State Champ, page 12
I guess I genuinely thought she’d be a good person to talk to about this. It kinda blew that she wasn’t.
“Whatever, it’s cool. It’s cool that you come to pray for me, even though it isn’t. It’s cool that you’re coming here, that Rose is coming here.”
“Is Rose your aunt?”
“What? No. Rose isn’t a person. Rose is a situation people find themselves in. You could be Rose. Sometimes I think maybe you’ve been Rose.”
Before our eyes Dr. Park was straightening her dark-gray Prius. She walked up to join Janine’s and my hangout and nodded, clicking the beeper back behind her. “Hello again,” she said.
“Dr. Park,” I said, “what do you call a Venn diagram with no overlap? Just like two circles and a big fucking channel in the middle? Omg”—revelation—“that’s two balls and a cock!”
“Let’s continue this discussion inside,” Dr. Park said, and offered me an arm.
“The kingdom of heaven is real,” Janine said.
“No, I agree with you,” I said. “I think it’s real.”
Dr. Park looked interested. Janine apparated however she does. Dr. Park and I slowly promenaded through the waiting room. Three roaches crossed our path, equally unrushed. I thought she’d react. I guess I thought she might scream, or leap up on a chair clutching invisible pearls. Nope, she just sidestepped the roach scuttling toward her taupe flat.
In the back, room 2, she helped me up onto the exam table. She folded the paper—this paper—to the side delicately, like she was trying not to tear it, but also like she was reading it. I was flattered.
She said something un-genius like: “You’ve been writing.”
“Uh-huh.”
“People say they feel a sort of clarity. They say their mind clears. Do you feel that at all?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “So I guess not.”
“I don’t really believe in that kind of thing, though,” I told her. “I don’t really believe that one moment is like clearer or better. When my mom died,” I told her, “everyone kept asking about a note. Like, did she leave a note, what did it say. But the note didn’t matter. What she said then wasn’t like the most meaningful thing. It didn’t mean more than every other thing she’d ever said. My aunt was so angry, like it was so selfish and she didn’t really say goodbye. She just left everything and everyone and there was this shitty note. I tried to tell them, her whole life is what she meant, what she was saying. This was just one fucked-up moment. It’s not what everything means.”
Don’t remember if Dr. Park replied to that. Maybe she said I’m sorry because that’s what people say. That’s OK. She means it.
* * *
She spent a while telling me about the case. Let me try to get it down, understand it. Understanding is harder.
“Fatima’s lawyers contacted me,” she said. “Her son as well, the whole team. They kept saying we. I assume that includes her, too. They wanted to know how you’re doing and if you’ll keep going.”
I asked what she told them. She said: “I haven’t told them anything. I needed to talk to you first.”
Are people afraid that life might actually be simple? Do they need everything to be hard?
* * *
“I’m good,” I said, “Say I’m doing good and I’ll go as long as it takes.”
“All right.”
Still waiting?
“I think the question for you,” she said, “is how you think they could help your protest succeed, what role you’d like them to play.”
“OK.”
“You might want to give some thought to that.”
“OK.”
* * *
“Are you paid for this?” I think I asked.
She looked surprised. “No,” she said. “But I have a good job, you don’t need to worry about that.”
“Do you believe in my protest? Is that why you came?”
“I came because you were a patient in need of a doctor.”
“Would you treat someone like me, like on a hunger strike, but for a cause you didn’t believe in? Like someone protesting against abortion?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think Dr. M was wrong to do what she did?”
“No.”
“But you wouldn’t have done it.”
“No. I don’t know. To be honest I like to think I would have been a little smarter about it.”
“You think she was stupid?”
“No. She wasn’t strategic, though. Maybe she was arrogant, or maybe she wanted to get caught. Maybe she thought getting caught would turn out differently.”
“Do you think I’m stupid?”
“No. But you would benefit from having more of a strategy.”
“Do you know what the best strategy for winning a cross-country race is?”
“No.”
“Just run faster than everyone else.”
“I’m sure there’s more to it.”
“No,” I said. “I promise. That’s it.”
* * *
“If someone was doing something like this for me,” I said, “I’d like pick up the phone. Do you know what I mean?”
“I do,” Dr. Park said.
“So that sucks,” I said. “I mean potentially. But then”—and this is the part I want to remember—“this isn’t even about her. If she isn’t into it, fine. It’s not personal to her, you know what I mean?”
“I think so,” Dr. Park said.
I knew she’d get it.
“What would you like me to tell her team?”
“Tell her I hope she gets out but this is bigger than that. Tell her I’m doing it like she did the secret stuff. It’s not just for the one person, it’s for everyone who could be that person. Can you say something like that?”
“I can.”
“Or I can do it.”
“They might appreciate your meaning better,” Dr. Park said, a little slowly, “if it comes from me.”
People always get diplomatic with me. Like they think I’m going to be offended by their little criticism but no. I’m actually only offended that they think I’d be offended.
“Totally agree,” I said.
I told her I’d been reading about a guy in Guantánamo who’d been on a hunger strike on and off for almost 10 years.
Dr. Park’s lipstick is pink at the edge but faded in the center, like she chews at it, like it just never looks the way she hopes when she puts it on in the bathroom mirror.
“He was imprisoned,” she said. “He had to keep going because they weren’t letting him out. You can walk out that door anytime. You shouldn’t forget that.”
* * *
“Point is,” I told her, “you actually don’t have to come check in on me every day, I’ve been reading about it. I’m not in the danger zone yet. Are you coming here just to be nice?”
“No,” she said. “I’m an overachiever. And if I take my lunch break at work, this new fellow tries to join me and he’s pretty annoying. So you’re a good excuse.”
“Thanks!” I said.
* * *
“I’ve been in jail, you know,” I said. “Drunk driving. 30 days.”
“I read that,” she said, “but thank you for telling me.”
“And a couple other times, actually,” I said, while I was at it. “For some nights here and there. Once for drunk and disorderly, once for DUI again, for uh indecent exposure. Nothing bad, I was just pissing on the street.”
“You didn’t just get a ticket?”
“Disrespectful,” I said. “I mean they told me I was disrespectful.”
“I see,” Dr. Park said. “There are worse things to be. See you tomorrow,” she said. “Rest up.”
* * *
You can forget you’re locked up, if you’re lucky. Like if you fall asleep, pass out, peace out, settle in. But you can never forget that you’re not locked up. Freedom is the first thing.
* * *
Now I’m wondering: did Janine know the Roses were coming? That they’d show up today, magical, like a pop-up garden? Did she get here early? Is there somewhere the Roses talk to each other and Janine listens?
* * *
I’m getting an idea.
* * *
Napped. I’m resting up. You’ve been texting me all day. Like you’re trying to make up for the other morning. You don’t usually have moves like that. It’s like I’m more of a girl now. You’re scared you dropped a kitten and it ran away.
Me: Don’t you have band practice tonight
?
Oh sorry thought this was Sean
Night.
Day 19
I feel like
I finally have the right job.
* * *
The problem with Sean from high school—why it did not “work out”—was his brother’s ex-girlfriend. Not something she did. Something done to her. I didn’t want to think about it anymore so I couldn’t hang around. It happened the night after prom. Not the night of, that’s what everyone says, they tell the story wrong, it was one night after. Sean’s brother and Sean’s brother’s girlfriend had gone camping. High-school-wise they were the star couple and this was their big romantic plan, except. She must have told him, night of prom, that she was pregnant. She wanted them to get married, classic. Later he’d be like I didn’t want to lose my football scholarship but the thing is he barely had one. It was the local DII school. The man was not going pro. He brought a baseball bat, on the trip. No baseball diamonds, no T-ball setups in the woods where they pitched a tent. You can only recognize her by an old photo if you already know. High school kids had fundraisers for the surgeries. I think I washed cars. Of course the baby was gone, lost, done. Why did he hit her face? He must have gotten started and not wanted to stop. Sean told the cops he saw his big brother put the bat in the trunk of the car. It didn’t just happen to be there. This made a difference. This was a plan, you get charged on the plan. I was proud of Sean for saying that. The truth about his own brother. His parents were not so proud. Afterward he used to go by her house—Rose’s house (this girl was named Rose, for real, she was Rose)—and bring her little coffees or snacks, sit and chat on the porch. Not sure what they had to talk about but Sean is chatty. Drop him in any bar anywhere. Anyway I think that’s why we never got serious. It was already too serious. I couldn’t handle it, you could say. That is in fact what he said. Like a lot of people I couldn’t quite take seeing her. Her changed face, her slowed speech.
Later, when I thought of her, I sometimes wished she’d come up to the window, come to this place. Then I’d have another chance. I could be like hey and just be helpful. But it’s fucked up to want people to need help so you can help them. It’s all fucked up. There was either a moment when she woke up after, or she was awake the whole time. Either way everything she knew changed. This whole volleyball world (she was captain), sneaks squeaking on the floor, meet your boyfriend in the hallway after, plan for the weekend, hairbrush and a little booze in your locker, she knew all that forever and perfect. Then one day the world was something else. What was strange was how you could recognize its new form, you just never thought this other world would come for you, and be so personal, so that you’d have to learn how to talk again, or watch the hair get so thick on your arms, feel the hot place on your skin that covers a fresh broken bone. Rose finds a lot out. She gets to know, if she lives. She finds out who comes by the porch, what happens when people find out what happened. That’s what people, me included, can’t handle. Not her face but what she knows when she sees you see it. What she knows about a boyfriend she gave a nice BJ to when he got his bad scholarship. Everything that Rose knows is what we don’t want to handle. But I’m getting there now, walking toward that porch.
I’m getting closer.
Day 20
Phone blowing up? Piss burning? All good?
Did the phone wake me up
or am I just never asleep exactly totally?
Just kind of alive.
Lift my arm up and down, press it on the paper, where blood—the old dent—makes a pattern, interesting. Delicate and fortune telling. Now it’s just blobs and smears.
Wanting something like hot broth, rainbowy fat on the surface, little carrot shards.
You know, I got faster but they still kicked me off.
Phone rang, thought it might be Dr. M and I’d get that collect-call robot girl. Instead someone just said “Hello?” slowly a few times. I guess I hadn’t said anything when I’d picked up, I’d flipped the script.
Me, late: “Hi.”
“Is this Angela?”
“Yes,” I said. I wanted to say something clever. But then I thought this person, as just a regularly eating human being, could destroy me in any competition.
“This is Rosheen, we spoke a few days ago, I work with Steve at the—”
I remembered, Mike’s follow-up girl.
“His assistant.”
“Well no, I’m not his assistant.”
She said something about a statement and a reaction. “We’d love to get a reaction.” What? “Could you comment on the record about.” What?
Went on like this for however long, a big cramp was screaming awake and I was not my best. I said something like, eventually I said, “What the shit? What are you talking about?”
So here’s the statement, she read it to me, but then I looked it up so I could copy it down and get it right.
I want to know what I’m dealing with. I gotta take things slow.
Looked up her name, too, over at Mike’s paper. Róisín. Wtf?
Intro stuff then: My client has recently learned from news media that a protest is underway on her behalf. A former employee, Angela Peterson, began a hunger strike almost two weeks ago to protest the imprisonment of my client, a doctor who has dedicated her life to providing reproductive healthcare to people in dire need. Ms. Peterson states she will continue her protest until my client is free. As you know, a hunger strike is a serious action. A young woman’s willingness to do something this courageous should only remind us how important reproductive rights are to so many women and people in this country. We commend Angela for her courage, and we urge you to contact your lawmakers to demand they repeal the so-called heartbeat law, which is so harmful to women and families, and to contact the governor’s office to request a commuted sentence for my client. We also urge executive action on the federal level to protect access to abortion nationwide. There is no time to lose.
Delivering this speech was a dye-job blond lady lawyer with a rich-dad coat, pearly buttons and a tight but classy shape like she’d been sewn in there. Can’t remember if she worked the trial. At the end of her speech she held up—literally, in her hands, bracelet dropping into her coat cuff—a big white poster printed with a URL. There were multiple cameramen (camerapeople?) so she couldn’t just print shit across the screen, I guess.
Beside the lady lawyer stood a guy, tall, not old, well-dressed, familiar, oh right, every body is just made out of other bodies, Dr. M’s son. I don’t remember his name. I can see the point of learning little kids’ names but not, like, adult children. Let’s say T. That’s close. He’s a lawyer but not the right kind, I guess, so when his mom got locked up he had to stick it out on the sidelines. He doesn’t look like sideline material. Big dark eyes. Looking right into the camera like from the prow of a sad and righteous ship.
I typed in the URL, and the link helps you reach your legislators and the governor. There’s a petition and lots of prewritten emails. My name is nowhere on this site? Just says widespread protest on behalf of …
Am I widespread? Sometimes.
Did not sign up.
The petition had 2,161 signatures so far.
OK.
1. More than two weeks, not almost two weeks.
2. Former employee sounds like I was fired?
3. Dr. M didn’t learn about me from the news. Donna and Dr. Park both knew, they both must have told Dr. M. So. It’s like we 5 (5?) are supposed to just know this part’s a lie. It feels nice, I guess, to be in the in-crowd. But what’s the point? Is everyone in the in-crowd always confused?
Róóóóóóóóóisíííííííííín asked me like the worst version of every question.
“You heard what she said,” I said. “People should do something. They should be pissed.”
“What do you think about the actions her attorney promoted? Contacting lawmakers, trying to have her sentence commuted? Does that seem sufficient to you? I wonder, are you coordinating with her defense team?”
“What? No. I’m acting alone,” I said. I only remembered later, like just now, that this is the phrase for like the gunman on the grassy knoll? Great. My cramps were going hard. I said—pretty sure—“I’m kind of a lone wolf out here.”
Then I said: “No comment.” I remembered that was the magic bullet. “No comment, no comment. Bye bye.” I hung up. Definitely two byes. OK.
I just needed time to think, but now I have it and I’m not thinking anything. I need time for someone to explain everything to me.
Donna?
You?
* * *
What time is it?
Fell asleep
* * *
Bunch of texts starting at 11:30 a.m. to now-ish. 3:30. I didn’t have the number saved but using context clues it was Dr. Park.
Angela, I can’t make it today. Emergency at work. Please let me know if you’re not feeling well.
Angela, are you OK?
Remember, you can always call an ambulance.
Then a bunch more.
I wrote back: Sorry was asleep kind of. Totally OK. See you tomorrow thx
Now that I’m thinking about it, should I say something nice? I don’t know what emergency means there. Here it means, like, a gun, or way too much blood.
