Windfalls

by Jean Hegland

  Another nurse arrived, her face already covered with a surgical mask. A man came in, the doctor. His face was masked, too, and he wore a blue shirt. He gave a curt nod in Anna’s direction, although he did not meet her eyes.

  “Open your legs,” the nurse commanded.

  No one had said it would hurt so much. No one had said the nurse would thrust a black mask over Anna’s face, a heavy rubbery mask that stank and threatened to suffocate her. No one had said that the man in the blue shirt would bark, “Be still,” while he twisted his succession of instruments up inside her. No one had told her that he would try to split her open, to core her like an apple, the pain red and mean and inescapable. A machine came on, roaring like a carpet cleaner, but Anna was too occupied with pain to think what that noise might mean. No one had said she would writhe, that a thick sweat would soak her all at once, that she would cease to care how her gown hung open, or worry about the noises she made. No one had told her that, as she fought the pain and the hissing mask, she would hate the people who were helping her as much as she hated the sculptor and herself.

  When the machine was finally silent, Anna lay panting and defeated on the table, the sweat on her neck and belly and thighs suddenly cold while the doctor removed his last instruments. Watching the expressionless eyes above the nurse’s mask as she began to unstrap Anna’s arms, Anna remembered the girl outside the clinic, remembered the broken baby in the photograph and the man’s sign with its red word—MURDER.

  Still lying on the table, Anna blurted, “Can I see it?”

  “It’s over now,” the nurse answered. “Time to go back to recovery.”

  “I want to see,” Anna persisted, startled by the urgency of her own request. “I need to see—what came out.”

  There were furrows in the nurse’s brow as she cast a glance at the doctor. He shrugged and answered, “Sometimes they do.” He addressed Anna directly for the first time since he’d ordered her to be still. “Are you sure?”

  Unable to trust her voice, she nodded. Beating down great raw wings of panic, she elbowed herself up to sit, wobbly and wet, on the edge of the operating table. The nurse removed a glass jar from the machine and held it out toward Anna. As she leaned forward to look, she felt terrified and also vaguely embarrassed to be studying a product of her body in public. But what she saw when she peered into the jar was so astonishing, it made her forget about herself.

  Suspended in the clear fluid was a billowing cloud of tissue. Like a strange flower or a rare sea creature, it was all tender pinks, iridescent whites, delicate webs of crimson. Anna bent closer, and for a moment she thought she glimpsed an elfin hand—a hand so tiny a doll that size might sleep forever stretched out inside a walnut, like Tom Thumb.

  “Oh,” she gasped. She gazed, soaked in emotions she couldn’t begin to name, until the nurse made a small, impatient movement that set the contents of the jar swaying. Then, tearing her gaze away, Anna whispered, “Thank you,” as, trembling, she climbed down from the table.

  THE STRIPES ON CERISE ’ S WRISTS TURNED TO SCABS THAT CRACKED AND caught on whatever she happened to brush against, and tore and bled. Sitting in the back of U.S. history or sophomore English or bonehead algebra, she sucked the ooze, thinking, This is me, and before the burns healed, she took the iron out again.

  In the beginning she had almost hoped that someone would discover those burns, like a row of mouths seared shut inside each wrist—maybe one of the teachers at her school, or Sam, or even Rita. She’d imagined that person would ask her what had happened, and hoped that in explaining it to them, she would come to understand it, too. She’d hoped that someone else would be able to give her the sympathy she craved, that someone else would finally recognize what she couldn’t seem to realize for herself. Sometimes she even envisioned Sam running his fingertips across the rutted surface of her wrists, only in her daydream his fingers were cool and gentle, as tender as a girl’s.

  At first she believed that things would change once someone noticed her wrists. But later she began to be embarrassed by their ugly skin and ragged scabs. The wrists of the other girls at school were fresh as clean sheets, and it wasn’t long before Cerise realized that there was something wrong with her, something sick and shameful about what she did. She began to worry that her wrists would betray her, and she started wearing long-sleeved shirts that hung below her palms. Now she dreaded being caught, dreaded being made to confess or to explain, dreaded having another of her weaknesses exposed to the whole school’s ridicule. But every afternoon when she got home, she had to battle with that craving to burn herself.

  The first time Sam asked her to wait for him until he got off work, one of the reasons she agreed was so she wouldn’t have to be alone at home with the iron perched like a squat, hot idol on the kitchen counter, taunting her. Sitting on the bench in front of the market, she stared at the inexplicable equations in her algebra book, dug her fingernails surreptitiously among her blisters and scabs, and felt as terrified as if she were about to take a pop quiz. But she was thrilled, too, for it seemed like her real life was finally beginning, now that Sam had noticed her, now that someone had singled her out.

  There were things she wanted for herself. However—unlike Rita—she could not fit her desires directly into words, couldn’t say she wanted a Cadillac DeVille and a new shag carpet and a trip to Hawaii. Instead, she yearned for the life she felt must surely be waiting just beyond the life she currently inhabited, and although she was helpless to say exactly what that life consisted of, she felt hopeful that Sam might be its start.

  Sam was taller than she, nineteen, and out of school. He took her to the apartment he shared with a group of other guys, showed her how to inhale the skunky smoke of a joint until her lungs convulsed for lack of oxygen and then how to exhale in a triumphant dizzy blast. He was impressed by the size of the tokes she took and, after they’d smoked the joint down to a damp nub, by the fact that she claimed she didn’t feel much different than before. Later, he was pleased by how quickly she agreed to lie down beside him on the mattress in his room, though on subsequent afternoons he complained about how little interest she seemed to take in what he did to her there.

  The times with Sam that Cerise liked best were the times after sex, when all the pushing and grunting was over and she could press her ear against his bare chest and listen to the naked booming of his heart. She liked to feel little in his arms, longed to be able to sleep with him all night, curled up safe like a baby, instead of having to get up and dress and rush home before Rita got off work. She sometimes startled Sam with her desire to burrow against him or the ferocity with which she inhaled his smell. But on those rare occasions when he was so moved by lust or dope or pride that he said he loved her, she never answered him, and when he came inside her body, he was always alone.

  School was almost over before Cerise began to worry that she might be pregnant. She couldn’t remember having had a period since sometime in January or maybe even December. Still, it wasn’t until the end of March that she started to wonder about it, and another week had passed before any real anxiety began to seep into her bones. It was impossible to imagine saying anything to Sam that would require her to use words like period or pregnant, so instead she made a deal with the universe or fate or God that if she let her wrists heal and did not burn them anymore, her period would come.

  She kept her part of the bargain, though she had to suffer through waves of panic and desire so mean they made her dizzy. But despite both her torment and her victory, the crotch of her panties remained pure white. Night after night she lay beneath the canopy of her bed, kneading her stomach or pounding it with her fist. Sometimes she even tried cramming her hand inside herself in an attempt to dislodge whatever it was that kept the blood from flowing. But she had no idea what she was groping for up there, and no matter how hard she hit or prodded, she could not get the blood to come.

  Each night she promised herself she would do something about it in the morning, but in
the morning the worst edge of her fear had been blunted by sleep. Besides, in the morning it seemed impossible to believe that what Sam did to her could make her pregnant, especially since she’d experienced none of the wild desire she’d seen on TV, had felt none of the overwhelming need the teacher in her health class had warned that girls should guard themselves against.

  It was the end of the first week in April before she finally dialed the only number she could find in the whole phone book that seemed to promise help. She called from the phone booth outside the market while Sam swept out the stockroom. Sticking her finger in the cold chute of the coin return, she stared out through the scratched glass and listened to the ringing of a stranger’s phone. “Problem Pregnancy?” it had said in the Yellow Pages. “We Can Help.”

  Three hours later she was sitting in the LifeRight office, almost buried in the cushions of a broken sofa, while Jon and Sylvia sat in folding chairs in front of her, smiles of pained tenderness on their faces as they told her that the plastic cup of hot yellow pee she’d shyly handed to Sylvia had proven that she was pregnant.

  Jon was broad as a fullback, with wide hands and ears that angled out from his head like semaphores. Sylvia was small, demure, in a skirt that covered her kneecaps when she sat and a blouse that remained unwrinkled despite the spring heat. Her eyes shone, and she held Jon’s hand and leaned toward Cerise.

  “Sometimes when we think we’re looking for someone to love us,” Sylvia said, “we’re really looking for God’s love instead. God never loves our sin. But He always loves us. And Cerise, He’s blessed you with the most wonderful chance of all to prove your love for Him—He’s entrusted you with the life of a baby.”

  On the floor beside Cerise’s feet a mint tea bag oozed a faint green into a mug of tepid water. They had already passed a plate of store-bought cookies, and Cerise, in her shyness and sugar-hunger, had taken four, while Sylvia abstained and Jon chose two, swallowing them both in a single gulp, like vitamins.

  Now Sylvia was saying, “God can try us in some really hard ways, if He thinks we’re strong enough. And you are strong, Cerise.” She smiled and reached out to give Cerise’s knee a little shake of encouragement. “God asks us to honor our parents, but He wants us to do that because they gave us life. You’ll do the right thing. We know you will. We’ll pray for you.”

  Cerise was embarrassed to be talking about that thing they called her sin, and by the pile of cookies on the paper napkin on her knee. But she liked the way Jon and Sylvia held hands. She liked the way their eyes sought each other out, as though they were each mirrors in which they could admire their shared reflection. She could not imagine Jon doing to Sylvia what Sam had done to her.

  Jon said, “Just because the government made the mistake of legalizing infanticide doesn’t mean it’s right—or even safe. We want you to know all the facts. Not just what they’ll tell you at the abortion mill.”

  They said her baby’s heart was already beating, that her baby was already breathing inside her. They said her baby was sucking its tiny thumb, that it would cry and struggle when the baby-killer tore it from her body. They said, “God doesn’t make trash.”

  They told her that abortions hurt, that the pain could be unbearable. Abortions were risky, they said. If Cerise had an abortion, she might die, or might never be able to have another baby. They said that women who had abortions had a higher risk of drug addiction and suicide, and for a second Cerise thought that meant she was safe, because she was only a girl. They showed her pictures—color photographs of tiny limbs and perfect hands projecting from jumbles of bloody tissue that made Cerise think of road-killed animals. They showed her grainy black-and-white photos of dead babies heaped in garbage cans like discarded dolls. They said her baby trusted her. Her baby would love her forever, they promised, their eyes tender and shining, whatever she chose to do—give it to a childless couple or even raise it herself.

  They said, “We’ll be there for you, all the way.”

  She looked at them holding hands, leaning toward her in the eagerness of their conviction. It was nice to think that her baby loved her, and she wanted Sylvia and Jon to like her, too. She imagined walking down the street between them, she in the middle, small and safe, holding a hand of each. She thought of the baby they claimed was inside her, like a tiny perfect doll she’d rescued from the trash. And she imagined later, when that baby had grown into a little girl who would, as Sylvia had promised, love Cerise more than all the world.

  When Jon described the lawyers and procedures it would take for her to give her baby to strangers, Cerise knew she was too shy, too easily flustered and quickly confused, to ever to go through with an adoption. That night, when Rita came home and handed Cerise the bag that was their dinner, Cerise unpacked the hamburgers and fries, poked a straw into each waxed cup of Coke. After she’d laid the food out on the table, she lowered her chin to her chest and told her mother that she was going to have a baby.

  The fries wilted and the ice melted while Rita yelled and wept. She called Cerise a slut and asked her what the hell she intended to do about the mess she was in.

  “Keep it,” Cerise answered.

  “Oh, no, you aren’t.”

  “Yes,” Cerise said, and though she was speaking to the floor, she felt a tight triumph as she spoke, like when she’d pressed her wrist against the iron.

  Rita said she would pay for Cerise’s abortion. She would pay for Cerise’s abortion and give her a hundred dollars besides for new school clothes, but she would be damned if she’d help Cerise raise a baby.

  “I’ve got more important things to do,” Rita yelled, while Cerise scraped crescents of wax from her Coke cup with her fingernail and rolled them onto her napkin, where they lay beside her burger like a litter of tiny moons. Finally Rita’s voice went hard and low, and she said, “If you want to ruin your life, go ahead. I don’t guess there’s much I can do to stop you. But don’t come crying to me to help you later on. I’m already doing all I can. Every day I work my butt off so you can go to school and have a good time, and this is the thanks I get. It’s time you learned about the consequences of your actions.”

  She stormed into her bedroom, slamming the door behind her like a fist, and Cerise waited until she heard the laughter coming from Rita’s television before she ate her limp hamburger and drank her watery Coke.

  AFTERWARD THERE WAS BLOOD—MORE BLOOD THAN ANNA HAD expected would come from the loss of that feathery, floating thing. On her way home from the clinic, as she leaned her head against the rattling window of the bus and waited wearily for her stop, she could feel the warm blood seeping out of her, and she was afraid she would not make it back to her room before the blood overflowed the pad that chafed between her legs.

  She was tired and cramping, and she longed in all her bones for the hot bath the sheet of instructions the clinic had given her said she shouldn’t have. But her nausea had vanished, and despite her exhaustion, she felt as relieved as if she had just survived a traffic accident and were now standing in one piece on the solid shoulder of the road.

  She made it home without meeting anyone she knew. Collapsing on her bed, she toed off her boots, shrugged her way out of her coat, and then crawled beneath the covers with her clothes on, toppling into a sleep so deep it was as though some huge hand were holding her beneath the surface of consciousness. She woke fourteen hours later and rose and showered and dressed and left her room. It wasn’t yet dawn, and for once the kitchen was empty of people, though the counter was cluttered with last night’s empty bottles and full ashtrays. An overflowing compost bucket sat like a toad amid the waxen husks of burned-out candles. She heated water on the great black range and dripped a mug of coffee for herself. Standing by the window, she ate a bowl of granola and yogurt, savoring both her hunger and the rightness of the flavors, exalting in the restoration of her senses. She rinsed her dishes in the stained sink, left them to dry in the musty dish rack, and let herself out of the house into the cold dawn, hurry
ing down the broken sidewalk toward campus.

  She was at the end of the block when she heard someone calling behind her, “Hey, Anna! Wait up.”

  She turned and saw Estelle hurrying toward her. Her hair was scraped back in a ballerina’s bun, and beneath the hem of her trench coat Anna could see her striped leg warmers and black Adidas. “It’s too damn early,” Estelle groaned as she drew nearer. Her breath left her mouth in a dense gray cloud. She shuddered and flipped the end of her scarf a second time around her neck. “Where are you off to?”

  “The darkroom,” Anna answered, stepping over an ice-filled gutter. She had not been back inside the darkroom since her visit to the clinic. She thought of the finished prints that needed matting, of the negatives waiting for her like unread fortunes, and her pace quickened. Turning to Estelle, who was nearly jogging along beside her, she asked, “How about you?”

  “Rehearsal,” Estelle answered. She gave Anna a shrewd glance, and asked, “What have you been up to, anyway?”

  “Me?”

  “We were talking about it last night. No one’s seen you for weeks.”

  Anna’s mind stuttered to a stop. They were walking past a row of fraternity houses. On the sidewalk ahead of them an orange tomcat had planted its head and forefeet inside an open paper bag and was tearing ravenously at whatever the bag contained. I had an abortion, Anna thought. But even inside her head the words sounded both too harsh and too meager to describe what had happened. Behind the frat houses and the telephone lines and the skeletal maples, the sky was stained a pink as delicate as the color inside a shell. In her mind she saw the jar the nurse had held for her, its contents wafting and drifting like a sea anemone.

  “You’re like the ghost in the attic or something,” Estelle offered, looking over at Anna. Startled by their approach, the cat bolted across the street, leaving the bag yawning in the middle of the sidewalk. It would be possible, Anna realized, to tell Estelle. She could explain the predicament she’d been in and what she had done about it, and she saw how by saying those words she could reduce the whole thing to a single memory, could turn it into something flat and manageable, a thing she could complain about and forget, like drinking too much on a Friday night, or having too many finals in a row. Something in the back of her throat yearned for the simplicity of that. She longed for Estelle’s quick sympathy, longed for the whole thing to be over.