What They Don’t Know Read online

  I’ve been so wrapped up in this cocoon of It didn’t happen that I didn’t notice time passing. Days blurred together. Saturday was indistinguishable from Tuesday, and a math test that I think happened on a Thursday could very well have been a Monday.

  So it wasn’t until a couple of days ago, when I stared at February stretched out below DaVinci’s Virgin of the Rocks in our Women of the Bible calendar that I noticed.

  Eight weeks.

  Eight weeks since it happened.

  But actually…ten weeks.

  Ten weeks since my last period.

  My mother has spent a lot of my life either pregnant or trying to get pregnant. Since Joanie was born six years ago, she’s been trying to get pregnant one last time, hoping for that elusive second boy. Instead, she’s had two miscarriages.

  Because of this, I know she has pregnancy tests in her bathroom. After dinner, I made sure everyone was occupied with dishes or homework or basketball on the television, and I snuck upstairs into my parents’ bedroom, to their private bathroom. I searched through a couple of drawers before I found two boxes of pregnancy tests. One was open and the other was still sealed. The opened box had one test left in it. My hand hovered over the drawer. If I took the last one, would she notice it was missing? How long ago had she taken the other test? And then there was the question of what to do with the empty box. I couldn’t throw it away at home, but I also couldn’t risk hiding it in my bag, where one of my sisters might see it.

  I swallowed hard. Precious time was slipping away. I couldn’t get caught in my parents’ bathroom. I am not supposed to go into their private space. So I snatched the test and pushed the empty box to the back of the drawer, hoping that if my mother saw it, she would think she’d forgotten to throw out the box. Sliding the test into the waistband of my skirt, I dashed out of the bathroom, past their big king bed, and down the hall to the bathroom I share with my sisters.

  “What were you doing in Mom and Dad’s room?”

  I whirled around. Hannah stood at the top of the stairs, her gaze shifting between me and the door to my parents’ room. I couldn’t look her in the eye. “I…I needed a tissue, and we’re out in our bathroom. In fact,” I said, raising my voice, “can you run down to the basement and grab a box?”

  “Sure.” Hannah gave me another narrow-eyed look, then turned back down the stairs.

  Without breathing, I made it to my bathroom and locked myself inside. Thankfully, we actually were out of tissues, but I only had a few minutes until Hannah would come knocking on the door. I ripped off the wrapping, hitched up my skirt, pulled down my underwear, and crouched over the toilet to pee on the stick.

  Two minutes.

  I had to wait two minutes.

  The last eight weeks passed in a blurry haze, but those two minutes felt like the longest of my life.

  Two minutes in which all I could think about was what if… What if I hadn’t gone down into the basement that day? What if I’d locked the door behind me, or brought a knife down there with me?

  Two minutes and a lifetime later, a bright fuchsia plus sign appeared. It only took two minutes for everything I’ve ever known, everything I’ve ever believed, to be destroyed.

  I hope you never have two minutes like that in your life.

  Signed,

  Mellie Rivers

  February 14

  Late (midnight, maybe?)

  Dear Ms. Tilson,

  I’m lying in bed, and I see my life spill out before me like a knocked-over glass of grape juice that I’m desperately trying to sop up before it reaches the white carpet. It’s slipping away from me, and my fingers aren’t fast enough to stop it before it makes a mess.

  I see my stomach growing, past the point where I can hide it. I see myself walking through the halls of school, students clearing out of my way. Don’t get too close to the pregnant girl. It’s contagious.

  I hear myself saying those words to Mom and Dad: “I’m pregnant.” The whole conversation unfolds in my head. I know exactly how it will go. Mom will cry. Dad will grow tight-faced, his lips white, anger like a tidal wave until it gives way to disappointment and then acceptance. “Well, we’ll just have to deal with it, won’t we?”

  They will ask who the father is. And I will lie. Because even if I told the truth—even if they believed the truth—it would still somehow be my fault. So I’ll wear this pregnancy like a badge of dishonor and become a living, breathing cautionary tale. This is what happens to you if you’re not careful.

  And then I’ll have the baby.

  The juice reaches the carpet and stains it purple.

  I imagine the nurse putting a baby in my arms, screaming, red-faced, every cry a reminder of what happened in that basement.

  And Baby will grow up, and one day he’ll ask, “What was my daddy like?”

  How many lies will I have to tell for the rest of my life?

  He will have won. He will have seeped his way into every fiber of my life, staining everything that was once clean.

  I can feel myself sinking and I haven’t even lived this life yet. But this is it. It’s already been decided, right? I don’t have a choice.

  Do I?

  Signed,

  Mellie Rivers

  February 14

  Dear Ms. Tilson—

  Sometimes the smallest things can break you. It can be completely innocuous, but the littlest detail can catch you, wreck your heart and your soul.

  Something like that happens to me every time I volunteer at the clinic.

  I’m only allowed to volunteer once a week, and since I started volunteering the day I turned sixteen, I’ve never missed a week. There weren’t a lot of appointments—no one wants to go to the doctor’s on Valentine’s Day unless they absolutely have to—but there are always protesters outside, no matter what day it is. I guess they have nothing better to do than tell someone what she should and shouldn’t do with her own body.

  Maybe it’s a bad idea to write about this. Maybe it’s too controversial. But you said to share our innermost thoughts, and while there are some I have to keep safe from everyone, there are some that I can’t keep in. There are some that fill me with so much rage I have to put it somewhere, so I’m trusting you to keep this safe. You said you were trustworthy when you handed out these journals. I hope that’s true.

  Most of the women I escorted in and out of the clinic today weren’t there for abortions. I know this, because many of them told me on their way in. “I’m only here for a mammogram,” they murmured as I held their arms and navigated briskly past the line of protesters.

  I’ve come to know the protesters. Not by name, by their actions. There’s the one I call Hail Mary, because she says the rosary over and over again, really loud, as she paces the line, her wooden rosary beads working their way through her fingers as she recites. There’s Bible Thumper, who pounds on his Bible as he screams at the top of his lungs about the sanctity of life and how motherhood is the only true path for women. And there’s the one I think of as You Could Die Tomorrow, because he goes on and on about how we could die tomorrow and we should atone for our sins before that happens so we don’t rot in hell. He likes to get real close to me, as close as the law allows, and talk about how my soul will be damned for what I’m doing. It takes all my strength not to punch him in the face, so much so that my body shakes from the effort of not decking him.

  “Don’t engage,” I tell the women I escort. It’s a reflex. Don’t engage. That was drilled into me during my escort training. It doesn’t matter whether you’re here for a mammogram or a Pap smear or to get a refill for your birth control or to terminate a pregnancy. These people don’t care. All they see are women giving their business to a place they think is a baby-killing factory. I’ve seen Bible Thumper get into a screaming match with a bald woman who was clearly going through chemotherapy and not pregnant a
t all. They don’t give a shit. They want to hear their own voices drown out everyone else’s.

  “They should be praying that I don’t have cancer,” one woman said to me when I got her inside the door. I forced a smile. The crowd was starting to get to me, and I still had an hour left of my shift. Jasmine, the security guard, could see it. She handed me a Snickers bar and squeezed my arm.

  Jasmine is the only one of us who is allowed to engage, because it’s her job to protect the clinic and its patients by any means necessary. It takes a special kind of person to be a security guard at an abortion clinic. I’ve seen her stand outside her guard post, outside of its bulletproof glass, her tiny, wiry body its own fierce wall, and recite that famous quote from the nun who called out the “pro-life” movement for its hypocrisy. You know the one, about how if you don’t want your tax dollars going to health care or education for children, then you can’t call yourself pro-life, you’re only pro-birth. Jasmine spoke in such a calm, authoritative tone, like she was giving a speech on a podium, that she completely shut down those protesters. In fact, most of them packed up and left a little while later.

  I wish I had that ability. I try so hard to stay calm but the anger just bubbles up inside me. These people are such hypocrites, squawking about how the government shouldn’t intrude on people’s lives one minute and then preaching the need for the most intrusive law—telling a woman what to do with her own body—the next. I am not like Jasmine. All my reasoned logic flies out of my brain, and I want to scream curses at them.

  When I did my training, I told the counselor I was afraid I’d lose my shit on protesters while volunteering. She looked at me and said, “You can lose your shit. Just do it when you get home.” I’m proud to say I’ve never lost my shit at the clinic. Instead, I absorb all the anger, and I carry it with me until I get home.

  But by the time I get home, I’m not angry anymore. I’m sad, sad down to my bones. Sad that this is what women have to deal with, women who simply want to make sure they don’t have breast cancer or who want to prevent pregnancy or get a checkup to make sure they’re healthy. Yes, some want to terminate a pregnancy, which they have a legal right to do in a safe, clean place. The government can shut down every clinic in the world, but abortions are still going to happen. And then where does that leave us? In back alleyways with rusty coat hangers?

  So I take all of this emotion home with me, and I break in places I didn’t know I had. I curl up on the couch or my bed and not even Parks and Rec can make me feel better, not even the episode where Leslie Knope teaches a bunch of senior citizens how to use condoms.

  When Mom sees me like this, she tells me to stop. She tells me to quit volunteering at the clinic. “It’s too much,” she says. “I hate what it’s doing to you.”

  But I can’t stop. I won’t stop.

  Because even though it is hard, it’s the only thing I do that means something. I know that school and all the other activities I’m involved in aren’t meaningless, but all that pales in comparison to what I do at the clinic. It’s the only thing that makes me feel like I’m doing something important.

  Today, the one woman who was actually there to have an abortion collapsed crying in my arms when we reached the safety of the front door. That’s how I knew why she was there. She didn’t tell me; she didn’t have to. It was written all over her face. This choice—it’s so hard on women, and those despicable people make it a thousand times more terrible. They have NO IDEA what these women go through. But I do. I see it. I feel it in the way they clutch my hand as we walk past the posters with pictures of aborted fetuses.

  That’s why I’ll never stop. Not until there are no protesters and women can walk into that clinic with their heads held high because they’re supported every step of the way. I don’t care if it weighs on me. Because if walking them into the clinic is hard for me, what is it like for the women I’m escorting in?

  I wish I could take away some of their pain. If I had a superpower, I’d want to absorb all that pain and turn it into something bright and beautiful.

  Something to change the world.

  —Lise

  February 15

  Early morning

  Dear Ms. Tilson,

  Last night, when I finally fell asleep, I dreamed of Baby.

  Baby crying all night long.

  Baby biting me and laughing.

  Baby being exactly like his father.

  I woke up sweating, tears streaming down my cheeks.

  This is not the life I chose. But how can I stop it?

  I’ll be stuck in this house forever, needing Mom’s help long past when I should’ve moved out. I wonder what Baby will call her. Grammy? Or Mom Number Two?

  I try to imagine when Baby will be three or six or eleven. Will I ever be able to look at him without seeing HIM? In my head, Baby is a him, like HIM. Will I be haunted by those terrible, awful minutes in the basement every time I look at his child?

  My insides twist as I write that, white-hot rage and cold dread tangled together. The pain is so intense that my heart hurts, like, physically aches. Can I do that? Live with that pain every single day? Relive the worst moment of my life whenever I look at that child?

  They say that Hell looks different for everyone. That for some people it’s burning in eternal fires and for others it’s being trapped in a small room with no escape. I know what my Hell looks like.

  It looks like being Baby’s mother.

  Living every day with the reminder of how he raped me.

  I want to scream, throw a glass across the room and watch it shatter, slice my skin to let out the pain. Why? Why me? Why should I be the one to live that Hell? He’s the one who did something wrong. Why do I have to be punished for it?

  I can’t do it. I can’t have this baby.

  I can’t do that to myself.

  It feels worse than cutting, worse than suicide. It feels like a slow form of torture that I’ll have to endure until…what? Until I die? What kind of a life is that? Don’t I deserve a life too?

  I honestly don’t know the answer to that. Do I deserve a life? What makes my life more deserving than this baby’s? The thing is, I can’t live my life if I have this baby.

  I don’t have a choice.

  Okay.

  I guess I have a choice.

  But I can’t make that choice.

  There’s adoption. That’s what I’ll have to do. But I’ll still have to tell my parents. I’ll still be marked. I’ll still have to walk through the school with a big belly for everyone to see. Watch out for the pregnant girl.

  I wonder what the rumors will be. I heard she did it in the gym after school with half the basketball team. I heard it was some guy from her church. I heard she doesn’t even know who the father is. People will make up their own truths, but I would be the only one to really know what happened.

  And then one day I won’t be pregnant. They’ll whisper, I heard she gave it up for adoption, and people like my friend Susanna will touch my hand and say, “You gave someone the greatest gift,” and I’ll smile tightly, like, Yes, I did. Aren’t I just such a saint?

  But somewhere in the back of my mind, I’ll wonder. What if Baby turns out to be just like his father?

  It can’t be helped. Someone will get this baby and it’ll be their problem, not mine. I’ll have a different problem. I’ll spend my life wondering about that child.

  Baby is a year old now, I’ll think on his birthday, wondering if they bought him a little cake to smash at his birthday party.

  Baby’s off to kindergarten.

  Baby is going to graduate from high school.

  I’ll look into the eyes of every child I pass who’s Baby’s age, looking for HIM. God—GOD, IF YOU’RE UP THERE LISTENING—I don’t want that life either. I don’t want to search every face I see for HIM. I don’t want to live my life knowing a pie
ce of HIM and me is out there. It hurts too much…that daily reminder…

  But I don’t think I have a choice. One of these lives will be mine, and I’ll have to live it.

  Signed,

  Mellie Rivers

  February 15

  Afternoon

  Dear Ms. Tilson,

  I’m writing this in the school library. It feels like the only safe place to write anymore. Last night I was writing in the living room since all my siblings were doing their homework at the dining room table, so I exiled myself to the couch. But then Jeremy came in, and peered over my shoulder. “Dear Ms. Tilson?” he read out loud. “Who’s Ms. Tilson?”

  I slammed the notebook shut. “My English teacher.”

  “Why are you writing her a letter?”

  “I’m not. It’s a homework assignment.”

  “Your homework assignment is to write her a letter?”

  “I said it’s not a letter!”

  “Then why were you starting a homework assignment with ‘Dear Ms. Tilson’?”

  “I wasn’t—it’s none of your business, Jeremy!”

  He stuck his tongue out at me, like a child. “Jeez, Mellie, what’s with the attitude? You on your period?”

  I launched myself off the couch. “You are vulgar and disgusting!” I ran upstairs, but Bethany was in our bedroom and kept asking me questions about her homework because I had the same class last year, so I couldn’t focus. I wound up finishing my entry from last night after everyone was in bed. And then writing more because I couldn’t sleep.

  I tried to write in the cafeteria during lunch, but it was stupid of me to pull out the notebook in front of Delia and Susanna. The minute I did, Delia eyed the journal and said, “How much have you written in that? I feel like I am way behind.”

  And then she reached for it.

  I snatched the notebook from her grasp so fast that I knocked over Delia’s water bottle. She yelped and grabbed it before it could make a puddle on the table. I shoved the notebook back in my bag, suddenly feeling like I’d come to school naked.