Customers shuffle in and out all day, and the shop is ironically busier than ever with the influx of sports teams coming into the city for a big game. Under regular circumstances, I’d be thrilled, but the guilt, shame, and uncertainty of my future that hangs over my head keeps me completely removed from the constant movement around me.
When I’m finally able to close the shop, I miscount the till at least three times out of pure nerves and panic before I allow myself to just give up and lock up the shop.
I know I only have thirty minutes before the corner store by my house closes, and getting there as soon as possible is the only chance I have to get my hands on a pregnancy test before I’m stuck driving across the city to a twenty-four-hour convenience store on a worse side of town than I already live on.
The drive to the store keeps my heart in my throat. The racing of my pulse in my ears coupled with the buzzing of anxious energy in my stomach forces me to pull to the side of the road and vomit at least once before I reach the shop. I feel like hot garbage.
It takes me five minutes to calm myself enough to climb out of my car without shaking. If I enter the store in clear distress, someone might notice and try to help me, which will just prolong this purgatory of my unnamed dread.
As I step into the store, the heady yellow lights flicker above me menacingly as my eyes dart along the ceiling for a sign that will lead me to the feminine hygiene aisle. The atmosphere is sickly and washed out, like I’ve woken up in a nightmare where the threat is very real, yet unrevealed.
I hear a woman negotiating with her young child in the distance, pleading with him to stop crying lest she takes away the single item she’s been allowing him to carry around the store. The little boy begins to wail, dropping to the floor like a pillowcase full of bricks in protest and cursing her fully in his undeveloped baby language.
The terrible humming in my belly accelerates as I pass them on my way to the other end of the store, where all of the family planning supplies and period products live in obscurity. The puritanical nature of my country is not lost on me as I’m cordoned to the back of the store, huddled into a corner scanning the wall for the one pregnancy test that will tell me that everything is fine, that I should go home and have a beer.
I had never realized how many weird white sticks had flooded the market since I had my first pregnancy scare at sixteen.
There are tests for both pregnancy and fertility, utterly indistinguishable to the eye of a panicking woman in a poorly lit pharmacy. The very existence of a fertility test highlighted the brutal irony of womanhood some of us desperately want a child, and some of us desperately don’t. Whether or not you get one is just a roll of the cosmic dice.
I reach for one of the more technologically advanced tests with a screen on it. I figure that if I’m going to be pissing on something that is going to be measuring the chemicals in my body, it might as well be the one that looks the most capable.
I grab two tests with the knowledge that the result of the first test will likely be enough for me to know, but there’s always that glimmer of doubt.
Walking through the store with the tests in a vice grip, I make my way to the self-checkout. To my horror, it’s out of order, and I turn to face the single person at the service desk who stares at me expectantly as I sheepishly wander over to her.
She’s just an old lady, probably has at least four accidental kids of her own. Logic would dictate that there shouldn’t be any space for judgment.
But as soon as I place the tests down, her expression changes. Suddenly, I feel as if she’s examining me for a tell, something that will indicate the worthiness of my predicament.
“Just this today?” she chirps in an excessively sweet tone.
I know that voice. It’s the voice of a mentally drained customer service worker who is forcing themselves to peel back a halfway decent smile to placate you into leaving as quickly as possible.
No problem, lady.
“Um, yes, please,” I stammer. I shift nervously as she scans the tests, placing them into a plastic bag that I’d never accept on a regular day. Today, though, I feel like the containment is necessary. I don’t want these things showing their face to the world.
I hand her my debit card.
“It’s not working,” she says flatly after swiping it.
“Can you try it again? There might just be something wrong with the strip,” I plead, trying and failing to keep the panic from bubbling up inside of me and choking me until I’m a teary-faced, stammering mess.
She tries it again, and the card declines.
“Hang on. I just have to run out to my car,” I say, and I nearly sprint out the door, flying into the passenger’s side as I fish around in the center console for whatever spare dollars I have.
I’m only able to find enough for one test.
“Here, I’ll just take the one,” I say, panting as return to the shop and hand her the wrinkled dollar bills.
She returns my four cents, and I give her a slight nod as I grab the bag with the single test and disappear back into the night to learn my true fate.