I pictured the bird teetering at the edge of the nest, trying to fly, and then falling and hitting the concrete below. Once I had seen an egg that had fallen from a nest in a huge pine tree near our apartment complex. A baby bird, partially formed, had lain in the cracked shell.
I threw my pencil down and stood up from my desk, breathing hard, feeling like I was going to crack too and severed pieces of Blue were going to rain down upon the room in a gruesome display. I grabbed my bag and ran for the door, needing to get out. I heard Wilson calling after me, telling me to wait. But I ran for the exits and didn't look back. I couldn't fly away. That was the kicker. The little bird in the story was no longer me. My story was now about someone else entirely.
I had been to Planned Parenthood before. I had gotten birth control there, though the latest round had obviously failed me. I googled all the possible reasons birth control could fail. Maybe it was the antibiotics I had been on after Christmas, or the fact that I had inexplicably had an extra pill and no extra days, meaning I'd missed one somewhere. Whatever the reason, the test was still positive, and I still hadn't had a period.
I'd called days before and made an appointment for after school – though running out of class had given me ample time to get there with time left over. The lady at the reception desk was matter-of-fact if not friendly. I filled out a medical form, answered a few questions, and then sat on a metal chair with a black cushion and turned the pages in a magazine filled with “the world's most beautiful women.” I wondered if any of them had ever gone to a Planned Parenthood. Their faces stared up at me from the glossy pages, resplendant in their colorful plummage. I felt small, cold, and ugly, like a bird with wet feathers. Enough with the birds! I pushed the thought away and turned the page.
I wondered if my mother had come to a place like this when she was pregnant with me. The thought brought me up short. I was born in the early nineties. Very little had changed in the last twenty years, right? It would have been almost as easy for her to get an abortion as it would be for me. So why hadn't she? From the very little I knew about her, my birth was not convenient for her. I was definitely not wanted. Maybe she just didn't know about me until it was too late. Or maybe she had hoped to use me to get her boyfriend to take her back, to love her, to take care of her. Who knew? I sure as hell didn't.
“Blue?” My name was called, a big question on the end, as was always the case when anyone read my name. People were always sure they were being messed with. I grabbed my purse and walked to the door where the nurse stood, waiting for me to join her. Without even waiting for the door to swing shut behind us, she informed me that they would need a urine sample and handed me a cup.
“When you're done, write your name on the label, attach it to your sample, and give it to me directly. We will test for pregnancy and STDs. You will have your pregnancy result today, but the STD results will take longer.” She walked me to the restroom and waited until I walked inside and closed the door. I looked down at the label I was supposed to attach to the cup. There was a place for my name and a section for the time, temp, and date of the sample, which I assumed would be completed after I turned it over for inspection. Wilson's lecture on labels filled my head.
“ . . . And if you don't like the direction you're headed, what label do you need to shed? Which one of those words that you've written to describe yourself should be abandoned?”
I was going to place my name on a cup of urine. They were going to tell me I was pregnant. Then they were going to counsel me on aborting the pregnancy because that was why I was here. Soon, I would be able to metaphorically peel off the “pregnant” label, scribble it out, throw it away and be done. It would no longer be true. And I would be able to change the direction I was heading. Label abandoned. Just like my mother had abandoned me.
I rolled my eyes at the comparison my overly emotional brain had immediately jumped to make. It wasn't the same thing at all. Abandoning a child, abandoning a pregnancy. I told myself the two weren't even comparable. I hurried and got the sample, scribbled my name on the label, and slapped it on the warm cup that made me very aware that I probably needed to drink more water, and very embarassed that the nurse would be thinking the same thing.
“Congratulations.”
The test hadn't taken very long. I wondered if they used the same strip test I had used ten times at home.
“Congratulations?”
“Yes. You're pregnant. Congratulations,” the nurse said, deadpan.
I didn't know what to say. Congratulations seemed completely the wrong word, considering I had been counseled about abortion services over the phone when I had made my appointment. But I didn't sense mockery. This was obviously just the response that was standard, or safe . . . I supposed.