What’s a 7-letter word for marriage? The young woman sitting next to me asks—like we know each other. Her Hemisphere is open to the New York Times Crossword. She works in ink, a confident optimist.
I say, “That’s easy. S-H-O-T-G-U-N because she didn’t have a choice.”
Thanks. Then she adds, Well, you know, everyone has a choice.
I tell her about a girl who was sixteen when her rabbit died, a euphemism for a positive pregnancy test, but that’s misleading since all rabbits tested died. A few days after the injection, they were sliced open to have their ovaries inspected, because these organs change in response to hormones secreted by pregnant women.
No one took the time to stitch up the poor bunnies. They were simply tossed out with the trash.
I drink Tito’s over ice from a plastic cup. “I suppose she did have other options. A home for unwed mothers or hitch-hiking to Tijuana.”
The young woman sips Bloody Mary Mix through a straw. I can’t think of a 5-letter word for ‘equality’? She draws extra squares on 11-Across and writes in F-A-I-R-N-E-S-S.
The cold vodka burns my throat. It hurts like everything hurts since the 6 to 3 Supreme Court ruling.
Then I start to freaking cry.
She asks, Why are you crying?
I remember the night my mother and I came together over the evening news and cocktails, adult conversation book-ended with laughter—returning to the same stories, family history relived, reorganized, rewritten.
I remember her sacred sadness when she told me about her other choice—after the shotgun wedding, after giving birth to a daughter, and five years later to a son.
There’s no reason to lie to this young woman.
So I tell her about the third pregnancy. How the 23-year-old hired a babysitter for her kids and rented a room in a rat-hole motel. I tell her about a desperate mother, alone and afraid, naked in a cold bathroom, untwisting a metal coat hanger.
She flips to the key for the puzzle and adjusts her jumble of answers.
Then she says, I hope you feel better soon.
No one said it was my job to remember these things.
I weep into my cocktail napkin and try to root my weary toes where there is no soil.
