“That’s great,” I said.
“Great.”
“Um…well…I hate to ask you this. It’s just, I’m a student, and two thousand dollars is a lot of money for me. I mean, that’s how much the abortion costs. So I’m wondering if you wouldn’t mind chipping in?” I was pretty sure that the abortion would cost less than that, but I didn’t want to risk having to have this conversation with him again if there were extra fees I hadn’t accounted for. I was also prepared to explain my insurance situation and why I’d have to pay out of pocket, but neither the real cost of the abortion nor my insurance coverage seemed to cross David’s mind.
“Oh. Right. Yeah, totally fine. Um…”
He took out his phone and I put in my payment information.
“Cool, sent.”
“Thanks.”
“I added an extra five hundred for um…well, I guess your inconvenience.”
“Thanks. That is very sweet of you.” I felt like the mistress of a politician getting paid off to keep the affair a secret. I tried to stop myself from laughing. And to not look too pleased about the extra money. “Anyway, I’m going to leave now. I’ll let you know how the appointment goes.”
“Yes, please do. Let me know, I mean, not leave. I mean, you can stay however long you want.” He looked down at his lap and shook his head. “I’m going to shut up now. Thank you. Uh…good luck.”
I was sure that I would never see him again.
—
I looked up the options:I could take a pill or undergo a minor procedure. Most people chose the latter. They would need to sedate me and put something into my vagina. There would be cramping and I would need someone to pick me up. I felt a pain in my inner thighs; my legs were crossed and I realized I had been inadvertently squeezing them together—so hard that I nearly lost feeling—and I released them, feeling the blood flow return. Then, I lay in bed and wept. I couldn’t quite pinpoint why I was weeping. I guessed it was a combination of things. Weeping because I was looking up abortion clinics instead of researching student housing in Cambridge. Weeping because someone else—someone who was supposed to be inferior tome—had gotten the one thing that I wanted. The one thing that I wanted so I could prove I was better than people like her. Weeping because I didn’t want to get an abortion. I mean, I also didn’t want to be pregnant. I definitely didn’t want to be pregnant more than I didn’t want to get an abortion. But still, it sucked that I even had to make the choice. Weeping because I wondered if the pregnancy was my fault. I didn’t know what had happened; I was on birth control and we used a condom. But just like everything else in my life, this thing didn’t go according to plan. It didn’t matter that I had done what I was supposed to do. It didn’t matter that I had prepared.
The next day, my eyes were swollen, my double eyelids having turned into puffy monolids. I threw on sweatpants and a sweatshirt, with a baseball cap tilted forward on my head to obscure my face. I took the 1 train, then the E, and walked to a shabby building in Midtown East. The doorman was giggling at some video on his phone and didn’t look up when I entered. I double-checked the directory:Central Med, Suite 1102.
I checked in with the receptionist, who directed me to one of the chairs across from her desk. The lobby was small, with a round Oriental rug that looked like it had a few coffee stains; at least, I hoped they were coffee stains. There was a water cooler in the corner that emitted a bubbling sound every few minutes.
Most of the negative reviews for the clinic were for the long wait; some women were only able to see the doctor one or two hours after their appointment time. Still, no one said they needed to come back on a different day. I brought a book with me but the words turned to gibberish, so instead, I scrolled through my phone, resenting the people who shared pictures of themselves in clubs or at frat parties while I was waiting in this stale clinic.
By now, I had looked at Laura’s profile so many times that I could describe most of her pictures by memory, so I decided to scroll down until I reached the posts from four years ago, from the summer before freshman year. She had spent the August before orientation in Mallorca. Turquoise beaches, Gothic castles, breezy marinas with pastel-accented sailboats. Maybe someday I would go to Mallorca; maybe someday I would own one of those grandiose homes nestled in the mountains with a swimming pool surrounded by palm trees, learn about a new culture, experience the rest of the world. I couldn’t lie—that did seem quite interesting. More interesting than my experiences in South Dakota, at least. Maybe that was the key after all. Maybe my perspective had been wrong: being rich didn’t make you boring, being rich actually made you more interesting. Or maybe being rich was a prerequisite to being interesting. After all, wealth could buy life experiences, like summer holidays in Mallorca. Wealth could buy anecdotes to pass around at parties—parties with other lawyers. Maybe that’s why Laura was the Interesting Asian Female, while I was just the Boring Asian Female. I just wasn’t rich enough.
I thought back to four years ago, when I was applying for college. The advice that I read online all said that in your essays, you should try to sound smart, but you shouldn’t appear like you were trying to sound smart. Similarly, you should show extensive engagement in community service and extracurriculars, but in a way that made it appear you did it not just so you could get into a good college, but out of a genuine passion. Passion was what made you interesting, but passion cost a lot of money. And if you were from a middle-class family or lower-class family, you wouldn’t want to invest that much money unless you knew youwere getting a return, perhaps a return in the form of admission to a great college. That was where you ran into the catch-22. Universities didn’t want the students who were trying to game the system; they wanted students who were genuine. Who weren’t desperate. They didn’t want the items on your résumé to appear like they had come effortlessly, but they weren’t supposed to be too effortful either. If genuine passion made you interesting, then it was desperation that made you boring.
Perhaps this was the secret language I had missed all along, the language they spoke at Arnold’s art gallery event, the language that made you friends at places like Annelise’s anniversary party. I used to believe that it was the wealthy’s intrinsic understanding that they were better than everyone else, but I understood now that this wasn’t the case. Only insecure people tried to be better than everyone else. No, this secret language was simply the ethos of abundance that only the rich and elite can espouse without delusion: a complacency that comes from the fact that you want, and will want, for nothing. Its opposing force was desperation: the need tostriveandtrybecause you lacked this abundance, yet desired it with every ounce of your being. I was no stranger to this sensation; I recognized that the ethos of desperation, ofstriving, engulfed every action I committed and every word I spoke. I finally understood what Robert had meant all along. I was just another robotic Asian kid with good grades and good scores that showed I was exactly what they didn’t want: a try-hard.
But how was I supposed to get interesting, authentic, non-calculated life experiences on short notice? If I were Laura, I could just buy them—a lifetime of private schools and travel that contributed to an overarching worldliness—but I was alreadytwenty-one years old and all I had in my bank account was five hundred dollars in savings from my work-study job and the twenty-five hundred that David had sent me.
I stared at the number in my checking account. Three thousand dollars wasn’t nothing. It was more than I had ever had in my checking account. I could probably do something with three thousand dollars. After all, I was scrappy. I mean, I got into Columbia from a random high school in South Dakota, didn’t I? Four years ago, when applying to college, I managed to make myself seem like not too much of a try-hard even though I totally was one, didn’t I? I pulled together enough interesting experiences for the application despite having grown up in a single-parent household in South Dakota, didn’t I?
If I spent all three thousand dollars on strengthening my application, I would still need an abortion, but maybe I could go to one of those nonprofit clinics that don’t turn anyone away.
I told the receptionist that I had changed my mind about the procedure. I took the train home.
—
I dropped my bag onthe floor and sat at my desk. I took out a stack of Post-it notes and wrote down ideas on each of them. Then I grabbed a sheet of notebook paper and made three columns: Yes, No, and Maybe. As though I were taking a standardized test, I started with the easiest answers, placing most of the Post-it notes with Robert’s suggestions in the No column. I didn’t have time to join the Peace Corps or write a bestselling memoir. I didn’t think I was capable of becoming a night manager at McDonald’s. But not all of Robert’s suggestions were nonstarters. Founding a nonprofit wasn’t a terrible idea. I’d just needto figure out the right cause. I could use the three thousand dollars to file the paperwork to form an official nonprofit, with an official-sounding name that would indicate a noble mission. The type of mission that only aninterestingperson would devote their time and resources to.
To brainstorm more ideas, I took my computer out of my backpack and typed “what makes a person interesting” into the search bar. Most of the answers had to do with “overcoming hardship” or “having unique life experiences.” I thought growing up in South Dakota was plenty unique and contained plenty of hardship, but Robert had mentioned that going to college in New York City negated my upbringing in South Dakota. I would need to think of something else.
I considered the more recent events in my life. Just two hours ago I had been sitting in the waiting room of a clinic that offered abortions. Having an abortion was interesting, but didn’t a lot of women have abortions? Besides, it was just a one-time procedure, not an ongoing experience. You did it, then it was over, and you avoided the actual permanent, long-term thing, which was having a baby. I scoffed. To think if I didn’t do anything about my current state, I would grow a child inside of me. A real-life human being. Now,thatwould be interesting. It would demonstrate both hardship and a unique life experience. I mean, what other Columbia senior, unmarried, alone, would choose to have a baby? And raise it while applying for law school?
I rolled away from the desk and held the weight of my chin in my right hand. Was I seriously considering having a baby to get into law school? That was an insane plan, even for me. The norm in New York was to have babies in your mid-to-late thirties. And I was going to have a baby right out of college? WhenI had literally just hit drinking age? Besides, weren’t babies supposed to be super annoying? But the plan started to sound less crazy the more I thought about it. I always knew I wanted kids, so I’d have to deal with the annoying parts of having a baby at some point in my life. Wasn’t it better to deal with an infant now, when I had time, rather than when I was a busy corporate lawyer? Also, I had resources at my disposal that other people in my situation might not, like an Ivy League education and a rich baby daddy.
Once I got over the initial shock of the situation, I realized that maybe it wasn’tsucha bad plan. Sure, it was crazy, but if I really thought everything through, it wasn’tthatcrazy. I wouldn’t necessarily describe it as crazy; maybe just bold. And unique. Wasn’t uniqueness what Harvard was looking for? Maybe this was exactly what I needed. Following the conventional path didn’t work, so now I needed to pursue something unconventional enough that it would truly set me apart from all the Boring Asian Females knocking on the doors of Harvard Law School, begging to be let in.
I dumped all of the Post-it notes into the recycling bin. I flipped to an empty page in my notebook and scribbled down the following:
