I tell the guy in the café that I’ll be leaving tomorrow as planned. He nods and says he’ll arrange transportation. And, yes, I would have time to visit the ruins in the morning before an early afternoon departure, easily catching a ride up the road if I choose to not walk the distance. Right now, I am not feeling much like walking anywhere, which I mention, and he invites me out to the beach later where they will be roasting lobster caught during my perilous snorkeling adventure. I am hungry, and the lobster is incredibly delicious. Still licking my lips I’m handed a joint, “some really good shit,” the guy says, “that might make you feel better.”
After a couple of puffs and enjoying a respite from my cramps, I watch the moon rise over the ocean while thoughts resume from earlier in the day when sitting in the boat. I have never been afraid of deep waters, and I wonder how this might be a metaphor in my life, especially in light of how treacherous my last two days have been. I am not respectful enough of what can be potentially dangerous or destructive and need to learn how to proceed more slowly so as to carefully consider situations, options, and consequences. I have not practiced this much in my life, rather jumped off cliffs with a ya-hoo and later rubbed anxious, tense muscles. So many reckless choices in the past could have gotten me killed, but at best they have simply kept me from moving forward. How many more times do I need to come to the threshold of death before I make changes and live less destructively? I do want to survive and make it home to Austin—and keep dating Bill—much more than I want a job at this strange place.
I mosey back to my palapa and hole up for the night, gripping my stomach and getting up regularly to change one soaked Kotex after another. Morning slips in and I’m determined to see the ruins, catching a ride and arriving just as the gates are opening. Perfect. I quietly stroll around the crumbling structures with other early visitors. A Mexican vendor approaches me, carrying shell necklaces in hand and rattling on in broken English how I must have one. I’m not interested and wave him on. As I walk away the man walks up behind me, takes my hand, and places a necklace in my palm. I look at the delicate shell and wonder if it came from this area, then notice the vendor has walked away. Slipping the necklace over my head, I ponder this gift of grace out of the blue.
The Castillo stands out as the tallest structure among the Tulum ruins. This is what I saw from my sailboat the day before as the Castillo sits like a lighthouse atop the bluff. The steps up are very steep and a difficult trek, but worth it for the miles of breathless views in both directions. As I walk the paved area around the top of this old structure, I pass a Mexican mother and her two children, listening to her Spanish, as she appears to be explaining things while pointing toward the sea.
Moments later, while standing and looking out at the same sea view, I hear piercing screams. I run around to the other side. The mother is halfway down the steps, clutching one child while the other lies motionless at the bottom of the steep stairs in a pool of blood.
I descend the tall narrow steps carefully yet quickly to where the mother is standing, and I gently take a tiny boy’s arm. The wailing mother creeps down the dangerous steps, crying out to her daughter below. People are gathering and kneeling beside the immobile child. Once the mother has reached her daughter, I carefully descend, tightly holding the arm of the little boy left in my care, then passing him into the arms of some Mexican women waiting below. The mother wails as Spanish travels from one employee to bystander to the next willing helper. I stand helplessly and watch, relieved to see the doting women have pulled the little boy away from all the commotion.
The morning has been cracked open.
As I walk back to the retreat site in a daze, I hear a siren in the distance, and I mutter a stream of prayers for the children and their mother. My ride to the airport is waiting—a dilapidated old truck apparently hauling junk to a dump. The driver assures me he has been instructed to take me to Cancun. Getting in this truck with a stranger feels like the deep waters I promised myself I would start thinking about before jumping in, but I’m determined to not miss my flight. No one is in the office, but my bag has been removed from my palapa and is waiting there. I grab it and pile it in the truck bed between several pieces of scrap metal. At the Cancun airport, the driver barely waits for me to snatch my bag out of the back before abruptly pulling away.
My stomach is cramping brutally, and I feel unusually sweaty and warm. My head pounds, and my heart still feels like bursting from the devastating scene I witnessed this morning. The airport is uncomfortably hot and nauseatingly busy, but I manage to get checked in and steer toward the direction of my gate. I feel like I am about to pass out and sit down, then realize I have once again bled completely through my Kotex. I need more but can’t stand up. I have already forgotten my gate number. I am unable to think clearly.
At that moment, a young American couple walks by and looks my way.
“Excuse me,” I begin without thinking. “Could you please help me?”
“What is it?” the young woman answers, immediately kneeling down in front of me. I don’t know why this gesture strikes me as so tender, or why I instantaneously break into a gush of tears. I am suddenly filled with an aching awareness of all the blood spilled in my own life—abortions, heavy periods, multiple heartaches, sacrifices in attempts to survive a life that I do not fully understand, that I have somehow blocked out. But from what, I wonder? It is as though there are three of us: my body, my soul, and my spirit. My spirit manages to carry my soul and body along—nudging my soul to keep my body cut off and numb—until from deep within, my womb wails. Then I become engulfed in my soul’s own personal grief.
The young woman reaches for my hand and begins comforting me as I confusedly blather on about watching a child fall at the ruins that very morning—probably to her death—how I felt like I was that child somehow, and how I have bled all over myself and don’t have another Kotex and can’t even imagine getting to a bathroom right now to clean up and feel like I’m about to black out and just want to get home but can’t even remember where my gate is.
“Don’t worry, we’ll help you,” the woman replies. Without any explanation she begins an earnest prayer, her companion placing his hand on her shoulder as she asks God to help them help this stranger in need.
I’m stunned into silence. The prayer is short and afterwards she opens her eyes, shifts gears, and tells her companion, whom I later learn is her husband, to go check on the gate and time of my departure. She rummages through her own backpack and comes up with a package of Kotex, smiling as she pulls them out. She takes out a big shirt and instructs me to wrap it around my waist to hide my bloody behind, wiping up the chair with a Kleenex as I stand. She then guides us toward a restroom where I clean up as best I can.
“Keep the shirt,” she informs me. I am grateful to not be left with that embarrassing situation. When we emerge from the restroom, her husband is waiting with a cold soft drink for me. He directs us to my gate. Their departure is after mine, so they offer to sit with me while I wait. I learn that they are on their honeymoon and about to head to another area of Mexico. They share how they have been talking recently about wanting to serve God in their journey together and running into me just confirms that opportunities to help others are everywhere; they just have to be ready. They both sit there smiling, radiating their Christian love.
I close my eyes for a few moments and consider how this might all be a dream, but when I open my eyes, there they are, real as ever. They ask if I have children, and I wisely avoid explaining why I don’t, aware their kindness could be transformed quickly into disgust and even hatred for someone who has made the choices I have. Right now, I am really happy to be the recipient of their new mission to serve God.
I want to do something for them and hearing how they love to snorkel but have been renting equipment, I reach into my backpack and pull out my mask, fins, and snorkel, all purchased just for this trip. “Please, soak up more of the ocean’s beauty and know how grateful I am for
your help and kindness,” I offer most respectfully.
“God be with you,” the husband calls out as I head toward my gate. Boarding the plane, my head throbbing and pants still damp with blood, I am struck by the turn of events at the tail end of this quest for a dream job. Fingering the delicate shell on my necklace and considering these two honeymooning angels, it appears Mexico is sending me home with a few blessings after all: a wake-up call to live more carefully, another example of the kindness of strangers, and the possibility that maybe there really is a good God looking out for me.
IN THE CARE OF AN ANGEL
1982 (age 29)—Austin, Texas
“I think we’ll circle up for the wedding over there,” I explain to Peggy, gesturing toward a grassy knoll.
“Gorgeous,” she answers. The Pedernales River glistens in the late morning light. There is an entire orchestra out here, with water rushing over rocks and birds serenading. Peggy picks up on it all, occasionally closing her eyes and cocking her head to listen and feel the morning warmth and breezes on her face. A shared love of nature has become a foundation for this growing friendship.
We met while playing soccer together about eight years ago on the Austin City League team sponsored by Freewheeling Bicycle Shop. I played to win; Peggy played for fun. I tapped my toes when she was put in the game, wishing only the most serious players could be on the field. She seemed too delicate for a contact sport that included snapping our heads at balls, kicking shins, and getting tripped up while running at fast speeds. Soon she didn’t show at practices and games. Later I found out she was pregnant.
We ran into each other again when I started a new job managing a couple of Austin restaurants. A restaurant where Peggy is an owner sits next to one I am managing. This time around I was game for a friendship, and totally open to being with a person like Peggy, who prioritizes play and fun. Besides, she is an expert in the restaurant business, while I have been unhinged by the demands of two restaurants I am struggling to keep open with my meager experience.
“I’ll be right back,” I say to Peggy, heading up for the coverage of some bushes. I squat and feel a few clots slide out. If I let these come onto the pad I am wearing, I soak through it too quickly.
“What are you doing?” Peggy asks me on my return. I have stepped away to do this several times, and she is curious.
“Oh, I’ve been bleeding for months, and sometimes I get these large clots that soak through my pads. I’m not sure what’s going on.” I leave out my checkered ten-year history: illegal abortion; cayenne-at-home abortion; legal abortion followed by miscarriage; just-in-case IUD to induce miscarriage; and subsequently this intense bleeding that now occurs about two weeks a month. The clinic I go to calls it menorrhagia. Shame keeps my secrets in place. Besides, I want to focus on my upcoming wedding to Bill.
“I want to see,” Peggy insists. I’m surprised but walk her up to where I squatted. “That doesn’t look good to me,” she announces with a scowl.
“They do look bigger on the ground than in a toilet,” I admit. Actually, I haven’t even been looking at them after they pass. “I’ve been thinking I should go back to the clinic soon and get checked out.”
“Yeah, soon,” Peggy agrees, and suggests we head back to the car.
Good idea. I have started to feel woozy and tired. After Peggy drops me off, I shower and crawl into bed. Maybe I just need a nap. But the cramps are too intense. Fine, I’ll sit up and make a few lists around wedding plans. Making lists often helps me calm down. Holding a glass of water with my left hand while writing with my right, I suddenly feel that the bed is wet. I look at my left hand and the glass is toppled over, and I can’t get my hand to move the glass to an upright position. Brain to hand, brain to hand. Nothing.
Then the phone rings. I can reach with my right hand to answer. It’s Peggy.
“How ya doing?” she wants to know.
I explain what just happened, and she says she’s coming right over.
Peggy takes me to the Free Clinic where a test reveals a dangerously low blood count. They want to call an ambulance, but we don’t have far to go so Peggy rushes me to Brackenridge Hospital. The clinic has contacted the hospital so that when I arrive, I’m taken back immediately for a blood transfusion. I thank Peggy and send her home to her five-year-old daughter. She promises to call Bill, who now works several hours south of Austin.
I’m feeling so weak, tired, and nauseous that I can barely keep up with what is going on around me or what I’m being told. Medical personnel are in and out and I am confused with who is what: doctor, nurse, assistant. Amidst a pounding headache like none I have ever known, I learn I need a surgical procedure to treat irregular or heavy bleeding, and to remove any remaining tissue from abortions and miscarriages. A D&C is ordered—dilation and curettage—a common gynecological surgery that consists of widening the cervical canal and scraping the uterine cavity.
With my cervix anesthetized, I lie on a table while my vaginal canal is coolly propped open. As a metal rod widens my cervical canal and a long thin curette topped with a metal loop slips through toward my uterine cavity, I am reminded of lying in the abortionist’s back bedroom ten years earlier, watching what appeared to be a coat hanger disappear between my legs. This time as the metal loop scrapes away the inner layer of my uterus, I cry not out of pain, but from how disconnected I am from my womb. I can’t feel what is happening in my uterus, not only because of local anesthesia, but also because with practice I have learned to detach from what goes on “down there,” as my mother used to say—touching, rubbing, fucking, making love; being poked, prodded, and scraped with a coat hanger, IUD or metal rods; propped open with speculums; or vacuumed aspirated to remove uterine contents.
This numbness and detachment about whatever goes on below my waist is familiar. I remember when I first tried a diaphragm after Dave and I got married. After several months I misplaced it, and he was forced to use the condoms that he loathed. Maybe I popped the darn thing out one night and it got lost in the sheets, then later at the Laundromat? I didn’t know and didn’t care. Just get out the damn condoms, I thought. Six months later I felt something inside my vaginal canal and, reaching farther than I ever had before, found the diaphragm crammed way up inside of me. How could that be, I panicked? How could I have left this stiff round contraption inside of me for so long and not felt it? I wrapped the slippery, stinky mess in plastic and tossed it in the garbage.
Now here I am scraping and emptying my uterine contents again. Why do I even have one? Images start zipping through my head: abortions, miscarriages, that diaphragm, an IUD, blood clots, a shark circling, a young girl lying in a pool of blood, a little girl humping a man’s leg … I turn my head and vomit in my long hair. Where do some of these nonsensical scenes come from? A sickening smell wafts toward my nose.
Later I doze in a dimly lit room, recovering alone. My head no longer hurts. I reach up to touch my temple, feel something crusty in my hair, then remember throwing up. It stinks. I want to weep. I’m alone, with vomit in my hair, and what feels like a diaper between my legs. An emptied stomach and an emptied uterus. I consider everything that has seeped out of me—confusion, distress, loss, babies—bleeding like my entire body has been one big gaping wound.
Tears begin to flow, even though the bleeding has finally stopped. I cry often—crazy crying jags where a sinkhole drops in front of me, and shame and self-hatred push me forward into an abyss where I believe I deserve to fall.
An evening nurse quietly enters the room. Apparently, she had been in earlier and noticed, or could have smelled, the vomit in my hair. She has a basin of warm water, some shampoo, a comb, and a towel. She notices I am crying but doesn’t ask a thing. I am so relieved.
She sits in silence on the side of the bed, places the basin under my hair and, with the utmost gentleness, begins washing it. In no hurry, she soaks and cleans, blots out wetness, then with the tenderness one would give a distressed child, combs my long hair, stroke af
ter stroke, gently straightening the tangles. I close my eyes and, as if in the care of an angel, drift to sleep.
WHAT’S IN A NAME?
1982 (ages 29-30)—Kerrville, Texas
“Are you going to change your name?” Bill queries, while looking into his almost empty coffee cup. He’s sitting at our wobbly kitchen table with its peeling white paint.
Actually, I never took the necessary steps to change my name after the end of my last marriage. What a hassle. Bill’s ex still has his last name—Cagle. Why join the list of Mrs. Cagles? Besides, kegel, which sounds like Cagle, is the name of those exercises women do to strengthen their pelvic floors and vaginal muscles. Would I want that name association? I thought of returning to my maiden name, Johnson, but have no fond feelings for that identity either. I’m like Shakespeare’s Juliet, pondering, “What’s in a name?”
“Why don’t you change your name?” I blurt out somewhat whimsically. Why do women get stuck with this choice anyway? Wouldn’t my becoming Mrs. Bill Cagle be acquiescing to that old marital property right of the husband owning his wife? I am tired of playing musical chairs with names.
“Okay.”
I am carrying dishes to the sink. Okay? I stop and turn around. Bill looks at me and with all sincerity offers, “I’d do that.”
I squeeze the dishes onto the counter, not even close to the sink, and immediately return to the table. “You would do that?”
“Why not? What name could we choose?” Bill looks right at me.
This is just one of the reasons I love this guy. He often surprises me with his willingness to be completely vulnerable and does so with a simplicity that is anything but.
“Well, I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it.” I look out the window at another Texas March and see flowers, probably weeds, sprinkled around the backyard of this welcoming old Kerrville home where we’ve only recently moved. “How about Spring, Brooks, or Meadows?” My mind starts racing, considering seasons, animals, birds, or even places as names: Summer, Star, Wolf, Fox, Thrasher, Robins, Reed, Bridges, Rivers. “Bill and Patricia Summit, Patricia and Bill Finch, Bill and Patricia Flowers,” I keep rattling off possibilities.
Being Mean Page 12
