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happiness.
    I’ll see you through to tomorrow.
    Today.
Hoy.
    I can make you as good as new.
    Instantly.
    Before you can say Jack Robinson.
    I am the cure.
    The serum.
    One shot of me and you’re hooked,
    Line and sinker.
    I’m an addiction.
    A craving.
    I’m nicotine and kerosene.
    You’ll burn for me.
    Chain-smoke me.
    Toke me.
    Intravenously stroke me.
    I’m tradition,
    Like marriage vows and first sons.
    I’m your inclination.
    And destination.
    It’s not cosmic.
    There’s no rocket’s red glare.
    No love at first sight.
    I’m no wonder of the world.
    I’m the American Dream.
    I’m small business at its best.
    I’m success in the flesh.
    You see, Doc? It’s a matter of natural selection. Birthright. Darwin knew what he was talking about.

Live Birth
    A girl I knew used a wire coat hanger. Clinics only take you after you prove you’re old enough to make the decision yourself. They don’t care if you don’t have parents. That you’ve been living on your own a long time. The law is the law.
    She said the ladies at the clinic gave her a five-page questionnaire and had her sit for an hour in a plastic chair, waiting her turn for review. Then they tell her, Sorry. Sorry. You have to prove you’re old enough. It’s the state law. Have you told your parents?
    She asked them, “Is there a state that doesn’t have this law? Is there a place I can go?”
    It turns out she can go to Mexico or the state of Maine. Either is a world away.
    She waited. She said the pregnancy began to fester. Johns don’t like you if you’re
embarazada.
She began to show. She couldn’t buy food. She was behind on her rent. When johns don’t take you there’s no way to pay the bills, unless you steal. She tried taking a can of soup and Doritos from a family market on Haines Street, but they ran after her. She threw it back at them and kept running so she wouldn’t go to jail.
    She said she thought of throwing herself in front of a car. But that would mean the welfare hospital. Beds are filled and you’re put on a cot in the hall, with people bumping into you, their talking and crying keeping you up all hours, and them butting into your personal business: “What happened to you? You look horrible, a mess. What happened to you?” There’s no privacy.
    She thought she could use the hanger and do enough damage that the baby would come unglued and come out of her like a blood clot.
    She said it felt like electricity moving around inside her. And then she began to bleed.
    She bled like it was raining. Like it would never stop.
    She told me she stumbled into the emergency room, the clean one at Cedar’s where the stars go, and they had to take her. She was a true emergency.
    They took her baby from her like it was a live birth.
    She said the wire coat hanger was the best choice open to her. She said she would have to do the same again if it came to that.
    She was in the hospital four days, and when she left they gave her a three-month prescription of birth control pills and a dozen condoms and told her to go to the county clinic when she ran out.
    This girl, she said it was nothing. Not at all like the horror stories you hear where the girl dies, all bloody and crying for her
mamá.
She didn’t think of her mother at all during her crisis. It was a few minutes of pain and wondering if she was going to die. She thought about her place. Who would come and go through her things? Would they keep the good stuff? Or would they think it was junk and throw it all away? That’s the kind of thing that went through her mind.
    She said the bleeding told her enough to go to a hospital, but she waited twenty minutes just to make sure the baby couldn’t be saved. She didn’t want to go through all that and still have a pregnancy, another mouth to feed when she couldn’t feed her own.
    Then she went outside and got herself a cab and said, Cedar’s Sinai, like she was somebody. Like she was a movie star. And they took her. They had to. She