Whisky Tango Foxtrot?

Yes, we all knew they were going to do it. Thanks to the heads-up there was time to lay some groundwork.

But it's different somehow to see it happen.

I have had out of state pregnant people sleep at my place back in the 90s. Back then, it was Idaho and other restrictive states. Now, what will the avalanche look like it California? At least now it is possible to do it at home, with safe and effective drugs.

I had an abortion back in the 80s. I was 19 and my birth control failed. Even with a wonderful, supportive boyfriend the experience was pretty awful, but I am grateful beyond words for Planned Parenthood of San Francisco. My older relatives had it a lot worse. Believe it or not, in the 1950s in Ohio there were actually places they sent unwed mothers to give birth.

I don't know what to do. Money, yes--but that isn't enough. Yes, if you need a place out in Dreamwidth land, I'm here. But that offer, too, isn't enough.

But it's a start.

Susie Librarian

I've always written stories about the people who inhabit my mind. They are scattered through notebooks that someday I will unpack and digitize. I never wrote about Susie, though. I thought she was gone, but I should have known better. The minute my job required her skills, as I unwillingly returned to pink collar work, she was back. Now she is Susie Silvertongue, and she has inhabited the polydimensional Balencian Library all along:

I came to life in a library. A series of them, visited in turn by my creator. I was initially a kind of false front, held between the person who labored and those she labored for. She returned the stacks of law books back to their proper places, opened the packages that arrived at each office, retrieved those books that the lawyers were finished with and--most of all--changed the outdated pages from the binders and spiral bound books that held treatises on law. Together we traced the numbered paths through numbers, decimals, and letters, each marching in hierarchy as pages in precise sections multiplied and volumes and sections were added.

We created order each week as we walked the Financial District in a wardrobe assembled with a good eye and a sense of style from thrift stores. The page filer saw no reason to spend more than necessary on clothing she loathed, but enjoyed the hunt for pieces that went together well and projected the professional aura that the job required. We were well dressed and spent a fraction of what the office staff did.

She created me as a savage joke on her employers. She was gaining experience as she got through a library technician certificate, and had no intention of staying in law libraries a moment longer than required. She gave her clients exactly what they wanted and laughed at their lack of awareness. They bought it hook, line, and sinker because in the end, we didn't matter as long as the pages and the volumes marched in order.

I was meant to blend in. My creator loved the work, but the drab offices left her cold. She hated the artificial persona she was forced to adopt, until I was created.

No matter how many books filled our arms, we had to step aside when a lawyer passed. This rule had no official existence, but we knew better than to transgress it. We were expected to know the rules and requirements of each office, briefly trained by our agency's manager, and to be professional, competent, and quiet. As my creator put it, we were to be seen as little as possible, and not heard, like a Victorian servant.

I was Susie Librarian, a name never known by them, in itself a joke--but I eagerly coalesced around it, inhabited the shell she created for me. We talked silently as we worked and as I grew real, she made room for me. Neither of us had a word for what we were, but I joined the other characters in her head. Characters were what we were called. Only now do we know the term "headmates." Only now do we know that we are plural.

To be continued