to be left alone the way her mother did her; the way Noah’s father did her.
Hearing her tears, Freddie offered to order dinner and come by the house. Rachael leapt at his humility.
When they got Home, he was already outside, smoking a cigarette, with a box of pizza from a restaurant around the corner and some store-bought brownie bites. He shot Noah a stern look that dissolved into a wink that made Noah giggle. Then he swept Rachael up with hugs and kisses. It was the first smile on Noah’s and Rachael’s faces since the whole store ordeal.
If she dug deep, Freddie had some redeeming qualities. When he took off his work clothes and washed all the funk of car grease off his hands, he was handsome, even at his age. He had the personality of a firework, but sometimes that spontaneity was helpful and wanted. He seemed to know how to redirect Noah’s tantrums with a joke and a smile. He could do the same with her.
Freddie didn’t talk about his other children or their mamas. Based upon how he acted with Noah, he might turn out to be a good father. Assuming she really was pregnant.
The pregnancy test was waiting for her in the bathroom floor, wrapped up in tissue paper and tucked behind the toilet seat. The test said she would have her results in five to ten minutes. She had to go back and check it soon.
Across the kitchen table, she smiled and grabbed Freddie’s hand. He squeezed it back.
“You good?” He asked. It was the same question he asked her when they were outside and he was hugging and kissing her.
“Yeah,” she tensed up. “Why?”
“I think that’s your third trip to the bathroom.”
“I’m fine. My Aunt Flo came to visit.”
“Aunt Flo?” Noah chimed in, face eschewed. “Who’s Aunt Flo?”
“Oh!” Freddie exclaimed and backpedaled like he’d come across a gruesome crime scene. He wanted no parts of it.
“When were you going to tell me I had an Aunt Flo?” Noah frowned.
“It’s woman’s stuff, buddy,” Freddie said with some bass in his voice. “Let it go.”
“She keeps lying and hiding stuff from me.”
“I know buddy, but trust me. This one you want to let go. It’s yucky, nasty woman’s stuff like soggy tomatoes on a wet burger.”
“Yuck!” Noah reaffirmed his hate for vegetables in one proud exclamation. Freddy laughed and pretended to gag at something disgusting.
“Excuse you?” Rachael chuckled weakly along with them. It was odd being the butt of a joke. It was even weirder that some natural function of her body was a joke to Freddie. But damn if it didn’t work on shutting Noah down.
“I’m starving.” Freddie rubbed his hands together. “Let’s hurry up and say grace.”
Freddie was big on saying grace. He was raised Catholic and that was one of the few things that stuck with him; that and his living out of the Biblical proclamation to be fruitful and multiply.
After grace, she was ready to serve the pizza, but she smelled the faintest hint of urine off her hand. She couldn’t understand how Freddie or Noah didn’t smell it. She could’ve sworn she had washed her hands.
Wasn’t the sense of smell the first time to improve in pregnant women?
No this was all in her head. She couldn’t be pregnant, she chastised herself, and the proof was waiting for her back in the bathroom.
She got up from the table, “Oops, forgot to wash my hands!”
“Really?” Freddie said incredulously. “And you let me hold your hands?”
“Be right back,” she started to bounce away. “Don’t eat everything you two!”
“The sink’s right there.” Freddie continued to protest his confusion, but she was already steps away from the bathroom door. She acted like she couldn’t hear him.
“Mommy, can I have a brownie bite now?” Noah snuck in at the last second.
She was about to close the door when she yelled a firm, “No!” between the crack.
She made sure to lock the door behind her. She braced her back against it for extra protection, and it groaned as she leaned heavily on it. She could see the toilet-paper wrapped test on the floor behind the toilet seat. If you weren’t looking for it, you wouldn’t find it.
She wasn’t prone to having pregnancy scares. She didn’t even know she was pregnant with Noah until the social worker dragged her to the hospital. Even then, they didn’t force her to pee, they just drew some blood.
Faced with that burden again, she started to hyperventilate. She turned on the faucet and washed her hands aggressively to remove the smell of urine. Real or imagined, it still made her heave. She splashed her face with cold water to wake up from this nightmare.
When she found out she was pregnant with Noah, her primary care doctor right on down to her damn social worker treated her as if she were fragile glass. They were too afraid to say anything that might break her, when what she really needed was a real conversation. The truth was she wanted the baby. She did this somehow on purpose.
With that thought, a little piece of her confidence threw its hands up in defeat. She walked out the bathroom unable to force herself to see the test.
Back in the kitchen, she stopped at the sight of Freddie popping open a beer and chugging it, and Noah eating brownie bites one-by-one out of the container.
Noah smiled at her with chocolate-stained teeth.
“What did I tell you?” She said. Her voice squeaked as it went up, and her shoulders ached with dull pain. “What did I just tell you?”
Freddie put down his beer and stepped in to answer, “Ah, let it go.”
“I told him no. You heard me tell him no. You can’t undermine me in front of him.”
“Ah c’mon,” he waved on her concerns and then tried to hug her. She could smell the beer off his mouth and it reminded her of the yellow stench of urine. She held back a gag reflex. She tried to squirm away from him, but he insisted on giving her a shoulder rub.
“You need to relax,” He said. “You’re tense.”
“No, thank you. Leave me alone.” She said politely.
She winced as his hands pressed sharply into her shoulders. She turned her head to escape his breath.
“I said leave me alone.” She shoved him away from her.
“Hey!” He barked. In an instant, he had her forearm in his hand. He was stronger than he looked. His eyes went a bit glassy, and for a moment, it was void of his playful light.
That look scared her, and out the corner of her eye, she saw Noah flinch in his seat as Freddie shook her arm. The look of uncertainty on Noah’s face hurt her more than anything Freddie was doing to her.
“Okay, okay, thank you, but maybe later. Just not in front of Noah,” Rachael quickly went to work appeasing Freddie. She talked extra sweet and feminine to sell the act.
“Whatever,” Freddie grumbled under his breath doing more than just letting her go. He tossed her arm back at her as if it were a balled-up, used tissue paper. Freddie chugged the rest of his beer and grabbed another one from the fridge.
Rachael gently rubbed her arm to sooth any pain there. Noah wouldn’t even look her in the eye. His face was glued to the brownie bites that he was slowly stuffing his face with. His jaw worked laboriously to chew. He had to close his eyes to swallow it down. She could see the barely chewed lump working down his tiny throat. It could’ve been the light, but she thought she saw tears shining at the corner of his eyes.
Years ago, a young Rachael like Noah’s age, stuffed her feelings too. She stuffed them with anything. She wanted those feelings so deep that no one, not even her, could reach it. And sometimes, it hurt so much it made her want to puke.
No. This Home was too small for another life.
“I’ll be back,” Rachael said, but Noah and Freddie ignored her.
She went to the bathroom one final time. She closed the door and locked it, and without hesitation she picked up the test from behind the toilet. She unfurled it several times. The anticipation numbed every other sensation but the gentle woosh of the toilet paper as it pulled away from the test. She held her breath, feeling like a true believer in front of an oracle.
She burst into laughter as soon as she saw the test. She caught herself and covered her mouth with her free hand. Her body trembled as her laughter rolled around in her. She collapsed onto the toilet seat unable to stay on her feet. She laughed and laughed until tears leaked out her sides.
She looked back down at the test.
She recalled what the instructions said with painful clarity. A pink line meant she was pregnant.
Well, the oracle determined her fate with the brightest and cruelest pink line she had ever seen. It might as well have been blood.