Recoiling

The ripping apart of flesh was easy. It wasn’t real. Or didn’t feel real. I was dead inside. I was sure it would be the end, a clean break, a fresh start. I wasn’t going to let this rooting take place and hold me back. There was screaming, cursing, swearing and tears before the bleeding.

I remember the shoes I wore that Monday morning. They were the same ones I wore the previous day. That Sunday that mum said, ‘you’re going to repent and maybe God will change your mind and save your soul’. She was Catholic. The type of Catholic that goes to mass at six o’clock and walks around reciting the rosary under her breath. She was also a mother of ten. She didn’t plan them but expelled each every year or two. So she didn’t understand. 

School wasn’t in her plans neither was a career. She could have been a model but that would be vanity. She could have been an accountant but that would be aiming too high, unmarriageable. Instead she married the teacher. She was content with a domesticated life. So it was hard for her to accept I chose different, to know my dreams were worldly. I was going to travel, make money and be a designer. So she prayed on her knees and cried to the priest for my heart to turn female and willing because according to her I was possessed.

I slipped on the pink flat shoes that made me feel feather weight walking in them. A type of balance that I never got acquainted with, but she liked them so after the screaming I wore them to church to please her. I also allowed her to choose my dress, a long pleated one with a choking neckline and long sleeves. That must be how she was presented to her husband, and how she was presenting me to the priest for cleansing. 

Looking at her you’d see she wanted it for me, the zero grazing. But globe trotters can’t be tethered. The priest put his hands above my head not quite touching it but like energy I could feel his pull. He prayed and asked for Him to soften my heart, to accept this authored life for myself. To accept the marriage proposal from the farmer’s son. But the next day I put on the pink shoes and drove to the clinic. It was nothing I expected to do but I had to do it. I was neither pro life nor pro choice. When I told the farmer’s son what I planned to do with the pregnancy he promised me forever, begged me for time and said, ‘ every child comes with his own plate’. But I couldn’t see the plate as clearly as I saw my dreams and he wasn’t in them. 

After the procedure I went home and told no one but she knew. I was sick for a few days but I lied it was my period.

A week later I took the bus and left for the city. My first apartment was in a dilapidated building with a miasma of old, sewage and illicit affairs. I would get work and move out of this hole in four weeks. But it wasn’t the stench or clamor that rented my brain. Before the abortion the counselor told me I might get post traumatic symptoms. ‘My trauma would be keeping it’, I thought. Now sleeping in musty mold infested sheets my cockcrow was almost always a screaming baby. It was the kind of torturous cry one lets out when in pain. I tried music, jogging and finally booze and sex. Anything to keep me from lonely spaces and wandering thoughts and unpalatable images. 

I thought maybe I should tell someone what I did. What would I say? That I wasn’t ready? or that a baby wasn’t in my trajectory? I thought about the farmer’s son. I should tell him I did it. I constantly found myself craving that stability I had ran from. That certainty of my mother’s life. After watching a woman pull out a baby from her inside alone in the alley then cuddling it with love, I felt the final crushing of my sins. I had to go back. 

Standing in front of the half mirror above the cracked leaking sink I looked at the image of purgatory. I deserved it. All levels were befitting. I could endure the purge if it meant forgiveness or at least acceptance. What was the punishment for murder? For defiance and disobedience? It must be better than this turmoil I have been living. No camouflage had banished the demons and maybe facing them would be the true release. Naming them would be hard but there was no choice. Unlike skeletons they had bodies, emotions and were my residents. Each a biting truth of myself. 

The bus stopped at the front of our house where I grew up being prepped for the choir, then the youth ministry and marriage. I felt prodigal standing there. The door opened startling me back to my current life. She looked older, frailer and stranger. She wasn’t crying or smiling. She was simply standing there as if waiting for me to make a move. If I did I’d have to confess my vile to let her choose her forgiveness. I had to give up this restive life. 

Willing every demon to submission I walked towards her and hoped she’d make some gesture of acceptance. My lips began to shiver as I tried to form the words ‘I’m sorry’. Then she uncrossed her arms and stretched them out and broke down. There in her arms I knew some anchorage was necessary, some grounding wasn’t prison. She led me inside. 

Tomorrow I will look for the farmer’s son. To say I was sorry, I shouldn’t have done it and I shouldn’t have left. To ask if he would still have me. He probably wouldn’t but at least I would face him and tell him what I did and maybe he’d forgive me.