Before Erica could answer, Mrs. Williams entered the room, wiping her hands on a towel tucked into the waistband of her dress. “How you doing, Miss Civil?”
“Fine, you?” I tore my eyes away from the girls.
“I can’t complain.”
“Here.” I held out a brown paper sack to Mrs. Williams.
“What’s this?”
“A gift from my mama.”
She drew the white leather Bible out of the bag.
“Ooh, look at this.”
“She said it’s for your living room. And right here”—I pointed to the gold lettering on the front—“it says ‘Williams Family.’？”
The grandmother’s eyes grew wet. India pulled at the book, trying to see it. I would need to bring more sanitary napkins. I’d have to show her how to use them.
“My big mama had a Bible like this. I remember some of the passages she used to read. I can recite them to you as if I read it with my own two eyes.” She said it without the complicated defensiveness her son had displayed. Mrs. Williams’s mother had been literate, and she was proud of it.
“My mama always said if you open a Bible and put it out, the house will be blessed,” I told her.
“Amen to that.” She tucked the book underneath her arm. “Every time you step foot in that front door you are going to know we doing everything we can to honor this gift you and the good Lord done brought us.”
“You’re so welcome.” I looked at my watch. “Y’all ready?”
The girls laced up their shoes and followed me out of the house. In the vestibule, I held tightly to the handrail. The news that India had started menstruating could not have come at a worse time. If Mrs. Seager had been on shaky ground before, there would be no disputing her determination to continue giving the shot once she found out.
Since discovering the potential dangers of the drug, I had given two more Depo shots to women, mothers desperate for reliable birth control. I had been unable to convince them to switch over to pills. My head was hurting over what I was charged to do to the Williams girls.
When the clinic was in sight, I turned to Erica and said, “I want to ask you a question, Erica, and I’m asking this question as your nurse.” I put the car in park and turned to her. “Has a boy ever touched you?”
“What you mean?” she asked, but from the look on her face I could tell she knew exactly what I meant. I should have asked her this question sooner.
“Do you . . . mess around with boys?”
She quickly shook her head.
I wanted to make sure she understood. “What I mean is, do you ever do anything with boys that might . . . make a baby?”
She shook her head again.
“Do you know how to make a baby?”
She paused and then said slowly, “Yeah.”
“Okay, and have you ever done that before?”
She shook her head.
I didn’t know what to think exactly. I still didn’t understand why they had been put on Depo in the first place. “You ever kissed a boy?”
“Miss Civil, you acting strange.”
“Just answer the question!”
“Miss Civil, you ever seen any boys around our farm? Other than them little white boys that be throwing rocks at us all the time?”
“You didn’t stay on the farm all the time. You must have seen other kids your age. You used to go to school.”
She gave me a look as if to say I was crazy or a fool or both.
“I’m sorry, baby. Let’s go inside,” I said.
Inside the clinic, all three exam rooms were occupied, so I asked them to sit and wait. When a room became available, I called them back. The two sisters went to the restroom together to pee in their cups. When they returned, I told them to take off their clothes and put on gowns. While they undressed, I stepped into the hallway and lined up everything on two trays. One tray held the items I needed for the exam. The speculum. Spatula. Brush. A second tray for the medicine. Alcohol. Cotton balls. Needles. Medicine. Bandages.
On the day of my abortion, the woman ordered me to undress from the waist down, and I remember thinking that I would not even remove my shirt for the most significant day of my life. I had never even had a vaginal exam before I became pregnant. My daddy had thought it unnecessary, and sex was not something Mama and I ever talked about.
I entered the exam room and carefully placed the tray on the counter. The girls stepped on the scale one at a time and I wrote down the numbers. India climbed up on the table. I wrapped a blood pressure cuff around her arm. Erica was excited by the cuff and her eyes widened as she watched it inflate on her sister’s arm.
A rap at the door. Mrs. Seager opened it. “Check them for infections and sexually transmitted diseases,” she said as if they were not sitting right there in front of her.
I held the chart up to hide my face. “Yes, ma’am.”
After she closed the door behind her I pulled out the stirrups. Erica climbed up onto the table and leaned back. She propped up her knees. I could hear my breath raking in and out of my nose. I tried to swallow. My throat would not open, and I thought I might choke.
There had been no pain medication for me that day and I never saw the tool the woman used. Beneath my cries, I remember hearing Miss Pope call out my name in an anguished voice. After it was over, I was grateful for her, but I regretted not asking Ty to come with me. It was part of the reason he could not understand. He had not been there. The moment I got off the table was the moment I pulled away from him and our relationship. We simply could not be together after that.
“Miss Civil?”
“Sit up. Sit up.” I slammed the stirrups back into the table. I could not look Erica in the face. “Roll up your sleeve.”
I moistened the cotton ball with alcohol and dabbed at her shoulder.
“So why did they start y’all on the shots in the first place?” I picked up the vial and stuck the needle in. I opened up the syringe, filled it with medicine.
“This lady came around to our house one day and told my daddy she was taking us to the clinic to make sure we don’t have no babies. I think she near about scared my daddy to death. He always say he don’t know what to do with girls without a mama.”
I squeezed a burst of air out of the needle.
“And did anybody ever ask you if you had messed with boys before?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Didn’t your grandmama ask y’all no questions about such?”
“Grandmama, she . . . she just kind of give up after Mama died. A lot of days, she don’t even get out of bed.”
Erica squeezed her eyes shut. I held the needle right next to her shoulder. When the girls were first brought to the clinic, Erica had been twelve years old and India ten. And no one had ever bothered to ask them if they were even menstruating. I believed that both girls were virgins. But here we were inserting what could be poison into them on the off chance that one of them might become sexual.
Or raped. There it was. The unthinkable word. My hand began to shake.
“Any grown men . . . ever . . . touched or messed with you or your sister?”
“You scaring me, Miss Civil.”
“India can’t talk,” I whispered. “How can we be sure nobody never messed with her?” I held the needle close to her arm.