Wonderland

by Joyce Carol Oates

  “No need to look so tense, my dear. It’s a lovely day and no one is going to hurt you,” he said gently. “First, I want to ask you about your father, if you don’t mind. How is he? It’s been ten years—at least ten years!—since I’ve seen Benjamin face to face—”

  And so she spoke dutifully of her father. Dr. Blazack smiled brightly, nodded at her recitation, sighed as if in envy of Benjamin Cady’s life; it was the courtesy of a wealthy obstetrician for a man of pure science. In his turn he talked of her father as if they had been very close friends. Helene doubted this. Her father had had no close friends. Helene pretended to agree but her mind wandered nervously. The magazine with its slick black-and-white cover seemed to shimmer. Protoplasm that was about to come to life—like jelly, like a balloon. Helene had examined thousands of cells under slides. Smears of cells. Jesse, in the pathology labs in which he’d worked, had gotten practice at examining cells of all kinds. The universe might open up into a snowstorm of cells.… Living units. Dead units. And yet the dead units were perhaps not really dead. Nothing dies. Nothing dies permanently—was that a law of physics? Life in each cell, like grit, like a grain of sand in the eye that can’t be annihilated. The cell shrivels down to this pinprick of life … or perhaps it goes mad and starts dividing, multiplying, blowing itself up into a balloon-sized tumor.…

  “I think I’m pregnant,” Helene said finally.

  “Ah!”

  Dr. Blazack smiled as if he had never heard such a statement before. Now he opened a folder, picked up a pen, prepared to take notes. The nurse had given him Helene’s folder. Already she was a patient of his, in his records. “When was your period due, Helene?” he asked.

  Helene was staring at his hands. Women fell in love with their obstetricians, she knew. Nine months of love. Their doctors became the true fathers of their babies. Their doctors became their true fathers, for nine months.

  “I don’t remember.…” she whispered.

  “You don’t remember?” he asked in surprise.

  “I think … I think it was two weeks ago, two or three weeks ago.…”

  She was silent.

  He must have thought this was strange; he smiled sternly at her. Then, looking at a calendar on his desk, he said cheerfully, “Ah, yes, that would have been the fifteenth …? If it was two weeks ago?”

  “Yes, yes.…”

  “Or was it three weeks ago?”

  She stared in silence at his hands.

  After an awkward pause Dr. Blazack said, “I’ll examine you and then arrange for you to take the test. How does that sound?”

  “All right.”

  “No need to look so nervous, Helene! You know better than that. There is never any point in worrying about anything, in assuming anything.… Wait until we see the results of the test.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Any hospital will run the test for you. Did you say your husband was at LaSalle?”

  She had not told him this; he must have learned it from her father. But she nodded anyway.

  “There’s really no need to look so worried!”

  Helene tried to smile.

  One of the nurses rapped softly on the opened door. “Dr. Blazack, Dr. Brant is on the telephone. Can you talk to him?” Dr. Blazack made a gesture of helplessness, sighed, gave in and picked up the telephone. “Hello …? I can’t hear you. Oh, yes. When? Tomorrow? But I didn’t think he would be willing to sell so soon … what about the highway commission? What happened?… Well, then tomorrow? At two?”

  Tomorrow at two everything will be changed, Helene thought.

  She could still leave. She could get out of here, run out onto the street, out loose in the streets of Chicago. She could lose herself in the crowds, walking freely in the crowds. No one would know her. Her heels hard on the pavement. Inside her, that warm little core would not be dislodged … she would walk fast and rap her heels on the sidewalks … she would feel the warmth spreading up through her, a radiance that could not be dislodged.

  Dr. Blazack stood and closed the manila folder.

  Now the examination.

  The young nurse reappeared and escorted Helene into the examination room. Helene’s heart was pounding. The room smelled of new fresh leather. At the sight of the table Helene felt something move inside her, in her loins. Was it the start of a flow? The beginning of blood? “I think … I think maybe.…” she stammered.

  The nurse smiled at her. “Yes, Mrs. Vogel?”

  But nothing. Of course not.

  “Nothing.”

  The nurse’s face was bright with efficiency. What was this room, Helene thought dizzily, why was she here? A young man had called out her father’s name.… And here was the examination table with its stirrups. All women are equal on that table, their heels caught in those stirrups. All women are the same woman. The nurse was opening drawers deftly—she was arranging instruments on a tray. She drew a length of clean white paper up over the examination table.

  “Would you like to get ready for the examination?” the nurse said.

  Helene came numbly to life. She sensed the nurse’s bewilderment. Why was she so stiff, so frightened? It was not normal. All of Dr. Blazack’s patients were beaming with life, grateful to be pregnant and to be his patients. Normal women. And so Helene stepped forward, feeling a kind of power in herself. A bitter dark power. She would be examined on that table, she would feel pain, and this pain was necessary. She deserved it. Her body deserved it, after what Jesse had done to it. She had lain in that man’s arms, obedient to his demands, though she had feared pregnancy and had feared Jesse himself. She had allowed him to make love to her. She had violated herself. Now she would lie down again, on her back, for another man.

  Lie down. Lie down.

  She was naked now, wearing only a coarse white smock that was too large for her. It tied loosely in back. She lay down on the cold leather table and the paper rattled beneath her like tin. The nurse, courteous and sweet as a sister, said, “Could you slide down farther, Mrs. Vogel?” Helene fixed her bare heels in the stirrups at the end of the table. She slid down awkwardly. “Just a little farther, please. A little farther.”

  The nurse spread her legs. One small palm on each of Helene’s knees, spreading them. Now everything in her was open. The nurse drew a white cloth over her, up to her waist. She might have been covering a corpse.

  “That’s fine, Mrs. Vogel. The doctor will be right with you.”

  Women lay with their legs apart like this every day.

  Helene looked at the window opposite her through her eyelashes. It was rimmed with eerie light—dark light—the sky outside had clouded over. In Chicago light changed rapidly. You could not trust the sun. It was hard for her to remember that she was in Chicago and not somewhere else. In Chicago. She was married now. Her father had arranged for this examination and so she was in good hands. In good hands. Time would stop now. The ticking of that relentless little watch would stop. And then, later, when the examination was over, the watch would begin again.… She would rush out of here when the examination was over and disappear into the city. Thousands of women disappeared into the city. She would go to Kresge’s and buy a knitting needle—or did they come only in pairs? She would take a room in a hotel and use that metal knitting needle on herself, the way girls used knitting needles on themselves.…

  Dr. Blazack entered the room quietly. He was fatherly and holy. He said, “This won’t hurt. It will only take a few minutes.” That was evidently his style; he made his patients ashamed of feeling pain, so that they would bear pain in silence rather than disappoint him.

  “Please relax, Mrs. Vogel.”

  And now a quick, peeling sound—flesh against something slippery—he must have been putting on his rubber gloves. The young nurse stood beside him, taller than he. Helene did not dare open her eyes to really look at them. If the pupils of her eyes flashed open she might scream. Between her legs, in that magic space, something flashed. The nurse was dabbing something
on her. An odor of chemicals, disinfectant … she was being cleaned and made ready for him. The sound of instruments on a tray, rattling. Dr. Blazack said something she could not hear.

  “This will only take a few minutes, Helene.”

  Then he inserted the instrument. It was very cold and sharp. Helene tried not to move, she willed herself to lie still. But something happened and she recoiled.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. She forced herself back to the edge of the table.

  “It shouldn’t hurt, Helene. You’ve been examined before, haven’t you?”

  “But I think I’m pregnant.…”

  That answer did not seem to mean anything.

  “I think I’m pregnant,” she said.

  “If you could slide down again, please, Mrs. Vogel.…” the nurse said.

  “I think I’m pregnant, I …” Helene said wildly.

  “Do you want the examination to continue?” Dr. Blazack said.

  “Yes. Yes.”

  She prepared herself again. Clumsily, brutely, she slid back down and let her knees fall apart. Dr. Blazack took hold of her knees firmly and spread them farther. When the instrument was inserted in her this time she kept herself still.

  Now he began to open it. Twisting it open.

  She forced herself to lie still. Absolutely still. She could not remember this man’s name. A man of late middle age, a stranger, with this thing stuck inside her body. It was metallic and sharp. Now he was opening it, spreading her body wider. It seemed to be turning. Slowly the instrument turned and expanded. It was like a circle of nothing, expanding, opening her and turning her inside out.

  I didn’t want … this is a mistake.…

  She began to breathe quickly. Someone might have been pressing a hand up and down on her chest, pumping her lungs. On the edge of the table her hands clenched and unclenched. The leather had become damp; it was slippery against her fingers. How could everything in her be so exposed now? The most secret veins of her body were open to the air of this impersonal room. Her head began to move, slowly at first, from side to side. She could not stop it. No. No. She did not want this thing inside her, she did not want a baby, she did not want a husband, she did not want to be completed.… “What does it mean?” she muttered, not knowing what she said. The clamp was cold and hard inside her, making a rim, a bracelet inside her, exposing her. Her body began to contract. She could not stop it. Her womb wanted to shrink back, hide itself. The secret parts of her body were drawing together in terror. Her knees came together hard—

  “No, please, Mrs. Vogel,” a man said in surprise.

  He gripped her knees and spread them apart again.

  She was trying to lie still but her heart had begun to pound wildly. Sweat on her face, under the heavy coils of her hair, which had come loose. A flash of heat shot upward from the cold dark between her legs, that open darkness, telling her she would die. She was going to die. It would come to her like this, the insertion of an instrument, opening her and turning her inside out, the dark heat rising to her heart with the ferocity of love—

  She began to struggle.

  “Mrs. Vogel—you’ll hurt yourself—”

  The nurse seized her hands.

  But her body had begun to fight and it could not be stopped. The table rattled. Something came loose—one of the stirrups. Helene felt herself recoiling backward on the table, away from that instrument, but it came along with her, inside her, hurting her.… She saw a wild, black space, open to the light and its veins pounding, something not meant to be seen. The strange man could see it. Jesse could see it. The rim of that instrument was like intense searing light.

  She heard herself screaming.

  The doctor was saying something to her. He was giving instructions. Helene threw her head from side to side. She could hear nothing. Why was this man talking to her? There was something stuck up inside her body, a terrible bright pain, and this man was trying to talk to her! She could kill him!

  “Mrs. Vogel—”

  Her smock was bunched up beneath her body. The muscles in her legs fought. She screamed. Another jerk of her body—a small thin shot of pain—

  Then it was over. The thing was out. Gone.

  Still she threw herself from side to side. Her head struck the table; her cheeks hot against the leather, which felt like a cheek itself. Faces against faces. All of them sweaty and slippery. So Jesse, her husband, had slapped himself against her, his face grinding against hers in the dark, so he had entered her body with his own, his flesh into her flesh, marrying them.

  No.…

  And suddenly she saw a young woman lying on a table. Herself, contorted like that: a woman on a table, on her back, her face twisted and demented. She had fallen from a great height and her face was twisted permanently.

  “Mrs. Vogel …?”

  What was that raw reddened gap between her legs? So vivid it sucked all the air into it—the entire white sky might be drawn into it and lost—a face more powerful than her own face, a raw demanding mouth.

  “Mrs. Vogel, please—”

  “—not my name!—”

  She sat up, weeping. Alone with the nurse. Had she frightened the nurse? The doctor had left. Two women alone in this room, both frightened. Helene could not understand what had happened.

  “You hurt yourself, it’s bleeding.… Here, wait.…”

  She fussed with something, not looking at Helene. Helene caught a glimpse of a wad of cotton with a smear of fresh blood on it.

  “You could have hurt yourself badly,” the nurse said.

  Helene forced herself to stop crying. She took long, slow, deliberate breaths to calm herself.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  She tried to get up. Her legs were shaky.

  “He didn’t finish the examination?” she asked.

  “I’m afraid not.”

  The nurse handed her a tissue and she wiped her wet face. “Are you feeling better now?”

  “Yes. Yes. I’m sorry I lost control of myself.”

  She glanced covertly at the nurse’s prim face. She had disappointed this girl.

  Left alone, Helene dressed quickly. She threw the white gown onto a chair and saw with disgust that it was streaked with blood. There was nothing for her to think now; she stood in a kind of vacuum, dressed for the street, ready to escape. In one of her university courses she had studied physical defects that sometimes accompanied retardation—children without arms, without legs, some of them even without faces—and she had thought, staring in a chilled fascination at the photographs, There is nothing to think about these children. Thinking demanded a space that could be entered—you stepped forward into that space, pushing other things out of the way, claiming a victory, a territory. In a vacuum you could not move one way or another. Everything was transparent and eternal. There was nothing to think.

  An eternity in the body of a woman: the explosion of small, soft, gentle cells, coils of absolute power. Nothing could stop that power. It floats upon a background of darkness, pinpricked by tiny dots of light.

  Her flesh still tingled between her legs. It might have been glowing. A tiny burning clot of moisture seeped down … Helene took a tissue out of her purse and dabbed between her legs with it. Let it be blood. The start of five days of blood. But when she brought the crumpled tissue back out, careful not to touch her clothes with it, she saw that it was bright blood—too bright for menstrual blood. So she stood very still, waiting. The past three weeks had been a nightmare of waiting like this. She would feel something move in her loins, seeping down hotly … but it would turn out to be only a vapid colorless moisture, not blood. Mucus. A quarter’s size of dark clotted blood would have redeemed her. But no. No blood. The cycle was not going to end this time.

  She was already in her second month of pregnancy. She knew this. She wanted to shout at them in anger, at their satisfied faces: Jesse, I’m pregnant, are you happy? Father, I’m pregnant! It was a fact that had nothing to do with her personall
y. It could have been said of any woman, anyone at all. Something was floating lightly, invisibly, inside her. It swam in a cupful of liquid that was its universe, transparent and eternal.…

  When she stepped out into the corridor she saw Dr. Blazack himself waiting for her. He was a small man, after all. “Mrs. Vogel, could you step in here for a minute …?”

  “I’m leaving. I’m going home,” she said quickly.

  “But Mrs. Vogel …”

  She hurried out, looking at no one. She had failed. Dr. Blazack would telephone her father, and this evening the telephone would ring and she would have to answer it before Jesse did. Her father. She would have to talk to him.… What had happened to her fingernails? Two were broken. She must have broken them in her panic, during the examination. She was still tense and contorted. Her muscles cringed. She walked awkwardly, aware of the chafing of her thighs, where the insides of her thighs rubbed together. She was very conscious of them touching and wondered why she had never noticed this before.

  Jesse was always telling her about the bad surprises at the hospital. Things broke, went wrong, collapsed, burst. There were hours of routine work, the filling out of reports, the blood samples, the spinal taps, transfusions, shots, intravenous feedings—and then suddenly there were the surprises, lungs filling suddenly with fluid, lips gone white, blood pressure falling, falling, as arteries somewhere collapsed—How did you make sense of such things? The body is a machine, but the machine sometimes breaks down.

  It could happen to her: she could pick at the wall of the womb until it broke down into bleeding.

  She drove along State Street in a haze of traffic. She was free for the day now. She would find a hotel, rent a room. She would run over to Kresge’s. Then, in the hotel room, she would run hot water in the bathtub and undress and sit in the tub, her legs slowly spreading. She would ease the thing up into herself. Angrily and calmly. Its pressure would be very sharp and very thin, unlike the broad, coarse pressure Jesse brought to her.