Julinda knew it wasn’t her place to take her sister’s seventeen-year-old daughter to get birth control, but she also knew Amalia wasn’t going to do it. Would she be furious when she found out? Absolutely. But Julinda was willing to face her sister’s anger if the trip to the clinic succeeded in preventing yet another teenage pregnancy in the family.
It wasn’t as if Julinda hadn’t tried to convince her sister to take Gee herself. But Amalia, whenever Julinda raised the issue of Gee’s likely sexual activity, would shake her head and say her daughter wasn’t like that, meaning not like Julinda’s daughter who’d gone and gotten herself pregnant when she was in seventh grade. Amalia wasn’t wrong that Gee was a very different person from her cousin, but just because Gee studied, was at the top of her class, and was aiming to go to college, didn’t mean she wasn’t a good-looking girl with a boyfriend and a body full of hormones.
“Did Mrs. K. talk to you about ‘things’?” Julinda asked Gee on a day Julinda had stayed home, and Gee stopped by after school to check on her.
Mrs. K. was Gee’s former ESL teacher and mentor.
“What things?”
“About what might happen to your college plans if you get pregnant.”
“Oh.” Gee blushed. “She said if I get pregnant, all my college plans go away.”
Julinda was lying on her couch wrapped in a blanket. It was May, but she was so thin these days that even when it was warm outside, she was cold.
“She asked me if I knew how not to get pregnant,” Gee said.
“And do you?”
Gee looked offended, as if she couldn’t believe Julinda thought she was ignorant about this.
“Of course, I know. We use something.”
“We, or he?”
“He, Aunt Julinda, but I make sure . . .”
Julinda reached for the bottle of medicine the doctor had prescribed for her. She drank it like water, though it had done nothing to reduce the frequency or the severity of her coughing.
“You can’t rely on ‘he,’” she said after taking a swig. “Believe me. You need something you can control.”
Julinda could tell by Gee’s face that Gee had thought this herself. She could tell by the way she didn’t argue.
“I’ll make an appointment,” Julinda said, grimacing from the taste of the sickly-sweet liquid. “I know where to go. Gloria from work took her daughter there last week.”
“But Aunt Julinda, you’re not . . .”
Julinda held up her hand. “This isn’t about me. It’s about you, and you’re more important.”
Julinda made the appointment in person because even after eleven years in America, she often couldn’t be sure of what people said to her over the phone. She went on a day she still had some energy after work.
“You know you don’t have to come with her,” the woman at the reception desk told her. “In Connecticut, she can come by herself.”
Julinda glared at the woman, sure that she was looking at Julinda’s skeletal frame as if she were the one who needed treatment and not at a family planning clinic.
“But I will come with her.”
The way she hadn’t come with her own daughter who now had a six-year-old and no high school degree.
In Julinda’s defense, she thought she had more time with Nelida who was only thirteen when she got pregnant. Julinda thought what had happened to her in Cape Verde couldn’t possibly happen to Nelida in America. She didn’t know why she thought this. Because girls here had more choices? Yet they continued to make the same bad mistakes.
She wondered if Mrs. K. had offered to take Gee to get the pill. Mrs. K. took Gee all over, to cities and states that Julinda had never been to, and to college campuses to take tours and do interviews. Or maybe Mrs. K. thought this was something Gee’s family should take care of? Well, Gee’s family was taking care of it. Gee had worked too hard to have it end with a wailing infant in her arms before she could even graduate from high school.
Julinda remembered her dismay at the urgency of Nelida’s newborn cries, even after she fed her, especially in the middle of the night. She remembered her mother shrugging at her shock. “This is what it’s like. You should have thought about that before you did what you did.”
But Julinda hadn’t thought. She’d only felt. She’d felt the power of his eyes and his voice, the warmth of his body. The singer from Sâo Tiago was a distant cousin of the bride, a man who lived in the capital. He left again the day after the wedding. Julinda never saw him again.
On the day of Gee’s appointment, Julinda took the day off. She’d been taking more and more days off and had been told at the eyelet factory that it was a problem. She’d been told this at the hospital as well, and at the nursing home where she worked on weekends. So far no one had done anything except warn her that things couldn’t go on the way they were, but Julinda already knew this. She knew her working days were numbered, but without savings or health insurance, she forced herself to keep going, calling in only when she woke up so exhausted that she couldn’t get out of bed.
When Julinda pulled up in front of Gee’s high school in her battered, third-hand Toyota, Gee was already at the curb. She looked quiet, respectable, her uniform neat, very little make-up. Not the way Nelida used to flounce off to school with an inch of high gloss smeared over her lips and a skirt pulled too high.
Gee climbed in.
“Did you tell him you were going to get the pill today?” Julinda knew the boy’s name was André, but didn’t use it, considering this an irrelevance.
“I did.”
“And what did he say?”
“He said he was glad.”
“I’ll bet he was.” He wouldn’t have to wear a condom anymore, and he wouldn’t have to worry about becoming an accidental father.
Julinda turned to look at her niece and saw her sister: her large eyes, her strong forehead, her lips that often curled into a playful smile. Amalia didn’t know what they were doing today though there had been plenty of opportunities to tell her. But Julinda warned Gee not to. Her sister would rail and cry and possibly, since her new church preached abstinence, even try to stop them. But if the thing were done, Amalia would accept it. She might be religious, but she was a woman who had once wanted to attend college herself. She was the last person who would wish to see her daughter’s dreams thwarted by a teenage pregnancy.
The atmosphere in the waiting room was charged with equal amounts of excitement and resignation. There were giddy young women with their mothers, their boyfriends, their bellies, and tired-looking, older women mostly on their own. Julinda sank onto a plastic orange chair next to one of the older women while Gee went up to the receptionist. Julinda’s heart was pounding. The elevator had been broken, and the two flights of stairs they’d just had to climb had shattered her.
“They’re running a little late.” Gee came and sat down.
Julinda had never visited a doctor who wasn’t.
Julinda took as deep a breath as she could and drew Gee toward her, realizing she should have said this in the car. “I need to explain about the exam,” she said in a low voice. “They put something up you.”
Julinda hadn’t spoken quietly enough. The woman sitting next to her stirred and half-turned.
“I know,” Gee whispered. “We learned about it in health class. It’s called a speculum.”
Julinda didn’t care what it was called. Vocabulary wasn’t the point here.
“Did they say that it’s cold and hard and can make you bleed?” She heard her voice grow sharp.
“No,” Gee said. “They didn’t say that.” She was a pale girl, and she’d just gotten paler. “But I guess there’s nothing I can do about that.”
“I guess not.”
Julinda saw her niece’s expression and was sorry she’d mentioned it.
“You shouldn’t have come today, Aunt Julinda.”
“I’m okay.”
“But Mom says . . .” Gee’s face creased.
“I’m fine.” Julinda knew no one believed this, but now was not the time to discuss it.
She patted Gee’s hand.
“Do you want me to come in with you?”
“Would you, Aunt Julinda? You know what to do and say.”
Poor girl. There was nothing to do or say. Lie back, legs up and open, and hold your breath until it was over.
In the exam room, Julinda took the stool the nurse pushed toward her, positioning herself next to where Gee would lie on the exam table. Gee was shown behind a privacy curtain that wasn’t big enough to give her any privacy. Julinda could tell she was nervous, and cold, and kicked herself for forgetting to bring socks for her niece so her feet wouldn’t freeze in the stirrups.
Then Gee was up on the table in the paper-thin gown, the tiny sheet they gave you spread across her lap. She had a look in her eye that Julinda recognized, a look of barely-controlled panic.
The doctor, a Black woman, came in, jovial and smiling.
“I’m Doctor Smithfield,” she addressed herself to both Gee and Julinda. “I heard you’re here for contraception today, Miss Silva? Well, we’re just going to have a look, and then we can talk about it.”
The woman had a pleasant lilt to her voice.
“You’re not from here,” Julinda said.
The doctor laughed. “I’m from a tiny village on top of a mountain in Jamaica.”
“My great-grandmother lives on top of a mountain.” Gee tried to smile.
“We’re from Cape Verde.” Julinda said.
“Island women.” Doctor Smithfield patted the stirrups. “Scooch down a bit, my dear. I’ll need you to lie back and put your feet in these.”
When the speculum was inserted, Gee gasped, and Julinda took her hand and squeezed as hard as she could.
“It’s cold, I know,” the doctor apologized.
“Ka ta dura muit,” Julinda whispered to Gee. “It doesn’t last long.”
Gee’s face was strained, her mouth a grimace.
“And we’re done.” The doctor removed the speculum as Gee let out another gasp.
“Now I’m going to make sure everything’s in the right place.”
Gee gasped for a third time as the doctor inserted her hand and felt around inside her. Julinda could see a quiet tear form in the corner of her niece’s eye and imagined her sister’s tears when Julinda told her they had gone ahead and done this without her.
“You’re all set,” Doctor Smithfield told Gee a moment later as she peeled off her gloves. “Get dressed and then come next door where your mother and I are going to have a chat.”
“I’m not her mother,” Julinda said after she was sitting in a much more comfortable chair in the doctor’s office. “She’s my sister’s girl. My sister who thinks that her seventeen-year-old daughter is going to wait until she’s married to have sex.”
Julinda had expected sharp, or at least disapproving words.
“You’re positive she’s active?” It sounded so matter-of-fact, as if the doctor were enquiring if Gee exercised or got enough sleep.
“Yes.”
“Is the boy responsible?”
“Is he responsible? I have no idea. My niece is responsible. She’ll take the pill, finish high school, and go to college.”
The doctor looked at Julinda for a moment until Julinda knew they understood one another. There was no reason to discuss it any further.
A few minutes later, Gee appeared at the door with her clothes on, one hand resting on her stomach the way Julinda used to rest her hand on hers when she first knew she was pregnant.
“Sit down, Germana. Everything down there looked fine. What kind of contraception are you interested in?”
“She’d like a prescription for the pill.” Julinda’s voice was firm.
“You know there are other options?” The doctor asked Gee.
“Yes.” Gee’s voice was faint. “I know.”
Julinda listened with Gee as the doctor described the IUD and the diaphragm.
Amalia would kill Julinda for allowing Gee to have something put in her. And how was a diaphragm going to work in the back seat of a car?
“But I do think that the pill is appropriate for you,” the doctor finished. “If that’s what you want.”
“Yes.” Gee’s voice was stronger. “Thank you, doctor.”
Dr. Smithfield smiled at both of them.
“Island women.” Julinda wasn’t sure why she said it.
Dr. Smithfield began tapping her keyboard. “Island women getting the job done.”
In the parking lot, Gee threw her arms around Julinda, nearly knocking her over.
“Thank you, Aunt Julinda, you’ve no idea how relieved I feel.”
Julinda did have an idea. She felt relieved as well. Her niece would have children when she wanted them, not as the result of some ill-considered moment of passion that the man walked away from. Julinda held Gee, wishing that someone could have done this for her when she was young, feeling guilty that she didn’t intervene sooner for her daughter.
“Don’t worry,” Julinda whispered. “I’ll tell your mother.” Though she dreaded the prospect, the look of betrayal in her sister’s eyes, the anger at Julinda for having parented in her place.
Julinda would tell her sister that she wasn’t trying to steal Gee’s trust, that Gee still loved her mother and respected everything she’d done for her.
“I should tell her.” Gee said. They were still holding one another tightly. “How can I keep it from her?”
“You can’t,” Julinda said. “We can’t. We’ll tell her together.”
“Together.” Gee said.
“Together,” Julinda repeated as exhaustion overcame her, her knees started to buckle, and she sagged toward the pavement.
*****
Linda Strange’s Pushcart-nominated nonfiction has appeared in Pangyrus,, and her short fiction has appeared or is pending in Freshwater Literary Journal, Glass Mountain, Marrow Magazine, the 2024 Connecticut Literary Anthology, and Bewildering Stories. She is working on a novel set in East and West Germany as well as a collection of linked stories about the immigration of a family from the Cape Verde Islands. She lives in Connecticut between two streams with her English husband and a silver Himalayan called Quince.
