The color appears red but on closer examination, more like wine — a Cabernet, not Burgundy or Chianti. At that place, tall trees create shadows, causing the color to darken more.
When walking, I can see the sign a good five minutes before I reach the spot. It juts out toward the sidewalk, where a narrow driveway leads back under the trees to a parking lot. After leaving the house and walking up my quiet street of midcentury modern houses to the busy avenue, I look for the sign, trying to decide if I should cross to the opposite side of the street or not. There’s only one traffic light between my house and the sign. Since so many cars travel that stretch of Sonoma Avenue, it’s dangerous to cross at any point other than the light.
***
They claim women will regret the decision later. Thirty-four years have passed since I made the choice, and I have never regretted it. Not once.
Like many women in my generation, I did not want my mother’s life. A stay-at-home mom, Jane Somlo had the bad luck to marry a man in the military. For my mother, this meant an exceedingly lonely life.
My mother raised three daughters, often alone. She also had to pick up and move at a moment’s notice, going to a state, or even a country, she had never been before. Our old living room rug was a metaphor for my mother’s life. In some places we lived, the pale gray-green rug was too small, leaving a bare floor obscenely showing around the edges. In other apartments or houses, the rug ended up too large, and my mother was forced to roll up the edges, and hide the unsightly lump behind the couch.
After years of single motherhood and moves, my mother steadily sink down. At night, she drank, one Seagram’s Seven and ginger ale after another, sitting alone in the dark den, the TV giving off weak light, as she talked to herself.
Not becoming my mom meant avoiding alcohol. I also understood that getting married and having children would trap me in a miserable life. Since this was what I had known as a child, how could it be otherwise?
***
I live in a small city in Northern California. The weather is perfect for walking, as well as growing grapes for world-class wines. My snug one-story house sits a mile from downtown. Days I want some exercise, I hoof it to and from the library, instead of getting in the car. Unless I cross the street at the light in front of the French-American Charter School, I am forced to pass the sign.
***
I never wanted children. Now that my fertility ticking clock of has stopped, I still haven’t changed my mind. Though I don’t regret not bringing children into the world, I do wish I’d had loving parents. If that wish had come true, my feelings about children might have been different.
It took decades for me to understand what I missed, growing up with parents who weren’t exactly on the job as nurturers, mentors, teachers, and even friends. It took decades because you don’t know what you don’t know until you step out of your tight little box.
***
As far back as I can remember, walking has been my therapy. During these meandering strolls, I am sometimes so lost in my head, I don’t notice much around me. Other days, I take pleasure in the gardens bursting with fiery orange poppies and red roses, and the lavender with its myriad slender green stems, tipped in purple buds. If I’m in the mood, I concentrate on a Buddhist meditation I learned years ago, in which I repeat two short phrases – one when I inhale and the other as I let my breath out. Because the meditating clears other thoughts from my mind, I can see my surroundings as if I’ve slipped strong lenses over my eyes.
Some days I cross the street at the light, to avoid passing the sign. Other days, I take my chances. The sign is far enough from the light that I can’t get a good view of it until I’ve walked at least a block past the school.
I used to fear that my anger would burst out if I walked that way, and I wouldn’t be able to contain it. After a time, when I considered whether to cross the street or not, I started to refuse to let them force me to the other side.
***
Like most women, I’d taken chances and had my share of scares. By my thirties, I wondered if I might be incapable of getting pregnant. Maybe this question caused me to find out.
It’s impossible to know what was running through my mind that warm night. I was in the lovely colonial city of Guadalajara, after a brief stay along Mexico’s Pacific Coast, sleeping in a palapa, overlooking the stunning white-sand beach and shimmering turquoise water. For some reason, I didn’t pull my diaphragm out of its blue plastic case, before my boyfriend Carlo and I made love.
Moments after Carlo and I returned home from the airport following the flight from Puerto Vallarta, he looked at me and said, “I think we should take a break from each other.” I had feared this was coming for some time and knew this would be a permanent break, not a temporary one.
The day I got the news, I debated whether to call Carlo or not. I hadn’t talked to him for over a month. Though he no longer wanted a relationship with me, I felt he had a right to know.
Before dialing Carlo’s number, I considered what I should do. Even before starting, I knew my options were limited. I was a freelance writer, with an unpredictable income. I shared a house with two roommates and didn’t own a car. At the age of thirty-four, I still didn’t know how to drive.
***
The women who plant themselves in front of the sign are old, long past when having children might be an option. One who appears slightly younger wears her unkempt gray hair long. It falls past her shoulders and gives her the look of a hag in one of those ancient fairy tales I read as a child. She carries a sheet of thick white cardboard, with messy handwritten letters scrawled across, that says something to the effect that all babies should live. She holds her cardboard aloft, as she marches up and down the sidewalk in front of the sign. The older woman sits on a folding chair close to the curb. Her message is intended for people to read as they drive by.
In white letters at the top of the Cabernet-colored sign, I read PLANNED PARENTHOOD every time I walk by. I tend the anger that rises like indigestion from my gut. I’m also forced to look at this old woman, who thinks she has the right to tell other women she doesn’t know how to make one of the most personal decisions of their lives.
It wasn’t until I received the results of my pregnancy test at the age of thirty-four that I understood what a difficult decision, whether to have a child or not, is for a woman. That’s what causes the bile to collect in my throat, when I see the gray-haired woman marching with her sign. I want to scream at her, “It is every woman’s right to decide. What do you know about other women’s feelings and lives?”
***
I walk, even in bad weather. If I come to a point in my life when I can no longer do so, I might need to push myself down the sidewalk in my wheelchair. Getting outside to hear the songs and calls of the birds that perch in the trees and atop telephone wires and poles, nearly always cheers me up.
If I have been hurt or disappointed, a long walk soothes me. As I get into an easy rhythm, a calmer, caring voice emerges. When I’m overly distracted by worry, I can pull my thoughts away by repeating a simple chant in time to my breath and steps.
***
I used to let the women’s presence, when I could spy them in the distance, force me to cross the street and walk on the opposite sidewalk. Lately, I have stood my ground, even walking toward the long-haired woman and looking her in the eye. At these moments, I still hold onto my anger but I won’t let it out in the sort of explosion of rage I used to worry about. Instead, I tell her silently with my mind that we are each entitled to our choices, and I haven’t experienced a moment of regret about mine.
A longer version of “The Sign” was previously published by Pink Panther Magazine in September 2017.
About the Author
Patty Somlo’s most recent book, Hairway to Heaven Stories, was published by Cherry Castle Publishing, a Black-owned press committed to literary activism. Hairway was a Finalist in the American Fiction Awards and Best Book Awards. Two of Somlo’s previous books, The First to Disappear (Spuyten Duyvil) and Even When Trapped Behind Clouds: A Memoir of Quiet Grace (WiDo Publishing), were Finalists in several book contests. Her work has appeared in Guernica, Gravel, Sheepshead Review, Under the Sun, the Los Angeles Review, The Nassau Review, and over 30 anthologies. She received Honorable Mention for Fiction in the Women’s National Book Association Contest, was a Finalist in the Parks and Points Essay Contest and in the J.F. Powers Short Fiction Contest, had an essay selected as Notable for Best American Essays, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize multiple times, as well as to Best of the Net.
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Cover Image by Ioann-Mark Kuznietsov on Unsplash
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