Shenar was ready for Ralph to leave. Turning off Denney Way and heading south, she was relieved to be separated from him and cramping for him. She knew he would try to contact her. She would stand firm, this time. She had told him that. She would.

It was late September. The rains had set in. As Shenar pulled into the left lane, west to go south, she spotted Ralph in her side mirror. He had cut across the block to the boarding area of the bus terminal. His face was soft and serious. She smiled. He smiled back. She wanted to rush him back to her house, climb onto him, and hold him inside her.

She turned right and waved as she headed south. She turned away from her mirror before she could see if he waved back.

What do I believe about abortion? I believe: At the time of conception a soul may be embodied in the resulting embryo—but not necessarily. I think the soul enters when the carrier of that pregnancy decides or has it decided that the pregnancy will continue, with the expectation that a new creature will be born.

If I am pregnant and decide to have an abortion I will be preventing a possible person, not killing one extant. Just as I would be doing by taking the pill. Or injecting foam. Or implanting a diaphragm.

I think daunting fantasies, lately. I think of my father, while I am pregnant. I think he is considering coming back, being born again, through this baby I conveniently conceived on his first birthday since his death. To know me from the inside, the way all fathers long to know their daughters, the way none ever can. I imagine I am metaphysically posting an announcement on my cervix for unincarnated souls: DO NOT ENTER, TEMPORARY STRUCTURE. I am, in fact, telling my father, not this one, not this time. This is not being done to bring forth another child. This is being done for another reason.

Shenar knows which night this was. She places her hand on her belly and replays the event. The keeness of the sex. The quantity of it. They were up all night, both of them knowing they had to work in the morning, knowing they would call in sick. First in the car, slung in urgency over the backs of the front seats. Then in the apartment. Their bodies, every place they fused, everything they touched, smelled like turtle oil, like something illegal in this part of the world.

“You’re very hot, tonight,” Ralph whispered harshly, digging deeper into her. He meant internal temperature, the volatility of her cavern.

She felt it, too. She felt viscerally feverish. They initiated separate episodes of fucking so often throughout the night that she was sure she was sometimes forgetting the foam. It’s all right, she thought, she is so full of foam nothing could get past this barrier.

This night, she feels as though her entrails are being scrubbed. She tastes semen at the back of her mouth, on her teeth; in her nose when she sniffles.

Later, she remembers what Ralph said after that marvelous fuck.

“I enfolded you in my aura.” He said it reverently. “Most women don’t let me do that.”

She can’t think of what she could have done to stop it. She wouldn’t have wanted to. Too bad for all those other women, she remembers thinking.

The separation has begun. The indefinite one. Shenar is sure she is pregnant. She feels as though she has gained an enormous amount of weight. She is tired. Always. Her breasts feel skinless and rare. She has no desire for sex. When she walks up stairs she thinks of elephants mounting foot stools. She has taken a home pregnancy test. Even though she already knows the result, when she sees it she turns solid, gritty, dull.

She receives a letter from Ralph in early October. It is a 12-step letter. He must have joined another group, she thinks. In it he apologizes for any hurt he caused her. He describes his life objectively, unusual for him. He sounds hopeful. He does not ask her to write. She doesn’t.

She decides to have a menstrual extraction. She is three and one-half weeks pregnant and she knew a long time ago she would not be having a child. Not this child. Not any child. She was born that way.

Shenar’s life hangs on a thread of thought. The thought is of Ralph. She feels as though it should be easier for her to tweak him into awareness of her, into wanting contact with her, since she is nurturing something of him inside her. She knows better than to seek him out.

She schedules the extraction. Attends the counseling session.

“My protection failed me.” She says nothing else. The physician’s assistant takes her seriously.

“You old gals are the easiest,” the abortionist tells her as she places her legs in the stirrups. She imagines herself crocheting while the vacuum shushes and her uterus cramps.

After her abortion she feels more like a woman. And less like dick.

They tell her it takes a good forty days. Exactly forty days later she starts her period. It is like her menarchical periods. Thick. Clotty. Her uterus works hard and long to express its contents. Clumps of compost soil pad after pad. There is no point in using a tampon. It will be rejected with everything else. When it is over, she feels renewed.

In the minutes following the afterglow, the separation sets in. Inside, my passages feel so sated and relaxed that the thought of doing what we were doing minutes before makes me queasy. My body turns away and nests in an isolated place in the sheets. As I settle onto my side, my back to Ralph, I feel him move.

He slips his arms around me and clasps my hands. His groin nudges into my buttocks. One of his thighs separates mine and moves up, cradling my cunt. A suggestion. I begin to warm. I think about the way he satiates my desire for him. The remembered pleasure, the anticipated pleasure, lightly coats my vagina. Gently, he slides into me. I am amazed, again, by the recovery of my appetite for him, so soon into the calm. He holds me very close. We fall asleep.

My belly felt so warm, so radiant, the morning after we made love and conceived. I couldn’t stop lubricating. I imagined I was cradling my uterus in my hands, offering it to whatever we produced.

He entered me again, and I wanted him again. I felt raw; a luxurious sensitivity. He was sloughing off the layers, getting to the rich secrets. I felt organically vulnerable, and safe, supremely safe. Several times my trunk shivered involuntarily—the excitement would cause me to lubricate again—his head would feel the sudden super-slickness and he’d groan and plunge further.

Ralph will get the message. He will call her. Sometime this week. Perhaps tonight. She will answer the phone. He will tell her he wants to be with her, he cannot wait until they are both sane.

She will tell him, “I know. I’ve been thinking it’s just me, since the pregnancy, since the abortion, needing comfort, wanting to be around you all the time, wanting you around me.”

She believes he knows about the pregnancy, that they conceived, the night he held her in his aura.

He will say, “No.”

It’s not just her. It’s him, too. Maybe they should just do it. Get married and commit their lives to that, first, and work out the details, later, of their lives together.

She will think for a minute. What she thinks of will cause her to say, “I will marry you, Ralph.” She doesn’t know, yet, what she will think.

Text & Graphics © 1999 by Gail Rae Hudson

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