For one night, she had been worshipped. A boy had lit fires inside her in places she had not known could burn. He had prayed with his hands and his mouth and his promises, and she had made a single mistake: she had put her faith in him. Even after everything he had done, she had turned the memory of that night over and over in her mind until it was so smooth and polished it was no longer an irritating grain of sand, but a pearl.
Shehadto see it that way, because if it wasn’t rare and special, then she was an even greater fool.
But her father wouldn’t think that. She had believed that nothing could ever hurt more than the moment she realized John Smith was not a real name, that she had willingly given away something she could never get back—not just her virginity, but her pride. But this, this cut more deeply—the look on her father’s face when he realized Beth was damaged goods. “Please, Daddy,” she begged. “It wasn’t my fault—”
He seized on that escape hatch. “Then who did this to you? Who hurt you?”
She pictured John’s lips grazing the inside of her thigh, his mouth closing over her. “No one,” she said softly.
Her father clenched his fists. “I’ll kill him. I willkillhim for laying a hand on you.” His words were full of angles and edges. “Who. Is. He.”
For a moment, Beth almost laughed.Good luck finding him,she thought. But instead of directing her fury at whoever John Smith was, she turned the full force of her blaze on her father instead. “This is why I couldn’t tell you.” Her own voice scared her with its true and perfect aim. “It’s why I went to the clinic in the first place. Because Iknewyou’d be like this.”
Her anger shook the curtains. Her fingernails bit into her own palms. She was a hydra. Her father had cut her down, and something twice as strong had grown in its place.
Somewhere, distantly, Beth realized that it had not been sleeping with a boy that had made her a woman. It was not even the pregnancy, or trying to remove it. It was this: being forcibly treated like a child, when she wasn’t one.
Her father stared at her. “I don’t even know who you are,” he said softly, and then he turned on his heel and left.
—
JANINE KNEW PART OF THEdisguise of being a woman who wanted an abortion involved fooling her own tribe. She and Allen had talked about this, how it was safer, how it was almost a quality control checkpoint before she entered the Center. If she could get by the other pro-life activists with her blond wig and her hoodie pulled up to shadow her face, then she could likely convince the employees inside. Plus, if she walked past everyone and they didn’t call out to her the way they would any other woman, it might look suspicious.
So the only person who knew who she was, as she walked for the first time on the other side of the fence, was Allen. He met her gaze and then turned away to talk to another activist. Meanwhile, the others began trying to get her attention. She knew that the Center considered this harassment, but honestly, it was good citizenship—if you saw a murder in progress, wouldn’t you stop it?
“Good morning,” Ethel said, stretching her hand over the fence with a little pink bag dangling from her fingers. “Can I offer you a gift?”
Janine felt her heart pound. She couldn’t speak; what if Ethel recognized her voice? Instead she reached out and snatched the blessing bag. “You don’t have to go through with this,” Ethel said triumphantly. Janine knew why—if you could actually get one of the women totakea bag, you had already gotten into her head. “We can help!”
Turning away, Janine rang the buzzer at the Center’s front door, and two seconds later she heard the buzz that would let her enter. There were maybe ten other women sitting in the waiting room—young and old, calm and jittery, black and white. The woman at the reception desk had a name tag,VONITA. Janine gave her alias—Fiona—and watched Vonita highlight her name on a list. Then she checked her watch. “You’re the last one,” she said. “Let’s get you in for a quick lab test and you can do the ultrasound after counseling, so we don’t hold up the process. It means you’ll have to stay afterward, but only for a few minutes. Sound good?”
But Janine said nothing. She had expected the nerves that would make it difficult to be a spy. She had not expected the PTSD, the sudden wave that knocked her off her feet and made her see not this clinic owner and this reception desk, but one she’d visited long ago in a different state.
“I’m gonna take that as a yes,” Vonita said, smiling. She patted Janine’s hand. “I know you’re nervous, but I promise you, we’ll get you through.”
Janine was whisked into the back to have her blood tested for her Rh type, and to give a urine sample. Janine’s was in her purse in a little baby food jar. Allen had gotten it from someone who knew someone who was pregnant, and she hadn’t asked any questions. In the bathroom, she poured it from the jar into the specimen cup.
When she entered the waiting room, Vonita was just starting the counseling session. She sat down between a woman whose eyes were so heavy-lidded she might have been asleep, and a woman who was taking notes diligently in a spiral notebook. “I run this clinic,” Vonita was saying, “and I am glad you’ve found your way to us. Now, we’re gonna spend a few moments together, and then the doctor is going to come talk to you as a group, and then you’re going to have a chance to meet one-on-one with him.”
As she spoke, she walked around the semicircle of seating, handing out clipboards with paperwork. “All of you have a file, yes? On the top is a prescription for azithromycin, which is given to you prophylactically so you don’t get any type of infection. I need you to get that filled and bring it with you when you return for your procedure.” She looked around, making eye contact with each woman to make sure they understood.
“The sheet underneath that prescription is what we’re going to work on first. It’s your twenty-four-hour informed consent. Mississippi law says that you can have an abortion twenty-four hours after completing this counseling session. This form signifies that you have made two visits, the first one being today. We’re going to fill out the areas marked withX’s to document that you’re here for your first visit. So. Take your pens, and let’s all do this together.”
Janine blindly followed the instructions, making up a fake address for her fake persona, and scribbling the date and a signature. The woman beside Janine who was taking notes held up her hand. “What about the time?”
“Dr. Ward will fill that part out for you when you meet with him.” Vonita held up a fan made of brightly colored pamphlets. “These are booklets that the Department of Health requires us to give to our patients. This first one gives alternatives to abortion, like programs for unwed mothers and licensed maternity homes and adoption information, and it tells you where the health departments are located all over the state. The second booklet shows you how a fetus develops from beginning to end of a pregnancy. The third booklet tells you what your risks are when you have an abortion, as well as when you have a baby. And the last one is my favorite. It’s about contraception.” Everyone but Janine laughed. “Today is the day you need to decide what kind of contraception you’d like to have when you leave here.”
This surprised Janine; she had known that the Center was a murder factory, but not that they also tried topreventpregnancies. She pressed down so hard on her mechanical pencil that the lead broke.
“Now, please sign and date on the form to acknowledge you were given these materials.” There was a tired thread in Vonita’s voice, as if this were a script she had memorized long ago. “The second portion of this page will be filled out when you come back. You’ll have to reaffirm your decision by signing again. Any questions yet?”
A few women shook their heads. The others just sat in silence.
“We do two types of abortions here at the Center,” Vonita said, and Janine leaned forward on the edge of her chair. “There’s the surgical abortion, which the doctor performs; and there is the pill—the medical abortion—which is an option if you are ten weeks pregnant or less.”
“Which one’s the fastest?” a woman blurted out.
“Girl,” Vonita chided gently, “I’m getting to that! If you decide to have a surgical abortion, you’ll be here for three to four hours, although the surgery itself is less than five minutes from the time you go into the operating room till the time you come out. You recover for about a half hour and then our nurse will give you discharge information—both verbally and in writing—about how to take care of yourself, along with a phone number to call for emergencies, and a date to return for a checkup. Surgery patients, if you return for a checkup, it’s fifteen dollars for the pregnancy test, and thirty dollars if you see the doctor. What I suggest you consider is you give yourself three weeks, then go to your regular physician for a checkup; and you get a pregnancy test from the pharmacy and do it yourself. You should have a light line or a clear result, and if you do, you can go on your birth control method.”
