Page 18 of Counting Backwards

Isobel nodded, her braids moving up and down against her shoulders.

“Has talking to her been helpful?” I asked.

“Well, I mean, yeah.” She shrugged again. “She lost part of her fallopian tube, and they didn’t know it had to be taken out until the surgery already started, so we had kind of a similar experience. A surgery with a surprise ending. I guess they just do things like that when you’re a prisoner.”

“Wait.” I sat up straighter. “She had the surgery while she was in custody? Did the same doctor do your procedure?”

Isobel nodded. “Dr. Choudry. All of us get taken over to that same clinic to see the gynecologist over there. Pinelands Women’s Health, it’s called.”

Two cases having such similar outcomes was a flag of the brightest red. If nothing else, the incidents clearly indicated that the facility was providing inadequate medical counseling.

“Do you think your friend would be willing to speak to me about her experience?” I asked.

Isobel looked away and began chewing on her thumbnail.

“Just a conversation,” I said. “Nothing more than she’s comfortable with.”

Isobel let out a long, slow breath.

“I mean, I can ask her,” she answered on a shrug.

“Great, okay.” I figured it was best to close the topic for the day and move on to questions about the specifics of her arrest, as I’d originally planned. Over the next hour, I collected pages of details about her detainment, including facts I thought might truly be helpful in obtaining the cancellation we sought.

After I packed up and headed out to the parking lot, where my car was now covered in a thin layer of snow, I finally let my mind run free. So many questions were nagging at me. Was my own struggle to get pregnant skewing my perception? I hoped so. It would be much better to discover that I was deeply self-involved than to confirm incarcerated women were being subjected to unnecessary, nonconsensual gynecological procedures. And by federal authorities at that. I groaned aloud as I tossed my tote bag to the passenger seat and settled in behind the wheel.

As I turned on the wipers to push the snow off my windshield, I thought again of what Gram had shared with me. Her family had given up so much to protect just one girl—and I resolved in that moment that I would find out what was really happening to the inmates at Hydeford and do whatever it took to help them. I pulled out of the parking spot, heading back toward Manhattan and my nephew’s preschool, my thoughts already racing toward my next steps.

8

Carrie

October 1923

When Mrs. Alice and Mr. John returned from Durham, Clarence spent two long summer days cozying up to them, following Mr. John around the farm, noting all the improvements he’d made while they were gone. There was the roof he’d thatched, he said, pointing, and there was the fencing he’d mended. Clarence took all his meals with his aunt and uncle in the dining room, acting as though he barely knew me. On the third morning though, as I served porridge and griddle cakes to the Dobbses, Clarence’s seat at the breakfast table stayed empty.

“Should I keep the oats warm for Mr. Clarence?” I asked as I ladled the food out for Mrs. Alice.

“No need,” she answered absently. She mixed blackstrap molasses into her morning tea, making it bitter the way she liked. “He’s gone on his way.”

The words were such a relief I nearly dropped the pot in my hands. I never did find out where he’d gone. Nobody thought to tell me, and I told myself that I didn’t much care, so long as he was far away from me. My only thought then wasgood riddance to bad rubbish, as Mr. John liked to say.

Not until weeks later, after the leaves had started changing color, did I realize my predicament. I was in the back hallway, searching in the closet for the tin of shoe polish we used on Mrs. Alice’s boots, when my eye caught the pile of clean sanitary towels folded behind the bath towels. The sight made me realize I’d not had my own monthly in quite some time. Too long. I startled as I suddenly understood why I had been feeling poorly in the mornings, sometimes the afternoon too, and why my appetite had soured. A tiny piece of Clarence had planted itself inside my womb.

I hoped with all my heart that Clarence’s seed wouldn’t stick. I’d lived on a farm long enough to know that not all pregnancies ended in babies. Sometimes an animal would start bleeding long before it was time, and there’d be nothing to show for the pregnancy except a mess on the barn floor. I knew I’d have to do whatever I could to dislodge that kernel before it grew any bigger inside me, weed the thing out like a dandelion from a vegetable bed. In the meantime, I couldn’t tell. Not anyone.

For those next few weeks, Mrs. Alice was happier with me than she’d ever been before, as I worked doubly and triply hard, lifting, carrying, sweating my way through the day, hoping something would shift that baby loose. Then at night, instead of drifting off after a hard day’s work, I’d lie awake on my cot wondering what would happen if Clarence found out. Would he want to marry me? I prayed with every ounce of my being that he would not. I didn’t realize then that there were worse things to fear than Clarence or how much was going to be ruined for me because of that one afternoon by the crick.

After another month went by, my breasts had grown bigger and my belly was starting to show the slightest bit of roundness. I let out the waists on my dresses, hoping Mrs. Alice wouldn’t notice. I knew, eventually, my secret would come out, and I hoped to figure out a plan by then.

It was Billy who said something to me first. Sunday afternoons, he and I liked to go walking across Free Bridge, up above the Rivanna River, one of the tributaries to the James. It was a mild autumn day, the weather less crisp than the few days before, and the sun was beating down on us strong. I was complaining about Mrs. Alice again, going on about how she soiled the good tablecloth with cranberry sauce for a third time. She expected me to rid the material of the deep red stain, yet again, without abrading the fabric none, but Billy interrupted me.

“You ready to talk about what’s really on your mind?” he asked, ignoring all I’d said about Mrs. Alice and her cranberry relish.

“Like what?” I asked.

He looked for a moment like he was calling up the nerve to speak, and then he just spit them words at me.

“About how you let Clarence Garland knock you up.”