Split Second
By Jamil Ragland
Your name? Rachel Watson.
Your date of birth? August 3rd, 1985.
Is this your first time at Planned Parenthood? Yes.
We use urine tests. Fill up this cup please, the bathroom’s down the hall on the left. Okay.
I already did this last night, twice. It was positive. I’m pregnant. I’m fucking pregnant. No, must have messed it up. I’m on the pill. I can’t be pregnant. But twice? I messed up twice? The test came two-for-one, CVS brand. Deshaun is so goddamn cheap. CVS pregnancy test? I’m supposed to trust that? And who needs a buy-one-get-one-free pregnancy test? I used both, why not, they’re there. Both positive. Fuck. FUCK. I didn’t mess up, you just pee on the damn things. No, they’re wrong. Cheap tests. I’m on the pill!
‘We’ll go to Planned Parenthood tomorrow to make sure,’ he said. ‘We gotta be sure so we can know what to do. Did you miss your pills? You’re supposed to take them at the same time every day! I told you that! Oh God, you can’t be pregnant. You can’t be.’
The people here are experts. They’ll tell me for sure. Tell me what I already know. He said we’d go to Planned Parenthood, but he’s not here. Something came up. More important than this?
Back already? Okay, I’ll take that from you. We should have the results in a minute. Just take a seat there.
I called my sister two weeks ago. ‘I don’t feel good, Julie. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Every time I eat I have to fight back the urge to throw up. My breasts are sore, and I’m tired all the time. So tired.’
‘Rach, it sounds like you’re pregnant.’
Julie was pregnant once, she had a miscarriage. She cried for days, until her bright eyes were bloodshot and puffy, mascara streaked down her oval face. What was the big deal, have another one. I don’t like babies. They smell weird. They all look the same, like little raisin people. Am I going to have a little raisin baby?
The results are positive. Are you planning on keeping the baby?
How long have I been pregnant? I’ve been drinking and smoking this whole time, but I didn’t know! Cigarettes and weed. Which one is worse, should I ask? Will they think I’m a bad mother? I didn’t know! Keep the baby, what does that mean? How do you choose not to keep a baby? It’s there now, what do I do with it?
My life is over. That’s it. FUCK. I was going to Spain this summer, and now that’s out the window. No, I’m just pregnant now, I can still go. But what about next summer. Washington for grad school, work wherever, live overseas maybe? I hadn’t decided. Now I have. I’m stuck. Stuck. Stuck. Where to work, where to live? Here? Home? Home is here now. Haven’t seen Mom, Dad or my sisters in a year. Can’t go back like this. Can’t. Won’t. Get knocked up, go back home. Not me.
That son of a bitch, he did this to me. ‘I don’t like condoms, I never use ‘em. I haven’t gotten anyone else pregnant.’ How many anyone else’s were there, but I didn’t ask, bad question. Any answer is the wrong answer. It was better without it. It was great without it. And I had the pill, never missed one. Or did I? No, never, maybe once. At the beginning. That was a year ago, why now? I told him. I knew it, I knew it. No condom was asking for trouble. And he’s not here now. WHY ISN’T HE HERE NOW?
Is this why I’ve been feeling so sad? Tired and down. Did my body know what was happening, and didn’t tell me? I lied to myself. I don’t want this baby. It’s not even a baby yet, just a clump of junk in my uterus. I don’t want it. I don’t want IT. Julie’s miscarriage came in the third month, a little closer to human. I asked her why she was crying, and she said that she hoped I would never find out. She was genuine. She hugged me, even hugged Sarah, and they hate each other. I thought I got it then. We’re sisters, we’d all be mothers someday.
Now I really get it. I really get it now. She wanted it so bad, and was so close. And it was ripped away, ripped out of her. She passed the remains of the fetus like a period, bloody and long, and she screamed. From the pain, but what kind of pain? I didn’t know. I know now, because I don’t want this. As much as she wanted it, I don’t want it.
Is that what the nurse meant? Do I want to keep the baby? No, I don’t. Get rid of it. GET RID OF IT. I did everything for this not to happen. Fuck fuck fuck. I can’t be a mother. I don’t want to be a mother.
Abortion. Mom had one, right before Julie. Old boyfriend, she said he pressured her into it. Took him months to save up for it. Late-term, illegal stuff. Said she threw up when she saw the doctor holding a little arm in his forceps. She tried to commit suicide, met Dad in the hospital. Didn’t feel better until Julie was born. That would have been a boy, says she’s been cursed with girls by God for her sin. I can’t do that. Fuck. I can’t. Fuck. That’s part of me in there. Part of me, part of Deshaun, part of God, part of the universe. Mom would kill me.
But this isn’t a person yet. No little arms. No heart or brain or eyes. Just cells. A clump of goo. That’s not a person. Not yet. That’s not a man. What is a man? This isn’t one, what’s in me. But it will be if I let it. Would’ve been nice to have an older brother. Just say no, no I don’t want it, suck it out with a Hoover. I can tell Julie, ‘I know, I know what you felt. I know how it feels to have life and death in you, to sense the flame of beginning and have it snuffed out, to wail as something not quite human is taken away from you, something you hate and love and you don’t know why, and to wonder what if for months and years. I know.’
Are you planning on keeping the baby? It’s not a baby, it’s a fetus. Are you planning on keeping the baby? Maybe I can miscarry too, no guilt and no baby. Are you planning on keeping the baby? Why is my hand on my belly? This thing doesn’t even have legs yet, why am I feeling for a kick? ARE YOU PLANNING ON-
“Yes.”
