???
My follow-up appointment at Planned Parenthood is on Wednesday. My parents have been back in town since Monday night, and for some reason my mother has decided that we need to spend time together as a family, which she does every now and then, and it’s usually okay except this is a bad week for her to get all involved. I tell her that I have to go to the library to work on my English project, and I won’t be home in time for dinner.
“Well, do you have to go tonight?” she asks. “The library tonight, you were at the shelter yesterday and you’re going back tomorrow. It feels like we never see you anymore. Isn’t your debt to society paid yet?”
She barely ever mentions the fact that my work at the shelter is the penance I accepted rather than being suspended after what happened last year. And I don’t bother to tell her that, actually, I could have stopped going to the shelter last month. My time has been served. My record has been expunged. I go to the shelter because I like it there, because even with the smell of urine and depressing Play Yard and frightened animals, it’s better than being at home. And more than that—I’m needed there, at the shelter. Even if the dogs are damned, I can do something there to make things just a little bit better for them. No one needs me at home.
Instead I say, “Sorry, Mom. We can do family dinner on Friday, okay?”
At the clinic, the nurse practitioner does another ultrasound. I lie back, for a third time, on the same paper-covered table. This time, my uterus looks like an empty cave.
“Great,” she says. “You’re no longer pregnant.”
Tears fill my eyes and spill down the sides of my face, into my ears.
The nurse practitioner gives me some tissues to wipe off the jelly and some more for my face. I sit up.
“How do you feel?” she asks.
How do I feel? I reach inward, searching with blind hands for the word that matches my emotion.
“Relieved,” I say.
“Good.” Her smile is gentle, and kind, and I wonder why I didn’t think she was pretty the first time I saw her. Then she says, “We need to talk about birth control moving forward, okay?”
“My boyfriend broke up with me,” I say. It’s the first time I’ve said it out loud. “I don’t need any birth control.”
“Ah,” she says, and she pulls up her chair to sit close to me. “Was it because of the pregnancy?”
“I don’t know why he broke up with me. Maybe because of this other girl. Maybe it’s because I’m a horrible person. I don’t know.” I picture the Bridge to Nowhere and the people diving off of it. I hear Seth’s voice asking me if I would jump. And I wonder for the first time if maybe there was no right answer to that question—if no matter what I said that day, he would have been done with me.
She smiles sympathetically. “Breakups can be hard,” she says. “And you’re not a terrible person.” We sit together for a minute, me wiping my tears. Eventually I blow my nose. Then she says, “You still need birth control.”
I don’t answer.
She continues, “I know right now it feels like you’re never going to want to have sex again. Between breaking up with your boyfriend and the abortion, sex is probably among the very last things you’d want right now. But that will change. And you need protection.”
“I’ll buy some condoms if that happens,” I say.
“Condoms are great,” she says. “In an ideal world you’d use a condom every time, in addition to hormonal birth control. Condoms are the best way to prevent disease. But condoms break, and sometimes people don’t make the best decisions in the heat of the moment, and a condom is something the man puts on.”
I have a headache. I don’t want to talk about this. But she’s right.
“Okay,” I say. “Can I get the shot?”
“There are a couple of other options, too,” she says. “There’s a patch you wear, like a sticker, that you change once a week. And there’s an implant, if you’d like to learn more about that, which is effective for three years. I have one myself.” She shrugs her left arm out of her white coat, pushes up the sleeve of her black shirt, and shows me the inside of her upper arm. “Here,” she says, and lets me feel the slim strand of the hormonal implant just under her skin. Her skin is soft and pale. I can see the bluish outlines of several veins there, too. She has a small, flat mole just above the inside of her elbow. Her skin is warm.
We sit there together, her arm turned out and bared to me, my hand on her skin.
“This is my third time with one of these,” she says after a moment, rolling down her sleeve and shrugging back into her coat. “I think they’re great.”
She hands me a pamphlet all about the implant. “It’s totally up to you,” she says. “I’m here to give you information and access, but this is your decision. You can take any of these options, or you can decide to do nothing at all.”
I don’t have any desire to have sex with anyone right now, not even Seth. I can’t imagine a time when I’ll want to allow any guy to put his penis inside me. I’m still sitting on one of the awkward, uncomfortable maxi pads, I’m still bleeding from my abortion. But that abortion was the kindest, best thing I have done for myself in as long as I can remember. It was probably the best decision I have ever made—maybe the best decision I will ever make.
So I get the implant.
???
Apollonia is having a birthday party. She’s turning seventeen on December 13, and she’s going to have a dinner party at her house, catered. Her parents told her she could invite a dozen people, no more.
Louise has called to tell me this. Her voice is apologetic, but there’s this vibration of excitement, too, because she has received one of the twelve invitations. She’s been chosen.
“You don’t mind if I go, do you, Neen? I mean, it’s not like she stole Seth from you. You guys were already broken up when they got together. And anyway, she had him first.”
Is she asking my permission?
“It sounds like fun,” I say. “Do you know what you’re going to wear?”
“The invitation said it was black tie, so something fancy.” Louise is gushing now with excitement, with having made the cut, with having been selected. “I was thinking of going to Lavish to pick something out. I don’t suppose you’d . . .
“Yeah, I don’t think so, Louise.”
“No, yeah, of course. I totally understand. I shouldn’t have asked.”
There’s a long uncomfortable pause. We both want to hang up. Finally I put her out of her misery. “Listen, I’ve got to go help my mom with something. Have fun at the party.” I press End.
Only twelve invitations.
???