By Kelly Russell
When my much younger sister, in her midtwenties now,
Tells me during our biweekly zoom sesh that
She wants to move to Texas,
A few months after Roe’s repeal,
I laugh out loud.
Literally.
Inside, my heart pounds and I see red.
I didn’t think it could get worse than it already was.
Maybe I was wrong.
Let me backtrack a little.
This isn’t our first rodeo with moving.
Originally from Boston, she is calling from Flori-Duh or DeSantis-Land as I
Unaffectionately call it
When she first let it slip that she was moving to Miami two years ago
My heart dropped
For different reasons then, of course.
She tells me that Austin is calling her name,
The city,
Not the boy she was seeing.
What calls her to another red state, I don’t know
My heart beats so fast in my chest, it rattles my soul.
Immediately I tell her, “You can’t move to Gilead,
You are just the right age for taking.”
My mind races,
thinking of dystopian books,
too-close-to-home TV shows,
and recent legal changes in the country we call home (Land of the Free, sort of).
In my worst nightmare come true,
I envision Greg Abbott and Ted Cruz’s photo,
On the wall in her ob-gyn’s office.
Marsha Blackburn may have been an architect, but she’ll get no credit.
In Gilead (Ozona, TX; Jasper, FL; Wilcox County, AL; Anywhere, MS)
Red cloaks line a long closet,
The only prescription available to her, no matter what ails her on arrival.
Accessing Mayday or the Auntie Network is not so easy.
She is white but she is not rich.
She has red hair but emerald won’t be the color of her clothing in Gilead.
There will be no crossing of state lines for birth control or family planning.
Shhhhhhhhhh
In Texas you can’t even mention abortion or preventing pregnancy. It can be a
$10,000 mistake.
I only say some of these things out loud.
I am too horrified by the possibilities.
She can see it on my face.
Nervously she laughs a little, too.
“Oh shit,” she says. “I never thought of that.”
“No shit,” I say. “That’s what you have me for.”
I wonder then if I should tell her,
Once upon a time our mother was a freedom fighter
Let me go back even further . . .
In my forties now, I was nineteen when she was born.
Our age gap means she had a different version of our mother than I did.
In my lifetime, our mother was a freedom fighter.
I don’t usually talk about our mother, for good reason.
That’s another story, but for this,
I’ll make an exception.
I’ve been about that Roe life for a long time,
Pretty much my whole life
Long before I even knew what Roe v. Wade was.
See, our Mama was a Rolling Stone
Just kidding!!
Our mother was a nurse in a women’s health clinic.
Now I know what you’re all thinking . . .
Abortion clinic and you’d be right (sort of).
There was so much more to it,
They did so much more than that, but Saturday was Abortion Day.
Saturday was the worst day.
A baptism of sorts . . .
I’ve been dipped in blood and body parts since I was six years old.
I went to work with our mother on Saturdays.
We could always see the protestors from a distance as we arrived,
Sometimes close to one hundred people from both sides
With their posters and megaphones.
My hand in hers, we’d run a gauntlet of opposing views:
One side full of obscene photos, broken baby dolls covered in red paint, and
venomous assumptions and insults.
The other side, full of crusaders, loudly and proudly defending a woman’s right to
choose and our right to be there.
Funny, in retrospect, they all always assumed my mother to be the patient
And never a facilitator of freedom.
Once inside I would settle in an office with my backpack of treasures while our
Mother ran the recovery room.
She cared for and comforted countless women in that large quiet room filled with
Beds and reclining seats.
Fast forward a little.
I am fifteen and at home in 1994.
Our mother is at work at the clinic when a deranged man walks into a Planned
Parenthood two miles away from her clinic and starts shooting.
He goes on to a second location and starts shooting again.
It is breaking news.
When he is done, two people are dead. Five wounded.
Blood and broken glass on the pavement
The phone at my mother’s clinic rings and rings.
My heart stops until I hear her voice.
It was not her clinic.
Now I’ll be honest, I didn’t realize she was a freedom fighter then,
but I know it now.
My sister doesn’t know this at all.
So, when my much younger sister, in her midtwenties now,
tells me she wants to move to Texas
in our biweeklyish zoom sesh, I laugh out loud.
Inside, my heart pounds and I see red.
My brain aglow with the flashing of alarm lights,
Set ablaze by the screaming of sirens.
I didn’t think it could get worse than it already was.
Maybe I was wrong.
Memories of another time overwhelm me.
“Got a little more time?” I ask
I grab the supplies to smoke again and seeing me, she does the same.
With the flick of a lighter, the blunt is lit, tip glowing . . .
Red.
I inhale, gather my thoughts, exhale.
And in the voice of my favorite rapper I say,
“Listen up, I got a story to tell . . .”
Then I begin.
