THE TUESDAY TWO weeks later Big Ma was still there, though the frowning grandbaby rocked his butt back and forth, with his head leaning to one side on his hand, on the curb far away from her. This time, I shot past like she wasn’t even there. Mamacita was still arguing with attitudes at the front desk, so we just signed in and left her alone altogether. There really wasn’t much to do but look, tap our toes, pray nobody who walked in recognized us (’cause they would spread it at school), and wait. Mamacita later called us back to the screening area at the same time. About twenty of us were around the table (I say us ’cause it was all Black girls, except one Puerto Rican or mixed one with her man, then one little White girl and a snow-haired, pinch-faced lady right next to her with her arms folded on top of humongous tits). At every place on the table, there was a glass of water, Tootsie Rolls, Hershey’s Kisses, and a couple of pamphlets. One each on STDs, tubal ligations, Norplant, and Depo-Provera.

“What if all you want is the pill?” I asked the dark-haired, mahogany-lipped young woman named Rebecca—the “Family Planning” specialist.

“There are some great new methods, more effective than the pill, that I want to discuss with you today,” she beamed.

“These girls ain’t gonna take no pills,” the White mama said. We all looked at her the minute she opened her mouth. She sounded surprisingly nasal, country, and Black. “I already tried that.”

The White girl rolled her eyes, smacked her lips, and slumped in her seat. The White woman hit her upside the head while we all winced. A thin coat of brown paint and they could have been me and Ma.

“Exactly!” Rebecca laughed, like she hadn’t just seen a juvenile get slapped. Or maybe she saw it all the time. Looking at this smiling chick, fingering the tiny gold Crucifix hanging into the V of her pink sweater, I wondered whether we were supposed to be in a preschool and not a clinic.

“So,” she continued, “I’ll give you all a couple minutes to look over the pamphlets and then we’ll get started, ’kay?”

For the next hour or so, Rebecca told us our options, talking so long about reliability, responsibility, and cost-effectiveness that there was little time left for questions.

“How come it’s free to put it in but we gotta pay all this money to take it out?” Nakesha asked about the Norplant—six little miracle sticks inserted in a forearm, pumping out enough hormones so a woman was sterilized for five whole years.

“Well, we’re really trying to encourage everyone to use it for the entire term …”

“What if we get married or something?” another girl asked.

“Then you would have to visit a certified removal specialist, which we don’t have here, but—”