After she took off her clothes, the girl assistant who was no older than the girl herself said, "Put this on."
The girl put it on.
I looked down at the sleeping form of Vida. She was wearing one, too.
Vida's clothes were folded over a chair and her shoes were on the floor beside the chair. They looked very sad because she had no power over them any more. She lay unconscious before them.
"Now put your legs up, honey," the doctor was saying. "A little higher, please. That's a good girl."
Then he said something in Spanish to the Mexican girl and she answered him in Spanish.
"I've had six months of Spanish I in high school," the teen-age girl said with her legs apart and strapped to the metal stirrups of this horse of no children.
The doctor said something in Spanish to the Mexican girl and she replied in Spanish to him.
"Oh," he said, a little absentmindedly to nobody in particular. I guess he had performed a lot of abortions that day and then he said to the teen-age girl, "That's nice. Learn some more."
The boy said something very rapidly in Spanish.
The Mexican girl said something very rapidly in Spanish.
The doctor said something very rapidly in Spanish and then he said to the teen-age girl, "How do you feel, honey?"
"Nothing," she said, smiling. "I don't feel anything. Should I feel something right now?"
The doctor said something very rapidly to the boy in Spanish. The boy did not reply.
"I want you to relax," the doctor said to the teen-age girl. "Please take it easy."
All three of them had a very rapid go at it in Spanish. There seemed to be some trouble and then the doctor said something very rapidly in Spanish to the Mexican girl. He finished it by saying, "¿Como se dice treinta?"
"Thirty," the Mexican girl said.
"Honey," the doctor said. He was leaning over the teen-age girl. "I want you to count to, to thirty for us, please, honey."
"All right," she said, smiling, but for the first time her voice sounded a little tired.
It was starting to work.
"1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6..." There was a pause here. "7, 8, 9..." There was another pause here, but it was a little longer than the first pause.
"Count to, to thirty, honey," the doctor said.
"10, 11, 12."
There was a total stop.
"Count to thirty, honey," the boy said. His voice sounded soft and gentle just like the doctor's. Their voices were the sides of the same coin.
"What comes after 12?" the teen-age girl giggled. "I know! 13." She was very happy that 13 came after 12. "14, 15, 15, 15."
"You said 15," the doctor said.
"15," the teen-age girl said.
"What's next, honey?" the boy said.
"15," the teen-age girl said very slowly and triumphantly.
"What's next, honey?" the doctor said.
"15," the girl said. "15."
"Come on, honey," the doctor said.
"What's next?" the boy said.
"What's next?" the doctor said.
The girl didn't say anything.
They didn't say anything either. It was very quiet in the room. I looked down at Vida. She was very quiet, too.
Suddenly the silence in the operating room was broken by the Mexican girl saying, "16."
"What?" the doctor said.
"Nothing," the Mexican girl said, and then the language and silences of the abortion began.
Chalkboard Studies
VIDA lay there gentle and still like marble dust on the bed. She had not shown the slightest sign of consciousness, but I wasn't worried because her breathing was normal.
So I just sat there listening to the abortion going on in the other room and looking at Vida and where I was at: this house in Mexico, so far away from my San Francisco library.
The small gas heater was doing its thing because it was cool within the adobe walls of the doctor's office.
Our room was in the center of a labyrinth.
There was a little hall on one side of the room, running back past the open door of the toilet and ending at a kitchen.
The kitchen was about twenty feet away from where Vida lay unconscious with her stomach vacant like a chalkboard. I could see the refrigerator and a sink in the kitchen and a stove with some pans on it.
On the other side of our room was a door that led into a huge room, almost like a small gym, and I could see still another room off the gym.
The door was open and there was the dark abstraction of another bed in the room like a large flat sleeping animal.
I looked down at Vida still submerged in a vacuum of anesthesia and listened to the abortion ending in the operating room.
Suddenly there was a gentle symphonic crash of surgical instruments and then I could hear the sounds of cleaning up joined to another chalkboard.
My Third Abortion
THE doctor came through the room carrying the teen-age girl in his arms. Though the doctor was a small man, he was very strong and carried the girl without difficulty.
She looked very silent and unconscious. Her hair hung strangely over his arm in a blond confusion. He took the girl through the small gym and into the adjoining room where he lay her upon the dark animal-like bed.
Then he came over and closed the door to our room and went into the forward reaches of the labyrinth and came back with the girl's parents.
"It went perfect," he said. "No pain, all clean."
They didn't say anything to him and he came back to our room. As he passed through the door, the people were watching him and they saw Vida lying there and me sitting beside her.
I looked at them and they looked at me before the door was closed. Their faces were a stark and frozen landscape.
The boy came into the room carrying the bucket and he went into the toilet and flushed the fetus and the abortion leftovers down the toilet.
Just after the toilet flushed, I heard the flash of the instruments being sterilized by fire.
It was the ancient ritual of fire and water all over again to be all over again and again in Mexico today.
Vida still lay there unconscious. The Mexican girl came in and looked at Vida. "She's sleeping," the girl said. "It went fine."
She went back into the operating room and then the next woman came into the operating room. She was the "one" coming the Mexican girl had mentioned earlier. I didn't know what she looked like because she had come since we'd been there.
"Has she eaten today?" the doctor said.
"No," a man said sternly, as if he were talking about dropping a hydrogen bomb on somebody he didn't like.
The man was her husband. He had come into the operating room. He had decided that he wanted to watch the abortion. They were awfully tense people and the woman said only three words all the time she was there. After she had her shot, he helped her off with her clothes.
He sat down while her legs were strapped apart on the operating table. She was unconscious just about the time they finished putting her in position for the abortion because they started almost immediately.
This abortion was done automatically like a machine. There was very little conversation between the doctor and his helpers.
I could feel the presence of the man in the operating room. He was like some kind of statue sitting there looking on, waiting for a museum to snatch him and his wife up. I never saw the woman.
After the abortion the doctor was tired and Vida was still lying there unconscious. The doctor came into the room. He looked down at Vida.
"Not yet," he said, answering his own question.
I said no because I didn't have anything else to do with my mouth.
"It's OK," he said. "Sometimes it's like this."
The doctor looked like an awfully tired man. God only knows how many abortions he had performed that day.
He came over and sat down on the bed. He took Vida's hand and he felt her pulse. He reached down and opened one of her eyes.
Her eye looked back at him from a thousand miles away.
"It's all right," he said. "She'll be back in a few moments."
He went into the toilet and washed his hands. After he finished washing his hands, the boy came in with the bucket and took care of that.
The girl was cleaning up in the operating room. The doctor had put the woman on the examination bed in the operating room.
He had quite a thing going just taking care of the bodies.
"OHHHHHHHHHH!" I heard a voice come from behind the gym door where the doctor had taken the teen-age girl. "OHHHHHHHHHH!" It was a sentimental drunken voice. It was the girl. "OHH-HHHHHHHH!
"16!" she said. "I-OHHHHHHHHHH!"
Her parents were talking to her in serious, hushed tones. They were awfully respectable.
"OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
They were acting as if she had gotten drunk at a family reunion and they were trying to cover up her drunkenness.
"OHHHHHHHHHH! I feel funny!"
There was total silence from the couple in the operating room. The only sound was the Mexican girl. The boy had come back through our room and had gone somewhere else in the building. He never came back.
After the girl finished cleaning up the operating room, she went into the kitchen and started cooking a big steak for the doctor.
She got a bottle of Miller's beer out of the refrigerator and poured the doctor a big glass of it. He sat down in the kitchen. I could barely see him drinking the beer.
Then Vida started stirring in her sleep. She opened her eyes. They didn't see anything for a moment or so and then they saw me.
"Hi," she said in a distant voice.
"Hi," I said, smiling.
"I feel dizzy," she said, coming in closer.
"Don't worry about it," I said. "Everything is fine."
"Oh, that's good," she said. There.
"Just lie quietly and take it easy," I said.
The doctor got up from the table in the kitchen and came in. He was holding the glass of beer in his hand.
"She's coming back," he said.
"Yes," I said.
"Good," he said. "Good."
He took his glass of beer and went back into the kitchen and sat down again. He was very tired.
Then I heard the people in the outside gym room dressing their daughter. They were in a hurry to leave. They sounded as if they were dressing a drunk.
"I can't get my hands up," the girl said.
Her parents said something stern to her and she got her hands up in the air, but they had so much trouble putting her little brassiere on that they finally abandoned trying and the mother put the brassiere in her purse.
"OHHHHHHHHHH! I'm so dizzy," the girl said as her parents half-carried her, half-dragged her out of the place.
I heard a couple of doors close and then everything was silent, except for the doctor's lunch cooking in the kitchen. The steak was being fried in a very hot pan and it made a lot of noise.
"What's that?" Vida said. I didn't know if she was talking about the noise of the girl leaving or the sound of the steak cooking.
"It's the doctor having lunch," I said.
"Is it that late?" she said.
"Yes," I said.
"I've been out a long time," she said.
"Yes," I said. "We're going to have to leave soon but we won't leave until you feel like it."
"I'll see what I can do," Vida said.
The doctor came back into the room. He was nervous because he was hungry and tired and wanted to close the place up for a while, so he could take it easy, rest some.
Vida looked up at him and he smiled and said, "See, no pain, honey. Everything wonderful. Good girl."
Vida smiled very weakly and the doctor returned to the kitchen and his steak that was ready now.
While the doctor had his lunch, Vida slowly sat up and I helped her get dressed. She tried standing up but it was too hard, so I had her sit back down for a few moments.
While she sat there, she combed her hair and then she tried standing up again but she still didn't have it and sat back down on the bed again.
"I'm still a little rocky," Vida said.
"That's all right."
The woman in the other room had come to and her husband was dressing her almost instantly, saying, "Here. Here. Here. Here," in a painful Okie accent.
"I'm tired," the woman said, using up 2/3 of her vocabulary.
"Here," the man said, helping her put something else on.
After he got her dressed he came into our room and stood there looking for the doctor. He was very embarrassed when he saw Vida sitting on the bed, combing her hair.
"Doctor?" he said.
The doctor got up from his steak and stood in the doorway of the kitchen. The man started to walk toward the doctor, but then stopped after taking only a few steps.
The doctor came into our room.
"Yes," he said.
"I can't remember where I parked my car," the man said. "Can you call me a taxi?"
"You lost your auto?" the doctor said.
"I parked it next to Woolworth's, but I can't remember where Woolworth's is," the man said. "I can find Woolworth's if I can get downtown. I don't know where to go."
"The boy's coming back," the doctor said. "He'll take you there in his auto."
"Thank you," the man said, returning to his wife in the other room. "Did you hear that?" he said to her.
"Yes," she said, using it all up.
"We'll wait," he said.
Vida looked over at me and I smiled at her and took her hand to my mouth and kissed it.
"Let's try again," she said.
"All right," I said.
She tried it again and this time it was all right. She stood there for a few moments and then said, "I've got it. Let's go."
"Are you sure you have it?" I said.
"Yes."
I helped Vida on with her sweater. The doctor looked at us from the kitchen. He smiled but he didn't say anything. He had done what he was supposed to do and now we did what we were supposed to do. We left.
We wandered out of the room into the gym and worked our way to the front of the place, passing through layers of coolness to the door.
Even though it had remained a gray overcast day, we were stunned by the light and everything was instantly noisy, car-like, confused, poor, rundown and Mexican.
It was as if we had been in a time capsule and now were released again to be in the world.
The children were still playing in front of the doctor's office and again they stopped their games of life to watch two squint-eyed gringos holding, clinging, holding to each other walk up the street and into a world without them.
BOOK 6: The Hero
Woolworth's Again
WE slowly, carefully and abortively made our way back to downtown Tijuana surrounded and bombarded by people trying to sell us things that we did not want to buy.
We had already gotten what we'd come to Tijuana for. I had my arm around Vida. She was all right but she was a little weak.
"How do you feel, honey?" I said.
"I feel all right," she said. "But I'm a little weak."
We saw an old man crouching like a small gum-like piece of death beside an old dilapidated filling station.
"HEY, a pretty, pretty girl!"
Mexican men kept reacting to Vida's now pale beauty.
Vida smiled faintly at me as a taxicab driver dramatically stopped his cab in front of us and leaned out the window and gave a gigantic wolf whistle and said, "WOW! You need a taxi, honey!"
We made our way to the Main Street of Tijuana and found ourselves in front of Woolworth's again and the bunnies in the window.
"I'm hungry," Vida said. She was tired. "So hungry."
"You need something to eat," I said. "Let's go inside and see if we can get you some soup."
"That would be good," she said. "I need something."
We went off the confused dirty Main Street of Tijuan
a into the clean modern incongruity of Woolworth's. A very pretty Mexican girl took our order at the counter. She asked us what we wanted.
"What would you like?" she said.
"She'd like some soup," I said. "Some clam chowder."
"Yes," Vida said.
"What would you like?" the waitress said in very good Woolworth's English.
"I guess a banana split," I said.
I held Vida's hand while the waitress got our orders. She leaned her head against my shoulder. Then she smiled and said, "You're looking at the future biggest fan The Pill ever had."
"How do you feel?" I said.
"Just like I've had an abortion."
Then the waitress brought us our food. While Vida slowly worked her soup, I worked my banana split. It was the first banana split I'd had in years.
It was unusual fare for the day, but it was no different from anything else that had happened since we'd come to the Kingdom of Tijuana to avail ourselves of the local recreational facilities.
The taxicab driver never took his eyes off Vida as we drove back to America. His eyes looked at us from the rear-view mirror as if he had another face and it was a mirror.
"Did you have a good time in Tijuana?" he said.
"Lovely," I said.
"What did you do?" he said.
"We had an abortion," I said.
"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAVERYFUNNYJOKE!"
the driver laughed.
Vida smiled.
Farewell, Tijuana.
Kingdom of Fire and Water.
The Green Hotel Again
OUR desk clerk was waiting for us, agog with smiles and questions. I had an idea that he drank on the job. There was something about how friendly he was.
"Did you see your sister?" he asked Vida with a big falseteeth smile.
"What?" Vida said. She was tired.
"Yes, we saw her," I said. "She was just as we remembered her."
"Even more so," Vida said, catching the game by the tail.
"That's good," the clerk said. "People should never change. They should always be the same. They are happier that way."
I tried that one on for size and was able to hold a straight face. It had been a long day.
"My wife's a little tired," I said. "I think we'll go up to our room."
Revenge of the Lawn, the Abortion, So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away Page 21