Chapter Thirty-Two #2
“You’ve been detained for trafficking a minor, for aiding and abetting a murder. You don’t get to order food and your purse.”
“I have rights,” I said. “I think. Basic human … something? My lawyer is on her way.”
“Your rights became less material once you started using my roads to commit heinous crimes.”
I looked at the floor. I wished I weren’t cowed by this man, but unfortunately I was. “My daughter says I wasn’t committing any crime,” I said softly.
“That gal out there?” Sir jerked a thumb behind him, and I breathed a tiny sigh of relief that Lola and Moth must be here. And a tiny sigh of disappointment that Lola and Moth must be here. “She don’t look old enough to make that assessment.”
“That’s my granddaughter. She’s fifteen. Her aunt—my daughter—is forty-nine. She’s a lawyer. She says it’s my constitutional right to drive to New Mexico.”
I thought he’d argue this point. Or denigrate lady lawyers. Or say he didn’t care.
Instead he nodded. “That opinion is goin’ around. But it is not my position.”
“But you don’t …” I began but couldn’t go on.
“Make the laws?” he finished for me. “That’s true. But I enforce them, which is even better. Making this charge stick ain’t my job. My job is getting dangerous criminals off the street and into this cell where they can’t harm innocent citizens.”
“I’m a little old lady.” Everyone thought it. Most people said it. It did not therefore seem the moment to stand on principle about what Lola derided as ageist patriarchal language (and everyone at Vista View just derided as language). “I’m hardly a dangerous criminal.”
“What makes it tough”—Sir either hadn’t heard what I said or didn’t care—“is how do I know why any two persons are heading to or from New Mexico? And even if I do, when I pull them over and ask, they can just lie. But you?” He cocked an eyebrow below my belt, not that I could wear a belt. “You can’t hide.”
“I didn’t go to New Mexico for an abortion!” I cried, in spite of myself. “Look at me.” I stood with some difficulty. Pain radiated through my back and down both legs.
“But you wanted to.”
I wobbled a little then found my footing. “Even in Texas, wanting to is not illegal.”
“None of it’s illegal if you’re the pregnant mother.
You can’t be prosecuted in any case. You can only be prosecuted for aiding someone else’s abortion.
Which you did. And because you look like you do, the protestors at the clinic yesterday morning knew exactly who you were.
A friend among them called to give me a heads-up.
He even told me what car you were driving.
I have you dead to rights. So don’t be calling requests out from your jail cell like this is a drive-thru. ”
“But I need my medication,” I said.
“Should have thought about that before engaging in abortion trafficking.”
“To live,” I added.
“Look.” He dropped his voice to level with me.
“I’m not trying to be a dick—I’m just a Jesus-loving, God-fearing, red-blooded American running for sheriff.
” So Alice had been right about that part.
“And I can’t send you down just for being evil and unholy.
So let’s call it a draw. Soon your lawyer’s going to show up and there’s no way I’ll be able to hold you, so much as it pains me, you don’t need to worry about growing old in prison. ”
“I already grew old,” I pointed out wearily. I was so tired.
“Exactly,” he said. “So don’t you think it’s someone else’s turn?” He pointed at my belly as if there were any question which someone else he meant.
I was eager to answer, but Mr. Sir turned on the heel of his boots and walked away.
And then?
Then I simply couldn’t wait a moment longer.
One of the million unfortunate things about being old is your bladder leaks a bit now and again, especially under pressure.
This is also one of the million unfortunate things about being pregnant.
So I couldn’t hold it like I used to, even though Mr. Sir wasn’t allowing me any food or drink.
Therefore I was sorry—and angry and embarrassed—to feel wetness between my legs, but I was not surprised.
Then I realized it wasn’t pee but that my water had broken.
Then I realized it wasn’t water but blood.
“Help!” I screamed. Nothing.
“Sir? Please, I need help. I need a doctor. There’s a lot of blood.” Nothing.
“Mr. Sir! I know you can hear me. If I die in here, if the pupa—baby does, who will be the murderer then?” Nothing.
“Someone help me!” I thought I was screaming still, calling out, and it was a small station, and surely someone could hear me, Mr. Sir, or maybe Lola with her young ears, or maybe my children had already arrived.
Maybe Moth would hear me and fight his way to my side, and I would cry in his arms, and he would make it better, as he did, just by being there.
Being here. But the other possibility was I was whispering, or horsely begging no one, or murmuring feverishly through a haze of pain and cramping and fear. In a cage. All alone.
Sometime later—I could not have even guessed how long, and if you’d told me five minutes or five hours or five days, I would have believed it—I opened my eyes to see:
the floor. I was lying on the cold, surely filthy concrete floor of a jail cell. Napping? Passed out? Who could say.
blood. A lot of it. I seemed to be swimming in it, like a pond, but I wasn’t swimming, so it couldn’t have been that deep or else I would have drowned. Or maybe I had drowned?
the toes of Mr. Sir’s boots rounding the corner.
What he had been saying was “Can’t a man take a shit in his own precinct without—” But then he arrived at the bars of my cell and abruptly stopped saying that and instead said, “Fuck me sideways,” which I assumed was not a request of me, but by that point, I would not have sworn to anything.
It all started—really, truly, finally started—in a helicopter.
I probably would have been terrified and in pain and still enraged, but they gave me an IV with drugs, so it wasn’t so bad.
I was vaguely aware that I’d gotten my purse back and been wrapped in a blanket and that Moth and Lola had been allowed to ride—fly—with me, so I lay quietly and tried to enjoy the trip.
I’d never been in a helicopter before. Lola held one hand and Moth held—squeezed, pulped, you might say—the other, and for the moment, for that moment, it was enough.
We landed on the roof. I would like to have seen the view, but what I saw instead was even better: Dr. Kim.
Dr. Kim and a whole team of other doctors and nurses.
No police. No would-be sheriffs. No handcuffs.
No one who was eager to trade my life for someone else’s just to make a point.
There was a lot of shouting and rushing and wind from being on the roof and from the blades of the helicopter, and Lola was crying, and Moth was rubbing slow circles on her back while explaining something—so competently, so unshakably—to Dr. Kim, and far, far away, I could dimly tell that whatever was wet down there was getting wetter, but I’d made it, alive, to somewhere people would aim to keep it that way. And that was a relief.
I closed my eyes.