"The Instructions" by Jessica Leeder
The pills were divided between two packages, one orange, the other green. Ivy lined them up on a rag-woven placemat like Matchbox cars in pole position. The notion of them there, in great Aunt Etta’s kitchen, was out of place—Aunt Etta never kept toys. She made games out of teaching her grandniece practical skills: how to light the gas stove, how to read labels for sodium, how to tie on a plastic rain bonnet to avoid a ruined perm. Ivy once spent as much time as she could at Aunt Etta’s, reveling in her aunt’s attention and studying her curious habits.
Being back flooded Ivy with memories, but also with guilt about what she had come here, of all places, to do. Ivy glanced out the kitchen window at the empty driveway. She had parked her SUV in the garage but the door refused to shut properly. Ivy hoped no one would notice the three-inch gap below the door. People in her aunt’s little town had a habit of popping by to offer help if they noticed something out of order.
The pharmacist assured Ivy that the print-out that came with her pills would answer all of her questions. Recruiting the sugar bowl and the salt shaker to weigh down the sheet’s stubborn creases, Ivy took a deep breath and began to read. “Two medicines must be used for the medical termination of pregnancy: mifepristone and misoprostol,” she read. The paper, thin and translucent, reminded her of the delicate Bible pages her aunt used to flip through as they lay reading before bed, tucked into side-by-side twins. Propped up by her pillows and peering through reading glasses, Aunt Etta would lick her middle finger and flick, flick, flick through the tissuey pages of the New Testament to find her verse. Whispering the words aloud, she would underline them in blue Bic and repeat them once more before returning the book to its crocheted doily on the nightstand between her bed and Ivy’s. Did that bed ever belong to anyone else? A man? Ivy wondered but never asked, for fear of threatening her aunt’s sturdiness. After the Bible, she picked up her library novel, often a thick Maeve Binchy. Etta seemed to like reading about predicaments between women and men.
Ivy’s predicament required the pills and perhaps a dose of luck to untangle. “A medical termination may not be suitable if your pregnancy is assessed at more than 63 days’ duration,” the instructions read. Ivy guessed she was pregnant two weeks earlier when morning coffee nauseated her. Later, she burned dinner when the smell of ground beef browning sent her running to the bathroom. The next day, at a downtown drug store, Ivy paid cash for a Clearblue Rapid pregnancy test and a pack of white Tic-Tacs. She stopped at a gas station bathroom and hovered over the grimy toilet seat, thighs shaking, while she peed on the test. When the ‘+’ sign appeared, Ivy vomited into the sink. Slurping tap water from her cupped hand and staring into the mirror, Ivy wanted to cry. She stared for a minute at her reflection, the skin that had gone crepey beneath her eyes, the flaky bits at the sides of her nostril, the errant threads of silver that behaved differently from the rest of her hair, poking up from her scalp like wires. The hands that gripped the sink looked more like her mother’s than her own; their lines seemed strange, all of a sudden now, but also so familiar. Ivy shook her head to jolt herself back into action. She wiped her mouth with a rough paper towel and used it to wrap up the test, which she tossed into the garbage.
How pregnant was she now? On her phone, she scrolled the calendar and did backwards math. It worked out to around 60 days, but she couldn’t be precise unless she could pinpoint the date of implantation—she knew this from all those years they had tried for babies.
This was not one of those times. There was no they, only Ivy and an old flame she reignited. A few especially drudgerous months choked with laundry, meals, dishes, nose-wiping, butt-wiping, storytelling, tucking in, tidying, changing pee-soaked sheets in the middle of the night — that grinding, run-of-the-mill parenting circuit — left her with the sense that she must be entitled to something. An endurance prize. Once she rationalized it, she began to connive. Then, her husband went away on a business trip. Ivy hired a babysitter. While her kids shoveled in popcorn and watched Disney, Ivy was in a room at the Sleep-EZ airport motel getting exactly what she wanted: to fuck someone she owed nothing to. Someone she would not later negotiate splitting up the chores that ticker-taped through her mind, robbing her of orgasms and sleep.
Now, the penance for those hours of pleasure. Ivy bent over the instructions. “The First Step: One tablet of mifepristone will be taken orally.” She read aloud, the same as she did when she was trying a new recipe. There was no danger of Aunt Etta overhearing. The 91-year-old was in hospital, recovering from a bad fall. Ivy got the news in a shakily handwritten letter, and was filled with shame. She had long since let the distractions of adulthood reduce their relationship to a mail-based exchange. Etta sent regular letters and cards; Ivy meant to write back but rarely did. Miraculously, Aunt Etta’s affection had not yet eroded.
“Go and visit the house sometime? I hate to think of the place sitting empty,” Etta wrote from the hospital. “Maybe you’d enjoy a walk down memory lane. The key is in the same spot.”
The invitation was well-timed. Ivy told her husband she needed to go help Aunt Etta with some chores. He seemed to believe her. Still, she waited until she was halfway there to stop at a drug store and fill her prescription. Having an abortion was not something Ivy had ever imagined. Abortions were for other women. Women with exciting lives. Certainly, abortions were not for mothers of grade school children, not for premenopausal 45-year-olds facing the onset of sexual invisibility.
Still bent over the paper, Ivy continued to read. “Mifepristone is an anti-hormone. It acts by blocking the effects of progesterone, a hormone that is needed for pregnancy to continue.” It sounded like such a capable little pill. Ivy picked up the green packet, tore it open and tapped the pill into her left palm. Placing the pill on her tongue, she took a swig of water and swallowed it down. Of course, there wasn’t any sensation, yet, just the uncertainty of whether things inside her could be coaxed undone.
Ivy looked to see what came next. “Some women will experience bleeding between the first and second steps of treatment.” Ivy crossed and uncrossed her fingers. “Please call your health professional if you are at all worried.” Ivy eyed the black rotary phone on the wall between the kitchen and bedroom. It had an extra-long cord that stretched to the sink so that Aunt Etta could talk to Lily, her neighbour, while doing the dishes. Would Lily notice the light on in the kitchen? Ivy snatched at the chain that dangled from the pendant, clicking the bulb off. She had to bend a bit lower to see the paper. “The Second Step” involved all four remaining pills. Ivy wasn’t to swallow them until at least 24 hours had passed.
Needing a distraction, she prowled the house, running her fingers over familiar objects: the burlap sofa, the hope chest, the spoon collection on the wall. Ivy opened the hall closet hoping to discover something. There was only ordinary miscellany: a dusty holiday wreath, a vacuum, and five umbrellas.
Ivy closed the closet. Without Aunt Etta, the house and its contents seemed forlorn.
The wicker basket beside Aunt Etta’s armchair was piled with newspapers and balls of yarn. Dropping into the chair, Ivy rummaged until she found a crossword her aunt hadn’t finished. She worked at it until it was too dark to see the clues. When the cuckoo clock announced 7 p.m., Ivy flicked on the TV. She found Vanna White twinkling at the letter board and Pat Sajak at the wheel. After, there was Alex Trebek, annoyingly full of answers. Ivy watched the game shows, just as she would have with Aunt Etta. There was comfort in mimicking her aunt’s TV habits. When Alex signed off, Ivy watched two reruns of Friends and an hour-long medical drama that she couldn’t really focus on. When the evening news blared onto the screen, she flicked the TV off and restored the quiet. Leaning back in the chair, Ivy shut her eyes and listened to the wind suck at the windows. She looked at her phone—no new messages— and tried not to count how many hours were left until Step Two, but she knew anyway. Thirteen.
Retreating to the bedroom, Ivy pulled on one of her aunt’s long flannel nightgowns and climbed beneath the cool sheets. She had never slept there without having Aunt Etta an arm’s length away. She looked over at the other still-made bed and felt hollow, corroded by uncertainty. Ivy reached over to the nightstand, feeling for the Bible. Her fingers landed on the empty doily instead of the familiar, pebbled black leather cover. Aunt Etta must have taken it with her. Ivy shut out the light. Wide awake and flattened by the futility of wishing time would speed up, she waited for her eyes to adjust to the dark. When she could finally make out the drop ceiling’s aluminum grid, she traced it with her eyes, over and over, resisting the glowing lure of the alarm clock.
When daylight began to seep through the blinds, Ivy was still staring at the grid. At 7:30, she gave in to her bladder, but before throwing back the covers, she hesitantly slipped a hand into her underwear. When she examined her fingers, they had a disappointing, bloodless slick.
In the kitchen, Ivy put the kettle on. She shuffled over to the table and scanned the instructions while waiting for the whistle. “24 to 48 hours after you take the mifepristone you take the misoprostol tablets. Misoprostol causes contractions, which help push out the contents of the uterus,” she read. “You will take four misoprostol tablets from the orange pouch at the same time.” Ivy tossed two round bags of orange pekoe into the Brown Betty and stood in the centre of the kitchen appraising the tired room.
Everything needed a good cleaning. Decorative plates and porcelain knick-knacks crammed every available surface. Ivy ran her index finger over the glazed wing of a light blue chicken, bisecting its dust coating. Give the kitchen a deep scrub, that’s what she would do for the next three-and-a-half hours. Until it was time for Step Two.
While the sink filled with hot, soapy water, Ivy collected her aunt’s figurines and set them on the counter for washing. She wiped down the surfaces, standing on a chair to reach the cobwebs, dust and dead house flies layered atop the cupboards. She whisked the kitchen broom along the kick plates, stabbing roughly into corners to loosen stubborn detritus. To reach the crumbs under the table and chairs, Ivy had to fling the broom out beneath them and drag it back over the old pine floor. On the third toss, the broom hit at a funny angle and dislodged one of the floorboards. “Shit,” Ivy said, dropping to her knees and crawling under the table. When she picked up the board, Ivy saw there was no subfloor beneath it. A vintage-looking cookie tin was nestled between the joists. Ivy lifted it up, brushed the dust off the lid, and tried to open it. The lid was jammed on so tightly that she needed to stand up for leverage. She was just getting to her knees when the cuckoo began its 11 o’clock bellows. “Shit,” she said again. Setting the tin on a chair, Ivy washed her hands, dried them and tore into the orange pill packet. “Hold the tablets in your mouth, between the cheek and gum, for 30 minutes. You can rinse any remnants down with water,” the instructions read. She dumped the whole handful into her mouth at once, wriggling her tongue around to divide the tablets evenly between her cheeks. She shut her eyes and waited to feel the pills dissolving.
“After this you can expect some vaginal bleeding, cramps and to pass some pregnancy tissue,” the instructions read. The uncertainty of how painful it might be made Ivy’s stomach clench. When the force of her cramps transitioned from anxiety to the medication, the contractions triggered full-body throbs. Sweating and clutching at her hips as spasms bolted through her, Ivy could no longer bear to sit upright and lowered herself to the kitchen floor. Huffing air, she was trying to control her breathing the way she learned to in those long-ago prenatal classes, when the sound of a knock made her gasp. Ivy shut her eyes against the thrum of panic. Breathe, breathe, breathe. Knock, knock, knock. Someone was rapping against the kitchen window. As long as Ivy stayed on the floor, her back against the cupboards, she couldn’t be seen. She willed whoever was there to go away. Three more knocks. Then, a fourth and fifth, but the rhythm was off, noncommittal. Wincing, Ivy got into a crouch to sneak a glimpse up at the window. Nobody was there. It was only the wind, knocking the lower branches of an old white pine against the glass.
The relief that washed over Ivy was doused by an intense urge to use the toilet. Ivy crawled into the bathroom as fast as she could and twisted the lock on the doorknob. Then, against a backdrop of Pepto-Bismol tile, she gave in to her body while it did what she had forced it to.
It was nearly dark when Ivy re-emerged into the half-cleaned kitchen. In her palm, a blue washcloth was folded over a clump of giblet-like remains. What was she supposed to do next? Ivy consulted the instructions. “It is recommended to rest after taking the misoprostol tablets.” The paper was no longer any help. Ivy scanned the kitchen. The porcelain figures she had carefully collected were still clustered beside the sink, which she had forgotten to empty. The water inside it was grey and cold and sad-looking without any soap suds. The pile of dirt Ivy had swept was still in the centre of the floor, which had a gap like a missing tooth where the one board had popped loose. The cookie tin sat unopened on the chair where she’d left it. Picking it up, Ivy hugged the tin to her belly and pried at the lid. It came off with a thwop, revealing a pair of knitted, baby blue booties and a black and white Polaroid of a young couple holding hands. The woman wore Aunt Etta’s shy smile and a dress that did not conceal her pregnancy.
Knock, knock, knock. The staccato jolted Ivy. Glancing reflexively at the window, she saw that the tree branches were still. Then, three more knocks, loud and impatient, on the front door. Ivy rested the washcloth of remains in the tin alongside the booties. She refitted the lid and lowered the tin between the joists, then slid the floorboard back into place. Standing up, she glanced down at her hands, checking for blood. There was only dust. Ivy wiped her hands on her jeans and went to answer the door.
Jessica Leeder is a Canadian writer and independent journalist who works in fiction and narrative nonfiction. She has an M.S. in journalism from Columbia University and her reported work has lately appeared in The Walrus, MaRS Magazine and Chatelaine; new fiction is forthcoming in the West Trade Review. Jessica’s work has been recognized with an Emmy Award, a National Magazine Award and a Digital Publishing Award, among other honors. The Instructions is Jessica’s first published piece of fiction. She is at work on a collection of short stories and a novel. She lives in Ontario and can be found on Twitter @jessleeder.
