And God knows, God will punish. You’d better believe.
The woman blocking Drewe’s way was heavyset, in her forties perhaps. Bulgy-eyed, with a strong-boned fattish face, shiny synthetic russet-red hair that must have been a wig, a floral maternity smock covering her drooping-watermelon breasts. There was something gleeful and demented about this woman, that set her apart from the other demonstrators. She was holding a rosary aloft, practically in Drewe’s face, praying loudly Hail Mary Mother of God pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death Amen. Hail Mary Mother of God pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death Amen. Hail Mary . . . In her other hand the woman held a picket sign—a ghastly magnified photograph of what appeared to be a mangled baby, or embryo, lying amid trash. Drewe had been warned not to look at these picket-sign photographs—(which were said to be digitally modified, and not “real”)—yet this ghastly photograph she saw clearly. Hail Mary! Hail Mary! Hail Mary save this baby from the abortion-murderers! Strike the sinner down dead.
You could see that the heavyset woman in the maternity smock was thrilled to be in combat, she’d been awaiting this moment to spring at Drewe. She was jeering, and disgusted, but thrilled, fixing Drewe with a look of derisive intimacy.
She knows me. She knows my heart.
They were almost at the front door of the clinic, which was being held open by another WomanSpace assistant. Yet the heavyset woman followed beside Drewe, taunting her. Drewe wrenched her arm out of Conover’s grip to push at the woman—“Leave me alone! You’re religious fanatics. You have no right! You’re sick.”
The woman, surprised at Drewe’s reaction, took a moment to recover—then shoved Drewe back. She was strong, a small dense mountain of a woman, with a flushed and triumphant face.
Murderer! Baby-murderer! Jesus will harrow you down to hell.
Oh!—the woman had hurt her. A shut fist, against Drewe’s upper chest.
Conover and the lanky escort hurried Drewe away, up the steps and into the clinic, where the demonstrators were forbidden to follow. With what relief, Drewe saw that the door was shut against them.
She wasn’t crying. She would not give the heavyset woman that satisfaction, to know that she’d hurt her.
Not crying but tears trickled down her hot cheeks.
Not crying but she could not stop trembling.
Pro-Life. Their certitude terrified her.
THE SURGICAL ABORTIONS were running late.
There’d been complications that morning at WomanSpace. Many more demonstrators than usual, a bus-load of particularly combative League of Life Catholics from Milwaukee. The Eau Claire PD had been called earlier that morning, summons had been issued.
But no arrests?
Conover complained to the staff: why wasn’t there another way into the clinic?
He was told that, no matter which entrance was used, the demonstrators would flock around it. Other strategies had been tried, and had not worked out satisfactorily.
“The civil rights of your clients are being violated. That’s an aggressive mob out there, and could be dangerous.”
It was not a secret, abortion-providers were at risk for their lives. Abortion doctors had been killed by snipers, Planned Parenthood offices had been firebombed.
Incensed, Conover sat beside Drewe, in a vinyl chair nearly too small for him. By degrees, he quieted. He’d brought work with him for the long wait, and would take solace in his work.
Drewe sat in a haze of such startled thought, she could not coherently assess what had happened.
A woman, a stranger, had assaulted her? Yet more astonishing—Drewe had assaulted the woman?
And all this had happened so swiftly. A terrible intimacy, in such close quarters.
“They seemed to know me. They recognized me.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. They don’t know you.”
“They know my type—my category. They know why I am here.”
“I should hope so. They aren’t total idiots.”
They aren’t total idiots at all. They are true believers.
Drewe had to fill out more forms though her gynecologist had faxed a half-dozen documents to the clinic. The receptionist, a harried-looking woman with a strained smile, took her name, checked her ID, asked her another time about allergies, asthma, any recent surgery, silicone implants—next of kin.
Next of kin: what were they expecting?
Conover said she could leave it blank probably.
In a hurt voice she said shouldn’t she give them his name?
“Sure. I’ll be right here, in any case.”
It didn’t seem like a convincing answer. Yet Drewe could not put down her mother’s name, her father’s name . . . No one in her family must know.
In the event that Drewe died, it would be mortifying to her—(yet, how could she know?)—that her family knew of her secret.
Not that Drewe was ashamed of herself—(though in fact, yes Drewe was ashamed)—but rather, Drewe resented others knowing of her most personal, private life.
Even knowledge of Conover, who wasn’t divorced quite yet—separated from his wife, who lived in another part of the country—had to be kept from Drewe’s family, who would have judged her harshly, and pityingly.
A married man. Of course he says he’s “separated.”
Too smart for her own good. Headstrong, never listened to anyone else. Pride goeth before a fall . . .
She returned to her chair, to sit and wait. Brightly she wanted to ask Conover if she’d really hit that awful woman, who’d thrust a rosary into her face?
Drewe was an entertaining storyteller. But to whom could she tell this story?
The waiting room was ordinary, nondescript as a dentist’s waiting room, except for the pamphlets, brochures, and magazines on display, all on feminist themes, abortion procedures, federal and state laws; yet, perversely, for WomanSpace was a Planned Parenthood clinic as well as an abortion provider, there was a wall rack entirely filled with pregnancy/birth/infant information. Drewe wondered at the incongruity, and the irony.
Slatted blinds had been pulled shut over the windows at the front of the waiting room. Yet you could hear raised voices outside, that seemed never to subside.
Drewe could have wept with vexation: she’d left Paradise Lost in Conover’s car, after all. And there was no way of retrieving it.
Drewe said, to Conover, “Waiting rooms! Think of No Exit. Even a waiting room to Hell would be boring, wouldn’t it?”
Conover, who was reading his Kindle, responded minimally.
Drewe told Conover, in a discreetly lowered voice, for she did not want to annoy or distract or further upset others in the room, who were very likely waiting for consultations or procedures like her own, of how, when she’d first been taken to a dentist, by her mother, at the age of four, she’d become panicked in the waiting room, and in the dentist’s chair she’d become hysterical. Her mother and the dentist—(male, middle-aged)—had tried to calm her with N2O—“laughing gas”—but this too had frightened her. In disgust the dentist had told Drewe’s mother Don’t tell a child “this won’t hurt” when it will hurt.
She was speaking in her quick bright nervous way that did not seem to involve her frightened eyes, or her frozen mouth.
Conover said, touching Drewe’s arm: “Not now, honey. Just be calm now. Maybe later.”
Had she been talking too excitedly? Had she been laughing, unconvincingly?
At first she had no idea what Conover meant: Later?
Of course she knew: it was not really surgery, only just a procedure. Vacuum suction through an instrument called a cannula, and she would be sedated, though conscious, thus not running the risk of an anesthetic.
She’d read all about it of course. It was her way to know as much as she could of whatever subject might be approached intellectually, coolly. She’d memorized much of what she’d read.
As if in one of the pamphlets she’d read, a vision of the heavyset woman—the
jeering face, accusing eyes.
Baby-murderer. You.
Sick. You are sick. You!
Drewe glanced about the waiting room. Was she being watched?—was she somehow special, singled-out, more guilty than the others? But why?
There were two or three women in the waiting room of Drewe’s approximate age. But she seemed to know they were not university students. And a girl of perhaps seventeen, soft-bodied, in a paralysis of fear; her mother close beside her, gripping her limp hand.
The scoldings, the disgust, had ended. Now, there was a mother’s sympathy, and anxiety.
Drewe would not have told her mother about this surgical procedure. Not ever.
Drewe would not tell her mother about becoming, by accident, pregnant.
When they’d entered the waiting room, there had been no man. Conover had been the sole man. Since then, another man had entered, with a thin ashen-faced heavily made-up woman; both of them grim, not speaking to the other.
Drewe wondered if men, in such situations, glanced at one another, to establish some sort of—bond? Or whether, and this was more likely, they assiduously avoided eye contact.
Conover appeared oblivious to the other man in the waiting room. Yet, Drewe guessed that Conover was well aware of his presence.
Drewe guessed too that Conover had been disconcerted by the Pro-Life demonstrators. Conover was accustomed to demonstrating and not being demonstrated against.
His sympathies were naturally with protest. This was his background, his instinct.
Conover had been involved in the Occupy Wall Street events in Madison. He’d organized a teach-in at the university. His politics were “leftist”—“activist”; he had a history of participating in marches and protests, particularly when he’d been younger. (On a protest march on State Street, on the eve of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, Conover had been injured by a riot policeman’s club, dislocating his right knee. Since then, he walked with a limp, and sometimes winced with pain when he believed no one was watching.) His father had been a high-profile labor attorney arguing federal cases.
It was against Conover’s political principles to “cross” any picket line—but this was a different situation, surely.
Conover was a distinguished man in those circles—academic, intellectual—in which he was a distinguished man: outside those circles, few would have known his name. He was an Americanist-historian whose books on pre–Civil War America, particularly a history of Abolitionism, had won him tenure, visiting professorships, prizes. Yet he was a man whom confinement made restless, anxious. He sweated easily. In the waiting room he crossed his legs, uncrossed his legs. He shifted in the vinyl chair, that was almost too small for him. In bed, his legs frequently cramped: with a little cry of annoyed pain he scrambled from bed to stand on the afflicted leg, to ease the muscle free of the cramp. Sometimes his toes cramped too, like claws.
Don’t be scared he’d said several times. I will be with you.
He was reading an article on his Kindle, submitted to a historical journal for which he was an advisory editor. Drewe, who had no reading material of her own, tried to read with him, but could not concentrate.
At last the receptionist called Drewe’s name—but it was not her name, as Conover told her, startled; tugging at her wrist, to pull her back. Still, Drewe rose from the vinyl chair, seeming to think that her name had been called. “Drewe, that isn’t your name,” Conover said, and Drewe stammered, “Oh, but I thought—maybe—there had been a misunderstanding.” She had no idea what she was trying to say.
Someone else will murder her baby. It’s a strange dream, but it isn’t my dream.
Was it true, the baby wanted to live?
But she wasn’t carrying a baby. Only just a cluster of congealed cells.
She might explain to Conover. Try to explain.
And calmly he would say You’ve changed your mind, then. This is for the good, I think.
Is it? For the good? Oh—I love you.
We can love the baby. We can make a life for the baby, in the interstices of our lives.
She was saying Yes!—I mean no . . . I don’t know.
Conover hadn’t heard. Conover continued reading, taking notes as he squinted at the shiny Kindle screen.
Another woman had come forward, to be escorted into the rear of the clinic.
Drewe had wanted to make an appointment in Eau Claire under a fictitious name. Conover had thought it wouldn’t be feasible, or even legal; as it happened, Drewe’s gynecologist wouldn’t have cooperated. And there was the matter of the faxed tests and documents. And health-care insurance.
Someone in the waiting room was crying softly. Drewe did not want to glance around for fear that in this bizarre waking dream she would discover that the afflicted person was herself.
In fact, it was the young girl with her mother. Very young, pale and wan, and scared. Probably not seventeen, nor even sixteen. It was difficult to imagine such a child having sex—maybe “having sex” wasn’t the appropriate term, having had sex inflicted upon her was more likely.
Maybe she’d been raped. That was an ugly possibility.
With a pang of envy Drewe saw how the mother continued to hold her daughter’s hand. The two whispered and wept together. And how, when the daughter’s name was called, both the daughter and the mother rose to their feet.
Drewe’s eyes locked with the daughter’s: warm-brown, liquidy, terrified.
Drewe looked quickly away.
“Drewe?”
Conover was watching her. His face was strained, the tiny shaving nick on the underside of his jaw was bleeding again, thinly.
“You’re sure, are you? About this?”
He is trying to be generous, Drewe thought. It was an effort in him, he was trying very hard. Like a man who has coins in his closed fist he wants to offer—to fling onto a table—to demonstrate his generosity, even the flamboyance of his generosity, which will be to his disadvantage; but his hand is shaky, the coins fall from his fingers onto the floor.
She reassured him, her lover. The woman was the one to reassure the man, he had made a proper decision.
She heard herself say, another time: “Yes.”
STRIKE THE SINNER down dead.
Baby wants to live. Baby prays—LET ME LIVE!
By the time her name was called, sometime after 12:30 P.M., Drewe was exhausted. She had not slept more than two or three hours the previous night and her head felt now as if she’d been awake for a day and a night in succession.
Something was happening in front of the clinic: some sort of disturbance. The demonstrators had interfered with one of the clinic’s patients, there’d been a scuffle with one of the WomanSpace escorts, the Eau Claire PD had been called another time.
There were shouts, a siren. Drewe was trembling with indignation. The fanatics had no right.
She’d used the women’s lavatory at least three times. And each time she’d scarcely been able to urinate, a tiny slow hot trickle into the toilet bowl, she’d been desperate to check: was it blood?
It was not blood. It was hardly urine.
The abortion-clock was clicking now, defiantly in her face. She saw how all of her life had been leading to this time.
The life-time of the cell-cluster inside her would be no more than seven weeks, three days. Conception, suction-death. From the perspective of millennia, there was virtually no difference between her own (brief) life of twenty-six years and the (briefer) life of the baby-to-be.
Sick. You are sick. You!
But her name had been called, at last. Numbly she had no choice but to rise to her feet, and be led by a nurse into the interior of WomanSpace.
Conover had leaned over to squeeze her hand, a final time. But Drewe’s fingers were limp, unresponsive.
The woman was speaking to her. Explaining to her. Calling her “Drewe”—she felt uncomfortable at this familiarity. Conover had been left behind—that was a relief.
A man might parti
cipate in his lover’s natural-childbirth delivery but a man would not participate in any woman’s surgical abortion.
He would not be a witness! He would never know.
Drewe was naked and shivering inside the flimsy paper gown, that opened in the front. Her lips were icy-cold. Her skin felt chafed as if she’d been rubbing it with something abrasive like sandpaper.
She’d been allowed to keep on her sandals.
A middle-aged woman doctor with skinned-back hair and a hard-chiseled face had entered the room. Her manner was forthright, with an air of forced and just slightly overbearing calm. She spoke in a voice too loud for the room as if there was some doubt that the trembling patient would hear her, and would comprehend what she was saying.
Dr. ____—Drewe heard the name clearly yet in the next instant had forgotten.
Dr. ____ was asking how she felt?
How do you think I feel? Ecstatic?
Mutely and meekly Drewe nodded. As one deprived of language, making a feeble gesture to suggest Good! Really good.
Dr. ____ was telling her it was required by law that she have a sonogram before the procedure.
A new law, recently passed by the Wisconsin state legislature.
A sonogram, so that Drewe could look at the cluster of cells—the “fetus” in her womb, at seven weeks. And she must answer a fixed sequence of questions.
Do you understand. Are you fully cognizant of.
Have you been coerced in any way.
You are certain—you have not been coerced.
Drewe was astonished. She’d been through all this—these questions—not a sonogram: she had not had a sonogram—but all this talk. She wanted to press her hands against her ears and run out of the room.
Dr. ____ was explaining that there are different sorts of coercion. Drewe would have to declare whether anyone had exerted pressure on her in any way contrary to her own and best interests.
Drewe stammered—she’d already answered those questions many times.
Yes. But this was a new law. They were required to ask her more than once.
She shut her eyes. No no no no no.
No one had coerced her.
Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories Page 7