As soon as I got home I asked my mama if we could trade cars. I didn’t want to call any more attention to myself than I already had, and her Pinto was much older than my Colt. I was determined that Mrs. Seager would not be disappointed in me. I was going to have that dragon eating candy out of my hand before it was over and done with.
THREE
I got to admit something to you before I go any further. Something I ain’t shared before, and I pray you’ll understand.
I had an abortion in the spring of 1972.
I was twenty-three years old, a nursing student two months before graduation, ready to start my life. At the time, I planned to work in a hospital, perhaps on the surgical floor. The moment I noticed the telltale signs, I told myself it couldn’t be true. I was supposed to be more than a wife and mother. Even though the baby’s father was Tyrell Ralsey, my best friend since childhood, I was not ready and neither was he. After the procedure, he drove to Tuskegee to see about me. We said little over bowls of cabbage soup. Then he drove home and we did not speak about it for months.
I wanted things to be different for my patients. Through the miracles of birth control, they would plan their pregnancies. I intended to decrease the uncertainty, the unwelcome surprises. If Ty and I had taken the necessary precautions, we wouldn’t have found ourselves in that situation. Most of our patients at the clinic had already learned that lesson the hard way. They’d already had babies or miscarriages. And yes, in some cases, abortions. They usually showed up at the door without an appointment, looking resigned to the fact that they were going to have to share their private business in order to get the help they needed.
Then there was the outreach side. We visited some patients at home because it had been determined that if we did not go out into the community, there would be women we’d never reach. The new nurses were each assigned one off-site case in the beginning. Our load would increase once we’d worked there six months. My home case was out in the country and scared me. I had no idea how I was supposed to talk about sex and birth control in somebody’s front room. On top of that, my two patients were minors. Would the mama and daddy watch while I stuck them with the needle? Just the thought of making a home visit scared the living daylights out of me.
You see, I’d believed in the mission of family planning clinics long before I applied to work in one. I knew that the rate of pregnancy in young unwed mothers in Montgomery was terrible. Earlier that year, the US Supreme Court had ruled that abortion was legal in certain circumstances, but Alabama had not yet caught up with the law. And even if safe hospital abortions had been made available, the procedure was expensive and out of reach for most poor folks. The best solution had always been a prophylactic one. Although I refused to believe there was such a thing as an unwanted child, there was such a thing as an unwanted pregnancy—and I could speak to that firsthand.
On Monday morning I set out for the clinic in my mama’s car though I could have walked. It was only two miles from my house, but Daddy insisted that I drive. He said he didn’t want anybody harassing me in my uniform. That may have been true, but I also think he wanted me to drive because he prided himself on it. Having a car was further evidence of our status. I rolled down the window and let the wind blow across my face.
I arrived at the clinic early that morning, but I wasn’t the only one. Eager Seager was already walking around checking lightbulbs. The bulb in the waiting room lamp popped as she turned it on. She seemed satisfied at this discovery and marched off in search of a fresh one in the supply closet.
The receptionist left the appointment book open on the desk so we could see the schedule as we walked by. Usually, there weren’t many names in the book. As I said, most women just walked in. After the patient signed in, the receptionist would put their file in the plastic slot holder outside the examining room door. We worked in rotations. Whoever was next would take the file and step into the room. During training, I’d raised my hand and asked a question. Wouldn’t the patients feel more comfortable if they saw the same nurse each time they came in? Mrs. Seager had just scrunched her face at me.
I didn’t see any complicated cases that first day—mostly women coming in for birth control. One woman complained of pain when she urinated. I prayed she didn’t have a venereal disease. She wore a satin blouse and skirt, like a secretary might wear. A good job uniform in a city where many Black women wore aprons. The test came back positive for a urinary tract infection.
The clinic didn’t serve male patients at all, and during orientation Mrs. Seager emphasized that wasn’t our mission. But doesn’t family planning include men? After getting my second shutdown, I kept my mouth closed for the rest of the training.
* * *
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BY AFTERNOON IT was time for me to go see my off-site patient, but I was dreading it so I stopped by Daddy’s office first. In the old days, the office had been just a few blocks over from the clinic. Holt Street had been home to a lot of Black businesses, but the interstate project cut right through the old neighborhood and he’d moved over to Mobile Road. Daddy still mumbled about the project and how it had destroyed the Holt Street businesses. As Montgomery grew and expanded its boundaries, Black folks got shoved this way and that, he complained. He wasn’t incorrect, but without political representation there was little we could do in those years.
When I entered, Glenda was sitting at the front desk, eating. She was a light-skinned woman with a smile that took up her whole face. In all the years I’d known her, Glenda had never called in sick. Same bouffant hairstyle, same baggy dresses. Daddy called her good-ole-Glenda. She did it all—nurse, receptionist, office manager. Her loyalty to the practice always made me feel guilty for not going to work there as Daddy’s only child.
“Late lunch?”
“Folks been in and out that door all day. I don’t think your daddy has had a chance to put anything in his stomach. When he comes out that room, can you stick this sandwich in his hand?”
I took the foil-wrapped sandwich, and Glenda buzzed me through the door. At the end of the hall, the doorway to Daddy’s office was cracked open. Books covered every surface. Even though Daddy loved the sciences, he was a born literary man. He especially loved poetry and had a whole shelf of collections. He was from the generation that memorized poems, and he would recite lines as a bedtime ritual when I was a little girl. We loved to talk politics in Alabama, and if you asked Daddy about the state of the country, he might reply with, “If this is peace, this dead and leaden thing / Then better far the hateful fret, the sting.” Half the time, I didn’t know what he was talking about, but I always loved the song of verse on his tongue.
“You come back and see me if it doesn’t clear up,” I could hear him saying. When he was finishing up with a patient, he always sounded the same. He’d raise his voice and add a tone of finality to it. I had probably sounded like that with my first patients that morning. I was my daddy’s daughter, after all.
I settled on the couch. All the pictures on the wall were of me at various stages of my life. The wall of an only child. One of them, a picture I’d forgotten, caught my eye. I was lying on my back on the dining room table. Mama had laid me there on top of a lace tablecloth, and a photographer friend of hers had snapped the black-and-white shot. The man had captured the sun streaming through the window, a streak of it right across my face. I knew every detail of that photo. I had stared at it for long stretches as a child, wondered at the love my mother must have had for me in those first days of motherhood. My hair was hidden beneath a cap and my eyes were closed.