Shudder
By: Hannah Mae
Tags: Abortion, Domestic Violence, Memoir, Creative Non Fiction, Creative Writing

I wake up in the middle of the night and watch you breathe.

Deep.

Even.

Your face relaxed, in sleep you are serene, innocent, mouth slightly open.

I get up to haunt your apartment, wrapped in the blanket I brought from mine. Imagine myself living here. Take a swig of your warm beer bottle, throat opening, half delighting that most of it is backwash. Then tossing it in the trash, picking up the rest of your living room so you can wake up to a clean house.

Scanning your bookshelf, quietly stealing a few quarters from your coin can for a drive-through breakfast the next morning. Smell the old pages of your favorite sci-fi. My rent check heavy on the shelf, your signature lazily scrawled.

Jackson, realizing I left the bedroom, slowing padding in after me, ever my corgi shadow and anchor. I squeak open the Dutch doors and we sit on the porch. Looking out at the green belt and suburbia, leaning against the siding, dozing.

You didn’t exactly ask to marry me tonight. I couldn’t tell people I was engaged yet. You told me you might though.

You grabbed both of my hands on your blue, cheap, Ikea sectional,

I would maybe marry you someday, I really mean it.

but your eyes were not filled with romance or love or passion but patronization and reticence and sorrow.

It would make up for all of it, you knew. I would sell out in an instant for a ring, and a third floor apartment in a medium-sized city, for the Sprouts across the street, and the community pool. For a family with the koi pond and yoga room. For the veterinarian sister-in-law and Sunday dinners.

I would forget everything: the pushing, the stairs, the ache of my hip, the pressure on my neck, my shudders and scares, the gasps and chunks of hair.

Earlier that month, we sat in that waiting room together, and I surreptitiously look around at how many people were in the packed, stuffy area with threadbare carpet and aged landscape paintings. They couldn’t all possibly be here for an abortion too? Lined up along this wall on a sunny Saturday morning.

Can they tell I’m here for one?

I eye the person next to me, scrolling through their phone, casually leaning on the veneered armrest.

I’m sure they are just here for birth control.

Or a pap smear.

There are no windows in here, and I wonder if that’s intentional. Vitriol from the protesters reaches through the walls.

Now you look over at me and squeeze my hand.

I’m so lucky to have you there with me.

I jump as they call my name over the loudspeaker.

I got this part on my own, I reassure you.

Descending the stairs I kick myself for wearing a hoodie with nothing underneath. All of the portrayals I had seen of abortions had been fraught, difficult decisions. Or the woman would miscarry beforehand, absolving her of the choice at all. But now I am trapped inside hot, grey cotton with no bra. This was a sober occasion I had thought that morning, ever the people pleaser and eager to meet (or exceed) expectations- I didn’t need perky tits. No under-eye concealer. I had been anguishing for days right? I didn’t want to seem glib with this decision.

This desperate grasp at stability.

The sweat drips in rivulets down my spine.

Would you like to know the gestation? The nurse asks me as I scoot down on the table.

Sure, I say.

She moves the internal ultrasound around inside, something that had initially alarmed me, before I quickly realized that I was likely not far enough along to use the one that glides over your stomach like on TV. I knew I had caught it early, my period just barely late.

Her eyes narrow at the image.

So it looks like the pregnancy is in the uterus and you are measuring about 9 weeks. Would you like to see the ultrasound?

Oh, I say.

And

No, I say.

The blood rushes to my face, hot needles on my cheeks as I do the math.

It wasn’t even yours.

A truth I probably knew, lodged deep in the back of my mind before that second line had even shown up, balanced on the side of that tub.

I still let you pay for it though.

Can I add a donation? You ask at checkout.

My triumph is when you hold me as my shoulders shudder in sobs in the parking lot afterwards.

This will be worth it I tell myself.