“Let’s go see Purity,” I say.
“She’s gonna text me when she’s ready.”
“I thought you had a boyfriend.”
“Look, don’t over-interpret my post-Apocalypse glow and innocent hand holding for anything seductive, ok?”
Clarity’s head is down, looking at her purse while she digs through it.
“I’m very happy with my boyfriend. He’s Latino, just in case you were wondering.”
“I wasn’t, but thanks.”
We both laugh.
“Is he really Latino?”
“Yes he is. Do you got a problem with that?”
“No I don’t, sister. I believe love is equal opportunity in this universe.”
Clarity looks up at me.
“I never said I loved the motherfucker!”
“Oh you’re funny.”
“I have to go to the bathroom,” Clarity says.
“Let’s find one.”
When she comes out I’m waiting for her. There’s a janitor with a mop bucket going in right after.
“You won’t believe what just happened in there.”
“What happened?”
“I was sitting in this stall and there’s blood seeping through from the next one over. There’s this drain but there’s so much blood not all of it’s going down the drain. So I’m like, ‘If you want your privacy I’ll give you your privacy but if you want help I can call someone.’ I knock on the divider. I’m like, ‘Hello?’ Then I realize there’s nobody in there. When I get out I stand in front of the stall and push the door in. It’s period blood and huge clots but it makes me think of this black girl who gave birth in a Burger King bathroom, not even knowing she was pregnant because she was too fat.” When Clarity comes out she tells me this story and is like: “Why do black girls always give birth in Burger King bathrooms?”
I say I heard of one giving birth in a Walmart—and this one was white.
“The real problem is these bitches who get so fat they can’t tell that they’re pregnant!”
“Exactly! And how do you not notice that you haven’t had your period in nine months!? I mean you’re the girl, you tell me: at what month do you finally fucking notice that you haven’t had your period? Six? Seven?”
“Some fat girls or skinny girls don’t get their periods.”
“Oh, I see.”
“Like athletes.”
“Right. Or fat motherfucking white trash motherfuckers that weigh like six-hundred pounds.”
“Anyway I thought there was a dead baby in there. Like when I pushed that door open it was going to be some tiny little black baby in the toilet while his mom was off riding rollercoasters with her friends, and I was imagining myself doing baby CPR on this little corpse and nothing—I mean nothing!—would bring this little guy back to life!”
“Clarity. Chill. There was no little baby corpse. It was just period blood. You’re off in your imagination.”
“Yeah but somebody finds those babies. And somebody does baby CPR after they fish that little baby out of a toilet filled with piss and shit and blood and they have to do mouth to mouth on a baby who’s covered in his mother’s shit chunks. I mean if you’re going to have a baby in a public restroom at least have the decency to flush.”
“Clarity. As your rollercoaster-riding partner I think you need to picture a field with green grass and daisies or something. The dead baby in the bathroom thing is going too far.”
“There wasn’t a dead baby in there.”
“No.”
“It was just period blood.”
“Right.”
“But it could have been a baby.”
“But it wasn’t.”
“I just imagine Asha.” Clarity is crying. “What if Asha had been a Burger King baby? Or a Walmart baby? Or a Six Flags baby? You know some hospitals now have drop boxes like they have at the library designed to drop off your baby if you can’t take care of it?”
“Yeah, well, it’s the economy.”
“These boxes are lined with foam and black duct tape so the baby has a soft place to land when the parents drop it off.”
“I doubt it’s duct tape but I know what you mean.”
“Imagine if you’re that baby. Imagine spending the night in some drop box at a hospital, looking up through the slit where your mother says goodbye for the last time, and then she shuts the lid and pushes you through like that slot in Lecter’s cell and it’s like slam! and then on the other side is all this fluorescent light and doctors and nurses in scrubs wearing blue footies and those blue caps to cover their heads so none of their hair contaminates the samples and that would be your new home. That would be your new home. Guess it beats drowning in a toilet at Six Flags. But. But. You know—”
“Clarity.”
“What, my rollercoaster partner?”
“I think we need to get you a drink.”
“Ok, that sounds like a good idea. It’s too early for alcohol, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, but I’m talking like something with some sugar in it.”
Clarity grabs my bicep.
“Ok,” she says, sniffling. “I just keep thinking of Asha.”
“Why don’t you call her?”
“Ok,” she says. “Good idea.”
“Hold onto me and call her and I’ll take us to get you a Slurpee or something.”
She has her phone out and is scrolling through her contacts.
“Ok, a sugar drink is a good idea,” she says. “Hello? Is Asha there? Please. Let me talk to Asha.”