Authors: Hillary Jordan
“Yes.”
“Show me how it was, how you were positioned. You can use the sofa or the floor, whichever you prefer.”
Rooted by horror, Hannah could neither move nor look away. Mrs. Henley’s avid eyes were locked on hers, siphoning her shame, and she saw that there was no bottom in their blue depths, no terminus, just limitless, insatiable hunger.
“I was prepared to forgive your first step off the path with Bridget,” Mrs. Henley said, “since you were new here and unused to our ways. But if you can’t be truthful with me, Hannah, I’ll be forced to conclude that this is a pattern of defiance and deceitfulness.”
Hannah closed her eyes. Where else could she go? There was nowhere. Slowly, mechanically, she lay down on her back and brought her knees up.
“The
exact
position, Hannah,” Mrs. Henley said, in an exasperated tone.
Hannah parted her legs, and it all came flooding back: the hot room, the feel of cold metal entering her, the pain. She heard herself whimper—then, now.
“Look at me, Hannah.” She turned her head. Mrs. Henley leaned forward, cocking her own head sideways. “How did you feel as you lay there, waiting for the abortionist to begin?”
“I wanted to die,” Hannah said. Falling, falling into that hungry blue.
T
HE INTERROGATION WENT
on and on: “How long did it take?” “Was there a great deal of pain?” “Did you see the aborted fetus afterward?” “How did your parents react?” “What was it like to wake up in the Chrome ward and see yourself for the first time?” “Did you imagine people you knew sitting at home watching you?” And over and over again, the question, “How did that make you feel?” After ten minutes, Hannah felt close to the end of her reserves; after an hour, she felt scraped as raw as she had after the abortion. The room was stuffy and warm, and she could smell the sharp odor of her own body. Mrs. Henley’s complexion was rosy and there was a slight sheen on her upper lip, but apart from that she seemed perfectly comfortable.
In her element,
Hannah thought,
like a rattlesnake basking on a rock in the sun.
Finally, Mrs. Henley said, “You can sit up now, Hannah.”
Hannah righted herself, feeling a little dizzy.
“Would you like some more chamomile, dear?”
“No, thank you.” She would rather have drunk arsenic.
“I have to say, one thing that surprised me was the degree of interest Secretary Dale showed in your case. Do you know, he personally called Reverend Henley to speak with him about you? And of course, there was his appeal at your trial. So eloquent, so … impassioned.” Mrs. Henley took a sip of tea, her blue eyes dancing merrily over the rim of the cup.
Striving to keep her voice even, Hannah said, “Yes, we’re all very thankful, my family and I, for his kindness. But that’s the kind of pastor Reverend Dale is. He feels personally responsible for every member of his congregation.”
Mrs. Henley’s pale eyebrows formed two incredulous arches. “Surely not to the extent of calling in from Washington DC every time one of his former flock goes astray?”
“I really can’t say.” Hannah felt sweat dripping down her torso under her dress and hoped it wasn’t visible.
“Of course, you were also his employee, weren’t you. Did you see Reverend Dale often?”
Just then, a side door opened and Ponder Henley came in. He had a notepad in his hand, and his eyes were lit with boyish eagerness. He didn’t seem to see Hannah; his attention was all for his wife, who quickly hid her irritation at being interrupted behind a delighted smile.
“You were right,” he exclaimed. “Those passages from Leviticus make all the difference. Listen to this—”
“I have company, Ponder. Hannah’s come for tea.”
Reverend Henley looked startled and then crestfallen to find his wife occupied. “Oh! Well, don’t let me interrupt you. I know how you girls enjoy your little chats.”
“It’s true, we do,” Mrs. Henley agreed. “But of course your sermon is
much
more important, and you know how I love hearing you practice.” Reverend Henley practically glowed under his wife’s adoring gaze. “Hannah and I can continue our talk another time. Just let me see her out, and I’ll be right there.”
As the door shut behind him, Mrs. Henley glanced at the wooden clock on the wall. “Good heavens, it’s already four thirty.” She looked back at Hannah, and her nose wrinkled ever so slightly. “I bet you’d like to shower and change your dress before supper. You go right ahead, and if Bridget or anyone else questions you, tell them I gave you special permission.”
Hannah got unsteadily to her feet, and Mrs. Henley escorted her to the door. “I’m so glad we had this talk, Hannah. I must ask that you keep it strictly between us. I’d be very dismayed if I found out you’d been discussing it with any of the other walkers.”
“I won’t,” Hannah said, understanding now Kayla’s reticence and discomfiture. Who would want to share such humiliation with anyone?
On the way back to the dormitory, she passed several other women in the hallway. When they caught sight of her face, they looked at her with pity, giving her a wide berth.
H
ANNAH SPENT THE WEEKEND
brooding about her talk with Mrs. Henley. Her shame eventually gave way to indignation and then full-fledged anger, both at the woman’s cruelty and at her own paralysis and complicity in the face of it. Why hadn’t she lied, as she had with the police interrogators? Why hadn’t she walked out of the room, out of the center? Could the outside world possibly be any worse than this?
Hannah wondered too how much her mother had known about this place when she proposed sending her here. Had her mother been aware of the Henleys’ methods of enlightenment? And what about Aidan, had he known? Hannah told herself he couldn’t possibly have, but doubt festered in her mind.
Monday at breakfast, Bridget informed Hannah that she was no longer her pathfinder. “There’s a new walker coming on Wednesday, and Mrs. Henley has asked me to show her the path. As of today, you’re on your own.”
“I’m crushed,” Hannah said. “After all the good times we’ve had.”
Kayla, sitting across from them, choked on her oatmeal.
After breakfast, the two of them joined the other women clustered in front of the work roster. Kayla was pleased; she’d been allotted chapel service—easy duty. Hannah expected to see her own name under sewing service but discovered instead that she’d be taking over her friend’s job cleaning the bathrooms.
“Tough luck,” Kayla said. “Still, Bathroom Slave’s not so bad. At least you get to be alone. Beats the hell out of Laundry Wench— being stuck in a sauna with three other cranky, stinky women.”
Bridget’s name was written under the mysterious Zilpah heading. Hannah pointed to it and asked, “What’s that?”
“Personal lackey to Mrs. Henley. I’ve never done it—she only assigns it to her pets—but from what I’ve heard it’s mostly writing letters, tidying the parlor and the study and chauffeuring her around town.”
“They get to leave the center?”
“Yeah, and you should hear them lording it over the rest of us.” Kayla humphed. “As far as I’m concerned, they’re welcome to it. The farther I stay away from that woman, the better.”
“You and me both,” Hannah said, with more feeling than she’d intended.
“You all right, after Saturday?” Kayla asked. “You looked kinda … wrung out. Everybody does, though,” she added quickly.
“I’m fine.” The words were rote and, from the look on Kayla’s face, unconvincing. Hannah wondered if she’d ever be able to mean them again.
When she walked into enlightenment a few minutes later, she was relieved to see that the stool was gone, and there were now ten chairs in the circle. The enlightener’s eyes widened a fraction when he caught sight of her doll, but he said nothing. When everyone was seated, he turned to the woman on his left.
“Monica, why don’t you begin,” he said.
“This is my daughter, Shiloh. Her father threatened to leave me if I didn’t have the abortion, but I should’ve cared more about her than him. Forgive me, Shiloh, for taking your precious life.”
“This is my little boy, Christopher. I was afraid my parents would kick me out if they found out I was pregnant. Forgive me, Christopher, for taking your precious life.”
“This is my daughter, Aisha …”
“This is my sweet Octavio …”
At last, it was Hannah’s turn. She didn’t hesitate. She’d known what she would have named her child since soon after she discovered she was pregnant. Her child and Aidan’s, begun from a tiny mote of matter and nurtured within the sea of her womb. Hidden, wondrous, unknowable. Unwelcome.
“This is my daughter, Pearl,” she said.
W
EDNESDAY AFTERNOON,
H
ANNAH
took her place on the choir riser with the others to “welcome” the new walker. A current of unmistakable excitement pulsed through the room as they awaited her arrival. They were a pack, scenting prey, and Hannah was one of them. But when the woman—a middle-aged Red with graying hair and sagging breasts—opened the narrow door and stepped inside, starting in fright at the sound of their voices, cowering and covering herself at the sight of them, Hannah’s excitement evaporated, and compunction and pity took its place.
Later, she realized that their reaction owed more to boredom than to prurience or cruelty. The days at the center passed with intolerable slowness, running together like the colors in a jar of used paintbrushes, merging into a uniform, leaden gray. Sermons, meals, enlightenment, work, repeat. She and every other woman here were starved for variation.
She lived for Saturday afternoons, when her time was her own, and for letters from her father and Becca, bittersweet as they were to read. They arrived already opened, presumably by Mrs. Henley. Her father’s were awkward, relentlessly chipper briefings on the weather, local news and the family:
Dear Hannah,
I hope you’re doing well and making some friends there. We’re all fine, bracing for an ice storm tomorrow, though it’s 65° and sunny today. Typical Texas weather in other words!
Reverend Maynard is settling in as head pastor, but he’s got some mighty big shoes to fill. Attendance has fallen off quite a bit since Reverend Dale left. As much as we miss him, we’re all proud of the job he’s doing in Washington. I guess we were lucky to have had him to ourselves for as long as we did. He and Alyssa are coming home for Thanksgiving, and the rumor is he’s going to lead the Wednesday night service. I’m hoping he’ll put in a good word Upstairs for the Boys while he’s at it. They’re playing the Giants on Thanksgiving Day, and they’ll need every prayer they can get to win. Walton sprained his wrist two weeks ago, and the offense has been paralyzed without him. It’ll be a miracle if we make the playoffs this year.
Becca’s finally over the worst of her morning sickness, and she’s starting to show. I’m building cribs for the babies and your mother’s knitting up a storm—you should see all the pink and blue yarn scattered all over the house.
With the holidays coming I’ve had to put in a lot of extra hours at the store, so I haven’t had much time to look for a job or an apartment for you. But I’ll get on it right after New Year’s, I promise. In the meantime know that my thoughts and prayers are with you. I miss you. We all do.
Love,
Dad
Becca managed better. She wrote humorously of her pregnancy, her day-to-day life, people they knew from church. Every once in a while, when she spoke of Cole, Hannah detected an undertone of disquiet in her words:
Dear Hannah,
How I wish you were here! I’ve had to let the waistlines of all my skirts out AGAIN, and you know how much I love sewing. My fingers look like pincushions.
Now that I’m starting to show, Cole’s getting more protective than ever. I swear, he hardly lets me leave the house except to go to church! He’s joined this new Christian men’s group, and they have meetings a couple of nights a week. He won’t tell me the name of it or where they meet—all I know is it’s not part of Ignited Word— but he says It’s similar to the Promise Keepers.
I hope you’re doing okay and have made some friends there. I know they keep you busy but please write more often if you can. I miss you so much. Mama’s still mad, but I’ll keep working on her.
Off now in search of cheesecake. And olives. Last week it was BLC sandwiches (bacon, lettuce & maraschino cherries).
All my love,
Becca
Hannah worried about her sister and father but was powerless to help them. No doubt they felt the same. It didn’t escape her that although they both expressed hope that she was well, neither of them ever actually asked how she was. Perhaps, she thought, they couldn’t bear to hear the answer. She kept her replies short and light, sparing them the truth: that she felt increasingly as though she’d wandered into hell.
Enlightenment was the worst, and she came to dread it more with every passing day. She never knew what to expect: a lecture from a visiting doctor on the gory specifics of the procedure, complete with jars of fetuses in formaldehyde; an “ideation session” where they had to imagine alternate futures for their aborted children; a holovid showing bloody, half-aborted babies trying to crawl out of their mothers’ wombs. But the worst were the survivors who came in person: a teenaged girl whose arm had been ripped off when her mother tried to abort her at twenty-six weeks; a man who’d suffered from cerebral palsy and crippling depression all his life, only to learn in his forties that his twin brother had been aborted, and that his own brain had been perforated during the procedure. These sessions left Hannah feeling so scalded and depressed that even Kayla couldn’t reach her. The hope she’d felt when she first arrived at the center gradually slipped away, and she found herself struggling to maintain her faith. Her conversations with God began to take on a doubtful, then an accusatory note. How could He approve of what the Henleys were doing here? Could this really be the path to Him?