AS RACHEL RACED down the sidewalk like a mom late for her child’s first recital, her jacket flapping open despite the cold, a woman’s shriek needled the frozen air: “God loves you!” Rachel halted to see a woman, her eyes bulging at Rachel from within a parka’s hood. “But!” the woman cried, “He hates murderers!”
A clot of homely women stood behind a rope to seal them off from passersby, mumbling, “Amen,” their puffy old faces florid as a child’s spanked ass. Revulsion quivered through Rachel, and something else: fear and exhilaration.
Rachel thrust her middle fingers at them and strode on.
A voice raged, “You’re going to hell!”
Rachel yelled over her shoulder, “Like you’d know, you cunt!” as she flung open the door to the Family Matters meeting.
She stomped her boots on a rubber mat and lifted her eyes to see the faces of six girls who sat in a tight circle of folding chairs, all of them Rachel’s age or younger, but with eyes as tired as those of a middle-aged woman facing trial for murder. Shame flooded Rachel: The Late Girl. The place was quiet; the only sound was that of water dripping from the melting snow on Rachel’s bootlaces. She could feel eyes sizing her up.
“Sorry,” she mumbled, and slumped into a seat. “Sorry.”
A woman in her forties waddled into the room, the frayed hem of her long black wool skirt sweeping the floor as her thunderous hips pendulumed in a manner that made Rachel wince to imagine how chafed the woman’s inner thighs must be. Her trim and flat-chested torso did not jibe with her ponderous ass and legs. It was like the two halves of different women had been screwed together at the waist.
The woman caught Rachel staring and smiled a gummy grin as she heaved into a chair with a groan. She scratched at the back of one rashy hand. “So. Who’s scared?” she said, her voice booming in the quiet room. Several girls flinched. None spoke.
Rachel studied the girls’ faces, trying to commit them to memory. A woman who’d looked at first to be eighteen or nineteen, under scrutiny, seemed closer to twenty-two or twenty-three. She was heavyset, with streaks of purple in her hair. None of the girls was the girl in the photo: Mandy Wilks.
“Well,” the woman leading the group said, “I’m Cathy. And I’m scared. Because whatever decision you make, it will change your life. I know; I’ve been there. I’m forty, and I have a twenty-three-year-old daughter.”
Mouths twisted as the girls calculated how old Cathy was when she’d given birth: seventeen.
A girl with pigtails crossed a leg over her opposite knee and waggled her Chuck Taylors, soaked through from melted slush. All eyes were on Cathy now.
“I was pregnant two years before that,” Cathy said. “I won’t lie. This is a place of truth. Part of me wanted to keep that baby. But.” Her forced smile was heartbreaking. “My uncle.” She forced a new smile. Meant to be brave: all the more tragic. “We’re here to give facts and support you with whatever decision you make, because, whatever choice you make, you likely aren’t getting much support. Are you?”
Crickets.
“Are you?” Cathy said again.
A girl with braces blurted, “I’m getting jack shit.”
“Right, jack shit,” Cathy said, and smoothed her skirt with fat fingers cluttered with chunky cheapo rings. “If you are getting support, be grateful. If you aren’t, or weren’t, you are now.”
Purple Hair opened a notebook and started writing in it with a pencil.
“So,” Cathy said, “who’s made up her mind?”
Three girls lifted their hands, cautiously. A fourth and fifth wriggled their fingertips tentatively. Slowly, Rachel raised her hand.
Purple Hair took notes.
“You’re undecided?” Cathy asked Purple Hair.
“I’ve made up my mind. Not to.” She cupped a hand on her belly. Nodded at the group, and so should you.
A girl with a boot cast on her left foot grimaced.
“OK,” Cathy said. “Good.”
“Then why are you here?” Boot Cast said.
“I still need support,” Purple Hair said. “It’s not easy when I think about money and how I am going to manage.” She pulled at a strand of hair.
The girl with braces stood up. “I gotta piss.”
Cathy nodded toward the rear. “Through there. Second door on the left.”
Braces lumbered off, tugging at her red leggings where they’d bunched at the backs of her knees.
“Maybe it’s time for a break,” Cathy said but made no effort to get up. Her body seemed to puddle in the chair.
Rachel got up with the other girls, stretching.
“Make sure you sign in,” Cathy said.
Rachel ambled to a corner of the room and took out her iPhone. She’d received texts from Felix, who was outside in Rachel’s old Civic, keeping an eye out.
Bored! Zip going down in steak out
Rachel let out a muted laugh and texted Felix:
‘Steak’ (sp?) out??? How’d u get in2 skool?
“Nice phone,” a voice said. Purple Hair. She leaned herself against the wall. “You rich, or did you steal it?”
A chill ran through Rachel. “Neither.”
Purple Hair gave a loose, easy grin. “I’m teasing. I grew up in a house of smart-asses. Family rubs off, you know? You can’t escape it.”
“Sure,” Rachel said. She’d never be here if it weren’t for her father.
Her iPhone burbled the arrival of a text from Felix.
She read it and knocked out a return.
“Boyfriend?” Purple Hair said.
Rachel nodded. Purple Hair stared. “I’m Rachel,” Rachel said, absently. She’d considered using a fake name, but had worried she’d not respond instinctively to it. She’d use a false last name on the list. Sort of. Pritchard. Her mom’s married name.
“Glad to meet you,” Purple Hair said, without offering her name. “You’re really thinking of . . . doing it?”
Rachel touched her fingertips to her belly absently, or so she hoped, and cast her eyes downward, trying for a deeply reflective look, not having to try too hard after what had happened the past weeks. “Yes.” She felt a shimmer of dread at lying, a sense that she was jinxing herself, messing with her future Baby Karma. “I worked hard to get to college. I can’t mess up now.”
“Where do you go?”
“Middlebury.” Lying came easier the more she did it.
“And you ain’t rich?” Purple Hair huffed.
“Scholarships.”
“A brainiac then.”
“I study my tail off,” Rachel said.
“What do you have to get for grades to get in a hoity-toity college like that?”
Rachel didn’t know. Better grades than her 3.2 average, for sure, hard as she worked for that average, and as proud as she was of it.
“You can tell a fellow pregger,” Purple Hair said.
Pregger. Rachel cringed. “Three point eight.”
“Wheeew. I got like a 2.4. That’s why I ended up in a crap community college.”
Rachel knew girls like Purple Hair, girls who thought even Rachel’s 3.2 was lofty. None of them believed she worked hard at it, thinking it was just some natural gift. Anyone with a 3.0 or higher was a brainiac.
“Some community colleges are very good,” Rachel said.
“This one was crap. Waste of time. But Middlebury. What are you doing way out here in the freakin’ boonies? Middlebury’s like a three-hour drive, and not a hundred feet of straight road on the way.”
“I—” Rachel paused to get her lies straight, deciding on a half-truth. “I grew up in the general area. And I’m on break. I didn’t want to risk one of my classmates or professors seeing me down there.”
“God forbid. Me. I’m keeping my baby. You should think about it.”
“I have.”
“I’d think with how test-smart you are, you’d realize how wrong what you want to do to your baby is.”
Rachel felt as if she’d been slapped hard across her cheek, and she could sense her mouth was hanging open. “I don’t think—”
Cathy made a sound like a dog puking up grass. “If you’ll take your seats.”
Rachel stood over the list. She wanted to take a picture of it with her iPhone, compare the handwriting to later lists. Even if Mandy wasn’t here. But she was afraid to get caught. What would happen if she was? Would she be kicked out? Arrested for trespassing?
“Forget your name?” Purple Hair had sidled up and nudged Rachel with her hip. “Hmmm?” Rachel said. “No.”
Purple Hair rocked on the heels of her boots. Why was she just standing there?
“Sign already,” Purple Hair urged, pressing closer. Did she know? Was she onto Rachel? How could she be? Rachel pulled away and signed: Rachel Pritchard.
Purple Hair pushed out her bottom lip like a toddler. “Let’s talk after, outside,” she said, and squeezed Rachel’s wrist.
Rachel rubbed her wrist, feeling the ghost of Purple Hair’s fingers on her flesh. Then she angled her iPhone at her hip and snapped a photo of the list.
After an hour of hearing the other girls’ traumatic stories, and telling a slightly altered version of her own story, still fresh in her memory, Rachel hurried outside, trying to ignore the sensation that her emotions had been sucked down a tub drain and left behind a filmy scum on her heart. Her uterus ached. Her womb. She felt ill as she gulped the icy air.
A hand touched Rachel’s back, and Rachel whirled around to face Purple Hair. “Quit touching me,” she snapped.
“Sorry. I’m pushy. I just. I did what you’re thinking of doing, once, and I would never wish it on my worst enemy. You can’t undo it. You know?”
Rachel knew. She looked across the road toward her Civic. It was parked under a dark pine trees, so she couldn’t see Felix inside it.
Purple Hair looked up into the black night sky, the stars cloaked by clouds, “I murdered my child,” she said, and jerked her head toward the protestors across the street. “I’m not crazy. Like them.” She looked haunted. “And you. You’re so lovely. So smart.” Her voice fell to a hush. “You have—” She paused.
“What?” Rachel said, her voice a whimper. Her energy sapped in the face of such a potent plea. “I have what?” she said in a faltering voice.
“Good genes. I thought this baby”—Purple Hair rubbed her belly—“would make it right. But it doesn’t.” Her nose leaked snot. “They tossed it in a medical waste can. Incinerated it.” She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “You’ll have to live with that.”
Rachel stared, astonished, feeling scraped out. She wanted to tell this girl the truth. This was an act, she was sorry for exploiting the girl’s pain by playing amateur sleuth.
“Are you OK?” Rachel asked.
Purple Hair shrugged Rachel’s hand off, and Rachel felt deflated. Weakened. But she needed to stick to her script. She needed to continue the lie.
“No. Are you?” Purple Hair said.
Rachel shook her head.
“So you’ll . . . reconsider?” Purple Hair’s eyes begged.
“I can’t just drop out of school.”
“You can go to school. Lots of girls do.”
“I can’t juggle both.”
“You have to,” Purple Hair said, and clutched Rachel’s arm, fingers like talons.
“Let go!” Rachel shrieked, and yanked free. She fled across the street, a car horn blaring, its headlights throwing her in a ghastly spotlight.
She dashed to the other side of the road, sobs catching in her throat as she tugged open the door to her car and collapsed into the passenger seat.
“How’d it go?” Felix said, patting her shoulder.
“Don’t touch me,” she screamed.