THE OUTPOURING OF GOODWILL IN the aftermath of Mama’s death had given way to the whispers Louie heard when he passed folks in church, or walked down the street holding fast to his grandmother. Something about Mama and Mr. Bouffet, the mayor, who Louie knew only for his marshaling of the Mardi Gras parade with his pretty blond wife and matching blond daughters at his side. And something else about abortion: a word he had never heard before.
His grandmama would squeeze his hand to keep him from looking at the people who murmured behind their hands and stared.
She squeezed his hand a lot, those days.
She was squeezing now.
Dr. Louie Ward’s eyes flew open and he immediately struggled against his surroundings—the soft beep of a heart monitor, the snake of tubing in his IV. He didn’t feel pain in his leg, as he expected, but then if he was in a hospital he probably had some kind of nerve blocker. The only thing that hurt like hell was his hand, which was being clutched by a skinny girl with pink hair and a ring of hoops climbing the cartilage of her left ear. “Rachel?” he rasped, and her head flew up.
The administrative assistant at the clinic had pinched features that always reminded Louie of a badger. “I’m sorry, Dr. Ward,” she sobbed. “I’m so sorry.”
He glanced down at his leg, thinking for one panicked moment that perhaps it had been amputated, and that was the source of Rachel’s hysterics—but no, it was there, if swathed in batting like a cloud of cotton candy. Thank God for that nurse at the clinic. “Rachel,” he said, raising his voice over the sound of her weeping. “Rachel, I already feel like I was run over by a truck. Don’t give me a headache, too.”
But the girl showed no signs of quieting. He didn’t know her very well—he flew to many clinics around the country, and the staff often blurred with each other. He was pretty sure Rachel was a grad student at Jackson State. She worked part-time as what the antis called a “deathscort”—guiding women from the parking lot inside the clinic. She also helped Vonita, the clinic owner, with administrative work. There was so much to do at the Center that they all pitched in, wherever they had to.
“I’m sorry,” Rachel repeated, wiping her nose on her sleeve.
Louie was used to crying women. “You got nothing to be sorry about,” he said. “Unless your alter ego is a middle-aged white anti with a gun.”
“I ran, Dr. Ward.” Rachel mustered the courage to glance at him, but her gaze slid away again. “I’m a coward.”
He had not even known that she was in the building at the time the shooting began. Of course, she would have been up front, and he was in the rear in a procedure room. And naturally she wanted to believe she would have been a hero, when push came to shove. But you never knew what path you’d take until you got to that crossroads. Hadn’t Louie heard this a thousand times before, from patients who had come to the Center, who seemed shell-shocked to find themselves there, as if they’d awakened in someone else’s life?
“You’re alive to tell the story,” he said. “That’s what matters.” Louie was aware, even as he spoke, of the irony. He turned his own words over in his mind. Coal, with time and heat and pressure, will always become a diamond. But if you were freezing to death, which would you consider the gem?
—
I DIDN’T CLEAN THE HOUSE, Joy thought, as she unlocked the door of her apartment. Breakfast cereal had dried to a crust in a bowl on the kitchen table; there were empty glasses on the coffee table in front of the television; a bra dangled from the arm of the couch. “The place is a mess,” she apologized to Janine.
Then again, Joy had not expected to bring home an anti-abortion activist on the day she went to terminate her own pregnancy.
When the door opened, there was a scatter of mail on the floor. Joy started to bend down gingerly but Janine moved faster. “Let me,” she said.
Let me drive you home.
Let me get you settled.
Janine had taken over like a mother hen, which was odd given that they were probably close to the same age. She watched Janine gather the bill and flyers. “Perry,” Janine said, and she offered a small smile. “I didn’t know your last name.”
Joy looked at her. “Same.”
“DeGuerre,” Janine answered. She held out her hand. “Nice to meet you. Officially.”
Joy smiled awkwardly, uncomfortable with the forced intimacy. All Joy really wanted to do was strip down, get into her pajamas and fuzzy socks, have a glass of wine, and cry.
Janine set the mail on the kitchen table and turned. “What can I get you? Are you hungry? Thirsty? How about some tea? She paused. “Do you have tea?”
Joy couldn’t help it, she laughed. “Yeah. Cabinet over the stove.”
While the water boiled, Joy went to the bathroom. She had to change her sanitary napkin, but after a moment of panic realized she didn’t have any. She had been told to bring one to the Center since they didn’t provide them, and it had been the last in the box. She’d been planning to swing by the drugstore on the way home.
Frustrated, she tore apart the closet, the medicine cabinet, scattering pills and ointments and lotions.
The last thing she pulled out of the recesses of the drawer beneath the sink was a dusty, crusted bottle of calamine lotion. Calamine lotion. For fuck’s sake. She had calamine lotion, but not a pad?
Joy grabbed the bottle and hurled it at the bathroom mirror, shattering it.
There was a soft knock on the door. Janine stood there, holding her knapsack. She had left it locked in the trunk of her car that morning, so unlike the rest of the possessions of the hostages, it hadn’t been part of a crime scene. “I thought you might need this,” she said, and she held out a small, square wrapped Kotex pad.
Joy took it, closed the door, and went to the bathroom. She was angry that her savior—again—had been Janine. As she washed her hands, she looked into the fractured mirror. Her freckles stood out in relief from her pale skin; her hair looked like a small animal had taken up residence in it. There was blood on her neck. She rubbed it off with a washcloth. She kept rubbing until she hurt on the outside as much as she did on the inside.
When Joy came out of the bathroom, Janine had picked up the living room so that the newspapers were stacked neatly and the dirty dishes removed to the sink. She told Joy to sit down and carried over two steaming mugs of tea. Each bag was tagged with an inspirational quote. “May this day bring you peace, tranquillity, and harmony,” Janine read. She blew on the surface of the tea. “Well. Screw that.”
Joy looked at her own tag. “Your choices will change the world.” She stared at the words until they swam. She felt a rolling wave of relief.
The room was painfully silent. Janine felt it too. She reached for the television remote. “What do you think is going on?”
The picture blinked to life on the last channel Joy had been watching, which now showed the exterior of the clinic. It was dark, but police lights were still flashing. A reporter said something about a SWAT team, and there was a grainy photo of a marksman on a distant roof. Joy felt as if she were being suffocated. “Turn it off,” she said roughly.
The screen went blank. Janine set the remote down between them. “I just moved here. I don’t really know anyone in Mississippi,” she suddenly admitted. “Except, you know … the people I was with.”
“What do we do now?” Joy blurted out.
“What do you mean?”
“Tomorrow. I mean, how do we go back to normal?” Joy shook her head. “Nothing’s normal.”
“I guess we fake it,” Janine said. “Till we forget we’re faking.” She shrugged. “I’ll probably just do what I did before. Hold signs. Pray.”
Joy’s jaw dropped. “You’ll keep protesting?”
Janine’s glance slid away. “Who knows if the clinic will even open again.”