“Hey, Evelyn, are you sticking around for a bit?”
“I hadn’t planned on it. It kind of seems like things are over now. I think I got here too late. Everyone’s leav—”
“Oh, things are far from over,” Paula says. “They’ve only just begun.”
Evelyn chuckles. “Now, why am I not surprised to hear you say that?”
Paula leans in toward Evelyn like a gossipy teenager. “My friend Cathy there is one of the organizers.” She indicates a tall woman with a long brown ponytail that falls nearly to her waist. She’s built like a marsh reed, but her face is fierce. “They brought a coffin in on the caravan, strapped to the roof of the car, you know, like a symbol for all our sisters who have died from back-alley abortions!” She tilts her head back and throws the words up into the sky.
They’re a shocking bunch, these women. But then, that’s really the whole point, isn’t it? To shock the patriarchy into change.
“Yeah, I, uh, saw it on the news,” Evelyn says.
“They used it to hold all their backpacks. Kind of clever, right? But now they want to deliver it right to Trudeau’s front door. His abortion law is so restrictive, it might as well not even exist. A whole panel of men have to decide whether a woman deserves to be allowed to abort? I mean, fuck that, right? Fuck that!” She bellows into the heavens again.
There’s a smattering of applause from the two dozen or so women remaining on the lawn.
“Yeah, you’re right,” Evelyn says. “There aren’t exactly a lot of safe options.”
She hitches her purse up onto her shoulder, readjusts her jacket. She hasn’t had so much as an infection happen in the procedures she’s performed so far, and she’s damn proud of that fact. It’s one of the reasons she does what she does, to help prevent deaths from botched abortions. Those stories are still in the news on a regular basis, but the laws refuse to catch up to the grim reality.
“That’s an understatement, Eve,” Paula says darkly. “And that’s exactly why we want to go do this special little delivery. They say Trudeau isn’t even in town today, and that’s why he wouldn’t meet with us. But fancy him coming home from wherever the hell he is to find a giant black coffin waiting for him on his stoop.”
The image of the coffin stirs something deep inside Evelyn. “I want to come, too. I want to help.”
Paula claps her on the shoulder. “I knew I liked you, Eve. Let’s get this show on the road.”
* * *
The Prime Minister’s house is only a five-minute drive from the Parliament buildings. Evelyn’s grateful it isn’t any longer, given that she’s squished in the backseat of the car with three other women. Paula’s hip bones dig into hers on one side, while the hard plastic of the car door presses uncomfortably on the other.
The women are all talking excitedly most of the way there, but a hush falls over the car in front of 24 Sussex Drive. Not surprisingly, a security gate with two guards blocks them from continuing up the gravel drive to the front doors.
“Figured we wouldn’t be able to actually drop it on his doorstep, but we can leave it here, at least.” Paula nudges Evelyn in the ribs. “Open the door.”
Evelyn extracts herself from the car, Paula on her heel as the other women pile out of the vehicle, too.
“Thought we might be seeing you ladies!” one of the security guards calls. “We got a heads-up that you might try to pay the Prime Minster a visit, but I’m afraid he’s not at home.”
“But we have a gift for him!” Paula shouts, indicating the black coffin strapped to the roof of the car. “Let us up to the door to deliver it properly, would you?”
“Most certainly not, ma’am.”
“Thought it was worth asking.”
“M-hm. You can be on your way now.”
“Not just yet, my friend.”
Paula and two of the other women are already unstrapping the coffin from the car.
“I’d really rather you not do that,” the guard calls to them.
“Too late!”
“Ma’am…”
Evelyn sees the other officer take out his radio. He’s muttering into it, facing back toward the manor. Backup will be coming, and she’d really rather not be arrested if they can avoid it.
“Paula, we should go,” Evelyn says.
But the women have the coffin in hand now, and Evelyn instinctively lunges forward to pick up the sagging foot of it as they carry it together, like pallbearers, their faces downcast, shouldering the weight of all the dead women’s bodies it represents. They lay it down just feet from the guards, who swallow and stare at it with pinched mouths as though they’ve truly just been delivered a corpse.
The women stand for a long moment as the golden late afternoon sun warms their faces and a breeze rustles the leaves on the Prime Minister’s lawn.
“This is for Mildred,” the driver of their car, Cathy, finally says, a tear shimmering on her cheek. She turns and heads to the car, her long brown hair trailing behind her.
A pause.
“For my sister,” another says, then follows her comrade. Each of the women steps forward in turn, naming their lost loved one.
“For my sister.”
“Roberta.”
“For my best friend.”
Staring at the coffin, Evelyn sees all of their faces: her friends at St. Agnes’s, her baby daughter, the two dozen women she’s provided abortions for, the thousands more she’ll provide between now and her eventual retirement. All the faces that led her to become Dr. Evelyn Taylor. She’s in this now, and she will be forever.
“For all of them,” she adds quietly, squinting into the sun. She walks back to the car with a heavy tread, barely registering the police sirens on the wind.
* * *
On Monday, Evelyn finds herself on the suited arm of a male ally of the cause, a man named Allan whom she met only ten minutes ago. They’re waiting in a long line to get into Question Period.
Beards, Paula called the men. Decoys, so no one would notice all the single women entering the galleries in groups, or on their own. “Too many women that interested in Question Period on a single day will raise alarm bells, unfortunately,” she said with a frown.
Paula approaches Evelyn and Allan now, sporting a blue shift dress and looking most unlike the version of Paula that Evelyn spent the weekend with, scouring secondhand shops for dresses and gloves to swap for their jeans and sweaters. They have to look the part of dignified ladies.
“The auto workers’ union got the chains for us,” she says. “Come here, Eve, hold out your bag. Allan, cover us.”
Allan turns his back on the women, feigning interest in the stone carvings in the vaulted ceiling above his head. Paula lifts a length of chain out of her giant handbag and lowers it as slowly as she can into Evelyn’s. The bustle and chatter of the people around them is noisy, but the clinking of the chains is still audible.
“How are we going to get them out of our bags once we’re inside?” Evelyn asks in an undertone. “They’re going to hear us, see us doing it.”
Paula shrugs. “Just do your best. It’s a protest. It won’t be smooth and I’m sure it’ll go sideways at some point. But it’s the media coverage that counts, and if we can get Question Period shut down, so much the better. The point is, it’s a bunch of men in there making decisions on our behalf, so we need to interrupt the decision-making. It’s our turn to have a voice now, Eve. And remember, if you get hauled away by security, don’t give them your name unless they absolutely force you to. We don’t think they have the resources to actually arrest us all, and it would be a bad headline, anyway.” Transfer of the chains complete, she adds, “Thanks, Allan!”