The Space of Possible
I’m sitting in the cramped hallway of Planned Parenthood and contemplating the mysterious stains on the upholstery of this chair. Something brown is crusted to my right, and something milky has seeped into the fabric to the left. I wonder what the previous sitters did to create these kinds of stains. Like, were they eating vanilla ice cream while waiting for the results of their pregnancy test? Were they bleeding? The artificial-lemon tang of antiseptic, and the meaty-pepperoni smell of someone microwaving a hot pocket, mingle in the air. Something about this olfactory adventure clashes in my brain, creating a whiny buzzing. I’m about to experience something life-changing, and someone else is microwaving their lunch. I am wearing jeans and a purple striped sweatshirt, and I am crying. I’m twenty-three and waiting to find out the definitive results of my pregnancy test. I’m nearly positive I’m pregnant. I am terrified. Twenty minutes from now, they will shove an ultrasound wand inside of me to take a picture of the interior of my womb. The nurse will say, “There is your baby,” and I will wince at the use of such concrete language. The truth is, at the moment, it is little more than a cluster of cells the size of my pinky nail. I will glance sideways at the screen and see something vaguely lima bean shaped in the black and white shadows there, and squeeze my eyes shut, because I have already made my decision, and I do not need anyone to force me to make this a baby in my mind. Even now, as I write this years later, I consider all the ways I am supposed to feel ashamed; all the ways I have been conditioned to doubt my choice; all the ways our world has tried to silence this story. But on this day, I am twenty-three, and afraid, and still unsure whether I’m an adult myself, and I grind my teeth and turn away, because I know I am making the right choice.
***
I’m sitting next to you at the bar, tongue coated in caramel from the scotch cocktail we are sipping. I’m twenty-eight now and you are thirty-four. We have spent most of the evening laughing and you smile at me, face flushed with candlelight and alcohol, but there is a hint of sadness behind the mischief in your eyes, and you say, “Can you imagine what our lives would have been, if we had made the other choice?” Your smile whispers: I know we chose right, and sometimes I think about the other life—the parallel life. I see images of it flash across your face, and find, strangely, that I can picture it too.
***
When we discuss my pregnancy, you sit across from me at the coffee shop, and while I try not to vomit from the overwhelming odor of espresso, you break down all the numbers. You show me a printout of a spreadsheet illustrating the specifics of how to make this work. “It’s just math,” you say, and you tell me you want to do this with me. This is not very far from how this conversation goes in the other version of this story. But in that one, you say, “I think we could figure this out,” and something about wanting to be excited when we decide to have a kid. I am moved by your willingness to support me in whatever decision I feel is best, but I am crying, and think, well, I’m definitely not excited. I am horrified. In this story though, I’m convinced by your tenderness and enthusiasm and can picture him with my green eyes, and your dark curls, and a smile like your sister’s, and I say, “Okay. Let’s have this baby.”
***
On the day of my abortion, I am not crying. I chew the inside of my cheek until it bleeds, and you hold my hand as we walk toward the metal detector at the entrance of Planned Parenthood. There are only two pro-life protesters here today, and they are not aggressive. They seem to be simply suggesting we make a different choice, rather than demanding it. Still, I find myself marveling at the fact that we have to be searched and metal detected for me to get an abortion—as though this is not already traumatic enough. I leave you in the waiting room. This is for my protection they tell us, and for a moment, I feel sad for all the women who need to be protected from people who allegedly love them. I also feel lucky to have you and wish I did not have to leave you sitting alone on stained upholstery, while they whisk me away, strip me down to my underwear, and clean me out. You wave at me through the shatterproof glass, and I am overcome with sensation—I know the exact moment it happened—remember your hands; your lips; the herbaceous scent of your freshly washed hair as it fell across your face; the way you grasped me, trying to absorb me through your fingertips; your kisses, voracious; the way our bodies moved together as though they were the same body. I remember thinking, even then, that something was different that night. They shove me into a tiny room, like a broom closet, and prick my finger to take my iron levels. I watch red ooze out of me and find myself appreciating how beautiful humans are on the inside; we really are something magnificent. In the pre-procedure room, the counselor—the fourth one I have seen throughout this process—a woman with cropped brown hair and a nose ring, apologizes to me. She looks at my chart and says, “I am so sorry. Just know you didn’t do anything wrong. Sometimes IUDs slip out.” I strain a smile and think, I know I didn’t do anything wrong. She asks me one more time if I am set on my decision, and I tell her I would like partial anesthesia, thanks.
***
I have an atrocious pregnancy, with morning sickness long past the first trimester, and I vomit so frequently you begin to assume every day will include cleaning up some form of my bodily fluids. You start carrying a bucket and a towel everywhere we go, which is particularly awkward when we ride the subway, but somehow, we manage to laugh through most of it. The birth is difficult. I am in labor for too long and though we had wanted a natural birth, I beg for drugs, and end up in a haze of pleasure masking pain. When I come back from my pharmaceutical vacation, I find myself crying. There is a waft of disinfected lemons in the air, and you smile down at me as you hold our son, and I hear our mothers whispering together from somewhere behind a closed door.
***
When they wheel me into the procedure room, they ask my name and confirm that I still want partial anesthesia, and I think, who the fuck wants to feel it when they get the insides of them suctioned out? But now is not the time for jokes, so I just nod, and they tell me I will feel a slight pinch in my left arm. I try to smile, but find, despite my conviction, that I want to cry. There is the now-familiar tang of lemon antiseptic in the air, and I wonder for a moment what they had to clean so vigorously. The needle enters my vein with the promised pinch, someone starts counting backwards from ten, and warm bliss seeps into my blood. I am still awake, can hear them talking in the periphery of my consciousness, but I feel awesome. Embraced by the warm arms of anesthesia, I sigh and savor the feeling of being wrapped in a fuzzy blanket from the inside.
***
We live in a cramped one-bedroom apartment which we can barely afford. The ceiling in the kitchen drips brown water into a pot with absolute consistency: plunk, plunk, plunk. I chase roaches around with a broom and we both work too much, at jobs we hate. Our friends see more of our son than we do, and they keep assuring us this is fine. It takes a village, they say, and we try to convince ourselves this is true. Only true things become clichés, right? We still love each other. This is true in both stories. Though in this one, we remain together, and in the other, we don’t, and in both, I am unsure which would have been better.
***
When I come down from the clouds of my anesthesiac adventure, though I feel fucking phenomenal, I discover I have been crying and that I feel like something is lost—though I don’t know what exactly—and I can’t seem to remember losing it. I am in a recovery room in a long row of other women, sitting in similar states of foggy silence. A nurse wheels someone through the room; still on the table, she is screaming as though she is in mortal danger. A shriek like a fighting cat—disembodied and feral. I wonder if it is grief making her scream, or if she is one of those unimaginable people who chose no anesthesia. I feel drunk. A nurse brings me orange juice and a sanitary pad the size of a diaper. She tells me not to move, she will be back in five minutes to see if I can be discharged. Through the mist of medication, the cramping begins and blood trickles down the inside of my thighs. I press my eyes shut and try to enjoy the last moments of warmth still percolating through me; to imagine that I am just really fucked up on some amazing drugs, watching the sunset, at a party, on a rooftop somewhere.
***
Our boy is smart and laughs often. As he begins to grow, we discover he is wild and kind, and that his moods snap from exuberant to withdrawn with surprising rapidity. How could they not? He is our child after all, and we both cycle through emotional states with alarming swiftness. Sometimes we worry. Bipolar runs in families, and yours is a formidable family tree. But he is only a toddler, we will have plenty of time to worry about him. We see very little of each other but keep saying this is okay. We work toward moving into an apartment with more space and less insect activity. We will see each other all the time, once you have a higher paying job, and I can work fewer hours at the restaurant. We reminisce about a time, not too long ago, when we were nearly always on a beach somewhere. But we have a different kind of joy now, brought to us in the form of this joint effort—affection made solid. This is what we tell ourselves, anyway.
***
When the nurse finally lets me leave, you are waiting for me on the same stained chair where I left you, and you stand up as I weave toward you. I still feel drunk and giggle this into your neck as you hug me. Pain creeps in now, as my body realizes it has experienced trauma. “What do you want to eat?” “Sushi,” I mumble. We go to our favorite two-for-one sushi place on 7th and 2nd. This place will explode two weeks later, due to a gas leak. The man who will die was our server that day, and when we find this out, years later, I will swallow the salt. But we don’t know this yet, and we eat sushi until we feel sick and smile, and we never talk about how either of us feels.
***
We often talk about how we feel, which is usually stressed, and sometimes blissful, and it takes us years to get used to our new life. New York is an atrocious place to raise a kid and we consider moving, but our friends are here, and despite your spreadsheets and good intentions, we know we can’t do this on our own.
***
I tell you I am fine. And this is mostly true, though I am unable to admit it is possible to be fine and still feel sad. You want to be supportive, don’t want to burden me with your mixed feelings. So, we go on pretending that because we made the right decision, nothing has been lost. Slowly, we stop talking, and gradually we stop fucking, and I wonder sometimes, where exactly along the way I lost you. I continue to insist that I am fine, and you continue to choose to believe me.
***
You get your fancy job, and we find an apartment with an extra bedroom, and a view of the river, and I watch the sunrise every morning, and marvel at the endless hues of pink, and orange, and blue, and lose myself in light. I watch the leaves turn, and the shores freeze, and the snows fall. I watch the sun set, and the ice thaw, and our boy grow, and replace roach hunting with journaling, and we still hardly ever see each other.
***
Silence expands into the corners of our life. I learn it is possible to be lonely even when you are not alone. I also learn something about the nature of fear. My greatest fear had always been getting pregnant. But now, having journeyed through the caverns of fear, I have come out on the other side, not only intact, but transformed. A little harder perhaps, but there is strength in hardness. You never ask me why my shell has grown thick, and I never feel like I can tell you. You begin to think it is because I don’t need you, and it never occurs to you maybe I simply can’t show you how much I do. Eventually, you leave me for one of my friends. Someone soft, who you think needs you more than I. I also learn something about the nature of betrayal. We barely speak for two years. I run away to foreign lands trying to outrun the ways you have hurt me; to rebuild myself into someone you won’t recognize when I see you again. And I learn something about the nature of anger. I am so angry at you for not fighting. For letting me become hard. I know now that you suffered too, and I made no room for your suffering, because if I had let myself be soft for you, I would have simply turned to ash. Still, I am angry at you for not reminding me of all the beauty there had been in my softness. We failed each other. Despite our anger, we continue to work together because we have “projects”—creative children that need to be nurtured. This is what we tell ourselves, anyway. So, we bury the burning bile of hurt, in service of something we want to believe is bigger than ourselves. And slowly, we begin to learn something about the nature of forgiveness. The incandescence of raw anger cools, and we become friends again.
***
Serrana Laure grew up in northern New Mexico. She lives in New York City and holds an M.F.A. from Sarah Lawrence College. Her work has appeared recently in X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine and Prometheus Dreaming. You can find her on twitter @serranalaure.