Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls

TEENAGER

I am sixteen years old and I cannot have Luke Gunter’s baby. I have seen my older cousin’s deflated football breasts. They have weird marks and lines that make them seem like optical illusions, like how pencils placed into glasses of water appear broken.

Vaginal elasticity is a secondary concern. I do not want to suffer the fate of many a cute sweater, suddenly stretched too large for proper wear. My vag must stay like the glove in the infamous OJ Simpson trial: too small to fit unless the wearer really, really wants it to.

I have a lot on my mind even before Kristi removes her left shoe.

You’re missing half a toe?

Kristi is a risk-taker. She explains that one night she and her former boyfriend (his real name is something like Brian but he goes by Goober instead, or “The Goob”) each made a pact to cut off a piece. Kristi, of course, went first. Goober has a small machete collection thanks to the Citrus Park Flea Market, and after icing down her pinky toe she hooked it over a wooden stool. The real pain apparently came in the hours that followed. The actual moment of separation was only a pinch, like the guns they use to pierce your ears in the mall.

Goober chickened out, but that isn’t why she dumped him. “He started working at the gag-gift store next to Cookie Time. It was just too weird to hang out there. Every time I’d go in Goober and his co-workers were playing with a giant glow-in-the-dark body condom, all stoned and giggling. He seemed so seventh grade all of a sudden.”

We are painting our nails. Kristi’s bedspread is a cow skin rug that she’s very protective of; she keeps making little “tsk” noises at me when my foot gets too close to the edge of the towel.

“I beat you,” she says. With only 9 toenails Kristi has an unfair advantage. “It’s sort of why I never wear flip-flops. I mean I care what people think but I don’t.”

This is true. When Kristi was fourteen she got pregnant (pre-Goober) and paid Laura Fitch’s older brother Steve forty dollars to drive her to Orlando for an abortion. Rumor has it that Steve went to an arcade while it was being done and was problematically late in picking her back up.

I started hanging out with Kristi a few months later, when she got an iguana, but recently our friendship has taken an intimate and critical turn since I, too, am with-fetus. “Think of it as fat and you’re going to get lypo,” she says.

I’m not going to just stop in at the first clinic I pass; that’s what Kristi did and they vacuumed her. Maybe she was farther along. I don’t know the specifics. I want to go to The Blooming Rose.

Procedures at The Blooming Rose are naturally a bit more costly than those at clinics whose walls are cement blocks bearing STD posters. There’s one such poster at our school where each STD has an illustrated, anthropomorphized version of what that STD might look like, were it a grumpy cartoon character, drawn next to it.

The Rose has Georgia O’Keefe paintings.

Though if I put it on my credit card, my parents might get involved. As in possible hymen reconstruction surgery followed by an armored truck driving me to Barnard College post-graduation.

Too bad I didn’t get knocked up by Chet or another student with an American Express. I’m feeling the realized danger of sleeping with scholarship recipients like Luke, even though he’s totally hot and athletic, and he did get $500 for being a semi-finalist when I sent his photo into the YM secondary school Campus Crawl contest. But that money is gone. He bought me a purse.

When I get home, I decide the best thing to do is borrow Grandma’s credit card. She moved in with us after Grandpa died, five months before her tracheotomy. She was a model in her twenties, but she smoked like crazy and no part of her is beautiful anymore. I only smoke cigarettes occasionally at parties because I don’t want to end up sounding like an old robot.

“Gammy, can I see your wallet a second? In Driver’s Ed today they were talking about the different kinds of licenses, and how if you can’t drive, they just give you an ID card. I was thinking that must be what you have. You know how you can’t drive because of all the pills you take? How you hit that boy and they said no more wheels?” She sits up and tries unsuccessfully to straighten her wig. “It was funny when you called the arresting officer a pauper in court.”

She reaches for her microphone wand. It used to bother me a lot, especially since before the operation her voice was so soft and pretty. But now when she talks I just think of it as a sample in a rap song and it isn’t as weird. Kristi and I once told Gammy to say the word “homie” and she did. It was hilarious.

“M-y w-a-l-l-e-t? S-h-o-o-t. M-y p-u-r-s-e i-s a-r-o-u-n-d h-e-r-e s-o-m-e-w-h-e-r-e. D-a-m-n a-l-l t-h-e-s-e K-l-e-e-n-e-x w-a-d-s. Y-o-u-r m-a-i-d t-h-i-n-k-s s-h-e-s t-o-o g-o-o-d t-o p-i-c-k t-h-e-m u-p. T-e-l-l y-o-u-r f-a-t-h-e-r t-h-a-t.”

When I see her purse, I find the card and write down its numbers. She’s doing something to her lap dog that seems like a tumor-search, carefully rubbing little spots on his stomach.

“Thanks, Gammy. That’s interesting. Your hair looks good in that picture.”

“C-a-n y-o-u c-h-a-n-g-e m-y s-o-c-k-s? T-h-e-y a-r-e w-e-t a-g-a-i-n.”

She always thinks her socks are wet. I go over and pretend I’m feeling them without actually touching her feet.

Tonight Luke and I are watching television and doing a position called “reverse jackhammer.” We saw it in a magazine.

“I can really feel the blood rushing to my head!” I say. In the mirror I watch Luke’s testicles bounce to and fro like a rubber cat toy. I want to reach out and bat at them playfully, except then I’d land on my skull.

When Luke’s finished he always sucks in a mass of air like he just got the world’s biggest paper cut. It sounds painful. The moment he relaxes, I push off his body and land back on all fours.

“That was excellent,” he says. “Since we got together, I don’t think I’ve been on the Internet.”

I nod, bringing his head to my chest like he’s a giant infant. He tells me all about the upcoming football game this Friday and his tactics as quarterback, who he thinks is ready and who isn’t. I completely drown out the actual meaning of his words and just listen to the sound, the depth of it, like his voice is one of those CDs of whale calls they sell in the nature store.

Later I change into a sundress and go with Luke to get vitamin supplements. He’s way too concerned about his body to drink or do drugs, but he doesn’t seem to care that I do. I’m a little paranoid about this. In my worst nightmares, Luke is disqualified from a critical game because he got a contact high from my vaginal secretions and failed a pee-test.

“You have got to tell him. You really have to.”

Kristi and I are watching a home video of her performing fellatio on Chet. She has this idea to make instructional tapes and sell them to the younger girls at school. We’re trying to write notes for the voice-over narration.

“Does he do something to his pubes or are they just like that?” I can’t decide whether or not Chet is attractive in the throws of pleasure. His upper lip peels back from the gum line in an equine fashion. It’s all very Mister Ed.

“Dunno. Maybe henna. What is so hard about telling him?”

“But I’m taking care of it.” Every thirty seconds or so in the video, Kristi looks back at the camera like she’s worried things aren’t being recorded properly.

“Hey, was this on a tripod? Who taped this?”

“Levi. Look, you just should tell him. Why go through all this alone? Plus it’s way weird if he finds out afterwards. Awkward.”

“Levi? Your brother Levi?”

“What. I gave him ten bucks.”

“Oh, gross.”

I watch Chet’s hands grip her head with a numb type of violence, like she’s electrocuting him but he can’t let go. Kristi has taped nearly every sexual deed from the past year and a half. Anything involving communal acts with myself or another girl has the base title of “Sister Act” followed by a roman numeral.

Kristi sighs. “Luke’s body is so athletic. I wish Chet looked like that.”

This comment makes my stomach feel bad, like I’ve eaten too much. “Luke’s my boyfriend,” I want to say.

Instead I excuse myself and go throw up. I guess it’s morning sickness.

When I meet with the on-site counselor at “The Blooming Rose,” I’m given a clipboard and a pencil with an acronym on its side: Abstinence Is Definitely Safe.

“AIDS,” I say out loud. Everyone in the waiting room looks up overtop their magazines at me.

I’m led to a tiny office where another woman enters and takes my questionnaire. She doesn’t tell me her name but it’s definitely something unisex. She is sow-ish and baggy. Her eyes shoot me a look that says, “I’d love to be your friend if I didn’t feel so sorry for you and you weren’t so irresponsible.”

“I’m here to tell you about all your choices,” she smiles.

I nod but really I’m picturing the post-delivery butt of my cousin. She had just one kid and now her whole backside looks like a Salvador Dali painting.

“Have you thought about having the baby and putting it up for adoption?”

I begin to take on a false, considerate persona but stop before I even begin. I’m going to have to break her heart sometime, and it might as well be sooner.

“Isn’t that like buying the cow and not even getting the milk?”

She starts writing furiously behind a manila folder. When she finally stops, she gives me a look of unfettered hate.

“Are you saying the baby is the cow? Or the baby is the milk.”

I lean forward a little in my chair. I want whatever is inside of me to hear my words and be crystal clear about the fact that it will not be staying long. I plan on throwing it a large goodbye party attended only by myself and lots of champagne.

“I don’t want this thing. There’s really no point in talking about it.”

She takes off her glasses and I realize that her eyes are two different colors. I can’t decide if it’s natural or if a contact fell out. If she were cooler it would make me think of David Bowie, but instead it just splits her personality further into Good Cop/Bad Cop. I focus on the eye I decide represents her more sympathetic half.

“Young lady, I’m going to tell you something and you can believe it or disbelieve it. But later on down the road, and it may be months or even years, you might really have a problem with the decision you made.”

“Okay?”

Obviously, there is a certain level of warmth or tragedy that she’s used to getting from these meetings, and she doesn’t feel like ours is complete enough to let me leave.

“I know that at your age, it’s hard to understand the concept of something being permanent. But later on you may feel…an emptiness.”

“Having a baby is just as permanent as not having a baby.”

“But it’s different,” she says. “You can’t see that?”

And then I start crying in order to please the sow. To get it over and be done with it. “I just need to do this,” I say. I keep repeating it until she comes over and hugs me, until her sandbag breasts are covered in my tears.

Kristi sent a balloon arrangement to my room in the clinic. One says, “You’re a Star!” and is actually shaped like a star. Another, “Congratulations.” My parents think we’re having a sleep over.

The doctors here are all male and seem to regard me as a liability, like at any moment I’m going to come on to them in a provocative underage way. They always leave a door open and call a female nurse before touching me.

I can actually feel The Mistake drizzling out. It’s time, I decide, to call Luke.

“Are you drunk, Babe?” he asks. “You sound kind of messed up.”

Even though I want to tell him, I panic. I cannot believe how hard I am chickening out. “I’m fine,” I say. “Just a little sleepy.” He begins telling me about football practice, and I put the phone down onto the pillow and listen. A documentary about America’s heartland is showing fields of sweeping wheat and grain on TV. When Luke says goodbye I make a very thoughtful noise on accident, the sound a homeless cat might make should a prospective adoptee decide against him.

“My guy wouldn’t come with me either. Said he wanted go to this car show.”

I look over at my roommate. She has brought along a series of framed photographs and placed them on her nightstand; several include her with babies.

“This is my oldest,” she says, smiling.

I try to change the subject. “Do they have that movie Training Day?” I ask. I’m tired of watching wheat.

The next morning when I check out, I have a weird surge of nostalgia for Luke. I almost can’t wait to see him. In the cab I call him and say that I need to stop by, then I imagine him holding me and the way his low whale-calls will resonate with the uneasiness in the bottom of my stomach. They will cancel each other out. They’ll dissolve everything sad.

“Sure thing Babe. Wanna watch the Packers? In the den?”

“I do,” I say. I mean it.

People are always working on their lawns in Luke’s neighborhood. I guess because they don’t have people that work on their lawns for them. When we pull up to his house his father is outside on a riding mower that’s making his surface flesh jiggle. They say you can tell what women will look like when they’re older because of their mothers, but I’ve never really heard that logic applied to men and dads. This is a good thing, I think.

I give Luke a huge hug and decide that when the time is right, I’ll know it. I wait until he is upright and celebrating a touchdown, then I give a little clap as well.

“Luke, you got me pregnant, but I took care of it for us.” I pause a little. “I know you don’t have a lot of money and stuff.”

His touchdown arms drop and his face contorts into a horrified teddy bear impersonation. “You mean you killed it?” he asks. His eyes have gone pained and watery.

I suddenly feel like a parent who’s telling a child a family pet died. “Come here,” I say, but he steps back.

“I’ve got to think,” he mumbles, which I know is bad.

Thinking is not a part of Luke Gunter, and not a part of feeling good. In fact it’s almost the opposite.

When I get home I take some of Grandmother’s Marinol. I’m feeling nauseous.

“Gammy,” I ask, reaching into her nightstand, “can I have some of those pills? The ones that make you eat ice cream? I think I got car sick.”

She’s asleep so I help myself. Her neck-hole is breathing and making a sputtery, flapping sound. I imagine a scenario where she’ll only awaken if the right man puts his finger into that hole and keeps it there, like a reverse King Arthur and Excalibur.

Gammy? I can’t hear you. Use the mic.

When Grandma first wakes up she often forgets she can’t talk. It’s sad. It looks like she’s trying to blow out thousands of candles on a birthday cake.

I t-h-i-n-k I s-m-e-l-l c-h-i-c-k-e-n. I-t w-o-k-e m-e up.

There’s no chicken, Gammy. She dozes back off violently, lots of elbows, as if she’s being escorted to sleep against her will.

I can’t help staring at her. She seems to be continually deflating from her neck hole, wrinkled and losing the battle for air. Her hole is like a withered pit that used to hold a large seed, but one day it fell out and she wilted.

It is so gross how we are born and so gross how we die.

Luke broke up with me in a text message. It said: I feel nothing 4 U.

After I scrapped our DNA craft project, he started dating Kristi. Apparently she is no longer using Chet as a human lollipop.

“Luke feels nothing ‘four’ me,” I said to sleeping Grandma.

Ironically, Kristi is the tallest flag on Piedmont Academy’s Mt. Abortion. She scaled it before the rest of her classmates had even started climbing. I think of how the number four could describe either me and the dead coffee-bean and Kristi and her dead who-knows-what (they vacuumed. It had to have been more like a quarter); or it could describe me and Luke and our dead coffee bean and Kristi. Or it could describe the number of Gammy’s sedatives I will have to take after receiving this distressing news.

But first, the message. Positive that they are involved in an act of fornication at this very moment, I call Kristi’s phone (knowing she will not answer) in order to get her machine (knowing they will hear it). My rage will be the soundtrack of this particular Kristi home pornography session.

I leave a mean tirade about how I know they’re naked and on camera, and she picks up in the middle of it,

“You stupid bi—”

but I snap my phone shut. My phone is a tightly shut clam and all the badness that happened inside is going to irritate itself into a pearl. It will just take a bit of time. My phone vibrates again and again, filling, no doubt, with venomous messages I will never listen to, but the thought of never hearing them somehow makes me sad. I get even sadder as I think of Luke and Kristi together, and me alone, and this oily kind of sweetness starts to crawl up my throat and then melt back down again over and over, like something I ate long ago but am just now tasting.