Weeks of my life were in that savings account. While they were handing out the papers, I counted how many hours I’d waited tables. Just before leaving for Hong Kong, I sat for my final exams. The richer I got, the harder it would be for anyone to force me to do anything. I got the money together by waitressing, then kept adding to it after I had enough for a procedure in England. I knew some women who saved with their friends, and they all helped whoever was unlucky. Throughout college back in Ireland, I’d kept a savings account that I charmingly termed “abortion fund.” It had €1,500 in it by the end. Aside from anything else, I hadn’t quit over their racist recruitment policy, so it would have been weird to leave just because I couldn’t piss whenever I wanted. “I need to go to the toilet between classes. When Benny came at the end of July to pay me, I said I was thinking of leaving. The buck stopped with him, a reflection of his general distaste for parting with currency. He spoke of this last as “back” in Connemara, a place neither of us had been, though I supposed that enhanced the poetry of it. Hong Kong–born, Canadian-educated, repatriated, and thriving, he owned a dozen other schools and-evocatively, I felt-an Irish seaweed company. Our director, Benny, was forty and wore a baseball cap backwards, either to look like he loved working with kids or to stress that he was his own boss and dressed to please no one, not even himself.
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