Wish Proof

By Lalanii Rochelle

Wish Proof is a wit-spit diary documenting a series of relationships through shocking discoveries and ill-sorted traumas. Told through lyric prose rooted in memoir and self-help, these stories provide insight and perspective, while illuminating misrepresented depictions of love. 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lalanii Rochelle
• Release date: Nov 29, 2019
• ISBN: 9780578614779

Lalanii Rochelle

Lalanii Rochelle is a writer and poet who lives in Los Angeles, CA. She holds an MFA and can be found on Instagram @lalanii.

Book preview

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1: Pregnorant

Wishful Thinking

Chapter 2: Fucked

Fear

Chapter 3: Hopeless

Jump

Chapter 4: The Process

Chapter 5: Money

Wings

Chapter 6: Shit

Resilience

Chapter 7: Pain

Time

Chapter 8: The Complete Mess Collection

Chapter 9: Dreamcatcher

Chapter 10: Wish Proof

Acknowledgments

CHAPTER 1

Pregnorant

I

sat in the waiting room of the abortion clinic. Daddy sat next to me, cool as prescription glasses with a tint. No words. Lines in his beige forehead gleamed with perspiration. Flushes of fear radiated through my blood. I had crippling constipation and occasional piss parties (porcelain and I were good friends). I had to pee ten times in two hours. It was the middle of May, and I was fifteen. 1999. I had never ridden a train, gone to an aquarium, taken a trip without my mom and dad, been to an art museum, or gone to a movie by myself, and yet I was pregnant.

White walls held my attention, the way an ellipsis waits in the wrong place. I gripped the cold metal chair as if it would give me air. Forgiveness wasn’t growling in my stomach, but maybe I’d call him collect again later. Nurse Whoever smiled pityingly.

A pale woman in a white coat and old carpet–brown hair called my last name. Grant.

I looked up.

Few people in the waiting room glanced; everyone knew not to stare. This was a secret society of silence and compliance. I walked through the door slowly. I walked through the second door more slowly. Left my father in the waiting room, and my heart began to panic, adrenaline pumping like a kitchen fire as it spreads to the bedroom, and your entire life is in that bedroom, but in this case, my entire life was in my abdomen. Left my father in the waiting room the way he would soon leave me, begging for forgiveness. Left my father in the waiting room with the white, white walls the color of shock and the smell of needles and problems. Left my father in the waiting room, waiting for what I’d done to be undone. Left my father in the waiting room because after all, all of the fathers wait in the waiting room. Eyes wet, but I blinked, emotionless.

When I was a child, I would always pretend I had wings. Except they weren’t really wings—they were only pillowcases tied to my back to break my fall whenever I felt like jumping from the top bunk to the bottom bunk, and then down to my flowered-daisy twin bed covered in throw pillows. No idea that the pillowcases tied to my shoulder blades wouldn’t help me float. This was the way I felt now, like pillowcases had taken the place of my wings. Like I would never fly despite my attempts. Like an invisible burden was trembling between my heart and thighs.

I followed behind the nurse, trailing after her socks. Argyle. I loved argyle. The pattern had dabs of pink and brown, and it was all a blur as she airily whispered to me as she showed me to the room in the far back. I seemed to be the only patient, although this office had swallowed—my count—four others, and none of them had come out. We got to the room, and I climbed on top of the table, which was too high to reach without using the stool.

Would you like to hear the heartbeat? She breathed the words in a faint murmur.

I stared with no response as if I didn’t even know what a heartbeat was. I was scheduled for an abortion today; why ever would I want to hear the heartbeat? I wasn’t ready for that question, and I wasn’t sure she was supposed to ask it. Maybe she was religious, or maybe she saw something in my eyes jumping around the room. I nodded, although I wasn’t sure.

I hesitated as I watched my feet sway childlike against the side of the table. The walls seemed to glow white now, so white—you’d think the nurses would have had enough empathy to turn them down. I leaned toward the back of the table. The nurse eased my neck in her hands until I reached the pillow. My chest swelled, and for the millionth time in the last week, I stared at my stomach as if a gargoyle were going to pop out of it right that second.

She covered my jeans with a thin white sheet, a standard procedure among nurses with kind paper smiles and stinky powdered gloves. My breathing sped up, and the wetness under my armpits began to pulse. She tucked my Betty Boop shirt under my breasts, and I helped her hold it up with my hands. I thought she was going to bend over and grab at the ultrasound machine, but instead, she reached over to guide my arms down to both sides.

My fingertips began to ache, eyes involuntarily blinked; my blood was seething beneath my skin. Her motions quickened as she grabbed for a cold gel, and I jumped slightly at the touch of it on my abdomen. Seconds later, a device similar to a high-tech flashlight was sliding around my lower abdomen, pressing inward ever so slightly. It was an ultrasound wand. I looked over at the monitor, at the swirl of mass moving, at the slosh of blah on the screen, at the cluster of what looked to me more like a peek into a tiny version of fuzzy outer space. I stared at the screen as I listened to the fast, faint thrumming, the catastrophic image burning into its own little outer space, strong and growing stronger like fierceness, a tiny hammer beating. Music.

I would never remember anything more than that hesitation, the way I could feel my veins; it was as if they were screaming in a mute moment. Like drowning with my eyes wide open. Death in slow motion. I was thinking about how I’d give my life for this baby, this growing mess of outer worldliness. I was thinking about how not having control over this made me want to cry and run. How I wished I was in a video game or that I could sleep through this.

It was terror. And then I felt it, like an anxious solitude: Mothers did not do what was best for themselves. Mothers did what was best for their babies. I had the feeling of being a mother.

Tears churned in my eyes, and for those few seconds I was outside of my body, envisioning my child. My doll. My. Mine. I was scheduled to be awake for the abortion the entire time, and this, I assumed, would take place in another room. I was supposed to walk out me again; I was supposed to wake up different tomorrow. I would wake up tomorrow without a baby. My baby. My. Mine.

I’d been reading about pregnancy and abortion. I understood the consequences: the bleeding, cramping, and clotting. The process of the suction, the fact of the abortion being twenty-nine times more powerful than a household vacuum cleaner. I knew I was approximately eight to ten weeks pregnant and that right now, my baby had eyelashes and could squint and turn somersaults inside of me. My baby probably had webbed fingers and feet like I’d seen in the pictures I’d seen supporting pro-life, the propaganda advertising bloody burnt-veined corpses online, children that were forced-born, and in overly bold print LEFT COUNTER SIDE FOR DEATH.

The tiny hammer beating was now more like little men in Timberland boots kicking me in the heart—not because I felt abortion was wrong but because I didn’t know what choice was right. I felt out of body, out of mind, and out of touch: insanity only the insane might understand. How insane for that person to be me. I should never have had sex anyway. I’d waited so long to have sex with him because I wanted it to be special. I’d waited exactly one year. I’d waited until he said he was in love with me. I shook my head in my hands.

I sat back on the table and fiddled with the corner of a parenting magazine that sat on the stand nearby. I pictured myself pushing the rocking stroller in the advertisement. The nurse turned away.

When I first found out that I was pregnant, I’d gone to my family doctor because I was stopped up. My constipation had gotten so unbearable that my father had to take me for a checkup. I told the doctor my symptoms and peed in a cup, and he’d sent me home with stool softeners.

When I was a little girl, I’d always had problems with constipation. Ma would tease me, Ya full of shit, girl! I squeezed my temples and eyes tightly. I wished she were saying that now and that I was only constipated. Everything used to be better before Mama and Daddy split up. I would have never expected this. I couldn’t have wildly imagined then that I’d be here, staring at the white buttons on the nurse’s coat as she prepared to give me an abortion. I felt hot tears drowning out my eyes. Far off in the distance, I heard delicate voices in the hallway begin to get closer.

My stomach purred in knots, and an intense churning took over my body. The skin around the nurse’s eyes pinched, she blinked too quickly, and when she breathed in, it was like she was forcing herself. It was like she was begging me with her eyes to have my baby. I squeezed the brown cushion of the table and as she looked at me again, my body shook hard. She might let me go if I changed my mind. What if I had this abortion and could never have children again? Dad had already formed his opinion about me—telling him it wouldn’t happen again or explaining it was the first time isn’t going to matter. Adrenaline was rocking inside me—what if they held me down? What is it going to feel like when I wish I’d had my baby? When my little girl would have been three? When my son would have graduated from fifth grade? The voices increased, and I heard a woman say, Is she ready? Fear broke every threshold of every feeling, and I tore away the sheet and felt the discomfort of my shirt falling over my moist stomach and took to running. I ran to the door, door open, hallway, hallway long, emergency exit, emergency exit, lobby, lobby long, big, lost, somebody help me, street—where?

There.

I ran full speed toward the street. Didn’t hear anyone follow and didn’t hear anyone call my name at all. I ran toward the bus stop. As I ran, I thought, Well, Ma, I’m definitely not full of shit this time.

Direction didn’t come easy to me. I looked around, panic-ridden. I knew I could catch a bus, and I’d always wanted to. I wished Mama and Daddy would have let me ride the bus alone like some of the other teenagers. It occurred to me just then that I’d never been on a bus before because Daddy used to say it wasn’t safe. I didn’t know exactly where I was, but I would rather have been lost than in that clinic. Bamboo grass surrounded the courtyard. Cars zizzed by. All I wanted was my mommy. I would run to her and tell her that I was in love and I was having a baby and I was afraid of everything and everything would not be ok, but it would be whatever it would be. Something about knowing a little person was growing inside of me made me want her, need her, understand the hopelessness and fanatical helplessness motherhood must bring. The fear of feeling the undeniable urge to want to love and protect a tiny doll and know all at once I needed to still be loved and protected myself. To know I had forty-six dollars in an account somewhere and I’d never bought diapers before made me feel hopeless. But someone was going to understand why I wanted to have my baby, and why as impossible and unfortunate as that sounded in the tenth grade, there was still a reason to have my child. I just didn’t know what that reason was.

I got on the first bus that slowed at a stop in front of me, a bus that could’ve been going anywhere. A bus that seemed to come from a whirlwind of places I’d never been. All I knew was that it was going somewhere, and I needed somewhere to go. I knew I was at least thirty to forty minutes from home, and I was in Los Angeles, but where exactly was beyond me. I wanted to reach the intersection of Rodeo and La Cienega, near Culver City. I was born and raised in Culver City, but Mama moved out with my sister into a condominium that sat on that corner nearby. I wasn’t paying attention on the ride there because Dad hadn’t said much to me, and I knew he was either