Chapter Six: Where's the Doctor?
Richard was waiting anxiously by the bedroom door.
"I think she'll be okay," Howard said. "She doesn't know where the house is, because she was completely unconscious when we brought her here, and we'll blindfold her when we take her out. Who knew she was going to start wandering around like that?"
Richard nodded agreement, his fair hair falling over his forehead. "Anyway, I'm not sure they would do anything more to us for being gay than running the Road. And I don't know how much longer we are going to get away with it, anyway. The counselors are starting to come once a week, asking Faith and me why we don't have children."
"They're coming here, too. We're going to have to move, I think. Next time we move someplace, we have to bring a baby. Maybe the Guides will have a baby we can adopt. I hate to leave this beautiful house, though. And it's so perfect for the Road."
Richard gave a whispered hoot of laughter. "Going native? Howard Brown falls in love with Richmond, the capital of the old Confederacy, home to the Heritage Plantation Foundation, drafters of the new constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia, providing, among other things, that no legislature may ever pass a law protecting the rights of gays. Boy, what a few Greek columns will do to a gay boy!"
"You stop that! I am as radical as you are. This whole two household partnership was my idea. If it weren't for gays like us, there would be no Rainbow Road. We moved here when no one was doing anything to get those gay kids out. And spoiled darlings like this tall drink of water with the snoopy disposition would just have to rot in their fathers' arms. Sometimes I feel like the last radical left in America."
"Touchy."
"I'd be a lot calmer," Howard answered, "if I knew where that damn doctor was. He knows where we live." He began to pace around and chew his nails, as he did when things got tense.
"Come here sweetie," Richard said, "and let's forget our troubles for one more night."
Chapter Seven: The Underground Jeep
"Feeling better?"
It was the woman again. Daylight was filtering through the open door from what she now knew was an empty room. What was she, the housekeeper or something? She was pretty young to be a single woman, even if she was sort of plain. There were hardly any single women around any more, what with the rules about marrying instead of burning and all. Even widows got married off to their husbands' brothers, when their husbands died from one of the new diseases or smoking. That's how she wound up with that awful Arthur. Hard to believe he was related to her beloved father, even if only by half. Of course mom could have said no. They weren't forcing people to marry the brothers at that point. She never liked being poor, her mother, so she didn't have a lot of options. Especially since Lucy was only twelve when her father died. Anyway the woman was wearing a wedding ring.
Lucy moved her head back and forth.
"Much better," she said.
"Do you want to get up and get dressed?" the woman asked. I washed your clothes."
Lucy swung her legs over the bed side.
"Of course you cannot go out. You should not have tried to wander around last night."
Lucy said nothing. Where was the diamond she had hidden? Did they find it when they washed her clothes? It was a secret pocket, but it certainly wasn't supposed to be for smuggling diamonds!
"There's a bedpan under the bed, if you have to go. I guess you forgot we showed it to you last night. You were pretty sick." Her tone was not unkind. But something in it scared Lucy.
"I won't tell, I'll never tell, no matter what they do to me," she avowed.
"That sounds fine," the woman said, "but it's three days now. You're a runaway girl. They must be looking for you. I saw the marks on your back when we took your clothes off. Even if they don't try you for running away, someone's been beating you pretty badly already, haven't they? Think what he can do to you if you're a recapture. Who was it? Your husband?"
"I'm not married," Lucy answered. She was so ashamed of the beating. She hadn't even told David. She drew a breath. "It's my mother's husband. I live - lived with my mother."
"You're sort of old to be living at home, aren't you?"
Lucy didn't answer.
The woman seemed little interested in pursuing it.
"We're going to try to get you out today. I'm not happy that the doctor isn't answering. If they've caught the doctor, this house could well not be safe. We need to move you out. Here are your clothes. Let's get dressed." She walked toward the door.
"Ma'am?" Lucy did not know what to call her.
She smiled a little. She wasn't beautiful like the Angel Man, but she had a sturdy, matter-of-fact air that was somehow reassuring. Everything about her was short, Lucy reflected. She was short, she had short brown hair and short nails.
"It's Harriet," she said.
"Harriet. What is this room? There are no windows . . . "
"I can't tell you," Harriet answered. "I can't tell you anything about this place. If you should get caught, you won't be able to lead them here no matter what they do. It's bad enough the doctor had to know where to come. But we had no choice; the last Parcel was bleeding buckets, abortionist just dumped her in the Toyota, the goddam butcher." She frowned hard. The doctor thing was obviously worrying her a lot.
The door bell rang.
"Don't move from this room," Harriet whispered roughly. "Don't say a word, no matter what. If something happens to me, someone will be here to take you out. This room is completely hidden; you cannot see the door from the other room and it appears on no plans, they would have to burn the house down to find you. Just sit tight."
Lucy ran for her skirt on the chair, feeling for the diamond. There. Pretty good secret pocket after all. Seemed like hours passed. Lucy could hear voices - they sounded like women's voices - from some distant place in the house. She put on the skirt and light blouse she had run away in and waited.
Harriet came back. "Okay, we're going. That was counselors paying a home visit. Could just be a coincidence. We don't have children, and they do come once every couple of months to see if we need help having children or something. Or it could be that they wanted to look around without committing to a police action. They don't like to send the Bureau unless they're sure. But the last thing I need is a runaway if they do decide it's time."
She pulled a white cloth out of her pocket and beckoned Lucy over. "Sit down. I'm going to blindfold you. You may not know how we work."
Blindfolded and still feeling a little strange, Lucy felt herself led across floors and down some stairs. The smell changed and she thought she must be in some basement. They walked a while in the basement smelling place and stopped. She heard Harriet click something and the sound of a door opening. Then the air changed again, damper and dank smelling. Her hands brushed against a wall that felt like earth. She could tell it was dark, although a flickering light indicated her Guide had a flashlight or something. They were in the earthy smelling place for quite a while.
"Arriving so soon?" a new voice asked. Her heart stopped. Had they been caught?
Harriet's voice was steady. "They sent a counselor. I can't tell if it's for real or just to snoop around, but the doc's gone missing, and he knew..."
"Oh, boy. If they arrest him, he could bargain us away in no time." It was a female voice. "Okay, give her to me and go back. Just pretend nothing is happening. If they come, we'll say the doctor made it up to buy himself out. If there's no runaway there, how are they going to prove we did anything?"
"Judges aren't so fastidious about proving things since the Agreement, my dear. And they're already suspicious because Howard and I don't have children."
"I know. But they still can't just throw you in jail without any proof at all. Now go back and clean everywhere she touched. They may not believe in DNA, but they still use fingerprints."
"Good by Lucy," Harriet said. "I hope you make it out, and I hope you have a wonderful life."
The other woman took Lucy's hand and they walked along. After a few minutes, the new Guide said, "I'm afraid we don't have such fancy digs as Harriet and Howard do. Especially with the Doc gone missing, I'm going to have to leave you here while we arrange some transit."
Lucy felt panic rise. Leave her in this dank place? Blindfolded?
The woman took the blindfold off and Lucy saw a little canvas chair and a lantern. They were in a tunnel of some sort, under the earth. That's what she smelled.
"Here's a book," the woman said. She was taller than Harriet and prettier. She had the traditional Red State long hair and perfect nose. "Things could always be worse." She handed Lucy a book from a table behind the chair. "I'll be back as soon as I can."
Lucy listened as her footsteps disappeared and, stifling the desire to run after her, sat down in the chair. Might as well see what kind of book they give out on the Rainbow Road. Some Canadian thing. She opened the book at random and began to read. "Nolite te Bastardes Carborandurum. Don't let the bastards grind you down." Well, that's a good start.
Before she could get any further, she heard the woman coming back. "Okay, let's go." She seemed upset, less calm somehow. She kept running her long hands through her silky hair. She hustled Lucy along, the blindfold business essentially forgotten. "Oh, shit, the blindfold." She reminded Lucy a little of Harriet - same no nonsense manner above a deep well of pure terror. Blindfolded, Lucy walked in what she now knew was the tunnel and then heard another door open and the air change again. When the blindfold came off, she was looking at a new red Jeep.
The new woman began to work inside the car, pulling and tugging. The back seat leaned forward -- Lucy had never seen a Jeep do this, and then the woman picked up the whole bottom of the car to reveal a well, covered with a dun colored quilted pad like the movers use, but small, so small.
"I am sorry to do this, but you have to go under this floor. It's a false bottom - we moved the seats up to make it, but we couldn't move them up too much or it would be obvious. Here's a bottle of water, you can breathe - it's hardly airtight, so don't worry about that. Now if you have to go to the bathroom, go now. Once you're in here, you can't come out until we have you over the line."
]]>When she woke up again she felt better. Maybe she'd pretend to be sick still so she could stay longer.
There was a knock and the woman walked in with a tray.
"Do you feel like a little lunch?" she asked. "It's just soup for starters."
Perhaps she did have a concussion; they were saying something to her, but she kept drifting back to sleep. The next time she woke, the whole house was dark. It must be night, she thought. Her bladder was bursting, but she didn't want to bother them to take her to the bathroom. She swung her legs over the side of the remade bed and tried to stand up. Okay, I can stand up, she thought. She found a lamp by the bed, but it was just a tiny light and she couldn't see what might be a bathroom door. Nothing. She looked around a little. She was in a tiny room, just a bed and a chair and the little lamp. No windows at all. She walked to the door and opened it. Strange, it opened into another room, bigger and with a window. It was dark out and the room had no light at all. She walked through the next door and found herself in a hall. At last.
She went into the hallway and slowly walked down, pushing gently on the doors as she went by. She felt a little strange doing this in someone else's house, but she really had to go. At least she wasn't so sick and dizzy any more.
The door swung open and a man sat up in bed, blinking at the light from the hall. Then the man in bed with him sat up. "What, what?" Two faces turned toward her, two short haircuts, one brown, one light.
"Oh, I'm so sorry, I was looking for the bathroom. I didn't mean to open this, I'm so sorry, so sorry." Two men? In bed? Omigod, gays. Was she in the hands of gays? No wonder they had "It's Raining Men" on their cell phone. She hastily pulled the door closed and made her way into the hall, walking as quickly as she could. Of course, the bathroom was the very next door.
When she came out Brown Eyes was standing there.
Taking her arm, he walked her back through the empty room to her tiny room and sat down in the ladder backed chair by the bed.
"I don't care what you do," she said hastily. "I don't know or care. Just help me get out of here, please. I'll never tell anyone, I never saw anything." She was babbling. She knew about men who slept with men of course, from the time before the Agreement when it was not a crime, but she had never met one. That she knew of. It was forbidden in Virginia now. Big time. Reeducation or the death penalty if you kept it up. She thought all the homosexuals had gone to the Blue areas while they still could. She couldn't resist asking him, "Why didn't you leave?"
"What would you be doing now, if I had left?" he asked.
Good point.
"You're walking around, so we can probably move you. Tomorrow we will try to get you out. It's gotten a lot harder since they search cars on the slightest pretext. They know girls are running away, and they know someone is helping them. But we don't think they've identified us yet. If we can't drive you out, we'll have to walk out."
"Walk out? Isn't it really far?"
"We'll drive you to another station closer first. Now go to sleep and we'll see how you feel in the morning."
]]>Old Spice. Her father used to have old spice shaving stuff. Even when he was away, doing polling and stuff, his side of their bed still smelled of Old Spice. Where was the smell coming from? She turned her cheek a little. What was this cloth, rough, yet so cool and smooth? Smelling of her father. From before. Her head hurt so much. What had happened? Was she dead? Was there really heaven? Was she going to see her Dad again if there was heaven? Did they kill her after they raped her? Did you still hurt after you died? That would suck.
She opened her eyes. It was still dark, but could she be dead if she still hurt and still smelled? Had they blinded her after they raped her? Where were they? Why did it smell like her dead father?
She wiggled her arms. She did not seem to be tied up. But she was surrounded by that strange cloth. Some kind of funeral wrapping? Surely ferals would not treat their victims to death rituals. The bachelor packs were famous for their savagery. Too many men and not enough women. That's what abortion does. Her stepfather harped endlessly on abortion. Once people could choose the sex of their children, they mostly wanted boys. People always wanted boys - boys got the good jobs, boys supported their old parents especially after Social Security got repealed. If you could only afford one or two children, it made sense to abort the girls and keep the males. Once everyone started doing it, of course, there were too many boys and not enough girls to go around.
Rich men got wives, but the poor ones and the ugly ones, like the three in the bathroom, roamed around in packs looking for unguarded girls to rape. Once you were raped you were hard to marry off, even in a time when girls were scarce. Sometimes your father would marry you to the feral, if he was someone you knew from school or whatever. "Better than no husband at all," Arthur said. "Better to marry than to burn." Arthur was always saying that. Wonder if he made it up.
You'd think with all the police around, cruising the streets making sure everyone was doing what they should, there wouldn't be much opportunity for the feral gangs. But rape was a crime the new cops didn't seem to care that much about. It certainly kept her and her friends from roaming around, looking for trouble, as Arthur would say.
"I think she's waking up." The smell grew stronger. A faint light appeared behind a figure in the doorway. A man in the doorway. Another figure behind. Oh, no, were they back? The light grew stronger. Well he certainly couldn't be a feral, not with that face. Maybe she was dead; he looked like an angel, if there was such a thing, with his perfect oval face and long black eyelashes over kind brown eyes.
"Can you hear me?" He leaned over her. With the light, she realized she must be in a bed. Sheets, made of some strange material, soft, yet firm and cool. Not a shroud. She tried to nod and briefly blacked out again. She felt a cool dampness on her forehead and opened her eyes.
"Don't move your head. Just blink if you can hear me."
She blinked and felt her face make a little smile in spite of his injunction.
"You are one lucky girl. We normally make rounds much later after it's really dark, but one of our people who works at the Union thought he saw someone in the Toyota when he left work, and he celled us. They were all over you when we arrived. Do you remember being raped? It didn't look like it. We need to treat you if you were. The ferals are dangerous."
He didn't say it, but at school they whispered "AIDS" whenever they talked about the bachelors.
"I don't think so." She moved gingerly. "It doesn't hurt there. Where am I? Who are you?"
A long silence ensued. Then, without a word, he turned and walked out the door of the room.
When he came back, there was a small, middle aged woman with him.
She pulled a chair up to the side of the bed.
"My dear," she said gently, "what were you doing in that garage at sunset?"
Oh God. Who were these people? She thought she was safe for a moment. Didn't they talk about making rounds? She assumed they were Guides from the Road. Had she made a terrible mistake? Were they the State "counselors?" She looked a little like them, so plain and no makeup or anything. One of them came to school last year to explain to her class why the girls were "graduating" early. They seemed so nice at first. But in the end they would turn her in or at least send her back.
She did not answer.
The woman said nothing.
Time - it seems like about a thousand years - passed.
The woman's pocket began to play a tune. She grabbed it and pounded on it. Too late. A cell phone. Even though cell phones had been forbidden for a while now, she remembered when they used to play music, and what's more she knew that song -- "It's Raining Men!" The girls used to sing it in the bathroom before, and a few of the rebellious ones still did. They could not be from Virginia if they had the gay anthem on their cell phone. She began to hum the rest.
"Okay," the man said to the woman with the cell phone. Were you waiting to be picked up?" he said.
She nodded.
"You're in."
She's in. They really exist. She found them. The Rainbow Road to freedom, a long, multicolored path from Red states to Blue. People whispered about them in the toilet, but no one had ever met one -- the legendary Rainbow Guides. Soon she would be gone. Gone from Virginia, gone to Baltimore to live with her friend Joanna. Or to New York. Maybe she could even go back and finish high school. If she could find work, she could send herself to college. Her dad always said she was very smart. She used to get really good grades. She could listen to Car Talk.
She threw up all over herself. The man ran for something, but it was too late. She puked up crackers and cheese from her brother's house, the candy bars she had taken to tide her over until they came for her, a coke. Vomiting on the sheets in their nice clean bead, retching and retching until nothing was left. Crying and apologizing, her head throbbing from the motion, she finally fell back against the pillow.
They cleaned her up. They did not seem to be mad, but there was a difference in their faces and their voices. And they left without another word. What had she done? Surely they weren't going to send her back because she dirtied their sheets?
When they returned, they had a sober look.
"What is it?" she said. "I'm so sorry I messed up your beautiful bed. Are you going to send me back?"
"Of course we're not going to send you back. Not even for linen sheets," the man said in a tone of mild amusement. His voice darkened. "But we can't move you until we find out if you have a concussion. Throwing up is a symptom of concussion. And we cannot locate the doctor who used to help us. We have nothing to do but wait. If I could have found him, I would have had him examine you hours ago."
That's okay. She would wait. She would be happy to wait here forever. When they turned on the lamp she saw beautiful drawings on the wall. She never had linen sheets, even if she did barf them up. Who were these people?
But there's nothing like fiction to engage the heart. What would it feel like to live in the world like the one the law professors coldly imagine? Chapter One: Safe, starts with our heroine Lucy hiding in the claustrophobic confines of her brother's gem safe. Chapter Two: Dream continues the saga and Lucy disappears. Continuing every Tuesday and Friday until the heroine meets her fate, I will publish at this site an installment of her adventures and an imagined, terrifying, but not unthinkable America in the time after Roe.
The website said to wait in the garage under the Student Union. It did not say when someone came to check. Good thing that newly converted sister-in-law of hers slept so soundly. And the gutless wonder. She curled up in the blanket she had taken off the living room couch when she left and calculated how much food she had left. Enough for one more day. Running from her brother's house, she couldn't take much food. It was going to get pretty scarce soon. How often did they come through looking for runaways? Every day? Every week?
The gray Toyota was cold and smelled of fear. She bet a lot of desperate girls had sat in this car. It must be really old; they didn't allow new Toyotas in Virginia any more. But this one was probably one of those funny old ones that people could keep driving until they needed parts. She remembered her parents' Toyota. It hardly ever needed parts. No wonder there were so many of them still around. Sometimes it seemed there were just as many of them as the new Americars. Her stepfather's Americar was in the shop all the time, and god knows Arthur was important enough to have the best one they made.
Was that a car coming? She crawled down on the floor of the back seat and tried to make herself small. What a stupid place for picking up runaway girls - a public garage. Come to think of it, she didn't even know if it was a place to get a Guide. Maybe it was just one of those internet hoaxes. It was hard enough to get the internet these days; who knew what was real? Or, worse, a trap. But she couldn't stay at Reuben and Phyllis's - they were going to take her back to Mom. And Arthur. She wouldn't think about him. Not until she had to. If they caught her. And if they sent her back. Of course if they caught her, going back home would probably seem like a good alternative.
A car. She could hear it approaching even though she couldn't see it from where she was lying. She heard the brakes, and then the sound of the motor died. Door slams. Footsteps on the concrete floor. Maybe she should hide. Surely the Guides would know to look closely in the old Toyota. Anyone else would probably turn her in.
She tried to fit herself under the front seat, crawling into the tiny space where they used to keep maps and stuff when her family had a Toyota. Bottled water. Game Boys. Trips to the national parks. Reuben breaking chips of rock off ledges, she remembered. He was such a little scientist. How could he stand it? They didn't even teach biology in school any more. Now the pharmacist near the house won't sell drugs made from stem cells or something. Her "scientist" brother had to buy all their medicine for the baby from that drugstore chain in Baltimore.
Asshole. Going to get medicine for the baby was the perfect excuse for him to go across. That's why she picked today to try it, gosh, it was yesterday already. Because she heard him say he was going to Baltimore after work. Phyllis always went to baby movement classes on Tuesday evenings.
It was perfect. He could have taken her the minute he got home from work and found her. They wouldn't even have been looking for her yet. But no, he had to talk to Phyllis about it. Not that Baltimore was so safe. Still, she had found her friend Joanna there already, using the illegal cell phone she had been saving. She must have just caught the Blue Satellite as it came over Richmond. She felt so lucky. Reuben would take her to Baltimore and Joanna would have helped her get out of Baltimore and up to New York or somewhere further away. She was a little tall to fit under the front seat of the Toyota. She folded up her bony knees and waited.
The door to the garage clanged open and then shut. Well whoever it was, they were gone. Another car. Another. People coming to work at the University must park here. It should be starting time - eight or nine, she guessed. After a while she stopped jumping out of her skin each time a car came. And then of course they stopped. Guess everyone's at his desk. She dozed a little. It was so warm and quiet under ground and she had been walking to the University last night while her brother the coward was asleep. She never thought he would betray her like that. He had been her best pal for so long when she was growing up. Her big big brother with the bright red hair.
Slam! People were streaming through the garage door. Could she have slept until quitting time? Just as well. They certainly weren't going to make a pickup while the garage was full of people and cars. Once it got good and empty she'd get out of the car and look around. Maybe there was some sign about what to do, where to go.
The sounds slowly died away. She opened the door a crack. The garage seemed so huge. And cold, even in the warm summer night. God it was clean for a garage. Everything was so clean these days. Except for the cigarette butts. Seemed so funny to see people smoking. Nobody had smoked when she was little. They were even making Virginia Slims, cigarettes especially for women again. Her stepfather said Kentucky and Tennessee needed to sell tobacco. They didn't make anything much there since the all the Japanese car plants moved away.
Virginia was lucky because it had so much coal. Coal was Reuben's specialty. She remembered when he showed her how coal became diamonds. He even had a pretty big diamond to show his students, back when he was teaching geology, that he was so proud of. She put her hand in her secret pocket. She probably shouldn't have taken it. It was a memento for him. Then she remembered how he was going to take her back to Arthur.
Might as well look around now. Where would a sign be? Wonder if the garage has a bathroom. Signs used to be on the bathroom doors. "Rape Counseling." "Eating Disorders. Call so and so for treatment."
"Ladies." Ah there it was. Ladies. She was only seventeen, did that make her a "lady?" Maybe she'd never be a lady. That's what Phyllis had said after she caught her streaming Free Public Radio on the old computer in the attic. Old busy body. What was she doing in the attic anyway? It had always been Lucy's special hiding place. After her mother moved to Richmond with Arthur, she stayed up there for days. All she was looking for on the radio was a little music to listen to for a while. But it was such fun to find NPR again after all these years. She remembered it from before, listening to Car Talk with her Dad on Saturdays. Wonder when they started broadcasting it into the Red States - what a cool idea. Does it violate the Agreement to send radio sounds across?
Even the ladies room was clean. Boy she hadn't been in a public rest room in a long time? She hadn't even been anywhere much for weeks before she ran away. Now that girls left school at sixteen, she had no place to go. In the year since "graduation," most of her friends were married off or gone to the coal towns or working in the textile factories further south. As if Arthur would let her go alone to see her old friends anyway. All he would let her out for were those word processing classes at the secretarial school he sent her to after she couldn't stay in high school any more. Got to the point where being married off seemed like a good idea in comparison to being a secretary and living at Mom's with him.
She opened the first stall door. It was completely blank. Scrubbed clean. Might as well use it as long as I'm here. She swung the door to the toilet stall open and lifted her thin green skirt. She had to give them credit - skirts did make it easier to pee. But even though it had been, golly, four or five years already since the dress laws - "sumptuary" laws they called them at school -- she just could not get used to them, after living in jeans all those years. Maybe skirts make you a lady, though, she thought, remembering the "Ladies" on the bathroom door. And they were cooler than jeans in the hot Virginia summer, even these long ones.
"Ah lahk it when their skirt's already up."
She looked up. Ferals.
Three of them standing in the stall door. Now she knew why bunnies froze when the dog walked by. Trapped. A runaway girl. In a remote toilet room. In the empty garage. After everyone had gone home. Her urine still flowing into the toilet. With three feral bachelors, one of them already unzipping his fly. He grabbed her legs and pulled her off the toilet. She felt the warm piss staining her skirt. "Ugh, you filthy slut." He slapped her face so hard the room began to reel and dragged her across the stall floor into the larger outer room. She felt the raw concrete on her bare back side. Then she felt his body on her front, squirming, and trying to stick his erect penis into her while she twisted and turned. She stared at his pockmarked skin. God, why were they so ugly?
She reached a knee up and pushed as hard as she could.
"Goddamit, hold her down," he screamed to his companions behind. "You'll get your turn soon enough."
"Can't you wait for anything?" The second one grabbed the first from behind.
"Someone could come in any minute. We'll take her home. Then we can have all the time in the world."
"I don't want any more time! Just hold her legs and let me get it in. You take your time if you're so nicey nice. Maybe she wants some flowers or candy. I want it in! I want it in now!" He tried to shake his companion off, and she felt his erection start to go down. He must have felt it, too, because he grabbed her hair and slammed her head against the floor.
But there's nothing like fiction to engage the heart. What would it feel like to live in the world like the one the law professors coldly imagine? Chapter One: Safe, starts with our heroine Lucy hiding in the claustrophobic confines of her brother's gem safe. Continuing every Tuesday and Friday until the heroine meets her fate, I will publish at this site an installment of her adventures and an imagined, terrifying, but not unthinkable America in the time after Roe.
Phyllis didn't hear a siren. But suddenly she was sitting up in bed, heart pounding. Knocking. There they were. Outside her front door, her house, her whole life - her baby, her husband, her four bedrooms and her three baths. She listened for a moment, still in bed. Why was it so quiet? Had they stopped using the sirens, she wondered, her mind balking at any action. Was there no need for sirens any more? Were people frightened enough so that they didn't need to hear the sirens to know? Was the silence worse than knowing?
"Reuben, Reuben!" she shouted, turning to his side of the bed.
He must have already run down. She felt around for a robe and moved toward the stairs, making her way to the door, her feet touching the soft blue stair carpet. Fear flooded her home, rushing in from the front porch and lapping up against the walls of the colonial style entrance hall. More swimming than walking, she reached the door.
Where was Reuben? She stopped and stared at the door, feeling their presence, knowing they had heard her, too. Standing there. Waiting. When they had come to the library to check the computers, they had looked so tidy. Their clean shaven chins, neat dark suits and ties made them resemble more the Evangelicals who used to come around on Saturday than representatives of the gas chamber. Could they see through it? Could they see her? She touched the doorknob.
She couldn't. She could not turn it and let them into her safe and tidy world. Where was Reuben? She swirled around and ran back up the stairs.
"Reuben! Reuben! Get up! There's someone at the door."
Where was he anyway? It felt like the dead of night. She'd been sleeping peacefully, knowing the little bitch would be gone tomorrow. Too late. Here they were. A lot of good it would do her now - to say they were about to send his sister back to her mother and the scary important guy she was married to. Still. Maybe he could save them from the state once he got his stepdaughter back.
She reached the bedroom, whispering, screaming, Reuben. Why weren't they ringing again or just breaking down the door and rushing in. "What? What?" Their bathroom door swung open and he ran out. What a large man he was, tall and broad chested. She had always felt so safe with him around. But he could not save them now.
"They're here, they rang the bell. Didn't you hear? We have to let them in, Oh God, what are we going to do? Where is she? Is she still in the gem room? Tell them we were going to take her back. Tomorrow. Give her to them; maybe they won't come after us, just give her to them."
He went back to the bathroom and slowly put on his robe, seemingly lost in thought. She felt like she had fallen into a slow motion movie.
"Reuben, they're out there. We have to face them. What can we say?" Why wouldn't he answer her? Why wasn't the baby crying?
He put an arm around her. "Shhh. It will be okay. Just say nothing. I'll talk." They descended the stairs into the eerily silent foyer, shiny marble floor under the low light chandelier, barricaded from it all only by its flimsy wooden front door. He pushed the filmy curtain away from the side window panel an inch, and, gingerly putting his head to the opening he had created, gazed into the night. Then he reached out and slowly turned the little brass bolt upright and pulled the door to him.
No one.
There was no one there. No neat young clean shaven men in dark suits and narrow ties. No weapons considerately concealed beneath tailored jackets. No blue Americars parked in the driveway or on their tree lined street. No minivans for the screamers. No Tasers. No lasers. No one at all.
"I heard them, I swear to God, I heard the bell!"
"It's okay, sweetie, you're upset, it's understandable, it was just a bad dream. You probably heard me going to the bathroom."
"Reuben, I want you to take her back right now! Take her back to your mother right now. They could come at any moment. I will not risk my son's life for a whim."
"I'll take care of it."
"Right now."
"All right. I'll take her back to mother."
"I'm not going back to bed until I see you do it. Right now."
He walked slowly through the kitchen and put his hand on the gem room door. It swung open, not locked, not even latched. The room was empty.
But there's nothing like fiction to engage the heart. What would it feel like to live in the world like the one the law professors coldly imagine? Starting today with Lucy hiding in the claustrophobic confines of her brother's gem safe, and continuing every Tuesday and Friday until the heroine meets her fate, I will publish at this site an installment of her adventures and an imagined, terrifying, but not unthinkable America in the time after Roe.
"They'll kill us. You know it's forbidden to take a girl across."
She put her ear as close to the wall as she could get. What were they going to do with her?
"They'll kill her if we turn her in," he answered. "She's been gone for more than a day. Even if we take her back to Mom, he can beat her near to death, and there will be nothing she can do."
Lucy wriggled around in her small hiding place to reach under her shift and touch the scabs the last beating had left. The pain was gone now, but she still couldn't believe it had happened to her, her father's little darling, the Principessa.
She envisioned her brother and sister-in-law sitting at their tidy oak kitchen table, the reproduction arts and crafts light shining on their perfect little retro household, her nephew's bouncy seat in its usual commanding position at one end, discussing her beatings.
"It won't kill her to get a beating once in a while, and, anyway, that's her problem. She didn't have to run away. A lot of girls would be glad to be left with their mothers a little longer whether they like their stepfathers or not. Lucy was always spoiled. Your father spoiled her."
"You spoil John," her brother pointed out.
"This is not about spoiling babies," Phyllis retorted quickly.
Boy, was her sister-in-law a good arguer, Lucy thought. All that law school wasn't wasted after all, even if she quit as soon as the baby came. If they weren't arguing about her being killed or beaten near to death, she'd be downright impressed.
"If you take a girl to a blue state, it's theft," Phyllis went on. And if they find out she's looking for an abortion, you're a murderer. In this state that means the death penalty! Don't you read anything other than your Geology journals? Is she pregnant? I wouldn't be at all surprised."
"That's not fair. Just because you caught her listening to FPR doesn't make her a whore."
"It doesn't? Then why do they call it fornication public radio?
"Who are 'they'? Free Public Radio mostly just broadcasts NPR, and NPR is still legal in half the states in this country. My god, Phyllis, you never used to talk like this. What has happened to you?"
"I'm a realist. Virginia is the state where your work is. NPR is not allowed in Virginia or they wouldn't be bootlegging the broadcasts from across the line. I don't know how your spoiled sister got it onto the computer. I don't want their "freedom." We have a baby now. I am not going to bring the VBI into my house for some little whore. Even if they don't kill me, I don't want to have to marry your creepy brother if you get yourself killed for her. You're a father now. Send her back to your mother and hope your hotshot stepfather won't turn us all in to the state. At least we didn't try to drive her to Baltimore or whatever you had been planning to do before I found out. It's a miracle they haven't come here looking for her already."
His voice was a whisper. "All right. All right. I'll do whatever you want. But not tonight. I don't want to take her back while "Daddy" Arthur is there. It's late now. I want Mom to be alone. I'll go there first thing tomorrow morning, after he's gone to work."
She lowered herself carefully to the floor of her little safe house, drawing up her knees so that she could sit in the tiny space. Even though she had taken the shelves out and stacked them against the wall, the hiding place was pretty crowded. Funny thing, it had been a safe - for her brother's rocks and gems and stuff in the old days. With all the police around, they didn't need a safe so much. But she thought she'd be safe here with Reuben, just until he could drive her across when he went. Mom should be able to hold Arthur off with some story for a day. Reuben the scientist. The adventurer. Phyllis certainly turned into a believer awfully fast after the baby came.