Choice Words

by Annie Finch

  is a red stone and I wanted to be a diamond—

  FROM FROG

  Mo Yan

  Every woman of childbearing age in Dongfeng Village who had given birth twice had had their tubes tied off if one of them had been a son. If they’d had only girls, Gugu said she’d taken village customs into consideration and chosen not to force the women to have their tubes tied; however, they were required to insert IUDs. After a third pregnancy, even if they were all girls, the tubes had to be tied. Zhang Quan’s wife was the only woman in any of the more than fifty commune villages who had neither had her tubes tied nor used an IUD, and she was pregnant again. Gugu’s boat had traveled to Dongfeng Village during a downpour expressly to get Zhang Quan’s wife to go to the health center for an abortion. While Gugu was on her way, Party Secretary Qin Shan phoned the branch secretary of Dongfeng Village, Zhang Jinya, ordering him to take all steps and use any force necessary to deliver Zhang Quan’s wife to the health center. When Gugu reached the village, Zhang Quan was standing guard at his gate with a spiked club; eyes red, he was shouting almost insanely. Zhang Jinya and a team of armed militiamen were watching from a distance, not daring to get close. Zhang’s three daughters were kneeling in the doorway, noses running, tears flowing, as they cried out in what seemed to be practiced unison: Merciful elders and uncles, mothers and aunts, brothers and sisters, spare our mother … she has a rheumatic heart. If she has an abortion she will die for sure—if she dies, we will be orphans.

  Gugu said the effects of Zhang Quan’s sympathy-seeking ruse were excellent—many of the women watching were in tears. Of course, some were resentful. As women with two children and IUDs, or three without a son, had had their tubes tied, they had no sympathy for Zhang Quan’s wife. A bowl of water must be carried level, Gugu said, and if we let Zhang Quan’s wife have a fourth child, those women would skin me alive. If Zhang Quan prevailed, the red flag would be lowered, but that would be nothing compared to halting the progress of family planning. So I gave the signal, Gugu said, and walked up to Zhang Quan with Little Lion and Huang Qiuya. Smart, courageous, loyal Little Lion moved in front of me in case Zhang used his club. I pulled her back behind me. The petty bourgeois intellectual, Huang Qiuya, was fine for a bit of technical help, but when push came to shove, she was so scared she nearly fell apart.

  Gugu strode straight up to Zhang. The language he used on me, she said, was worse than you could imagine, and if I repeated it, the words would dirty your ears and my mouth. But my heart was hard as steel then, and my personal safety was not a concern. Go ahead, Zhang Quan, call me any insulting thing you want—whore, bitch, murderous devil—I don’t care. But your wife is going with me. Going where? To the health center.

  With eyes fixed on Zhang’s savage face, she walked right up to him. His three daughters rushed up to her, cursing like their father, the two smaller ones holding on to Gugu’s legs, while their older sister rammed her head into Gugu’s midsection. All three were on her like leeches, and she tried to fight them off. A sharp pain in her knee, she knew, meant she’d been bitten. Another head to her midsection knocked her flat on her back. Little Lion grabbed the oldest girl by the neck and flung her to the side; but the girl came right back at her, driving her head into the Little Lion’s midsection, where her belt buckle hit her on the nose, which started to bleed. Seeing the blood on the back of her hand a moment later produced a mixture of terror and dread. As Zhang rushed to club Little Lion like a raving maniac, Gugu ran up and put herself between them. The club hit her forehead. She fell again. Are you people dead? Little Lion screamed at the onlookers. Zhang Jinya and his militiamen ran up and wrestled Zhang Quan to the ground, pinning his arms behind him. His daughters looked like they wanted to come to his aid, but they too were wrestled to the ground by Party women. Little Lion and Huang Qiuya wrapped a bandage from the medicine kit around Gugu’s head; blood seeped through the wrapping almost at once. They wrapped it some more. Gugu’s head was spinning and her ears rang; she saw stars and everything took on the color of blood; people’s faces were as red as cockscomb, even the trees seemed to blaze like torches.

  Hearing what was happening, Qin He came over from the river and froze when he saw Gugu’s injury. Then a howl burst from his lips, followed by a mouthful of blood. When people rushed up to help him, he pushed them away and staggered forward as if drunk, picking up the club, now stained with Gugu’s blood, and raised it over Zhang’s head. Put that down! Gugu shouted as she struggled to her feet. You’re supposed to be watching the boat. What are you doing here? Making things worse. With a sheepish look, Qin He dropped the club and walked slowly back to the riverbank.

  Gugu pushed Little Lion away and walked up to Zhang Quan. Qin He was still howling as he walked towards the riverbank—Gugu was too focused on glaring at Zhang Quan to look behind her. The man was still cursing, but there was fear in his eyes now. Let him go, she said to the militiamen who held him by the arms. When they hesitated, she repeated herself. Let him go!

  Give him back his club! she demanded.

  One of the militiamen dragged the club up and tossed it down in front of Zhang.

  Pick it up! Gugu said with a sneer.

  Zhang mumbled, I’ll fight anyone who tries to end the Zhang family line!

  Fine! Gugu said. You’re a brave man. She pointed to her head. Hit me here, she said, right here! She took a couple of steps closer. Me, she shouted, Wan Xin. This is the day I put my life on the line! Back when a little Japanese soldier came at me with a bayonet, I wasn’t afraid, so why should I be afraid of you today?”

  Zhang Jinya came up and shoved Zhang Quan. Apologize to Chairwoman Wan!

  I don’t need his apology, Gugu said. Family planning is national policy. If we don’t control our population, there won’t be enough to feed and clothe our people, and a failure in education will lower the quality of our population, keeping the country weak. Sacrificing my life for national family planning is a small price to pay!

  Zhang Jinya, Little Lion said, get on the phone and send for the police.

  Zhang Jinya kicked Zhang Quan. On your knees! he demanded, and ask Chairwoman Wan for forgiveness.

  Forget it! Gugu said. Zhang Quan, you could get three years in prison for hitting me, but I won’t lower myself to your level, and I’m willing to let you go. There are two paths open to you now. You can have your wife go with me to the health center for an abortion, where I will personally perform the procedure and guarantee that she comes through it safely. Or I can turn you over to the police for punishment; then, if your wife goes with me willingly, fine. If not—she pointed to Zhang Jinyan and the militiamen—they will take her there.

  Zhang Quan was in a crouch, holding his head in his hands and sobbing. Three generations have had only one son each. Will I be forced to see that line ended? Open your eyes, Heaven …

  Zhang Quan’s wife walked out of the yard; she was weeping, and had straw in her hair. Obviously, she’d been hiding in a haystack.

  Chairwoman Wan, be kind, forgive him. I’ll go with you.

  Gugu and Little Lion were heading east on the riverbank behind our village, probably to make a report at brigade headquarters. But as they entered the lane that would take them there, the woman on the boat—Zhang Quan’s wife—came out of the cabin and jumped into the river.

  Translated from the Chinese by Howard Goldblatt

  GETTING INTO TROUBLE

  Jacqueline Saphra

  Mr. Giles said he didn’t want the school used as a political jousting ground and made me take the pro-abortion poster down, although I explained patiently that the ancient Romans didn’t mind it, that the church was okay with it in the thirteenth century until quickening (when, they said, the soul enters the body), and the statute books condoned it.

  Michelle, who was a Born Again, insisted life was ensouled even before conception, Clare believed that once the fetus was viable it had a right to exist, my mother said she didn’t believe in the primacy of the unborn, and I sat in biolo
gy wondering if I had a soul, and if I did, where it was. I daydreamed of knitting needles, coat hangers, and permanganate.

  After my mother came back from hospital—unharmed, grateful, and political, only to find that my stepfather had spent her emergency money on canvasses and Carlsberg and dinner with that woman in Portobello Road—she sent me straight to the doctor to get myself a Dutch cap.

  My boyfriend who was stupid but useful told all his friends I was a virgin and forced me to see Close Encounters of the Third Kind three times and listen to nothing but Genesis, which I preferred to the Sex Pistols, because I never believed there was No Future, not when my mother was, at least for now, empty-wombed and full of soul, as she stirred a pot of her famous lentil soup, not yet tied by blood to the man she loved.

  THE CHILDREN’S CRUSADE

  Ana Blandiana

  In 1966, Nicolae Ceaușescu of Romania issued Decree 770, a law that criminalized all family planning, enforced monthly gynecological exams, and required women to birth at least four children. First published in 1984 in the student magazine Amfiteatru, the legendary poem below was at first hand-copied and shared in secret.

  An entire people

  still unborn,

  but condemned to be born,

  lined up before being born,

  fetus by fetus,

  an entire people

  that cannot see, or hear, or understand,

  but marches on

  through the aching bodies of women,

  through the blood of mothers

  who are never asked.

  Translated from the Romanian by Chrisula Stefanescu

  A PROMISE

  Gloria Steinem

  When I was in high school, the greatest shame was to get pregnant. It was the worst thing that could happen to you. It was most likely to get you banished from your family, disapproved of by your neighborhood, turned into somebody who was clearly not a “nice girl.” And in my neighborhood growing up—a very working-class, factory-working neighborhood in Toledo—there were clearly only two types of girls: nice and not nice. There was also very little knowledge about reliable contraception, so most of the people who I knew got married either before they graduated from high school or immediately afterwards—and most of them got married, at least in part, because they had to.

  As a senior in college, I was engaged to a wonderful man, but not somebody I should have married. That would have been a disaster for both of us. So I broke off the engagement with him and that was part of my motivation for taking the fellowship and going to India. He and I were together again just before I left, and soon I kind of knew—or feared—that I was pregnant. I was living in London, waiting for my visa to India, which took a very long time, working as a waitress with no money, no friends, dark winter days, trying to figure out what to do.

  You know, in a way, ambivalence about abortion is a function of its legality. I was not ambivalent. I was desperate. I did not want to see any way that I could possibly give birth to someone else and also give birth to myself. It was just impossible. So there was not one moment, not one millisecond, of me thinking it would be a good idea to have a child.

  In London at the time (the mid-1950s) if you got two physicians to say that having a child would endanger your health or your mental health, then it was possible to get a legal abortion—not easy, but it was possible. After many weeks of fear, confusion, and magical thinking that I would somehow have a miscarriage, I found this wonderful doctor who had many writers and poets as his patients, and he said, “All right, I’ll help you. But you must promise me two things. You must never tell anyone my name and you must promise me to do what you want with your life.”

  So he signed what was necessary and sent me to a woman surgeon, who gave me an anesthetic, so I was not conscious for the actual procedure. Afterwards, she gave me pills and told me to be aware of the amount of bleeding, but it wasn’t much. So I just went home and stayed in bed for the weekend and went back to work as a waitress—but with such a feeling of lightness and freedom and gratitude.

  I thought everybody was supposed to feel guilty, so I used to sit and think and think and think; but I could not make myself feel guilty for even a moment. Far from feeling guilty, it was the first time I had taken responsibility for my own life. It was the first time I hadn’t been passive. That I had said, No, I’ll take responsibility for my own life, I am going to make a decision. And you know, to this day, I would raise flags on all public buildings to celebrate the chance I had to make that decision.

  1Those interested in ritual healing may be interested in the ritual I wrote and used successfully to heal after my own abortion. It is available on my website and as an appendix to my book Among the Goddesses: An Epic Libretto in Seven Dreams (Red Hen Press, 2010).

  2“Be All You Can Be” was the advertising slogan of the United States Army from 1980 to 2001.

  3and somehow, as I don’t remember, I got out the pool.

  SPIRIT

  POEM FOR MYSELF AND MEI: CONCERNING ABORTION

  Leslie Marmon Silko

  Chinle to Fort Defiance, April 1973

  The morning sun

  coming unstuffed with yellow light

  butterflies tumbling loose

  and blowing across the Earth.

  They fill the sky

  with shimmering yellow wind

  and I see them with the clarity of ice

  shattered in mountain streams

  where each pebble is

  speckled and marbled

  alive beneath the water.

  All winter it snowed

  mustard grass

  and springtime rained it.

  Wide fancy meadows

  warm green

  and butterflies are yellow mustard flowers

  spilling out of the mountain.

  There were horses

  near the highway

  at Ganado.

  And the white one

  scratching his ass on a tree.

  They die softly

  against the windshield

  and the iridescent wings

  flutter and cling

  all the way home.

  A GOOD WOMAN WOULD NEVER

  Sylvia Beato

  for years you told no one

  how you cried yourself to sleep

  after the doctor held your hand

  “are you sure about this?”

  how you cried yourself to sleep

  while blood poured down your legs

  “are you sure about this?”

  and protestors booed outside the clinic

  while blood poured down your legs

  you stopped believing in god

  and protesters booed outside the clinic

  because a good woman would never

  you stopped believing in god

  “are you sure about this?”

  because a good woman would never

  for years you told no one

  ABORTION ISN’T BEAUTIFUL

  Nicole Walker

  It is hard to write anything beautiful about abortion. I can see the beauty in snapping off a couple of yellow flowers to give more energy for the current tomato plant to grow. I can see the beauty in pulling off the dead petals of geranium. I can see the beauty in cutting off a branch that sucks too much water from the main trunk of the apple tree, but it’s hard to see the beauty in the suctioning out of fetal tissue. Perhaps the image becomes too medical right off the bat. Make it narrative? Is there beauty in a waiting room? Beauty in stirrups? Beauty in ultrasounds?

  I’ve had two abortions. One when I was eleven and one when I was twenty-one. The one when I was twenty-one was much more beautiful than the first. In Portland, Oregon, there is some kind of advanced thought about abortion. The doctor inserts flags of seaweed inside your cervix to let it expand naturally. The lights are dimmed. It’s still not beautiful but it’s not punitive.

  Perhaps it’s that abortion is not natural that makes it hard to find beauty
, but the flower snapping, the petal pulling, the branch cutting isn’t natural either, and petals and branches are supposedly natural. A skirt can be beautiful. A blanket. A bowl.

  If we called abortion “miscarriage,” or maybe “optional miscarriage,” would it be more beautiful? If you had to opt in to a pregnancy or you would automatically be opted out, like registering for the health benefits you may not have which might cause you to opt out of the pregnancy, would that make the choice easier or harder? If nature stopped pregnancy’s “progressing” and instead stayed still until you checked the “go-ahead pregnancy” box, would the choice seem as sinister? Why is choosing an ending morally more troubling than choosing a beginning?

  I don’t think it is death that robs abortion of its beauty. Many deaths have poignancy and significance. To sit beside your mother as you hold her hand while her breathing slows and slows and stops is beautiful. Beautiful that you got to be there. Beautiful that the moment was charged with meaning. But the fetus doesn’t know it’s alive. Its hands are not holdable.

  Is the choice “yes” always more beautiful than the choice “no”? Did I choose to have my current children? I mean these very children? I chose to try to get pregnant, or at least not try very hard not to. I didn’t know that a fetus would be Zoe. I didn’t know a fetus would be Max. They are beautiful to be sure but was the choice itself beauty? I can’t pinpoint the moment of choice so it’s hard to say. There were beautiful moments being pregnant, but I think I may have borrowed that beauty from a TV show I once watched, and who Zoe and Max are has very little to do with what beauty I pregnantly fantasized.

  I cannot make abortion beautiful even when I think of my children that I would not have had had I not had the abortions I did. It’s still not beautiful that I went to college and that I went to PhD school or that I am writing this right now. It’s not beautiful that I was eleven years old. It was not beautiful at all when the doctor said, you are too young to be having sex, and I was like, yes, that’s true, you should tell the guy who molested me, but she was right. I was too young. Maybe there’s something beautiful there?