Sneha.
The hefty odor of coconut with subtle hints of tea tree floated through the room as I sat dutifully on the living room floor. My mom sat on the sofa behind me, holding a faded yellow comb with one too many bristles missing in one hand, and balancing an aromatic elixir of oils in the other, the scent of which permeated the room. Without much warning, her cold hand pulled against my forehead, painfully craning my neck back.
My mom’s fingers, intentional and trained by preceding generations, massaged my scalp, the warm coconut oil seeping into my hair, washing away the burdens of the week. Even the slight tugging of the comb on my scalp felt like a release, a cathartic experience. When I saw the metallic cup of oil depleted, I knew every strand of my hair was meticulously drenched. She concluded by carefully folding her work into two braids on either side of my head.
Every day until the end of fifth grade, my scalp was well-cared for, my braids bore an uncanny resemblance to Wednesday Addams, and coconut became my signature scent as I pranced through the halls of my elementary school. Little did I know at the time that I carried my culture with the oil in my hair and the braids resting on my shoulders.
But as I entered middle school, these parts of me began to wash away. I grew distant from my culture in an attempt to satisfy the norms I saw around me. A circular oil stain and a bottle of heat protectant replaced the shelf space that once had been filled with a Tupperware container of oil. The sharp scent of coconut no longer trailed me; instead, I conformed with straightened strands. I spent Monday and Thursday nights alone in the bathroom, burning my hair into society’s mold.
Until one day in tenth grade, my mom arrived home carrying a mammoth-sized white jar. Unscrewing its lid, the soft scent of coconut slid through me. A sense of euphoria seeped into my body in unison with the memories of those weekday nights with my mom.
“You know, I’m not just pulling strands, Riya,” she said, and explained that in Sanskrit, the word “sneha” translated to “to oil” as well as “to love.” What I had once simplified to be a method to improve my hair health, was truly a labor of love that had been handed down, generation to generation.
I came to realize that abandoning this tradition had led me to rinse my culture away. And so, I began to gradually re-oil these gaps I had created. That night, I asked my mom to oil my hair once again. I sat in the same spot I had those many years ago, with her steady presence behind me. Her slow process felt soothing and tender, linking our generations. My mom’s hands on my scalp restored my appreciation for the tradition she was continuing through it. Through her, I’ve learned the significance of treasuring tradition and I’ve found compassion in even the most mundane rituals in my life- at school and at home.
Mondays and Thursdays, once demoted to ordinary days, are now treasured occasions for introspection and connection. On the days following, I proudly wear my hair, coconut-infused and all, with the braids cascading over my shoulders as symbols of my identity. They remind me of the ties that bind me to generations past. Through hair oiling, I honor and embrace my authentic self, weaving my story into the traditions that shape it. These days have a special place in my heart, reminding me that, despite the tangles along the way, I am capable of appreciating the profound beauty of the people and traditions that complete me.
A TAD ABOUT the ayes and bees, OF CONTRA DANCING
Yea you in the mom genes do not be shy!
Go ahead and ask a partner (yea, that lonely looking heavenly gal or handsome guy), who can never refuse to kick up heals in this rollicking shenanigan – the rumor holds that said activity the most fun one can have with his/her clothes worn.
The caller will usually do a walk thru, which begins with the first two couples closest to the stage crew of lively musicians (frequently filling the makeshift hall with music aligned the genre of irish jigs and reels) beginning to pair off.
After couples one and two (nearest the band) complete their quartet, this process (sans participants coupling off) continues until the foot of the line.
Actually each duo of dancers within the foursome nearest or furthest from the podium dons the role of “first and second” couple respectively.
The walk thru can be helpful, especially for those unfamiliar with this social activity, which encroaches on the ordinary comfort zones because eye contact plus physical hand to hand fusion necessary.
Many of the routines utilize various combinations of approximately a couple dozen unique moves, where each distinct extemporaneously choreographed fancy footwork utilizes a unique variation of such movements.
The most frequent array of moves comprises the following terms, which I located at hyperlink -
Glossary of Contra Dance Figures:
Allemande Left - Two dancers join left hands about shoulder height with elbows bent down and walk a circular path.
Allemande, Mirror - Two couples, facing, starting with one couple going between the other couple. Give the person you are starting to pass your most convenient hand, right for two dancers and left for the other two, and turn as described in the allemande right and left.
Allemande Right - Two dancers join right hands about shoulder height with elbows bent down and walk a circular path.
Balance – The simplest balance is a step forward and back. Another type of balance is a step on your right foot and swing left foot over your right foot and then step on your left foot and swing right foot over your left foot.
Balance and Swing - Face other dancer, take both hands, balance (as above) and swing the other dancer.
Baskets - More that two dancers, step in so all the dancers are in a very tight circle.
MY TESTIMONIAL
This advocate of contra dancing, whereby many participants claim this activity to the best social interaction one can enjoy and indulge while attired i.e. clothes gave this shy person the courage to get up and do the wild thing.
Contra dancing as palliative per bashfulness – how this once extremely emotionally withdrawn fellow got into the groove as a swashbuckling bad to the bone beastie boy.
Life as a high school wallflower served me
without any budding female friendships
until lo…
a gent tulle mandate from my late mother uprooted me
from mine kempf familiar bedrock level road terrain
which venue offered a groundswell
to blossom forth into golden sterling resplendent rod
of natural equipoise (this an unbiased opinion) and balance
with freestyle improvisational swinging motions
unchained from the moors of formality
and lit figurative saint elmo’s sesame street fiery dance
allowing, enabling and providing this shy awkward self
during his young adulthood
to cast away four ever
thy self embroidered handsome
straight as an arrow
naturally high as a kite young guy
buzzing like a yellow jacket
thus liberating spontaneity that je nais sais quoi joie vivre
clamoring headlong toward venus
from healthy pistil packing overflowing bin
laden well nigh testosterone erupting penis
toward opposite gender
whereby bravado donned as key
to hoe field of whet dreams
fostering initial albeit late blooming
roll in the hay hormonally rooted rutting squeal.
He Ain’t Heavy He’s My Brother
by Wilkinson Riling
There is a quote from French dramatist Jean Baptiste Legouve, "A brother is a friend given by nature." I can say from experience, nature went out of her way to provide to me the best friend, the best brother, a person can have. It would be years later when cruel fate would override that process of natural selection with the indifference of a random accident.
We were two years apart, my brother Richard and I, but I can tell you we had a deep connection I've heard only exists among twins. Physically, for all the similarities, there were significant differences. Richard was taller, I was leaner. Richard was muscular, where I was slight. Richard was left handed, I was right. Richard was outgoing and personable, I leaned towards being introverted. The one trait we both possessed was we could look at each other and know in that instant what the other was thinking. With just a glance we could detect in one another our thoughts, mood, veracity, anxiety, needs and most of all humor. That was the one super power he had over me. He could make me laugh anytime he wanted, and often did.
When we were kids we had a basement my Dad had refurbished with a tile floor, drop ceiling and wood paneling. Pop even put a TV in the back wall when the first remote controls came out. The basement was a man cave long before they were ever known as man caves. Speaking of caves, when you closed the main door and covered up the basement window, it was black as pitch in the cellar.
The neighborhood kids would come over to play a game of "Tag in the Dark." The person who was "It" would step out of the room and count while everyone scurried for hiding places. That person, after reaching "ten Mississippi," would turn off the light, enter and have to search in the darkness to find the next person to be "It."
My brother never bothered searching for anyone else, he just would start calling out my name in a funny voice and wait to hear my stifling giggles. I tried so hard not to laugh one time, I wet my pants. So, when he tagged me and the lights came up, I was not only "It," I was pissed, because he made me the focal point of much childhood derision. But I knew then as I know now, all's far in a game of "Tag in the Dark."
My brother had a softer side to him as well. When we were kids we shared a room and a bed. Around Christmas time we both liked having a back scratch. When we gave each other a back scratch there was always an argument who went first. Because if you were the first scratcher, then you, as the scratchee, could fall asleep after. Without a clock we had to figure out how to time the length of the back scratch. So, we used the Christmas standard, "Silent Night." The back scratch would last only as long as the first two stanzas of the carol. Richard always got to give me a back scratch first, leaving me half asleep to finish up. I still remember my seven-year-old voice cracking on the high notes of the lyrics encouraging one to sleep in heavenly peace and finishing with my brother asleep in what could only be described as such.
I smoked my first cigarette with my brother. I was around ten. We would go behind our garage along with my brother's friend Scotty. We took turns puffing and try not to cough on a Winston cigarette Scott stole from his mother. Our garage was backed up against a small hill that divided our block from the street behind us. This hill gave us easy access to the garage roof where we would practice our delinquency. On this particular day, we were racing to climb up to the garage roof. Scott and I took the well travelled back route.
My brother had a better idea. My father had left a ladder out, unbeknownst to us, Richard set it up in front of the garage and started to climb. Scott and I arrived on back of the roof just as Richard's arms came over the opposite end of the garage followed by his grinning face. He had that smile on his face thinking he surprised us with his ingenuity. It took less than a second for that smile to be replaced by a look of fear and regret. The ladder slipped out from under him and he disappeared from view. I don't remember hearing him scream, I do remember the sound of crashing glass.
Scott and I ran up to the edge of the roof and looked down. The image is burned into my brain like a color daguerreotype. The edges may be faded, but all the consequential parts clear and visible. Richard lay splayed on his stomach perpendicular to the fallen ladder and surrounded by shards of glass from a broken window. He was wearing short pants. His left leg was cut open at the calf with a four inch wide vertical tear that ran from just below the knee to just above the ankle. There was a pool of blood around the area of his leg. I could see the white of his bone protruding out from the canal of blood held in his place by a levee of skin.
I don't ever recall being more clear of thought. I remembered our neighbor had been working in his garage. I jumped off the back of the garage and ran through the neighbor's hedges, I told my neighbor that Richard needed help. The neighbor ran over with rags to use as a tourniquet. I didn't follow. Instead, I ran down the driveway and up the street. This happened on a Saturday afternoon. I recalled that another neighbor up the street always had her father over for a late afternoon spaghetti dinner on Saturday. Moreover, I remembered her father was a doctor. I got the old man away from his Italian dinner and to bring his medical bag. I pushed him down the street imploring him to hurry and to save my brother.
The doctor had clean bandages and gave my brother a shot of something just as the emergency vehicle showed up. In the end, Richard required over seventy stitches and had to work to rebuild muscle in his leg. It only served to make me aware of how accident prone my brother could be. I've heard it suggested because he's left handed as the reason, but I believe it's because he was fearless. He remained so even after taking that fall.
My brother went on to become of all things, a roofer. Talk about tempting the fates. He started his own roofing company which became locally very successful and well respected. I pursued a career that took me to the West coast. Whenever I'd come back to visit over the years we'd rib each other about our childhood exploits, whether wetting pants or falling off ladders, to any weight gain that we managed to accumulate over the years. Even though we both put on the pounds, Richard would always smile and say, "Bill, you ain't heavy, you're my brother." The line was taken directly from the 1969 hit from the Hollies, "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother." It would become our theme song.
In 1989 I was at work at my desk in California. The phone rang. It was my father. He told me Richard had an accident. "Please don't tell me he's gone, Dad." He wasn't, but it didn't look good. I flew home that evening. My brother had fallen after a chicken ladder snapped in half causing him to slide off a three story roof. He struck a car and then hit the pavement head first. A chicken ladder is a homemade wooden support that allows a roofer to walk perpendicular to a slanted roof. This gave out causing Richard's fall.
The first day I arrived at the hospital and saw him, Richard's head looked swollen to the size a beach ball, tubes and wires stuck in and on him like tentacles draping from an electronic squid. I got to hold his hand and let him know I was there but I have no idea if he heard me. I spent the day bedside and whispered to him stories from our childhood.
On the second day, I am left with another color daguerreotype in my brain. My father and I were visiting Richard. We were talking in low tones at the base of his bed. Without warning, Richard bolted straight up in bed, eyes wide open, staring directly at us, his left hand reaching out to us as if he wanted us to grab his hand and stop him from falling. It was and is, the scariest thing I ever saw in my life. Because I had no idea what to do. Nor did my father, because we banged into each other trying to move out of the room and call for a doctor. Richard was pulling at tubes and cables and stretching all the wires clipped to him. The doctor and nurses scrambled and settled him down, but I can never forget the fear I saw in my brother's eyes and the helplessness I felt. The doctor said Richard might have been reliving the fall in his mind. Add to that, what my father must have been going through and it was all beyond my emotional imagination.
The third day remains the most incredible for me, because it contains elements of life's mysteries causing me to question my very sanity and issues of life after death. I can play back bits and pieces in my head like a tick tok video, so let me time stamp it for you.
It was March, 13th, 1989. 7:30 a.m. an early Spring morning. The sun had risen above neighborhood rooftops. I'm sitting in Richard's hospital room with his wife. We're letting Richard know we're there. I'm speaking in low tones because I don't want to excite him and repeat the previous day. His wife is gently stroking his forehead. A nurse barrels into the room like Mary Tyler Moore on prozac and loudly proclaims, "Good morning, Richard, it's a beautiful day!" She opens the blinds to let in more sunlight. "Spring is in the air! The tulips are in bloom and your family is here and they love you very much!"
I asked the nurse how he slept through the night. She smiled saying he had such a good quiet evening, no seizures. She again reminded us it was a beautiful day and left. I turned to my brother's wife and smiled. "I think he's going to be okay. I'm going to call Dad." I went to a nearby pay phone, fished out a quarter from my pocket. My Dad picked up in one ring. "Dad, Billy. Richard slept through the night, no seizures. He even looks better. Dad, I think he's going to be okay." Those words no sooner left my lips when I heard the intercom. "Code Blue, Code Blue, Code Blue."
"Dad, get down here, now!" I had a sinking feeling I hope I never feel again.
I ran back to my brother's room, it was already crowded with an emergency staff. My brother's wife was against the opposite wall in the hallway looking in, but it was hard to see anything except the backs of the doctors and nurses working on Richard. The patient room right next to my brother's room was empty, so I stepped up to the doorway to get an angled view of them working on my brother. They were doing CPR and all the other emergency procedures we see on TV hospital dramas but this drama was real. Or was it?
There was a radio playing music in the empty room as they worked on my brother. The radio was playing a song. It was a song by the Hollies. "He Ain't Heavy He's my Brother" was playing as my brother was dying. I started to think I was in a bad dream, not quite a nightmare. This can't be happening. But it was. For four minutes and nineteen seconds I listened to that heart breaking song watching as my brother's life ebbed away. To add to the mystery of the moment, the next song that the radio played was Chicago's "If You Leave Me Now." His wife later told me that was their song. Was that Richard saying goodbye to us? Was it just an amazing coincidence? Was my brain seeking connections to help me deal with the trauma of the moment? I don't know. It haunts me to this day.
As the song says... the road is long with many a winding turn that leads us to who knows where? But if I'm strong, strong enough to carry him, he ain't heavy, he's my brother.
I carry my brother in my heart.
2 Immigrants and a Baby
My concept and definition of home is a bit more nebulous than most. I was born in Venezuela, a nation that I never got much of a chance to make a home in. You might have heard the chaotic headlines or whispered rumors from that one coworker who visited in the 90s. You see, Venezuela used to be a destination. It used to be a hot vacation spot known for its gorgeous beaches and women, and even a popular place to immigrate to for better opportunities. Now, it’s known for violence, hyperinflation, and a mass exodus from the country’s own citizens. It used to be a place to be proud of. Now, the actions of a violent few have corroded the shiny patina of Venezuela in the eyes of foreigners.
For the past 25 years, the beautiful land that brought me to life has been pillaged and plundered by a revolving door of murderous leeches. They come in walking on the backs of generations of Venezuelans toward their gilded podiums. They sit down, get fat off the land, and leave the nation a bit more crippled each time. They left my country tattered and decaying, a dying weed stuck to the northern coast of South America.
We left for the US with little more than suitcases of clothes just before things took an even sharper downturn. It took nearly ten years until we were finally able to secure permanent residency. Throughout that time, I felt like I was truly a person with no home. We took a couple of careful trips back to Venezuela to visit family where possible, but it was clear that the nation was falling into disrepair. It was plain as day that things weren’t safe for our family there so the last time I ever visited was in 2006, 18 years ago. With the way things have progressed, I think that might be the last time I’ll ever see it with my own eyes.
I thought everything would change when we became permanent residents. Now we had a legal document asserting that we could call the United States our home. But could we really? We’re an immigrant family that wasn’t exactly rolling in money. My parents worked hard to provide a roof over our heads and food on the table. It wasn’t ever easy, but they made it work somehow. Truly, the “how” is a mystery to me to this day.
We moved around a lot. The 2008 recession crushed our family, but we spent the next 15 years working hard for a better life. I’ve called a lot of rented apartments, townhouses, and eventually single-family houses my home. My parents sacrificed a lot to allow us to go to top American schools in good areas. Good schools cost a lot to live near. I’ve worked hard to make them proud of their investment in my future.
I’ve been at my current place for a year now. We thought we were going to get to call our last place home for a little longer, but our landlord needed to move back in. Something always happens, so I try not to get too attached to any place. This place feels different, though. It’s still a rental, but I’m making it feel like home. We go thrifting for artwork and bit by bit, we invest in furniture and rugs and all the other things that make a house a home.
Some people talk about going back home. Some people ask me where home is for me. I’ve lived in different countries, states, and cities so at this point, home is wherever I’ve currently got my two feet planted in the ground. I haven’t yet set roots anywhere too permanent, but I’ll get there. Until then, I’ll just shake my fist at the economy and try to pay down these student loans.
my first and worst love
This story is a tragedy. I’ve told it a million times. In fact, it’s most of my stories, but I’ve left out much of it. I’ll tell you more and more each time, I swear. Here’s the most I can give you today:
He was my first love. It all began when I was 18 and he was 17. We were almost to the end of our senior year of high school. March 24th was our first date. I had never been romanced before. I’d had crushes, been on dates, been kissed, been felt up in someone’s basement by a guy I hated. But, I’d never felt something like I had that night. I was wearing ripped jeans, a black tank top, a flannel shirt, my black converse, and my dad’s old jacket. I still have the last two items. The shoelaces are frayed and the jacket’s pockets are ripped, though. We had pizza and ice cream, and talked about our future plans - college, jobs, moving away from home.
I had already committed to school, but he was waiting on a letter from his top choice. He wanted to be a theater major. I only went to one school play - the children’s play he was in - because I hate plays (for the most part). He’d actually told me not to go to it, but I did anyway, and I think I still have the ticket stub and the playbill with a kiss mark over his name. I wore pink lipstick that day.
He got his degree in computer science but works in email marketing (I despise advertising of all kinds, but not because of him). But, before all that he moved back to Italy, and we were long distance for a year. It was awful, minus when he visited me at Christmas. I drove to the airport to see him. It was raining and I listened to “Friday I’m in Love” by The Cure on the way home. I got distracted and took the wrong exit. I ended up on the toll road.
Our second date was at the mall. I wore yoga pants and I may have been hungover again. I know I was tired. I don’t drink anymore which makes this story funnier to me. When we were walking, I started singing along to the music they played over the intercom and he said to me, “you know every song”, which isn’t true, but I know a lot of the hits from the past 50 years. We sat on a couch in the Macy’s furniture section for hours. Long enough for someone who worked there to come up to us and comment on it. He said he’d already sold the couch and didn’t mind that we’d been there for so long, he just thought it was interesting. He said, “When you two get married, come back here, so I can sell you some furniture”, and we used to reference that all the time. We didn’t get married, not even engaged.
On our third date, we went on a walk at a park near my neighborhood. We ended up back at my house (not in that way, that comes later). He met my mom for the first time, and we went upstairs to “watch TV” aka makeout. We made our relationship official that day. I was wearing my favorite overalls that I still get compliments on to this day. I bought them specifically to wear on that date.
Our fourth date was prom. My dress was $450, and it was the most beautiful I had ever felt. I was not popular in high school, but he was relatively popular. I ended up getting compliments from people who had never spoken to me. We went back to my friend’s house for the afterparty. He drove my car there. I got a little bit drunk on shots of Ciroc and we spent the whole party alone in my friend’s bedroom (not like that, that comes later).
That happened for the first time in late June, but I won’t tell the story. It was unremarkable to be honest. We had our first fight around that time. We were driving home from another park. I think I was driving because that was something that I used to do. I stopped the argument by cranking up the music. We were listening to “Jack and Diane” by John Mellencamp, and I was singing along to it. He used to like my singing and my taste in music back then. I took him back to my house and my mom convinced him to stay for dinner. We were fighting about something stupid and she was the one who ended it, albeit unknowingly.
The worst fight we ever had was when I was 21 or 22. Flash forward from senior year of high school to senior year of college. He was an anti-vaxxer and I made fun of him for it. I can’t remember what I said, but it wasn’t that offensive. He started screaming at me. He screamed at me until I sobbed on the floor of my bedroom. I stopped trusting him that night. I remember my friend was in the other room, and he texted me asking if I was okay, and I said “yes”. The next day, when my boyfriend had gone home, my friend asked me about the fight again and I told him that I started it, which is kind of true, but he said, and I’ll never forget it, “I can’t imagine what [his girlfriend’s name] would have to do for me to yell at her like that”. They live together now and are a very happy couple, I’m still friends with them both.
The reason for the breakup was not all the fighting. In the end, he cheated on me. He admitted to it in August. I was 23 and he was 22. He told me it had happened while he was away in Italy while we were 18/19 and that he had just kissed a few girls, so I forgave him. I told him not to do it again and he promised he wouldn’t. I visited him in mid-September and was there until October 30th. He called me on the 31st to tell me he’d cheated on me twice while I was there.
I told him he was a coward for not telling me before. The thing that made me the most angry was that he chose to confess over the phone. I didn’t even get closure because he didn’t want to see me cry in person, he couldn’t do it when we were together because he couldn’t bear to see my face. He didn’t cry when he told me. That made me angry too.
He started dating someone else, but we called each other and fell asleep on the phone together many nights for the next few months. He started going to see a therapist and he got better to some extent, he started letting me talk and had more empathy towards me. He apologized and told me he’d repented (he’s a devout Catholic). I told him that meant he was forgiven by God, but not by me. (I love the song “God Will” by Lyle Lovett, and I think it’s fitting).
Regardless, we saw each other in person in January, and we went on a weekend getaway to Savannah to try to patch things up. It ended in him yelling at me in the airport when I had a panic attack. We haven’t seen each other in person since then. I wish I could say I had a better last memory with him, but I don’t.
We continued to try to patch things up for months, multiple times. We broke it off once and I started dating this girl that I really liked (she broke my heart too, but she was nicer about it). The ex-boyfriend and I almost got back together in June, but we fought over the phone about sexual assault statistics. He said men get falsely accused all the time and I disagreed. I asked him if he really believed me when I told him what had happened when I was 16 and he promised he’d never hurt me like that. He said yes, and I asked him if he’d believe that I’ve had so many friends who have similar stories and he said he wouldn’t necessarily believe them. I hung up and told him I couldn’t do it anymore.
I think back to all the times I took Klonopin before having sex, so “it’d be easier for me to get through it”, and I think it makes that argument make more sense.
Last Thanksgiving, 5 months post-breakup, we went around the table and talked about what we were most thankful for, and I said that I was most thankful that he wasn’t in my life anymore. The whole table - my whole family - clapped for me.
All good things….
At the end of January I fell and broke my ankle. It was pretty serious, had to have two pins and a screw put in and I spent a month in a rehab facility recovering and re-learning how to walk.
I have never felt so helpless in my entire existence!
However, the nurses and doctors were so kind, they were so understanding, not one of them said a harsh word to me.
All of these people deserve a reward for everything they have to put up with on a daily basis. Dementia patients, cranky elderly by in general, cleaning up messes that would make you gag!
Im telling all of this to say that maybe
my broken ankle wasn’t such a terrible thing after all.
Here’s why, it got me out of my little bubble and out into part of the world ordinary people don’t see most of the time. I was able to meet some of the most amazing, caring people when I had lost my faith in humanity.
It takes a special kind of person to be in the medical profession.
To you out there I say a most humble
THANK YOU!
The Most Magical Place on Earth
The day before our trip to Disneyland, I woke up with blood in my underwear. I should have been surprised, but I wasn’t. I’d known this was coming, sooner or later, the same way it was always looming for prepubescent girls, but I’ll admit, the timing wasn’t stellar. Still, I wasn’t surprised. Life had always had a way of taking good things away from me. Why should I have hoped to be a child at the most magical place on earth, if even only for a day? I shook my mother awake in the darkness of Grandma’s guest bedroom. “I started my period,” I stated bluntly.
“Oh honey,” Mom moved to cup my face, to give sympathy, but I pulled out of her touch and tucked twitching hands behind my back.
“It’s not a big deal. I just need…stuff.”
Mom sighed, resigned, and threw off her blankets. She shouldn’t be surprised this was how I’d chosen to handle the situation. First blood or not, I’d been an adult for years. It didn’t matter that I was only twelve. I’d stopped being a child the first time I’d offered myself up for a beating to spare my little brother. Dad didn’t particularly care who he hit, so long as he hit someone. I’d been six then and already well on my way to understanding some things about the world I really shouldn’t have. With the first smack of Dad’s beating stick on my back, the last dregs of innocence had left my small body. I should probably feel something about that, too, but I didn’t. It’s just the way things were.
My mother shuffled past, beckoning me to follow her into the bathroom across the hall. She held up a bulky panty liner, “Here. This is all Grams has. We’ll stop and get you something better on the way. Let me show you how to use it.”
I nodded, and let her show me, though I already knew. My best friend had gotten her period six months ago. Sara wasn’t one to leave out any detail and had shared the ins and outs of bleeding and tampons and pads with brutal efficiency to anyone who would listen in our little friend group. Yes, I already knew, but I let Mom show me. It was more important for her to feel needed than it was for me to be comfortable. And so, I shuffled out of the bathroom and packed up my bag, adding a fistful of the low-quality incontinence liners to my purse.
We drove for twelve hours that day. I shifted uncomfortably in the back seat of my grandparent’s minivan, but I wouldn’t dare complain. They were footing the bill for this trip to Disney. God knew my mom, who was in the throes of raising six kids solo, couldn’t afford it. Mom bought me tampons at a truck stop. Every hotel we’d be staying at during our week-long trip would have a pool, and I loved to swim. Mom tried to convince me that I wouldn’t even bleed much, but I knew she was wrong. My body had been hovering on the precipice of this thing for too long. I was more developed than any of the other girls I knew, with heavy breasts and curving hips and standing at 5’8” already. Men had been screaming vulgar things out the windows of their trucks at me for two years as I made my trek to school in the mornings. I couldn’t really blame them for mistaking me for a woman or something close to one. I looked like it. I relished the vile words the men spewed out their windows at me. I knew I shouldn’t, but my father had told me I was an ugly thing for so long, it was nice to know that someone, anyone, thought differently. I pondered all of these things during the twelve-hour drive, and arrived at the conclusion that while the whole period thing was miserable, it wasn’t a bad thing. It was just another step toward becoming the adult I so desperately wanted to be. When I was an adult, I could be free. I wanted so badly to be free. I wanted so badly to be wanted.
By the time we arrived at the theme park the next night, I was an old hat at the whole tampons and pads thing. I had fully leaned into the idea that no matter what anyone tried to tell me, I was a woman now. I’d demand the respect of one. And I did. Grams and Mom were the first to notice the shift. They just met my gaze with a knowing glint and subtle nods. I’d not be treated like a child anymore. Mercifully, they didn’t try to. They stopped giving me orders and started deferring to me for opinions and on the fourth evening of the trip, Grandma handed me a tattered copy of her favorite romance novel and informed me, “You’re old enough to read this now.”
During our breaks from the sticky, sweaty excitement of the park, I devoured the book. It confirmed some things that’d been pondered over pillows at many a slumber party. The book gave vital information on how to fully wield the power that’d been bequeathed upon me in the form of generous hips and cat eyes. On the last night of the trip, my bleeding had stopped and I clutched a towel around my breasts and left the hotel room with a mumbled, “I’m going to the pool.”
Surprisingly, no one challenged me. They let me slip from the room, twelve years old, clad in nothing but an orange bikini and a towel.
I smiled with wicked delight as I made my way to the pool yard. I’d been watching, these days past, hoping for an opportunity to test my hypothesis, but in order to do that, I needed to get away from my family… and they’d just… let me leave. My heart pounded as I exited the building. The thick, warm night air of a Los Angeles summer blasted me, and I gulped down lungfuls and told myself to be brave. I stepped into the poolyard and let my towel drop. It pooled around my feet, and when I looked up, six pairs of eyes were running up and down the length of me. I met a pair of glittering blue and grinned. I let a little bit of that heat I’d been kindling flare in my eyes, too, “Can I join you?” I purred in a voice foreign to my ears. The minor league baseball player across from me smiled lazily and trailed his fingers through the steaming water next to him.
“Sure,” he said, taking another sweeping look down to my toes and then slowly back up before he met my eyes again. Something stirred in his gaze and I bit my lip before climbing into the hot tub beside him.
I’d been watching the baseball team for a few days. They had rooms down the hall from ours. I’d overheard them talking about their spur-of-the-moment decision to stay a few nights and explore the theme park before continuing on their way. All of them were young, in their early twenties, and all of them were outrageously good-looking in the way only aspiring male athletes can be. They were all also, mercifully, on good behavior. I took for granted the danger I was putting myself in, not having learned the other truths about the way men might behave when confronted with an almost-naked young woman. And that’s what they thought I was: a young woman. My body, my face, the way I held myself told them. They didn’t ask, and I didn’t bother to correct them. I spent hours in the pool that night, riding on their shoulders, swimming beside them, running my hands all over them, their hands all over me. I reveled in it. I laughed and they echoed, and when the one with striking blue eyes invited me up to his room, I thought for a long minute about going, but this man was a gentleman and he saw the hesitation in my eyes and tipped his head.
“I get it,” he said, “you’ve got other attachments.”
I smirked and nodded, allowing him to believe whatever conclusion he’d come to.
“Either way, this was,” he smiled, “...fun. Thanks.”
I twined my fingers in his and looked up under my lashes, “Sorry.”
He ran a tentative hand down my cheek. “There’s nothing to apologize for. Let me know if you change your mind. You can find me in room 402.”
I nodded again and gave him the sultry smile I’d spent an hour cultivating in the mirror earlier. He grinned and turned away, exiting the pool yard with his friends elbowing and gently ribbing along the way.
When they were gone, I sank back into the hot tub and laughed. Though they didn’t know it, those men had just given me the keys to the kingdom. My hypothesis was confirmed. There was power in this woman’s body. I’d just had no less than ten men dancing for me like puppets on strings. I palmed my round breast and grinned at the sky. Yes, there was power in this body, power in the truth I now beheld. And I would use it from that moment forward to get everything I ever wanted.
When we left the most magical place on Earth the next day, my metamorphosis was complete. I was a woman, and the world wasn’t ready for the terrors I was poised to unleash upon it.
Going Away
“Maybe I’ll just stay home. Go to community college,” I say, setting my laptop on my new dorm desk. I look at my mom, sitting on my bed helping me unpack my boxes, and silently beg her to agree. But she doesn’t say anything, just smiles at me sympathetically. If she thought that's what I really wanted, she'd have me home in a heartbeat. But she knows, despite my fears, I want to do this. Need to. “I’m just so nervous,” I say, rubbing my stomach. Anxiety always brings me stomach problems. “I don’t remember how to make friends.”
“Oh, come on,” she says, her tone telling me I’m being ridiculous. “You’ve never had any trouble making friends.”
“Well, yeah. I know. But they’ve just... always been my friends. Through school and sports and stuff. This place is so big. It’s not like in third grade when I just went up to whatshername and said ‘will you be my friend’ and she agreed and that was that.”
My mom laughs. “Well, no, you probably don’t want to do that. But you’ll meet people in the dorm. And the sorority, if you end up deciding to rush.”
For some reason, my mom’s really wanting me to join a sorority. Maybe because it's not an opportunity she ever had. Her parents were barely able to send her to college, and she had to work her way through it. For me, college was a given, and there's been no talk of me getting a job. “Ugh," I say, plopping down next to her. "I just wish I could fast-forward past all the awkwardness and find people I can be myself with immediately. I, like, lock up around new people and forget how to be a person."
“Just remember. Everyone is in the same boat as you. It’s not like you’re the new girl coming into a place where everyone knows everyone. You’re all freshman in college. People are looking to make friends. Trust me. It’ll happen fast.”
“Okay,” I sigh, not wanting to talk about it anymore. She’s probably right, but her words do nothing to loosen the knot in my stomach.
I momentarily wonder if I should have gone where my friends are going and experienced high school 2.0. But I remind myself that I came to this school so I would be forced to get out of my comfort zone. As scary as it is, I want new. I want change.
My dad walks into the room with the last of my boxes. “Alright, that’s it,” he says, setting them down in the middle of the room. I use my foot to shove them closer to what I've claimed as my desk. My roommate hasn’t arrived yet and I don’t want her to think I’m trying to take over the place. Thankfully, we'd chatted online before this and had established that she'd take the top bunk, which is fine by me since I spent my whole childhood on the top.
“I’m starving." My dad says. "Should we go eat?”
My mom looks at me. “What do you think, Coley? Do you want to finish unpacking first or go eat now?”
I look at my dad. He has his hands on his hips and is tapping his foot, exaggerating his impatience. This is his signature move. I laugh to humor him. “Let’s go eat,” I say. I’m really hungry too, though I’m not sure I’ll be able to eat much with the knot in my stomach. But if I unpack now and then we go eat, what am I going to do when I get back and they leave? As long as I have a tangible task to complete, I won’t feel completely aimless.
We go to Shakespeare’s, my parents’ favorite pizza place since when they were students here. It’s crowded-- I’m not the only freshman moving in today-- but somehow we manage to get a table outside. I lean back in the chair and try to enjoy the beautiful August day. I breathe deeply, hoping it will ease my anxiety. It doesn’t. I look around at the tables around us. Mostly families, probably doing the same thing we’re doing. I lot of people are wearing the school’s colors, and suddenly I feel self-conscious for wearing a T-shirt with my high school’s mascot. As I fidget with my senior class ring, I make a mental note to hide it and anything else bearing the name or colors of my high school. I’m in college now. Better play the part.
When we get back to my dorm, my dad stays in the car because we’ve had to create a parking spot and he’s worried they’ll get ticketed. I hug him goodbye and my mom walks me back up to my room. I go slowly, trying to delay their departure. I wonder if I’ll cry. Probably not. I don’t typically cry when I’m expected to, something that’s always bothered me. But the feeling of dread in my stomach grows.
“Do you need anything before we go? We can run to the grocery store if we need to,” my mom says when we get to my room. My roommate still hasn’t arrived. I wish she would. That would at least be something.
“No,” I sigh. Something I’ve been doing a lot lately. Cleansing breaths. Not working. “I think I have everything I need. I can always walk to the school store if I need to.” As much as I dread them leaving, delaying it is only making my anxiety grow. I need to cut the cord. Start figuring out how to be here on my own.
“Ok,” she says, but she doesn’t move. It’s like she’s trying to think of something else to keep her longer. “Here,” she says, digging into her purse. “I got you this. I’m not sure why, but it reminds me of you. Of us.” If my mom was a public crier, this would be the time she’d start blubbering. But her eyes are dry.
I take the CD out of her hand and look at the cover. Dixie Chicks. I smile. “Landslide,” I say, remembering the times we sang that song together in the car. “Awww, how cute of you,” I joke, unable to handle the intimacy of her gesture.
She gives me a hug. “You’re going to do great,” she says. “I better get going before dad leaves without me. Love love love.”
“Love love love,” I say, looking down because I actually start to feel tears welling up. This is unexpected. “Have a safe drive back.” But I don’t want her to leave. She’s comfort. She’s familiarity. She’s safety and solace. She’s the person I turn to for just about everything, and now I’m going to be without her.
Just like that, she’s gone, and I turn and face my empty room.
A Wednesday.
A day ago, I woke up again, smacked with the quick realisation that life is still a thing I am living. So I get up, even though I do not want to. We have a lecture extra, that day. One, two, three. When I was young, in secondary school, classes lasted from eight to three with more than a few subjects a day but here I am, already stressed out over what I was once used to.
Everything changes. Nothing stays the same.
I get ready. I ignore the slight feeling of discomfort my roommate gives me as I always do. When it comes to people, it's always a question of when will they hurt me- will they hurt me- how- when- where- what can I do to avoid it- I learnt some time ago that no matter how small and insignificant you try to make yourself, sometimes it just isn't enough. Someone may still be gunning for you.
That's when you realise that it doesn't matter what you do. Because you still exist. The only time you can know for certain there will be no sense of discomfort or unsafety is when there can be no sense of comfort or safety, either. What I mean is death, whatever that entails, may be the only escape from the good and bad and possibility that comes with being a human being that exists around other human beings.
I like the sky, birds and music too much to call Death to take me like I once did.
The day goes as you would expect. The first lecturer comes in late and talks, then leaves an hour before time. The second does the same, picking out some special people for special presentations and I am relieved by the ease with which I am disregarded. That I am so very inconspicuous to most eyes most of the time.
By the last lecture, I am not doing well. I am teetering. Something I was once so used to... I strangely remember, for the first time in years, that I used to sleep often in secondary school. As good a student as I was academically, classes were mostly boring. The literature teacher had a spark to her, though. Now that I've left Law to study English Lit in university, I see that it may have been the better choice for me but it has grown cold. The passion has left. I just want to get through and enter yet another phase of this weird existence.
The last teacher of the day is a woman I'd had a problem with the semester before. She'd kicked me out of her class for wearing the wrong clothing, I missed a group work because frankly, no one told me there was one because I suppose they didn't care and now my grade is anyone's guess. We're both at fault. Her for establishing ideals for a couple of classes, only to throw them away this semester once again. Me for being so pissed off I left altogether rather than standing outside to listen.
I wore a dress for her this Wednesday. I told myself I wouldn't make myself but I did. I wore a dress for her a day ago and it felt very not like me and it was a bit tight and I spent the day wondering if anyone could see how uncomfortable and strange I felt in it. I always tell myself dresses are for the oppressive church drag my parents like and nowhere else. I wore them for her that day but I didn't have to because people wore t-shirts and she didn't send them away, anymore.
It had stopped mattering to her.
Another thing to remember is that people don't give a shit about you unless they really do. If this person is not family (and I mean genuine family, not a relative by blood that you do not genuinely know) or a friend or you get the idea? Most do not care. You will walk by millions in your entire lifetime and you can wear and say and do whatever. Most that'll happen is they'll glance at you a moment, either amused, amazed, indifferent or weirded out, then forget you ever existed.
This is what happened that day. I was exhausted. So I put my head on the table, trying to hide behind those in front the way my secondary school self often did. What a fond memory, oftem interrupted by annoyed teachers. If I was a teacher, I'd stop caring eventually. Let the little things sleep once I realised it didn't matter all that much, anyway. So many things mean so little to me, now.
I'm getting off track. The lecturer called upon me. Asked my name which I gave, despite my discomfort. And then she did something rather strange. She asked me who my friend was in the class. I mentioned the name of an acquaintance when she wouldn't take my uncomfortable "umm..." for an answer. She was surprised. Said with her own mouth that she was certain I didn't have any. I didn't have the strength to agree with her hypothesis, nor did I have the strength to ask why it was her business in the first place.
After the class, I left as quickly as possible. I'd spent a lot of it numbing myself. Keeping myself upright. Most importantly, my low blood sugar (at least this is my theory) was kicking in. I left to find something to eat so I didn't get dizzy and fall to the floor and I wondered what they thought of me. Those strangers with their eyes and their lips that seem like mine but aren't. All those eyes...
It wasn't a regular day. I usually have one or two lectures instead of three - living the dream, right? I didn't feed myself well enough when I left my hostel and I couldn't find snacks to fill the in-between. I've had that low blood sugar dizziness happen in public and every time, it leads to a panic attack when people inevitably notice the person who cannot walk properly and has dived to the floor. It's embarrassing. I forget how well I need to be fed till it happens to remind me.
That woman confuses me. Most people do. Why does it bother people when anyone does anything? Everyone is always too fat or too slim, too loud or too quiet, too stupid or too smart.
You think you're better than us?
You think you're nothing?
Both.
Neither.
I don't know.
I am the way I am now, despite the fact that my depression properly began due to being as friendless as I am today, because I need a break from people. They have put me through a lot and I'm tired of forcing myself to be the friendliest, smiliest Oompa Loompa. Who do I need to get approval from? The woman? Classmates? They don't know me. I don't know them.
As far as I'm concerned, they are faceless, heartless, mindless beings as Bukowski once wrote. They are cardboard cutouts. Ants like me. I do not know them so they hardly exist. I only know myself and even I don't feel real sometimes. Interactions like the one with the lecturer feel daunting and confusing. I have kept myself away from you enoygh. Why would you enter my space and pull me into your attention orbit just to tear me down? Do you think it kind? Cool? Am I a joke to you?
It hurt for a moment. But the pain stopped. I don't like to numb myself but this wasn't the time to cry. I'd already cried in her class once before, as secretly as possible. I'm a sensitive person. I feel things. Which is lovely when it comes to good emotions. Difficult for bad ones.
The day came and ended. I spent the rest of it watching a series I like... Listening to beautiful music... I enjoyed myself. That day and this week will some day soon fade from my memory. My forgetfulness is a defence mechanism that does much for me - prized above many, despite its bad parts. It will all fade away as it always does. Just as this post will fade away in my dozens of others. Just like I fade away in the dozens of people. Everything fades, so will she, so will I. I only want to live a life that works for me. As much as I dread seeing her again next week, I equally feel nothing at the thought.
Let us forget each other. Let nothing but what matters to you matter. Let everything else simply not exist. Caring is a tiring sport. Anxiety, too. Trying to be enough nearly destroyed me. Here's to trying something new.
Shotgun
I:
The whole thing had been a grave error. To this day, I believe it was the biggest mistake of my life. Call it what you will, it was willful enough, and it only took once (with a fertile womb, I have been blessed).
At the time, Stefan and I were engaged. Still, my heart was only half in it. Although I remember the early days of dinners and white water rafting with a sort of nostalgia, I also remember the telltale absences, particularly in my gut.
I had been drawn to him with a firm heavy hand and the threat of desperation in his eyes. Whenever I broke up with him (for it happened often enough), he told me he had nothing to live for anymore, and he would turn to the bottle.
And so, naturally, three years later I married him.
II:
If I could go back I would do it differently: I would have absolutely run away.
But the funny thing about life is, you can’t go back. You can only go forward.
I found that out three years and five months ago when my pregnancy test came out positive. I couldn’t believe it. I had gotten my period in the airport of Niamey Niger scarcely a month prior. I had been about to fly back to Stefan after seven months of living on different continents. We were both confident we would be married right away. And yet there I was, sitting in the cool autumn sun on our ratty hostel balcony, scarcely having touched down in Croatia. I was unwed and pregnant and wanting nothing more than for this whole nightmare to disintegrate before my eyes.
III:
I had gone to see Stefan with the test in my hand and tears in my eyes. Secretly, I was still planning to break up with him. I never felt completely confident in our relationship, nor in our engagement, and coming back to see him after seven months resurrected all of my uncertainties. It’s easy to cling to a man 5,000 miles away, especially when you’re living in a war-torn country hot as hell with the threat of Islamic terrorism so real that you sleep with a knife under your pillow and jolt awake at the sound of a cricket.
But with the test in hand, and sitting only half a meter apart, I wanted nothing more to do with this man.
“Do not hate this child, and do not hate me,” he had said, his voice faltering as he reached to touch me. My tears were coming fast, and I wanted someone to blame. I did hate the child, and I did hate him. Quietly, I began to make my plans.
IV:
I remember those first few days of decision. Here in Croatia it was too late to go to the pharmacy and get their version of the RU-486 pill. I silently berated myself for not having done so right after having sex, just to be sure. My world felt like it was spinning out of control, like I was about to be flung to the far reaches of the universe, like everything was about to disintegrate and grow like a terrible cancer, all at the same time. I had wanted to cover my tracks, I had missed the opportunity and now I would have hell to pay.
Years later, I see this failure as providence. RU-486 takes whatever is growing and sucks the life right out of it. Even if it had just been four cells, those four cells had still been my son. And me taking that pill would have sucked all the life from him.
V:
With RU-486 out of the question, I realized I had one and only one option: to take the two-step abortion pill. I was apparently five or six weeks along, and I could take it legally in Croatia until 14 weeks, only I had to get an OBGYN to sign off on it. So, with a single-minded purpose and only a few words of Croatian under my belt, I googled, called, and set up an appointment. I would not tell Stefan. I would go and do what I needed to do, and later I would tell him it was a miscarriage. Then, I would slip out of his life forever. I took a breath: I was doing what I had to do, and that was that. Soon, this whole nightmare would be over and I would be doing what I did best: starting over somewhere new.
Still, I felt something nagging at the recesses of my conscience. I had been raised a red-blooded conservative in a staunch pro-life household. My parents voted down the line on every anti-abortion candidate, and as the middle of nine children, I’d lingered long hours over the Life magazines with double-spread in-utero pictures of developing babies, swimming unawares in their translucent sacks, sucking their thumbs as they orbited in perfect peace.
I knew what was inside me wasn’t just a clump of cells. I knew he had hands and feet and a beating heart. I knew his fingers were beginning to form. I knew, somewhere in the back of my mind, the abortion pill would rip him from the protection of the uterine wall, starve him to death, and then flush him piece by piece out of me.
And yet, I pushed him away. Or rather, I pushed the thought of all of that away. I needed an out. I could not marry Stefan and I could not have his child alone. There was only one solution.
VI:
A few days before my appointment, my friend in America left me a long voicemail. I awoke to it. “I had to tell you something,” she said. “I had a dream about you last night.”
I lay there on my bed, listening, feeling my hope for a quick fix wrinkling up inside me like a prune.
When I met Maria two years earlier, she had told me of a miscarriage, after her ex-fiancee had raped her. Now, she told me about her dream the previous night. “There was a pregnant woman, and a devil was dancing between her and me, and I couldn’t get to her,” she said. Then she told me the other part. “And I had to tell you that…I lied to you. I didn’t have a miscarriage. I had an abortion. And my Mother begged me not to, but I was determined. I was seven weeks like you are now. It came out in pieces. Right afterwards, I felt ten years older. For a long time after, I felt dead.”
After the message was over, I felt my fate was sealed. I could not pretend away what I was about to do: the Devil had been dancing between Maria and I, but God had seen fit to reach out and save me and whatever was inside me. Only I didn’t feel saved, not one bit. I felt condemned.
That afternoon, I told Stefan about my appointment. I didn’t tell him that I had planned to get permission to have an abortion, just that I had scheduled our first OBGYN visit. His eyes shone and he reached for my hand. He knew this was a sign I was letting him in again, that I was accepting the fact I was pregnant. Perhaps I was, but I could not match the delight in Stefan’s eyes. I felt dead. Since Maria’s message, I had had no change of heart towards this life growing inside me - I only knew with a cold sobriety, that I could not kill it. God had been very clear on that.
So the next day I experienced my first ever vaginal ultrasound at the hands of a jovial 60-year-old Croatian OBGYN whose language I spoke about fifteen words of. Stefan stood by me, looking at our baby’s beating heart, holding my hand, clear excitement in his eyes.
I, on the other hand, felt nothing. My fate had already been sealed. I was not so much angry at God, as at myself and at Stefan. I would accept to have this baby, I would accept to give him life, but I was not going to be happy about it. The baby felt, still, even after seeing the ultrasound, like a pit in my stomach, a life sentence, rooting me to a man and a country I wanted desperately to leave.
“Amazing, that is our baby,” said Stefan afterward, holding up the black and white printout of the ultrasound. I remember there, right next to the famed Zadar sea organs where Stefan and I had watched so many sunsets, the way he looked at me, his eyes beseeching and his mouth almost wobbling. He was begging me to express warmth for our child. He was begging me to express warmth for him. And yet my heart felt so cold: Stefan, after all, had been the one to push me towards sex. In my mind, he had brought us to this point - the edge of a cliff, and now he was begging me to jump off with a smile. What more would he ask of me?
VII:
Week seven turned into eight, then into nine. I could not kill this child inside me, but perhaps I could encourage a miscarriage? I was still skirting with the idea of getting rid of it, without actually getting rid of it. I knew up until twelve weeks things were quite dicey, and many women lost babies for no reason whatsoever. I began to pray for a miscarriage - if it happened, it wouldn’t be my fault. I even one day went so far as to eat a whole sprig of ginger, which I had heard had abortive effects.
But God protected the child in my womb, and it grew and grew and grew. At our next appointment, we found out he was a boy. Again, I felt nothing.
When I was 11 weeks pregnant, I went home to America for Thanksgiving. I had yet to tell my parents I was pregnant, and I knew it would be news they would need to take sitting down. But maybe I would have a miscarriage before then, and I would just stay in the US, escaping from Stefan and his two older adopted kids forever: that was my fantasy. Even if I did stay pregnant, a large part of me decided I would not return to Croatia. I would give the child up for adoption here in the US, and then restart my life again. Days ticked by. Thanksgiving came and went. I remember my brother-in-law grilling me about Stefan, and finally saying “I don’t think you love him. Why are you still with him?” Tears immediately sprang to my eyes, but I couldn’t tell him the reason was right there between us, tucked inside my womb.
A few days later, Stefan wrote my mother and told her himself. She came into my room, more upset than I have seen her in my entire life. Later, when we told my dad, he really did have to sit down to take the news. I remember the first thing he asked me was “You wouldn’t have an abortion, would you?”
And I had shaken my head. Ginger roots notwithstanding, that was something I could not do. If God chose to cause a miscarriage, I would be grateful, but I knew I could not kill this baby myself.
VIII:
The next few days were fuzzy, in that quiet corner of my parent’s small Virginian college town. I felt dead inside, and yet livid. Stefan had gone behind my back to tell my mom, even though we had agreed I would tell her myself. I was taking too long, and he again had usurped control. Something told me he was a dangerous man. Something told me I would do far better without him.
And yet I was terrified and attached and ridden with guilt. His child was inside me. Could I really deny him the right to his son? Could I legally give our baby to another family without his father’s permission? No.
And if I asked for his permission and he refused it, what would I do? Raise the boy alone or give it to Stefan? Every single option seemed impossible, riddled with unseen mines and a world of heartache. Those early days, I cried myself to sleep most nights, asking God to either kill the baby or kill me.
IX:
Finally, in early December I went back to Croatia. I was not happy, but I felt I had to return. What other option was there, really? Raise the child alone? Start over in my parents’ hometown where I knew no one and had no job, no relevant skills and only a spare room in my parents’ home? I couldn’t fathom that. I could not fathom the aching loneliness of becoming a single parent, nor of relegating my child to knowing only his mother, even while his father desperately loved him and wanted to raise him.
I don’t remember much from that time: Christmas was a small blip on my grey calendar, stretching before me without cheer. Stefan’s hostel usually ran from April to October, when Covid wasn’t ruining everything. In the winter, he had nothing to do, or at least this winter he had nothing to do. He also owned a big vacation house split into seven apartments, but it had been out of commission for three years by then, and he kept insisting the water damage and necessary repairs were too much to handle, plus he had no money to repay three years of electric and gas bills. What a mess.
It was in late December, right after the non-glow of Christmas, that Stefan came to me with more bad news.
“Anna, I lied to you,” he said. He was visibly shaking, and he knelt before me on the floor in front of our bed (yes, by that time I was mostly sleeping in the same bed with him, although it felt terrible).
I lifted my head and looked at him. I was prepared to hear anything. In fact, listening to his pre-confession was like ice finally breaking out of a dam. Maybe this was what I needed to finally get some clarity on things. At that point, I still felt the terrible nagging feeling he was not right for me, that this was not right.
And then it all came out. His divorce, which had been in the courts for years by then, was still in process. We could not get married until it was finalized, and given the glacial speed of the Croatian legal system, it could be years more before we could wed.
And yet, I was not devastated. I remember him telling me “I thought I would lose you.” I remember the sorrow in his eyes. And I forgave him on the spot.
And yet, the reality of what he had done took longer to sink in. That meant that from the moment that we met, more than a year prior, he had been lying to me. I had even pressed him on it more than a month earlier, after hearing a rumor that he was still married. But he had insisted that the divorce was finalized. He had insisted ardently. It also meant that he had lured me back from Niger (and forced me to break my contract), on a false promise that we would wed immediately. It meant that he got me pregnant full well knowing I might not enjoy legal status for years to come.
But he had not premeditated any of that. Stefan is a man who operates chiefly on hope and optimism, and he does not often entertain the dark possibilities of his actions.
Still, it hurt. And it was a warning. A man who could lie to me so convincingly for so long about something so big, so monumental, what else could he do? I felt more than ever that I was in between a rock and a hard place - if I stayed with him, would I be setting me and my child up for unspeakable pain later down the road? Was I trusting my fate to a rickety stool with rotting feet? But if I fled, what would he do? What kind of battle would ensue for the child? Already, he had a fierce attachment to our son, and I knew he would not give him up without a fight.
Gingerly, I let my weight down on that rickety stool. Stefan had lied, yes, but he had also come clean. I decided to stay with him, for the time being, but even so, my trust was gone.
X:
By then I was almost five months pregnant. Many things happened in the next few months, but one thing remained the same: I wanted the baby to die inside me. I wanted to be free of this weight.
I felt that way until the end, up until the very day my water broke alone in Stefan’s big apartment house, where I was still scaling palm trees and scraping walls clean of water-damaged paint.
Soon after my water broke, I found myself at the Yugoslavian-era hospital, again alone (due to COVID), relegated to a bed with a strap around me and my contractions barely registering. Even then, my apathy remained.
It is a terribly dark thing to say now, to admit to, but it is the truth. Some would say they understand me. Others would judge. Jesus made it clear: whoever hates a brother, it is as if he had murdered him. So indeed, my dark thoughts toward my child were tantamount to murder.
XI:
Even during labor I felt nothing particular for the life inside me. When finally the doctors called for an emergency c-section after hours of painfully induced labor (anyone who’s been induced can attest to how those artificial contractions rip through you like a hurricane), I breathed a sigh of relief as the mask went over my face. Finally, it would be over. I did not think immediately of my son, only of the pain and finally being rid of it.
But hours later, when I was being heaved onto a bed in the middle of the night, my eyes fluttered open and the first words out of my mouth were, “My son. Where is my son?” It was instinct, and it set in hard. It wouldn’t be until the next morning at nine that they would finally bring him to me, like a Christmas present delivered by the stork, swaddled and clean and fast asleep.
With my stomach having just been sliced open, I was not strong enough to sit up, but they tucked him in next to me on the bed and I just looked at him. Even now, years later, tears come to my eyes as I think about that moment: my son, there, in front of me. I saw his tiny fingers curled up tight, his peaceful face, unperturbed by everything that had taken place those first tumultuous nine months of existence. He was so small, so absolutely defenseless, and he was mine.
Immediately, I thought of what an abortion would have entailed: I imagined scissors going after the back of Joshua’s neck - him wailing and fighting but having not even a chance in a thousand of fighting them off. How could it be? How could I have even contemplated such a monstrous act against a human so defenseless, so dependent, so trusting? I wouldn't wish that on the child of my worst enemy.
It hit me like a truck, the utter evil of what I had considered, and I held Joshua all the more close. Nothing would happen to him now - nothing. And if ever he were in danger I would without a thought fling myself in front of an oncoming train in order to protect him. Again and again, I thanked God he had not let me go through with my plan to 'get rid' of Joshua. During pregnancy, it had seemed like torture, but finally, I knew just what an evil he had saved us both from.
In the months that followed, I looked at Joshua this way many times: my fierce love for him was made all the more powerful by the destruction I had contemplated for him. No matter what had happened in my life, no matter what anyone else had done to me, he was an innocent, helpless child, and the only role I could ever assume would be to protect him and if necessary, give my life for his. Stefan felt the same.
My heart broke for all the babies who, unlike Joshua, did not survive. My heart breaks thinking of the final, helpless moments of their lives, of their desperate struggle against a torturous and deadly force so much larger than themselves. My heart breaks for all of those lives so cruelly and senselessly ended, even as dozens wait in line to adopt newborns (a hard choice as well, but a worthy one).
If you are a woman with an unwanted pregnancy, choose life. Choose it. I promise you, there is absolutely nothing in your entire life that you will do that will be of a higher good than this: nothing.
Like me, perhaps you want to pretend that whatever is inside you, is not really human. Perhaps you want to pretend that torturing it to death while it is still in the womb will not hurt it, nor you. But just because you cannot hear your baby’s screams, does not mean it is not suffering unspeakable torment. This is a hard truth, but it is important to grasp: if you get an abortion, you are murdering the most innocent of humans, and their blood will be upon your hands.
If you have had an abortion, I mourn for you. I mourn for the emptiness you have when you could have had fullness. I mourn for the blood red stain that is on your conscience, and the terrible stabbing that is in your soul. You might not feel this. You might be numb or you might feel wonderfully free. You might be happy and light, relieved the problem is 'taken care of.'
But remember, this is a lie, and one day it will be exposed. After that, you will feel pain and regret ten thousand times more than those who admitted their fault in the first place.
Still, there is healing and forgiveness for you too. Jesus did not come to die for the “pretty good,” the “alright,” and the “working on it.” He came to die for murderers, thieves, and adulterers. That is you, and that was me. Not one of us is too far gone. And he has a way of turning our worst mistakes into our greatest blessings if we'll trust him with them.
Tonight again, right after I tuck him in, I'll kiss Joshua on the cheek and say "I love you."
He'll say it back.