Farewell

Kavi and I were watching Mignonnes (“Cuties”) together when Kevin came to tell me that Ruth Bader Ginsburg had died. It’s a good movie, Kavi and I agree; she did have a lot of questions, so I’m glad we watched it together. The movie is all about girls and women, and how terribly this world treats them, and I suspect Justice Ginsburg would have liked it. It’s certainly apropos for this grievous moment.

A few years ago, on Trump’s election, I was asked what kind of future we might be heading towards. I wrote a story, “Farewell,” for the anthology, _Welcome to Dystopia_, and poured all my sharpest fears into it. Kavi was ten when I wrote it; she’s thirteen now.

Some point soon, I need to change her primary care doctor, so Kavi has a doctor not attached to Loyola, a Catholic hospital which refuses to prescribe birth control. We may need to switch to the more expensive PPO for that; there aren’t so many places around that take our HMO insurance. We’ll do what we must.

So many fights ahead of us. I’m tired, loves, but I’ll be with you when they come. Hold the line.

*

“IUDs had gotten scarce, impossibly expensive, and most companies had stopped covering them. But John’s university insurance would still cover our ten-year-old, Jenny, who, thank god, was fair-skinned enough to pass for white. The underground clinics that served brown girls hadn’t been able to get their hands on IUDs for years.”

The rest of the story is here.

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