In All the Things

In All the Things

By Charlotte Sloan

(Micro Essay)

          My brother told me that I should’ve come to him first. My friend said our youth pastor said I’d end up with a teenage pregnancy. My cousin said he didn’t want to talk to me anymore. He thought I lied about his brother. 

          My dad said he’d take me to the hospital. He said he wanted to make sure I wasn’t pregnant. “Tell me what he did,” he said. “Tell me if he did what he said he did.” 

          “He didn’t,” I said. I played with the orange cap of the Gatorade he bought me on the way over. It was blue, my favorite. 

          “He didn’t what?”  

          I didn’t know what else he wanted me to say. “He didn’t.”

          “Use your words. Exactly. Tell me exactly what he didn’t do.” 

 

          On my college campus I like it when there is a breeze and I can hear the leaves rustling and the squirrels fighting in the trees. I like it when I am reading a book in a white lawn chair and I see someone I know. They offer me a snack that I sometimes accept. We make plans for coffee on Friday. I like it when I smell something sweet but I don’t know where it comes from. It’s in the bushes somewhere, somewhere that I can’t see. I like it when there is a cat nuzzling between my feet and I sit down for her to crawl in my lap even if I am late for my next class. 

 

          “He didn’t, Dad.” He asked me to tell him exactly, to say the exact words, to use the exact anatomy. My parents taught me that those were bad words. 

          “Or,” he began. He pointed to the hospital behind him. We were sitting at the wooden picnic table under the canopy at Pedigo Park, across from the emergency room. “We’ll go to the hospital and you’ll get a pregnancy test.”

          I knew that look, that scowl, that tone. He wasn’t kidding. He said he’d make me get an abortion if I was. I wasn’t sure I knew what that was, not really, but he knew. My mom knew, too. She once said she was against it. She said it was sinful, that it was murder. I understood sin and murder. I didn’t want to be either of those things. 

 

          I like when the sun makes my scalp warm and I run my fingers through freshly washed hair. I like when the wind tangles it. I like the natural shade that trees provide and the acorns that drop onto the pages of my open book, the small spiders that scare me when they crawl over my rolled sleeve, the green inchworm inching along my finger as I hold it up in front of me. 

 

          I told him. He didn’t. He really didn’t. At least not in the way he thought he did. Maybe that’s what I wanted him to believe so he would stop. I didn’t see my cousins much anymore. My father didn’t like him, because he believed me. I’m not sure if my father hurt my cousin. My cousin wasn’t much older than me, about four years, but my dad hurt my younger cousin and my brothers for less, so maybe he did. It was a confusing feeling. My father might not have been all that great sometimes, but he believed me. 

 

          I am grateful for the way my skin feels after a shower, the city lights at night, graffitied compliments, vines climbing walls, freshly warm sheets, my early morning reflection, a wave from someone I only somewhat know, the shapes of the clouds, the crickets chirping at night, rolled down windows on long car drives. I am grateful for the new day, the buzz of the bees, and the ground under my bare feet.