Such autobiographical moments are intercut by snatches of the central character's phone conversation with a friend [video clip], Marcia, who needs an abortion and is desperately searching for a place where the procedure is still available. As she speaks into the phone, her posture and the rising volume of her voice spell increasing desperation. She tells Marcia that she will probably need to go underground in order to get the abortion. This is a particularly poignant moment in the piece, for the thought of going underground brings back to the central character's body ancestral memories of secret flight. Her experiential knowledge of institutional state-sponsored assault on women's bodies coincides with the historical legacy of African-American peoples. Personal and racial memories intersect here to reflect on issues in African-American life, on persecutions and oppressions that return in different forms and contexts like ghosts that arise from the past and haunt the present. Another dimension is revealed as she begins to articulate her painful memories of being raped when she was a child by a trusted family "friend." This was her initiation into the "womb wars," and the dawning of her realization of the close relationship between the threat of violence and sexual submission.