The Grief Comes First in Little Knockings

“ournal” by Tracy Whiteside

A

Your rickety 1991 Chevy Cavalier, heavy as a boat, sails into the parking lot, finds itself a place to dock. It’s huge and blue, but not like the ocean. You step out; you slam the door. Across the street you see a lone shopping cart on the corner, an abandoned twin-sized mattress, an overturned trash can. All of it useless. There’s a group of people with Elmer’s poster boards just ahead, standing guard by the front of the building. You notice that they’re shouting—the words, you can’t quite make them out; you only know which way they’re coming. You hear something like savior or murderer or both. 

Behind you sits your car, poised and awaiting your return, like maybe you will change your mind, get out of there, quick; but you keep walking. There are places to grow and places to grieve. This place holds neither possibility. It looks more like a post office than a hospital wing. But it’s not a hospital wing; it’s a clinic in a neighborhood that you’ve never walked through until today. It’s not a hospital wing; it’s a tall, secluded patch of meadow where fawns stay to rest: out of sight from predators, yet still—too young to be left on their own.

To enter, walk past the angry mob, open the front door, and go to section B.

To change your mind, go to section J.  

B

You don’t see the nurses—just their TV sets. They play Bring It On in the tiny waiting room, one of your favorite movies from when you were in middle school. You mouth some of the cheers, remembering all the words and how you’d wished you could be a cheerleader like them, though you’d never told anyone that. Never would. Do we always wish we were someone else? Instead, you sit there in your Ramones t-shirt and black Sofie stretch shorts. You wear eight total bracelets and one rainbow sweatband. They hide pale white markings embroidered on your skin like the patterns of doilies. Tally marks towards relief. 

The floor has toys thrown about for the young mothers who bring their firstborn along with them. You watch one, particularly cute with bright blue eyes and cheeks like fluffy mushrooms playing with one of those wooden puzzle games. The beads of red and orange and yellow and pink stacked up like sunsets. Each clunk into the bead next to it feels like a time stamp. You’re up next. They call your name. They call your name again.

To walk through the waiting room’s door and into the office, go to section C.

To change your mind, go to section J.  

C

It’s a long and winding white hallway, or a short one. You don’t notice the nurses, if their eyebrows are strong or slender, if their voices are calm or rushing waters. You just notice that the process is dizzying: the rooms rotate and move as if to shake you up and spit you out somewhere new. First, the waiting room. Then, a room for video viewing, for changing your mind last minute. One for the ultrasound. An office. The walls are off white in each of them. Maybe, there’s a painting. Maybe, there’s an oversized infographic. One room advertises birth control. Another boasts baby care tips. You go where they tell you to go.

There are two videos you must view before you go through with it. Two different TV screens, two different viewing rooms. Eventually, there are two decisions. Eventually, another mass of matter inside. Or maybe it’s the same one, attempting to come back again. It depends how you look at it.

To watch the videos and move along, sit down in the cold metal chair, mumble thank you to the nurse as she leaves you there, and go to section D.

To change your mind, go to section J.

D

You don’t notice if they wear lipstick, if they’re all dressed in the same maroon uniform, if they even wear uniforms at all. What you notice is the shift in their tone from each space, the way the atmosphere alters itself entirely, as if the steps in your decision become more palpable as you descend. None of them attempt to comfort you.

The ultrasound room is two doors to the right when you walk back. It houses a maroon exam table that you lay on top of, the crinkle of the paper revealing your restless squirming. There’s a machine beeping beside you, strong and steady. Another TV set: this one will show them what they’re working with. How many cells have clumped and arranged themselves? In what ways. If they’ve already too closely resembled something like a baby—or if you’re safe. The cold jelly all over your belly soothes you like soft jam being spread on morning bread when you were young.

You hear the chug of the black and white photographs, the final push from the slot, the swish as they hit the floor. You advert your eyes as the nurse picks them up and try to ignore the visions in your mind of all the expectant mothers who wait months to see what’s growing inside them. You think of hair follicles, the mitochondria of cells, bright eyes. You picture limbs: slender and new.

“I don’t want to see the pictures,” you say, breaking the silence. Your voice comes out thick and sure like sticky caramel. But they hadn’t asked you if you did. 

To go back 8 weeks and 4 days, go to section E.

To shuffle into the next room, go to section G.

To change your mind, go to section J.

E

You are old enough to make it to a big city for college, but you drop out a semester and a half in. Somedays, you show up out of a cab off N Broad Street in his clothing. Big, baggy white t-shirts that feel foreign on your skin, yet still somehow comforting. Your sweatpants, washed every three weeks or so, smell of sweaty sex and Vladimir half gallons, foreign stains on the inside crotch seam and a missing drawstring. You worry that anyone (or no one) notices when you walk into the lecture hall late each Wednesday evening, 5:30 PM, the sunlight beginning to slow itself.

You struggle to pay attention to anything your professor says, your phone going off each minute with his whereabouts. He’s getting on the train in Lancaster, duffle bag in hand packed for the week. You’ve just returned hours ago from a trip home where you spent all weekend in his upstairs bedroom while his mother washed his clothes and cooked you both Kraft macaroni and cheese in the late afternoons. A weekend of staying out too late, shot after shot, McChicken binges, tubs of ice cream, puffs of weed smoke, crushed up pills.

After class, your professor calls you up to the front of the room and asks you how you’re doing so well in her class. You don’t understand. “You have the most absences and the highest grade. It doesn’t make any sense. I’m going to have to fail you, regardless. You haven’t been here enough.” You hide your smirk and let her know you have a doctor’s note in your dorm room you forgot to hand in.

“I’ll have it to you tonight.” She’s barely saying okay before you’re off, out the door and into the busy Philadelphia street, messy bun threatening to unravel.  Back in your dorm room, you scan a doctor’s note from earlier in the semester, change the dates in a PDF program on your computer, and send it to your professor’s email. He calls to say he’s arrived.

To find out what happened that night, go to section F.

F

You’re almost sure, in hindsight, that it happened that night. He’d walked back to your dorm room early with you from a party off Girard Avenue. You’d drank too much. Your roommate was still out with your friends, a group you’d found quickly that took shots for the Saturday afternoon tailgates at 10 AM like you did and didn’t judge you for your live-in boyfriend, at least to your face.

You remember riding on top. The rocking. The “that was close.” Or maybe it was “I think I got some in you.” Maybe you said, “I’m sure it’s fine.” It doesn’t matter.  You remember the city lights and how bright they were through your window that night. How you never once closed the curtains (still wouldn’t). You remember curling under his arm, falling asleep in minutes to the melodious seesaw of the crosswalk’s chirp, the city’s only bird call. How that only happened when he was there with you, even though your roommate slept just feet away from your own bed. Other nights, you’d spend hours staring out into the buildings’ silhouettes, their stature like sharp points into your internal interrogation, journal entries full of pitying mentions of your potential, about how small you’d become in a town where you were nothing if you didn’t ‘make it.’ A bug-eyed goldfish staring through the glass. You’d leave the city before you had the chance. 

Of course, you had no idea anything had happened, could happen like that, to you. As if there’d be a knock on your heart, a tap on the glass, a courtesy to make sure you were in there. No, of course you didn’t know it happened that night. Instead, you passed out, mouth wide open beside him on the tight twin bed, as something began shifting inside of you to make room.

To find the clinic, head to section A.  

To make a different decision, go to section J.  

G

“You’re almost at 9 weeks,” she says next, a concern in her voice that means nothing to you until it does—four days later, one day past the pill’s prescriptive deadline, forehead pressed to the floor of his bathroom in agony. “I’ll give you these, but I need you to be aware that it might not work. You’re cutting it very close. We’ll need you to come back in a week to make sure there’s no tissue left in your uterus. If so, we’ll have to perform the in-clinic procedure.” 

“Should I call the hospital?” he asks, one foot in the bathroom and one foot into the hallway. He doesn’t hold your hair back or wipe the vomit from your upper lip, doesn’t sponge the sweat from your neck. His uneasy eyes peer through your twisted body. 

“Please. Please.” You’re crying. You don’t remember if he calls or if you do it yourself. You don’t remember what they say on the other line. It doesn’t matter. What you remember is crawling from the bathroom rug to the toilet, placing a trash can in front of you to catch the vomit. What you remember is the sudden, swift push; the plop. The blood, the blood, the blood. The weight of it—the way it left you in one motion. The way the cramps just halted, the nausea commenced, the curtain call’s applause: a flush. And then—a loud, suffocating silence inside of you, as if none of it ever happened at all.

You remember inching down the hallway and into his room. “It’s done.” Did he have a response? It doesn’t matter. Then, the way he ushered you across the threshold of his little sister’s bedroom. His voice: “My dad’s coming over. Sorry. Here,” and a small blue pill from his hand to your mouth. The way he didn’t look at you. The gulp of water. The foggy thump of your head on the pillow. The mattress on her floor like a life raft. You remember a sensation like floating above, like watching yourself there. The way that no one held you. Then, you see, or you dream, of those wooden puzzle toys from a waiting room in arm’s reach. You see, or you dream, of the colors of the sunsets they’d miss: reds, yellows, oranges, pinks—like the stains in the pads you will wear for weeks.

To see what’s next for you, go to section H.

H

It is only three months later when you realize you’re pregnant again. It’s Autumn, a time when things start over. A season of trying again. Of death, rebirth. Reds, yellows, oranges. It’s the morning sickness that gives it away, a retched condition that leaves you bound to your bed for days besides the secret trips to the bathroom. (No one knows but him.) And still—there’s something about the second pink line on the pregnancy test that shocks you.

It’s certainty sends your body into freeze response. You are a deer in the middle of the street posed for defeat—stuck there and savored in bright white. The oncoming car is approaching, but you are paralyzed, you are so heavy, you are holding your breath, you are numb, you are not there at all—except the swimming inside your stomach that threatens a pulse.

This time, the conception is a mystery entirely. Is it easier that way? No, it doesn’t matter. He is furious now, and you? You are gone. First, you stop smoking cigarettes, cut back on your drinking. In a few long days, you start again. There’s a confliction: you don’t want to hurt it. (Hurt what? The tissue?) Anyway, just in case. Then, what’s it matter?

There will be another pill. Another $440. Another At-Home Procedure. And in a few years, there will be no recollection of where it occurred, of what happened before or after, of if he was there at all. Nothing is left of the experience. (Where does it go?) Only this: the ease with which it leaves you this time is swift—as if your body remembers the process. As if it knows this: this is what we must do.

When the body is stuck in a freeze response, it takes an impact to set it back into motion. Something must massage and extract the lodged occurrence from the body. (It will never pass on its own. It will stick; it will grow.) Picture: Deer in headlights. Picture: A pill rolling down the esophagus. Picture: Blood and insides splattered all over from the blow.

To see what happens next, go to section I.

To change your mind this time, go to section J.

I

The Woman at the desk in Room #3 asks you if you’ve considered birth control. ‘No,’ you tell her. ‘I don’t want it.’ Your revolt against the added hormones in your body is an extension of an eating disorder that has eaten you from the inside out since you were nine years old. The threat of potential weight gain is stronger than your fear of making the decision again. (The depth of your kind of sickness knows no limit.)

Of course, you don’t tell The Woman this. She wouldn’t want to hear it. She only wants to tell you something: “Honey, do you understand you were just here in June?” Her honey is not meant to make you feel safe. You begin to float above the scene, watch yourself shake your head yes. Of course you understand. “That’s only three months ago,” she says. “How many times do you plan to do this?” Her disgrace can’t reach you up here. Nothing can.

A few weeks later, you will go back to that same clinic and you will put your feet in stir-ups. You will spread your knees like a raw oyster. They will insert a tong-like metal device inside of you. Deeper, deeper. Your hands will grip the edges of the examination table; your fingernails will rip through the thin sheet of exam paper. Slice. Pop.  

The woman inserting the IUD will notice the way your knees are buckling in like a newborn fawn. She will look up over them at your face full of tears, and you will look away. She will stop for a moment, ask if you’re doing okay. “Yeah,” you’ll say, crying harder now at her thoughtfulness. The pain forces you to be there, in the body.

He will not be there, though, to hold your hand like he said he would. When you leave the clinic, you will drive yourself home. (Be sure to tell them you have a ride waiting outside.) You will pull over twice on the side of the road, vomiting from the pain of the cramps post-insertion. Years later, you will learn that IUDs are typically reserved for women who have given birth before. Something about the grip of a cervix.

To come to terms with your decision, go to section K.

To change your mind, go to section J.

J

There is no other decision. You can come to this section again and again, but there is no way around it. You are unfit to be a mother; you are just 18 years old. Really, you are still a child yourself. An addict, a drunk, a drop out. The father: even worse if this is possible.

You can imagine changing your mind. You can imagine the doe, the way she looks for a quiet space in the valley to birth her young. You can picture her there in the luscious, overgrown meadow: how she finds a safe spot, how she lies down on her side as her babies reveal themselves. How she moves to all fours for the finale. The sudden, swift push; the plop. They slide right out. (She is alone there. A doe typically births two fawns at once. The father is never a part of the ceremony.)

But your life is no rich, green pasture. You will have the abortion. You will have another. You will not think twice about your decision, not once, until you do.

K

You are in bed next to your current partner sobbing about lost daughters. It is 10 years later, and yet she floats just behind your left shoulder blade, waiting for the day she can introduce herself. This is a haunting, a modern ghost story. You know who she was; you feel her all around you. A mother’s instinct—you’ve read about it. They say it’s never wrong.

But you are not a mother. Something has taken a scalpel to whatever leftover tissue was inside of you and struck it loose. The grief comes for you. First, in little knockings. Then, all at once. The ache, it seizes your body and forces you there. The pain, like a recurring nightmare. (What haunts us quite like grief?) There is nowhere to escape.

That night, your partner holds you as you cry and cry and cry, assures you that you did the best you could at the time. Tells you he could never understand, but he’s listening. Tells you: we will get her back one day. (Can we grieve for what we’ve never known? How many years is too far gone?) But the grief, the grief, the grief. It’s an island far, far away. He cannot reach you there.

Each time you close your eyes, you see yourself digging a hole for her tiny little body. You are in a meadow that stretches on as far as you can see, the grass high and lush and emerald green. Just one tree. You lay her on the tree’s roots; they cradle her helpless frame as you thrust your shovel into the dirt a few feet away. Riiip, swoosh. Every time you look past your shoulder, she is still there; she waits for you. Rip, swoosh. You could be anywhere—washing the dishes, waiting for a train, braiding your niece’s hair—but every time you close your eyes—riiip, swoosh—there is digging. 

You lay your shovel down. The meadow is silent, like a long, empty corridor. There is nothing here but you and her. The grief—it comes for us wherever we are. Threatens to bury us alive alongside the things we choose and the things we don’t. I will remember you, you whisper to her tiny cheeks, as you lay her down in the earth. You will remember her, each time the grief knocks, like the ping of a shovel into hard, barren soil. You will remember this fertile ground.

about the author

Lizz Dawson is a writer from York, PA living in New York where she's pursuing an MFA at The New School. She is an editorial intern at Creative Nonfiction and an editorial associate at Teachers & Writers Collaborative. Her work has appeared in Elephant Journal, Story Online, and Bending Genres. It’s forthcoming in Hayden's Ferry Review. You can find her online @lizzdawsontwozs on Twitter and @lizzdawsonn on Instagram.

about the artist

Tracy Whiteside is an award-winning, internationally published Chicago photographer specializing in creative art. Her art is always meant to ignite the imagination. Tracy wants to open the viewers’ mind and encourage them to examine their own soul and spirit.