The Bitch Posse (21 page)

May 1988
Westville, Illinois

I’m chomping on an enormous wad of Juicy Fruit, my teeth smashing in and pulling up over and over. The rhythm and fake fruit smell calm me somehow as rain crashes onto the windshield, and I don’t have to think. Cherry’s truck bumps down the road, and Amy says next to me, “No, you missed it, turn around.” Cherry U’s it, and we turn into the parking lot and pull up to the redbrick building, Westville Women’s Health Center.

Cherry turns off the engine. “Are you sure this is what you want to do?”

I’m not sure at all. Part of me even hoped the weather would cause us to have a big enormous wreck and I’d be injured and it’d all happen on its own, so it wouldn’t be my fault. But of course, since that didn’t happen, there’s no other way out. I just tell myself,
I’m Liz in a
Degrassi
episode. This is TV, not my life.
“Sure as I’ll ever be.”

The three of us are cutting school to do this. We usually cut to do fun things, head into Chicago a la Ferris Bueller, get stoned at the Porter Place. This time?

Let’s just say it won’t be so fun.

When I told Rob, the first words out of his mouth were “How much money do you need?” They were a slap in the face. I mean, he just assumed I was going to do this. Then, when I told him I wanted to have the baby, to marry him, a hard look crept into his eyes. He gave me a big talk about Stanford, my writing, my future. He talked not one bit about himself, but it sure makes things easy for
him,
now, doesn’t it? Nothing to explain to Dawn. No nasty little rumors about the high school girl he got pregnant.

I can’t help resenting him, but I also know he’s right. Who would take care of a baby while I went to classes? So over the last couple weeks I’ve convinced myself it’s better this way, that the baby wouldn’t have a very good life. Adoption, well, then everyone would find out about me and Rob, and it would mean his job, plus he could go to jail for sleeping with a teenager. Besides, I don’t want to have a baby and then give it up. Mom I rarely hear from and I’m sure she wouldn’t give a shit, but Dad would flip if I gave away his grandchild. Anyway, I don’t want to get huge and fat and start at Stanford as the slutty cheap pregnant girl, have a baby by myself around New Year’s. I don’t want to face Dad and Kelly, who’ll be absolutely self-righteous about it and who I’m sure will pull her precious Mallory close and whisper to Dad that all my character flaws came from Mom. No thanks.

Since I had no idea, I told Rob I needed five hundred dollars. Months ago, the Bitch Posse started an Abortion Fund, and whenever one of us had money, we’d throw a few bucks at it, just in case one of us got in this situation.

No one ever thought I’d be the one.

There’s less than a hundred bucks in the Abortion Fund anyway,
and if Rob Schafer’s not going to take responsibility and marry me and move to California with me and help take care of our baby, well then, the least he can do is pay for my sorry abortion.

We’re still just sitting in the truck in the parking lot, and I reach over Amy and flick open the door. “I just want it to be over.”

The craziest part is that after I agreed to this whole thing, we’ve gone on with our relationship like nothing’s changed at all. I mean, we’re still meeting once a week at the Paradise Inn. Drinking it up since it doesn’t matter that I’m pregnant since I’m getting an abortion anyway. I even brought over some weed a couple of times, and we’ve gotten high, him reading aloud the play I’m working on (it’s about three sisters who coincidentally share a lot of personality traits with the three of us), starting a list of competitions to submit it to, even laughing sometimes, and then having our sweet pretty sex, just as drawn out and spinningly amazing as usual.

To me, though, it feels forced. I don’t think he understands that things changed when he got so matter-of-fact about my abortion. Like I’m getting a haircut or something.

Cherry squeezes my hand. “It’s all right, no one will find out. They don’t make you tell your parents if you’re not using insurance. Which we aren’t.”

And I’m grateful for the “we.” It makes me feel not quite as alone, and Amy hops out of the truck and I follow her.

Rob gave me the five hundred dollars in cash, and I’m carrying it, ten fifty-dollar bills, in my purse. He decided not to come here. I asked him to, but he said it was too risky, someone might see him. In-stead he wants me to come by after school so we can “talk.” I wonder where he got the money, how he’ll explain the five-hundred-dollar deficit when he and Dawn pay the bills this month. I wonder if he cares if anyone sees
me
at the clinic, or if he’s just concerned about his own reputation.

I didn’t ask.

Outside the clinic ten or so people are marching up and down shouting stuff. One of them’s carrying a gigantic picture of a fetus. It’s bad enough coming here without dealing with this, and Cherry grabs me by the waist and so does Amy. Cherry leans to my ear and whispers, “I love you, Rennie.
As long as the stars are fixed in the heavens and the fish sparkle in the sea.
” And I’m flooded with warmth; this is survivable.

Shouts zoom through the air and pelt me on the back, and yeah, it’ll be bad. “Thou shalt not kill!”
Oh shit, fuck, please, God, just strike me dead now.
“It’s not a choice, it’s a child!”

Amy mutters, “Keep your head down, you don’t have to talk to them.” At least I’m not alone, I have the Bitch Posse’s strength behind me.

“They aren’t allowed to touch you,” says Cherry loudly as we walk by. “You don’t have to take their flyers.”

One man gets right in my face and says, “I’m praying for you and your baby. Please don’t kill your baby!” and a woman behind him shouts, “I’ll take your baby, give it to me! I can’t have a baby.” Flyers are pressed in front of me, with graphic bloody pictures I can’t even make out because my eyes somehow aren’t processing images. The only word that really makes sense is “baby.” What’s inside me couldn’t be a baby, it’s only been six weeks since I missed my period. But the word “baby” makes me sad, and I wonder for an instant, How will I remember this day? Maybe I can forget it, blank it out in my memory. But I don’t want to think about that just now.
Stay focused, Rennie, think of Stanford, think of how relieved you’ll be when this is all over.

Amy pulls open the glass door, and the protesters’ shouts dim away behind me. It’s a great comfort to be in here, in the clinic. And it’s surprisingly pretty, the waiting room done in shades of rose and lavender, and a big flower arrangement at the center of one of the tables.

I go up to the desk. “Wren Taylor.” I hate my real name so much, but I have to use it. When I made the appointment, I had to give all my
contact information in case of an emergency, but I’m still kind of freaked about it. It’d be easy for them to call Dad and Kelly if they wanted to.

I’m starving because I wasn’t supposed to eat anything last night, and the receptionist looks suspiciously at my gum, but gum’s okay, I think. She hands me a bunch of forms, medical history, consent to surgery, and shows me where to sign. I take them back to a chair with a clipboard, and Amy and Cherry sit on either side of me as I fill them out, wordless support.

“Don’t put in the insurance info,” says Cherry like she knows. “Unless you know for sure what their confidentiality issues are.”

“But then—”

“That’s why you have the cash, Rennie.”

I take the forms back to the desk and slide them at the receptionist. She glances over them and says, “These look good. We’ll just give you a follow-up pregnancy test then?”

Like the results are going to magically change. “Whatever.”

“Are your friends waiting for you? Do they know how long it’ll be?”

On the phone the woman said two to three hours. Amy’s brought homework, and Cherry’s brought her new poetry book, the one she hides between her mattress and box spring, after what Marian did to her old one. “They know.”

“They need to stay here so they can drive you home. You’re not to drive.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“We ask you to pay in advance for the medical procedure. You can file a claim with insurance later, or give us a card now. Do you have a referral authorization for your insurance?”

“No.”

“And how are you paying—money order, Visa, MasterCard, Discover . . . ”

“Cash.” I open my purse with all the fifties inside, and she asks me for two hundred and eighty dollars. I hand over six fifties and put the others and the two tens she hands me back into my purse. Then, Rob Schafer’s face washes over my mind, and I pull all the money out and bring it to my friends, handing them each two fifties and a ten. “Here.”

Amy looks at it. “Aren’t you taking this back to Mr. Schafer?”

Anger cycles through me, pulls up in a spiral through my chest, and comes out in my words. “Fuck that. I’m not bringing him change from my abortion.”

Cherry hands the money back to me. “You keep it then. He owes you that and more.”

I snap it back into her hands. “I don’t want his abortion money, I just don’t. It’s yours. Buy something great with it.”

Someone’s at the door and says, “Wren Taylor?”

I stand up, and the woman leads me down the hall to a locker. “You can put all your stuff here and change into a gown. You need to take off all your jewelry, including any piercings.”

I change and unlatch the red glass necklace Amy made for me, unlace my sisters from my neck. God, I feel naked. Alone at my most important moment.

In the exam room, I’m joined by a nurse, who asks a bunch of medical history questions that I already answered on the form, takes my blood pressure, and draws some blood. Then a hundred-year-old male doctor comes in and does a pelvic exam, which is more humiliating than anything I could ever have imagined. I stare at the ceiling as he probes into me, examining parts so hidden and secret I’m amazed anyone would even care about them. Should I explain how it happened? It all feels so impersonal. “The guy who . . . He said he’d marry me, but his wife—”

The nurse curls a frown and interrupts me. “We don’t want any of those details. Your boyfriend doesn’t matter. This is between you and
the doctor.” She was so cold before, but now a pleasant stream of chat floods from her mouth as if the words can’t pour out quickly enough. “I see girls like you all the time. You’re making the right choice, the responsible choice. Are you scared?”

I nod.

“I bet you didn’t know the whole procedure takes about five minutes. We put you under general anesthesia, and you won’t remember a thing.” She smiles. “Follow me. We’ll go into the surgical suite.”

Thoughts are jumbled up in my head right now, but I do know one thing: I am not going to be pregnant anymore after today. Hopefully all my awful feelings about Rob and myself will be gone along with this pregnancy, be washed away, taken from me. Anticipation wriggles through me, like I’m at the top of a Ferris wheel. A voice creeps into my head—
Are you sure, Rennie? This is your last chance. . . .
—but I banish it. I’m here, my friends have driven me into the outskirts of Chicago and cut school to help me do this, this is the right thing right thing right thing. Having a baby fucks up my life and Rob’s life and just about the entire world around me. Having an abortion just fucks up my own, and only (I hope) for a little while, and then I can forget about it and move on.

In the surgical suite, soft cheerful music is playing. Barry Manilow, I think, something I’d never listen to in front of anyone, but it calms me down in a ridiculous sort of way. The nurse puts my legs up in stirrups, and looking around the room I notice a table with a bunch of tools, including a long slender clear tube that I guess they use to do the abortion, pull stuff out of me with.

That’s when my stomach starts to turn over in itself, and it’s a good thing they’re going to put me under because I’m pretty sure if they didn’t, I’d faint. They attach a drip IV to me
(This is the anesthetic, Wren, you shoiddfeel it in just a minute or two),
and I’m thinking about the Bitch Posse and the night we swore our solemn oath.

We, the Bitch Posse girls,
do solemnly swear
to be undyingly faithful to each other,
and to put no friends or lovers before one another. . . .

The scene shimmers in front of me and I’m asleep.

The next thing I know I’m in the recovery room. A twang shivers out of me almost like an orgasm, and my body feels empty for the first time in weeks. I know that’s relief, the burden of my pregnancy’s been taken away. Then, a feeling of darkness sinks into me, and that’s what fills me now. It’s like a real cloud entering my body, and I feel very, very alone and afraid and too young to be mixed up in all of this.

The nurse is here. “Are you all right? It went fast. Come on, let’s get you dressed.” She leaves a Kotex on the table. “Use these, don’t use a tampon. The bleeding’ll stop in a couple of weeks. No sexual intercourse for two weeks, until your follow-up visit. Otherwise, you risk infection and another pregnancy. A counselor’ll be by in a minute to go over the whole post-op sheet with you and to talk about birth control options.” She touches my arm. “It’s okay, you did great. It’s good you didn’t wait very long. The longer you wait, the more complicated the procedure.”

She lets me dress, which I do very robotically, and then comes back to sit with me for a while. The counselor comes in, and she tells me a bunch of stuff—no aspirin, only Tylenol, and no sex for two weeks (guess that’ll surprise Rob, he probably didn’t know about the bleeding either, I sure didn’t). She hands me a sheet of instructions and tells me I need to stay here until I’ve “stabilized.”

I blank myself out because it’s so boring waiting, and try to remember
A Midsummer Night’s Dream,
scene by scene. Act 1, Scene 1. Hermia and Lysander are in love, but her father wants her to marry
Demetrius. “
The course of true love never did run smooth.
” Hermia’s friend Helena’s nuts over Demetrius, but Demetrius is nuts over Hermia. Hermia and Lysander plan to run away to the woods.

The nurse takes my blood pressure once in a while.
Why can’t I go home?
Act 1, Scene 2. The players—Peter Quince, Snug, Flute, Bottom, and the rest—practice their play. The tragic love story of Pyramus and Thisbe.