“Habitat” by Christy Stillwell (fiction ’14)
An excerpt from “Habitat” by Christy Stillwell (fiction ’14), published by The Rumpus.
Habitat
n fifth grade Charlie Bell called JJ an abortion. He’d never heard the word. His mother said, “It’s hard to be ten.” She was a nurse and explained using terms like “aspirate” and “terminate,” words that left him with the impression the doctors ate the baby. Still, it was an action. A person could not be an abortion.
This satisfied him until he was twelve and Jupiter, his eighteen-year-old sister, had to have one. The family normalized it as best they could, but he was told there was no need to speak of it outside the house. Telling people was up to Jupi. Being in seventh grade, he didn’t think about babies much. The whole subject existed inside a gooey, cosmic muck. For two days, Jupi didn’t come out of her room, except to use the bathroom. Even the sight of her closed door made him vaguely sick. JJ didn’t know whether he was pro-choice or pro-life, but by then he knew you were one or the other.
By age fourteen, the subject was largely forgotten. Charlie Bell had dropped out of his life, along with Legos, soccer, and juice boxes. Braces had straightened his teeth; his hair was shiny and thick. JJ ran track and played saxophone in the jazz band with his best friends, the Ts—Taylor and Todd. A part of him believed he had stars on the inside. His blood was starlight. It came out his eyes, was in his breath.
