Nothing Much to Offer but a Sky Full of Stars

Dad and I bushwhacked a north facing slope along Northern California’s Smith River in a swath of forest we hoped contained culinary mushrooms. Pink rhododendrons blossomed in an understory of redwood, cedar and fir. We were hunting for chanterelles, yellow feet or hedgehogs. The mushroom buyer didn’t pay much per pound, but I desperately needed the money to pay for my half of an abortion.

“Dad, how much did you say they pay per pound for the chanterelles?”

“About five. Seven, if we’re lucky.”

“And the hedgehogs?”

“Maybe four fifty.”

“So we need to bring in twenty to twenty-five pounds to get one-hundred and fifty dollars?”

Dad shuffled through the brush silently for a moment. He was doing the math in his head, and I knew he wasn’t accustomed to it. Dad picked spring mushrooms because it was fun for him. Getting the cash was a decent way to supplement his disability checks, but he wasn’t relying on the funds. Ordinarily I wasn’t either. 

Financially speaking, I was hurting to start my new season as a guide at a local National Park. A winter-long rendezvous with a summer hire had led to an unwanted pregnancy. Rowan, still in college, was insistent that we get an abortion. 

Perhaps naïve on my part, I initially told Rowan that I wanted to keep the baby. But he was firm about terminating the pregnancy, and I’d reluctantly agreed. I had an abortion myself when I was in college. Part of me worried that two abortions were one too many. I probably should have learned the first time. 

“I’m doing this for you,” I  agreed through gritted teeth. 

A fog of fatigue reminded me that I was six-weeks pregnant. I ached with every lift of my legs trudging up the hillside. I was irritable and short-spoken. At least I could be that way around Dad, who probably thought I was just hormonal and trying to earn some extra money to cover rent. That’s what I’d told him—that I needed the cash to help cover rent. 

I didn’t know it for sure, but I thought Dad might be pro-life. He’d certainly been pro my life. But we’d never discussed our stances on abortion, and since I avoided discussion about sex all-together with Dad, I wasn’t about to bring it up now. 

I wanted to curl up under one of the gigantic redwood trees and rest. I wanted Dad to find all the mushrooms. Without him knowing I was pregnant, there was no way he could tell that he was exhausting me by picking the steepest ravines for us to traverse up. Nonetheless I persevered, fueled by Cliff bars, sheer will, and spring water. Besides, luck was clearly on our side. Anyone who’s foraged for mushrooms before knows that the hardest mushroom to find is the very first one, and Dad had found a chanterelle before we’d even stepped off the main trail.

Down on my hands and knees I gently brushed forest duff off the snow-white top of a hedgehog, then sliced the mushroom at its base with my pocketknife. 

My own mother ran off when I was still in diapers. Like any kid with that kind of background, you tell yourself, it ain’t gonna be me. I probably wasn’t going to run off on the baby but…was I really ready for everything else? Maybe Rowan was right. 

“Everything will work out according to God’s will,” Dad said to me. This in reference to my “rent” that was due. 

When Dad spoke, he held out his hand, palm facing up, fingers fanning out when he said God’s will. Fir needles and lichen stuck to the hand that was missing two fingers. 

I just nodded. According to God’s will? Dad was a good listener, but I just didn’t have it in me to tell him about the abortion. The story would be too long. We had work to do. Besides, Dad hadn’t even met Rowan yet. 

“I’m going to sleep out here tonight,” I said, gesturing toward the trail that winded down to the river. 

“You sure?” Dad asked, looking a little surprised. 

“Yes, I’m sure,” I told him softly. 

If I wasn’t careful, Dad would pick up on something being wrong. But as had happened when I was an adolescent, and later a teenager, he struggled to get through to me. No matter how much he cared, there were just some things you needed a mother for. Talking about boys was one of them. I didn’t like referring to men I dated as boys, but at five years my junior, Rowan sometimes felt like a child to me.  

I was exhausted and on the verge of tears. A dose of solitude would do my mind, body and soul good. What I needed was an adequate amount of time and space to think. The chance to be alone with my journal, my thoughts, and dreams for my future. I had prepared by bringing along a sleeping bag, a modest meal, flashlight, lighter and notebook. A couple pages ripped from the back of my journal would be sufficient to start a fire.

By the end of the day, we’d picked about twenty five pounds of mixed mushrooms. Dad loaded them into his pickup truck, then ten miles upriver to the cabin I grew up in. After parting ways, I hiked the extra half mile to the riverside. Camping alone was something I did on occasion, and it frightened me mildly. Cougars, aliens and lone men were among my primary concerns. But camping also empowered me. I achieved a little pep in my step on the trail. I loved the freedom that came with the forest. The freedom to act how I want, to look how I want, and even the satisfaction of peeing in the woods. The truth is I was beginning to feel more myself than ever. I was almost one with nature. Hell, I was nature. It was as if I could more easily commune with the universe. Ask it questions and hear it answer. I knelt in front of a small waterfall to scoop a handful of spring water into my mouth. My thoughts quickly circled to the innocent being inside my body. I wrapped my arm around my belly. I wasn’t showing yet, just six weeks along, but the way I was kneeling down made my stomach spill over the band of my jeans. My breasts were heavy. Something was different. 

“I’m so sorry,” I said out loud into the fern lined canyon. 

I wasn’t in love with the idea of getting another abortion. But I would shake hands and make peace with it. It was practically a done deal. Rowan and I had an agreement. We’d come to a decision. I understood the predicament he was in. He had his future to look forward to. Big career plans. More travel abroad. My pregnancy wasn’t in line with what his parents expected of him, or of what he expected of himself. 

I sat with my decision on the bank of the river. I built a small fire, ate tuna fish on crackers, rolled out my sleeping bag and climbed inside. I was surprised to see that I still had cell phone service, so without thinking it through, I called up Rowan.  

“Hey, what are you up to?” He asked hurriedly when he answered, sounding distracted.

It sounded like something you would say when picking up the phone out of obligation. Rowan didn’t sound happy to hear from me, but I tried to brush it off and stay positive. I didn’t want to convey my weakness, I wanted to convey my strength. 

I was nonchalant about sleeping in the woods. I didn’t explain about the culinary mushrooms and the need for money for the abortion, and Rowan didn’t ask. He was paying for half, and I was paying for half. Two hundred and fifty dollars each.  

Sparing you the details, what led to the pregnancy was your run-of-the-mill heteronormative sexual experience. We’d had little to no discussion about logistics beforehand. Rowan and I could’ve easily gotten deep into a “whataboutism” debate, though we didn’t. 

What about the birth control you weren’t taking? He could have said. 

Oh yeah? What about the condoms you didn’t have in your cabin in the woods? And your inability to pull out? I might have shot back. 

My brain kept firing unhelpful thoughts at me: If the pleasure hadn’t been shared…why should the cost be? 

But when I got on the phone with Rowan, I was all pleasantries. Pending abortion notwithstanding, I was hoping for an intimate chat between lovers. Fuel for the night. I was only human, after all. I told Rowan about the starry sky and about being on the bank of my favorite river. I could hear him moving things around in the background. It sounded like he was climbing into his car, or maybe onto his bicycle. My instincts were confirmed when he said he was getting ready to leave for a party. A pajama party, he told me.  

“A pajama party?” I questioned, with as little envy in my tone as I could muster. 

“Yeah, just your typical college party. Anyway, I gotta go. I’ll talk to you later, okay? I love you.”

He mumbled the “I love you” part. I wondered why men often said those three words “I love you” when they clearly didn’t. After we hung up, it got dark outside quicker than I expected. As the sun set in the west, I watched its reflection on the surface of the water, turning it from jade green to golden. A fish jumped. It always felt lucky seeing a fish jump. Like spotting a falling star or a bald eagle. I needed a little more luck in my life. 

The moon was a crescent shape over the eastern horizon. Despite everything, I felt the peace of being where my childhood memories were made and feeling like my true self. But as the fire dimmed, my natural fears arose. What if a mountain lion came for a drink? Was there enough sand on this riverbank for the both of us? And what about the abortion. The word seemed to echo off the canyon walls: abortion, on, on, on, on.  

When I was a little girl, my grandmother told me about something called a safety bubble. She described it as an iridescent bubble around my body. She said if I could just imagine a bubble was there, protecting me like a shield, then nothing could harm me.

Even then I knew it was bullshit. Horrors had already gotten past that bubble. But it was a nice thought, one that I sometimes came back to. In my sleeping bag under the stars, with a baby in my belly that I was not going to keep, I made myself one giant, impenetrable safety bubble. I crawled inside of it and with a knot in my throat, willed myself to sleep. 

I woke in the morning to the sound of ravens. My body was both heavier and lighter at the same time. I hiked to the trailhead to meet up with Dad and we drove the winding road through the redwoods to the mushroom buyer. Mercifully, Dad let me keep all our profits, for my “rent” that was due. 

There is something sacred even in the letting go. A decision was made, and it was the right one. The pennies in my bank account were proof that it couldn’t be any other way. I had nothing more to offer the child than a sky full of stars. Or the reflection of a crescent moon on water. It wasn’t enough. 

Something told me that Rowan was not experiencing the same type of inner drama, insistent as he had been about the abortion. Even if he was paying for half, the cost would never be evenly split down the middle. 

Before driving to the clinic to pick up the abortion pills, I sat outside under a canopy of trees and talked to her. The baby. I told her to come back whenever she was ready. I said I would be her mother then. I promised it with all my heart. I didn’t know how to reconcile feeling so connected and then choosing the route of abortion. Except to say that there are times in life where you don’t feel like you have a choice at all. Yet you know you are on the right path. Your path. And you must trust, despite everything, that it is your destiny. That you, too, have a bright future ahead of you. 

-Terah Van Dusen

Terah Van Dusen explores her relationship with nature, others, and the divine through writing. Her personal essays have appeared in The Manifest Station, Sad Girl’s Club Literary Blog, Chicago Story Press, and elsewhere. Terah lives on a farm in western Oregon. A six-year-old named Autumn calls her mama.