State Champ, page 5
She hung up.
Is Donna on Team Suicide?
Day 10
Saw what your friend wrote, based on our convo. Under the headline PUBLICITY STUNT. He sure used the verb claim. And why that photo of Dr. M, all handcuffed and defendant-looking, head bowed behind the bad table. Gray roots, skunked out. You’re right, your paper is trash. Sorry. But I had to scroll way down to see anything about anything, the first 4 minutes of scroll are all advice columns run by the kids of dead advice columnists, ads for the one house in this city that costs $1 million, a feature on a guy who was on the baseball team when they were good 10 years ago, then interviews with some fans just like remembering, 5 articles on cops who may or may not get put on leave, an article on how much people love this new towpath, a photo of a kid who got his eye shot out at a protest against police brutality, an interview with the quarterback from the ’80s discussing rape-y rumors about the new quarterback, 2 hotels going bankrupt and what readers could personally do, a review of a new Taco Bell product, maybe 15 articles on high school sports and only 1 girls’ team and it’s gymnastics, an article on a bill to keep trans girls off girls’ sports teams, I guess if you just switch up which girls you treat the shittiest that fools some people (and now everyone has an excuse to check out kids’ genitals, I guess), then an article on some politicians who aren’t fans of China, some celebrities’ 46th birthdays, an article about an actress in a Transformers movie a few plastic surgeries ago who I guess is making changes in her dating life, an incorrect list of the 10 best Nine Inch Nails albums, and then … PUBLICITY STUNT.
I got your text with a link to the article like an hour after I’d already found it. You said, I can’t write about u bc of our relationship but this is my coworker. Ange ur not really gonna keep on w this? DANGEROUS
I texted back: u think I didnt have a “relationship” w your coworker?
Buzz buzz buzz.
I’m lying down.
* * *
Don’t know if anyone at your paper does research, but Janine’s social media is a treasure trove. Follow your finger down down down and there she is on the podium with that state senator, total fucking Nazi, standing beside him with little sparkles in her eyes. Holding a pair of oversized scissors. It’s a ribbon-cutting for one of those crisis pregnancy centers, Valley Women’s Care Center—like, sweetie, we’ve got you nestled here in some cozy valley, not surrounded by soybean fields and pig slaughterhouses like you think. I think Janine’s kids are there, or at least there’s three boys with her jawline, sporting sharp little khaki pants and polos. The Nazi rests his hand on one boy’s shoulder. A few years back the Nazi went in hard on defending a wrestling coach at the state school who it turned out really was molesting high school kids in his “recruiting program.” Some people come back from that—the boys the coach got to—but some don’t. I think if you stepped back later and looked at their whole lives, you’d be like, no, they never quite came back. But you don’t ever hear about what happens after, unless a suicide or overdose turns up in the news. Boys and girls, Janine is not looking out for you.
* * *
Pregnant women and girls, the article said, seeking abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, at approximately six weeks, now need to travel out of state … Pregnant women and girls … Like hey trans men are running for that border too. You’d think the other side would brag about everyone they were fucking over. But then they’d have to admit everyone exists and is, like, a human who is alive. This was a Priscilla thing too (not her name?) now that I think about it. When she got trained in to say like people and patients and you, to not assume pronouns and stuff, she was like “I don’t like to erase women from the conversation.”
“Just say women and people, then,” I said, “that’ll cover it,” like I was solving her problem.
“Especially at a place like this,” she said, “I just really believe in centering women.” What? This building was so full of women, everywhere you turned there was another one, making sure to tell you god you’re so skinny like it wasn’t a compliment or trying to diagnose how hungover you were.
I tried something like: “Listen, just be chill, honestly no one cares what you believe.”
(Did I go to high school with Priscilla? Is that it? This bitch is so familiar. I’m thinking that’s why she asked me so many questions, maybe we knew each other? Like she maybe dated this guy Robin, little birdname guy I made out with in the social studies closet?)
Krys used to remind me about vocab stuff, like I was some hick who couldn’t handle it if a man walked in here pregnant, would have to crank my jaw back up off the floor like a cartoon. I did not need reminding but you can’t win those fights. To Krys I was a hick and if I went to tell her why I actually, in some matters, was not, then I’d just be an angry hick. No one respects you because you tell them they should respect you. That has never worked throughout history. Didn’t work on Priscilla either. Wherever she is now, I’m sure she’s on her same bullshit, crying about how saying they must be what lost us everything and ended abortion. I swear, either Janine runs some sleeper cells or she doesn’t even need to, women (centered!) are that dumb on their own.
* * *
Publicity stunt. Last time I heard that phrase was from the guy who did or did not have a gun. It was intern Allie’s last day though we didn’t know that yet. The waiting room was normal, except someone was eating, I’m serious, a container of diced onions. I mean, they had a separate dish they were sprinkling the onions on. But that meant they opened up, more than once, this container of pure onions. Is that what set everything off? I’m trying to see if the smell has gotten more appetizing—like my memory of the smell—in my current condition. Nope. Good sign. Guy walked in, sat down by onion lady, then got up and moved. So there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with him. I was on hold in an insurance vortex. (You know, everyone forgets but there were certain calls Donna assigned to me specially. I can get past the first denial, wait out any 40-minute hold, no one outlasts me, that shit takes real persistence, you have to slog like a maniac through the first 3 operators until you get a supervisor, or one of the insurance co.’s “doctors,” and then you can get something done.) Anyway, that day I was watching this guy in the waiting room tap his foot very hard, his knee was like one of those sun-powered dancing toys, my aunt has a little pumpkin-head in her kitchen window, bounce bounce bounce. Then he got up. He ran at me. Like he ran across the waiting room, fast around the people and chairs. I was behind the sliding glass window thing, closed. The glass either slows or stops bullets. Does it slow or stop bullets? The guy stopped right in front of me. With my finger I hung up the phone. I don’t remember what I said. I looked at what I first thought was a hair stuck to the glass between us, making a line that ran down his face. But then I realized that the line was part of him, like a muscle tweaked by some expression he made, an acne or knife scar, I don’t know. He was pale and his eyes looked wrong, like an ancient mask of eyes he was forced to wear. His sweatshirt was wadded up on one side and he was gripping the wad of it. “You bring her back out here,” he said. “I have a gun. Before they do it to her. I have a gun.”
I don’t think I did or said anything. I was thinking. I was thinking I should find out her name, then say she wasn’t here. There seemed to be some problems with that plan. I sensed the presence of problems. I was getting the receiver out from under my ear with the wrong hand. I think I said: Sir, are you looking for someone? Probably the most polite I’ve ever been honestly. I guess this was one time I truly cared what someone thought.
But then Donna was already out there. She has secret passages, like in Clue. Boom, conservatory, boom, waiting room. “No you don’t,” she said to the guy. “No you don’t.” She got louder and her hands were up in front of her, between her and him, like she was both surrendering and about to shove him down. Her palms were flat, hands wide, he could have palm-read her whole vacationless life. “No you don’t,” she said. “No.”
Everyone in the waiting room was like a statue of a person in a nightmare. The onions were extreme. Donna’s voice was the only thing in my head—like I could feel her voice in my mouth. She was backing him toward the door. There are two doors, of course, for security. There’s an area in between, like closed in. Buzz him out, I thought, and I hit the buzzer. I could see the lines of Donna’s bra under her red clingy shirt. Her nails were a clashing pink. She was loud, she was endless. Her boobs, her belly, were our front line of defense. No, she was saying, and she kept stepping toward him, he kept stepping back. The sweatshirt was still wadded up, but his grip on it looked changed. Good sign? Buzz him out, I thought, and I was also dialing 911, phone off the hook, I could hear a low squeak from it. NO YOU DON’T. He was out. She was shutting the door in his face and I saw him, everyone saw him, step over in front of the left window and puke. Once quickly, then with a big heave, sinking on his knees into the puddle, again. It was orange, chunky, too red. I’d buzzed Donna back in. I hadn’t thought about it. I’d just buzzed her on back. I picked up the phone and the 911 dispatcher was telling me where I was. “Yes, that’s the address,” I said. “He’s a young white guy, with a weird face, puking outside, get here already.”
“Good job,” Donna said to me, nodding. I didn’t say anything because puke was filling my whole head. Through the window I could still see the line of it, long from his foul mouth hole, gut to lip to pavement.
I walked pretty normal to the back, got it all up and out, wiped the toilet down real nice after. Things were going on. Through the window to the cops you could hear the guy saying “just a publicity stunt. Publicity stunt.” I was watching Donna watch the cops. She talked with a nearly blank face. The day ended at a surprisingly usual time.
Someone said, “They said it wasn’t a gun or it wasn’t loaded?”
Someone said, “It was loaded.”
I thought about it and then I executed: I bought like 30 Bailey’s minis and spelled out THX on Donna’s desk. I’d heard her say once she liked an Irish coffee before bed. I’d heard her say “I don’t wait for cops.” I got in very early to set all this up and my arrival time really turned heads. Later from my desk I heard her chuckle.
Not one mini bottle in the trash. Willpower.
* * *
Your friend’s not as useless as I thought. There’s more to the article, below a huge ad for some kind of laser-pointer bikini-waxing device.
Judge Russo, who presided over the criminal case, declined to comment.
Reached by phone, the office of the prosecutor stated: “The defendant was found guilty by a jury of her peers and was sentenced according to state law. Like everyone she is entitled to appeal. We do not overturn the laws of our society based on random acts of terrorism.”
* * *
Rando terrorist! ☺ I’ve been called a lot but not that.
* * *
What I want is a big piece of white bread, the crusty kind, from a loaf you pull at with your hands, scales of crust splitting and falling, and then you spread that fake butter from a plastic tub all over a big piece like in a commercial for WASP lifestyles, grab a spoon and sprinkle, messy so it falls all over the plate, hot chocolate powder thick on top of the fake butter. If it’s the kind with those tiny crystallized marshmallows, you’ll find them later in your back teeth. Goddamn.
* * *
Evening now, like always, but this afternoon the doctor came. She had one of those leather bags doctors have in TV shows set in horsey villages. “Holy shit,” I said when I saw it.
“Angela?” she said. “I’m Dr. Park. I was asked to come by.”
I let her in. For convenience I’ve propped open the interior door.
“I understand you’re on a hunger strike,” she said. Her eyebrows were drawn toward each other, like she was worried, but they stayed there the whole time we talked. So either that’s just how she looks or I’m someone who worries her.
She paused in the waiting room and held her bag with both hands. “Before we begin,” she said, “you should know that my role is to confirm you are participating in this fast voluntarily, to evaluate your mental and physical health, including any underlying conditions that may make fasting more dangerous, and to provide you with medical care. I am not here to force-feed you. I am not here to spy on you, and I am also not here to serve as your spokesperson. For your safety, I may communicate basic information about your status to people outside this clinic, but I will not provide any further information or relay any messages without discussing the parameters with you in advance.”
“That’s serious,” I said.
Eye contact. “I would say it’s very serious.”
“I’m into it,” I said. “Let me show you my setup.”
We headed back. I was planning to take her to room 4, which I don’t go in much and which looks the most profesh, except for a spasming bulb. It occurs to me that this place—waiting-room chairs set up for slaloming, carpet unvacuumed, scent of old and new farts—is not at its best. It occurs to me I must have stopped slaloming chairs a couple days ago, and now I do not really, all that often, walk. This afternoon, leading the doctor, I was using the wall a lot, like we were part of each other. The hallway is getting longer.
“Let’s go to the scale,” she said. “There must be a scale?”
“Right,” I said. I thought for a minute. In the nook by Dr. M’s door. I see that scale a lot, but I’ve never succumbed. Exciting.
“OK, step on up,” she said. “I’m sorry, but you can’t hold on to anything.” She slid the sliding things with a metallic flourish.
“And what was your weight before you began fasting?”
“I don’t know.” (Lie.)
“Would you like an arm?” she said.
“What?”
Then I saw her arm, crooked and held out to me. Yes. We strolled together to this room, weird old room 2 with the double-table nest, because honestly I forgot to impress her with room 4. She picked up a piece of exam paper, this piece, halfway covered in writing. “Is there clean paper?”
Her fingers were warm, pressing at my pulse, my belly. She went to place the blood pressure cuff. “What’s this?”
She meant the dent, still kind of oozy.
“A dent,” I said. “On day 7 I dented myself.”
“It’s not healing,” she said. She made a note.
She mixed up some water with lemon and salt and a vitamin concoction, made a little show of it. She found me some more pillows and explained to me, repeating certain phrases like a car alarm, some things that could happen. Hypothermia, sure, vision loss, the heart …
That WOULD happen, I tried thinking.
“I want you to understand”—she said suddenly, in the midst of her own speech—“that what I’m saying to you is just words. To actually go through it is something else.”
Was she telling me how language works?
* * *
“I’ll be back the day after tomorrow,” she said. “Call me if you need me sooner.” She left several cards.
“You’re very professional” is I think what I said as she was leaving.
She looked curious?
“It’s something I struggle with,” I said. I tried: “Have a good night.”
* * *
Realizing that when I said this it was 2 p.m.
* * *
Ever think of Rose who came with her own magazines tucked under her arm, like she didn’t think she could waste time right with our supply? She was wearing a blouse and a flowy skirt with a careful crinkle. You could get abortions at the fancy hospital (like, Dr. Park’s) but it costs way more so people come here. (Came here.) I think they found themselves surprised by the system in place, or their place in it. “Do you need anything else?” I asked Rose, who was just standing in front of my window, magazines tucked, holding the clipboard I’d given her, as if she wasn’t sure where to go. It wasn’t that there weren’t seats. She turned to me and kind of smiled. “No, you’ve been great,” she said (honestly?), “I was just expecting something different.”
“Reality bites?” I said. That seemed neutral?
“The protestors don’t seem that bad,” she said. “I was really nervous about the protestors but they seem all right, it’s just a few women.”
“Well,” I said, “you’ve never tried talking to them.”
“Is it always like this?” she asked.
It was a sleepy midday, sun bright on the eyeballs and hot in the room, two kids were playing blocks on the floor in the corner while their mom typed fast on her phone, murmuring, I was wearing jeans with shredded knees and a tucked-in button-down with only one below-boob button missing, a compromise everyone could enjoy, the TV was on like hour 81 of some home renovation show where they were only touring houses built on the actual edges of actual cliffs, as if the minute filming ended a storm would just tip the whole thing into a big green sea. Between me and Rose were fingerprints on the glass and beyond her a carpet no one would call clean.
“Definitely,” I said. “We’re always just offering safe affordable reproductive healthcare for anyone who needs it.” I’d heard Krys say this sentence, in a different tone.
“There’s such a big price difference,” Rose said, “between here and my ob-gyn through the hospital. I was really surprised. I mean, I was asking her, who would pay the higher price?”
“People who don’t want to come here?” I said.
“But if you all are professionals,” she said, then didn’t finish.
I don’t think I said anything. I was into anyone who would say that about me. What would happen next?
“Is it possible to get a little sip of water?” she said. “My throat is so dry. I guess I’m a bit nervous.”
