The Abortionist
Tearing package wrap off the bathroom cupboard's last absorbent pad, Jacinta cast a glance over her shoulder, peeking to ensure the latch was closed before wasting it, pristine and untouched, in the cold, rumbling bowl. Flushing the vestal napkin, she paused to assess what careless, fun negligence, had led her to a delinquent accident's embarazada coyness. “Come on, already,” her third eldest sister commented from the hall, “you can’t be in there all day.” "Alright, alright," she answered and stole a brusque look at the mirror in haste before opening the door. “Finally,” she heard as the blur of urgency rushed past and into the oft crowded lavatory. Denying anxiety grasp the expression on her nervous dial, she shuffled through the kitchen's jammed tostada, socked kin hive and approached their harried madre, head bowed over a tousled counter, spreading earnest mustard on white bread for her treat haggling brothers's lunches. "You each get one box of raisins," the domestic, fruit arbitrating sultana insisted. “We’re out of napkins,” Jacinta shrank before her madre. "Get some from school, mi cielo," their thrifty madraza encouraged. "Ok," her lack-of-sleep utterance scarcely breached their strident breakfast din. Wanting to dodge extra chores, she reached after the depleted bowl of pasta-salad their catering tío, had brought adonde, surfeit from a nuptial, and, kissing her madre's harassed brow, said, "I’ll be a little late to get home, tonight, ok.” "¿Ah?" “Choir practice.” "Bien, cariño," her mother concurred, "but come straight home. You know how your mica, tag along sibling, Lucia, waits for you." Slouching in mimicked sympathy for her needy sister, she pressed a thumb's brief smear of both tug-of-cheese-string brothers's OJ dotted cheeks and quelled their lactic guerra over mom's watered down milk jug's dregs. "Bien," she said. Culling a redundant ballast poundage of copious libros from her bursting school bag, Jacinta hedged over Austen, Shaw and Hawthorne before thrusting a copy of The Scarlet Letter in her stitch mended book bag, and quit the apartment. Scooting to avoid her brother’s friend, Juan David, as he leapt out into the hall, she watched him hasten to shut the domestic uproar crashing inside. “Hiya,” he said. "Hi?!" she cautioned, "you all right?" “Yea,” his snark assured , “why? are you?” “I'm fine,” she agreed . while marching beside him towards the lobby. “Heard you and Mateo got into a fight.” Juan David and her asinine brother Mateo were best of friends since third grade. Fighting became part of their weekend rituals soon after the start of Mateo’s fascination with vaping and the cheap cannabis blends they get from the Narcan wastrels bent in two on the corner. Now they were doing jobs, and getting high looking out for the bangers on the block. Not like Santiago, the boy she saw only too rarely, having dodged the hood's gangster draft and street thug amicus that every tween yearling bopper there joined, her distracted amigo was off to college and only came home long enough to sneak her in for sex while his mom did the month's laundry. As she felt like a picked at leftover on a dorm buffet tray, Jacinta expected him to run from her the second he learned she was pregnant, despite the fevered promises boys in lust make. “... so Mateo deserved it. He should have just given me the roach clip since he wasn’t using it anyway.” A brooding schoolgirl and fecund teen, the expectant, gutter debutante guess realized she hadn't paid attention and replied, "Right, I'll tell him." “He knows,” Juan David turned off and waved over his shoulder outside, “see ya.” "Bye," she hastened past the beaten transients and aging libertine, damsel men, dwelling on the sidewalk's breadth. Circling wide around two bedraggled, rag women, contending for the sloven gallant, crooked in a wastebin, nigh, Jacinta traded resigned hails with the city's inner narco fauna. Drawing her laggard cell out of a tobacco lint pocket in the alley outside, she ran a lithe index across its broken glass surface. Attempting to login at the corner's greasy, mom n’ pop fries and WiFi, she stress lolled between the distrust of estranged derelicts and their frightened lecher sneers. Without wampum or pesos to purchase a coffee inside, she dithered by the diner's rear confit jar ashtray and plastic, staff lounging crate. Launching her digital, cloak-and-dagger, nervous system, Jacinta scrolled through social media prattle balderdash and drudging bobada. Piloting vapid Catholic te deums, she found her activity list, left unchecked since the previous evening's slop bin, alleyway login and, startled to find the encrypted missive she had prayed for, thumbed in reply, "I’m coming over, I won’t forget this.” Chancing to hasten past the two bickering squattresses disputing in the alley when a hungry passerby, agog for his burnt sausage breakfast within, threw a freshly lit cigarette in the trench filth and sent them both leaping for the smoking lung carcinogen, Jacinta was free to decipher the enceinte celebrity chatter, online. Awaking from her posh crib reveries, she began her search amidst reels of carousel adverted fear she'd be taken in by a fake, MAGA sponsored clinic’s moral rhythmic abstinence. Posing as medical doctors, Sunday school, bible study preachers with no scientific training, exalt their misinformed screed as prophylactic scripture to cozen pregnant girls into delaying abortion until what legal time window they have closed and they are forced to multiply their burdens. .As ill-informed on that subject today as she was the day her single, gang viuda madre had given birth to her, Jacinta set out for the only help she could trust, a cousin's ex who had been there before. Passing rows of crumbling tenements along the way, she was greeted by a gang-land striker and low ranking campeón, who had dropped out of school the year before. Though she only got high with friends at long weekend parties, many of the hood's flock of meth adventuring dealers liked Jacinta and eagerly fawned at her on their court. "Hey, Jacinta," a boy she had foregone dating due a friend's past jealous issue before Santiago, called to her, inviting, "you haven’t been around." Harried, distracted and expectant, she feigned to cheer, "Hi, Shanks." “Ah, girl, where’re you going?” “Gotta run. ...” she tossed over her shoulder to counter his disappointment. Most everyone she knew knew someone tagging for the slum's drugs and lucre squadrons. A community watch that tolls the spirit and taxes people till out-bangers come to break their racket of strife daily. The parties are fun but don’t get hung up, she thought. Guys are guys, there is no cure. They make trouble, they fight. The problems are the fun… until they’re a problem. Only now, there were consequences and she didn’t have nine months to gestate herself fat thinking about it. "¡Habla, Fierro!" she said to the gang's chin bearded doyen, roosting over the building's decrepit, unkempt steps. "¿Qué onda, Jimena?" his blear eyed parley inquired, "you need anything?" “It’s Jacinta,” she replied. “Is Mary home?” "¡Dios mío!" his soured wink curdled disaffected, "go in and look." "¡Perdón! I'll go see," she said, and tread over his dozing vendee, resting on the cracked steps beside him. "Move over, Bautista,” Fierro insisted. “It’s alright,” she said and shuffled inside. Cat-litter acridness, immixed amongst disparate cigarette stenches, vied with the festering dust odors of rat scat accruing corners. A weakling baby's whimpering lament objected to the rhythmic bedsprings of a distant, live-in john. Reaching the hallway's end her anxious rap clattered inside the stained yellow door. “Who is it?” Mary called with evident alarm. “It's me,” she said, “Jacinta.” When Mary’s misgiven clicketing within sketched out her inexpectant savior's regrettable, nervous twitching, she added, "you said I should stop by." A chain was pulled off its slider. Then a bolt swivelled and a hook loosened the door from the frame before a turn of the handle saw Mary peering out into the hall. “Are you alone?” “Yes,” she replied, uncertain why Mary seemed so frightened. “You ok?” “Yea,” her friend invited her in. “I was just ...” “Your arm is bleeding,” Jacinta pointed to the needle marks below her sleeve . Absently wiping off the blood with her soiled fingers, Mary explained, “It's nothing. Come in.” Jacinta pushed aside some take-out trash that was on the couch then sat perched over the cushion’s edge with her hands pressed together anxiously looking at Mary for help. “You got any money?” “No,” she admitted. “That’s why I’m here. I’m in trouble.” “But do you have any money?” Taken aback by Mary’s questioning, she tensely palmed her knees and apologised, “no. I’m sorry.” “Oh,” Mary said with dreamt regret. “We should go get some.” “What do you mean?” she asked. “You said you could help me.” Mary stood and fumbled in her pockets then pulled out a crushed bit of tinsel and pressed it to the table to gingerly wheedle out three remaining grains of a white crystalline powder into a spoon. Head bowed in adulation, a handy syringe found its way into her shaking hands and promised to aid her towards oblivion. A bit of cigarette filter followed one squeeze of water into the spoon and soon she was tapping the barrel’s side with a scarred index finger squinting through beady, tired eyes. Jacinta sat quietly watching her friend stab herself, repeatedly looking for a vein while only pulling blemished yellow plasma before adjusting her angle and trying again, hoping for the red taint that pledges swift transmittal of her last three grains of jib. A celebratory reflex caused her hand to twitch when she finally drew blood into her syringe but again she pulled the yellow bile into the barrel and failed in her desperate search for a vascular avenue. When she did finally breach its inner recesses the bright red blood she had drawn before was now congealed with her salvation and refused to pass through the needle’s narrow opening. “Damn it,” she said in frustration. “Is there anything I can do?” Jacinta asked, eager to rescue the woman she had come to for help. “Do you have any money?” Taken aback and sorry to have come, Jacinta slowly replied, “No. I don’t.” Afraid to startle Mary from her restless and forlorn waking slumber, Jacinta slowly began to rise from the couch hoping to slip out the door. “Where are you going?” Mary asked. “I thought you wanted my help.” “I do. I did,” she replied, “but ... I don’t know.” “ Fierro said you should come round tonight,” Mary explained. “Tonight?” “Yea,” she said with unexpected excitement in her delayed response, “tonight. At the club-house.” “Oh, my,” Jacinta said, “my mom kind of expects me home. It's a school night.” “Oh, well, if it's a school-night,” Mary admitted with a hint of sarcasm. “Don’t let the club get in the way of one of your school nights.” “It's just, I don’t want her to know,” she said. “About ...” “But you want to get rid of it?” “Yes,” she replied with hopes renewed. “And you have no money.” Saddened to be reminded of her condition she grudgingly admitted, “No. I have no money.” “So,” Mary explained, “come by the club-house tonight.” “For how long?” “A few hours. You’ll get rid of that problem,” she said, pointing to Jacinta’s bloated belly. “Stop by after ten. Party’ll just be getting started.” “Party?” Jacinta was taken aback, “A party is how this all started. I need an abortion, Mary. Not another party!?” “I know sweetie,” Mary walked her to the door, “you’ll be tonight’s sweetbutt to pay for your cure.” “What?” Jacinta almost cried, “no... No. I can’t.” “But you will,” Mary insisted, “that’s the only way.” “But why?” tears streaked down Jacinta’s reddening cheeks. “Why?” Mary exclaimed, “because you want an abortion and you have no money.” “But,” Jacinta couldn’t believe what she was being asked, “not like that. no...” "Don’t worry," her older friend soothed, "we’ve all been there. Me, Regina, Celeste, Carmen... you know the girls. The guys like them. Treat them nice. Part of the club. Its all for fun." “But ... “ “Besides,” she added, “you like guys, don’t you?” “Yea,” she had to admit, “but ...” “Don’t worry,” she insisted, “it’ll be fun.” Still shaken by the idea, Jacinta let Mary guide her to the door and found herself in the rank smelling corridor again listening to a sad radio weeping in a nearby apartment. She passed Fierro while scaling over the slumbering Bautista on her way down the steps and half watched as he supplied another customer with a small tin foil packet and pocketed the accumulating bill-fold. “Did you see Mary?” he asked. “Yea,” she said, stifling tears, “thanks.” “So, we’ll see you tonight?” Forcing herself to smile despite her fear, she raised her head and confirmed her intention to go, “I’ll be there.” “Here,” he said proffering a tin-foil gift, “to get you through the day.” “But I don’t have any money,” she apologised uncomfortably. “On the house,” he invited. “We’ll be seeing you around now.” “Well... tonight, anyway,” she was averse to agree. “Right,” he said, dismissing her apology, “right, tonight then.” Uncertain what to do with the gift, and loathe to insult him by refusing it, she slipped the tin packet into her pocket and, sauntering away cooly, stumbled on the pavement cracks, sheepish, before escaping the discomfort creeping up her spine. Wishing she could afford to pay for what a defunded Family Planning once did, she again winced at the threat of accidentally falling into the clutches of the Crisis Pregnancy Centers which a teen aged mother she knew warned her about. Abandoned to ask for help where she could, Jacinta clutched the tinsel package of head loll toxins in her brooding hand and stowed it deep in a lint pocket, grieving over the lost hope to break out of her impregnated abyss. Having missed her school bus, and no longer wanting to go to class anyway, she considered going home and confessing to her mother who still ostracized an estranged cousin despite welcoming the five year old girl that caused the family rift. Certain that the conversation she had just imagined could never go well, Jacinta headed back to Mary’s apartment, giving Fierro a faint greeting along the way, and met her friend at her door. “You’re back,” she said, looking past her to see if she had brought someone with her. “Yes.” “I was just going to head out,” Mary said, “see if I could score.” “Here,” Jacinta held out the tinsel of dope she had just been given, “we can share it.” As Mary’s surprise followed her recognition of what was being offered, she swung the door wider and ushered her in. “Sure,” she said, “it’ll just be us two girl-friends.” As they sat down again, Jacinta relinquished her remedy-of-the-moment into the hands of the drug’s loyal mistress then waited anxiously as the excited grumblings of her bowels anticipated the day’s listless passions. When Mary had done her fix and it was Jacinta’s turn, she laid out a thin white line on a dusty mirror and proffered it along with a short plastic straw. “This alright,” she drawled as Jacinta took the gear from her. “Uh, huh,” she said and placed it carefully onto the coffee table beside her then knelt in prayer and drew the precious crystalized paragon of problems to her nostrils. The leisure's sting was subjected to a euphoric rush of excited energy that launched Jacinta to her bounding feet with her heart's violence thrashing at vitality. “Ahhh,” she gasped with joy. “I remember now.” “Better?” Mary asked. “Didn’t even know anything was wrong until a minute ago,” she admitted. “Wow...” “Yea, I know what you mean,” Mary agreed, “we can hang here a while. But we’re going to need to go out and get some more.” “ Fierro’s right outside, let’s just go ask him.” Jacinta said, “he likes me.” “Yea,” Mary conceded, “I’m sure he does but that doesn’t mean he’s just going to give it to you.” “So, we’ll work for it,” she happily asserted, “I’m up for a little fun.” Swinging her arms as she jumped in circles where she had knelt only a moment ago, Jacinta gambolled and swayed in a Tinkerbell dance as she fluttered about the room in a lonely and ecstatic cotillion. “Come on,” she urged Mary, “it's fun.” Oblivious to the time that passed as she swayed about the room in the flight her fancy, she pranced about as the jib in her commanded, until she fell to the couch’s warm embrace and let her mind pother on without her. While still entranced in her fair beatitude a handsome champion of her dream swelled her thraldom until the delightful taste of his pleasure urged her need for fresh invigoration. Praying to the crystal god again, she rose deified to receive the crowd of pilgrims to her sweetbutt shrine. As they raised chalices of oblation to her, these supplicants begged for her attention and offered their alms of affection which she gladly accepted as one scepter to her reign followed another until, on her knees, with hands grasping hard flesh and her hunger sated, she felt love’s alluvium seeping along her thighs and cried for abdication. “Stop,” she whimpered as forces thrusted every rent in her. What had been blissful abandon lost its benevolence along with her illusion of consent and soon her struggles brought her low. She was slapped as she struggled then tossed from her throne onto the dirty cum slickened floor where the heroes-no-more taught her to fear their manhood. “No....” she had breath enough to say until yet another crusader came to her cries and stole from her again. When she no longer felt their mind-jarring jabs and the violent sludge of their delights clung to her face as it cooled, Jacinta collapsed overtaken by the besotted spasms that fallen queens only wish were the morning remnants of unwanted dreams but are the tremors that sisters rising from their underworld initiation are taught to accept as love. “I love you, Jacinta,” Fierro was the first to welcome her to her new home. “Say thank you,” Mary whispered kindly as they helped her up to her feet. “Thank you,” she whimpered, too tired for tears. “I love you, Jacinta,” each of her protectors asserted in turn. Mary stood beside her as the procession passed them by. When all the members of the club had formerly welcomed her she was seated on a corner love-seat and told to receive any late-comers as they pleased. Given another measure of her earlier restorative, with Queen Mary beside her to lend her company, Jacinta roamed her oblivion’s acrid-smelling garden of thorn tangled roses. As each petal was plucked from her flowers, the thorns about her withered and fell away until the garden’s vast chasm of emptiness enveloped her. Alone in the company of her peers, she thanked her crystalline rapture for taking her again until dawn’s light recalled her to her first plight. “What about my abortion?” she asked Mary who was still beside her. “You’ll have to wait until they decide,” she was told. “But you promised,” she said in a desperate anger, “that’s why I came here.” “What’s this?” one of the strikers approached. Mary stood before him and gently cooed him away. “It's ok,” she said. “I’ll handle it.” “If she needs working,” he promised, “I’ll set her to work.” “Enough!” Fierro called out, invoking his rank, “sit down, Rot-Gut.” Grumbling to himself while still eyeing Jacinta, Rot-Gut ambled over to Carmen on an adjacent couch and let her purr a gest quell his anger. “What’s this then?” the lair's old hand magíster, asked Mary. Whispering in his ear now, she explained Jacinta’s condition, “she’s pregnant.” “What of it?” he asked. “Ain’t mine.” “I sort of promised her we’d take care of it,” she added, “like we did for Celeste last year.” He shook his head in disbelief. “We ain’t Family Planning, you know,” he scowled at her. “It ain’t an easy thing to do.” “Just call your abortionist,” Jacinta insisted. “You promised.” “The abortionist ain’t cheap.” “But I paid,” she cried, “come on.” Reluctantly, Fierro looked around the room with a quizzical expression, “you know it ain’t legal, right?” “I don’t care. Just call your abortionist. I’ll pay him too...” she added as her voice echoed out resonant in the silent room. “Shit...” he said, shaking his head. “You know it's dangerous. And we ain’t responsible if you’re not happy. It's a lot of problems.” Jacinta’s tears streamed freely as she listened to him in disbelief. “You can’t go crying to the police about this,” he insisted. “I don’t do police,” she said in the softened voice the evening had given her. Shaking his head reluctantly, Fierro turned to his sergeant-at-arms. “Shotgun,” he said, “we got an ’abortionist’ here tonight.” Shotgun looked around nodding, “Yea, several.” “What?!?” Jacinta asked in wonder. “Who?” “You sure you want this abortion, Jacinta, my sweet sister?” Fierro gently asked. “Yes,” she said with hope brimming her eyes. “Yes, I do. Please. I have to have an abortion.” “Ok,” he settled the matter with hesitant deliberation. “We’ll call a volunteer by straws,” he ordered. “Alright,” Shotgun complied and turned towards the room, “Strikers!” The young hoods around the room stumbled forward in varying states of inebriation, ready to obey the commands of their Sergeant-at-Arms. “We need an abortionist. Everyone pick a straw,” he said. “What!?” Jacinta whimpered as Mary took her arm and shooed her to silence. “What are they doing?” “Things are in motion, now.” “What do you mean?” she asked. “You can’t back down anymore,” Mary explained. “Why would I... What do you mean?” Jacinta began to worry. Shotgun held the straws and each of her new brothers took turns drawing from the lot until the short straw was plucked and Flood-Gates, a bleary eyed reveller who threatened to fall over, held up his new badge of office. Having pledged to serve the club, he diligently listened to the instructions his sergeant-at-arms gave him then turned to Jacinta with the benevolent look of a sadistic saint. “You understand?” Shotgun asked. “Yes,” he said with sadness, “I understand. We go in back?” “No,” he was sternly informed, “here. Now.” Flood-Gates stepped towards the club’s newest novitiate with a bashful demeanor that reminded Jacinta of a shy boy who once asked her to dance at the end of middle school. “Jacinta?” he said as he offered her his hand, “this way.” “What’s going on?” she asked, shyly letting him guide her to the center of the room. “I love you, my sister,” he said. “Ok..?” she said inquisitively waiting for an explanation as he stared intently at her stomach. The striker took long deliberate breaths until the heaves crescendoed into a brutal surge of violence and his rage struck out at her tender condition. Driving his fists through her stomach he kicked and beat her fetus with the violence of an enraged bull compelled to punish its yet unborn tormentor. Waves of cruel fury washed over his face as he flogged their despondent sister barren. When her parlor abortionist had exhausted his breath, fumbling to remain upright, he took Armero’s assenting nod as instruction to retire from his blooded gang lair sister's dolor scarred vision. Horror stricken silence followed the spectacle of brutal, inner-city medicine as the violence sobered, late carousers watched Mary help their battered street kin. “Is it over?” Jacinta asked. “Yes,” Mary replied. “It's over.”
Christ Kennedy