Chapter Twenty-Six
In Texas, summer starts in March. As I got larger, rounder, wider, I also got hotter.
Hotter and crankier. I felt sweaty and greasy and sore almost all the time.
I had cramping and headaches and heartburn.
I could never sleep. My body hurt on the inside from being constantly kicked and on the outside from suddenly extending so far and in so many directions.
It seemed like I got up to pee every ten minutes but only managed, if you’ll pardon the indelicacy, to shit once a week.
But like Moth’s argument that old people’s lives are in fact more conducive to parenting, I was beginning to wonder if old people’s bodies might be more conducive to pregnancy.
Sure, my pelvic floor was less strong, my skin less elastic, my muscles less defined (or even definable), my reflexes less responsive, my joints less cushioned, my digestion less governable, my blood flow less turgid, my core less grounded, my sinews less rugged, my catalog of physical complaints less, well, circumscribed—this list could go on—but old people need not get pregnant to experience all of the above.
I was uncomfortable, but I was used to being uncomfortable.
I was living in a loud, rebellious body which felt not entirely mine—which was not entirely mine—but I had quite a bit more practice soldiering on nonetheless.
Therefore I decided to have cookies for dinner.
Maybe there was nothing I could do about the unseasonable weather upon my unseasonable body, but Father Frank had to be sourcing those deli cookies locally, and after not even an hour on the internet, I figured out where.
Comfortable—at age seventy-seven, week twenty-five—was too much to ask.
Cookies that tasted of home for dinner was not.
I filled out the form on the website, called down to tell Deanna to expect a delivery in thirty-six to forty-two minutes, then retired with a book to the (relative) cool of my balcony to wait.
Thirty-seven minutes later, my doorbell rang.
I hauled myself upright. It rang again.
There’d been a space on the form for delivery instructions, and though the suggestion was “e.g., leave on front porch,” I’d entered, “Please be patient; for a variety of reasons, it might take me a while to get to the door.”
The ringing turned to knocking. I toddled as fast as I could, but it wasn’t very fast. The knocking got louder and more insistent. “I’m coming!” I had to shout because I was still only halfway across the room. The knocking became pounding.
When I arrived at my door finally, the woman on the other side of it looked both ways then thrust a bakery box into my hands.
Something felt wrong about it though, and when I opened the lid, I found nothing underneath.
I raised my eyes back to hers. One didn’t like to complain, but a cookie delivery should include, at the very least, a cookie.
But before I could say anything, she whispered urgently, “Can I please come in?”
And because I thought it likely she was having a medical episode of some kind—her tone, plus why else would a food deliverer forget food?—I let her inside. “Do you need to sit down? Would you like some water?”
But she shook her head. “I’m here to discuss a pressing matter.”
“About cookies?”
“About abortion.”
Suddenly, I was the one who needed to sit down. I hurried best I could to the sofa and tried for as graceful a collapse as I could manage.
“The cookies were just a cover,” she explained, “because I knew you’d say no if I tried to grab you outside.”
“I’m going to say no anyway.” It’s probably a bad idea to piss off one’s home intruder, but I was having trouble catching my breath, and honesty is usually the pithiest option.
“That’s why I didn’t ask.” Whoever she was, she looked quite sure of herself.
The delivery people were usually teenagers.
The anti-abortion people too, I thought, remembering Azmina, Becka, and Candi.
But this one was Darcy’s age at least, maybe older, a Black woman with a graying Afro and what you might call laugh lines rather than wrinkles except that she wasn’t laughing.
The ABC girls’ fresh-faced, myopic optimism had been replaced, I could see, with steely resolve and a hard-earned confidence in its success.
“I’ve already said no to this.” I felt better—and braver—now that I was sitting down.
“No to what?”
“Family Futures. Azmina and Becka and Candi.”
“Those bloodsuckers,” this bloodsucker said. “I’m not with them. I’m very, very not with them.”
“Oh,” I said. “What are you doing here, then?”
“Avoiding the paparazzi and the gawkers and the social media whores out front.”
“No, that’s what I’m doing,” I corrected. “What are you doing?”
“Evangeline.” She stuck out her hand, and mine met it without my say-so.
“I come in peace. I would never try to co-opt your body for my religion or anything else. It’s bad enough the state of Texas is doing it.
It’s outrageous and offensive they won’t let you choose what’s best for you and your health and your family.
I’m fighting for you to have those rights. ”
“Oh,” I said again. “Thanks.”
“That’s why Family Futures sends those girls, though. Or girls like them. They’re essentially interchangeable.” She perched on the arm of the sofa opposite me and smirked. “They probably didn’t even give you their real names.”
“They didn’t seem very concerned with privacy,” I said.
“Not yours, no. And the fake names aren’t to protect their privacy. It’s to make them seem cute, nonthreatening. How nefarious can someone be if their name ends in a vowel sound?”
“Mussolini?” I countered off the top of my head.
“They want to make you think of children. Healthy, virtuous, employed children.”
“Why?”
“To intimate that kids are all upside, never a burden, an investment that pays for itself in record time then starts returning dividends you can be proud of. It’s sick.”
“Whereas you?” I was grateful for the perspective and the truth but suspected I wasn’t being told all of it.
“I’m who’s pulling their strings. Her counterpart anyway. I’m VP of community engagement for She’s Worldwide. We’re fighting for safe abortion access for everyone. And I came myself instead of sending minions. You’re owed that much.”
“Thank you?” I said.
“But since you bring it up …”
I couldn’t recall bringing anything up.
“We’d love for you to be a spokesperson for our campaign.”
“But I can’t have an abortion.”
“Exactly.”
I was confused. “Why me, then?”
“Look at you!” Evangeline waved at me. “You’re an ideal illustration.”
I rubbed my enormous middle and tried to sit up straighter. “Of what?”
“The lie that is ‘life of the mother.’ They’re always throwing that one around, aren’t they?
They want to present themselves as sane and measured.
Obviously, the mother’s life is paramount.
Naturally, they’d do anything to save her.
But anyone could see that isn’t true just by looking at you.
Whose life looks more precarious than yours? ”
I thought of Dot in the nursing wing fingering yarn she could no longer knit. But of course Dot wasn’t pregnant.
“And that’s just the life part,” Evangeline went on. “You’re also not who anyone on any side of this debate thinks of when they think of a mother.”
“I’ve been a mother for fifty-one years.”
“Exactly,” Evangeline said again.
“Exactly what?”
“They show you a picture of a healthy, pretty twenty-three-year-old white girl, and maybe you think yes, those are the genes this state needs more of, and isn’t it selfish of her to try to keep her uterus to herself.
But you? No one thinks that when they look at you.
Don’t get me wrong—I’m sure your genes are great—it’s just not where people’s minds go.
To be honest, no one even wants to think about you having sex, let alone this.
” She waved up and down my body again. “You don’t look like you’ll survive pregnancy and childbirth.
Hell, you don’t necessarily look like you’ll survive the week.
You may not be at death’s door, but you do look your age.
No offense! I’m not saying any of this is true.
I’m just saying the optics are hard to argue with.
You are the poster child for choosing an abortion. Literally, if you’re willing.”
I was not willing, but I did appreciate her use of “literally.”
“Here’s how it might look.” Like the Family Futures girls before her, Evangeline produced a screen then presented campaign ads featuring my face and body.
In these, I looked frail and haggard, wrinkled as linen pants after a long car ride, with dark pouches under my eyes and a back more rounded than my belly.
The ads read, “Here’s what happens when you don’t have a choice” and “Look what Grandma’s got in the oven. ”
“These are faked, of course.” I waited for her to invite me into a studio for higher-quality portraits like the ABC girls had, but that wasn’t her point.
“We added liver spots, thinned your hair, stooped your back, deepened your wrinkles. You’re gorgeous, Pepper.
Too gorgeous. Frankly, you’re glowing. Pregnancy looks good on you. It just doesn’t work for our purposes.”
“But …” I began.
“What.” Evangeline’s tone said whatever my objection was, it was unreasonable.
“You’re on my side. Or I’m on yours. Or whatever.”
“Which is why I signed up for this appalling, underpaid sham of a so-called job doing delivery.”
“Why?”
“Because a little birdie told me you’re addicted to these cookies, and given how hard those vampires out front have made it to leave the building, I figured it was only a matter of time before you ordered in.”
“No.” I was grudgingly impressed by her tactics, but that’s not what I was asking. “Why did you want to talk to me in the first place?”
“You just said. Because you’re on our side. Because you agree with us.”