Annabelle
Sabrina is still asleep when the volunteer—Tammy—guides the white minivan into your driveway.
You realize you are shaking as you stare through the window next to the door.
In your bag, all of the money you’ve saved from this summer, which was meant for so many other things.
College application fees. Books. But you’ll deal with all that later.
You’ll make more money somehow. You have heard about other girls who had to pay for the whole thing themselves, girls who have had to ask the boy to contribute and come away with nothing.
You are glad for all of those long, empty hours at the ice cream stand, though now you’ll have to find another job to pay for the SAT registration, for more study books because you don’t want to mess it up twice.
But you’ll figure all that out once you sort this out.
Once you are on the other side of whatever is going to happen today, this thing you have only heard the faintest whispers about.
You wonder if you’ll bleed a lot. You wonder if it will hurt.
If they will have to cut you open. You run a finger over your scar.
It wouldn’t be the first time, at least. That you have a part of yourself split apart and sewn back together again.
It won’t be like Sabrina’s ministrations, the way she sucked in the breath between her teeth every time she pierced your skin with the needle, as though she felt it too. But maybe it’s better that way.
Tammy waves at you through the windshield, rolls her window down, calls to you. “Come on in, honey.”
You open the door. The car smells like cinnamon and underneath that, a sour smell, like old milk. A wooden cross dangles from the rearview mirror, swings as she backs out of your driveway. A lanyard strung with plastic beads hangs with it. Tammy sees you eyeing it.
“My daughter made that one.” She touches the beads and smiles to herself. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”
“Anna,” you say, your throat too clogged with worry to get the rest of it out.
“Anna, nice to meet you. Sorry the car is such a mess; hard to keep up with the little ones, you know.”
She gestures behind her and it is only then that you register the two car seats, the plastic rattles and dinosaur figurines on the floor, the fine orange crumbs that maybe were Cheez-Its or Goldfish crackers before getting pulverized in tiny fists, under tiny feet.
Tammy is nothing like you thought she’d be. You realized you expected someone younger, hipper, more like Miss Hamilton. Even now speeding along with Tammy in her minivan you feel the urge to call Miss Hamilton, to tell her the truth. To be with her instead.
“You’re quiet. It’s okay. Most of the girls are when I pick them up.
But you’ll feel so much better once you meet with Brenda and Fran down at the center.
Believe me, swear to Jesus I’ve seen it so many times myself.
Girls just like you, desperate and without anybody in the world to talk to, to help them, and don’t they just walk out of there whistling—whistling!
—like new women, seeing the world in brighter colors. ”
You smile, surprised at the cheer with which she’s talking about it, this thing.
Talking more openly than anyone you’ve ever heard, really.
This mother with crushed crackers and a sticky film of spilled juice covering her car.
“That will be good. I haven’t told … I haven’t talked to anyone. No one knows.”
Even describing how the secret is a secret makes you feel unburdened, without having to even use the words you’ve been afraid of, the ones you’ve been avoiding, kept in a dark box in your mind for all these months.
After twenty-five minutes in the car Tammy pulls up to a ranch house painted a faded blue gray. There’s two other cars parked in the yard, a maroon Oldsmobile and a station wagon with wood paneling along the sides.
“Here we are!”
By the door there is a name, Preston, and underneath the name a paper label edged with masking tape: Women-First Pregnancy Crisis Center. It is written in faded marker, black turned navy blue.
Tammy lets herself in. “Fran? Brenda? I’m here with Miss Anna.”
They step into a living room with crocheted blankets thrown over the back of the sofa in lumpy piles, hooked rugs on the floor, another cross on the wall—this one white, with a mournful Jesus draped across it.
Little bowls of potpourri on the end tables.
How can they do everything here, you wonder.
You had expected a doctor’s office like the one your mother took you to when you needed shots as a child.
White walls and fluorescent lights, padded tables covered with paper that crackled when you moved.
A thought rises up that you try to quiet.
They can’t help you here. You concentrate on the potpourri, the sickle of a dried orange nestled among the flower buds and cinnamon sticks until you feel someone else enter the room.
“Hello there, I’m Fran. Please, make yourself comfortable. Brenda will be right out too.”
Fran is older than Tammy, with woolly hair cropped close to her head and deep wrinkles around her mouth. She wears a crewneck sweatshirt with a turtleneck underneath, and still rubs her hands together and complains of the cold. “Brenda is my daughter,” she confides.
“Is she a doctor?” you ask.
Fran looks at Tammy for a moment, something passing between them, before looking back at you. “Brenda, please come meet Anna.”
You expect Brenda to greet you in the bright scrubs you remember from those visits all those years ago, the rubber gloves that the doctor snapped on her wrists, but instead she’s just another woman like Tammy and Fran, wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt that says HARRAHS CASINO RESORT across the front.
“Anna, can I get you anything? Tea? Water?” You smell something new, now that you’ve gotten used to the potpourri, and then a glance to the kitchen floors helps you make sense of it. A litter box, one that has not been cleaned in a while.
“No thank you.”
“We’re here to take care of you, Anna. Maybe you’ll change your mind about a drink. Whatever it is you need, you just let us know, okay? This is a precarious and special time for you. We’re here to look after you.”
Even though you sense something is essentially off about the situation, you feel relieved, the way you did on the phone. You try to relax, to let their reassurances wash over you. They are here to take care of you. When was the last time someone offered to get you a drink? Not since your mother.
“Tell us a little about what brought you here,” Tammy says, tilting her head.
When you speak, the words come out so quietly that they are nothing more than a whisper. “I just want it to be over. I just want to go back to how it was. I want—I want my life back.”
The women exchange looks again. Let your words hang in the air for a long time, long enough that you start to wonder if you are allowed to want those things. But if they don’t agree with you, why would they say they can help you in the first place?
Fran puts a hand on your knee. “Anna, there are things in life that we can’t take back.
I know it doesn’t seem right. But we can’t go back in time.
We can’t turn our backs on blessings we are given.
Even if those blessings come to us in ways we aren’t expecting.
And it would be a shame to waste those blessings. To think of them as burdens.”
Brenda takes up next, not long after Fran, as though she is impatient to speak her part. “It is part of being a woman, Anna. We have certain responsibilities, but if you can come to think of them as special, as a privilege, then you will be on your way to living an enlightened and happy life.”
Tammy leans in. “My children, Anna, are the best thing that ever happened to me. And my goodness, seeing their faces for the first time? These gifts from God, that kind of pure love? It might seem scary now, but I promise you, you will fall in love with this child.”
Child, that word like an anvil being struck inside of you.
“Is the father in the picture?” Brenda asks.
You stumble over the word father. First you wonder if they are asking about your father.
It is only after you shake your head that you realize they mean the Coyote.
The Coyote who knows nothing of any of this.
Who is still meeting your sister, who comes home with bruises on her wrists, hickeys splotching her neck.
“Raising a child is the best thing a woman can do with her life, Anna.”
You would do anything, anything, to not hear anyone use the word child again.
A child is what you just were. You just put your dolls in their boxes a few years ago.
Maybe they need convincing. This is a test to make sure you are going to be okay with the decision.
With going back to some secret room filled with all the right instruments and tools and medicine, or whatever it is they need, to undo what has been done to you.
You need to make them see that you are serious, that you know your mind, that the decision is right.
“I can pay,” you say, taking the money out from your purse.
They pause. The mention of money works for a moment, makes them quiet. Makes them stop using those words like blessing and baby. Like this is all something you can do, something you can allow to happen.
You fan the cash out so they can see how much it is. Everything. Everything you have. The women are still silent, and you think they must be deciding something. Whether or not you are worthy. The cat meows from deep inside the house, a needy warble.
Fran reaches for the money and before you can say anything else, folds the bills and sinks them into her sweatpants pockets.
“We’ll take this and hold on to it. Because you need more time to think about this decision.
I think you may end up seeing what we mean.
And in that case, I would hate for you to squander this money.
You will need things, after all, and we can help with that.
Diapers and bottles, clothes and blankets. All of these things require support.”
She disappears into the next room and you object. “I would like that back. I still want to get the thing done.”
Fran clears her throat, her tone different. Not as honeyed as before. “Anna, when was your last period?”
You close your eyes. “June.” You are still trying to go back to that last moment, wonder what you could have said to convince them that you were worth the kind of help you wanted.
“Even if we were to help you in that way, which to be clear, is a sin, it is far too late for that. There are some people who think nothing of snuffing out an unborn life at any point, for any reason, but we are not those women.” Next to Fran, Tammy nods in agreement, closes her eyes as if the thoughts cause her pain.
“We are saving you, Anna. It might not feel like it right now. But we are saving something more important than your plans for the next few years—going to the mall with your friends, weekends at the Shore, all these things that don’t actually matter. What we are saving is your very soul.”
“Hell is a brutal place, you know. And you’ve committed one sin already, Anna, by joining with a man who was not your husband. Don’t make the mistake of committing a second, more grievous sin by murdering the fruit of that union.”
“And murder, Anna, isn’t just a sin. It is illegal in the eyes of God and in the law,” Tammy says. “It is the cruelest, most base thing you can do to another human. Do you want to be a murderer? Is that what you think will solve everything?”
That word, murder, sets off an alarm bell inside of you.
All of the sudden the potpourri is overpowering, a choking sweetness and spice that irritates the back of your throat.
The cat that you haven’t gotten a glimpse of is making your eyes water.
These women are still staring intently at you, strangers speaking of your soul.
You want to argue with them. It isn’t fair.
I can’t do this. You feel this thing thumping and kicking inside of you, thrusting up toward your lungs, crowding out the air.
My father will kill me. My sister … Sweat forms under your arms, along your back, in all the places where your flesh touches other flesh.
“No one will help me,” you say. Your words just little mouse squeaks. It is not a question, but the women take it as one. Tammy leans over and grasps your hand in hers.
“Of course that’s not true. We’re here to help you. You found us. You’ve already taken the first step.” You pull your hand away.
“I want to go home.” There are tears leaking from your eyes even though you have tried so hard to keep them away.
Of all the people you could cry in front of, you do not want to cry in front of these women, and realizing that, you realize that you knew—knew the second that Tammy pulled up in the driveway, or maybe before, when the hope was too sweet and pure to be true, that no one can help you anymore.
On the drive home Tammy makes a comment here and there about songs that come on the radio, about shows she watches when her kids go to bed.
You don’t say anything, just feel the emptiness of your bag in your lap without the weight of your savings inside and watch the swing of the cross from the rearview, listen to it clack against the plastic beads of the lanyard.