by Randi Pink
They watched the same movies, read the same books, and talked for hours about everything and nothing. But the main thing they had in common was they were both natural leaders. People followed them around like sheep, hanging on their words. When Tye was elected senior class president, Gran Izella made the front page of the Atlanta Times for Rutabaga’s Diner. When Gran Izella’s homemade chocolate cake earned a J. B. Culinary Award, Tye was crowned homecoming queen. They were both powerful, and that type of power was misunderstood by those without it. No one knew what it felt like to be a leader like another leader. They were soul mates.
That’s why the moment Tye realized she’d missed her period, without a second thought, she called Gran Izella first. Who else would she call? Her mother would lecture her like she was one of her undergraduate English students at Emory. Her grandmother, Sippi, back in Valdosta, would just pray until her knees gave out. And her other god-grandmother, Sue, was a thousand miles away in Chicago, probably busy with some ritzy gallery opening.
Only Izella knew, and that was enough for Tye. Still, it was a betrayal, choosing Gran Izella over the rest of them. And the risk Izella herself was taking by hiding it from them was more than Tye should’ve ever asked of her.
They were airtight—Grandma Sippi, Gran Izella, and Nana Sue, SIS for short. Tye could never squeeze the origin story of their friendship out of them, but they were bonded together like cooled lava. No cracks or kinks, only smooth, beautiful friendship forged over time. Tye hoped for such love in her own life. Yet she was asking Gran Izella to outright lie to SIS for her sake. Regret crept into her chest, nearing her heart.
It would all be over very soon, though, Tye thought. All preliminary examinations and mandatory ultrasounds were done. Surely the Supreme Court would take more than a day to deliberate such a wide-reaching decision as abortion rights, even if the court did lean majority conservative. She would get her procedure and graduate high school next week, and her future would begin with no one the wiser.
Tye’d been accepted to Harvard, Yale, Howard, Vanderbilt, Emory, and Cal State, and she’d received numerous unsolicited offers from random schools all around the country.
Harvard’s was the offer she’d accepted—full ride with a concentration in English/poetry and a thousand-dollar-per-month stipend for working at Widener Library three days a week. She worked her ass off to get that offer, and she would never be able to handle the workload with a screaming baby on her hip. Eliminating the pregnancy was her right. Her choice. Hers alone. And with Gran Izella at her flank, she could handle anything.
“Here they come,” whispered Gran Izella, spotting shadowy footsteps nearing the waiting-room door. “I don’t like the feel of it.”
Tye lifted her chin, readying herself for anything. She didn’t like the feel of it, either.
The heavy steel door leading to the examination rooms scraped open. Three nurses in pink scrubs, two receptionists, and one doctor huddled in the doorway. Their collective expressions sullen and grave with worry. The oldest-looking nurse stepped out of the clump, holding a single sheet of white paper. The nurse pushed her glasses farther up her nose and cleared her throat.
Suddenly something pelted the window behind Tye and Izella, causing them to leap from their seats. The object left a large gash and traveling cracks in the center of the dingy glass. More objects were being flung at the single waiting-room window, one after the other after the other. The nurses pulled Tye and Izella into the locked receptionist area.
“Duck down here,” the older nurse whispered before pointing to the double-plated glass. “Bulletproof.”
“Bulletproof?” was the only word Tye could think to say before more loud crashes seemingly rang down from all sides of the clinic.
Then, as quickly as it had started, everything went silent. Red and blue lights lit up all four walls. Thank God, Tye thought.
And then an orchestra of buzzing surrounded them—phones.
Hidden in the backs of drawers and purses and coat pockets. Some left in haste in the vomit-green chairs in the waiting room. Tye’s was there among them, buzzing away across the glossy waiting-room floor and out of reach. Only the doctor had his phone in his hands.
He squeezed it alive and slowly read the screen until his face scrunched and went beet red. “I’m very sorry.” He crouched down beside them. With his starched white lab coat scraping the dusty floor under the receptionist’s desk, he rested the whole of his attention on Tye. “We cannot move forward with your procedure, Tyesha. Abortion is officially illegal in these United States.”
The buzzing was replaced by uproarious laughter and resounding cheers from the abortion clinic parking lot.
“My God,” Izella said to herself. “Not this again.”
11 Weeks (the next day)
After helping with the lunch rush, Tye went into Rutabaga’s stockroom to lie down. The nauseating variety of smells was getting to her—white and brown gravy, shrimp and grits, and twice-marinated steak. The strength of their stench mixed together and lifted her stomach up and down and left to right inside her body like ocean waves.
The sun was high and bright on the Atlanta afternoon, and a muted episode of Wendy Williams gave her the approximate time—from 3:00 to 3:22 p.m., since Hot Topics was still on. She despised Wendy Williams but still watched every day. When the commercial came, she tried to fall asleep on the small love seat, but it was no use. The smells, dear God, were overwhelming.
Another thing keeping her awake was the constant vibrations emitted from her cell phone—Twitter notifications. She watched her number of followers tick up, which brought her both joy and terror. Her original Twitter felt like an intimate coffee shop of like-minded beatniks, appreciating one another’s viewpoints and perspectives and poetry. Twitter now was an enormous amount of people hanging on her every word. It was beginning to feel like an angry auditorium of eyeballs.
She’d just cracked the twenty-thousand mark, and it made her remember when she’d first opened her account. She was barely a teenager, holding court with congressmen and senators who misjudged naivete from her fresh-faced profile picture. Her first follower, a middle-aged white guy named Marc from the outskirts of New York City, defended her positions with unwavering fervor. Tye felt grateful to Marc, because he provided a middle-aged-white-guy legitimacy to her young-black-female perspective. No matter how rational and/or eloquent an argument she put forth, Marc’s stamp of approval shut the mouths of millions. She was equally pissed off and accepting of that sad realization.
For a time, she shouted into the Twitter void with Marc as her strangely loyal sidekick. Then the well split open. One random Tuesday afternoon, Tye sent out the tweet heard round the world. It read as follows:
Is it me or does senator john macdonald always and I mean always have sex in his eyes? #creep
It was a nothing tweet, Tye thought. But that’s usually how social-media storms work. Tye’d been throwing tiny, stinging snowballs into the elected-official Twitterverse for months, but that one kept rolling and transformed itself into an abominable snowman, large enough to take down a US senator. As it turned out, Senator John Macdonald did have sex in his eyes, a lot of sex in his eyes. Underage sex, actually.
At first, the euphoria associated with gaining followers was intoxicating. Tye, a teenager from Atlanta, Georgia, had achieved what most people her age could only dream of. She’d earned herself a captive audience of people to hang on to her words. But it all turned ugly, fast. Senator Macdonald’s supporters built what can only be called a strategic and targeted attack against Tye. Thousands of negative tweets and mentions picking apart everything from her looks to her poetry, and mostly coming from adults. It was a brutal, but necessary, introduction into public life.
The most horrifying bit of political mudslinging came from Nana Sue’s father, Senator Day. He personally reached out to Gran Izella. Attempting to utilize his own daughter’s friendship as a breakthrough point to save his creepy friend’s career. But
it had only backfired. Nana Sue released a statement, condemning her horrible father and effectively hammering Senator Macdonald’s political coffin shut for good.
When the senator’s lackeys swarmed, Tye made a concerted effort to respond to every critique, even the ones where she was called a cunt or a bitch or a whore. She was a natural counter-puncher in such situations. Her fingers knew what to do, and she trusted her own instincts, posting public responses to some of the most vile terms in the English language. She continued, almost around the clock for twelve days, when Gran Izella noticed what she called a deep-set look on Tye.
Tye brushed her gran off, but as soon as she was alone, she looked in the mirror for the first time in days. Her cheekbones were more pronounced than usual. Her shoulders crouched inward like a scavenging vulture, and her hair was wiry and dry from lack of oil and care. Dark circles haloed her gaunt eyes from little sleep, and she couldn’t remember when she’d last eaten.
She’d become addicted to the Twitter fight. The tug-of-war of rebutting the angry isms—racism, sexism, et cetera. Looking at herself, she felt both sad and strangely proud. A fierce and fearless female, she was. But she knew she couldn’t continue like that. The exhilaration of heated debate would only lead her head-on into a brick wall of exhaustion. That’s when she implemented her wait until the storm passes; then and only then shall you proceed policy.
It was hard, though. With the overturning of Roe, the country was ripping at the seams, and Twitter had no idea how invested Tye actually was. Caught in the middle of a powerful cultural firestorm, Tye stood in the center of the debate. She could rally the world if she wanted to. But instead, she just scratched her itching thumbs. Wait until the storm passes; then and only then shall you proceed.
“Babygal, come on here,” Gran Izella called after her. “I smashed some Jiffy in your greens. You need to eat.”
Tye smiled. Jiffy cornbread mix was against everything her gran Izella held dear. She believed in making her cornbread from scratch, by scrutinizing every grain of meal, buttermilk, egg, everything. Her corn muffins were part of what had made Rutabaga’s such a hit in the early days. But Tye was the only person walking earth who hated them. So Gran Izella swallowed the pain, pride, and embarrassment of Jiffy Mix and made a separate pan for her favorite Babygal.
“I’m coming, Gran,” Tye called to her. “Just a minute.”
Tye burped mid-sentence. She could feel the acid creeping into her windpipe, and it made her gag uncontrollably. She clasped both hands around her mouth so Gran wouldn’t hear her, but she was not in charge of her own impulses. Even so, she willed herself to breathe calm, slow breaths. She focused her energy toward her chest, up and down, in and out. Exhale pain and lack of control, and inhale the normal Tye. It had worked in hatha yoga, where the room’s temperature could creep up to 110 degrees. It had worked while she ran her first half marathon. No reason why it shouldn’t work during the first trimester of pregnancy. She closed her eyes. In and out, she thought. Up and down, she thought. And then she violently threw up a thick, yellow something.
“You okay in there, Babygal?” Izella asked from the kitchen. “You sound like a cat with a hair ball stuck.”
“I’m good,” Tye lied with as much authenticity as possible. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
“You lie worse than a puppy dog,” Izella replied softly. “Come on out. Somebody wants to see you.”
Tye unmuted Wendy Williams so Gran couldn’t hear as clearly. She knelt down in front of the pool of yellow vomit. For breakfast, she’d had a few bites of toast, and for lunch a spoonful of broccoli casserole. She hadn’t eaten anything yellow. She then took her index finger and tapped it to feel the texture. It looked and felt like an egg yolk, thick and kind of bouncy to the touch. That’s when Tye began to cry.
Tye rarely cried. It wasn’t that she’d been in denial; the magnitude of her predicament had hit her as soon as the pregnancy test read positive. Crying simply wasn’t her way. She’d rather work than cry. Her boyfriend, Davis, was the opposite. Shouldered linebacker already recruited by the Falcons, Davis boo-hooed like a newborn. Corn-fed country-boy Davis and nose-in-a-book intellect Tye, they’d been together since fifth grade, and it was love, absolutely.
She’d only missed one damn week of birth control. One damn week. And they’d only had sex once within that one damn week. It had been enough, though. Another thing Tye itched to tweet about. Though she knew they’d call her a slut for getting pregnant. Or a disappointment. Or a missed opportunity. Or a sad, sad case. None of that hurt. Actually, it energized her.
What truly hurt was her loss of control.
Tye: that badass with the Twitter fingers.
Tye: that fabulous girl with the sick butt-length braids and quick wit.
Tye: that female who could take down a powerful senator with a single Tweet.
Tye: that yogi who mastered the headstand, camel, and cobra poses within the span of a single class.
Tye: the youngest girl to complete the Decatur Half Marathon in under two hours and fifteen minutes.
That was Tye prior to throwing up the egg yolk. Tye now couldn’t even control the foreign substance expelling itself from her own body. No breathing exercises or willpower could make it stop. In that moment, she recognized that her body, and her life, were no longer her own. She belonged to the thing growing inside her, and a bunch of cloaked men said she couldn’t eliminate it.
Applause roared from the television set. Wendy Williams was welcoming her first guest on set, Stevie J from Love and Hip Hop. Tye’s eyes welled up even more watching him walk from backstage to join Wendy for an interview. Stevie J was a musical genius. A multi-instrumentalist musician who wrote some of America’s most iconic pieces for some of the best singers in modern history. He was a Mozart, but no one cared about that. All anyone cared about was Stevie J’s relationship with Joseline, and how many kids he had, and how much back child support he owed, and how much drama he could rile up on his reality show. It was a tragedy, Tye thought, and she could end up exactly like him—a brilliant, uniquely talented hot mess. Then she shook off the thought, turned off the television, and tore off an obscene amount of paper towels to clean up her own vomit.
That wouldn’t be her fate. No. She wouldn’t allow herself to become a statistic of teen pregnancy. No. She needed a plan. A method of action to tackle the seemingly untackleable, just like she’d done with yoga and the marathon and social media.
“Tye,” a voice that wasn’t Gran Izella’s said after a small knock. “Open up.” Poised, serene, almost musical in its melody, it was the unmistakable voice of Nana Sue.
“I’m here, too, my heart,” said Grandma Sippi. “Came soon as we heard.”
Anger filled Tye’s body. How could Gran decide to tell SIS without asking her first? It was a rousing betrayal. A lack of loyalty. Now she’d have to sit across from three women who had no idea what she was going through. Three perfect women—Nana Sue, an accomplished curator; Gran Izella, owner of the most successful diner in the ATL; and Grandma Sippi, world’s most loving grandmother and prayer queen of Valdosta. It should’ve been her choice who knew, just like it should’ve been her choice if she kept it.
She flung the door open, readying herself for a rare argument with Gran Izella. But she wasn’t there; no one was.
“Hello?” asked Tye, careening around the doorway. “Where are y’all?”
“Dining room,” said the three ladies at once.
When Tye laid eyes on them, all anger left. They were the most beautiful sight—strong, wise, welcoming women with no judgment anywhere on them. Tye sat across from them and became a timid child in the presence of queens.
“You go first, Sue,” Izella said with tears in her smiling eyes. Tye had never seen Gran Izella cry before. It wasn’t her way.
“Tyesha, my love,” Sue started. “I’ve missed your beautiful face.”
“I…” Tye said, but Gran Izella held her hand in the air.
&nb
sp; “You, child, are to sit quietly until we all have our turns to speak,” Gran Izella said in a tone not to be questioned. “Understand?”
Tye nodded.
Nana Sue began telling the story of how her daughter, Katherine, came into the world. She told a story of melody and music eclipsed by silence. Sue kept making a point to say how much she loved her daughter, but the cost was high. In her opinion, too high for her seventeen-year-old mind and body. Nana Sue sang a song of thick regret of what could have come of her without giving birth to Katherine so early in life.
Grandma Sippi went second. Her tiny hands flailing as she spoke. She told the tale of a lonely girl as if it were not herself. A girl in a small house with a good book and a good papa. Vulnerable to nasty men, she said. A girl so much smaller than you are now, she told Tye. Less learned. More hopeful. A dreamer who brought two dreams to life in a tiny apartment building high up in Chicago surrounded by the purest love. Grandma Sippi sang a song of gratitude to God for bringing her through the darkness and out into the sunshine.
As Sippi spoke, Sue began to cry without control, and Izella, too. They clasped onto one another to make up one flesh, and when they let go, all eyes fell on Izella.
“You haven’t touched your Jiffy, Babygal,” she said.
Tye knew her. She saw something inside her that was hidden so deep that bringing it up might kill her. Gran Izella was terrified of whatever that thing was. Terrified. Nana Sue and Grandma Sippi sensed it, too. They changed the subject.
“Back then, we had no choice, you see?” said Grandma Sippi. “I can’t say that I could’ve gone through with something like that if I could’ve, but a choice would’ve been a good thing. I was a child myself. A clueless one, to boot.”
