She sits in her car, radio on, throat shivering with hints of vomit, until she’s late enough for school not to care that her eye–foot–brake reaction time is slowed by the Ovutran. The roads have guardrails. Her forehead pulses hard. She sees a black lace throw itself across the windshield, and blinks it away.
Two years ago the United States Congress ratified the Personhood Amendment, which gives the constitutional right to life, liberty, and property to a fertilized egg at the moment of conception. Abortion is now illegal in all fifty states. Abortion providers can be charged with second-degree murder, abortion seekers with conspiracy to commit murder. In vitro fertilization, too, is federally banned, because the amendment outlaws the transfer of embryos from laboratory to uterus. (The embryos can’t give their consent to be moved.)
She was just quietly teaching history when it happened. Woke up one morning to a president-elect she hadn’t voted for. This man thought women who miscarried should pay for funerals for the fetal tissue and thought a lab technician who accidentally dropped an embryo during in vitro transfer was guilty of manslaughter. She had heard there was glee on the lawns of her father’s Orlando retirement village. Marching in the streets of Portland. In Newville: brackish calm.
Short of sex with some man she wouldn’t otherwise want to have sex with, Ovutran and lube-glopped vaginal wands and Dr. Kalbfleisch’s golden fingers is the only biological route left. Intrauterine insemination. At her age, not much better than a turkey baster.
She was placed on the adoption wait-list three years ago. In her parent profile she earnestly and meticulously described her job, her apartment, her favorite books, her parents, her brother (drug addiction omitted), and the fierce beauty of Newville. She uploaded a photograph that made her look friendly but responsible, fun loving but stable, easygoing but upper middle class. The coral-pink cardigan she bought to wear in this photo she later threw into the clothing donation bin outside the church.
She was warned, yes, at the outset: birth mothers tend to choose married straight couples, especially if the couple is white. But not all birth mothers choose this way. Anything could happen, she was told. The fact that she was willing to take an older child or a child who needed special care meant the odds were in her favor.
She assumed it would take a while but that it would, eventually, happen.
She thought a foster placement, at least, would come through; and if things went well, that could lead to adoption.
Then the new president moved into the White House.
The Personhood Amendment happened.
One of the ripples in its wake: Public Law 116‑72.
On January fifteenth—in less than three months—this law, also known as Every Child Needs Two, takes effect. Its mission: to restore dignity, strength, and prosperity to American families. Unmarried persons will be legally prohibited from adopting children. In addition to valid marriage licenses, all adoptions will require approval through a federally regulated agency, rendering private transactions criminal.
Woozy with Ovutran, inching up the steps of Central Coast Regional, the biographer recalls her high school career on the varsity track team. “Keep your legs, Stephens!” the coach would yell when her muscles were about to give out.
She informs the tenth-graders they must scrub their essay drafts clean of the phrase History tells us. “A stale rhetorical tic. Means nothing.”
“But it does,” says Mattie. “History is telling us not to repeat its mistakes.”
“We might reach that conclusion from studying the past, but history is a concept; it isn’t talking to us.”
Mattie’s cheeks—cold white, blue veined—go red. Not used to correction, she’s easily shamed.
Ash raises her hand. “What happened to your arm, miss?”
“What? Oh.” The biographer’s sleeve is pushed way up above the elbow. She yanks it down. “I gave blood.”
“It looks like you gave, like, gallons.” Ash rubs her piglet nose. “You should sue the blood bank for defamation.”
“Disfigurement,” says Mattie.
“You got straight disfigured, miss.”
By noon the cloudy throb behind her eyebrows has dialed itself back. In the teachers’ lounge she eats maize puffs and watches the French teacher fork pink thumbs out of a Good Ship Chinese takeout box.
“Certain kinds of shrimp produce light,” she tells him. “They’re like torches bobbing in the water.”
How can you raise a child alone when all you’re having for lunch is vending-machine maize puffs?
He grunts and chews. “Not these shrimp.”
Didier has no particular interest in French but can speak it, the tongue of his Montreal childhood, in his sleep. Like being a teacher of walking or sitting. For this predicament he blames his wife. During his first conversation with the biographer, years ago, over crackers and tube cheese in the lounge, he explained: “She says to me, ‘Aside from cooking you have no skills, but at least you can do this, can’t you?’—so ici. Je. Suis.” The biographer then imagined Susan Korsmo as a huge white crow, shading Didier’s life with her great wing.
“Shrimp are sky-high in cholesterol,” says Penny, the head English teacher, deseeding grapes at the table.
“This room is where my joy dies,” says Didier.
“Boo hoo. Ro, you need nourishment. Here’s a banana.”
“That’s Mr. Fivey’s,” says the biographer.
“How can anyone be sure?”
“He wrote his name on it.”
“Fivey will survive the loss of one fruit,” says Penny.
“Ooosh.” The biographer holds her temples.
“You okay?”
Thudding back down into the chair: “I just got up too fast.”
The PA system sizzles to life, coughs twice. “Attention students and teachers. Attention. This is an emergency announcement.”
“Please be a fire drill,” says Didier.
“Let us all keep Principal Fivey in our thoughts today. His wife has been admitted to the hospital in critical condition. Principal Fivey will be away from campus until further notice.”
“Should she be telling everyone this?” says the biographer.
“I repeat,” says the office manager, “Mrs. Fivey is in critical condition at Umpqua General.”
“Room number?” yells Didier at the wall-mounted speaker.
The principal’s wife always comes to Christmas assembly in skintight cocktail dresses. And every Christmas Didier says: “Mrs. Fivey’s gittin sixy.”
The biographer drives home to lie on the floor in her underwear.
Her father is calling again. It has been days—weeks?—since she answered.
“How’s Florida?”
“I am curious to know your plans for Christmas.”
“Months away, Dad.”
“But you’ll want to book the flight soon. Fares are going to explode. When does school let out?”
“I don’t know, the twenty-third?”
“That close to Christmas? Jesus.”
“I’ll let you know, okay?”
“Any plans for the weekend?”
“Susan