crinkly paper strip that covered the examining table. The office was on the 7th floor of a modern block, overlooking the traffic that led into the mall below. I concentrated on the pale blue of the sky as she felt my breasts and shook her head sadly.
‘They’re pregnanty,’ she announced. ‘We’ll get the test back tomorrow, but I can tell you right now, you’re pregnant.’
I know, I thought. I know.
Mary wanted me to tell her mom because that’s what she would do. But I knew I’d have to do the rest on my own. I made an appointment, but had to wait another month before I could have the abortion.
In the meantime, I told my parents I had an ulcer, which they believed without questioning. Every morning at around 4:30 am, I was sick. And every morning, my father woke up at 4:15 and made me a small bowl of porridge to settle my stomach, which he placed by the side of my bed. Then he’d pad off upstairs in his red robe, feeling his way in the darkness to catch another hour and a half’s sleep. He never asked if he should do that; he just did it. Like so many things in our house, even acts of kindness occurred in silence. I wondered if he would do the same thing if he knew the truth. I think he would.
My skin got bad and my mouth tasted metallic. In my locker at school, I kept an enormous box of saltines, which I ate in the hundreds. My diet diminished to saltines, mashed potatoes, and porridge. Anything else was just too exciting. No matter how much I ate, I still got sick. And no matter how often I threw up, I was still hungry. I was more afraid of gaining weight than of being pregnant.
The operation cost two hundred and thirty dollars. My parents gave me two hundred dollars in cash after I managed to convince them that I needed a new winter coat and the rest of it I paid for out of my allowance.
Finally the day came, a Saturday morning in early March. It was raining, softly misting when I left the house.
I told my parents I was going to go shopping with my friend Anne and then I drove myself to the clinic and checked in. It was early, around 9 am. The waiting room was full of flowered cushions, pleasant prints, and bright, soft colours. There were little clusters of people – a young couple holding hands and whispering to each other, a girl with her family. They’d obviously tried to make the waiting room as sympathetic and normal looking as possible, but despite that, no one wanted to look at one another.
You had to meet with a counsellor before you did it. They took us in one at a time, in such a way that you never passed any of the other women in the hall. I was led into a little office where a young woman with short brown hair was waiting for me. I cannot remember her name or how she introduced herself but I can remember her deliberate, almost institutionalized kindness. And I recall her asking if I was alone and saying ‘yes’.
My mouth was dry and sticky. The office was like a closet, with no windows. There was a table and two chairs and a chart on the wall with a diagram of the female anatomy. Even here they’d done their best to make it seem normal and wholesome by painting the walls pink. It was like a beauty parlour for abortions. There were no sounds at all in the room, no traffic noise, no distant conversations. Just the woman and me.
‘I’m here to tell you about the operation and what to expect,’ she began.
I nodded.
She took out a red plastic model of a uterus cut in half.
‘This is a model of a uterus,’ she said.
I nodded again. I wondered where she’d got it, what kind of company made these sorts of things, and what other models they had in their catalogue.
She started to talk and point at the model. I could hear her voice, and see her hands moving, but my mind had gone numb. I just stared at the plastic uterus, thinking how red it was and how a real one couldn’t possibly be that red.
‘Excuse me,’ I interrupted, after a while. ‘I’m going to be sick.’
‘Of course,’ she said.
I went and threw up in a little cubical next door. There seemed to be cubicles everywhere – clean, little rooms filled with women throwing up. When I came back, she continued where she left off. She was obviously used to people throwing up in the middle of her presentation.
‘During the operation, what we will do is remove the lining of the uterus, creating a kind of non-biological miscarriage. You will have all the symptoms of a miscarriage – heavy bleeding, cramps, and hormonal imbalance. This will make you feel a little more fragile than normal. It’s important for you to rest afterwards and take it easy for a few days. Is someone coming to pick you up?’
I stared at her.
‘Did you drive yourself?’ she repeated.
The room was perfectly still. She had no make-up on. I tried to imagine her in a bar, talking to a stranger, way past closing time. I couldn’t.
She waited. She was used to waiting.
I started to open my mouth; it tasted like yellow sick. I closed it again and tried to swallow.
‘Would you like some water?’
I shook my head; it would only make me throw up again.
‘You don’t have to do this,’ she said at last.
She was looking at me with her clean, fresh face, the face of a mother on a children’s aspirin commercial.
I started to cry and she was used to that too.
I hated myself because I knew we would all be doing it. She passed me a Kleenex. Twenty minutes from now, she’d be passing a Kleenex to someone else, the girl with the boyfriend perhaps.
‘Maybe you’d like to think about it some more,’ she offered. Freedom of choice.
‘No.’ I was done crying. ‘I’ve made up my mind.’
It was exactly as she said it would be. An hour later I was lying in a hospital version of a La-Z-y Boy chair, drinking sugary tea and eating biscuits.
Four hours later I was shopping for a new winter coat with my friend Anne, using a credit card I’d stolen from my parents.
‘Your ulcer seems to be better,’ my father remarked a week later.
‘Yes, Da. I believe it’s gone.’
And it is gone. Until the next time.
There’s a coat that hangs in the front hall cloakroom of my parents’ house. It’s a single-breasted, navy blue winter coat; a classic cut in immaculate condition. It’s been there for years but no one’s noticed. It has never been worn.
If women are honest with themselves, they would admit that the fascination they feel for furs is not only due to the warmth they provide. After all, a fur is never just a fur – it is also, more than any other garment I can think of, a symbol, and a mink coat is the most easily identifiable symbol of them all. It stands for achievement, both for the man who bought it and the woman who wears it, as well as status and undeniable
