“Just stay right on there,” I heard him say to the car driver with a deep Southern accent. He probably handled injured animals all the time. I felt less guilty about turning my back on the scene, right before Big Mama broke her silence and belted into song, sounding nothing like the large Black woman in the movie who I had already heard sing the song.

Soon we’ll be done, with the troubles of the world …

I cut her voice off as soon as I shut the second glass door that led into the lobby, scowled at the long line before me, and headed straight to the first window without caring who I was cutting. The abortions took place in a large, separate facility way in back of the clinic and I was ready to bypass this line to get in the one back there. My money was secured tight in a zipped pocket of my backpack.

“Young lady there’s a line …,” the same old Mexican girl explained.

“I got an appointment,” I told her.

“Well you’re supposed to arrive twenty minutes before your appointment so you can wait in line.”

“I had a detention after school.”

“What is your name?” she hissed while I heard the girls behind me running their mouths about how long they had been waiting and how much nerve I had.

“Shivana Golding.”

Mamacita sighed and rolled her eyes.

“I don’t see your name down here …”

“I got a private appointment with Sue,” I lied. “She told me to come back and see her today.”

“Sue doesn’t make appointments with anyone,” Mamacita groaned. “Now if you’ll excuse me.”

I saw Sue’s unmistakable blond, Carol Brady hair suddenly swish through the hallway behind the mountain of colored folders in the office vestibule. I leaned my small head into the narrow window cut out of bulletproof glass and shouted her name. “Oh no she didn’t,” I heard behind me. Mamacita stood up to try and shut the window, but she wasn’t fast enough. Sue had already backtracked.

“Remember me?” I yelled while Sue walked forward to the window. Mamacita had her hands on her hips. Sue looked at her face and immediately grimaced, no doubt remembering the mess I had left in her office.

“You told me to come back and talk to you,” I said to her, my eyes pleading.

“Well, I meant with an appointment…,” Sue started.

“I got all the information I ain’t have before. I’m ready to talk about it now. I don’t have that much time because I have to be home at a certain time.”

I wasn’t lying. Ma wasn’t going to tolerate me coming in a minute late after the stunt I had pulled last week.