State Champ, page 1
for Caryl & Caren & Alyssa & Jess
& in remembrance
for Marie
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
They Dragged Them Through the Streets
Watchfires
Strawberry Fields
Hole Studies
Excisions
Contents
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Day 9
Day 10
Day 11
Day 12
Day 13
Day 14
Day 15
Day 16
Day 17
Day 18
Day 19
Day 20
Day 21
Day 22
Day 23
Day 24
Day 25
Day 26
Day 27
Day 28
Day 29
Day 30
Day 31
Day 32
Day 39
Day 12 back to life
Acknowledgments
We have different relationships to windows.
MELISSA DICKEY
Day 2
I’m going to use all the printer paper.
No, Donna, I’m not using both sides.
No, I’m not starting with day 1.
Anyone who counts day 1 of a hunger strike is not going to make it. You just ate.
I’m at work. I’m living here. I thought it through. It’s October, even if someone shuts off the heat it won’t get cold for a while. Plenty of time. No one’s allowed to live here, zoning, but if they haul me out they’ll just bring me to jail, which works. No one’s allowed to do abortions here anymore, but me I’m just sitting in a room. Water and lights are paid through December, I think. Or at least through the end of the month. There’s a sort of shower in the back, a nozzle in the wall. I brought a lot of bottled water. No food. Keep it simple. I slept on an examination table last night, in your old sleeping bag. Inside near the top smelled like coconut. Sunscreen, I guess. Further down smelled like rainwater, like that Velcro sound when you pin back the tent flap and look for stars. John, you’re always prepared. You always own the right stuff already. I don’t know how that works, it’s like you went shopping at birth. I stole this sleeping bag from you last time I saw you. It’s hard to steal something shaped like a sleeping bag but that’s my skill set. I didn’t have a purpose in mind, back then, I just wanted to try out your lifestyle. And now here I am, prepared. For example I brought—I rode the bus here so it was not easy—a bunch of buckets, now filled with water and lined up in the hallway. The hallway that was too narrow to fit a gurney with doctors suited up on both sides, like on TV, running while they ask the patient overly emotional questions, except you could just push it from behind, it’s a very short hallway, you could honestly just carry someone to the end of it honeymoon-style, I know because one night after the holiday thing Monica tried it with me, Monica scooped me up and carried me, we were both drunk but it went fine, you can save more lives drunk than you ever dreamed. Hallway width was one of the first restrictions. A million tiny laws and big court cases later and we had to open up a sort of loading dock area in the back, like truckfuls of knocked-up humans would be rolled down in here, babies sucked out of them. Exit through the front. The buckets are in case the water gets cut. I want to be able to flush the toilet. I honestly don’t know what the situation of shitting will be. I’m guessing major, then nothing. I did shit yesterday. Day 1. I thought there was something already wrong with me then remembered, beets. I had a big old beet salad, last day of gluttony. I have not shit today. I feel hungry, which I’m hoping will stop soon, like how you get warm as you freeze. They say. My breath is very bad and I find that interesting. Whenever I’ve dieted hard-core the breath rots right away, like it knows what you’re thinking. Blasting out the passage. Can teeth melt? My tongue’s a little stinker. Like nothing could ever taste good. I bet this paper smells like my breath.
Whoever is reading this, give it to John. It’s for John, I should have said.
John, I wrote and called you yesterday. You’re an OK reporter. You’re pretty good, I think. You wrote me back wtf u for real which is not what a good reporter would write but on the other hand made us both feel dramatic. My aunt, who would like to remind you she is a city councilwoman, who I emailed to be official, has been calling all day. I’m not answering. I’m just sending her selfies. In the latest, I’m drinking water, slice of lemon, out of a urine sample cup. I brought the lemons, that’s not food. She can tell from the photo I am where I say I am. Now I just have to chill. Yesterday I sat on the floor and stretched for so long I think my hamstrings liquified. The rug smells like comfy shoes worn by scared women.
This strike is for Dr. M, who was sentenced last week.
Should have said that on page 1.
She can’t hunger strike because of her diabetes. She actually said exactly this once, too bad for me, I could never go on a hunger strike because of my diabetes. 12 years minimum, 12 years before parole, that’s what she’s got going now. 10 would be plenty but they went in for the extra 2. I don’t know what she’ll do in there. As far as I can tell she’s never even thought about something that wasn’t work. Maybe she’ll be roomed with another abortion doc and they can set a professional tone. Sew tags into mall-brand bras, but like at a high level?
That I’m here at work and she isn’t is kind of ironic, or is it a paradox, since Dr. M does not in general have a lot of confidence in me, which I know because she has on more than one occasion made lots of eye contact with me while saying Angela, I find I do not have a lot of confidence in you. But I think this is the one task she might bet on me for, since she always, and I liked it, did remember that I was “an athlete.” Her son was a few years ahead of me in high school and played tennis famously. So she’d follow the high school sports coverage. Even though he was long gone, off at college, I’m sure already doing something useful like inventing a vaccine to prevent fellow geniuses from getting tattoos they’d regret later when their dad bods set in. I don’t think Dr. M has ever had a habit she didn’t keep up with. I bet she still plays with dolls just to keep her hand in the game. Dr. M can tell winners from losers. So she’d remember, if I was reaching up for a ream of printer paper on the shelf and gave a little hop, she would say, there you go, Angela, very athletic. I haven’t forgotten you were a state champion.
It’s really paying off, I’d say, or something.
Well, you didn’t do it for the reward, she said once, and she was right actually. I can right now taste the waste of puking hard onto green grass, in the middle of a random field, walking it off after getting out of the finish-line chute, kind of careening forward along the ropes and water-cup people until you’re finally out in the open and you can finally puke. My point is, I think this is a paradox not an irony because it comes from something we both understand, me and Dr. M. I think irony is like, not knowing + someone else watching = knowing. But what about knowing + knowing = the opposite of what you thought you knew. John, you’re the writer. John, help me out.
Day 3
Krys was right. There are roaches. A guy came last spring to genocide them, but no. Who knows what he killed, the roaches are fine. Every other day, right as I got in, Krys would be talking about how she was the first one here, and when she flicked the light on in the break room she’d hear roach feet cackling toward the walls. I wasn’t here in time to squeal with her, was her point. Even if I did get here first, I told her, I wouldn’t go to the break room because I don’t pack a lunch. Krys was always putting her cute purple lunch sack in the fridge, sandwich sliced into quarters and a little baby Coke. She uses those baggies that fold over at the top, don’t zip shut, real act of faith in plastic. The break room is kind of your thing, I pointed out, so the roaches are kind of your thing. People always want to make jobs about something else that’s not even the job. How are you so skinny? Krys or Monica or whoever would say. You eat so unhealthy. You always eat crap. People shouldn’t ask questions they don’t want answered.
I hear the roaches at night. I hear their whole civilization. If they had a roach abortion clinic with roach protestors, I’d know all about it. I brought roach spray. I thought of that, so thanks, Krys. Now that I’m not eating it’s good to still be killing at least one animal.
This morning I found a roach floating in the bucket closest to the break room. I was going to get a pair of latex gloves, fish it out, chuck it. There’s the parking lot dumpster. But I keep hearing about microplastics in the ocean. There’s more tiny plastic pieces now than plankton? You go to get a big mouthful of little food critters with your cool whale mouth and it’s plastic plastic plastic. On the news they just rescued a turtle from some beach and it shit plastic for days. So I used my bare hands, I fished the roach out by its leg, but that didn’t work, so I touched its whole wet bug self. Hunger-strike-wise, anything that grosses you out is just fuel to the fire. Little roach baby, I said, though it was probably a roach mama, did you ever think that when they closed down the abortion clinic, you’d die too? No lunches, no Wednesday donuthole boxes? And here I am with no food. So this is how it ends. I flicked the corpse into the trash and drops of water flicked back off its dead wings at my face. Christ. Were they—they weren’t—eating, like, tissue? They weren’t. Everything’s sealed off, disposed of right. We used to have to prove this, and then things got even weirder, and we had to ask the people lying there on the table, legs in
Someone thought of this law.
But roaches get us all eventually, right? Eventually everyone is something bugs eat.
I don’t think anyone else is still protesting for Dr. M. People will keep protesting the heartbeat law, or the next law up, which will ban every abortion in this state forever. After the heartbeat law that one’s sort of unnecessary but they’ll go for it. If other states are going all 1800s, we’ve got to keep up. But everyone’s already forgetting about Dr. M. All the talk of bans and referendums and how the referendums will get blocked, it all drowns her out. She’s just a name you’d list somewhere, another shitty or great thing that happened. Her sentence came down last week, but it was just a sad blip in the news. That’s why I’m here, why I’m starting something. Because it’s like, where’s Dr. M’s baby boy? Where’s everyone who cared so much for a minute?
During her trial twin crowds corralled outside the courthouse. Once or twice I joined in. I’m not much of a sign waver. I didn’t know what to bring. I knew I’d duck out early and in the meantime I just kind of stood there till Donna gave me pamphlets to hand out.
If we’re being honest, only Donna was talking to me then. Or now. The others were pissed because they thought I’d made things worse. They thought I’d snitched. They were wrong but it’s not the kind of thing I could just explain. They don’t think I can handle myself. But the thing with the politician’s aide was just fucking, which is exactly the sort of thing I can handle.
Didn’t help that I hated the pamphlets, which were just like government office numbers to call, places to donate to. This is great for other people, was my point, but for Dr. M, it was like everyone had already given up on her, like only the cause mattered and not the individual people, when individual people were the cause anyway, like everyone who walks through our doors, the phrase Donna used to say …
At the trial, in the crowd opposite us, outside the courthouse, lined up on the sidewalk and basically high-fiving each other, were some of the old shouters. Back from the dead. It was weird to recognize them. All those guys who used to show up with baseball caps that said Repent Whore (who needs punctuation), homemade signs against Muslims and Homos (“Are you lost? This is just an abortion clinic,” I told a guy once, then had to like wash his reply out of my ears), blown-up cut-up fetus signs, signs tallying some number of babies dead since ’73. Last time that sign got waved at me I said, “God, I’ve had my period way more than that and I’m only 27.” (28.) I regret saying that since I think most people think I’m younger than I am. And to be honest I’m not much of a menstruater.
Janine, though, Janine is the queen of flow, everyone syncs their cycles up to hers. Janine was outside the courthouse every day. She kept her distance from the Repent Whore crowd (they do not smell great) and sometimes the guys seemed like they were shouting not just at Dr. M and us but at her, with a kind of pissed-off flirtation she seemed into. Whatever battle had taken place between these factions, for the right to scream at human beings all day in our parking lot, she’d won. For years those dudes assigned themselves to us, showing up whenever they felt like it, messaging consistent, membership inconsistent, led by an old priest who, someone said, was in the midst of a big heap of accusations for child sexual abuse. Allegedly. Do you have to say allegedly in your personal hunger journal? Anyway like three years ago Janine and her girls showed up, and not long after we never saw the old shouters and that bummer of a priest again. Turf turnover. Janine runs a tight ship. I swear I did not hear the word whoremonger from the day she took over the parking lot until the trial’s cool generational mix. Repent Whores were Facebook, Janine was Instagram. On fall days she wore sweater blazers and they were shapely. Her girls handed out well-formatted pamphlets and cute rubber baby dolls, talked less about babykillers and more about resources. We’re here to empower women, they’d say. Society is pressuring you, they’d say, but you’re free to listen to your heart, and they’d press this cute swaddled rubber baby, pink ribbon round its torso, into your hand, really wedge it in there. No more fake-blood-smeared dolls hurled at someone’s face. We’re here to save lives and love women. You could see Janine monitoring each member of her little team, approving their message, syllable by syllable. The minute Dr. M was arrested, funnily about nine months ago now, Janine must have known she’d won. She preened outside the courthouse, there to see and be seen, hair dyed dark red, darker than blood and glinting.
When I scrolled through photos from the news, two crowds doing their thing in front of the courthouse, I saw someone I hadn’t seen there in person. Rose, standing to the side of the crowd, looking like I must have looked, like she didn’t want to get closer, didn’t know what to do. Just standing there wearing a windbreaker over jean shorts so short they were more of a rumor, her legs kind of knock-kneed, thigh faintly yellow.
In the waiting room she’d tipped her head back to rest on the wall, exposing her neck, which looked long and throbbing, like you could see her pulse going hard in the side of it, like a thumb had pressed into the freaked-out heart of this weak clay. At the desk she’d started to tell me everything, lots of people do that, I have to break in to tell them I’m not a nurse or anything, they can wait to talk to the nurse when they go back. Sometimes it’s true I could interrupt faster. Sometimes Monica would step in and keep her eye on me, saying, “Oh she doesn’t have medical training, but we’ll help you with all of that in the back.” A few months before Dr. M’s arrest Rose had come up to the desk gripping her clipboard, left wrist choked with little beaded bright bracelets like kids make, she’s a real sport for wearing those around. She’d been in for a procedure and now she was back for birth control. She had the prescription but she didn’t like it. “Is there a stronger pill? I need a stronger pill,” she was saying.
“I hear you,” I said. “The nurse—”
“I don’t get my period with this one,” she was saying, “and I need to get my period, I’m spending like so much money on tests—”
“It’s all about the estrogen,” I said. “They’ll totally—”
“I have to get my period.”
I think it all got sorted out, except now we’re closed and she’ll have to get her pill somewhere else, we can’t help anyone. I keep thinking the phone will ring and I’ll be able to help someone, by chance, by still being here, just picking up the phone. Everyone in the world doesn’t know everything that happened, someone could just call, thinking we’re still here, ready to help, whatever they need. But what could I do anyway, what would I say? Before the heartbeat law passed, people were calling and calling. Like from other states where the laws had moved faster. You’d ask for an address and it was like, what? If I got up to take a piss I’d miss like ten calls. Sometimes when you picked up the phone to dial, there’d just be someone there already, hello? I started making outgoing calls on my cell while the actual phone rang in my face.
And then after the heartbeat law, mostly if I answered I was just like, no. You can come in and see. But if you already know and you’re already too far along … No no no no no no no. Then Dr. M was like, take down their names anyway. Try to get them in anyway. If there’s even a chance, she’d say, they could have the dates wrong, some crisis pregnancy center could have told them wrong …
“Get their info, I’ll call them back,” she said. That should have tipped me off?
“Dr. M,” I said, “have you tried using the phone? Pick that shit up and see what happens.”
“Just get their information, Angela. As many as you can.”
And now there was an outgoing message on the system. I know because I recorded it. Donna kept trying to leave the message on the last day. It felt like there were a million last days, we stayed open after the law flipped, we stayed open after the heartbeat law passed, we kept doing all the things that weren’t the main thing, seeing patients, pills, exams, referrals, more referrals, and every day felt like both the absolute last day and the day after the last day, like a sort of hell where you tried to catch up on everything everyone ever alive hadn’t gotten done, but anyway then Dr. M got arrested, the money got frozen or tied up or whatever and there were more search warrants and we were fucked. It was done. So on the last last day Donna kept starting to leave a message then getting too choked up, not a problem I expected Donna to have. “I can’t do it,” she said. “Krystal, can you do it?” Krys had come in to take down all her identical beach sunset photos and her actually framed and signed Hamilton poster and she was asking Donna about medical supplies, what the cops took, what would be donated. She had a box in her hands when Donna called out to her. “I’m busy,” she said to Donna, “have Ange do it.” She could see I was sitting at the big desktop, where I happened to be deleting some browser history. Way too late. “All we’re doing is telling them they’re screwed, they have to try to get out of state in time? Have Ange do it, Ange always sounds like a stone-cold bitch.”
