Take My Hand(40)

“Where are you taking me?” I asked my daddy as we got in his car.

“St. Jude.”

Mrs. Seager had taken the girls to Professional. At St. Jude, the care might have been better. Perhaps the nuns would have stopped them from performing the procedure. She’s just a baby, they might have argued. We were eight. Eight nurses and we hadn’t stopped it. A whining noise in my ear. The sound of India squealing as she rode the metal horse at Kmart. A needle scratching a record. My head was throbbing now.

Daddy took me right upstairs to a doctor he knew. Mama was already there, filling out a form, still dressed in her luncheon dress from earlier. She touched my cheek with cool, thin fingers. I sat on a steel table, and a nurse shined a light in my eyes. She told me to lay back while she pressed against my ribs. Daddy sat on the doctor’s stool. I needed to tell him about the girls. I needed him to go over to Professional and see about them. I had taken them off the shots. Mrs. Williams had signed the paper. These thoughts crowded my head. I moved my lips, but nothing came out.

I tried to gather myself. My voice was hoarse, but I found it. “I’m alright, Daddy. I’ve got to—”

“Sometimes you can have internal bleeding and not know it. It’s best to get you checked out.”

Daddy had always been the calmest person in the room when it came to accidents. When I was little, he would clean my wounds with antiseptic and cover them with bandages. Bike falls. Play yard scuffles. Once, Ty got shot in the temple with a BB gun by our neighbor’s kid, and Daddy calmly sterilized his tweezers and pulled the bullet out. Then he told the boy’s daddy that he had better take his son out and practice on some cans with that gun before the kid hurt somebody for real.

But on the day of that car accident, I witnessed a panic in Daddy’s eyes I had not seen before. Daddy’s doctor friend entered the room and asked me a bunch of questions. It was hard being the patient when you were the one used to doing the examining, but I let them because I wanted that look on Daddy’s face to disappear. My body ached. I asked the doctor for some Tylenol, but he made me sit down in an armchair and rest first. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, Mama was standing there.

“They found the driver,” she said. “He reported to the station. The police officer just called your daddy. Apparently, the man admitted running the red light.”

So it wasn’t my fault. At least that was one thing I hadn’t caused. Did Mace have his truck yet? Could he get to the hospital? I needed to get back to the girls.

“Good thing you were in your car and not mine.” Mama made a halfhearted attempt at a joke.

I did not look at her as I swung my legs over the side of the bed. “Has the doctor cleared me?”

“You can’t leave yet.”

“I need to go.”

“I’ll drive you home.”

“I can’t go home.”

She helped me to my feet.

“Why can’t you go home?” Mama peppered me with questions. “Were you speeding? Did you see the other car coming? Where were you going, Civil?”

“Where’s my purse?”

“You don’t need a purse because you’re coming home with me.”

The letter was in my purse. I’d never had a chance to share it with India, her acceptance to a school where she could finally receive the attention she deserved.

We found Alicia and Ty in the waiting room. I paused at the nurse’s desk and signed some papers before following the three of them outside. The sun had set and it was dark. Mama held on to my arm tightly, as if she didn’t plan to let go until she got an explanation. I wanted to pull away, but I had not felt my mama’s strength in so long that I yearned to lean into it. The world really had turned upside down.

“I need Alicia and Ty to take me to Professional Hospital.”

“Professional Hospital? Why? You had the best doctors all day here at—”

“The girls are there. They . . .” It hit me in the gut all over again. I could not say it. Here I was, lucky to be alive, while those girls were lying up in hospital beds with their motherhood destroyed. The sound of India’s moaning rose in my ears, and I closed my eyes.

“They performed a tubal ligation on the Williams girls,” I said finally.

“Who did?” I heard Mama’s keys jingle.

“Mrs. Seager tied their tubes?” Alicia’s voice was so loud, it sounded like she was screaming.

Ty looked as if he were losing a battle with his anger. He wore the same tight look as the day Miss Pope told us about the untreated men with syphilis at Tuskegee.

“She can do that?” Mama sounded incredulous.

“The clinic is doing this to patients. It’s . . . allowed,” I whispered. The Tylenol wasn’t strong enough. “Could you just please,” I said quietly, “take me back over to Professional? And Ty, can y’all go pick up Mrs. Williams and bring her to the hospital? Please?”

“They’re just children.”

“I know, Mama.”

She placed a hand on my shoulder and said, “Jesus, we seek your mercy.”

I wanted to tell her it was too late for that.



* * *



? ? ?

MAMA WAITED DOWNSTAIRS in the main lobby. She believed the family did not need gawkers, but she wanted to be there for me when I came back down. The elevator doors opened, and I stepped off, my shoes squeaking. Alicia had brought me a change of clothes to the hospital. We wore roughly the same size in clothes but her shoes were too small. So I was still wearing my stained white nurse’s sneakers, a bloody reminder of my day, and I needed a bath.