“Go on, my child,” came the voice. It was a gentle voice, kind yet firm.
Kate wondered how old he was, what he looked like. What must it be like to sit behind the screen, listening to people’s confessions hour after hour? Most of it was probably as dull as dishwater. Did he bring a book to pass the time? A walkman?
“Do you have something to confess?” coaxed the priest.
“I . . .” This was proving more difficult than she had imagined. There was no way she could tell him everything; he would think she was crazy or lying, just like Glory and the doctors had. “Father, what if God wanted a person to do something. Something very hard and dangerous. And that person was afraid. Too afraid to do what God wanted.”
“Do you mean dangerous physically or dangerous spiritually?”
“Both, I guess.”
“God doesn’t ask the easy things of us,” came the response. “But he doesn’t ask what is beyond our ability to give, either.”
“But what if a person prayed to God not to have to do . . . what was asked? And the prayer was answered. So the person didn’t have to do it anymore.”
A pause. “I suppose I might reflect on why God should have asked it of me in the first place.”
“But to pray that way. To go against God’s wishes. Isn’t that a sin?”
“God is compassionate, my child. He understands and forgives human weakness. Why, even our Lord had moments of doubt. In the garden of Gethsemane, He prayed that the cup might pass from Him. How, then, if the Son of God should make such a prayer, can it be a sin for a human being?”
“But He did what God wanted. In the end.”
“Yes. Why was that, do you think?”
“I don’t know. He had to, didn’t He?”
“No, He did not. Jesus had free will, just as we do. He could have refused. Gone off somewhere and lived a quiet life.”
“Then I guess it was because He knew how things were going to turn out. He knew He would rise from the dead and everything.”
“But so will we all, my child. Every Catholic knows that. It’s what we believe. The pillar of our faith.”
“Then I guess I must not have very much faith,” she said miserably.
“What does that word mean to you?” asked the priest. “What is faith?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, when I think of someone like Mary . . . you know, she was just a girl when she became the mother of God. No older than me, maybe. Imagine how frightened she must have been! But she did it anyway. That’s faith.”
“Yes, she was a brave young woman. All the same, I’m sure she had moments of doubt as well. Moments when her faith, as strong as it was, wavered.”
“Do you really think so?”
“She wouldn’t have been human otherwise. All of us are weak sometimes. That’s when we need to remember that God loves us and wants to help us.”
“I’m not like Mary,” she said in a voice so soft that she thought at first he hadn’t heard her, so much time passed before he replied.
“In what ways are you not like her?”
Kate’s heart leapt into her throat. Somehow, without realizing it, she had been led to broach the very subject that she had intended to avoid. She had been foolish to think that she could fence with a priest; this was what they did. They were experts at drawing people out, getting them to confess the sins they were too ashamed or afraid to speak aloud. And now she had said too much.
“My child?” the priest prompted.
“I . . . I’m sorry, Father, but I can’t tell you.”
“My child, I’m not here as a man, but as the representative of Christ. You must unburden yourself to me as you would if it were Jesus Himself behind this screen. No matter what you’ve done, how bad you think it may be, I assure you that forgiveness is available to you. But I can’t absolve you of your sins if you won’t speak frankly about them. Please, there’s no reason to be fearful. Everything you say is under the seal of the confessional and cannot be revealed to anyone under any circumstances.”
“I know,” she said. “It’s just . . .”
“Go on.”
Yet despite the priest’s assurances, Kate couldn’t go on. She wanted to unburden herself, wanted it so badly that she could feel it, but something was holding her back. Shame? Fear? Perhaps, but it was more than that, an instinctual whispering deep in her soul, a small, true voice, bright as a glimmering star in the darkness, telling her that this was between her and God, and she had no business sharing it with anyone else, not even a priest. Was it for this realization, she wondered now, that she’d been guided here?
“Father, God wouldn’t ever ask a person to commit a sin, would He?”
“Of course not, my child. God wants to lead us away from sin. What is it that you think God has asked of you?” He sounded worried now.
“I have to go,” Kate said. Suddenly the close confines of the confessional seemed to squeeze in even more tightly, until she felt as if she were suffocating. She hurriedly made the sign of the cross then lurched to her feet and out the door. Behind her, the priest said something that she couldn’t make out. She hurried up the aisle, glancing back once to see if he was following, but of course he wasn’t. The anonymity of the confessional had to be preserved at all costs. The green light above the booth was glowing; another penitent was already entering, taking her place.
Kate wrapped her scarf around her neck, buttoned up her coat, and walked out into the night. Snow was falling more heavily now, big flakes like the feathers of an angel’s wing. She could do this, she told herself, thinking of the procedure scheduled for tomorrow morning. God had offered her this chance, and because it had come from Him, it couldn’t be a sin, even if it would be under normal circumstances. The priest had confirmed it: God wouldn’t tell her to commit a sin. It was as if she’d been given a Get Out of Jail Free card.
But that didn’t mean she felt good about it. On the contrary, despite a sense of relief, Kate felt shame at what she still perceived as her own weakness, and sadness at the thought of what would happen to the life she was carrying inside her. Perhaps her unborn child was dead already, or soulless, its divine spark removed somehow, reabsorbed into the blessed Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or sent on to its new destination, into the womb of whatever woman God had chosen to replace her as the mother of His child. If, indeed, He had chosen anyone at all. Perhaps her refusal had been a refusal for all humanity, and now God would withhold His gift. But no, that couldn’t be. God was not petty or cruel. And she was just one small person, an ordinary girl who only wanted to live an ordinary life, grow up, fall in love, get married, and have children that would have no divine mission to perform, no sacrifice to enact, just the ordinary joys and sorrows that all human flesh was heir to. That wasn’t too much to ask, was it? How could it be?
With these thoughts and others whirling in her mind as the snow whirled down around her, Kate hailed a cab back to the Plaza, where Glory was waiting, angry and nearly frantic with worry. “Your father called and wanted to talk with you. I had to tell him you’d gone to a movie.”
“I was at St. Patrick’s. You know, praying.”
At that, Glory’s whole demeanor shifted. “Oh, honey, I should have thought of that! I should have gone with you!”
“It’s okay, Mom. I kind of needed to be alone.”
Kate felt too drained emotionally and physically to go out to dinner, so they ordered room service and watched movies on cable until it was time for bed. Glory tried a couple of times to sound her daughter out about what she was feeling, as if to make up for taking her shopping instead of to church, but Kate fended her off.
“Mom, I just want to get through this, okay? We can talk later. But I think I kind of need to go on automatic pilot for a while, you know?”
“Of course, dear. But I’m here if you need to talk.”
“Thanks, Mom.” Kate gave her a hug and a kiss, then turned in for the night.
To her surpris
e, she slept like a log.
The next morning, she didn’t feel like eating and only sipped at a cup of room-service coffee. She showered and dressed, putting a change of underwear and sanitary napkins in her purse, per the clinic’s instructions. Then she and Glory took a cab to the Upper East Side clinic where Glory had made an appointment. There was no trace of last night’s snowfall; or, if there was, it was already indistinguishable from the frozen, dirty gray mounds left over from previous snowfalls.
With each block they progressed through the slow-moving, noisy Manhattan traffic, Kate felt herself sink deeper into what she had described the night before as “automatic pilot.” I’m a robot, she told herself. A machine, not a person. It became her mantra, and she repeated it to herself as they drove, while Glory, sitting beside her in the backseat of the cab, assayed a variety of lame jokes and observations that Kate didn’t respond to. Soon a tense silence descended that lasted until they reached the clinic.
Kate hadn’t known what to expect. A crowd of protestors, perhaps, angry men and women waving placards and shouting imprecations at anyone approaching the door. But there was no crowd, no protestors. The clinic was located in a high rise, with a security guard at the entrance to the building, but there was no other sign of anything out of the ordinary . . . even the security guard was a far from uncommon sight in New York office and apartment buildings.
Only the door to the clinic itself gave some hint of the controversial activity that took place within. The door carried only a number, nothing else. There was an intercom box beside the door, with a security camera mounted above it. Glory hit the buzzer, identified herself, and stood with Kate where the camera could transmit their images. There was a pause, and then a buzzer sounded, unlocking the door. As Glory and Kate entered, a young couple, a man and a woman, glanced up at them with nervous smiles from the comfortable waiting area, where there were cushioned chairs and a table strewn with magazines. Glory nodded, but Kate looked away, feeling her face turn red with embarrassment.
There were reproductions of paintings from the Met and the Guggenheim on the walls, along with posters about HIV, STDs, and birth control, and a floral display at the reception desk, as well as a bowl of what Kate thought at first were candies but were actually condoms in brightly colored wrappers. Lite jazz was playing softly on a radio. The receptionist, a pretty, young black woman with platinum blond hair cut so short it might almost have been a silver skullcap, was seated behind a thick barrier of some transparent material that Kate could only assume was bulletproof.
Kate stood mute as a statue, silently repeating her mantra, as Glory spoke to the woman. There were forms to sign, which Kate did without reading them, and then Glory opened her purse and drew out an envelope with two hundred-dollar bills tucked inside.
They sat and waited. Glory picked up an issue of Cosmopolitan and began to leaf through it, but Kate just sat there. I’m a robot, she thought. A machine. Out of the corner of her eye, she observed the young couple, wondering what their story was, whether they were man and wife or boyfriend and girlfriend. Despite her mantra, she felt as if her intestines were tied up in knots that were being slowly twisted together.
After a while, a nurse came to fetch her. Glory asked to come too, and the nurse agreed that it would be okay. The nurse led them to an examination room, where she gave Kate a cup to pee in and directed her to a bathroom in the hall. When she came back from the bathroom, the nurse took her temperature, blood pressure, and a blood sample. Not once was the reason for her appointment mentioned.
Then she was sent back to the waiting area. Moments later, the same nurse called a name; the young woman waiting with the man gave a little start and turned pale. She took her companion’s hand and squeezed it, gave him the saddest smile that Kate had ever seen, then got up and followed the nurse out of the waiting room without a backward glance. Once she had gone, the man glanced at his watch, crossed his arms over his chest, put his head back, and closed his eyes.
I’m a robot. A machine, not a person . . .
The door buzzed, and two slim, tan, dark-haired women entered, both seemingly in their twenties, obviously sisters, each wearing a golden crucifix around her neck. Kate was wearing a similar necklace, which she’d forgotten about completely until now; somehow, it seemed almost sacrilegious to be wearing such a thing in this place. Yet the two women didn’t seem at all disturbed; their expressions were solemn, yes, but there was no shame in the looks they cast toward Kate and Glory. One of them even gave Kate an encouraging smile. But Kate didn’t smile back. How could she? She was a robot. A machine.
Machines don’t smile.
Then her name was called again, and another woman, who identified herself as a counselor, took Kate and Glory into a windowless room whose only furnishings were plastic chairs and a big wooden desk on which sat a strange-looking sculpture that Kate suddenly realized, with a sense of mounting unreality, was a life-sized model of a uterus and vagina. The counselor used the model to demonstrate what she, too, called “the procedure.” Actually, Kate thought it was more like “the Procedure”: she could hear the capital P. In a calm and authoritative voice, the counselor assured them that the Procedure was statistically safer than giving birth. Then, as if to undercut her own argument, she spoke about the risks: incomplete evacuation, infection, perforation of the uterus, hemorrhage, words that flowed right through Kate, though Glory, beside her, seemed to clench her body tighter and tighter at the list of possible complications, until she was hunched over in her chair like a woman crippled by osteoporosis. Finally, the counselor asked to speak to Kate privately, and when Glory had left the room, she questioned her closely about whether or not this was something she wanted for herself, whether her mother or any other adult had pressured her into making the decision. Kate said that she understood what she was doing and that nobody had pressured her. The counselor nodded, satisfied, and gave her two Advil in a paper cup. “You’ll want these later,” the woman said. “For the cramping.”
Then it was back to the waiting room.
The next time her name was called, Glory was not allowed to accompany her.
I’m a robot, she thought as she stood up. Glory was plainly fighting back tears, and this nearly got Kate started as well. But she looked away, forcing her eyes to remain dry.
Machines don’t cry . . .
The nurse led her back to the bathroom, where she directed her to empty her bladder and to place the sanitary napkin she’d brought into her underwear. When she emerged from the bathroom, a second nurse was waiting, a gray-haired woman with a kind, weathered face who appeared to be in her fifties or early sixties.
“I’m Nurse Rhodes,” she said. “You can call me Jackie if you like. I’ll take good care of you, dear, don’t worry.”
Kate nodded.
Jackie took her to the room where the Procedure would take place and asked her to undress from the waist down.
“No, leave your socks on,” she said when Kate made to peel them off. Then she helped Kate onto the examining table, draping a clean white sheet across her bare lap and legs. “The doctor will be here shortly,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”
With that, she left the room.
Alone, Kate began to shiver although the room was actually quite warm. She observed a sink, a cart of various implements, probes and the like, but she didn’t look too closely. She heard a low drone of conversation from outside the door, Jackie’s voice and the voice of the counselor, but she couldn’t make out any words, though she strained to do so, certain that the two women were discussing her. Then, suddenly, she heard what sounded like a big vacuum cleaner being switched on, a howling, whining roar, as if the cleaning crew were at work in the room next door. But of course, it wasn’t a vacuum cleaner.
It was the machine that would quite literally suck the life out of her.
The noise went on and on. Then, as suddenly as it had started, it stopped.
Then started up again.
I
’m a robot. A machine . . .
The door opened, and Jackie came in, wheeling the vacuum machine. She was followed by a pudgy, balding, fortyish-looking man who introduced himself as Dr. Lambert. He smiled at her reassuringly, but she was too far into her robotic state to respond.
Jackie had her recline on the table, with her bottom as close to the edge as possible. “No, closer—until it feels like you’re going to fall off. That’s right, good girl.”
“Let’s have a look, shall we?” Dr. Lambert pulled up a low stool and took a seat between her spread legs.
Jackie came to stand at Kate’s side. “You can hold my hand, dear, if you like.”
Kate just wanted everything to be over. She flinched as Dr. Lambert inserted the speculum. Then she felt a sharp jab as he injected the anesthetic into her cervix; she cried out, jerking away involuntarily.
“Please don’t move,” Dr. Lambert said sternly.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her own voice sounding pathetic in her ears, as if she were apologizing for having caused him pain. Tears had sprung to her eyes, and only when she moved to wipe them away did she realize that her hand was being held; without being aware of it, at some point she had reached over and grasped Jackie’s hand and was squeezing it now as hard as she could. But the nurse didn’t seem to mind the pressure.
“Another shot now,” Jackie told her.
It was like being stabbed with a dagger. She couldn’t help the groan that escaped her lips. She felt as if she would faint. She tried to tell herself that there was no pain, that machines didn’t feel pain.
“One more,” said Jackie.
“No, please . . .”
But Dr. Lambert was already jabbing the needle into her. It hurt less this time, but it was still enough to make her whimper. She wondered if Glory had heard her cry out. Then she felt the doctor’s hands pressing against her, far up inside, and a cramp shot through her.
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