🏁 Week 6: Tug-of-war

This week’s update is a short one: just a single scene.

I sat down to write a fight between Mira’s parents. I knew this scene would have to do most of the work of explaining and justifying Mira’s lifelong interest in the resilience problem in Life. This scene would have to show the extent to which, as a child, Mira feels herself pulled in different directions, buffeted by forces that threaten to tear her apart.

As I thought about this scene over the course of several weeks, an image occurred to me: a stable Life pattern (Mira) with two gliders or spaceships approaching (her parents). The spaceships graze the stable pattern, and in doing so, they disturb its equilibrium; they pull off bits of it. They manage to survive and continue on their way, but what they leave behind is altered, damaged. This, I imagine, is the way Mira sees herself, and she wants to fashion herself into a pattern that would be able to persist and survive and thrive through the spaceships’ encroachment.

With this image in mind, I began to think of a tug-of-war fight, each of Mira’s parents wanting something different for her, neither paying much attention to what she herself wants. Here’s what I wrote:

This scene is about teenage pregnancy and abortion; if these topics are uncomfortable for you, I recommend you skip the excerpt below.

It is after dinner. Mira is supposed to be doing her homework, but instead she is on the family computer experimenting with Life. She has taken a FORTRAN program distributed in one of the LIFELINE newsletters and made it her own by rewriting in BASIC to run on the Commodore PET her mother bought earlier that year.

She is playing a game she has invented. What began as a flower-shaped oscillator in the middle of the screen is by now barely recognizable. From the edge of the screen, she shoots gliders at the flower to see what will happen to it. Sometimes, when the glider reaches it, it explodes and leaves behind an ash of blinkers and still lives. Other times, it disappears altogether. In between gliders, she modifies the pattern, attempting to stabilize it — to rescue it — while keeping it as close as possible to the original.

She is wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt. She is still far away from showing a bump, but the jeans she normally wears have started to feel tight. She feels slightly nauseous. There is something inside her and it is changing everything. She wishes she could go back, wishes she could undo it.

Her parents are in the kitchen. They are talking quietly. They don’t want her to overhear.

They had both been home early when she came home from school earlier today. They were sitting in the living room, waiting for her.

Her father had gripped her tightly: “We’ll help you, baby. We’re going to do right by this child.”

Her mother had held her at arm’s length, asked her how she was feeling. “Mira, sweetheart. This is a gift.” But strain had showed on her face.

Mira doesn’t know how they found out. She certainly hadn’t told them.

Now she can hear their voices rising in the kitchen above the sounds of washing up. Each time they interrupt each other, their voices get a little bit louder. They are fighting again.

Mira’s mother reasons: “We can send her away to your sister’s in California for the year. By the time she comes back, the baby will be born and adopted. No one will have to know.”

“I will not have my flesh and blood raised in some stranger’s home.”

Mira’s mother hisses: “Who’s going to take care of this child? I won’t have Mira doing it. She needs to be back in school.”

“Family is the most important—“

Mira’s mother speaks over him: “Are you going to take care of the baby? Babies need diapers changed. They need to be fed. I remember when Mira was a baby. You were always somewhere else whenever her diaper needed—“

“That is not true. I changed—“

“It took me ten years to build my career back up after I stopped to take care of Mira. I’ve finally reached a position that I like, where I’m happy, where I’m challenged. I’m not giving that up.”

“Your career. It’s always about your career. Can’t you think about someone else for a change? Think of Mira. We can’t ask her to give up her relationship with her child. Don’t you want to be part of your grandson’s life?”

“Who said anything about a grandson? We have no idea whether it will be a boy or a girl.”

“I said grandson for example. For example.”

Mira’s fingers are still tapping the keys, but she can no longer focus on the screen. She wishes she could get her transistor radio, plug in and turn up the volume and drown out her parents’ fight. But to do that, she’d have to go through the kitchen.

Heavy footsteps recede. A door slams. There is silence at last, though it is a poisonous, resentful silence.

Mira’s mother comes into the living room.

“Oh, sweetheart. I’m sorry you heard all that.” She kneels by the chair. “You may have to go away for a little while. Maybe for the whole school year. But you’ll be back before long. Never forget that the life you are carrying inside you is a precious thing. And I will always, always love you.”

Later, her father says good night: “I’m proud of you, baby. You’re going to be a great mother.”

Mira cries during math club that week, and afterwards, she confesses everything to the teacher who leads it. The next week, the teacher cancels math club meeting and instead drives her after school to an underground clinic.

Mira bleeds sporadically and has cramps for two weeks afterward. She cries often during those two weeks, and in the weeks afterwards. She cries for herself, and for the life she had briefly sheltered inside her own body.

My research while writing this scene was primarily about pregnancy and abortion: how the body changes during the first trimester of pregnancy, how pregnancy tests work, what abortion was like in the ‘70s. Still, I know I’ve barely scratched the surface!

If you have any feedback on this scene — things I should know about pregnancy or abortion, what it might feel like as a teenage girl to have an abortion, etc — please let me know! I’d love to know anything I can do to make this scene more sensitive.

I know this isn't the most pleasant scene to read, so if you've made it this far: today, more than ever, thanks for sticking with me!

Justin