was so irritated and she was driving so fast—well, at least trying to. We were telling her it was no problem because the track events weren’t usually on time and we’d get there for Bee’s first challenge, but Jinny didn’t let up. She was bug-eyed, not cursing but muttering about the other drivers—procits, and illegals, geezers and gramz—weaving in and out of lanes that were not moving anyway, and I was getting sicker and sicker. I wondered if that was her plan.
And then we pull up in front of the Pasadena Courthouse and we’re all like, wha…? And Jinny goes, “Surprise.”
That’s when I realized why the road trip to Pasadena had gotten her so excited. The courthouse in Pasadena is where they take women who’ve been caught in illegal clinics, since the other courthouses in the area couldn’t handle the traffic from the protesters. Pasadena handles all of the abortion-related crimes and built permanent barricades to keep back the Crusaders and hired a squad of goons to make sure there was relative peace.
The rest of us got quiet in the car, wondering exactly what we’d signed up for, but Jinny was on fire—flaming nervous energy and euphoria. After she parked, she got out and hefted this big green garbage bag out of the back of the Tahoe, going, “Come on. Come on. We don’t wanna miss them!”
We got out and followed her over to join the other fifty or so people already there singing old-timey Christian hymns. “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” “Nearer My God to Thee.” Ugh. No wonder Christian rock got so popular. No wonder Jagger Jonze rose so high so fast. It was a crowd of mostly white people. Mostly women, but a few men and children too. They all had signs but hadn’t hoisted them yet. I read the stack against the wall: Baby killer. Murderer. No Mommy No!
I said, “Um, Jinny…This is one hundred percent not okay. What are we doing here?”
Jinny couldn’t hear me over the roar of the crowd as a police van pulled up to the curb. She reached for the green garbage bag.
I’m like, “Jinny. I don’t want to be here. You should have asked us.”
That she heard. She turned on me slowly, making sure the other girls were watching. “Don’t tell me you believe in abortion, Miller,” she said.
“Get your religion off my body?” I replied.
Jinny turned back to the idling police van and began to shout, “No, Mommy! No!” Around us, the crowd took up the chant, including Zara, which really tore me.
I wasn’t down with any of it. Plus, No, Mommy! No! Seriously? That was a creepy fucking thing to yell at a woman who’d recently terminated her pregnancy, or who’d been caught in the waiting room of an underground clinic.
The first woman out of the back of the van wore a pair of mud-caked faux BushBoots, pleather disasters that made my heart ache for her before I even laid eyes on her face. Her coat was what we oh so sensitive girls called Nino Kmarti, a term we applied to all clothes that poor people wear. She had blue hair twisted up into a knot at her crown. Dirty face. She looked homeless. And broken. The next woman was older, almost Shelley’s age, and wellish-dressed in Ann Taylor and good shoes. What’s her story? Did she already have fifty kids and a demanding job and couldn’t deal? The next person out of the van wasn’t a woman. She looked to be our age. A girl. She was wearing jeans and a crop top and she had frizzy hair and freckles and she was sobbing, and all I could think was, That could be me. It could be me.
The woman in bad clothes didn’t look our way. None of them did, even when the protesters began to shout from behind the barricades, “Baby killer! Murderer!” An armed security guard took the elbow of the sobbing teenager after she stumbled on the long walkway toward the courthouse steps.
Jinny’s face was red. Veins popping at her temple. Zara shouted along with her, taking the sign someone shoved into her hands, “No Mommy NO!”
“Oh my God. You guys. This is not us.”
“Not you, maybe,” Jinny said.
“Can we please go now?”
Dee and Fee were just sort of there, not joining in with the protesters but not supporting my objections either. I wished Brooky were with us.
“YOU WILL PAY FOR WHAT YOU DID! NOT OKAY TO KILL YOUR KID!” Jinny sang when the rest took