Erica shook her head and started to cry. “Cause I know, Miss Civil. I wouldn’t let it happen.”
The girl actually believed she could protect her younger sister. She believed she knew everything. But none of us knew. Not even me. Without the ability to vocalize, India was virtually defenseless. And Erica was just a child herself. Ty was right. I hadn’t asked enough questions.
“Shit!” I hissed as I dropped the needle onto the tray and snapped the glove off. I could hear Mrs. Seager talking in the next room, but in my ears her voice sounded like whack wick whack.
India’s eyes widened. Usually when the younger sister met my eye, it was pure adoration. She completely trusted me, and I often found myself fighting back a motherly feeling, which was not at all anything I had ever imagined for myself. I had never longed for children in the way that some little girls did. I did not dream of a wedding or husband. I wanted a career, a mission other than motherhood and wifehood. The choices in those days felt stark to me.
I emptied the needle’s contents into the sink before filling a second syringe with the medication and emptying it into the sink, too.
“Miss Civil?”
“You can’t tell nobody I didn’t give y’all this shot today, hear?” I spoke quickly, hating myself for doubting their innocence and honesty, but also knowing that this decision I was making was potentially disastrous for us all.
Erica nodded.
That day was the beginning for me. I knew that the next step was for me to convince the rest of the nurses to stop giving the drug to anybody at all. Not just minors. An impossible but necessary task.
I picked up my clipboard and wrote in elegant script a chart full of lies.
EIGHTEEN
We can’t anymore,” I told Alicia one afternoon, a week after the girls had visited the clinic. We were in the break room, and it was time to close the place up. I’d cornered her next to the coffeepot.
“Can’t what?”
“Give the patients any more of these shots. I took the Williams sisters off birth control completely.”
She paused. For a moment, I didn’t know what she was going to say. Then she surprised me. “I feel the same way. I haven’t been giving it, either.”
“You haven’t?”
“Child, I put two of my patients on the pill. I just changed it on their chart. Said they wanted to switch.”
“Good idea.”
“But you know it won’t work. Mrs. Seager orders all the meds. Plus, the grown women can remember to take the pill; the younger ones I’m not so sure.”
“Alicia, that’s the thing. My girls ain’t even sexual.”
“Not yet.”
“You sound like the white folks.”
“That’s not fair, and you know it.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry. Have you talked to Ty?”
“Yeah, I talk to him all the time,” she said.
“Seem like y’all talk to each other more than you talk to me.” I wiped the coffee stains from the counter.
“Ty told me he ran into your daddy and told him about the Depo studies.”
“I heard. That boy trying to incite a riot.”
“Ty’s mama supposed to be looking into it, but we haven’t heard nothing from her yet. I think she know some people up in Washington.”
Val entered the room carrying the bucket of cleaning supplies. “What are you two carrying on about over there?”
“I’m trying to convince Civil to let me borrow the extra cap in her bag until I can get a new one. I lost mine.”
I had not even noticed her bare head.
“I’m surprised Mrs. Seager didn’t say anything.” Val took a rag from her bucket and wiped down the table. She was becoming more like a mother to the younger nurses, keeping us in line. I think Mrs. Seager appreciated Val the most because she did some of the management work, freeing Mrs. Seager from the brunt of it.
“I been trying to avoid her, hoping she won’t notice.”
Mrs. Seager stopped in the doorway. “Notice what? That you forgot your cap? If you forget it again, you will receive a demerit. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Mrs. Seager.”
When she was gone, Val pointed at me. “Your fault. If you’d given her your cap when she first asked, she would’ve been wearing one just now.”
“You sure are poking your nose in everybody’s business today,” I said.
“Yes, have you ever heard of an A and B conversation?” Alicia piped up.
“Please C your way out.” I finished Alicia’s line and we started to bust up laughing.
We quieted as Val aimed a rag at us. “Think you know everything, and don’t know nothing. Now go get the broom and sweep up this floor.”
Lori came in with the brooms. She passed them to Alicia and me. We divided up the rooms and began.
* * *
? ? ?
AFTER THE GIRLS visited the clinic, I took two packs of birth control pills from the supply closet with the intention of teaching them how to swallow them. I was scared of getting into trouble if Mrs. Seager found out I hadn’t given them their shots, but I was also disturbed by the possibility of them getting pregnant. They weren’t sexual, but they could be. Let me tell you something: I still believed in the mission of the clinic. Women needed access to reliable birth control and information about their reproductive health. And I did not believe in minors becoming pregnant under any circumstances. I was sure enough the deputy Mrs. Seager believed I was, and I had a duty. I was as much a bona fide member of the Talented Tenth as I was an acolyte of Booker T. Washington. Rise and lift the race. But also work like hell to pull up those bootstraps.
First task: Get them out of that shanty and into a real home. Second task: Get them into school. Erica was thirteen years old and hadn’t been in school in more than three years, but I managed to get her into summer school. She wasn’t the first child from out in the country to jump into school late. I had been trying hard not to judge Mace on this. After their mother died, Mace had let the girls’ education fall by the wayside. It was plain old irresponsible, and I wanted to tell him so, but I held my tongue.
Third task: Keep them from becoming pregnant. The grandmother and father had given their blessing for birth control, and I was obligated to do their bidding, wasn’t I? Yet I kept the pills in my purse and never handed them over. I just couldn’t do it for some reason.
It was more difficult finding a school for India. The week after their appointment at the clinic, I picked up the paperwork to have her tested. I didn’t fully understand the girl’s abilities because she did not talk. The woman at the school had asked if she was trainable, and I said that I thought she was. I contacted a doctor who could administer the test the school required; he told me the testing fee would be forty-five dollars. I told him that was awful that he charged poor people that much money, and he had the nerve to say, I’m not charging them, I’m charging you. Old buzzard.
I called Ty to see if he would go with me to the doctor’s office. I wanted to chat with him more about this Depo issue. When he got in the car, he was wearing a suit. I was glad he had dressed up. How Black men dressed mattered to white folks.
“Look at you,” I said.