I clutched Gina’s hand in the back of the taxi as we rode through an unfamiliar Baltimore neighborhood. It was January third and the Christmas decorations that hung in the air above the street looked tired. The chilly gray day didn’t help. I felt sick with nerves. I only had to get through this day, I told myself, and I could get my life back on track. If I made it through today, wedding invitations would go out as planned in March. I’d buy the dress with the rosettes. Vincent and I would have a future together, the future we’d always planned for. As long as I made it through the horror of today.
The few days with Vincent had not gone well. I hadn’t been able to feign joy over his homecoming and I finally pleaded a headache that simply wouldn’t go away. I was sure our parents talked to each other in hushed, worried voices, wondering what was wrong with me, and Vincent sat on the edge of my bed, gently pressing a cool washcloth to my forehead or rubbing my temples. I didn’t even go with Mimi and Pop to take him back to the train station. By that time, though, I’d made up my mind. I knew what I had to do. It was a terrible, unthinkable sin but it seemed like the only way out of the dilemma I was in.
“It’s going to be all right,” Gina whispered to me now as she squeezed my hand in the back of the taxi. Her palm was as damp with sweat as my own. “It’ll all be over soon. A bad memory.”
I swallowed hard. Gina had been shocked when I finally got up the nerve to tell her I was pregnant.
“Did he rape you?” she’d asked in a horrified whisper. She couldn’t believe I would sleep with a stranger after saving myself for my wedding night all these years.
I shook my head. “I was … intoxicated,” I said. “But he didn’t force me.” I wished I could blame Henry Kraft for what had happened. I only blamed myself.
“You’ve got to get rid of it,” Gina’d said. We’d been sitting in her bedroom, our voices quiet because her mother was down the hall in the living room. I could barely hold my emotions together.
“Get rid of it?” I’d said, shocked. “I can’t believe you’d even suggest that, Gina. It’s a sin, not to mention it’s illegal.”
“It’s illegal but not impossible,” she said. “This girl I sort of know did it. She said it wasn’t so bad. I can find out where you can go to have it done.” She leaned across the space between her twin beds to look hard into my eyes. “Do you really have a choice?” she asked.
“I can’t do that,” I said. Yet what option did I have? I had no husband. The man I was engaged to—kindhearted and loving though he may have been—would never marry me if he knew I was pregnant with another man’s child. There was no way I could tell him what I’d done. It would kill him.
“I think I’ll have to go to one of those homes where you have your baby and put it up for adoption,” I said. “Maybe the church can help me find a home like that? Everything would be hush-hush, and my baby would go to a good family. Have a good life.” My own well-planned good life would be over, but at least I would have done the right thing by my baby.
Gina looked horrified. “Those places are terrible,” she said. “They’ll treat you like trash and you’ll never know what they really did with your baby. Where they really put it. And what will you tell Vincent? If you have an abortion, you get to move on with your life.”
“It’s wrong,” I argued.
“Why are you making this so hard on yourself, honey?” Gina said. “Right now, what you have inside of you is a fetus. Not a baby. It won’t be a baby for months and months.”
I wished I could see things as simply as Gina. We’d been raised in the same church. Made our first communions together. Learned about sin and heaven and hell from the same nuns. Yet somehow, with Gina it never took and she was freer for it. Even with the baby gone, I knew I would never feel free of what I’d done. It was the one thing I would never be able to admit to in confession. I’d carry it with me forever, but at least I could marry the man I loved. We would have other children. Our children.
Gina was able to get the details from Kathy, the girl she “sort of” knew who’d had the abortion, and she made the arrangements for me, even giving me one hundred of the exorbitant two-hundred-dollar fee. “Will it hurt?” I’d asked her.
“Kathy didn’t say,” Gina’d said. “Probably just cramping, but it will be worth it. You’ll have one bad day and then you’ll be free for the rest of your life.”
Now, Gina leaned forward to instruct the taxi driver. “I think you make a right here,” she said. We turned off the street with the Christmas decorations onto a narrow road lined with dark, three-story brick buildings. Apartments, maybe? Offices? I had no idea. I tried not to notice their ramshackle condition. The sagging shutters. The trash in the street.
“Stop here,” Gina said suddenly. “That must be him.”
A man stood on the corner near a black sedan. He reminded me of the pictures I’d seen of my grandfather. Iron-gray hair. Rotund build beneath a heavy black coat. The slightest hint of a hunchback. He wore thick glasses in wire-rimmed frames. I knew what would happen now. Kathy had given Gina the details. The man would drive us to the house where the abortion would take place. “His sister does it,” Gina had told me. “Kathy said she’s really nice.”
“Is his sister a doctor?” I’d asked.
“I don’t think so, but she has more experience than most doctors,” Gina’d reassured me.
I paid the taxi driver, slipped on my gloves, and we got out, shivering in the chill, damp air as we approached the man.
“Which one of you is the girl?” he asked. “Only the girl can come with me.”
I grabbed Gina’s arm, my grip tight through her coat.
“I have to come with her,” Gina said calmly. She patted my gloved hand. “I promised.”
“I only have the one blindfold, so only one of you can come,” he said.
“Blindfold?” I looked at Gina. I wished our taxi hadn’t already driven off. I wanted to get back into it and ride away from this neighborhood.
“It’s all right,” Gina reassured me, but there was a shiver in her voice. “We can use something as a blindfold for me,” she said to the man. “My scarf?” She started to unknot the scarf at her throat.
“No, no.” He waved an arm through the air. “Only the girl can come.”
I looked at Gina in a panic. “She has to come with me!” I said.
“Keep your voice down,” the man snarled, although we were the only people on this sad-looking street.
Gina took my arm. “Look at me,” she demanded, and I tried to focus on her blue eyes. “It’s going to be fine.” She glanced around us at the decrepit old buildings. “I’ll wait for you right here and we’ll find a cab to take us home.”
“You can’t wait here,” I said. “This is a terrible area.”
“Look.” The man’s eyes were buggy, magnified by his thick glasses. “Do you want to do this or not?”
“I’ll wait on this stoop.” Gina motioned toward the dirty gray granite stoop of the building behind us. “I have a book in my handbag to read. I’ll be fine. I’ll be right here when you get back.”
The man frowned at Gina, his bushy gray eyebrows knitting together. “Anyone ask you what you’re doing waiting here, you make something up, all right?”
“Of course.” She smiled, but the quivery tone was back in her voice and that scared me. I was completely dependent on Gina’s calm.
The man looked at me. “You got the money?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Get in, then.” He strode toward the sedan and opened the passenger door for me.
I mustered all my courage and slid into the seat. The car smelled of tobacco and something else. Some food smell I couldn’t place but that turned my stomach. He got into the driver’s seat and handed me a black blindfold. “Put this on,” he said, “but give me the money first.”
I fumbled in my handbag for the ten twenty-dollar bills, my fingers trembling, and handed them to him.
He counted them, folded the bills in half and stuck them in his inside coat pocket. He watched as I wordlessly put on the blindfold. I heard him start the car and we were off.
* * *
“Hello, dear.” An old woman greeted me with a smile as I took off the blindfold. I’d been led up a short flight of stairs and now saw that we were in the tiny foyer of a house or apartment building. I couldn’t be sure, since I hadn’t been able to see the building from the outside. All I knew was that my teeth were chattering and my knees trembled. The woman reached out to hold my gloved hands. “Tess, is it?” she asked.
I nodded. She looked like someone’s grandmother, her dull gray hair pulled back in a bun. Her legs were as thick as posts and her black shoes big and solid. She wore a bibbed pink floral apron over her blue dress as though she was about to bake a batch of cookies. I felt both reassured by her kind manner as well as anxious, because she looked like the last person on earth who could perform a medical procedure.
“I’ll be working in the shed,” the man said, and he disappeared down a long hallway carpeted with a ratty-looking brown rug.
“I’m Edna,” the woman said. I wondered if that was her real name. “Let me take your coat.”
I slipped off my coat and scarf, my gloves and hat. She took everything from me, laying it all on top of a large wooden chair in the corner.
“Let’s go in here.” She gestured toward a room off the foyer and I followed her in. A heavy wooden table stood in the middle of the room covered with a sheet. A pillow rested on one end of the table, and a kitchen chair was set on the floor at the opposite end. The carved wooden table legs exposed beneath the sheet looked somehow obscene. On a wheeled tray next to the table lay a basin, a speculum, a long, thin metal rod, and a few other items I didn’t recognize. I’d heard about botched abortions done with coat hangers and was relieved that none were in sight.
“Take off your panties,” Edna said. “You can just unhook your stockings.”
“No coat hanger.” I smiled nervously, gesturing toward the wheeled tray.
“Oh, good heavens, no,” she said. “I’ve found this works perfectly.” She picked up the metal rod. “A bicycle spoke,” she said. “Does the job every time.”
A bicycle spoke. Good Lord. Had it been sterilized since the last time it was used? Shivering, I slipped off my shoes and panties, and she helped me climb onto the table, rock hard beneath the sheet. I tried to ignore the small brown stain on the pillowcase as I lay back on the table. It was cool in the room and my body trembled almost spasmodically.
“This will be over in a jiffy,” Edna said. “Now open your legs for me.” She sat down at the foot of the table as I bent my knees and spread my legs, my eyes on the stained plaster of the ceiling.
“There’s a good girl,” Edna said. “Now hold very still.”
I held my breath, waiting for the cramping to begin. On the plaster ceiling, as if by magic, I saw the image of my tiny, helpless, baby. He—I was certain it was a boy—was nestled inside my body—the body that was supposed to protect it and nurture it, not allow it to be pierced by a bicycle spoke. Gasping, I sat up quickly, pulling away from Edna and her tools. She was wide-eyed, her mouth a small, surprised O.
“I haven’t even touched you yet,” she said.
“I can’t do this,” I said, my hand on my flat belly. “I just can’t!” I was suddenly crying.
Edna stood up with a heavy sigh. “Oh, for pity’s sake,” she said. “You won’t get your money back, you know.” Her sweet grandmotherly demeanor had suddenly disappeared.
“I don’t care.” I didn’t look at her as I climbed awkwardly from the table, my stomach turning at the sight of the basin. The spoke. How could I have thought I could go through with this? “I can’t do it.” In spite of the fact that I knew I was ruining my life for good, forever, I felt weak with relief. Yes, this spelled the end of my engagement. Yes, it was the end of my future with Vincent. But I had not harmed my child.
Edna stared at me as I looked around the room, unable to remember where I’d put my panties. “Meet me in the foyer when you’re dressed,” she said after a moment.
I found my panties beneath the table and pulled them on. I could hear Edna talking to the driver—most likely her brother—but couldn’t make out their words. Both of them met me in the foyer.
“You can find your own way back to your friend,” the man said. He was drinking a beer.
“You have my money,” I said, lifting my coat from the chair in the corner and putting it on. I’d stopped shaking. Stopped crying. I felt suddenly strong. “You owe me a ride back,” I said to him.
“Take her,” Edna said.
With a sour look, he handed her his beer, opened a closet near the front door, and grudgingly got into his coat.
Once settled in the passenger seat of the car, I slipped my hand inside my coat to rest on my belly. I would not have this baby only for it to be put up for adoption. This was my child. My son or daughter. I’d saved its life and I was going to be with it, always. I would have to move away from Baltimore. Someplace where no one knew me. Someplace where I wouldn’t be the object of scorn and shame or have to worry about bumping into Vincent or his family. I would start a fresh life. I would tell people my husband was overseas. No one would be any the wiser. The only thing standing in my way was my lack of money. I had a hundred and seventy dollars in my bank account that I’d earned when I’d worked at the grocer’s to make money for school. Hardly enough to start a new life.
I thought of Henry Kraft and his well-tailored suit. He owned a furniture factory and had government contracts. He would have to give me money. I hoped it would be out of a sense of responsibility, but at that moment, when I felt I could move heaven and earth to protect the life inside me, I was not above threatening to tell everyone he knew that he’d impregnated me and then left me high and dry. I would do whatever it took to protect my baby.
Henry Kraft. I whispered the name to myself. Hickory, North Carolina. Wherever that was.