Anthropology of an American Girl: A Novel - By Hilary Thayer Hamann Page 0,180

Hill maybe. I was born at Lenox Hill.

The streets between Fifth and Madison Avenues on the Upper East Side are like halls of windows reflecting infinitely onto themselves, canals of pink-gold boxes repeating across the narrow streets. I sat on the stoop of a brownstone near Mount Sinai waiting for nine to come so I could go and meet Dr. Mitchell. Maybe that’s not right. Maybe time does not come. Maybe you come to time, or through it. Or maybe you are a wheel and it is a wheel and periodically you line up.

July made sense. Hadn’t I felt unwell in August? I’d been nauseous all the time. And then in September there was this tenderness, an ache disentombed like being bruised all over. What I’d felt were messages, weaving and unweaving, a new thing: half me, half Rourke. I would have guessed such a mix would survive, but how could it when those who brought it into being could not find the purpose to carry on? How was a baby to be strong when everyone else was weak? As a child I’d wondered such things too, and often.

There are those who would claim that I’d done nothing wrong, that it had been an accident, that nothing was killed, but rather, something had ceased to live. But the same people who say things such as, It wasn’t a baby; it was a zygote, also say, It’s cruel to wear fur. Then again, those who advocate killing animals for sport or fashion are equally hypocritical to speak of the sanctity of life. Maybe a deer has feelings, maybe the origin of a child is in the protoplasm; frankly, it’s impossible to know. And yet, people keep trying to assign logic to sensation and consciousness in beings and entities other than themselves.

No one can say for certain that the grief of failed life does not enchase the walls of a woman. God knows you see so much sadness out there. There’s proof enough of peculiar transmissions if you choose to seek it. I’ve heard that cows release adrenaline into their flesh as they’re slaughtered, which in turn can alter you when you eat it, and organ transplant recipients can develop the dead donor’s habits.

I did not have to envision a dead infant to make myself sad; I had only to think of what had happened in fact to what in fact had been: a minuscule cluster of cells artlessly awaiting the assistance of its life system, its world and its home, seeking sustenance—whether hormonal, electrical, or food-like in nature—but receiving nothing—nothing consistent, nothing adequate. I had only to think of atrophy in me, and my heart broke again, and worse.

The very brevity of the thing’s existence was sacred to me—fine force and gossamer essence. In its economy there was a lesson I needed to learn having to do with windows of opportunity being fantastically small, with powers I had that were hidden. It had never occurred to me that I possessed such aptitude for damage. For several days I cried for Rourke and I cried for me and I cried most especially for the soul that had come and gone like a solitary flicker of the tiniest light. When I thought of the fluttering quills of an angel, consecrated and divine, flapping, flapping, slower and slower to sleep, I cried until the water in me dried; then I did not cry again. For years I did not cry.

“Date of last menstrual period?”

I did not know.

“Form of birth control?”

“The pill.”

The nurse was preparing a needle. She wore a plastic heart pin that leaned to one side. Like a heart blowing. “Did you eat today?”

“She’s not getting general,” another nurse said. “She’s getting Demerol.”

“You’re Dr. Mitchell’s patient?”

“Yes.”

“Dr. Mitchell’s nice.” The nurse drew blood, her head bent. Her hair was dense and coarse, like chocolate wisteria, twining like woody vines into a twist. Her skin was caramel with acne scars that were blackish by comparison. I asked her name. She said Lourdes.

“Are you Puerto Rican?”

“I am,” she answered as she snapped the rubber tourniquet off my arm. Her eyes drooped lazily. “Open your fist for me, baby.”

The syringe filled rib-red and she withdrew the needle, pressing cotton to the prick. I wondered if her life was nice. Maybe there were bridal showers and dowager aunts. A mother with hypertension and a cherished dog. “It’s a hard decision, honey,” she said. “I’ve had to make it myself.”

“I didn’t make the decision,” I confided. “The baby made