06/17/2022
WELP – Weeping Endures (but) Love Prevails
By A. Hawkins
“Take off your bottoms and put this gown on, and this sheet around you,” said the nurse as she closed the door to the Doctors office. I remember sitting there bewildered, lost, and wondering why I had to take my clothes off. I had never taken my clothes off for anyone before. I was a 17 year old teenager in my senior year of high school with only 1 month to go before walking across the stage in May, 1977.
I was pregnant, at least 3 months, and afraid to tell anyone especially my single parent mother. How devastated and disappointed she would have been! Not only that, I was a witness as to how she did not take it so well when my sister that was 5 years older than myself had revealed she was pregnant some years earlier. I was a witness to the beating my sister endured, and I knew in my heart this was a beating waiting to happen. No, not I; I’ll just keep it to myself and skip the beating.
That day at the Doctors office is when I found out babies did not come out of the stomach. The nurse came back in with Doctor “H,” and told me to scoot my bottom down, and place my feet in what they called stirrups, and open my legs. What? Why? I don’t understand what’s happening? Why is the Doctor looking at my naked “P” when babies comes out of the stomach don’t they? Those were the thoughts in my head, but too confused to speak them out loud.
As I reluctantly, with great fear, followed the orders given, and placed my feet in those things, my private part on display for a stranger (the Doctor), I heard him say, “That is not what you did when you laid down to make this baby.” He was referring to my knees still together and my legs not being opened wide enough for him to do the exam in what I now know is similar to a pap smear which I had never had yet.
What made his words so cruel, and more devastating was little did he know I never volunteered to lay down with a man. I was “r***d,” and now I was 3 months pregnant alone, with no one to talk to, not even the Doctor because he just stereotyped me, by assuming I consented, when I was still a 17 year old virgin looking forward to graduating and going to college before, I was r***d.
So, the only thing I learned that day at the Doctors office was that babies did not come out of the stomach, they came out of my “P” thing.
"Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning."
