PARSLEY AND COCA-COLA  

I sat on the toilet, peed on the pregnancy test, and waited the longest minute of my life. Positive. I had a panic attack and then felt almost happy; I rubbed my belly tenderly. Those scenes of girls in bathrooms waiting to find out if they’re pregnant had always seemed pretty lame to me. “This is pathetic,” I thought. To be honest, though, I’m used to being pathetic, which may be why I identify with characters like Jessica Jones, or Penny Lane in Almost Famous. I stood up, washed my face, and walked out of the bathroom. I collapsed on the bed.  

I’m not great at getting bad news. Some people say I’m in denial, but really I just have a hard time believing bad shit only happens to me. I’ve been cheated on and mugged, my pets have been run over and poisoned, I never met my dad, and I lost my mom a few years ago. And now there’s a pregnancy test with two pink lines in my right desk drawer. So I had a blood test done just to be sure. Positive. I didn’t know home tests could only give false negatives, never false positives. I wasn’t ready to bring a kid into this fucked-up world.  

Right then, “Desorden” by Maria Rodés was playing on my Alexa. I remember it perfectly. That song pretty much sums up my life: I’m trapped in an infinite loop of bad decisions with consequences that are never not dramatic. I take the same road over and over, always forgetting it’s the wrong one, and even when it looks like I have things under control, something tells me maybe I don’t.  

You might think I’m exaggerating, that an unwanted pregnancy isn’t a catastrophe or anything, but for me it was. It was the biggest catastrophe of my life. A fucking tsunami that wiped out every one of my hopes and dreams, even the mistakes I hadn’t gotten to make yet.  

I sent Gerardo a text. “I’m pregnant,” I said. “Really? Awesome!” he texted back, followed by a string of the dumbest emojis ever. “We’re gonna be parents, Diana. That’s fucking great!” “Great? Fuck no. No way.” “Wait, what? You wanna get rid of it? You’re fucking kidding.”  

Okay, I made that up … There is no Gerardo. I just wanted to add some romance to the story. I got pregnant from a one-night stand. I didn’t know the guy’s name and had zero interest in finding out. His performance was underwhelming. Yup, I got knocked up by a terrible lay.  

I’m the kind of girl who gets used as an argument against abortion. The kind who hooks up with the first guy who sweet-talks her on a night out. The kind who should be on birth control, get her tubes tied, or keep her legs closed. I let total strangers grope me. I like parties, getting wasted, making a drunken ass of myself.  

The idea of going through with the pregnancy never crossed my mind. So I looked into my options. I googled “abortion” and found a few clinics, all in Mexico City. Too far. I read up on a whole range of shady home-abortion methods. Stuffing parsley up your vagina. Using a mix of Coca-Cola, aspirin, and black sapote as a vaginal enema. Drinking rue tea, oregano tea, star anise tea. Stabbing your uterus with a coat hanger. One click after another led me to a video of a fetus fighting for its life while screaming “Ouch, ouch, that’s my foot!” I laughed, then I felt sad.  

I came across women who’d had abortions talking about hemorrhages, blood clots as big as planets, painful curettages, hypovolemic shock, and rotten, worm-eaten intestines. Tales of remorse, pain, and terror. Somewhere in these stories, I heard a girl mention a drug called misoprostol. I googled it.  

Misoprostol—according to Wikipedia—is used to treat gastric ulcers, but it also makes your uterus contract. It was Brazilian women living in favelas who discovered it could end pregnancies. The World Health Organization later studied the drug and authorized it as a safe abortion method. It was a no-brainer, I grabbed the 500 pesos I had left and headed out.  

There was a Farmacia Guadalajara on the corner of my street, but the pharmacist asked for a prescription. I kept walking and reached a Farmacia del Ahorro, but the drug cost 600 pesos. I sighed and anxiously continued the search. I tried five other drug-stores. Most of them required scripts for misoprostol; the ones that didn’t charged more than I could afford. Tears rolled down my cheeks, and I had another panic attack. “What am I going to do?” I thought. 

I walked around for at least an hour, or that’s what it felt like. I cried the whole time. Suddenly, in the distance, I saw a chubby Dr. Simi mascot dancing to a song by Maluma. I picked up my pace, walked into Farmacias Similares, and asked for misoprostol. The clerk, a fortyish-year-old woman, gave me a pitying look and said: “You’re in luck. On Mondays, we sell it for 380 pesos.” “I’ll take a box, please.” “Sure thing. Another ten pesos will get you a twelve-pack of 800 mg ibuprofen.” “I’ll take that, too.” I paid, grabbed my stuff, and ran out.  

I got home and immediately reread the information I’d found online. I read it three times, until everything was clear. My palms were sweating, I was terrified. All the abortion websites said not to take the pills alone, but I didn’t have anyone. My mom died five years ago after a long fight with cancer that carved her down to the bone. I had her cremated with the money I got from her pension, put the ashes in her bedroom, and shut the door for good. Everything in there is just the way she left it. A lawyer who accepted payment in sex helped me with her pension. Since then I’ve basically been going to school and living off the 10,000 pesos deposited in my account every month. I’m a student at an Opus Dei university and have some friends there, but none of them approve of abortion. Unless, of course, the abortion is performed in Houston and followed by a trip to the mall. 

My only companion is my cat, Ricardo. I adopted him the day after my mom died and raised him in a box under a lamp for extra warmth. He was so little I had to feed him special milk from a baby bottle. Because I cared for my mom while she was sick, it’s helped to have someone who depends on me, someone who needs me to come home. It keeps me alive, away from temptation and ruin.  

I read the instructions one last time, turned on the TV, logged on to Netflix, and found a good movie for an abortion: Mean Girls. I opened the box of misoprostol, took out four pills, put a drop of water on each one, and placed them under my tongue. I left them there for half an hour. They were bitter as hell, and swallowing was an epic feat. I threw up twice in my mouth and started shaking almost immediately. I washed what was left of the pills down with a little chamomile tea, then finished the movie and put on another, Legally Blonde. The chills got worse, and I pulled the blankets around me with Ricardo on my lap. I threw up and then had diarrhea. I wasn’t bleeding, and the cramps weren’t any worse than PMS. Legally Blonde ended, and I clicked on Miss Congeniality, put another four pills under my tongue, and waited for them to dissolve. It was easier this time: I’d gotten used to the taste, so it didn’t make me gag anymore. I washed down what was left with mint tea and made myself a quesadilla with panela cheese and turkey. Then the pain started: it was like a bad period, nothing too crazy. I took an ibuprofen and got into bed with a hot compress over my belly.  

A sharp tug in my uterus and an uncontrollable urge to push sent me running to the bathroom. I pushed, and a stream of blood and clots turned the toilet bowl red. The pain got more intense: it was way worse than a period now. The heavy bleeding lasted for a minute or so. I had another panic attack and wept inconsolably. I was terrified. I didn’t want to die, not in the middle of all this blood and shit. I’d always imagined a more rock-and-roll death, something involving an overdose at least. I slid to the floor and wrapped my arms around the base of the toilet, sobbing with fear, anger, and grief. I wanted a Gerardo to tell me I was doing great.  

Then the pain eased up. I stuck my hand in the water and felt around for the baby but all I found was a load of clots like the kind you get with your period. I flushed. I got undressed, ran the hot water, got into the shower, crouched, and started to push like a bitch with her litter. I pushed as hard as I could and squeezed out a stream of blood and a clot the size of a guava. I lay down on the tiles and stayed there for around half an hour. Then I got up, finished showering, and fed Ricardo. I made myself instant chicken ramen with a ton of lime, some Ruffles instead of tortillas, and an ice-cold Coca-Cola. I did the exact opposite of what the abortion instructions said, which was to eat light, drink Gatorade, and avoid anything that could upset your stomach. Maybe I did exactly the opposite because I wanted things to end badly, like with me in the hospital or jail or both. I watched Almost Famous and cried, as usual. The cramps came and went, and the diarrhea was annoying but manageable. My abortion lacked drama. I’d read about hemorrhages, excruciating pain. This was less a tragedy than a bad period plus the flu. I was also pissed that for the first time in my life it seemed like something was going to work out.  

I put the last four pills under my tongue and waited, almost happy, for them to dis- solve. The diarrhea had stopped, and there was no nausea or chills. Maybe a low-grade fever. I clicked on Knocked Up, rolled a joint, and opened a Heineken. When the pain came back it made me want to push so bad I busted out laughing. I went into the bathroom, sat on the toilet, and pushed hard. A bunch of huge clots and a wine-red liquid gushed from my vagina.  

I sat on the floor and stuck my hand in the toilet. There it was: a little sac the size of my pinkie with a rosy bean floating inside it. I sighed with relief and smiled, then tossed it back in and flushed.