streetball junkie

Chicago, 1991.  I had just turned 23 when I became strung out on streetball, needing a fix at least 6 days a week, up to 10 hours a day.  The court where I hung out the most was in Chicago’s Bucktown neighborhood.  Bucktown was still a year or two away from becoming gentrified at that time.  It was a neighborhood full of Hispanic households that had more kids than bedrooms.  There was also a handful of starving artists types who lived in Bucktown because they were young and idealistic enough to think that going hungry was romantic and being poor and suffering was the only legit way to be creative.  The rest of the neighborhood was filled out with white trash, wanderers and homeless types who loitered outside corner taverns with names like Danny’s or Estelle's.  On the larger four lane streets that formed the borders of Bucktown was the usual assortment of laundromats, second hand clothing and thrift shops, a few greasy restaurants, and still more bars. 

Tucked away in this neighborhood on the corner of Wolcott and Cortland was the court where I spent most of my days that summer, and it was there that I was dubbed with the nickname “Flea”.  At other courts I had different nicknames like ‘the Caucasian,’ ‘Whiteboy,’ or ‘Mayonnaise.’  But on Cortland it was ‘Flea’.  The last game I ever played there was one I’ll never forget.  It was a typical day, late summer, clear sky, bright hot sun.  At noon there were four guys on the court shooting around with me.  A Nirvana song had been running through my head as I practiced using my off hand.  I had heard of college coaches making their players tie their dominant hands to their shorts and go through a scrimmage like that, using their weak hand only.  So I was doing the same thing - playing with my right hand stuffed in the pocket of my shorts - when I hoisted up a bank shot and a white Oldsmobile with no license plates and a tiny flag of Puerto Rico hanging from the rear view mirror pulled up alongside the playground.  The basketball rim had a couple of loose lug nuts holding it to the backboard so it wobbled and bounced like and epileptic spring board as the ball rattled through the net.

“Hey!” someone called as I hurried to gather the ball after it bounced onto the pavement.

A gangbanger, not even old enough to vote, had raised himself out of the passenger side window of the white Oldsmobile and was pointing a small caliber handgun over the roof directly at me.  The song in my head that had been steering me around disappeared and the other four guys on the court slowly began backing away in unison.

The gangbanger called out, “Which of you’se is with the Unknowns.”

Five other gangbangers were crowded in the Olds, all decked out in white and blue t-shirts, and it slowly dawned on me that this was a drive-by.  I didn’t know if any of the kids I was shooting around with were in the Unknowns—a local rival gang, but I pulled my hand out of my pocket and took a step toward the Oldsmobile.  Behind me I could sense the others still hedging backward so I stopped and shook my head at the kid with the gun as if to indicate he and his buddies were in the wrong place.  Then the kid with the gun and I locked eyes for 6 or 7 seconds.  Uncertainty.  It may not seem too smart to stare down a guy twenty yards away who’s pointing a gun at you, but I have to admit I had a strange fascination in being in that position.  Generally I’m bored with everything—except when I’m playing hoops.  But here I was with a gun pointed at me and it wasn’t boring at all.  It was a curious feeling; I wasn’t panicking, yet I wasn’t exactly calm either.  After another second and half the gangbanger kid frowned as if he was disappointed about something then ducked back into the passenger side window, said something to the driver, and the Oldsmobile pulled away real slow, not in any hurry, until it turned the corner and disappeared.

I’d heard that in order to be accepted into some gangs you had to shoot someone in a rival gang.  I wasn’t in a rival gang or anything, but I still wondered why the kid didn’t shoot me - it probably would have been enough to get him into the gang.  But I know that sometimes it’s hard to pull the trigger.  I had been having thoughts of sticking a gun to my own head and blowing my own brains out around that time.  Many of those summer nights I’d lay in bed, unable to fall asleep and these images would come.  I couldn’t help it.  These thoughts just invaded my mind, almost every night.  Then one night I actually did pull a gun to my own head, but when I went to pull the trigger I couldn’t get my finger to do it.  I imagine that’s what happened to the gangbanger—he just couldn’t make his finger pull the trigger.

When the white Olds was gone, all of the kids who had been shooting left as well.  But suddenly feeling territorial I decided I was going stay.  Physically the schoolyard wasn’t much to look at; uneven pavement, broken whiskey bottles, fast food wrappers and graffiti tags spray painted up and down the brick wall of the school building.  But conceptually, tucked away somewhere in between Sector 3 (my imagination) and Sector 4 (my memory) this playground was paradise.  It was the reason I got out of bed each morning, even though the days were too hot and it would have been much easier to lie on the mattress in front of my clanky fan and wallow in the stench of my own sweat and body odor.

I jabbed my right hand back into my short’s pocket and dribbled the ball down to the other end of the court where, just to the right of the free throw line, there was a gradual mound.  Some sort of shifting in the earth or unsettling of the cement had caused this bump to rise up, just slightly noticeable—unless you knew it was there.  I practice dribbling over it, knowing that it was possible to use this bump as a mechanism to gain a step on a defender.

I picked up this little trick from Martin.  Martin, a tall, handsome angular Mexican, was the undisputed neighborhood superstar.  31 years old, always dressed in profession styled warm-up jersey, Martin was a true streetball artist.  With Martin it was all smoke and mirrors.  He was the master of deception, making everything he did look like he wasn’t making any effort at all.  At the blink of an eye he could be cleaning up a rebound, nailing down an outside shot or making a slick steal.  But his best work was in the post, down around the basket.  Slippery, seemingly misdirected inside moves that split double-teams, and then a quick release to the hoop was his trademark.  Miraculously, he seemed to find a slightly different way of doing it each time - as though he was just creating the move for the first time.  Martin was always easy going and respectful of others and he usually arrived around 3:30 in the afternoon - as did the other regulars (approximately 95% Hispanic here at Cortland).  Some came slowly, some came running, some came straight from work and some slithered out of strange and dark corners of the neighborhood.

By 6 pm that day the sun was hovering just above a row of trees lining the other side of the street.  Visibility was good, but an elongated purple shadow began to stretch its way across the court.  Somewhere in Sector 3, I had begun realigning my DNA: instead of being a 5’10” out of work lazy white guy wearing hand me down sneakers, I’d become a 6’6” basketball Jones with his own Converse high-top named after him.  Meanwhile the young ones and the less serious had been pushed off to the sidelines as the mood for the rest of the afternoon was set.  Some days it was serious, competitive, stress filled, trash talking, elbows flying, grudge matches.  Other evenings it was more relaxed—trick shots, jokes with the token fat guy and one-on-one matches with the little Mexican kid who wore a baggy white t-shirt that was so big you couldn’t see what the advertisement on it read.  He was one of a group of 7 or 8 little kids that bombarded the court between games, trying to get in as many shots as they could until they were pushed off once the real games started.  And as always there was a flock of new school punkwipes, gangbanger types who were battling the latest NWA lyrics back and forth at the teen-aged chicks in baggy pants and tight fitted tops:  “Bitches ain't shit, but ho’s and tricks.  Lick on these nuts and suck the dick.”  Occasionally I’d catch a glimpse of the teenage chicks, their busts and buttocks blossoming in the summer sun as they packed together on the other side of the chain link fence like a row of carnations.  And of course there was the ice cream guy, with his push cart and jingle bells (ding-a-ling, ding-ding) to provide concessions to the 20 to 30 kids who were just there to hang out on the sidelines.  But as the summer heated up, the mood at Cortland took on the competitive edge more often than it did the relaxed one.  Certain players began to drop out while others began to emerge.

Martin’s arch rival was a thirty four year old black named J-ball who traveled up from Union Park on the Near Westside about once a week with a couple of other brothers—Green Jeans and Waxy.  Green Jeans (about 6’3” and solid build) and Waxy (distinguished by his Super fly Afro circa 1974) were both in the habit of draining outside jump shots while telling you all about themselves in the process.  “You can’t guard me,”  “See this one, this one’s in your face all day long mutha fuckah,” and so on.  But even they knew better than to say anything is Martin’s direction.

Before J-ball and his crew showed up, mainly because of Martin, there was a certain semblance of constructive competitiveness maintained between everyone on the court.  It wasn’t unusual for friends to compliment each other, even if they were on opposing teams.  “Good move,” or “Nice shot,” and stuff like that.  But J-ball had his own twist on this; he’d kiss up to Martin between games, saying things like, “Damn Martin, you’re like Michael Jordan to everyone around here.  They all love you, the little kids and everyone, like you was Michael Jordan.”  He’d say it with just enough smile to keep things nice and friendly between him and Martin, but as soon as the game began, J-ball would do everything in his power to disrespect Martin on the court.

On my last day at Cortland, with only a few hours of sunlight left, J-ball and his crew pulled up in his rust bucket yellow Ford Ltd. (I think it was ’73) and before he was even out the door he was calling, “I got NEXT dammit!  I got game!” spinning his genuine leather Spalding ball out in front of him.  J-ball had come to humiliate the Hispanics, as he liked to do once every week or two just to get some kicks.

Martin gathered Amelio, a wide body and beer gut with an automatic set shot (when he was feeling it) who liked to play the point and distribute hard slap-fouls to compensate for his lack of quickness.  Then Martin picked Mundeez, a tall skinny 19 year old and the most explosive scorer on the court who could drive the lane or hit from outside.  And to round off the quartet Martin eyeballed the sidelines, scanning the ranks for a hard-nosed defender who was also aggressive on the boards.  He looked at me, the only true white boy in the lot (besides a clumsy, giant Ukrainian guy).

“Wanna run Amigo?” he asked.

J-ball, aware of old school protocol, had seen the white bread and found it necessary to comment, “Whiteboy, if you came out to get a sun tan you came to the wrong place.  The beach is that-ah way,” as he swooped his head exaggeratedly toward the east.  A little laugh spread around the sidelines, but I noticed he called me “Whiteboy”, instead of “White Bread” which was somewhat less insulting.

I tightened my shoelaces and stood up, “I’ll run.”

“Well if you all are gonna run with a white boy,” J-ball announced, as though running with a white boy was a disability, “then I’m gonna have to run with a white boy,” and he choose the giant Ukrainian guy to round out his foursome.

Since J-ball’s squad had just arrived, our team got the ball first.  It was a ritual of Martin’s to be the last one to touch the ball before the game officially started.  That way, the game didn’t start until Martin said it starts.  Martin tossed the Spalding inbounds to Amelio then jogged down to our end of the court.  J-ball’s team started out in a zone defense, confident that they wouldn’t have to exert too much energy to defend against us.  They didn’t even press.

Green Jeans fronted Martin down in the post, denying him the ball.  So Amelio swung it over to me on the wing.  I did a dribble drive cross court and bounced an entry pass to Martin that just barely threaded the needle.  The giant Ukrainian lumbered over to help Green Jeans double team Martin, which left Mundeez open for a jumper in the corner.  Martin knew he could spilt the defenders, but most likely they would only foul him so he wouldn’t get off a good shot.  Of course our team would get the ball back on the foul, but that wasn’t the type of game that Martin wanted to run.  He knew to beat J-ball’s squad he was going to have to get his teammates involved.  So he made his move to the bucket, extending the ball out way above his head as if he was about to throw up a shot, but then with only the slightest flick of his wrist, dished the ball over to Mundeez who was in position for a 16 foot jump shot.  The ball left Martin’s hands just a split second before Green Jeans and the Ukrainian sandwiched him with a hard foul.  Bone and meat crashed and bruised as all three players collided into each other like stock cars in a crash up derby.  Mundeez lined up his 16 footer, fired the shot and missed the “gimme”.  Green Jeans rebounded the ball and threw a baseball pass down court to where J-ball was waiting for the easy lay-up.  As J-ball flipped the ball into the hoop he announced, “One thing I can do…is finger roll.”

Midway into the game a dim street lamp from across the street clicked on.  J-ball’s team decided to turn up the heat and switched from zone defense to man-to-man.  As a result his team was on top and J-ball was looking for new ways to challenge himself and rub in his superiority.

“This games too easy,” he cracked, hitting from outside to put his squad up 9 to 4 in a game to 15.

“Damn,” Martin hurried to take the ball out of bounds.  “Flea, let’s switch guys,” he said, directing me to guard J-ball.

J-ball began to laugh.  “Oh day-um... you all must be desperate putting a white boy on me.”  J-ball pretended not to remember me, but I’d played against him and even with him before - a couple times at Wicker Park and once or twice over at Commercial Park just off Chicago Avenue.  One thing I had noticed about him was that he was a master of the game within the game.  If he didn’t think his defender was a challenge to him, as the game progressed, he would disrespect the defender and also challenge himself by taking an extra step backward, lengthening the distance on his shot.  This would draw the defender further and further from the lane and loosen things up down low giving his teammates have more room to maneuver for a rebound (or to be open for J-ball to hit them with a quick interior feed).  By the time I began to defend him he was shooting from nearly out-of-bounds.

Next time he touched the ball, J-ball dribbled it lackadaisically at his side.  In mock consternation he surveyed the court.  “This games too easy,” he declared.  
I crowded him, knowing not to go for the steal, which would only give him his chance to shoot.  I held my ground instead, face up, my feet apart, one hand in his face and the other hand free to slap at the ball—the textbook defensive position.  J-ball juked as if to drive.  I heard the screech of sneakers scuffling the pavement, causing me to shuffle slide to the right.  But J-ball simultaneously backed off a step, giving him ample spacing for his jump shot.  Realizing my mistake, there was nothing I could do but watch as J-ball’s shot left his hand. 

Like every natural jump shooter, J-ball’s jumper had its own distinct peculiarities.  Whereas Michael Jordan would bite his lower lip in concentration, J-ball liked to widen his eyes, sorta like an old lady examining her fingernails after a manicure.  “Oh , that’s nice,” he seemed to say, “That’s real purty.”  Also he had this hitch where he released the ball high above his head, instead of out in front of his him (like most shooters do).  This made it difficult for a defender to reach out and block it.  It is such a natural hitch in his shot that I imagined he learnt it at a very young age, probably playing against older and taller boys.  Last of all, when he shot, J-ball’s feet were relatively close together, making his center of gravity more stable and giving him a little extra lift from his legs (even though his feet only got a few inches off the ground).  This accounted for the spectacular range and steady alignment on his shot.

His shot sailed over my head, the ball spun like a distant planet, softly, silently through the cool blue evening air in a perfect trajectory toward the basket, until it sunk through the hoop untouched but for the bottom of the net that resulted in that crisp, familiar “swish”.

“This game’s too easy,” J-ball gawked.

Martin grabbed the ball before it could hit the pavement and hustled it out of bounds, up to Amelio. The guy with the afro, Waxy, was all over me, not respecting my space.  I felt serious, maybe too serious.  Waxy crowded me so that I couldn’t square up on my jump shot and said, “You can’t score on me whiteboy.  I’ll block that shit right back to where it come from.”

“He’s more worried about your damn afro blocking his shot that you blocking it,” Martin yelled as he tangled up with Green Jeans and the giant Ukrainian in the post.  I passed the ball back out to Amelio on the point.  Our team was dead, no energy.  I swung through the lane, crisscrossing with Mundeez, catching someone’s elbow in my jaw.  Martin stepped into Waxy and lowered his shoulder squarely into Waxy’s chest.  I heard a thud followed by a gasp of air leaving Waxy’s lungs as Martin’s ‘pick’ allowed me just enough time to pop out to the three point line, if I hurried.  But Amelio was out of breath, like an overworked old mule, and slow to ricochet a bounce pass over to me, barely skipping it there before Waxy recovered from Martin’s pick.  Waxy and his funky afro came chasing.  He’d recovered the cocky smile from earlier and was confident that he was gonna reach me and reject my shot before I could square up to the basket.

Since the gangbanger incident earlier in the afternoon, the Nirvana song that had been running around in my head had been missing.  Suddenly the sporatic patter of Waxy’s sprinting footsteps recreated the drum beat, and the song, somewhere out of sector 4 in my head, came banging back.  
There are certain moments and certain shots during the course of a game that can define the entire game for a player.  Certain shots depending on whether you make them or miss them, can influence an entire career.  When Michael Jordan, as a freshman at the University of North Carolina hit the game winning shot in the NCAA finals, it was one of those shots that elevated his confidence and had a mark on the rest of his career.  Conversely when Charles Smith of the New York Knicks choked in the final game of the 1993 Eastern Conference Finals and missed three straight shots form underneath his basket, that effort marked him in the annuals of NBA lore as a loser and a choke artist.

When I heard Waxy’s footsteps and saw him coming towards me I realized that, in my own little world of lifetime street ball highlights, this was going to be one of those shots.  It was either going to make me or break me.  But there was no time to think about that.  I had to focus.  John Paxson, after hitting a three pointer with just 1.8 seconds left in the game that clinched the third straight NBA championship for the Chicago Bulls, described the shot in terms of proper mechanics.  He described it in therms of repetition.  He had taken that shot thousands of times.  It was simply a matter of getting your feet squared up, using proper balance then releasing the ball and following through.  It was something that he and every other NBA player had done over a hundred thousand times in their lives.  But the amazing thing about that shot was the time and space it happened in - and the heightened level of concentration it took to balance aggressive with composure within such a time and space.

I saw the hoop—it was comfortably familiar; orange and rusty, broken chains dangling from it.  And I saw the look of nonchalance burrowed behind Waxy’s brown eyes, strangely mixing into the murky late afternoon shadow that was now stretched across most of the court.  I pulled the trigger, but had to shorten up on my follow through - just enough to avoid Waxy’s outstretch arms.  The ball spun through the air and splashed through the hoop—all net.  The giant Ukrainian simultaneously let a fart.  The first threads of dissension among J-balls’ team appeared.

“Man, why is white guy’s farts stink the worse!” J-ball wailed, motioning to the Giant Ukrainian.  “What do you guys eat?”

“That wasn’t me,” the Ukrainian protested, sounding too slow to hang with J-ball.

“It’s all that wiener schnitzel and Sour Crout and shit.  Damn!”  J-ball made an ill advised pass; Martin intercepted it.  Something had changed.  Martin tossed the ball ahead to me and I dropped in a quiet lay up.

But once again J-ball returned to the game within the game.  This time so did I.  He called for the ball and positioned himself to shoot.  I gave him plenty of room to square up for his outside shot, but this time, when he squared up to release, he saw something in my eyes.  I made no effort to block his shot, but instead I charged straight at him, tapping his elbow and letting my momentum carry me, pounding him chest-to-chest and knocking him off balance—a solid hard foul that caused his shot to bank off to the left of the board.

“Foul!  Man!”  J-ball cried.  “Man what the fuck is this, rugby!  Don’t you white boys know the difference between basketball and football!?!”

I remained silent.  Martin retrieved the ball and tossed it back to J-ball.  “Just take your foul and play the game,” he said.

“Damn white boy better stay the fuck off me!” J-ball continued, dribbling the ball low, below his knees out in front of him.  He tossed the ball off to Waxy in the corner and Waxy fired up a 20 footer that hit the front of the rim, then the back of the rim, then the backboard, and then ricocheted off.  
Some players if they want to get noticed as a big time player, find it necessary to bring attention to an aspect of their game which would otherwise go unnoticed.  At five foot ten, not many people would think of me as a formidable rebounder.  So sometimes, especially after I’d gone awhile without a rebound, I would crash the boards like the Tasmanian devil and let out a primal scream from the pit of my stomach as I jumped and bumped underneath the basket and fought my way for a rebound, letting everyone on the court know that I wanted the ball more than they did.  And if there was someone else who wanted it more than me, then that was too fucking bad, because I was the one who had it.  So after Waxy’s shot bounced around the rim, I boxed everyone else out and was there to grab the rebound.

“AAAHHHRR!!!” I screamed and cradled the ball in my arms like it’s my first born.

J-ball laughed, “Crazy honky.  Now he thinks he’s a rebounder.”

I saw Mundeez releasing down court so I hit him with a side arm bounce pass which he grabbed in stride and silently laid into the hoop, just before getting tangled up with the small Hispanic boy with the baggy t-shirt who was trying to sneak in a quick shot while the ball was at the other end of the court.  J-ball, chasing after the play, got tangled up with the little boy as well.

“Hey!  Get the Fuck off the court!” he yelled at the kid.

"Take it easy, that’s my cousin,” Martin yelled from the other end of the court.

The little kid with the bag shirt grabbed his ball and ran off the court while Waxy was slow about taking the ball out of bounds; J-ball noticed this and called for the ball.  “Niggah, give me the pill!”

Waxy tossed it to up to J-ball at half court and J-ball turned around to shoot another jumper.  I came charging at him, just like on the last play, and J-ball flinched.  But this time instead of following through I put on the breaks and avoided touching him.  J-ball’s shot missed completely.  
From that moment on everything became subconscious—the way it’s supposed to be.  An adrenaline high mixed with a confidence-high, causing my endorphins, dopamines and what not to swell up and intertwine.  Energy, mass and dark matter spread throughout my veins and seeped from my pores.

By the time the sun sunk completely below the row of houses across the street, our team had rallied ahead to take a 14 to 12 lead.  One more bucket and we would win.  J-ball’s team had the ball though, until I snuck up behind Waxy and poked it away from him as he tried to slash down the lane.  The ball squirted away cleanly and ended up in Martin’s possession.  Martin held the ball with both hands and exhaled deeply.  He and everyone else on the court was dog-assed tired.  He dribbled the ball at his side as both teams fell back in transition to the other end of the court.

At mid-court I called for the ball.  Martin tossed it to me and I looked for Amelio and Mundeez who were both out on the wings, too exhausted to shake their defenders.  The leather hide basketball felt like it was melting in my hand, so smooth and becoming even smoother every second.  Waxy was sluggish coming up to defend me.  So, “Screw it!”  said to myself.  “I’m going for it.”  I didn’t have time to catch my breath.  I juked then jived down the lane, splitting the defenders—Green Jeans and the giant Ukrainian—then hesitated with a quick cross-over, and then in one fluid motion I drove the lane, losing Waxy as he stumbled over the bump on the pavement, the bump that I knew so well.  I left my feet and rose toward the basket with the ball in my right hand, switching it to my left as I saw J-ball leaving his man to come over and defend me.  He rushed at me to slap the ball, but he couldn’t touch me.  “Not today bro,” I said just above my breath and before anyone could even think about it I served the ball to the hoop and gently laid it in like a polite waiter serving a bowl of cream of broccoli soup.  And with the dainty “swish” that followed, the game was over.  Final score 15 to 12.

“Game!”

A round of cat calls spread around the sidelines.

“I wanna rematch,” J-ball balked.  “20 bucks a man.”  
But I didn’t stick around the court.  I was thirsty.  “I’m outta here,” I said to no one in particular and walked off the playground.

excerpt from the abortion doctor's wife

Dr. Egush-Patel heard a scream as he forced his forceps into the vagina of 15 year old LaUniqueshwa Scott.  The scream did not come from LaUniqueshwa – she was out cold – nor did it come from either of Egush's two nurse aids who were there to assist him with the procedure.  It was a ghost scream.  Egush-Patel motioned toward his nurse to wipe his brow as a single drop of sweat spilled from his hairline onto his eyelid.  Two feet above him, a large, bright overhead lamp beamed stale heat directly onto his scalp. The lamp was to aid Egush's vision but as he looked at the nurses faces, the white light saturated their features into egg-yoke blobs.  He blinked.  He drew a breath, and continued his work with the forceps.  He was beginning a dismemberment abortion, or what was called a Second Trimester D&E Abortion.

Egush-Patel had performed hundreds of dismemberment abortions during the three years he held his practice at the Woman's Advocate Health Clinic.  The procedure was second nature to him.  So when he positioned the forceps onto the mid section of the tiny unborn human inside of L'Uniqshwa, he wasn't surprised by the unborn baby's response.  The touch of the steely cold forceps caused the baby to move.  Instinctively Egush-Patel noticed the cohesiveness of the skin tissue.  He found the flesh easy to grip.  This meant the body would be relatively easy to dismember.  Egush-Patel also gauged that the unborn body's pelvis was at least 5 centimeters in width.  He made this mental note, then moved the forceps deeper into the vagina until the icy metallic grips found the human head.  He would have to crush the head by squeezing it between the ends of the forceps.  That often took a great deal of strength involving the wrist and forearms.  Most doctors who performed dismemberment abortions were men.  There was a certain gruesomeness in collapsing the skull – it was accompanied by a gut-dropping "snap" and a certain feeling of "give" that was similar to the sensation someone feels when they crush a walnut inside a nutcracker.  Most people didn't have the stomach for this - but he did.  He had the stomach for it and he had the hands for it.  His hands, wrists and forearms were strong enough to perform such a maneuver in a very slow, deliberate manner.  And each time he did, he had the same realization - the realization that he was ending a life.  During his training the unborn baby was always referred to as a fetus.  But there was no doubt to him that it was a living human being.  He was as fully conscious of the fact that he was ending a life as a clear-eyed serial killer is conscious of the fact that they are ending a life.  His forceps probed deeper toward the skull.  Crushing the skull would come at the end of the procedure, it was the finale.  

As Egush-Patel moved the forcepts with one hand, he gripped the long curved Mayo scissors that he would use to cut the pelvis and dismember the rest of the unborn baby with his other hand.  And it was at that moment that he realized that the scream he heard wasn't real.  It was some kind of ghost scream – a mental flashback to a scream of an unborn child he aborted several weeks prior.  That unborn had been from another teen mother.  That fetus, that unborn baby screamed - and it had been unmistakable.  He heard it, his aids heard it.  They were startled.  It sent shivers down their spines.  Egush-Patel believed he had already crushed that unborn's skull but in fact, he had only smashed its face in.  When he pulled the disfigured baby from its mother's vagina it cried out.  There was no mistaking in.  

But, Egush-Patel didn't let that scream stop him.  He simply turned to his nurse and handed her the remains to dispose of.  Then he put that scream, the scream, out of his mind.  Instantaneously forgetting about it - he thought.  But it was still there, somewhere in the back of his mind.  He could still hear it.  Even now as he gripped onto a meaty piece of flesh from the unborn body inside of LaUniqushwa, even as he pulled it toward him, through LaUniqushwa's cervix—the scream was still there.  Egush-Patel tugged harder.  There was a steadily increasing resistance.  He was accustomed to this friction that came with pulling body parts through the cervix.  That friction helped tear the body apart.  It always reminded Egush-Patel of the way chicken meat is pulled apart from a succulent, well-baked chicken.  He was ashamed of this thought the first time it occurred to him, but now it just causes a caustic, cold sigh to himself.  He pulled with a bit more torque until a liquidy, bloodied dismembered piece of flesh was ripped off the tiny human body.  As he pulled it out of L'Uniqushwa's vagina, that human body inside her thrashed and kicked.  The piece of flesh he pulled out of her was the left foot and ankle which he had just ripped apart from the left leg.  Egush-Patel discarded this piece of flesh then positioned his forceps into the vagina to grab the rest of the leg.  There was more resistance as he pulled it through the cervix, until the leg ripped apart just above the knee.   The body thrashed about more.  Egush-Patel pulled this leg part out and flung it into a cold steel container at his side.  After removing the foot and then the leg, up to the knee, Egush-Patel felt the tiny human body inside of L'Uniqshwa still violently thrusting about, almost to the point of delirium.  He did not need to look at the ultrasound equipment.  There was obviously still a heartbeat. 

---

“What is life?” Brock Sproles addressed the group of high school seniors.  “When did your life start?"  
He looked around at the class. The class was typical of the high school groups he often spoke to.  Fifteen years removed from high school himself, Brock surmised that this class wasn't very different from the classes he attended when he was a high school student.  He spotted the drama queen, the prom queen, the stoner, the jock, the music geek, the computer geek, the wall flower, the shoe gazer, the art chick, the class clown.  Brock himself had always been bored in high school, completely bored.  Now, as an activist, boredom was the one sin he refused to commit.  

“Does anyone want to take a stab at that question?” he asked.  “When did your life start?”

A dark-haired boy up front declared, “Your life began when you were born.  Duh.”  

A few half-suppressed chuckles spread around the classroom.

“So what were you before you were born?” Brock asked.  “When you were in your mother's stomach?  Weren't you a life then also?”  Brock knew this was the kind of question that most kids their age hadn't ever given much thought.  He searched their eyes for cues.  Were any of them mulling over possible answers?  

Ms. Witherspoon, their Health Sciences teacher stood toward the back of the class.  Brock's attendance there wasn't her idea.  Brock petitioned the school board, filed the red sea of red tape and schmoozed the school's administrators for several months before convincing them to allow him into the classroom to talk to the seniors during Sex Education week.  

Finally one female senior with bookish glasses and the look of a junior librarian raised her hand.  “My pastor says life begins at conception.”

Brock had a ready-built “recourse of conversation” for any path that any student response would take.  The religion angle was one he had to tread lightly around, one that he wanted to avoid actually.  Truth be told, he was actually an agnostic.  He believed that human life had a "soul" but not in the sense that religions defined it.  He believed in a "soul" as in how the Ancient Greeks first defined it: that invisible force within a human life that keeps it moving through time and space.  And he believed that an unique individual soul was created each time there was a conception. 

“Okay, conception – does everyone know what that term means?”

There was a few guffaws, a few giggles before Ms. Witherspoon spoke up, “On Monday, we watched the documentary you recommended, The Miracle of Life, which explained the process in detail.”

Brock had made a quick effort to size up Trisha Witherspoon earlier, when the vice-principle introduced them to each other.  She had shoulder-length black hair, a thin figure that was draped with traditional progressive attire, brown leggings and a sleeveless blouse.  She was a few years younger than he was, her facial features were sharp, precise, but her expressions were somewhat suppressed, as if she were constantly straining to hold her emotions in check.

“Okay, good,” Brock continued.  “So you understand that prior to conception there is a sperm and an egg, which are parts of two different human lives—one part from the man and one part from the woman—but separately the sperm and the egg do not constitute a human being.  It is not until these two entities join—when the sperm fertilizes the egg—that an entire new human life is created.”

Ms. Witherspoon stared at Brock.  There was something mischievous about him.  Here he was, dressed respectfully in a suit and tie, with his clean, even jawline, and his hair just one quick head-turn away from being unkempt, speaking in a professional manner, with a politically correct confidence to his cadence - yet there was something troublesome about him.  His aura was that of a man on a mission of some sort, a mission beyond just educating high school students about the moral questions that arise from the Abortion debate.  

“So technically, biologically speaking, that point is when your life began.  Conception.  If that moment of conception had not occurred, the rest of your life never would have happened.”   Brock paused to let that idea resonate.  Trisha Witherspoon found that her pulse was starting to increase.

“So, I'm here to talk to you today about abortion...” he said, taking in the student's faces once again then nearly grinning at Trisha Witherspoon, who now had her arms crossed tightly around her chest. “...And some of the questions that arise when someone is thinking about abortion.”    

“What is this guy up to?” She wondered.

“In 1973 the Supreme Court ruled that a woman has a right to choose to abort the life that has been conceived inside of her. Since that time, there have been over 50 million human lives aborted in America," Brock declared, letting that large number sink in, knowing that most kids had no idea there had been that many legal abortions.  Then he added, "Nearly half of those have been African-American lives.”

Now why on Earth did he have to mention that?!? Witherspoon questioned to herself, What does that have to do with anything?  But then she contemplated that statistic.   That can't be true, she told herself.

“I'm not here to give you a history lesson or bombard you with a lot of statistics, but just let me share one more bit of information with you,” Brock continued. “It is a statistical fact that only one out of every one million Americans choose to kill themselves.  One out of a million.  Remember that number - that is the percentage of Americans who choose suicide.”  

Trisha Witherspoon was glaring at him now.

“So that means that out of those 50 million aborted lives since 1973, only 50 of them – fifty out of 50 million – would have chosen to abort themselves.  All of those other 50 million are innocent Americans whose lives have been taken against their will.”

Trisha's jaw nearly dropped to the ground.  What the fuck is this?!?  

“So the question you might be asking yourself,” Brock continued, “is why were these millions upon millions of American lives denied the miracle of life?  Why weren't they allowed to choose life?  Why were their mothers allowed to decide life or death for them?”

Trisha couldn't contain herself a minute longer, “Excuse me, Mr. Sproles – but how do you propose that a zygote express its decision to live?”

Finally, Mrs. Witherspoon gave herself away.  It was usually about half and half when it came to health education teachers.  Half were pro-life, generally of the Holy Roller variety.  While the other half were pro-choice, generally of the woman's rights variety.  Witherspoon looked like she could have belonged in either camp though.  Yet she also did not look like someone who had no opinion, she didn't look like someone who was neutral.  And now as she cocked her eyebrow at him, Brock knew which way she bent, and he couldn't help but admit that he was attracted to her now.  Oddly enough, he was attracted exclusively to women who were pro-choice.  Something about the challenge of converting them made them much more interesting.  He was once pro-choice himself, after all he was a Democrat.  But, similar to how a born-again Christian yearns to spread the word of the Lord and convert everyone he meets, Brock had undergone his own born-again experience and he yearned to spread his message.  Only his message didn't involve the Lord.  No, his message was that life is a miracle - and it should not be destroyed under any circumstances.  And he wanted to share this belief and convert everyone he met, especially hard-boiled, somewhat uptight Health Science teachers with perky breasts.  So when Ms. Witherspoon posed her question about how is a zygote supposed to express its decision to live, Brock knew...it was "go" time.

“How does anyone express their decision to live?” he stated, pointing to a slacker sitting toward the back of the classroom.  

“You there, how do you express your decision to live?  Did you wake up this morning, throw open the shutters to your bedroom window and decree to the world outside that 'Today, I choose to live!'”

This line got the predictable laugh from the class.

“As a matter of fact, I did,” the slacker joked.

There were some more laughs as Brock smiled at him and said, “We express our decision to live by actually living.  By partaking in this merry-go-round miracle of life and by moving forward, evolving, learning, loving, living... our cells growing, our bodies moving, our blood pumping.  Just like the zygotes in The Miracle of Life did.”

Oh for fuck's sake, I have to stop this guy, Trisha Witherspoon decreed to herself before speaking up, “Mr. Brock, with all due respect, everyone in this room is conscious.  We are all sentient beings.  We can choose to live or we can choose to end our life – but a zygote is not sentient.  A zygote cannot even exist outside the womb.  It is totally reliant on their mother for their survival.  Technically speaking, a zygote is actually just a clump of cells, like the skin cells that come off your body while washing your face.”

“Well, a clump of cells that came off my face never became an Abe Lincoln, or a John Lennon or a Martin Luther King or a Ms. Witherspoon.  No, a zygote is not just a clump of cells.”  Brock knew he had sparked the fire.  That fire and passion that the abortion topic always ignites - and that was never boring.  

“Look at this way,” he continued, “technically speaking, the word zygote is just a name that mankind has assigned to a certain stage of development in a human's life.  It is no different from the other names that we use to describe other stages of human development like 'teenager', or 'baby', or 'adult', or 'elderly'  or 'middle-aged'.  The only difference is the stage of life a person is in.”

“Except that a zygote is not sentient, Mr. Brock.  And a zygote cannot exist without its mother.”

“The same could be said about my cousin Mortie,” Brock joked.  “But does that give his mother the right to kill him?”

Again the class laughed.

“You know what I mean, Mr. Brock,” Trisha patronized.

“I do know what you mean, Ms. Witherspoon,” Brock smiled at her.  His grin was inviting, instead of being a look of confrontation, it was a look of inclusion that welcomed all comers.... yet that mischievous glint in his eye, it had a strange effect on her – it made her fearful, fearful to step deeper into this conversation, where the promise of dangerous and challenging ideas lurked - ideas that Mr. Brock Sproles had already navigated astutely over and over again.

“And I'm glad you bring up the notion of sentience, Mrs. Witherspoon,” Brock continued.  “Sentience is a very crucial part of the equation when it comes to a decision on Abortion.”  He paused a moment.  Trisha had her eyes glued to him.  And he had his eyes glued to her.

"You see, if your argument is that any human life that is not sentient has no right to life then that means that you believe that someone who is knocked out, or someone who is sleeping or in a coma, has no right to life.  So from that point of view, if a human being is in a temporary state of not being sentient, well that's just tough luck because mankind has no obligation to helping those human beings out.  But a question I ask to this class is: Just because a human is unconscious at a certain moment, does that make them any less human!?!"

Ms. Witherspoon's fists were actually clenched now.  Her face was blush.  She wanted to say something, but she held back, trying to bite her tongue when she blurted out, "Mr. Sproles, are you trying to say that abortion is equal to killing a person?  Because killing a person is illegal.  Abortion is not."

"Actually killing a person in not illegal if it is done in self-defense or in an act of war," he shot back, sensing she was coming unhinged.  And she was sensing this too.  In fact she realized that if she didn't excuse herself from the classroom at that very moment, she would... she would do something that she didn't want to do.  And without another word she stormed out of the classroom, into the hallway where she stood motionless, fist still clenched, staring at the floor.  Trisha Witherspoon took a deep breath.  

To her surprise, upon looking up, she noticed a young lady sitting on a wooden chair beside the door to her classroom.  This young lady had Down Syndrome.

"What are you doing here?" Trisha asked the girl.

"I'm waiting for my uncle Brock," the girl explained.  "He's giving a speech," and the young girl looked toward Trisha then toward the classroom.

Trisha nodded slowly, as if she understood, yet she was actually completely confused.  She was light-headed now, as though she might black out.  She began walking slowly, not sure where she was headed, dragging her feet until by instinct, she found herself at the drinking fountain down the hall.  She bent over, took a drink then stood back up and stared at a flyer for a Band Recital that was pinned to a bulletin board.  After reading it thoroughly for several minutes, she slowly composed herself.  She sighed heavily then headed back to her classroom.  As she re-entered Mitzi, a girl who wore too much lip-gloss was speaking.

"But what kind of life would that baby have?"  Mitzi asked, "It wouldn't have the economic opportunities that most kids have, that baby wouldn't be as loved as kids who are wanted.  They would probably get hooked on drugs and get involved in crime.  I mean, they could become little Adolph Hitlers and Charlie Mansons."

The class laughed at this, and another dark-skinned kid chimed in, "Yeah, that baby would probably grow up so unhappy and miserable that they would just want to end up killing themselves anyway - So why not just do it for them before they are even born?  Save them all the heartache."

Brock had this class engaged in a manner that Ms. Witherspoon hadn't been able to achieve the entire semester - hell her entire teaching career.

"Well, now you are getting into the area of Social Engineering.  Who decides if poor children's lives are worth living?  Who decides if their lives have value?  That's social Engineering - which, if you've read your history books, you'll know, that is what Hitler was doing in regard to the Jews in Nazi Germany.  And we all know that that was wrong.  Don't we?  Don't we all know that the decision to live or die must be up to each individual human - not some government officials?"

Ms. Witherspoon immediately regretted that she had re-entered the classroom.

"So remember that statistic I gave you earlier," Brock continued, smiling at Ms. Witherspoon as she re-entered.  "Only one in a million Americans choose to kill themselves.  The overwhelming majority of people choose to live rather than to die?"

Trisha Witherspoon turned and headed straight for the back of the classroom where she leaned herself against the back wall.  She still felt light-headed.

"Now, I know there are a lot of jerks in this world." Brock continued." A lot of total A-holes, but I also know that in my 30 plus years of life that most people I meet actually have more good in their hearts than they have bad.  Most people have hope, most people, if you treat them nice, are going to be kind."  

Still looking at Mrs. Witherspoon Brock asked, "Would you agree with that Mrs. Witherspoon?"

"I'm not sure what this has to do with the choice of abortion," Mrs. Witherspoon replied.

"Ah, but it has everything to do with abortion," Brock continued.  "In its most basic essence, the question of abortion comes down to this one simply question: is it best to have a glass half-full view of life, or a glass half-empty?  The highest form of existence, the highest level of decision making, comes when every decision you make and every action you take is in consideration of what is best for humanity.  ALL of humanity.  Not just yourself, but the overall evolution of mankind.  Now, certainly if someone is elderly and has lived a long life, but is in constant physical pain, it is reasonable to think that they might want to kill themselves and be put out of their misery.  But most folks, young folks, physically healthy folks choose to live.  Most folks choose to learn and love and create and celebrate life...  So I'd like you to each ask yourselves one simple question."  
Brock walked over to his duffel bag, pulled out a bottle of water and a small drinking glass.  He sat the glass on Ms. Witherspoon's desk and poured the water into it until it reached the halfway mark.  

"Is the glass half-full or is it half-empty?"

Witherspoon took a glance at Brock, making eye contact. What a fucking ass-clown, she thought.

"Is life a good thing?  Is it something we should rejoice in and celebrate?  Or is it a cruel, terrible thing?  Something we should destroy?"

Brock looked at Trisha, "How about you Mrs Witherspoon?" he asked smiling invitingly.  "Is this glass half-empty or half full?"

"My personal opinion is not relevant to the abortion issue in regards to this class, Mr. Sproles.  And I don't think yours should be either," she replied coldly.

Brock cocked his head, "But isn't much of the goal of education to help and inspire kids to develop and obtain skills that allow them to reach the highest levels of critical thinking?  And doesn't the highest level of thought development involve making decisions that extend beyond how your decision is simply going to affect yourself?  Doesn't the highest level of decision making concern how your decisions affect others?  In fact doesn't the very highest level of decision making involve taking into consideration how your decisions not only effect you and those around you, but how they may affect all of mankind?  And all of history?"

Trisha Witherspoon did not respond.

"So if you have faith in humanity, if you believe that there is more good in the universe than there is bad, then you have to believe that every human life is more likely to want to live than die.  Even the weakest, poorest, ugliest, smelliest specimen on Earth has more potential to be happy if they are alive than if they are dead."

It was time for Brock to pull out his secret weapon.

“As you all think about your obligation to mankind and, in turn, mankind's obligation to the weakest members of our species," Brock continued, "I'd like to introduce you all to my very good friend Jenny...”

Brock then walked to the door, opened it and Jenny, the girl with Down Syndrome who had been sitting obediently in a chair outside, walked in.  She followed Brock to the front of the classroom, standing by his side.

“Hello," she said, "My name is Jenny Smart.  Some of you may recognize I have Down Syndrome.”  The slacker kid rolled his eyes and the kid next to him looked as if he was about to laugh.

“When my mother was about your age she was raped and she became pregnant.  Before I was born, the doctors told my mother that I would have a defect.  They told her that it was very expensive and very difficult and even dangerous to have a baby like me.  They told her about abortion, but she said she did not want one.”  

Jenny's gaze had gradually drifted downward as she spoke, until her head was tilted toward the floor.  But then she remembered what Brock had told her though.  She had to keep looking up, find someone in the back of the room and speak as though you are speaking directly to them.  So she raised her head again and saw Trisha Witherspoon, standing in the back with her arms crossed.

“It was hard to raise a baby like me,” Jenny continued.  “My mom did not know it was going to be so hard, but she did a good job.”  Jenny looked to Brock, who nodded at her with his smile.  

“When I was in school I used to get teased,” Jenny told them.  “One mean boy called me Jenny 'Not So' Smart.  Every day he said this and he made ugly faces and noises.  But today I have my own job and my own apartment and three cats that I take care of by myself.”  When she mentioned her cats, Jenny's face lit up into a huge smile.  “I am pro-life because every human life has value.”

Brock then hugged her as the classroom watched.  And with that Brock said, "When you go home after school today, I would like each and every one of you here to walk up to your mother, give her a big hug and say 'Thank you for choosing life and bringing me into this world.'  Life is a good thing.  Life is something to celebrate - not something to destroy."

---

A pile of memories sat in Mrs. Donna Egush-Patel's mind, like rocks in a pile or suds in a bubble bath.  The ones at the top were more accessible, mostly because they were more recent.  Some of the memories were older though, many years older, but they were still on top because of the impact they had on her emotions – the unexpected, the out of the ordinary.  Sometimes old, mysterious memories were connected to newer ones.  Like the memory of her abortion.  She had been 18 years old.  She remembered the young man who impregnated her, she remembered knowing that she should have known better.  She remembered the headache that ran from the front of her skull, straight down to the bottom of her jaw that lasted for days.  But mostly she remembered the ten-year-old boy she saw when she left the clinic that day.  She stood outside the clinic, dazed when, there he was. Walking down the sidewalk, by himself, eating an ice cream cone, with chocolate ice cream all around his mouth.  He looked so content, so happy.  When he stopped a few feet from her, he looked into her eyes.  She remembered those eyes.  She remembered the panic that swept over her... she remembered thinking that he knew what she had just done.    

Donna met Egush-Patel a couple years later.  She just called him Egush.  He reminded her of a Pakistani version of Jimmy Stewart.  He was tall, slim, well-mannered, humble, shy... yet when he asked her out on a date, she hesitated.  Something about Egush made her think about that boy again.  So when Egush asked her to dinner, she said "How about lunch instead?"  Their first official fight was over who should pay the check.  Egush insisted on paying for the lunch, after all he had asked her out.  But she argued that she was a modern woman and she insisted on splitting the bill.  Then Egush surprised her, and himself, when he said he would let her pay the entire check - but only if she would allow him to take her to dinner the following night.  They glared at each other, then broke into a laugh.  It was the first time she had ever seen him laugh.  Egush rarely laughed, in fact.  Always so serious.  

After that they began dating regularly.  He was always very direct, very pragmatic, very to the point.  He made her feel safe, but after six months of dating exclusively, she decided to call it quits.  She suggested they date other people.  Egush pressed her for a reason and she admitted that she could never marry someone who was not a Christian.  She felt as though they were wasting their time by dating each other.  She was unsure of Egush's religion - some "bizarre Hindu religion" that worshiped some "weird 8 armed, blue-skinned humanoid with an eyeball on its forehead" or something like that, she thought.  But again Egush surprised himself and he told her that he would convert to Christianity. 

A year and a half later they were engaged.  As many brides-to-be are, Donna was nervous on the days leading up to the wedding.  She couldn't eat, she couldn't sleep.  She obsessively combed her hair - a bad habit she hadn't partaken in since she had been a teenager.  But now that habit had come back.  And she couldn't seem to concentrate or think straight.  She left her keys in her car one day, with her car door wide open as she went into a movie theater.  She watched the entire movie, went shopping, had lunch then came back out to find that her door was still wide open with her keys still in the ignition.  This wasn't like her... and, she also kept dropping things; drinking cups, her toothbrush, she dropped her change purse right into the toilet one day.  Finally on the night before the wedding, she was at dinner with both of their families, when she excused herself to use the restroom.  Instead of going to the restroom, she slipped out the back door and stood alone staring at the parking lot for several minutes.  It was then that she saw a young boy walking alone, across the parking lot.  It was dark, but she swore it was that same boy - the boy she had seen years earlier, right after her abortion.  The exact same boy with the exact same eyes... 

And now, five years later, on a sunny spring afternoon, in which birds were singing and tulips were sprouting, Donna sat in her car, in the parking lot outside of the Women's Advocate Health Clinic, thinking about that boy.  It had been years ago.  That boy would be twenty by now.  Would she still recognize him if she saw him?  She let out a long sigh.  I have to do this, she convinced herself, opening her car door and stepping out.  It was rare for her to visit Egush's place of work.  She came only two or three times a year.  The last time had been for the Christmas party last December.  But now she came to tell Egush the news.  She was not alone.  Inside her, there was a tiny human being growing.

Inside the clinic, Egush's workday was about to end.  He walked from the operating room, straight past the metal bin containing the day's pile of dismembered body parts.  These body parts had to be properly disposed of.  A couple years earlier, when Egush opened the clinic, he did a cost analysis between having the body parts disposed of on site - a process that would have entailed purchasing special equipment, paying more licensing fees and other training costs - versus the option of paying a professional contractor (who specialized in biological disposals) to come in and take the discarded baby parts to a pathology lab.  Egush decided to train his staff on the "clean up" aspect of post-abortion, but then pay a professional contractor for disposal.  He was aware of a number of abortion clinics that merely wrapped the body parts in heavy bags and dumped them, but Egush would never risk something like that.  He could lose his practice, lose his license and be disgraced.  So he decided to contract out the Sanitize-O disposal agency.  But there was one more option to consider.  The option that no one spoke of... the black market.  He found out about it one day when Hamilton Standish, the friendly handler/driver for Sanitize-O, came in for a pick-up and rather casually mentioned the black market to Egush.  Standish, a blond-haired, middle-aged guy who looked as though he exercised regularly, told Egush that "Not all of the body parts we cart away make it to the pathology labs."

"What do you mean?" Egush asked.

"You know, a lot of the body parts actually make their way to an underground agency and end up being sold on the international market."  

Egush did not respond to Standish's not-so-subtle come-on.  Yet the idea of making money on these body parts instead of spending money on them certainly began wiggling around in his mind until, one day, three months later, Egush asked Standish to step into his office.  Although he had a part-time bookkeeper who came in at least once a week, Egush was highly aware of the day-to-day financial transactions of his business.  So, his first question to Standish was, "How do these abortion clinics that sell body parts to the black market, keep the transactions off their books?"

Standish shrugged, "That's really not something they discuss with me."

"Do you know of any clinics that have been caught?"

Standish had dealt with "amateurs" before and had an entire rap ready to feed Egush.  "No, not a single one.  How it works is like this: I continue making pick-ups here each week, only now I take two bins.  One bin has a few less valuable parts in it, while the other has the bulk of the body parts.  I call my contact, drop off the valuable bin to them, they pay me in cash, which I split with you, then I take the smaller bin to the pathology lab.  

"Won't the lab notice the bins are less full?"

"No," Standish thought of how asinine the question was, then added, "No one there cares."

"Do they have inspectors?  Auditors?"

Standish laughed, "Believe me, no one cares and no one will notice."

"So what happens to the body parts after they go on the black market?" Egush asked.  

Standish raised an eyebrow, as if to ask "Do you really want to know?" then let out a sigh.  "Well, all I know is that there is a number of Asian, African and Middle Eastern networks that provide aborted babies for experiments, medical research, you know.  They even provide babies from 'botched' abortions, that is, babies who are still alive.  These networks sell the eyes, organs, limbs, tissue.  Then also, like in Japan, there are companies that use the fetal tissue from abortions to make facial creams. 

"What?" Egush questioned.

"Beauty creams," Standish continued.  "The parts are listed as 'human collagen' on the labels.  If you ever see 'human collogen' on a face cream label that means there is material in it that is either from child's tissue or from the placenta.  This is forbidden in the United States however."  

Egush had one last question, "How much money are we talking here?"

Standish was still holding the invoice for that day's pick-up in his hand.  "Let me put it this way, one bin would cover your entire yearly fee for disposals."

A month later Egush split his weekly supply of body parts into two bins and gave them to Standish. 

"I am only interested in doing this one time each year," he explained.  Standish didn't object.  But eventually it became twice a year, then five times, and soon enough it became old hat, routine, no risk.  And eventually with each payment that Standish dished over, Egush would contemplate a new spin on his cost analysis.  What if he cut out the middle man?  What if he cut out Standish and took the parts to Standish's contact himself?  Or even hire someone, for 50 bucks, to do it?  The idea sounded preposterous to Egush, yet one afternoon after Standish picked up two bins of body parts, Egush tailed Standish.  Standish nearly lost him twice, and nearly spotted him once, but he finally lead Egush right to the location of his black market connection.  It was a large warehouse on the Westside in a predictably shady neighborhood.  Egush wrote down the address then drove away.  

He kept the address in his wallet, but it wasn't until this day, as he passed the pile of body parts, that he decided to test the waters for himself.  In his mind he could not help but calculate the price tag that such a pile would bring.  He had gotten to know Standish well enough to believe that Standish was low-balling him.  And today was the day to find out.  He just had to figure out how to get the bin out of his office without raising any suspicions.  Just then his head assistant came down the hall.  

"Your wife is here," she told him.

Egush thought he was hearing things.

"Who?"

"Your wife."

---

Brock gazed at the large bright red banner that hung from his office window: “On an average day in America there are 1,876 black babies aborted. Since 1973 there have been 50 million abortions in the U.S. African-American women have accounted for 40% of these abortions even though African-American women only make up 6% of the population in the U.S.  This means African-American women are nearly 7 times as likely as white women to have an abortion.  Over 80% of all abortion clinics are located in predominantly black neighborhoods.”

His organization, DOA (Democrats Opposing Abortion) had rented the office space in the plaza that shared a parking lot with the Woman's Advocate Health clinic.  From their second floor window they had a bird's eye view of the entrance to Egush-Patel's abortion clinic.  Brock and his team hung their banner so that anyone who walked in that parking lot (which meant anyone who exited the abortion clinic) would certainly see their banner.  It was prominent enough that hundreds of people would read it each day.

Brock was flanked by his two partners-in-crime, Charles Chabley and Deronda Butler.  The Glee-some Three-some, they called themselves.  They each wore a tiny, yellow pro-life button on their jackets, the one with a smiley face that had the phrase “smile, your mother chose life” encircling it.

“And so it begins,” Deronda joked.  

The Glee-some Three-some had been DOA's most effective unit in Chicago.  They had closed down three abortion clinics in the last 18 months.  The last one had taken less than 60 days.  As a team they had grown into a cohesive unit that could finish each other's sentences, know what the other was thinking, anticipate each other's moves.  Charles, who relished the role of the bad cop, also had a knack for grant writing and finding off-the-beaten-path sources for donations.  Deronda, who wore her heart on her sleeve, was deeply Christian and had a down-home, honest nature that always shone through.  She spoke with a matter-of-fact truthfulness that gave her an air of having been through it all and seen it all.  Low-income girls, especially black girls, connected with her immediately.  She was like a mother figure, like their own personal Oprah Winfrey.  She was dedicated to the cause, she put in the longest hours, did all the dirty work, filed papers, answered phones and she and was HIV positive.     

A fourth “unofficial” member of their unit was Paul, the "kid in the bowler hat".  Paul looked down from the upper window, ready to adjust the sign if Brock directed him to do so.  Brock waved to him, then gave him a "thumbs up".  Paul, who always wore a bowler hat, was a college student who joined the unit as an intern.  He was a video production whiz and Brock knew there was a very large chance that he would move past DOA and onto one of the high-salaried positions offered by some corporate suiter just as soon as his internship ended.  Brock's only chance to keep him was to convince him that his job was the most fun and most important thing in the world.  To do so, he gave Paul free reign.  Paul was producing a series of videos that would be shown on public access channels in over 30 major cities nation wide.  The videos documented the various conflicts with pro-choice folks that the Glee-some Three-some sought out.  The only rule Brock gave him was that he had to make the pro-choicers look like idiots - which given the tactics that the Glee-some Threesome developed was not very hard to do.  Ideally he wanted the pro-choicers to get so mad at him that they physically attacked him.  He wanted the camera to capture their rage and hatred.  He wanted to portray them as irrational kooks.

Two young black women exited the clinic, one was holding a baby.  A small child was trailing behind them.  As predicted the two women saw the three-some looking up at the banner and they slowed to glare at it.  Brock handed them a flyer announcing a meeting for 7 pm that evening.

"Well, I won't be attending that," the first woman declared.  "My views on abortion are not political; they're personal and as far as I'm concerned your views on abortion are null and void, because you do not have a uterus. Are we clear, sir?"

"I'm familiar with your argument, miss..."

The woman stared at him.  If Brock hadn't flashed her that slick smile of his, she probably would have slapped him.  Instead she conceded.  "My name is Holmita."

"Yes, this argument Holmita, that 'What a woman does with her own body is her business and hers alone' doesn't hold up, because by that same logic you could argue that if woman wants to blow her body up next to a school bus full of children, then that's okay, because its HER body. The thing with abortion is that it is not just her body she is affecting. It is that unborn baby, that living soul she is destroying.  

Holmita, had heard enough, "Look Jack, if you oppose abortion, then don't have one!"

"But that's like saying if you don't support killing people, then don't kill someone.  We have to do better than that."  Deronda could have stepped in at this point, she could always defend Brock's flank - but it thrilled her a bit to see the way Brock countered every aggressive attack with his unflappable certainty.  He was stone, he wasn't budging.  He could insult people right to their face, call them murders basically, but in such a cool, calm and confident manner that sometimes it was just better to sit back and admire.  

"We have laws that prevent people from killing other people Holmita," Brock continued.  "If we want to thrive and evolve as a race, that is something we must do.  We must protect the weak and we must celebrate life - not destroy it."

Holmita was steaming.  Boiling.  Brock could almost see the smoke blowing from her ears.  She had been played.  She grabbed the small child at her side, nearly jerking his hand off.  "You don't have to bring race into it, Asshole!" She yelled as she marched off.

Brock looked up at the banner again.  There was Paul, the boy in the bowler hat.  He had grabbed his video camera the second Brock handed Holmita the flyer.  He was too far away from Brock to have gotten much of a sound recording, but the confrontation and the gestures of Holmita were worth something.  The boy in the bowler hat thought about how he could insert a voice-over in the video and make it work.

At that moment, Donna Egush-Patel exited the clinic.  She had not informed Egush of her pregnancy like she had planned.  It was probably a bad idea to spring it on him at work.  He was preoccupied, busy - but she needed to tell him as soon as possible.  She couldn't hold it to herself a moment longer.  But inside the office was not the right place.  So she told him to meet her in the parking lot in fifteen minutes.  Fine, Egush thought, figuring that would give him time to sneak the baby parts out the back door, to where his SUV was parked.  As Donna left the building, Egush dismissed his receptionist and assistant, then put the baby part container on a dolly.  The container was basically a small cooler.  It reminded him of the dorm-room fridge he had in college as a freshman.  He rolled it out the back door and prepared to hoist it into the cargo carrier of his utility vehicle.  But the bin was too heavy.  

"Oh fuck," Egush muttered to himself.  He wasn't able to get the container into his vehicle... unless... "I'm gonna have to take the bags of body parts out of the container," he muttered to himself.  ",,, then I can throw the empty container into my vehicle and throw each bag back into it..."

---

             "Excuse me Miss," Brock smiled at Donna, who was walking nervously to her car.  He handed her the flyer as she slowed to glance his way.

"There is a discussion panel meeting this evening..." and then he recognized her.  And she recognized him.

"Brock?"  

It had been a decade.  They hadn't spoken since the abortion, literally.  He had not accompanied her to the clinic.  He called her afterward, but she didn't return his calls.  She never wanted to see him again.  But now here he was, right in front of her.

"Donna?  Are you..."  This was too weird.  The last time Brock saw her was when she told him she was going to the abortion clinic.  And now, ten years later, here she was coming out of an abortion clinic.  Brock didn't know whether she had the abortion or not all those years ago.  He had called her, tried contacting her friends and family, but...

"Are you pregnant?" he asked.

"Oh my god!" Donna cried, then ran off.  Paul, the kid in the bowler hat kept the camera rolling as Donna ran around to the side of the building, right to where Egush's SUV was parked.  There, she saw Egush literally holding a bag of aborted baby parts as she rushed up to him and declared, "Oh Egush, it's a baby!" as she wrapped herself in his arms. 

The blood in Egush's body left him as she clenched him.
"It's... it's..."  Egush stuttered until Donna interrupted.
"I'm pregnant!" she exclaimed.

Egush stared at her, noticing the flyer Brock had handed her just moments before.  She was still clenching it.

"We are having a baby," and he nodded at her.