Emma

Dad's girlfriend and Dad dated off and on throughout my childhood after my parents' divorce when I was nine. Rumor has it that he proposed to her during the time of his chemo/radiation at the Mayo Clinic for pancreatic cancer, though they never got married.  They broke up before I got involved in his care, after they did exploratory surgery at Mayo and realized the cancer had spread everywhere and he only had six weeks to live. But Dad’s girlfriend was at his funeral.  I remember she asked our permission to put something in his casket. A picture, I think.  Or maybe a flower.

What I really remember about Dad's girlfriend was that she was the head of the anti-abortion movement in Iowa City, where I grew up.  When I was about ten Dad and Dad’s girlfriend sent me into the parking lot of a gynecologist with a huge stack of anti-abortion fliers to stick underneath the windshield wipers of those who parked there. The reason why they sent me was because it was illegal-- trespassing--and they told me to play dumb if the fuzz came.  The fuzz didn't come. I remember I only stuck a couple of fliers on the cars, then I threw the rest away and walked home.

My dad and I protested at the local women's clinic-- the Emma Goldman clinic.  At that time, Iowa City had established an ordinance stating that protestors couldn't stand together or be within fifty feet of one another while protesting (to try to stem the tide of times the protestors would accost women trying to get inside).  The staff at Emma Goldman took my dad and I's picture when we stood together. “Smile,” my dad whispered, putting his arm around my shoulders.  

The only other thing I remember was a guy walking by and saying, "How would you feel if your daughter got raped?" My dad put his arm around me and said, "This is my daughter." Then the Emma Goldman staff woman took another picture, standing in the doorway, hip holding the door open, ready to escape back into the safety of the inside.

Six years later I went into the Emma Goldman Clinic when I was in need of their services. I was terrified that there would be a poster on the wall with my picture on it: Enemy Against Women's Rights or something, or that the staff would recognize me from that little kid self.  But they didn't.

I had been driven to Emma for a rape kit to be performed. I was seventeen.  I remember feeling sad because the doctor was so nice. She spoke kindly and she offered to testify for me. I laid back and stared at the mobile of butterflies floating above my head and I wanted to tell her what I had done when I was a child. I wanted to confess.  I wanted to apologize.  I watched the butterflies float above my head and thought about how nice that was, that they had remembered that a woman might need something to watch, and that butterflies were nicer than posters of kitties, and that before the butterflies were all the way around their breezy circle this would be over.