I held it in my hand, the pale green, cheerfully colored box. The one, tiny pale yellow pill. I flipped through the glossy, mini guidebook, to make sure...to make sure what I don't know, I just needed something to do. It's just a little pill; it looks like my allergy medicine, or headache medicine.
But it wasn't.
It started with a panicked look, eyes that I'd seen a hundred times before, that I knew as well as my own, a cold hand on my wrist: "
The condom broke."
And it ended with me, in a car, in the parking lot of CVS, holding the box, the one with the pill. The morning-after pill, that is.
--
We practically grew up together. She was only a couple of years younger than me and we were the only cousins on this side of the family that lived close enough to see each other. We spent every summer together, all of us, since I was born.
We were like sisters, my little cousin and I. And the last time I saw her before this she had never had a boyfriend, had never had sex.
I tried to tell her how even though it's the hardest thing, harder than the Olympics, it's worth it, it's so worth it to wait, you won't regret it. I wrote her a letter once trying to convince her that she is beautiful and loved and that someday a man will come, a good man who treats her right, not like her father, but who tells her every day that she is precious to him and amazing and smart, someday this man will come and
he will have been worth it.
Then, she meets a guy, a guy at work, the bartender, who's several years older, and who has told her all those things.
He tells her she's beautiful and calls her "Princess" and tells her he loves her and everything else she's been waiting her whole life to hear from a man.
When I finally see her again after a few months of us "being busy" she's asking if she can trust me with a secret and her eyes are wide and scared, her hand on my wrist: "The condom broke."
The story of how this guy swept her off her feet comes in the car.
At first she wants to go to the local Planned Parenthood but, honestly, I can't stomach that, so we go to CVS. She's telling me how wonderful he is, how much they love each other, how she knows, she just knows he would take care of them, her and baby, but they also have a problem because he wants to move back to California and maybe she wants to go with him.
I haven't said anything; me of a thousand words, and I can't find any good ones.
I tell myself I'm overreacting, people have sex all the time, lots of people don't wait, heck, I have friends who didn't wait but who I still love and respect--
She turns to me at a stoplight, a hand hesitantly fits into mine, my little lost cousin, "Please don't be angry with me. Please come in with me. I need you to come in with me. This is the right thing to do, right? Right?"
For a second, I think she might cry. She's looking at me, needing me to say the right thing, and suddenly all the voices of the past few months, of all the times I've argued, online and in real life about contraception, about the HHS Mandate, about abortion and Planned Parenthood, are sucked up like by a vacuum into this one moment.
I squeeze back. I tell her: I'm not angry, how could I be? I love you. I'll go in with you. I'll keep your secret.
The light changes. She gives a nervous laugh,
he'd kick me out you know, my dad. I nod, I know. She says she thinks her mom knows she's started having sex but hasn't said anything but, don't get pregnant.
I feel like I'm failing her, and myself. Like I've already failed. In the back of my mind, the old tape is playing.
It's okay, don't overreact, it's just sex.
We're there.
I can't be, I just cannot get pregnant, she says under her breath, and I can see her envisioning it. They'd kick me out and our whole family will say I'm a slut and I'd have nowhere to go.
She asks for "a Plan B, please." The woman behind the counter looks at me, momentarily uncertain. My cousin is older than eighteen but looks much younger, and especially now, under the fluorescent lights, her face is bright red and she's trying to hid behind her bangs. Again, she looks like she might cry and I think she looks even younger than that.
When we get back to the car she opens the box, pulls the pill pack out and hands me the directions and the little question-and-answer booklet ("What if I'm already pregnant?" "What does Plan B do?").
I know this is the right thing, I mean, this is the right thing to do, right? She keeps saying.We look at the little yellow pill in her palm and I fail her again.
I can't say yes. I can't make the word come out. I just tell her, it'll be okay.
How do I do this? How do I take it? But I can't answer that either so she takes a sip of water and then the pill.
She closes her eyes and sighs, her head falls back on the seat, relief.
There, it's done. There, whatever secret thing may have been happening within her, it's done.
And, right then, I believe everything I've said the last few years. Everything I've said about contraception and abortion and babies and making babies, I suddenly believe it. My heart believes it.
She's more relaxed now, less nervous, and we go home. She'd driven a couple of towns over so she wouldn't run into anyone she knew.
Something comes over me and I turn to her, a knot in my throat.
I would help you. I would drop everything and drive down here and get you and you wouldn't be homeless.
She tries to cut me off -- don't say that, I'm not pregnant. As if by speaking the words, I could accidentally speak a baby into being.
I'm serious, I say. You're not a slut. I believe in you. I know
people who can
help you.
I know it would feel like your whole life is over but it wouldn't be. It really wouldn't be. I would do whatever I had to, I would take time off work. I would come down here and I would help you.
And I knew, with all my heart, I would. I don't know how, but I would.
She doesn't say anything for a while, then, thank you for coming with me. But it's okay because I know she's heard me.
When we get back into town, back home, back with the rest of the family for lunch, the moment's over and I know she doesn't want to talk about it again. She jokes about the "near miss" with me and her younger sister later. But I know her and I know she heard me, she hasn't forgotten what I said.
--
I'm staring down a long stretch of highway. I'm on my way back home with my family and I chose to do most of the driving because I had tried to read and couldn't. I had tried to listen to music and couldn't.
I couldn't save her from herself this time. I feel like a hypocrite. How could I, who doesn't believe in using contraception, all but put the pill in her hand myself? Should I have done something different? Did I say the right thing? Did I do the right thing?
That morning, I had seen a scared little girl. Later that night she would suggest I read
Fifty Shades of Grey and find myself a man, hollow, empty words.
I just hadn't been able to leave her. I couldn't let her go in by herself. I felt, somehow, that running away from this would be worse than going with her.
But I'm left with doubts; did I hurt You, Jesus?
The ride home gives me time to think.
Maybe it was my overactive imagination, but when I'd looked at the pill, so plain and small, I'd felt a darkness. The guide it came with said in bold, "NOT AN ABORTION PILL." She had read it out loud, reassuring herself, telling me.
But I couldn't stop thinking.
What if there had been a baby? A tiny, undeveloped, unknown, little bud of a life, and I sat there and watched as all that was swept away. I thought I might be sick.
Because no matter what my mind said, the lines I'd heard from our culture, I knew it was wrong and it wasn't love and
if I had taken part in something which ended a life, no matter how small and invisible to all but its Maker, I don't know how I could live with that.
I've seen love, true, God-given love, bright as the morning sun and pure as gold, and I've heard the truth, clearer and sharper than
silver, and goodness, like a crystal light - and
this wasn't it.
I had never felt the weight of my broken-ness, our broken-ness, like I did then.
We broke it, sex which was supposed to be pure and holy and is sometimes still. But we broke it and made a mess of it and this is what's left.
I've never, ever needed Jesus more.
What's not included, notably, in many (if not all) of these depictions is any sign that the forces of good in this world stand a fighting chance against evil. Should we, as Christians, be dwelling on this as much as our culture is wont to do? Of course not. (“…there are things old and new which must not be contemplate by men’s eyes.”) But we do have a role to play. In this brief article on the new Ignatius edition, the author notes how Bram Stoker accords this vampire the exact right silliness he deserves, and the exact right seriousness. Maybe we have something to learn from this. Maybe we shouldn't get too cozy with this strange, uneasy alliance. What do you all think? Agree, disagree, confused?
