It was my sixteenth year
by Jeanette
We loved each other.� Whatever that means at 16.� When I look back now I know that whatever we thought love was, it wasn�t important enough to think of each other�s future.� When we found out I was pregnant my first thought was:� �what will my parents think?� How will they face their friends and our family�?� So it was decided.� I would have an abortion.�� We spent a month scraping money together and then we borrowed the rest from a friend whose grandmother had given her Christmas money.�
Now, 20 years later, my memories of the day are clear but odd.� It is as if watching a movie that is full of clips that flash from random moment to random moment.� We didn�t have a car or a license for that matter, so we took buses and subways into the city.� I remember some of the money we paid with was rolled quarters. At the clinic I remember they took all the women (and girls) into a room for a group information session.� There was a woman who wanted to know how soon she could get back to aerobics after this.� I remember thinking �doesn�t she know how serious this is�what a horrible thing we are doing, and yet this is her only question�.�
I remember lying on the table, full of fear and terror, tears running down my face and nervously telling the nurse, who held my hand, about how we had to take a bus.� I was too young and naive to know that when they had told me not eat that morning before coming to the clinic, that included orange juice.� So, while in recovery I threw up on the floor as a nurse became angry with me for not asking for a trash can or bed pan.� Didn�t she know I was a child?� Wasn�t someone supposed to be taking care of me?
I don�t know how long I lay there; I really wanted to just leave.�
When we did leave, as we walked from the entrance of the clinic to the bus stop, I remember a woman, who obviously knew she couldn�t come onto the property, yelling things at me from the other side of a chain link fence.� I don�t know what she yelled, I was in too much pain and already crying too hard to hear her.�
We had enough money in change to get some French fries; I needed something in my stomach.� I remember lying across the back seat of the bus and sleeping most of the way home.� I remember going to his house to sleep for the rest of the day, and his mother not asking questions and being very kind to me.
I remember not understanding that when they gave me the antibiotic that said, take 2 times a day, that it meant 2 times during the day�and not having to set my alarm for the middle of the night for 10 days to get up and take it...which is what I did.��� Why would I have known�I was 16, I shouldn�t have been allowed to fill a prescription myself.� I needed to be taken care of by an adult.� But no adult had been required�so in secret I took care of myself.
Now, married with young children�always looking at someone else�s child that is 20�thinking, �That is how old my first baby would have been.� I could go on about how many years I waited for lightening to strike me for my sin.� I could write about many lies I have told to cover it.� But all of that would be insulting to God who has loved me through it all and comforted me in my pain, sorrow and loss.� I no longer condemn myself; I spent many years doing that.� All I can do now is trust in God�s mercy and that through His grace I am forgiven.�
I talk to my baby sometimes, and I ask her to pray for me.
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