![]() I had only begun to see that they hadn’t, my whole life. I had only recently, within those past few months, for the first time, come near the idea that the words of a woman could matter. I didn’t know what I was doing, what I had done, what I would do. One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice - though the whole house began to tremble … I was teaching from an anthology called “Cries of the Spirit.” I pointed out a line in the preface in which the editor describes attending the lecture of a teacher she respected deeply, relating that “throughout his presentation, he quoted from his teachers, from books, from the founders of Western thought - everyone from Aristotle to Auden - and not once did he mention a woman’s name or recall the words of a woman.” In this way, it was my first encounter with the meaning of death. I remember realizing I had never been up against such a true moment of inevitability, of mandatory decision-making, before. I was wearing a delicate pink sweater, a long dark green silk skirt and pretty sandals. Now it is time for finals: losers will be shot. ![]() I felt a line sear its way through the middle of my body. In nightmares she suddenly recalls a class she signed up for but forgot to attend. ![]() At the break, after talking to the students about a poem by Marge Piercy. I had received my bachelor’s degree in English the week before but had stayed in town to guest-teach the literature unit of a monthlong course on women’s spirituality, led by one of my professors. I took the pregnancy test in a restroom in the Biblical Studies Building. I remember the moment I learned of the pregnancy so clearly - as if it has always been happening and will continue to be happening until the end of my life, as if it rang a heavy bell and the deafening note reverberates still. His father always pulled out, which works until it doesn’t. As long as I didn’t take the birth-control pill, I could believe I wouldn’t sin again. Our faith trapped us: We needed to believe we could be good more than we needed to protect ourselves. To acknowledge a pattern of repeatedly breaking, of in fact never failing to break, would have meant acknowledging our powerlessness, admitting we could never act righteously. To prepare to sin would be worse than to break in a moment of irresistible desire. For the same reasons, I couldn’t take birth-control pills or use any other form of contraception. When we had sex, we couldn’t use condoms, because having them around would have been admitting an intent to sin or an expectation of fallibility. I kept saying I didn’t want to be with him. We kept having sex, and we kept praying for the strength to stop having sex. My son’s father is kind, gentle, handsome, friendly, warm and funny. I was a little younger than the two of them but two years ahead in school, so I lived off campus. Isak Dinesen: “Anecdotes of Destiny and Ehrengard.” The friend would go back to his dorm on the campus of the small Christian university we attended, and my son’s father would linger at my apartment. I would be winsome and flirt with the friend, and we all had a nice time. The friend wasn’t interested in me romantically, but the three of us hung out together. His father was only the second person I’d had sex with, and I had a crush on his good friend. I hadn’t thought I wouldn’t do those things, but if I thought about them, they existed in the vague haze of my distant future. I had not thought about having children or being a wife. Those were my interests: religion, literature, study. I was headed to Yale Divinity School, where I would study for a master’s in religion and literature. I got pregnant with him when I was 19, a month before I graduated from college. He was born on New Year’s Day, the year 2000. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
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