The Alone Girl gobbled a quick peanut butter and jelly sandwich. She felt the sunburn radiating through her pores. It was one detrimental side effect to her job as a summer tennis instructor, the guaranteed nasty sunburn from the first week of summer tennis.
But she had class tonight and couldn’t miss it. When she transferred schools midway through her college experience, six credits did not count toward filling the new school’s requirements. A night class last summer, and one now, assured she would graduate on time next May.
Of all nights to have a group presentation. She and her group were to explain the short story “Hills Like White Elephants,” by Ernest Hemingway, to the rest of the class. The Girl and one other guy in her group were the dependable students in that they read the assignments. But she would be quick to admit she didn’t always understand the full scope of an author’s message(s).
She drove to class with the presentation on her mind. Could she say the word ‘abortion’ in front of the class without turning red? This caused her to laugh. No one would notice if she turned red. Her sunburn was that bad. A wave of cool menthol drifted by her nostrils. The once soothing effect of the Noxzema liberally applied to squelch the fire on her skin was wearing off. This night’s class wouldn’t pass quickly.
Two members of the group were absent, the concept of the “presentation flu” taking root in the Girl’s mind. The other two members were not even able to sit adjacent to the Girl due to the heat radiating from her sunburned body. Misery was the Girl’s companion on this night.
When the professor asked them to present, she sighed and looked him in the eye. Her explanation of having read the ultra-short story and finding difficulty reading between the lines. Her group felt the story was perhaps a metaphor, building on the white elephants in the title, for being rid of something you didn’t want.
She wasn’t certain what she was saying. It didn’t matter because the class members began bombarding the professor with questions about pregnancy, abortion, drinking, the characters. The Girl had been truthful, in her own fashion, about not totally understanding the story. And now, with a cool late-June night breeze blowing through the car, the Girl thought how unfair it was for the female character in the story to feel she needed to do what the man wanted even though it wasn’t the character’s own choice. The Girl snorted and vowed no one would ever tell her what she could or couldn’t do with her own body.
Within two months, as summer neared its completion, the Girl would be forced to make a decision. Thankfully it wasn’t the decision the character in the story faced, the decision of whether or not to terminate a pregnancy. It was, in fact, a decision that would impact whether or not the Girl would ever have a pregnancy. And it was the Girl’s decision to make. Her tumor. Her body. Her decision.
Stories Are For Eternity 