Brooklyn Story (36 page)

I had no time to think of what I had done.

It was a gloomy day and dark clouds filled the skies when Janice and I came up from the subway on Third Avenue in downtown Brooklyn, a stone's throw from the bridge that seemed to be collapsing before me. I was so ashamed that I had even thought of asking Father Rinaldi, but by then Janice knew everything, and she had given me the last two hundred dollars.

We had forgotten an umbrella and the skies opened up after we had walked the few blocks to the abortion clinic and stood facing the all-white brick building on Thirty-ninth Street. A group of picketers held up signs proclaiming death for the abortion doctors. There was an array of detailed photos carried by these protesters with sayings such as “Don't kill your baby” and “Let us help.” Yeah, right, I thought. Everyone was going to help me. I was in my own hell and had already chosen what I was going to do to put out the fire. At no point did I ever intend to keep this child. As religious as I was, Mother Mary would somehow have to forgive this sin. I could not raise Tony's child; I would have hated the child and what I would eventually become. I knew this for sure.

When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be …

I pushed my way through the crowd with Janice following close behind as the words of the Beatles song swirled in my head, trying to keep me calm.

“Don't be a murderer!” a woman screamed when I approached the door to the clinic. The door opened and I took the hand of a clinic worker who pulled me inside.

Someone handed us towels to dry off before we took seats in the crowded waiting room. By the traumatized look on all the faces, I assumed the pressure of the picketers outside must have gotten to everyone. Most of them were slumped in their chairs, staring blankly straight ahead.

“Wilson,” a nurse called out. A skinny black girl who couldn't have been older than thirteen stood up and looked as if she'd have found a firing squad preferable to what she was facing. She disappeared behind a door as I took a clipboard from the unsmiling receptionist. “Fill in both sides,” the gray-haired woman told me. “Do you have cash?”

I nodded. “Do you want it now?”

The nurse reached a hand under the glass window as I pulled the three hundred-dollar bills from a wrinkled envelope. Tony's comment at the racetrack months before about milk money bubbled up from my memory as I handed over the precious bills that could have been spent on better things. I tossed the empty envelope into a trash receptacle and went to a seat with Janice to fill out the questionnaire and waiver forms. I was grateful for the distraction; I didn't think I could handle any conversation. I felt so afraid and ashamed of myself, I thought I'd burst into tears if she tried to console me.

I returned the forms to the receptionist and the woman motioned me through a door. After a wistful glance at Janice, who gave me a tentative thumbs-up sign, I walked into a back room where they took my blood and checked my blood pressure. Then I went to the ladies' room to give them a urine sample so they could make sure I was pregnant. Afterward, I went back out to sit beside Janice, praying that it was all a mistake, that I had gotten a false positive and that the nausea had been caused by the upheaval in my life. But no such luck.

“Bonti,” a woman called out with a Spanish accent half an hour later. I hugged Janice and got up to cross a bridge of a different kind.

Janice pulled my arm. “It's almost over and you can start again,” she whispered. “You're gonna be okay, Sam.”

I choked back tears as I joined a nurse in a consultation room, awaiting a counseling session that never came. Instead, she recited instructions in a monotone voice. “Here's the key to your locker, number sixteen. We'll be giving you some gas …” The nurse quickly corrected herself. “I … mean sodium pentothal.” “Gas” made me think of Grandma's stories about Auschwitz. “I wouldn't think about driving anywhere right after,” the nurse continued. “Is someone here who can help you?”

“My friend is waiting for me,” I said. What if I were alone then? I wondered. Thank God for Janice, I thought. The nurse gathered some papers and opened the door. “Will it hurt?” I managed to squeak out.

“Oh, not much,” the nurse said. “You'll probably have a little discomfort, but I wouldn't worry about it.” I wouldn't either if I were standing where you are, I thought. I'd heard doctors talk about discomfort before, a softer word for the shitload of pain I was expecting. But didn't it serve me right? I chastised myself. How dumb had I been to get myself into this position?

The nurse directed me to an elevator and I went up one floor to a hallway of lockers. The walls were dingy, the metal lockers were scratched with unintelligible graffiti, and mine had what looked like pink Teaberry chewing gum stuck around its lock. I fought a powerful urge to cut and run.

I didn't want to kill a baby, my baby. I believed it was a sin. But what other choice did I have? I tormented myself.

Several women were doing what I was doing—fumbling in front of an assigned locker and avoiding looking at anyone. They were alone with their thoughts, which probably included the men who were waiting in comfort while they suffered. That didn't seem fair to me. I saw Tony's face in my mind's eye, the father of the seed that was growing inside me. He was already the worst boyfriend in the world, not really caring for me at all.
It was all about him, I knew. He didn't and couldn't love anyone. I knew he would make a terrible parent.

I took off my white T-shirt and peach-colored pants, folded my clothes with care, and placed them in the locker. I removed the blessed mother I always wore around my neck, kissed it, and put it in my purse, which I then placed on the shelf. My throat felt thick and I trembled as I put on a thin, honeycombed blue robe and paper slippers and dropped the key into a pocket.

Another nurse appeared and ushered me down the hall to a small, cold room in a row of rooms that probably looked the same and had the same purpose. I felt weak and hopeless as I looked around. I wished I were getting ready for a facial instead of a revolting procedure. It appeared that all the girls were lined up, like an assembly line. It had to be the most degrading thing I ever had endured. The ominous steel table with stirrups waiting for my feet dominated the room, and the instrument packets and needles on metal stands glowed in the harsh overhead lights. I shivered.

The nurse left and I took off my robe, put on the paper skirt and torso cover she had handed to me, sat on the table, legs dangling over the side, and faced the door. It had been left ajar, and I caught glimpses of clinic personnel and heard them rushing in and out of doors like the White Rabbit in
Alice in Wonderland
. But I knew I wasn't in some fairy tale.

The nurse who had brought me to the room came back and prepared me for the procedure without saying much. With curt commands, she instructed me to lie down and put my feet in the stirrups. “The doctor will see you now,” she said when she had finished, and she left the cold room.

She returned a moment later with a young, good-looking man with short, brown hair and a white coat who stood over me without an introduction. “Relax and breathe.” He tapped my arm for a fresh vein and inserted the sodium pentothal. I so wanted to see my grandmother, the woman who had loved and
nurtured me so much, standing in the corner of the procedure room. I wanted to tell her I was sorry.

I gritted my teeth as I contemplated all that I had done over the previous months, the mess I had made of things. My mind raced, flitting wildly from one heartache to another, and then for some reason it settled on Psalm 23. I had first discovered it when I was thirteen in a Bible at church. This felt right.
The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death …

I had a hard time opening my eyes. Was something wrong? I wondered. Had they decided I was too young for an abortion? My memory of my mother's words when she was trying to scare me had all come true: Lifebuoy soap and a wire hanger my mother had used for her first two abortions on a kitchen table and a few hot towels. She was lucky to still be alive. I guess it was only fair that history would repeat itself and bestow that ungratefulness upon me. Would I have to face my mother and grandmother and tell them the truth? I tried to clear the fog that filled my head. I needed to find a button to contact the nurse and explain to her that I
had
to have an abortion, and then I felt a searing pain below.

As I made sense of what had happened, I was wheeled into recovery. I wasn't pregnant anymore. It was over, but I sure as hell still felt terrible. I sat up too fast and vomited all over my scrubs. My stomach roiled and I had a putrid taste in my mouth. I really wanted a drink of water but that wasn't permitted. The nurse changed me quickly and left the room. A thin stream of blood ran down my leg.

I wiped the blood and changed my sanitary pad with a new one the nurse had left for me. I felt dizzy, weak, and very cold. All I wanted to do was get the hell out of there and stand
under a warm shower but my head was spinning. Take it easy, I told myself, and I took my time lying down on the cold, hard surface.

I wondered how long they would leave me there. When would someone come back? What if I passed out? What if I bled to death? I fretted. It was a possibility, I reasoned, because the clinic was so busy.

Forty-five minutes later, I couldn't bear the torment any longer and decided to leave. I took my time sitting up and putting on my robe and slippers, and then I moved on shaky legs out of the room and down the hall. I leaned against my locker for a moment and wished it were the one at New Keiser High.

“Who said you could get up?” barked a nurse who had come up behind me.

“No … one … was … around,” I said as I turned to her. “I really … didn't know …”

The nurse eyed me up and down. “As long as you're here, get your clothes on and check out, then,” she said, and brushed by me. “We'll see you out front.”

I got dressed and shuffled like a piece of cattle to the elevator and went down to the main floor. As I took a sheet of recovery instructions from the receptionist, Janice ran up to hug me. I couldn't look her in the eye.

It was still raining when we got outside and we pushed through the boisterous crowd of protesters that castigated me with screams of baby-killer and murderer. If Janice hadn't been with me, I would have collapsed in tears right there on the sidewalk.

As soon as we were out of sight down the street, I fell into her arms, sobbing.

When I got home, I stood, sopping wet, in the hallway, and was grateful for the rain that had drenched my hair and plastered it on my wet face. It disguised my swollen eyes.

“Is that you, Samelah?” Grandma called out from the kitchen.

“Yeah, it's me. I'm soaked.”

Grandma came out of the kitchen and hugged me. “
Oy vey
! Go change,
bubelah,
” she said as she squeezed me in her arms. I could have burst into tears, but took strength from Grandma as she let go of me. “You'll catch your death.”

“Where's Mom?”

“She's been in bed all day.” Thank God for small favors, I thought. “I need to get some rest, too, Grandma,” I said without looking her in the eye. I took off my wet jacket and headed for my room. “I'm beat.”

“I love you, Sam,” Grandma said.

“I love you, too, Grandma,” I said over my shoulder.

I closed my bedroom door, got out of my wet clothes, and crawled into bed. I clutched the red beads of the rosary with which I'd taught myself to pray by reading a pamphlet when I was a little girl. As I held them to my chest, I wished that I were still that innocent child.

I then prayed for the forgiveness that Father Rinaldi said would be there for me. But, what if?

My body recovered over the ensuing weeks, but my mind couldn't escape the ravage at the abortion clinic and the added torment from losing sight of my dreams. I made more detours and more purposeful visits to Father Rinaldi's church, said more fervent prayers to the Blessed Mother, and lit more candles with the hope that She would still light the way for me.

Memories of my sins dulled over the summer but I knew their sting would never disappear. I intended to keep them locked away until I had acquired the perspective to sort them out on the page. Constant reminders of my past, however, thwarted me as I attempted to distance myself from it.

My clients at Danni's salon evoked Bensonhurst in their dress and in their speech. The ladies prattled on about the kind of men and the kind of things I yearned to forget. Headlines in the
Daily News
and its regular “Gangster” series titillated readers with graphic coverage of the goings-on that had been all too real to me. I could no longer ignore that paper with the large, bold type that screamed to me as I walked past newsstands.