Vox

I shrug. By six, Sonia should have an army of ten thousand lexemes, individual troops that assemble and come to attention and obey the orders her small, still-plastic brain issues. Should have, if the three R’s weren’t now reduced to one: simple arithmetic. After all, one day my daughter will be expected to shop and to run a household, to be a devoted and dutiful wife. You need math for that, but not spelling. Not literature. Not a voice.

“Test tomorrow in AP Religious Studies.”

When did sophomores start taking AP classes? And why isn’t he doing something useful, like biology or history? I ask him about both.

“The religious studies course is new. They offered it to everyone, even the frosh babies. I think they’re phasing it into the regular curriculum next year. Anyway,” he says from the kitchen, “that means no time for bio or history this year.”

“So what is it? Comparative theology? I guess I can tolerate that—even in a public school.”

[...] “Nah. More like, I don’t know, philosophy of Christianity.”

Mommy, please don’t let it get me don’t let it get me don’t—

Sam and Leo start crying. For the smallest of moments, I register a single thought: lousy mother. My boys are in distress, and I’m moving past them, uncaring and oblivious. I’ll worry about this damage later, if I’m in the condition to worry about anything.

Two steps into Sonia’s small room, I vault onto her bed, one hand searching for her mouth, clamping onto it. My free hand gropes under her sheets for the hard metal of the wrist counter.

“You think I should garden and cook more? You think the work I do is less important than—I don’t know—crafts?”

“Not you, Mom. Other women. The ones who just wanna get out of the house and have some kind of identity.” He picked up the book and kissed me goodnight. “Anyway, it’s just a stupid class.”

“I wish you’d drop it,” I said.

“No way, José. I need the AP credits for college.”

“Why? So you can major in modern Christian thought?”

“No. So I can get into college.”

And that was how they did it. Sneaking in a course here, a club there. Anything to lure kids with promises of increasing their competitiveness.

Such a simple thing, really.

“I had no idea,” she said.

“No idea about what?”

“These numbers.” She pointed to one of the charts, now being televised with a prepared voice-over of Baby Blue’s voice. She had moved on from rape and was reciting statistics on antidepressant usage. “Jeez. One in six? That’s awful.”

No one in the studio audience was paying attention to Jackie’s claims of skewed statistics, of the correlation-causation fallacy, of the fact that of course no one was taking selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors in 1960, because they didn’t exist.

That was how it started. Three women with a stack of pie charts and people like Olivia.

[...] I’m thinking I did a crackerjack job on the behavioral part, conditioning Sonia with bribes of cookies and marshmallows to keep her words unspoken. Someone should take away my mothering license.

I keep reminding myself it isn’t my fault. I didn’t vote for Myers.

I didn’t vote at all, actually.

And here’s Jackie’s voice again, telling me what an acquiescent shit I am.

“I haven’t talked about [marriage] with Julia,” he drawls. I’ve talked about it with Evan.”

My blood is beginning to boil. “Does Julia get a say?”

There’s no response from my son, only a bewildered look, as if I’ve suddenly begun speaking in tongues. We stare at each other across the table like strangers until Patrick interrupts.

“Let it go, Jean. No sense in fighting about it. He’s too young, anyway.” Then he looks over at Steven. “Way too young.”

“Wrong again, Dad. A guy from the Department of Health and Welfare came to our school today. Major assembly. He talked about how next year they’re rolling out a new program. Get this: ten thousand bucks, full college tuition, and a guaranteed government job for anyone who’s married by eighteen. Boys, of course. And another ten thousand for each kid you have. Pretty sweet, huh?”

I drive the long way back home, stopping at a 7-Eleven to pick up a pack of Camels. I could smoke it out of me, I think, poison the little palace, practice Teratology 101 in the privacy of my own home. Abortion the old-fashioned way.

An abortion is not an option.

It isn’t just Reverend Carl and his pack of Pure fanatics. They have to put limits on choice for other reasons, for pragmatic reasons. The way things are, the way women are, no one would want a girl. No sane parent would want to choose a wrist-counter color for a three-month-old. I wouldn’t.

In three days, I’ll know if I have to.

“See, he says, “this is why the old way didn’t work. There’s always something. Always some sick kid or a school play or menstrual camps or maternity leave. Always a problem.”

I open my mouth, but not to speak. It just falls open in disbelief.

Morgan hasn’t finished. He picks up a pen and jabs the air with it. “You need to get it in your head, Jean. You women aren’t dependable. The system doesn’t work the way it was. Take the fifties. Everything was fine. Everyone had a nice house and a car in the garage and food on the table. And things still ran smoothly! We didn’t need women in the workforce. You’ll see, once you get over all this anger. You’ll see it’s going to be better. Better for your kids.”

“Someone should shut that woman up,” Olivia says. “Permanently.”

Oh, Olivia, I think, what the hell did you expect?

When I first started experiments with lab animals, I had one golden rule: don’t name them. In other words, don’t think of them as pets; don’t think of them as anything other than a way to get from point A to point B. Think of them as test tubes or Petri dishes or microscope slides, nothing more than innate vehicles to fill and observe. While I hold each tiny mouse for Lorenzo to inject with a potion that will either cure it or kill it, all I can think of is the names I’ve given them:

Jackie. Lin. Jean.

I click open the Honda, climb in, and think about what I would pray for—a boy or a girl. Stay or leave. Watch Sonia taken away from me, or, in a marginally more pleasant scenario, watch while some uniformed male nurse, following orders, injects her with a concoction that will take all her words away, forever. I don’t think I could stand it either way.

I pray to a god I don’t believe in for a girl, so I don’t have to witness any of this. And I pray to that same god for a boy, so I never have to leave my Sonia.

“What the hell did you do that for?” he says.

I open my eyes and see the soldier, gun hand still trembling after what might have been his first kill, looking from me to Lorenzo to Morgan to the dead number 412 in the cage above me. Before he can answer, Morgan opens his mouth again.

“That’s just terrific. Just great. You idiot. I should put you in one of these cages, except you don’t have enough of a brain for me to work with. Do you know how much these animals cost?”

“Apparently more than I do, Morgan,” I say.

Patrick is number thirteen. The Judas Iscariot of the Oval Office. As I lie here in bed, numbed by the spin of the ceiling fan, these religious coincidences strike me as funny. Water, wine, thirteen men. Reverend Carl and his insanity.