Take My Hand

by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

Our arrogance was a shield against the kind of disdain that did not have the capacity to even conceive of Black intellect.

My daddy had made sure that I was educated not only in my books but also, as he had once described it, in the code that dictated our lives in Alabama. Knowing when to keep your mouth shut. Picking your battles. Letting them think what they wanted because you weren’t going to change their minds about certain things.

And even if safe hospital abortions had been made available, the procedure

was expensive and out of reach for most poor folks.

Although I refused to believe there was such a thing as an unwanted child, there was such a thing as an unwanted pregnancy—a...

But doesn’t family planning include men?

There are a lot of things a mother can say to hurt her child, even long after the child is an adult.

When it becomes clear that a woman of a certain age has not married or had children, folks like to think there’s something wrong with her.

There is no greater right for a woman than having a choice, Anne. And I exercised that right. Fully and consciously.

Maybe getting them this new apartment would erase the wrong I’d done by injecting that little girl with birth control. This was why I’d taken the job at the clinic. I wanted to be like Alicia: doing right by people, proving God was real.

Daddy had done me such a disservice by sheltering me on Centennial Hill, telling me we were never better than our people while at the same time keeping those people away from me.

Parting the hair, line after line, this shared geography of scalp like an ancestral road map, bound us Black girls.

For the first two years, I didn’t date, and no one expressed any interest. I was not sure why no one asked me out. I knew a lot of them preferred light-skinned women, and I was on the darker side.

Ty scooted a clean bowl toward me. “Think about it, Civ. What if

those drugs are doing more harm than good?”

“If it weren’t safe, Ty, they wouldn’t be injecting people with it.” Mrs. Ralsey placed two elbows on the table. “Unless you’re poor and Black. You know how they did those men at Tuskegee.”

Yes, we had given them documents to sign, but Mrs. Seager had coached us to summarize the document. Just standard language. Nothing alarming. The women I’d seen had not actually read the document.

Mr. Ralsey, who had been listening quietly, spoke. “Ty’s right. If it’s true that these drugs carry serious risk, then you are essentially experimenting on those women the same way they experimented on those men in Macon County.” Not just women. Girls.

Even though she would never have used such a term, Miss Pope was the first feminist intellectual I ever met.

“You know, some folks think family planning clinics are a form of genocide.

“Now, you know how some white folks feel about Black bodies. They think we can tolerate pain better than them. According to some of these documents I’m about to show you, some of them even thought syphilis couldn’t kill us. It was as much an experiment about the effects of the disease as it was a crazy white man’s idea of a laboratory game with Black bodies.”

“Because even though regular folks didn’t know, the medical folks knew. In some respects, the government did this in plain sight. They were publishing articles in medical journals about it and everything. Either they didn’t see what was wrong with it, or nobody cared about poor colored folks down in Alabama.”

This might surprise you, but I thought we had turned a corner by the seventies. I knew racism still existed, but I was hopeful that Black Power and

education would sustain us and keep it at bay. We’d been to hell and back, so the seventies had to get better.

Hamer had been sterilized without her permission in 1961, and the procedure was so common, women had labeled

Did Mrs. Seager know about the dangers of the drug, and were there other underage patients on it? Was she recording the experiences of patients on Depo? The only place I knew where I might get straight answers was in the patient files.

Mrs. Seager assumed that India and Erica were sexually active or would be soon. Had I assumed that, too? I realized that I had. I started to cry, but then I quickly wiped my tears. I did not have time for tears. I had to act quickly if I was going to figure this all out.

Could we trust the government?

needed to know if we were injecting poison into our patients.

When the girls were first brought to the clinic, Erica had been twelve years old and India ten. And no one had ever bothered to ask them if they were even menstruating.

myself. I had never longed for children in the way that some little girls did. I did not dream of a wedding or husband. I wanted a career, a mission other than motherhood and wifehood. The choices in those days felt stark to me.

“You can’t tell nobody I didn’t give y’all this shot today, hear?” I spoke quickly, hating myself for doubting their innocence and honesty, but also knowing that this decision I was making was potentially disastrous for us all.

Let me tell you something: I still believed in the mission of the clinic. Women needed access to reliable birth control and information about their reproductive health.

It’s easy to forget your own flesh when you are concentrated on other people’s bodies.

Now, you know how some white folks feel about Black bodies. They think we can tolerate pain better than them . . . Some of them even thought syphilis couldn’t kill us.

Daddy shined his shoes every morning. Mama wore earrings. These little acts might seem simple to you, but baby, let me tell you. They held back the storm.

In order to survive the humiliations of Jim Crow life, we sustained one another through laughter, food, music.

Even with all I knew about the cruelty of humans—the beatings, the murders, the disappearances—I had still somehow underestimated people, and the girls had paid a price for that naiveté.

We’d thought we were doing something useful for society, but this is where that so-called good deed had gotten us.

Right smack into a nightmare.

“I’m sorry, Civil, I can’t live up to your high-and-mighty expectations. You ever stop to think about all the pressure you put on yourself? This ain’t your fault.”

My belief that all women needed access to trained medical professionals, especially poor women, did not mean that I was without ambivalence.

Once Dr. King changed the course of Montgomery, the Black churches stayed on the lookout for a King twin.

Black churches in Montgomery were more than buildings, more than houses of worship. They captured our collective activism, organized our frustrations.

In church, Mama found stability, calm. Like her artistic pursuits, church was grounding for her.

She expected me to comply, as many Black Alabamans did when confronted with white authority.

“They done took away my girls’ womanhood!” “Having children doesn’t make you a woman.”

Mace’s voice sounded strained and high. “I don’t know. I can’t explain it myself. Them white folks come to the place near about every day. Always asking questions, leaving me papers I can’t understand. We wasn’t starving, but getting that bit of assistance helped, man. I work hard as a mule, but it ain’t never enough. Mr. Adair give me just enough to scrape by.”

“That’s how they do it,” Patsy said. “I was on food stamps and they made

me tell them everything but the color of my panti...