Vox(48)

“Anyway,” Sharon says, opening up a cooler and taking out a handful of fat carrots. She feeds them to the horses, showing Sonia how to hold one hand out, palm up, so the beasts can take the carrot without taking the hand along with it. “Anyway, how about you go off to work and Sonia and I will do a little farming? Any idea when this magic potion of yours might be ready? I’d like to talk to my mother. Well, Del’s mother, but she’s the only one I’ve got now.”

“Yeah. So would I.” I explain about Mamma and her aneurysm.

“Looks like you and me are in the same barrel of pickles, Jean,” Sharon says, and takes Sonia by the hand. “I don’t envy your position, though. You get the cure done, that little bracelet goes back on. You don’t, and your mama keeps babbling. One or the other, one choice to a customer, as my daddy used to say.”

“I could set something up for early next week. Maybe Tuesday?”

“That’d be real nice.”

We exchange numbers, and Sharon tells me Del will call over the weekend, if that’s okay.

“Meanwhile,” she says, “you don’t say anything about our little talk here, all right? Del’s got a lot to lose, with him being the errand boy for the resistance. I don’t want him in trouble. Or anyone else.”

“There’s a resistance?” The word sounds sweet as I say it.

“Honey, there’s always a resistance. Didn’t you go to college?”

As we walk back to the house, the woman beside me seems more and more like Jackie. I imagine her carrying posters and organizing sit-ins while I stayed home with my nose in a book, or while Patrick and I went out for cheeseburgers and rolled our eyes at the latest campus protest. Sharon, even with her mud-caked boots and torn overalls, makes me feel dirty.

“I’ll pick her up at six, if that’s not too late,” I say before kissing Sonia goodbye.

“That’s fine. We’ll be here.”

On the way to my doctor’s appointment, I think of Del, my mailman, running errands for some underground group of anti-Pure people, and I laugh.

They would use a mailman.





THIRTY-NINE




It’s official. I’m pregnant.

The gynecologist who stepped into Dr. Claudia’s place at the clinic tells me I’m about ten weeks along, give or take a few days. You never really know exactly when conception happens, he says before giving me a sealed envelope addressed to Patrick. It contains the date of my next appointment, some general literature, a schedule, and other information I might find useful. This is what he tells me.

My words tumble out like a geyser. “What if there are complications? Unexpected pain? What if I need to describe symptoms?” All I can think about is what will happen when the counter goes back on.

What I don’t say is: What if I don’t want this baby? I already know the answer.

Dr. Mendoza waits for me to finish, eyes calm, mouth drooping slightly at the edges. I can’t tell whether this outburst of mine annoys him or invokes sympathy. “Mrs. McClellan,” he begins.

Not “Dr.,” not “Professor.” “Mrs.”

“Mrs. McClellan, you’re a healthy woman and we’ve picked up a strong, regular heartbeat. We’ve marked you as advanced maternal age, yes, which would worry me if this was a first pregnancy. But it isn’t. You have nothing to worry about. I’m confident you’ll carry to term and, let’s see”—he pauses, spins some dials on that little wheel doctors use, even though they have computers to do the work—“deliver a fine baby around December twentieth of this year. A nice Christmas present.”

I don’t want a fine baby around December 20 of this year. I don’t want a baby at all. Especially if it’s a girl.

“Dr. McClellan will have all the information.” He taps the sealed envelope. “He’ll be on the lookout for signs of trouble, loss of appetite, changes in skin tone or weight, and so forth. And we’ll be monitoring your progress regularly. If you like, I can set up a chorionic villus sampling for you early next week. You’ll find out the sex then.” The doctor consults a schedule on his iPad. “How is Monday afternoon?”

I nod. Monday, Wednesday, next month, December 20. I might as well find out sooner.

Now he taps my knee. A fatherly tap. Or the kind of touch you’d use on a well-behaved dog. I wish the tap would send my foot shooting out and upward, smack into his groin. I could always say it was an involuntary reflex, a spasm. “Okay. All set. Congratulations, Mrs. McClellan.”

He leaves, and I rush into my underwear, jeans, blouse. The smell of latex and hand sanitizer in this room has become unbearable. My sex is slippery with K-Y Jelly, or whatever they use for the ultrasound, because I didn’t take the time to wipe it away. But I can’t breathe here. I can’t breathe at all.

I drive the long way back home, stopping at a 7-Eleven to pick up a pack of Camels. I could smoke it out of me, I think, poison the little palace, practice Teratology 101 in the privacy of my own home. Abortion the old-fashioned way.

An abortion is not an option.

It isn’t just Reverend Carl and his pack of Pure fanatics. They have to put limits on choice for other reasons, for pragmatic reasons. The way things are, the way women are, no one would want a girl. No sane parent would want to choose a wrist-counter color for a three-month-old. I wouldn’t.