A Poetic Retelling of an Unfortunate Romance

Gabriella’s Point of View

Several hours passed before I was capable of doing anything other than gaping at the pregnancy test that I held in my hands in horror. I wanted to change the result on it, thinking that if I stared at it hard enough it would reveal that I was not pregnant but after fours hours of doing that it became painfully obvious that no error had been made by the test; that I was indeed pregnant.

The word itself had always scared me, making me think of the painful process that comes with giving birth to another human being but now that it was a statement that could be used to accurately describe my health, I was absolutely horrified.

But more than horrified, I was ashamed of myself.

Ashamed of what my parents would think of me if they found out that I – their youngest child – had gotten pregnant from the wild haired young man that they so ardently detested.

They would be absolutely livid.

Angrily yelling at me for not having been more careful about sex but the truth is that even when we were fucking baked we had somehow always managed to use a condom, we always remembered to slip one on, but apparently that hadn’t been enough and I was scared.

I was scared that this was some sort of punishment from the almighty for having sinned so frequently in my life but I always tried to make it up with other things, sure I had premarital sex but I volunteered with charities.

Shouldn’t that have evened out the score?

The silent contemplation that I had been engaged in ended when my mom knocked on the door, announcing that they had gotten back from her friends birthday party in Diamond Bar and that they’d brought me back a plate of food.

“I'm going to heat it up for you, alright?” she spoke from the other side of the door.

“Thanks mom, I’ll be right down!” I shouted, my voice remaining perfectly composed.

It took a few minutes to fix my appearance so that my parents wouldn’t suspect that something bad was going on because if they did, they would surely start bombarding me with questions to figure out what was going on; that wasn’t something that I wanted happening.

Once I felt comfortable with my appearance, I began the short walk downstairs to the kitchen where the plate of food was waiting to be devoured.

At the sight of me, my mother began talking about how lovely the party had been. Never before had I been so thankful for one of her long rants, she saved me from having to utter a single world.

While sitting at the kitchen table I watched my parents have an animated conversation like they do most every night, but for some reason the sight made my chest swelled with emotion.

The emotions that burned deep in my chest threatened to cause tears to spill from my eyes but I fought to keep them hidden, bursting into tears would not have been the best thing to do.

“Ella,” spoke my dad from his seat on the couch.

“Si papi (yeah dad)?” the fork in my hand was set down on the plate.

“When do you find out what schools you got into?”

College . . .

I had completely forgotten about college.

“Um, not until March,” I replied.

“March?” exclaimed my father. “That’s just around the corner! Where do you want to go? Does Brown still have your heart or is it Berkeley?”

“Brown,” it had been my dream school since I was five. “But who knows if I'm competitive enough to get in.”

“Of course you’re going to get in!” he always believed in me. “They’d be crazy not to accept you.”

“Thanks dad.” I stood from my seat at the table. “I'm gonna sleep in the tree house tonight, just in case you guys are wondering why I'm not in my room.”

“Alright, but make sure to take some blankets. We don’t want you getting sick like last time,” my mother took a sip of her tea. “And make sure to wear pants! It’s to cold for shorts; it’s nearly fifty degrees outside!”

In Southern California 50 degrees was considered freezing.

Shortly after gathering everything I would need for my night in the tree house. I wandered out back, lugging the massive bag that I carried on my back as I climbed the stairs to get to the top of the tree where my sanctuary awaited me.

The moment my feet touched the olive green carpet I dropped the bag on the ground, grabbing the twin sized mattress from the corner of the room and throwing it on the floor so I could set up camp.

Once my sleeping arrangements had been made, I walked towards the vintage wooden table on which an old record player rested, beside the table were massive crates filled with various vinyl records.

I searched through the stack of vinyls, searching for the perfect one that would ease the turmoil within and when my eyes landed on Simon and Garfunkel, I knew that they were the ones that would bring peace.

“Hello darkness, my old friend,
I've come to talk with you again,
Because a vision softly creeping,
Left its seeds while I was sleeping,
And the vision that was planted in my brain still remains
Within the sound of silence . . .”

The hauntingly beautiful lyrics captured my attention, taking them from the tiny being that was growing within my womb but the break in thinking about the pregnancy was short lived because soon . . . soon I was lying on the mattress with tears streaming down the side of my face, struggling to make sense of how I could be a future mother.

I was seventeen, a senior in high school.

I smoked copious amounts of marijuana on a daily basis.

I cursed like a sailor.

I had never worked a day in my life.

I was an irresponsible person.

I was emotionally unstable, economically dependent.

I was a borderline alcoholic.

Nothing about me screamed mother material.

Sure I was a caring individual with a sweet disposition and love for my fellow man but contrary to popular belief, love is not enough to raise a child.

They need love, attention but more importantly they need formula, diapers, clothes, medicine, regular visits to the doctor’s and all those thing require a lot of money.

There was no way in hell that I could afford that.

Theoretically speaking I could get a job, work full time, but even then I wouldn’t be able to afford raising a child in Los Angeles without financial help from my parents and when you’re having a child you shouldn’t factor in financial help that you’ll get from other people, you should be able to be responsible for them completely on your own.

And I wasn’t.

I wouldn’t be for at least thirteen more years.

My thoughts then went to James, about asking him for help in deciding what to do with the pregnancy. I even toyed with the idea of starting a little family with him in Venice, but that idea was quickly struck down as being not only stupid but unrealistic.

James may be four years older than me, but he’s more unfit to be a parent than I am. For crying out loud the man is a full blown drug addict who dropped out of high school and makes a living by dealing drugs on the streets.

But let’s suppose that none of that mattered; that I had the child.

There was still the question of my family.

My parents had left their native lands to give their children an opportunity to make something of themselves. They had put themselves in a life threatening situation just to get into America and once they were here, they worked tirelessly to make sure that we had everything we could ever want, everything we could ever need to succeed.

How could repay them by throwing everything they had given me away?

Because having a child would be just that.

Whatever dreams I had would be cast aside in order to provide for that being. I would no longer be able to live the life that I had always dreamt of living. There would be no going to school, no hanging out with friends, it would be a life that revolved around providing for my child and I had to decide if being a mother was something that I wanted before it was too late to turn back.

That night sleep refused to visit me.

Instead I was cursed to stay awake, staring out the window at the stars in hopes of finding a solution to the mess that I had gotten myself in, but the stars held no hidden message for me to decipher.

I was on my own.

Four days of intense soul searching later I decided that being a mother was not something that I could handle in my life. I couldn’t deal with the responsibility of looking after another person when I could barely take care of myself and I couldn’t have the child and then give them up for adoption because at the moment of birth I would get attached and my emotions would blind me from reason.

There was only one thing that I could.

I had to get an abortion.

It was the only way out.

Really, it was. I had tried to convince myself that I could raise a child on my own and still lead the life I had always dreamt but that was unrealistic. That stuff only works out in Hollywood movies and this is the real world, for the first time in my life I had to be realistic; even if it killed me inside because deciding to have the abortion wasn’t easy.

Pro Life people always make it seem like a woman that gets an abortion is nothing more than an evil whore with no morals, but that’s not true, I was a good person, really I was, but I just couldn’t do handle being a parent.

I wished that things were different that I was in a position to have a child but that wasn’t the case for me, as much as I wanted to believe that I could make things work, I just, I knew that I couldn’t.

Once I made the decision, I went down to local Planned Parenthood Branch, not to have the abortion performed right away, but to have a medical professional examine what was going on inside.

Walking into the clinic was the hardest thing that I had ever done in my life. There were groups of people standing on the sidewalk in front of it, carrying signs with grotesque images spread across them as they screamed that abortion was murder.

Those people almost made me turn around.

I didn’t want to have to walk by them. I didn’t want them to scream those horrible things at me as they had to all those other women that had crossed their picket line but I couldn’t leave.

My desperation wouldn’t allow me to.

“Come on Gabriella, you have to do this,” I grabbed the rosary that was hidden by my shirt and kissed it softly, praying that God would give me the strength to do what I had to but more importantly that he would forgive me.

With one last kiss I began the walk to the clinic, keeping my eyes firmly fixed on the massive building in front of me, trying my best to ignore the heckles coming from the angry crowd but I couldn’t ignore them.

Halfway through the crowd I burst into tears, sobbing violently as a group of men shouted that I was nothing more than a murderer.

They had no right to call me those things.

They would never know how hard it is to make the decision.

They would never know . . .

Slowly the crowd surrounded me, screaming out hateful statements as they took turns throwing things at me. I desperately wanted to find a way out of there, but it seemed like the world was caving in on me and it wasn’t until a man shouted for them to disperse that I was able to breathe properly.

“Come on Miss, I’ll escort you to the clinic,” spoke the Officer, holding out his hand for me to take.

“T-t-thank you,” I stuttered, clutching his arm for dear life.

This wasn’t supposed to happen.

I was supposed to go into the building, be examined and then leave and return another day to have the procedure done. I hadn’t planned on being emotionally abused and physically assaulted by strangers.

“Did those bastards harass her?!” yelled a woman with a soft voice.

“Yes, they were throwing things at her when I intervened,” answered the Officer to which I clung.

“Miss,” spoke the woman trying to get my attention. “You’re safe now.”

“T-t-those people are animals.” I sobbed. “They don’t know . . . they don’t know what’s happening . . . b-but they stand there judging like they know but they don’t know a thing about me.”

The woman placed a comforting hand on my shoulder. “They don’t know you and you shouldn’t feel bad about what they said because none of it is true.”

I turned to look at the woman that was comforting me.

In all honesty I was expecting to see a young woman in her late twenties standing before me but instead she appeared to be in her late 50’s and the warm, compassionate expression that was spread across her face made me sob even harder.

“Don’t cry Miss,” she whispered, taking me into her arms. “None of what they said is true.”

Ten minutes later the woman managed to calm me down. Apparently consoling people was an everyday occurrence at the clinic, considering the people outside, it made sense.

In silence I filled out the necessary paperwork, answering every last question on the papers in order to ensure that they had an accurate idea of where I stood health wise.

“Juliet Richards,” spoke a woman from the doorway.

I stood up from my seat, clutching my black purse as I made my way towards the Doctor. I hadn’t had the courage to write down my real name so I gave them a false one in order to protect my identity in case the clinics records were somehow leaked.

“How are you feeling Miss Richards?” inquired Doctor Pritchard.

“I could be better,” I croaked.

“I'm terribly sorry about what happened with the demonstrators,” apologized Doctor Pritchard. “I’ve spent the last five years trying to get a court order that would keep them from being within a mile radius of the clinic but apparently their freedom of speech and assembly is protected even though they’ve beaten more than one patient over the years.”

“That’s awful . . .”

“It is,” she grimaced. “I’ll never understand why it is that they find themselves obligated to come harass women that are going through emotional hardships. I understand that they hate abortion, but the solution is to simply not get one and to leave other women to be in charge of their own reproductive health but they don’t understand that.”

“Very true.”

“I'm going to need you to slip on this gown and we’ll go from there. Sounds good?”

“Yeah,” I answered, grabbing the hospital gown from her hands.

I quickly changed into the gown, sitting on the hospital table afterwards to wait for Doctor Pritchard to return to the room so that we could begin the examination that would tell me just how long I had been pregnant.

After the examination ended, I was escorted to the main room where I sat for roughly an hour, waiting for Doctor Pritchard to call me into her office so that we could discuss what was going on.

“Juliet the examinations have shown that you are roughly nine weeks pregnant.”

“First trimester,” a wave of relief washed over me, an abortion during the first trimester was medically safer than during the later trimesters.

“On the paperwork you filled out you specified that you were interested in having an in clinic abortion performed but before that can be done you have to undergo counseling in order to make sure that an abortion is really the right decision for you.”

“I just had a bunch of angry Christian Extremists abuse me, I think I'm pretty set on having the procedure,” I responded.

“That may be so but the counseling is mandatory for all women considering the procedure and once counseling is completed we can set up a date for the procedure to take place on.”

We devoted the following half hour discussing how the procedures worked. Knowing the manner in which the procedures worked filled me with a sense of relief but the feeling was short lived when I was informed of how much it would cost.

“$850,” stated Doctor Pritchard.

“That’s a lot of money,” I was stunned by the price.

“I know that it is quite an investment but an in clinic abortion is arguably one of the safest methods and is effective in almost every woman that undergoes it.” Doctor Pritchard took in a deep breath. “Your safety is worth that.”

I nodded in agreement. “It is but I already spent all the money I had on the consultation fee.”

“We can work out an installment plan for you, we do it all the time but please don’t try to do this on your own, an at home abortion can be fatal.”

“I’ll call to set up the counseling.”

That was a lie.

I wasn’t going to come back, there was no way that I could afford the abortion at the price it was being offered. I tried to think of ways to come up with the money for it but there was no one I could ask for that kind of money.

But I wasn’t about to give up on the abortion altogether.

That night I jumped on my laptop and researched various methods that would end the pregnancy. One stood out to me the most; abortion via coat hanger.

Was it dangerous?

Yes.

Yes, it was, but desperation leads a person to do questionable things.

Two days later when my family left to Phoenix for my Uncle’s wedding, I found the opportunity to carry out my plan. Convincing my parents to let me stay home hadn’t been the easiest of tasks but I had managed it and that was what mattered.

I moved through the house like a ghost, standing in front of the sink in the bathroom with scalding hot water pouring from the faucet, drenching the coat hanger – that had just been dipped in rubbing alcohol for ten minutes – to wash away the germs.

Tears cascaded down my face as I turned off the faucets.

I was terrified of what I was about to do but I had to do it; I couldn’t be a parent and I was willing to risk my life to end the pregnancy.

People can call me a coward if they like, a murderer, but only I know what I was going through and unless they’d been in the same situation then they had no right to judge me; no right.

“I'm sorry,” I whispered softly while patting my womb. “I wish things were different. I wish that I was worthy of being your momma but I . . . I can’t be your mom. I can’t even take care of myself and I hope that you forgive me for doing this but its better that you go to heaven with the angels than suffer on earth with me.”

One last caress was given to my womb before I propped leg on the toilet so that I would have easier access to my vaginal entrance. With shaking hands I began moving the coat hanger towards my body, stopping when it was right at the vaginal entrance, it just needed a slight shove and it would be in; it would all be over.

But I couldn’t do it.

As much as I wanted to I just couldn’t bring myself to shove the coat hanger inside of me so that it could travel through my vagina and cervix until reaching the uterus. I angrily threw the coat hanger against the wall, collapsing on top of the floor as violent sobs shook my frame.

I was furious.

I was furious for having gotten myself into this situation.

I was furious that I couldn’t tell anyone about what was going on.

But most of all I was furious at James because he was an unreliable man that only cared about getting high, had he been more reliable I could’ve reached out for him in my time of need, but no, he was nothing more than a beach bum.

The more I thought of James the angrier that I grew but then suddenly an idea dawned on me.

James’ Point of View

Drugs were my downfall.

They had brought me nothing but destruction and unhappiness in my life. I desperately wanted to get clean to make things better but after Ella left, I lost the will to rehabilitate myself.

After she left, life lost its meaning.

That sounds like something a little bitch would say but it’s the truth.

Ella was my everything, that which gave life meaning and after she left, scratch that, after I pushed her out of my life with my addictions, I found myself spiraling into a deeper hole of addictions, one that I feared I would never get out of; at least not alive.

Loud knocking coming from the doorway snapped me out of my marijuana induced hazed late that Friday evening. I lazily made my way towards the door, expecting to find my father on the other side of it, screaming at me for being such a fuck up but when the door opened it didn’t reveal my father, it revealed Ella who looked as beautiful as ever but even in my altered state of mind I could see the torment and anguish in her chocolate brown eyes; something was wrong with her.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Nothing,” her right brow twitched, she was lying.

“There’s something wrong Snow White. I know it.”

“We’re not together,” she forced a smile onto her face, “That’s what’s wrong.”

That wasn’t what was wrong, I knew it, but my desire to have her as my own was greater than my desire to know what was wrong with her; all that mattered to me was that she was in my bedroom.

There would be time for questions later.

Without warning, Ella collided her lips against mine, catching me off guard but I quickly recovered and hungrily moved my lips against hers, wanting to savor her intoxicating flavor.

“I want to try it,” she mumbled against my lips.

“Try what?” I was genuinely confused.

“The heroin,” Ella stared deep into my eyes.

“Gabriella, no,” I stated, I was not about to let her get mixed in with hard drugs.

“Don’t tell me no, I want to try it.”

“I'm not gonna let you! That shit is fucked!”

“If you don’t let me try it then I’ll just walk out and you’ll never see me again,” hissed Ella.

“Please don’t leave.”

“Then let me have some.”

Have some she did.

We spent the following two weeks in an intoxicated existence; drinking anything we could get our hands on as well as smoking, snorting, and shooting up all the drugs that my money could buy.

There was a part of me that was telling that what was going on was wrong but I silenced that part because in my mind the savage fucking sessions that Ella and I embarked on for hours at a time were worth whatever risk the drugs held but that mentality ended when I awoke to find Ella sprawled across the floor with blood staining her pants.

At first I thought that it was period blood but my heart told me that it was something else; something more serious.

“Gabriella!” I frantically yelled.

Ella came to a little after I began shaking her, confusion spreading across her face when she saw how worked up I was.

“Where the fucks blood from?” she asked when she saw it staining my fingertips.

Ella looked down to see where I was pointing at, her eyes widened in horror when she saw the blood that stained her pants. She attempted to stand up but was knocked back onto the ground by an invisible force.

“What’s wrong Ella?!” I needed to know.

“Take me to the bathroom, take me to the bathroom,” she cried.

“NO! We need to take you to the hospital! You’re bleeding too much.”

“NOOO!” she grabbed hold of my arm. “Don’t take me to the hospital, take me to Planned Parenthood.”

“Why?” I feared what her response would be.

“Because I think I'm having a miscarriage,” she whispered so softly that I barely heard her words.

At miscarriage I froze, she was pregnant. There was a baby inside of her, my baby, and it was dying. I opened my mouth to ask questions but no noise came out, I was lost in a state of confusion but Ella’s pained howls brought me back to reality.

Very quickly I grabbed my backpack that housed all my earnings and scooped Ella into my arms, carrying her bloodied frame out the door so that I could throw her in the back of the van and drive off to the clinic.

There was a large group of people that tried blocking the entranceway to the clinic when we arrived but I simply revved the engine and the fear of being run over made them jump out of the way.

“I NEED HELP!” I screamed as I carried a hysterical Ella in my arms.

Doctors rushed out, undoubtedly to check what all the noise was about but when they saw the condition that Ella was in they began shouting orders, a large man attempting to pry her from my arms.

“James, please don’t leave me alone,” she whimpered.

“I’ll never leave you alone, I promise.” I tried to hold onto her.

“Miss Richards you need to tell this young man to let you go so that we can take care of you,” spoke a Doctor, I was confused as to why she had referred to Ella as Miss Richards but I figured that Ella had probably visited the clinic before and had used an alias.

“NO! I don’t want him to let me go, I need him. JAMES, don’t let me go.”

“Sir she needs to be taken care of, let her go,” advised the Doctor.

“Baby they’re going to take care of you and I promise that I'm going to be waiting right here for you.” I let the man take her from my arms and place her on the stretcher.

The sound of her hysterical screams filled my ears, breaking my heart in half.

“Please promise me that she’s going to be alright, she’s all I have,” I didn’t care if the doctor saw me cry. “I have money; I have lots of money so please take care of her.”

“We’ll do our best but you need to sit down to wait.”

There was no sitting down for me.

I paced back and forth in the lobby, the sound of Ella’s screams penetrating my ears.