Little Billionth

by Kristopher Jansma

Deeper and deeper, we drove into the burning heart of Ridgedale. It was a hundred degrees outside. Steam flowed off the hoods of the cars going the other direction. Louise and Catrina were almost hanging out of the back windows to catch the breeze. Beads of sweat rolled down, stinging my razor-burned cheeks, before landing on the Corolla’s passenger seat beneath me. Cash steered down highways and passed out-of-business strip malls, their doors dark, the neon signs unlit, the empty stores floating like deserted islands in asphalt seas. 

Louise said there was this ShopRite parking lot that got so hot one time that the blacktop melted into a toxic soup trapping the tires of all the cars. The white paint bled all through the pavement. A little boy got stuck so bad that his mother had to unlace his Keds and leave them in the tar. She said she saw them there, hand to God.

Cash said asphalt would have to be heated to over 113 degrees Fahrenheit before it melted, and that the record high temperature in Buffalo was 99 degrees on August 27th, 1948, but Catrina told him to be quiet. We all wanted it to be true.

When we finally got to the clinic, Cash parked as far away from the entrance as possible, near what might have been a dead seagull, and the four of us trudged across the parking lot in the blazing August heat. I thought the asphalt felt sticky, but it could have been the soles of my sneakers. What’s the melting point of rubber? I looked down and imagined the surface liquefying beneath us, draining out into the highway, all the painted lines seeping away and leaving us in the dirt where we belonged.

Cash and Louise had only just gotten back together when the morning sickness started, so we knew this wasn’t his doing. He’d have been well within his rights to lay on a thousand I-told-you-so’s, but he hadn’t. Hadn’t been anything but good to Louise about it. Even Catrina said so, and she was usually happy to be on his case about whatever was available. The other night she and I had kissed for the first time, but today she was barely looking at me. Aimlessly, almost arbitrarily, the month of August had thrown us together after four long years in which high school had kept us in separate corners. Two weeks ago I’d barely spoken to any of them before. Now we were here getting an abortion together. Sort of.

At first, it seemed like we’d lucked out. I’d been imagining people out front of the clinic waving signs, like we’d seen on the news. At school the priests talked about it all the time. Having sex was a sin, but having a baby was a miracle, and so having an abortion was like sinning on top of sin. I knew they were just trying to scare us, like when the police came before the Christmas dance and made everyone look at crime scene photos of drunk driving accidents. I wasn’t scared when Father Warner told us all about the sit-ins in St. Louis and how these mothers and their unborn babies needed to be saved from the fire of Hell. I didn’t believe in that stuff. 

But why, with every step across the pavement, did I feel more and more uneasy? I wouldn’t feel anything about Louise getting an ingrown toenail removed, or having a mole taken off her arm. Wasn’t that all this was? I realized I was squeezing Catrina’s hand. Catrina, who did believe in Hell. Who did believe this was more than an ingrown toenail. Last year she’d gone down to Washington to march with her mother and sisters and grandmother and their whole church group in support of a constitutional amendment to ban abortion. 

But she was here, holding Louise’s hand, and mine. Only Cash was walking by himself, his hands pushing up under a roll of his sweaty black T-shirt, lifting the cotton so the stale air could get to his sweat-shiny stomach.

Because he was ahead, Cash saw them first, but soon we all saw them, coming out of their cars. Grown-up cars: Pontiacs and Chevrolet station wagons. They’d just been waiting in there with their air conditioners running full blast. No sense in suffering too much for their cause. 

Six of them, reaching into their passenger seats for their homemade signs as Louise dropped Catrina’s hand and flipped them all the bird—both birds—but said nothing. And maybe it was the Army surplus jacket she had on, but in that moment, I saw her as a General. A pink-haired, pierce-nosed General. Firing the first shot against the enemy troops. Our invasion would not be stopped. Our forces would not be beaten back. We would see them in Hell.

Louise did not break her stare, straight ahead at the door. She was determined, sweating through a pair of Cash’s heavy black jeans and a grey button-down shirt.

No way, he’d said, that morning when she’d gotten dressed at his house, meaning, no way was he taking her to get an abortion in her plaid St. Francis jumper and a pair of ripped fishnets.

Once I saw their signs, I wished Louise had kept on her own clothes. Because fuck them.

Stop Abortion Now, over a little red stop sign.

I Choose Life, with a cartoon fetus curled happily on a flowing American flag.

Jesus Heals and Forgives.

A Child is Not a Choice.

God is Pro-Life. I am Pro-Life. My Baby is Pro-Life.

And the sixth: a big black piece of poster board with white writing. I Regret My Abortion.

No zealot like a convert. To us then, she was a traitor. Bénédicte Arnold.

As we approached, I stared into this supposedly repentant woman’s eyes, searching for anything resembling regret, or love, or sympathy, but they had only the same hate as the others.

Louise began to slow down a little, and for a moment I thought she’d turn and run back to the car. Cash seemed to see this too, or else he had some other reason entirely for the diversion he abruptly created next.

I’m pregnant! Cash yelled suddenly.

I turned to see that he had pulled his shirt up all the way now and was rubbing his hands through his dark, sweaty belly hair. He pushed out his gut, made it swell, as he waddled directly at them, scrunching his face up and then wailing:

Oh God! Somebody help me! Please! This isn’t supposed to be happening!

This succeeded in horrifying three of the older protesters and clearing a path between Cash and the door. Louise saw the opening and pushed ahead. I wanted to laugh but a large guy with a Marlboro Man mustache started to yell something at Catrina. I tugged at her arm as she looked down at the pavement, still advancing but covering her face like she was walking into court to defend herself.

Just as Louise got to the door, another lady thrust a pamphlet at her chest, as if she might, in the next half a second, read it and spontaneously come around.

Cash reached around and pushed the door open for her. Catrina and I followed close after, ducking under his outstretched arm. The moment we were in, before Cash had even released the door, the signs came down behind us, the yelling stopped, and the protesters rushed back to their idling vehicles. 

From inside the clinic, a woman at the reception desk waved—I thought at me, at first. But no, she was waving through the closing door to the Marlboro Man. He waved back, like some colleague in an office hallway. And I felt, for a moment, as if we’d all just walked on to the set of a play. Everyone around us was just acting their part and we happened to be in the middle of it.

There was minor trouble as Cash set off the metal detector at the front. A guard made him remove his jacket, shoes, and belt. The whole time he kept trying to explain how it was just these bullet fragments the field doctors in Khe Sanh couldn’t ever get out of him. The lady didn’t buy this, as Cash would have been five then, but she gave up when Cash lifted his shirt and showed her a thick, glassy scar along his side. Later, he’d admit that the scar was from an appendectomy. He actually didn’t know why he set off metal detectors. It had been happening his whole life. He’d suggest, not unseriously, that it might be an alien implant.

Yes, hello, Cash mumbled when we reached the front desk. We’ve got a . . . whatsit, reservation?

I couldn’t tell if he had meant to say appointment, or if this was just his sense of humor. Abortion for four please. Non-smoking? A booth by the window, if you could?

As Cash hovered next to Louise at the front desk, Catrina and I moved toward some cheap plastic chairs that were lined up along the far wall. The woman behind the counter kept glaring at me, and at Cash. The Eiffel Tower was painted on each of her long nails. She probably thought one of us was the father. This isn’t my fault, I wanted to say. And aren’t you supposed to be on our side anyway?

Soon Louise came back with the paperwork. She masticated a stick of Trident as she wrote her name so forcefully that the ballpoint carved rivers into the paper.

Catrina swung her feet from the chair, scuffing her sneakers on the linoleum, then anxiously wiping the smudges away again, as if worried about leaving evidence behind. She refused to look up—and at first, I thought she was somehow mad at me for all of this. But as I watched her twisting at the bottom of her shirt, I realized that it wasn’t blame, but shame she was hiding. Because she thought that what was about to happen meant she was going to be damned. That she was, in that very moment, being entered on some Naughty List in God’s day planner. She believed this, and yet here she was. For Louise. And for that, I loved her more than I knew what to do with.

As Louise filled out the forms I tried not to stare at her stomach. Somewhere under blue denim and black cotton underwear. Under a few centimeters of skin and muscle and blood. In a little hollow somewhere. Was there really a little billionth of a person?

I didn’t believe what Catrina believed, that it constituted—that it counted as—that it was actually a life. But if not for what was about to happen, it would most likely become a life at some point. So maybe it was a pre-life. Even if at St. Gabriel’s they said it had a heartbeat. And tiny webbed hands. And a tongue. Why did it need a tongue, in there, already? I wished I could tell it that a tongue seemed unnecessary. I wished I could tell it that this was all for the best.

Let me tell you about the world, Little Billionth. Nobody wants you and everything sucks. You can’t be afforded, and your father is some old, sad dude who runs a record store and who fled the jurisdiction when he heard you existed. And can I tell you something in confidence, Little Billionth? Existence is for suckers anyway. The ice caps are melting, so in a hundred years, seven or eight million people in New York City are going to be living underwater. Plus, there are quite a lot of people on the other side of this ball of rock who want to kill you for all kinds of things that happened before you were even conceived. They’ve got like eight thousand missiles pointed right at you, and me, and all of us, right now. And, oh, by the way, like fifty years ago some geniuses figured out how to crack open the tiniest known particles so that now each of those missiles could kill millions of people all at the same time. Which, let’s face it, isn’t great. Being here isn’t great. You’re not missing out, is what I’m saying. You’d be just one more in 6.8 billion people with seventy-five years to live if you were lucky, on just one of one hundred billion planets in the galaxy, one of at least ten trillion planets in the universe. And that’s just this universe. There are an infinite number of others. The point is, you don’t matter. You wouldn’t matter either way, get it? Neither do I. Neither does Cash. None of this matters. Trust me, you’re better off skipping existence entirely.

The only noises were the shuffling of magazines and the rumble of an ineffectual air conditioner. The ladies behind the desk wandered into the back. Other patients came in, went back, came out, left. Louise pretended to be asleep. Her arms were crossed. Tight. Cash located a Popular Science buried under all the Good Housekeepings and Mademoiselles. I flipped through a Newsweek from a week so long ago that I’d already forgotten all its news. Someone shot the Pope, back in May. He ended up being fine. Someone shot President Reagan, two months before that, because he wanted to impress the actress from Taxi Driver. You see, Little Billionth, you see? And before that, John Lennon! And of course, out of those three, he was the only one not to pull through. You could get another Pope, another President. But there’ll never be another John Lennon. What a joke. Little Billionth, I’m telling you, this place is all a lot of shit. 

Next to me, Catrina stared straight through a page in A Farewell to Arms. Summer reading. I’d forgotten, but school would start up again in a week. She had been on page 137 for some time. Her fingers twirled her hair around and around. Her mouth moved, like she was reading silently to herself.

Was she talking to the Little Billionth too?

No. She had bigger things to talk to. She was praying, of course. Asking for forgiveness. For guidance, probably. Was that so different from what I was doing? Her pink lips pursed and parted. I wished I could kiss her. I wished I could do other things too. Shifting uncomfortably in the plastic scooped seat, I crossed and re-crossed my legs, willing myself not to get turned on in the middle of an abortion clinic. But the wrongness of this only made my heart thump faster against its cage of bone.

I wanted. Wanted to feel her pulse speeding against my fingertips again. To feel the skin on the small of her back again. To confirm and reaffirm everything that was wonderful and good about this universe, this planet, this town—right there on the scuffed linoleum. To fuck the nukes and the Pope and the President and the rising sea levels and A Farewell to Arms and Good Housekeeping. To think of anything but the burning wasteland of August. Think of anything but the Little Billionth. 

Mary? Mary? Mary Louise? They called for her.

I wondered if I’d ever known her full name. If she’d preemptively dropped the “Mary” to avoid just these kinds of ironies. Mary had to be a tough one. Bad if you were a prude and bad if you weren’t. The woman with Eiffel Tower nails gave a little wave in her direction. Catrina walked up with Louise and we listened as the nurse explained that the procedure would take around an hour. Louise would receive some painkillers and a prescription to fill later for more. These were for her use only, she said. Not to be shared with friends.

Cash looked at me and said, I feel like maybe she doesn’t like us.

Then Louise went into the back. No wave, no hug. It was understood that we’d all be there when it was over.

Cash waited a minute, then got up to talk to the ladies at the front desk about the bill. Catrina tried to stop him. Louise had her summer tips from the bakery all ready. She’d been very clear: this was not Cash’s problem. But Cash brought a wad of cash out of his own back pocket and began to settle up.

She’s going to be furious, Catrina warned him.

Cash shrugged, as if to say he’d deal. If they were going to work things out from here, they would start off with a clean slate. And if she was going to leave him again, he might as well do this anyway.

Catrina sat next to me and slowly slumped toward me. I lifted an arm up and laid it behind her neck. Her hair was dripping with sweat, but so was my arm. As far as bodily fluid exchanges went, this one was relatively harmless. Soon, her cool tears seeped into the cotton shoulder of my shirt.

Maybe coming with Louise to the abortion was a sin. Maybe it was the right thing to do. Catrina thought there was a God and I didn’t. Maybe she was right and we’d all go to Hell. Or maybe she was right, but He would get it. I knew I shouldn’t be in love with a girl who believed I was going to Hell. But I also knew I didn’t really know anything. Maybe it would work out, somehow. Maybe what we had was stronger than I thought.

My maybes melted with the minutes and soon Catrina stopped sniffling. She picked up her book. She read a little, then a little more.

I stared at the ceiling. Two weeks ago I’d barely known any of these people. Now I couldn’t even remember what I’d done without them. I wanted it all to go on like it had been. For August to never end. But it would end—and already on some level I knew that this would all end too. That we’d leave this place together and then begin to drift apart. This thing we’d done together out of love would, tomorrow, be too hard to talk about. Already I felt bad about the absence of the Little Billionth that I didn’t even believe in. Already Catrina couldn’t look me in the eye. Already Cash was squaring his shoulders away from us. And the way Louise had left, without saying anything—you just can’t hold things together in this life. Not for long, anyway. 

At some point I figured that it had to all be over. That this was it. Life was just going on, a billionth more or less, but it was done. And the time passed easier after that.

Finally, after a dozen magazines and four bathroom breaks, Catrina was called back to help Louise into the waiting room. Once she was gone, Cash and I both straightened up. Wrinkles from his T-shirt were swollen onto his cheek. 

Catrina emerged with Louise, stumbling slowly through space together, like they were in a three-legged race. Louise looked all right, considering. She looked good. Happy, even, though maybe that was the painkillers. Her cheeks were flushed, but not in embarrassment. They were flushed like the way they had been when we’d first gone down to the town fair together. Like she was already on all the rides, already playing all the games. Like there was now, again, a vast array of amusements there in front of her, lit up with ten thousand bulbs.

Either she didn’t care about the bill, or she didn’t remember, or she’d known all along Cash would pay it as soon as she left. That’s the kind of thing you know about someone when you grew up together. When you’ve dated since middle school. 

Outside it was sunset and the air was cool and the sky was the sort of burning purple that it almost never really is. The protesters had all left. Gone home to watch Dallas or whatever grown-ups with no souls watched. Our Corolla was the only car left in the parking lot.

We crossed the empty spaces, stepping over the forking white lines, like the bones of some enormous, discarded fish. Louise’s face was a little pale, and I could really see her freckles in that light. It would take me many years to understand the look on her face in that moment. Not happiness, not relief. Not either one exactly, but not neither one, exactly.

She was eighteen years old and her whole life she’d always had nothing. Just Cash, and he was nothing too. She’d always done whatever she was supposed to do. Sure, her hair was dyed pink and her nose was pierced, but these were just outside things. Little promises she’d made, to stand up for herself, to choose, for real, when the time came. And now the time had come. And that was the look on her face. The look of having made good on those bets with her future self. Of having freed herself from something bigger than all of us. Bigger than this town. Bigger than a whole life wasted in it. I was jealous. Because I didn’t know when my chance would come, the pivotal moment when a choice opened a hundred doors at once. Watching a goofy grin float across Louise’s face, I think she knew, the same way I did, that this was all over. That this summer was over, and that we were also over—and she was glad of it. We walked across the asphalt together and it was firm beneath our feet.

Published May 23rd, 2021