Choice Words

by Annie Finch

  Back at the shitty hotel. Himself goes out to get us food and I message @BfN_UK #breastfeeding #medication to find out how much codeine I can take and safely feed the toddler tomorrow evening #ratherbehome #nowforNI

  October 22, 2018 [Monday]

  4:19 a.m. On Monday morning I’m ruining everyone’s day with our news. Trying to remember who knew we were expecting and who didn’t know. If the long or short version of this shitty story is needed. Thank goodness for WhatsApp because I can’t handle the conversations right now.

  I should be at home in the privacy of my own home. Instead I’m trying to discretely bleed in a shitty hotel knowing that some low-paid worker, probably a woman, is going to have to empty a bin full of bloody sanitary pads. There’s no dignity here. There’s no privacy.

  8:27 a.m. The drive back to the airport is a relief. I’m so glad we could afford a hire car instead of public transport. At least one small part of this journey is private.

  We navigate the airport without delays and board quickly, #thanks @ flybe

  The flight home. I feel myself crumbling as we board. When the doors close I can’t hold it together any more. Relief to be going home, loss, grief, exhaustion. I shake and sob. Himself holds my hand and the engines down me out.

  My overwhelming thought is that we have left him. We left him alone. I know that we made the right choice, but my body is desperate to hold him, to have him with me. If we were treated at #home he’d be with us.

  Home. Landed in Belfast. Toddler is at the gate to meet us. She does a little excited dance and I scoop her up. She clings to me. Was she this strong when we left? I am so relieved to be home to hold my precious girl in my arms.

  1:45 p.m. Home. Home. Toddler has a nasty cold. She demands milk as soon as I get my coat off. We sit on the sofa, she snuggles up, latches and I can feel her body relax. She’s exhausted and falls asleep in minutes. I’m relieved to be home with her, #breastfeeding is a comfort to us both.

  We’re so relieved to be home—that this journey is over—so our grief can finally begin. But other women are only beginning their stories of exile. Other families don’t know our story might be theirs one day. Unless we change it https://bit.ly/2CYudeF @All4Choice @bpas1968

  THE VIRGINITY THIEF (A LETTER TO MY MAN)

  Thylias Moss

  Dear H,

  I’m sixty-five, retired, mixed-race with one term-pregnancy—my son, who is thirty-seven, the best son anyone could ever want—and I’m an award-winning poet, Professor Emerita at a major research university where I was Full Professor of English and Full Professor of Art and Design, and finally in Love with the finest man on the face of the earth, you, a poet also, a life made possible because I had an abortion following my loss of virginity: rape at age fifteen that resulted in pregnancy fathered by Charles Jones, twenty-five-year-old deacon in my mother’s church, and director of the choir I was in.

  I can’t tell you why I didn’t fight, instead giving in to paralysis. Each rough ripping of a button breaking in that harshness, mother-of-pearl molar and canine destruction like being bit into with rotting teeth, green at the gumline like Patrina’s, seemed more a misapplication of makeup than deliberate placement of gum disease finding its rot path. No way did I want anything like that to touch me!

  D-Con assuring himself that no pregnancy could happen if I sat up, still draped in smelly blanket so semen could run down my legs in a carnivalesque application of cheap lotion. Smelly blanket over me like cloth privacy shield in case he was stopped and could easily explain just taking soloist home from Assembly Baptist Church, just alphabet: ABC.

  To get home, I had to run, as he didn’t drive me. Made me get out of the car, I was glad to escape, ten baths weren’t enough; I didn’t stand up straight, found scoliosis out there also, specious muscle relaxant, repackaged snake oil oleo. Blue choir robe stained with a narrow stream of semen twisted as a poisonous snake, the full length, my virginity snaking away, subdividing into tributaries, snakelettes, seeking hem, him too for hellfire; I had very long natural fingernails, at least I could’ve scratched his face, but I didn’t want contaminated fingernails. I didn’t want to touch him anywhere. I wouldn’t get to give it to someone I chose (and I didn’t choose till you). Contaminated robe. That too I burned. Backyard ritual of fire (although I was terrified of matches), always plenty around because my father smoked Pall Malls, my hair having been caught in stove’s flames when I was eight, my signature braids burnt. Crispy.

  But no period. Two weeks passed and no blood. I tried to tell D-Con that I was pregnant. What else could it be? Trying also to be back in school. Trying to talk with the only possible man, but he or his wife hung up the phone every time. I persisted. I wanted him to know what he’d done. My body was thickening with his baby, despite what he wanted to think. My large breasts swelled even larger. I kept calling and eventually he agreed to take me to his wife’s OB-GYN, all the bumpy ride hiding me under the ragged, stinky blanket, as if never washed. D-Con said he would call me with results of the test, but he never spoke to me again.

  Abortions were legal then (1969) in only one state, New York, and mine performed by a Greek doctor at St. Luke’s Medical Center, Dr. Panayotopoulos. Fifth month of pregnancy—many premature babies just that age survive. Nineteen-seventy—I was sixteen when the abortion was performed, assigned to the maternity floor. I could hear the newborns.

  I could’ve been another young woman having a live birth. But I wasn’t. There may have been a heartbeat. I didn’t want to hear it. Rhythmic. That baby’s solo for the D-Con Choir. My father was with me. Not sure where my mother was. She liked me the least she ever had so was done with me.

  A large syringe withdrew amniotic fluid. Lethal saline solution—salt—replaced it, burned baby. An essential nutrient; no salt in the body and no life. Baby barbecue. Infant flambé. A horrible death, but death penalty seemed right. Labor all night. The next day I delivered the stillborn vaginally and got admonishment from Dr. P: “Don’t do this again, young lady!”—as if I would want to repeat this! I never checked for fetal movement. The baby must have sensed it wasn’t wanted. I did nothing to celebrate it, nothing to memorialize that striped blanket, its stank odor, that D-Conning deacon.

  My most fertile days of this cycle for rape, but I didn’t scream. Maybe I could’ve. I don’t know because I didn’t try. I opened my mouth, drained of sound, only mouthing words of an ineffective heavenly song. Nor did I bite him, staining my teeth, rendering them useless for eating anything. I would surely need prosthetics. Voice and virginity gone. And a pregnancy that would follow me to this day. Having to say to every OB-GYN that I have had, not one, but two pregnancies and only one son.

  You might think that this would be the end, but two more things: my mother said, “Be sure to tell no one about this. They will never understand. No man will want you. It will always hold you back.” And her prediction seemed to happen, because the person she insisted I marry the very next year, John Moss, who attended that church, said to me, “Charles Jones is laughing at me for having his used goods.”

  ABORTION HALLUCINATION

  Larissa Shmailo

  In the corner of the basement where my father used to lie I

  watch, interested, as the snake

  grows larger and more menacing I am

  taken slightly aback but remember him remember that I like

  handling snakes and smile

  and as always he softens grows smaller

  becomes a hippopotamus I have won again I have stared him down

  made him warm

  and the Nile gives up its life to me

  animals carnivorous and calm come home to me

  two by two

  I watch for the longest time

  until the largest fills the window with his face

  black as light

  Agnus Dei

  BRASS FURNACE GOING OUT: SONG, AFTER AN ABORTION

  Diane di Prima

  I

  to say I fail
ed, that is walked out

  and into the arctic

  How shd I know where I was?

  A man chants in the courtyard,

  the window is open

  someone else drops a pecan pie

  into the yard

  two dogs down there play trumpet

  there is something disturbed

  about the melody.

  and what of the three-year-old girl who poisoned her mother?

  that happens, it isn’t just us, as you can see—

  what you took with you when you left

  remains to be seen.

  II

  I want you in a bottle to send to your father

  with a long bitter note. I want him to know

  I’ll not forgive you, or him,

  for not being born for drying up, quitting

  at the first harsh treatment

  as if the whole thing were a rent party

  & somebody stepped in your feet

  III

  send me your address, a picture, I want to

  keep in touch. I want to know how you

  are, to send you cookies.

  do you have enough sweaters? is the winter bad?

  do you know what I’ve done, what I’m doing?

  do you care?

  write in detail of your day, what time you get up,

  what you are studying, when you expect

  to finish & what you will do.

  is it chilly?

  IV

  your face dissolving in water, like wet clay

  washed away, like a rotten water

  lily rats on the riverbank barking at the sight

  do they swim?

  the trees here walk right down to the edge

  conversing

  your body sank, a good way back

  I hear the otters will bring it to the surface

  and the wailing mosquitoes even stop to examine

  the last melting details of eyelid & cheekbone

  the stagnant blood

  who taught you not to tangle your hair in the seaweed

  to disappear with finesse

  the lion pads

  along the difficult path

  in the heart of the jungle

  and comes to the riverbank

  he paws your face

  I wish he would drink it up

  in that strong gut it would come

  to life.

  but he waits till he floats

  a distance

  drinks clean water

  dances a little

  starts the long walk

  again

  the silent giraffe lets loose

  a mourning cry

  fish surface

  your mouth and the end of your nose

  disappear.

  the water was cold the day you slipped into the river

  wind ruffled the surface, I carried you on my back

  a good distance, then you slipped in

  red ants started up my leg & changed their minds

  I fed my eyeballs to a carnivorous snake

  & chained myself to a tree to await your end.

  your face no sooner dissolved than I thought I saw

  a kneecap sticking up where the current is strongest

  a turtle

  older than stars

  walked on your bones

  V

  who forged this night, what steel

  clamps down?

  like gray pajamas on an invalid

  if I knew the name of flowers, the habits

  of quadrupeds, the thirteen points of the compass…

  an aged mapmaker who lived on this street

  just succumbed to rheumatism

  I have cut the shroud to measure

  bought the stone

  a plot in the cemetery set aside

  to bury your shadow

  take your head & go!

  & may the woman that you find know better

  than talk to me about it

  VI

  your goddamned belly, rotten, a home for flies.

  blown out & stinking, the maggots curling

  your hair your useless never used cock,

  the pitiful skull the pitiful shell of a skull, dumped in the toilet

  the violet, translucent folds

  of beginning life

  VII

  what is it that I cannot bear to say?

  that if you had turned out mad, a murderer

  a junkie pimp hanged & burning in lime

  alone & filled w/the rotting dark

  if you’d been frail and a little given to weirdness

  or starved, or been shot, or tortured in hunger camps

  it wd have been frolic & triumph compared to this—

  I can’t even cry for you, I can’t hang on

  that long

  VIII

  forgive, forgive

  that the cosmic waters do not turn from me

  that I should not die of thirst

  IX

  oranges & jade at the shrine

  my footprints

  wet on the stone

  the bells in that clear air

  wind from the sea

  your shadow

  flat on the flat rocks

  the priestess (sybil)

  spelling your name

  crying out, behind copper doors

  giving birth

  atone

  silence, the air

  moving outside

  the door to the temple blowing on its hinges

  that was the spirit she said

  it passed above you

  the branch I carry home is mistletoe

  & walk backwards, with my eyes on the sea

  X

  here in my room I sit at drawing table

  as I have sat all day, or walked

  from drawing table to bed,

  or stopped at window

  considering the things to be done

  weighing them in the hand and putting them down

  hung up as the young Rilke.

  here in my room all day on my couch a stranger

  who does not take his eyes

  off me as I walk & walk from table to bed.

  and I cannot stop thinking I would be three months pregnant

  we would be well out of here & in the sun

  Even our telephone would be polite

  we would laugh a lot, in the morning.

  XI

  your ivory teeth in the half light

  your arms

  flailing about, that is, you

  age nine months,

  sitting up & trying to stand

  cutting teeth.

  your diaper trailing, a formality

  elegant as a loincloth, the sweet stench

  of baby-shit in the house; the oil

  rubbed into your hair.

  blue off the moon your ghostshape

  mistaken as broken tooth

  your flesh rejected

  never to grow—your hands

  that should have closed around my finger

  what moonlight

  will play in your hair?

  I mean to say

  dear fish, I hope you swim

  in another river.

  I hope that wasn’t

  rebuttal, but a transfer, an attempt

  that failed, but to be followed

  quickly by another

  suck your thumb somewhere

  dear silly thing, explode

  make someone’s colors.

  the senses (five)

  a gift

  to hear, see, touch, choke on & love

  this life

  the rotten globe

  to walk in shoes

  what apple doesn’t get

  at least this much?

  a caramel candy sticking in your teeth

  you, age three

  bugged

  bearing down on a sliding pond.

  your pulled tooth in my hand
/>
  (age six)

  your hair with clay in it,

  your goddamn grin

  XII

  sun on the green plants, your prattle

  among the vines.

  that this possibility is closed to us.

  my house is small, my windows look out on grey courtyard

  there is no view of the sea.

  will you come here again? I will entertain you

  as well as I can—I will make you comfortable

  in spite of new york.

  will

  you

  come here

  again

  my breasts prepare

  to feed you: they do what they can

  WHAT WAS, STILL IS

  Alida Rol

  Although the how matters

  little, she blamed herself

  as women do. She told only

  those she had to and nursed

  her shame alone. There was

  never a question. There were no

  what-ifs. She knew there must be

  no baby. It was legal and yet

  so difficult to lie on a strange

  man’s table, trust his hands

  inside. It was hard to feel the

  delving, hear the motor, taste

  the pain. It was as right

  as it was unbearable. She held

  these thoughts side by side

  and carried them into her future

  where she treats the women

  who’ve come to lie, often afraid,

  on her table. Now there are

  pills to take and probes

  instead of fingers, but there is

  no proxy, still, for the plain

  words and kind touch

  of someone who was there.

  FROM “ABORTION”

  Anne Finger

  Amber and I ate a p.m. breakfast at a diner near her house. A man in a stained white apron came over to the booth to take our order, carrying a pencil but no pad. He pointed the pencil eraser end outwards (as if pointing with the sharpened end were rude) first at Amber, repeating, “Bagel, scrambled, grapefruit, coffee,” and then at me, “Poached, bacon, whole wheat, coffee.”

  “Amber, when you had your abortion, did you … ”

  “Jesus,” Amber said. “Jump right in.”

  “I’m sorry.” I took a cigarette from her pack but didn’t light it. “I think I feel guilty. About having had one.”

  “You?” Amber asked. “Guilty?”

  “What do you mean, me, guilty. I’m guilt-ridden. It’s my sap, my second blood.”