Do you remember the first time you saw a production of Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 play, “A Raisin in the Sun”? The multi-generational, African American Younger family is led by Lena, the widowed woman they call “Mama.” Each one of them — Lena’s daughter, her son and daughter-in-law and their son — look to Lena for guidance and strength. So when it becomes clear to Lena that her daughter-in-law, Ruth, is planning to abort her unborn child, she calls on Walter, her son and the baby’s father, to act. She tells him, “I’m waiting to see you stand up and look like your daddy and say we done give up one baby to poverty and that we ain’t going to give up nary another.”
Walter doesn’t speak, and instead, runs from the apartment.
I’m Walter, all the way, ready to leave the room when I’ve been asked to stand, too often unable or unwilling to stand up and do the right thing, to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. I want to be like Lena, which is how I found myself, early in the morning late last summer, standing and praying silently at the corner where cars turn on to the road leading to our local Planned Parenthood facility. The one-story building is tucked behind a large, multi-story office building. The entrance is probably one-half mile or so from the corner where protestors are allowed by law to stand and pray, to celebrate Mass and to hold signs in support of the unborn. There are no encounters between the people on the sidewalk and the people driving into the Planned Parenthood parking lot. We never speak to one another. We are never face to face.
So I was a little alarmed when a young woman, about the age of my youngest daughter, crossed the street, walking towards us. It was clear from her expression that she was as uncomfortable with whatever might result from the encounter as I. She said, “I work in that building over there.” She gestured to the tall office building just to the east of Planned Parenthood and continued, “Every time I come to work or leave you’re here and I just hate it. I’m a Christian, too, but I wish you people would go away.”
I said, “I’d like to leave, too. And when we can do better by women and their unborn children, we will.”
I hadn’t planned to say anything to anyone beyond the polite hellos to others gathered to pray. I don’t know what this young woman expected to hear. Shouting? Condemnation? Concern expressed only for the child and never for the woman? Whatever passed between us, it did not end the conversation. We began to talk.
She looked as if she might cry. She said, her voice trembling, “When I was sixteen, my stepfather raped me and I had an abortion.”
And there it was, all that she had suffered and carried, all that she continues to suffer and carry. And there it was, another child given up to that other kind of poverty, the poverty of violence and brutality.
I said, “I am so sorry, so sorry that he did that to you. I am so sorry you had to bear all those losses.” I meant what I said, do mean it, and I include the lost child as part of the “terrible thing,” as part of all the losses. I don’t know what the young woman heard, or how she understands the losses. Perhaps she would say her abortion was, and is, a relief.
This is what she said to me.
She sighed, “Sometimes I take my little girl with me to work. She can already read, so sees your signs and she asks me, ‘What is abortion?’ I don’t know what to tell her. I don’t want her to even know about it. She’s only seven. I told her this was something for us to talk about when’s older, but she went home and looked it up on the computer. She typed in ‘abortion.’”
I said, “Sounds like a smart little girl.”
Her face softened and something in the air lightened as she said, “She is; she’s great. I’m really blessed to have her.”
I said, “Well, I think you’re right. I don’t think a seven year-old child should have to live with all the details of abortion, or lots of other things we ask children to learn about. I think it’s good to try and protect her.”
She asked, “What do you think I should say?”
I said, “I would tell her that sometimes mothers have very hard decisions to make and that she should pray for them and for their children. And I think that’s all she needs to know now, that there are people in trouble who need our prayers. Someday they’ll need her help, you know, her material help, and she’ll be ready to give it.”
Cars sped by us on the busy street. Behind us, cars pulled into the grocery store parking lot. Customers drove through the bank branch drive-through. Some people hollered at us, their derisive calls broken up by the noise of the cars around them. Others honked and gave us a thumb up. For all passersby knew, this woman in the business suit was one of us. They had no idea who she was, or who I was.
It was hot and the air smelled of exhaust. Our hair tangled in the currents generated by the traffic. Our eyes stung from the grit stirred up and blown from the roadway. My back hurt from standing on the concrete walk. I can’t imagine all the hurt she was feeling.
We stood in silence for what seemed like a long time, but was probably only seconds. She needed to get back to work. She brushed hair away from her eyes and tears from her cheeks. “Can I give you a hug?” she asked.
I hugged her hard, thinking how much she felt like a daughter in my arms. “Thank you for talking to me,” she said.
“Thank you for talking to me,“ I said.
She smiled, “I still wish you people would go away.”
I smiled back, “I’ll be glad when we can go away.”
There was no resolution of all that separates us. And yet, to the passersby speeding along Centennial Avenue, she looked like one of us. And if anyone had pulled over to ask, I would have said, “She is one of us.”
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