Karen walked down the cereal aisle. She had been craving Cinnamon Toast Crunch for the past week, and there was never enough in her parents’ house. When her mother offered to get some more on her next grocery run, Karen knew that wouldn’t be soon enough to satisfy her, so she decided to go herself. She loaded her cart with seven boxes of the cereal, leaving two for any other customers, and then checked the status of her donations on her phone. The site had collected just under twelve million dollars, and time was starting to slip away. She was relieved that her plan was working so well, but she was forcing herself to face the serious prospect that she’d have to undergo an abortion relatively soon. Even if she’d been able to avoid developing any significant emotional connection to the fetus growing inside her, she knew that just the sheer amount of time she’d been pregnant would make it harder to endure than if she had dealt with it when she originally wanted to.
She sometimes fantasized that Paul would go with her to the clinic, drive her back to their apartment when it was over, and spend a few days with her afterward, allowing them time to reconcile. She could imagine a future in which she published her paper or maybe even an entire book about the details of the ordeal, became a known public intellectual who would be asked to weigh in on a great variety of social issues, rekindled her relationship with Paul where it left off, and lived a life that was full of meaning for herself. She imagined this life more and more as the days ticked away. It became a kind of goal, even though it was more a fantasy than anything.
As Karen put her phone back in her pocket and headed to get some hummus and Cheese Nips, she brushed one of her breasts with the back of her hand and it came away slightly wet. She looked down to see that both of her breasts were leaking through her shirt. She had experienced many things during the pregnancy that she found to be disgusting. Vaginal discharge of varying viscosities, constant sweating, large and belabored bowel movements, stretch marks, skin so dry that it sometimes flaked off around her growing belly—and the fundamental fact that there was a living thing moving inside her—were just a few things that Karen found unsettling, but this new development almost made her vomit as she left the cereal aisle of the grocery store.
Turning the corner, she very nearly ran into another woman pushing a cart in the opposite direction. Karen said, “Sorry,” to which the woman replied, “You are sorry. I know who you are, and I have to say that I think what you’re doing is child abuse. It’s just the worst thing a mother could ever do. I mean, do you even have a soul?”
God, the soul, and the spirit were all just names people gave to the same energy that flows through everything. Specific religions were all wrong, in that this energy that binds all living things wasn’t sentient and didn’t create anything. The energy was just always there. Space, and everything beyond our planet, might be interesting to scientists, but it would never have any real impact on the day-to-day life of the average person, so it was a waste of time to think about. Sex was fine, and it didn’t have to happen only within the confines of a legal relationship, but people needed to be responsible about it, much more responsible than they were in contemporary society. Too many women had children because they weren’t careful, and too many kids were neglected or parented improperly, and it was destroying the fabric of society. Having a child was something to be done only after a great deal of consideration, and raising a child was among the most important things a person could do. Raising a child meant bringing another person into the world and giving it the tools it would need to do the same someday. Having a child was the only purpose for which people existed. These were things that the woman in the grocery store understood to be true.
Karen said, “Well, luckily, I’m not a mother, so you should have no problem with it.”
The woman in the grocery store said, “Yes, you are. You’re carrying a human child right now. That makes you a mother.”
Karen said, “Actually, it’s delivering the child that makes you a mother legally. So I’m not a mother, and I very likely never will be.”
The woman in the grocery store said, “You’re disgusting,” and then pushed her cart past Karen’s, making sure to hit it as she pressed forward. Karen shook her head and wondered if anyone else in the grocery store would feel the need to chastise her while she was there. She made her way to the snack aisle, put a few boxes of Cheese Nips in her cart, and got some hummus. She checked out without another incident, but when she left the store, she was surprised to find that a group of a dozen or so paparazzi had gathered outside the exit. They all called her name while they snapped pictures of her, their flashing cameras disorienting her.
Karen was almost used to seeing groups of people gathered both in support and protest wherever she went. She didn’t enjoy the experience, but she understood it. Her purpose was to engage people, to make them think, to make them debate the legitimacy of the pro-life forces in America, and they were having that debate in the context of supporting or attacking her. But being hounded by paparazzi was a different thing entirely. The flashes of the cameras and the urgent and aggressive tone of the paparazzi were all too much for Karen. She covered her face instinctually as she made her way to her car, got in the driver’s seat, and started the engine. She wanted desperately to leave the situation, but the paparazzi swarmed in front of her car, still yelling at her and taking pictures. She honked the horn and moved the car forward a few inches, which got them to move enough for her to drive out of the parking lot.
She drove faster than she should have, and when she stopped at her first red light, she found that she was breathing heavy and sweating. She looked back over her shoulder to make sure she wasn’t being followed, and in that moment, she began to understand that her life was no longer her own. This was something she had not anticipated. She started crying, aware that she had no real sense of what further impact this all might have on her life. She had no way of predicting what would happen next, how far she might actually be forced to remove herself from society.
Once she was back at her parents’ house, she realized that she’d left the groceries she’d paid for in her cart just outside the grocery store. She cursed herself for being so fragile and allowing such a simple thing as a group of photographers to affect her that much. She walked into the kitchen where her mother was having coffee. Lynn could tell something was wrong with her daughter. She said, “Honey, are you all right?”
Karen said, “No. I’m not. A lady at the grocery store stopped me in the aisle and insulted me, which was weird, and then when I was leaving, there was a group of paparazzi taking pictures and shouting at me. I got so flustered that I left all my groceries in the parking lot. I just kind of lost my mind for a minute. It was really scary. Mom, this is just . . .”
Lynn said, “Too much to handle? If it is, you can still change your mind.”
Karen said, “I don’t know. No. I’m not changing my mind. But I think it might be better for me to kind of hang around here.”
Lynn said, “Did any of them follow you here? You know your father and I don’t want those photographers camped out in our front yard.”
Karen said, “I don’t know if they did or not, but if they could find me at a grocery store, I’m sure they can find me here, Mom.”
Lynn said, “You may be right. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen. Do you want me to go get the groceries?”
Karen said, “No. I don’t want you and Dad involved in this at all if it can be helped. I’ll call Tanya or something.”
An hour later, Tanya showed up at Karen’s parents’ house with several boxes of groceries. Karen said, “Thank you so much.”
Tanya said, “No problem. So it was pretty bad today?”
Karen said, “Fucking terrible. I’ve never dealt with anything like that. They were like animals or something. Tanya, they stood in front of my fucking car yelling at me while I was trying to drive away. I didn’t tell anyone I was going to that grocery store. They just showed up. That was an hour ago, and look at this shit.” Karen held up her phone and showed Tanya a Christian watchdog website that had posted a very unflattering photo of Karen that afternoon as she was crying and trying to leave the grocery store. The caption read, “Devil Mom Tries for Sympathy with Fake Tears.”
Tanya said, “Yeah, but that’s one of those dipshit sites like Americans for Prosperity or World News Daily. Who cares?”
Karen said, “I care. Those sites might be the only ones running captions like that, but the photos are all over the Internet. I never wanted my face to be part of this thing. My identity is totally beside the point, and it’s tainting what I’m doing. Beyond that, I don’t know if I can leave my parents’ house again. What kind of fucking existence is that?”
Tanya said, “It’s the one you made for yourself.”
Karen said, “My mom was saying it’s not too late just end this. I know it’s crazy, but that doesn’t sound like such a bad idea anymore.”
Tanya said, “You’re a real piece of shit if you end this now.”
Karen said, “What? I thought you’d be into that idea.”
Tanya said, “Seriously? You’re being a pussy. Would you want to quit if no one knew it was you? If you were still anonymous?”
Karen said, “No. Of course not. I’m saying that quitting is starting to sound better and better, because I’m no longer anonymous. That’s the reason I would quit if I was going to.”
Tanya said, “So you’d be fine to get everyone just as riled up and pissed off as they are right now, just as long as you’re not the one they’re blaming?”
Karen said, “That was always my plan. The idea was the only thing I wanted out there. I never wanted to be out there with it myself.”
Tanya said, “But the idea is out there, and you are, too. You can’t just stop because you’re experiencing some personal blowback. You know how I feel about this, but you have to stick it out now. You have to prove your point, and that means following it through to the end. If you don’t, you’ll still have gone through all the shit, but without getting the result you were looking for. You can’t change the facts: you got kicked out of school, you lost your boyfriend, and now you’re holed up at your parents’ house, completely robbed of your privacy. All of that has already happened. Things can’t really get much worse. Or they could, I guess, but you get what I’m saying. Things are not good. Don’t let everything you’ve gone through be for nothing. At least get to the end.”
Karen hugged Tanya. “You’re the best fucking friend of all time. Jesus.”
Tanya said, “Every person has looked at the world and wanted to change it. But most of us just hope it will change on its own.”