A Spark of Light(100)

She nodded, satisfied. Not for the first time, Louie was amazed that a woman who believed nonsense like this would still be brave enough to schedule an appointment.

He looked into the eyes of each of the women. Warriors, every one of them. Every day, he was reminded of their grit, their courage in the face of obstacles, the quiet grace with which they shouldered their troubles. They were stronger than any men he’d ever known. For sure, they were stronger than the male politicians who were so terrified of them that they designed laws specifically to keep women down. Louie shook his head. As if that could ever be done. If he had learned anything during his years as an abortion doctor, it was this: there was nothing on God’s green earth that would stop a woman who didn’t want to be pregnant.

—


THERE WAS A STUFFED LOBSTER on George’s daughter’s bed. It was red and wore a little white hat like a Victorian baby, and he had won it for Lil at a church fair. He sat in her room, the way he used to every night when he tucked her in, before she told him she could read her own books, thank you very much. She had been seven at the time. He remembered laughing about it with Pastor Mike. He didn’t find it funny now. In retrospect, it seemed like the first step on a path that would ultimately take her so far away from him he couldn’t even see her in the distance.

She had wanted that lobster so bad that he’d paid more than thirty dollars to a huckster to get three baseballs he could pitch into rusty milk cans. The first time he won, he was handed a little stuffed snake the size of a pencil. Damn bait and switch. But Lil had been next to him, clapping every time he got one in, and so he’d traded up until he got to the stuffed animal of her choice. The fact that she still had it after all these years was a testament, he supposed, to what it meant to her.

Or maybe she hadn’t wanted to let go of her childhood any more than he did.

When she was little, every Saturday morning in the summertime they’d drive out in his truck to get crawfish. Lil would curl up next to him on the bench seat, her legs dangling and kicking because her feet were nowhere close to hitting the floor—happy feet, he’d call them. There was a creek that was shallow enough even for a five-year-old, and he and Lil would grab a bucket from the backseat, take off their shoes and socks, and wade in. He taught her how to find the rocks that would make good hiding spots. If you lifted the stones too fast, you would startle the crawfish and stir up the mud so they scurried away. If you lifted the stones slow, you would be able to surprise the crawfish. You could pick it up with your hands then, minding the pincers. If they had a good day hunting, Lil would help him boil them in a broth made of onions, lemon, and garlic. They’d eat them with potatoes and corn on the cob, until they fell asleep in the lazy slant of the afternoon, bellies full and fingers still slick with butter.

Once, Lil had lifted one of the crawfish to find rows of little red eggs stuck underneath her tail. Daddy, she had asked, what’s wrong with her?

She’s gonna have babies, George had explained. So we have to put her back, and let her do just that. You don’t mess with a mama, Lil. She belongs with her babies.

Lil had been quiet for a moment. Daddy, she’d asked. Who messed with my mama?

He had scooped his girl up and out of the water. Let’s get home before the crawdads get out of that pail, he’d said. Because he couldn’t very well tell her, I did.

Now, he lifted the pistol that was cradled in his lap and stood. As he did, the paper he had found on her bedside table fluttered to the floor. He stepped on it as he left the room, his heel landing square across the heading at the top. Medication Abortion authorization and Informed Consent, it read. The Center for Women’s Health, Jackson.





Eight a.m.





WITH A FLOURISH, WREN SET THE PLATE DOWN in front of her father: a fried egg, and a drippy candle stuck into a smile of melon. “Happy birthday to you,” she finished singing. “By the way, that would have been way better if I had a sibling. Harmony sucks when you’re an only.”

“You’re overestimating your singing ability,” her dad grunted.

She laughed. “Someone’s feeling grumpy.”

“Someone’s feeling old as hell.”

She sat down across from him. “Forty is the new twenty,” she told him.

“Says who?”

“Me,” she sighed. “I told you you never listen.”

He smirked and took a bite of his egg. She didn’t have to look at his face to know that it was perfectly cooked. Her dad had been the one to teach her to fry one correctly. The way to ruin an egg was to not be patient, and to heat the pan too fast, which would make it stick to the pan. You had to be slow, methodical, deliberate. Wren had lost track of how many times her father had come into the kitchen when she was making breakfast and would automatically turn the flame down. But, as much as it pained her to admit it, he knew his shit. The eggs she cooked were works of art.

She folded her arms and rested her chin on her them. “So I’ve been saving this one for today,” she said, and immediately he perked up. For as long as she could remember, they traded facts, mostly about astronomy—which her father had introduced her to so long ago she couldn’t remember not being able to pick out constellations like Andromeda and Cassiopeia and Perseus and Pegasus. “Astronomers have found a massive star that exploded in 2014 … and again in 1954.”