Page 18 of And Still Her Voice
“Somewhere he could keep the old lady in the shoe except without all the kids so you could keep your music career. Dad told me the story.”
I stepped into the kitchen to fix myself some lunch. I opened the refrigerator and scrounged around.
“Anna—”
“Oh, I thought you were finished.” I reached in for a juicy, ripe tomato.
“I’d like to talk about something I never shared with anyone. It’s not something one talked about back in those days, much less with an immature, troubled son.”
“You mean how you were a lesbian?” I set out two slices of white bread, a slice of ham, the tomato, and picked up a jar of mustard. “It’s all starting to make sense. Your choices.”
“I was pregnant a couple times before I had your father.”
The jar slipped, shattering to the floor, speckling gold all over my shoes.Dammit!I grabbed a towel and dropped to my knees to clean up the mess. “Go on, I’m still listening,” I said, wiping my Mary Janes.
“The first went full term. She died after a week. Heartbroken, I didn’t want to go through that again. It would be up to me to decide if or when. Too soon, and barely healed, I found myself pregnant again. Wesley supported my decision to end the next one in an abortion.”
I’d taken a seat and found myself staring at the glistening, pink ham. This was a topic we for sure didn’t discuss at home, so I didn’t know very much about the subject matter. What I knew was that it was a sin against God. “Wait, was abortion legal back then?”
“No, but it wasn’t uncommon. It just wasn’t talked about. Though we were silenced, it was a way for a woman to have control over her own body. It used to be legal until all the men in the medical profession banded together to decide what was best for all females.”
I’d been taught that God was in charge of his church, and like God, husbands were in charge of their families. So, for sure, I thought Grandma had taken too much control on matters such as to who gets born or not, and especially whether or not it’s time to die.
“Unbelievable,” I said.
“Well, believe me, an abortion isn’t the best form of contraception—which, by the way, was also illegal back then—and if there’d been the pill, I would never have gotten pregnant again.”
“But then you had Dad.”
“I rest my case.”
I detected purple sarcasm. “Why didn’t you abort him?”
“I was already pretty far along. Besides, I was older and established in my music career. Besides, if I hadn’t had him, we might never have had you.”
“Well lucky me. I can tell you I wish I’d never been born. Besides, who cares?”
“Oh, darling. They care. A mother never stops aching over her missing child.”
I thought of the story about the woman from theIsland of theDolphins. When she realized her son wasn’t on board the ship that had captured her and her people, she jumped off and swam back to shore. Suddenly, I felt a tug in my womb, and an ache in my breasts. I cradled my stomach, rocking myself as I imagined what it might have been like for Grandma to deliver her baby, to hold her, care for her, love her, but then lose her after only a week.
“Did you name the baby girl?”
A dark shade of blue tinged the room as she whispered, “Aria.”
I choked, trying to swallow my tears before they made it up to my eyes. Damnit! I didn’t want to feel sorry for Grandma because I needed to keeping hating her if I were to survive.
CHAPTER 9
Mothers for Peace
Ben carried a sign: “Children are for loving not burning.” He pushed the stroller with his free hand. Betsy marched alongside holding a sign: “Mothers for Peace.”
By early afternoon, I’d fallen into step with other demonstrators, male and female, both young and old, as we paraded peacefully toward Kezar Stadium. “Stop the War,” we chanted to the beat of drums and tambourines. I had nowhere else to be, except that Grandma, with her daily mantra, insisted on going home. I swung my guitar off my back and strummed along and even though I was swept up in this march, I felt like at last I’d taken control of my own destiny.
A young Black man marching next to us carried a sign: “Peace now, Viet Cong never called us nigger.”
I came up with a simple tune and chanted:Peace now, Children are for loving.Soon, others joined, the collective vibration echoing between my ears and filling me with such emotion as we continued on toward the promise of something I could only trust was meaningful and good. I strummed my guitar, every stroke charging the air with so much anticipation that I could no longer hold back the deluge of tears dropping like little wet bombs onto the asphalt. Not even in church, surrounded by hundreds of parishioners had I ever felt such a connection. Uncomfortablewith such a public display of feelings, I didn’t know what to do with myself except to play through the tearful blindness. Soon, someone had wrapped their arms around me.
