The elevator bell dinged and I slipped past the person waiting for it. When I got off on the fourth floor, I realized I hadn’t waited long enough to hear the room number, and now I regretted it. The floor was relatively quiet, but I thought I could make out the faint sound of someone moaning. I turned down the east corridor. It sounded like India’s faintly unintelligible sounds. At the last door, a chart stuck out of a clear plastic folder, and I saw the name Williams. I picked it up and flipped through the pages, reading quickly.
Dear God. I pushed the door open.
The two sisters were lying on beds opposite each other, India curled into a fetal position, her head between her knees, Erica holding a hand out toward her sister. When I entered, Erica turned to me, a panicked look in her eyes.
“Miss Civil!” She reached out her arms.
“Erica.” I went to her and smoothed her hair back. Her forehead was cold and wet.
“Miss Civil. Oh, I hurt so bad.”
“What you say?” I lifted the covers. Blood-soaked bandages were wrapped around her abdomen.
“They done something to us, Miss Civil. I thought we was coming for shots. But they done something to us. They say we can’t have no babies.”
Heat rose up behind my eyes, and the room fell away. I held Erica in my arms, the sound of India moaning behind me, her voice thick, a raw sound. The room smelled of blood and urine and disinfectant.
Erica started to cry. “I was doing everything you told me to do.”
“Shhh, shhh.” I rubbed her forehead with my hand. “Hush, baby. Don’t talk.” I turned around and tried to take hold of India. She was holding on to her legs tightly, her eyes squeezed shut. “Come on, sweetheart. Let loose. Let loose.”
Now, you know how some white folks feel about Black bodies. They think we can tolerate pain better than them . . . Some of them even thought syphilis couldn’t kill us. I picked up a cord on the side of the bed and pressed the buzzer over and over. A few minutes later, a nurse stuck her head in the door.
“Have these patients been given something for their pain?”
She looked at my cap, which, though it didn’t look that different from hers, was falling halfway off my head. Both of my knee-highs were down around my ankles.
“Excuse me, do you work here?”
“Call the goddamn doctor!” I yelled, and she escaped through the door.
India let go of her legs and went limp, her cries easing into whimpers. I did not need to look under her bandage. I knew there would be an incision running down the front of her abdomen past her navel. I had learned about laparoscopies in nursing school.
A doctor entered. He had gray hair and a neatly trimmed beard. He gave me the same look the nurse had, then said, “Do you work on this floor?”
“I’m from the Montgomery Planning Clinic, and these girls are my patients. What have you done?”
“These girls were scheduled for a tubal ligation this morning. The supervisor, Linda Seager, brought them in personally. Perhaps you should check your own records so that you can keep up with your patients better.”
“A tubal ligation?”
“The surgery went well. They can go home in two days.”
“A tubal ligation?”
“You say you’re from the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic?” He had a concerned look on his face, as if he were beginning to think it was possible that I was lying.
“She’s eleven goddamn years old!” Now I was crying, and I could hear a commotion in the hallway. I pressed India’s face into my chest, as if to shield her from him. “And they need pain medication.”
“Get them some—”
“I’m going to find your daddy and let him know what happened, alright? And I’m going to make this right, do you understand me? I’m going to make this right.”
I stumbled out of the room. Down in the lobby, there was a pay phone, and I used it to call Mace at work. I told the supervisor it was an emergency and they let him come to the telephone, but it took a long time. When he finally picked up, I told him what had happened and there was a long silence before he said, “What you saying?” and then the line went dead because my time was up. I dug around in my purse, but I didn’t have any more change.
When I got in the car, I didn’t know where I was going or what I was going to do next. I could hear a rattling in my chest, like paper crackling. I turned left out of the parking lot, hit the gas pedal. I never saw the other car, though I was told later that there was one, and as I crossed through the intersection all I remember was the impact, the whirl of the car spinning, and my body being tossed around, light as air, like a rag doll.
PART II
TWENTY-ONE
When I say to you that what happened to those girls was the greatest hurt of my life, I am speaking the God’s honest truth. To understand that statement, you have to understand where I came from. When I was growing up Daddy had a good practice, and it afforded us some things. We owned our own house, took vacations. I got my hair done in a real beauty shop, not somebody’s kitchen. Our little family managed to live dignified in undignified times. Daddy shined his shoes every morning. Mama wore earrings. These little acts might seem simple to you, but baby, let me tell you. They held back the storm.
In order to survive the humiliations of Jim Crow life, we sustained one another through laughter, food, music. And to that end, in the clutch of a community’s embrace, Centennial Hill nourished us, and I was protected from the worst of it. It was a place where folks saved the tears for church and left their burdens on the altar.
It seemed unfathomable to me that anything like this would ever happen to someone close to me. Even with all I knew about the cruelty of humans—the beatings, the murders, the disappearances—I had still somehow underestimated people, and the girls had paid a price for that naiveté. No wonder my car got hit. It was a lesson on the laws of physics. There are consequences in life.
“Are you alright?”
A lady helped lower me to the curb. My knees hurt as if they’d been skinned. My car was still in the middle of the street, the entire passenger side dented. I touched my forehead. “Am I bleeding?”
“Well, the glass scratched you up, but you look alright to me. I don’t think you need no ambulance.”
I held on to her. She was wearing a white shirt, though she did not seem to care that I might get it soiled. My palms were pricked and raw.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. When I got here, I found you here on this curb. I never saw another car. I’m sure they’ll find it.”
“I need to go. I have somewhere to go.” I started to rise, but she pushed me back down.
“Which hospital do you work at? Can I call somebody for you?”
“Hospital?” The front of my uniform was brown and mottled with something funky. I must have vomited on myself. “Can you call my daddy?”
“What’s your daddy’s number, baby?”
I told her, and she repeated the numbers softly.
“Okay, I’ll be right back. You sit here and don’t move.”
The minutes dragged on. I shook my head to clear it, sniffed, wiped the back of my hand across my face, and saw that blood was running from my nose. I smoothed my hand down the side of my dress.