"Patsy," I say.
She clenches her jaw, takes a breath and sighs it out. The intent eighteen- year old anthro student is gone, replaced by a worried, tired mom. The lines in her face deepen and her eyes go dead. "The circumcision."
"Yes. Katie, you have to stop her!"
"I can’t." She looks away from me, staring fiercely at her beads as if she will find some answer there.
"You can’t?" I am outraged.
She is weary. Her voice trembles. "Legally, her body is her own. Once a child is over fourteen, a parent cannot interfere in-"
"I don’t give a damn about legal-" I try to break in, but she continues doggedly.
"-any decision the child makes about her sexuality. Birth control, abortions, adopting-out of children, gender reassignment, confidential medical treatment for venereal disease, plastic surgery-it’s all covered in that Freedom of Choice act." She gives me a woeful smile that threatens to become a grimace. "I supported that legislation. I never thought it would be construed like this."
"Are you sure it covers things like this?" I ask faintly.
"Too sure. Patsy has forced me to be sure. Shall I forward all the web links to you? She has, in her typical thorough way, researched this completely . . . at least in every way that supports her viewpoint." She shrugs helplessly. "I gave her a set of links to websites that oppose it. I don’t know if she looked at them at all. I can’t force her."
I realize I have my hand clenched over my mouth. I pull it away. "You seem so calm," I observe in disbelief.
For an instant, her eyes swim with tears. "I’m not. I’m just all screamed out. I’m exhausted, and she has stopped listening to me. What can I do?"
"Stop her. Any way you can."
"Like you stopped Mike from dropping out of school?"
Even after all the years, I feel a pang of pain. I shake my head. "I did everything I could. I’d drop your brother off at the front door, I’d watch him go into the school, and he’d go right out the back door. Battling him was not doing anything for our relationship. I had to let him make that mistake. I stopped yelling at him in an effort to keep the relationship intact. At least, it saved that much. He dropped out of school, but he didn’t move out or stop being my son. We could still talk."
"Exactly," Katie says. She stares past me at her screen but I have broken the spell. She can no longer forget her daughter’s decision in wonder at some ancient beadmaker’s work. "I was quite calm last night. I told her that all I asked was that she always remember the decision was hers and that I completely opposed it. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Fine.’ At least this way, she’ll come back here after the damned ceremony instead of overnighting in a circumcision hut with just the other girls. If she gets an infection or doesn’t stop bleeding, at least I’ll know about it and can rush her to the hospital."
"Can you legally still do that?" I ask with bitterness that mocks, not her, but the society we live in.
"I think so." She stops speaking and swallows. "Pray, Mom," she begs me after a moment. "Pray that when the other girls scream, she loses her courage and runs away. That’s my last hope."
"It’s a slim one, then. Our Patsy never lacked for guts. Brains, maybe, but not guts." We smile at one another, pride battling with despair. "Once she’s said she’ll do a thing, she won’t back down no matter how scared she is. She’ll let that woman cut her up and sew her tight rather than be seen as a coward by her friends."
"It’s the baby I feel sorry for," Katie says suddenly.
"Baby?" All the hair on my body stands up in sudden horror.
"Mary’s baby. She decided to have her baby done, the midwife is doing the baby first."
I didn’t even know Mary had a baby. She is only a year older than Patsy. "But she can’t! She has no right to make a decision like that, to scar her daughter for the rest of her life!"
Again the bitter smile makes Katie a sour old woman I don’t know. "It’s the flip side of the Freedom of Choice act. The compromise Congress made to get it passed. Under the age of fourteen, a parent can make any choice for the child. Mary is Bartolema’s mother. It’s her decision."
"It’s barbaric! It’s abusive!"
"You had Mike circumcised when he was two days old."
That jolts me. I try to justify it. "It was a different time. Almost all boys were circumcised then. Your dad and I didn’t even think about it, it was just what you did. If the baby was a boy, you had him circumcised. They told us it made it easier to keep the baby clean, that it helped prevent cancer of the penis, that it would make him like all the other boys in the locker room."
"They did it without anesthetic."
I am silent. I am no longer sure if we are talking about Mary’s baby girl, or my own tiny son, all those years ago. I remember tending to the fresh cut on his penis, dabbing on petroleum jelly to keep his diaper from sticking to it. I am suddenly ashamed of myself. I had not hesitated, had not questioned it, all those years ago. I had charged ahead and done what others told me was wise, done what everyone else was doing.
Just like Patsy.
The silence has stretched long, and said more than words. "She invited me to be there," I say quietly. "Do you think I should go? Is that like giving my approval?"
"Go," Katie pleads quickly. "If it all goes wrong, you can rush her to a hospital. She won’t tell me where it is, and I won’t ask you to betray that confidence. But be there for her, Mom. Please."
"Okay," I say quietly. I’ve said it. I’ll go watch her daughter and my grand-daughter be maimed.
Katie has started to cry.
"I love you, baby. You’re a good mom," I tell her. She shakes her head wildly, tears and hair flying, and breaks the connection.
For a time I stare at my rainforest. Then I get up. There is a backpack in the hall closet. I take it to the bathroom and begin to put things in it. Clean towels. Bandaging. I shudder as I put in the alcohol. I try to think what else. There is a spray antiseptic with a "non-sting, pain relieving ingredient." Feeble. What else should I take, what else? I stare into the medicine cabinet but find no help there.
I draw a breath and look in the mirror. Katie’s face is an echo of mine, made perfect. Patsy, I see you in my green eyes and almost cleft chin. They are mine, the woman and the girl, the daughter of my body and my daughter’s daughter. Born so soft and pink and perfect. I make my arms a cradle and wish they were both still mine to hold and protect. Protect. It is what a mother does, and no matter how old one gets, one never stops being a mother.
I grope behind the stacked towels on the shelf and take it down. Shining silver, it slips from the holster, releasing the smell of Hoppes Oil. There is a horsie on the handle. Fred always loved Colts. There is a dusty box of ammunition, too. I break it open, and begin to fill the empty cylinders, one by one. The bullets slide in like promises to keep.
I am suddenly calm. Don’t be afraid, baby. Not my baby, not Mary’s baby, no one’s baby need fear. Granma is coming. No one’s going to cut you.
I think for a moment of what a mess I’m going to make of my life. I think of the echoes that will spread out from one bullet, and I wonder how Patsy and her friends will deal with it, and what it will do to Katie. This is my freedom of choice, I tell myself fiercely. My turn to choose. Then I know I am too close to any of it to understand. Maybe we should just leave the midwife’s body where it falls. In situ. Perhaps in a hundred years or two, someone else will know what to make of it all.