A Spark of Light(12)
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.”
If after all that, other women didn’t have the opportunity do what Joy had done, then why had she lived through it at all?
Joy felt a surge of heat. How could Janine not recognize that it was rhetoric spouted by herself and her cronies that led to violence? When they passed judgment on people like Joy, it gave license to others to do it. And this time, the person who had done it had been wielding a gun.
“In spite of what happened today,” Joy said, incredulous, “you still think you’re right?”
Janine looked her in the eye. “I could ask you the same thing.”
Joy stared at this other woman, who believed the polar opposite of what she believed, yet with the same strength of conviction. She wondered if the only way any of us can find what we stand for is by first locating what we stand against.
“Maybe you’d better go,” Joy said tightly.
Janine stood up. She looked around, located her knapsack, and headed silently for the door.
Joy closed her eyes and leaned back on the couch. Maybe there just wasn’t any common ground.
Did all babies deserve to be born?
Did all women deserve to make decisions about their own bodies?
In what Venn diagram did those overlap?
She heard the knob turn, and then Janine’s voice. “Well,” she said, miffed, as if she were the one whose morality had been attacked. “Have a nice life.”
Joy wondered how you get someone you think is blind to see what you see.
It certainly can’t happen when you’re standing on opposite sides of a wall.
“Wait,” Joy said. She dug her hand into the pocket of her sweatpants. “Can I show you something?” She didn’t wait for Janine to respond. Instead she smoothed out the ultrasound picture on the coffee table. Her fingers touched the white edges.
She heard Janine close the door and walk back toward the couch. Janine looked at the grainy image, bearing witness.
“It’s—it was a boy,” Joy murmured.
Janine sank down beside her. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
Joy knew this wasn’t true; that Janine had a dozen responses, all of which were variants of the fact that Joy had made her choice; that she didn’t deserve to grieve. She wanted to tell Janine that yes, she had gotten what she wanted, but she also felt the pain of loss, and they were not mutually exclusive.