The GI Bride (29 page)

‘Of course you’re not pregnant.
After all the stress you’ve been under, I’m not surprised you feel sick.
Don’t forget that you’ve had to take medicine before for your nervous
stomach,’ she assured me. I’m not sure that either of us believed what she
said, but neither could we bear
the thought that that one last night
of drunken abuse could end up with a baby.

To put my mind at rest, I went to my family
doctor and had a pregnancy test. Waiting for the result was a nightmare but getting the
news that the test was positive was the cruellest blow of all. Hadn’t I suffered
enough? If Palmer found out he would be back in my life and I would never be able to get
him out of it. Once more, I thought about killing myself but again I realized that I
could never do that to my children or my family. In desperation, I called Dr Crown to
see if he or anyone he knew would perform an abortion but he told me that that was the
one thing he couldn’t help me with and sadly wished me luck. And so began the next
painful episode in my mess of a life.

I began checking with everyone I thought I
could trust to see if they knew of anyone who had ever had an abortion or if they knew
anyone or anything that might lead to finding someone. There was no way I could have the
baby. I tried scalding hot baths and douches, I took massive doses of laxatives. All any
of it ever did was make me sick. I did get one lead on someone who might help and went
to see an elderly doctor who had an office in an old Polish neighbourhood of Chicago.
She spoke in broken English and seemed nervous. When she learned how far along my
pregnancy was, she said she would not be able to help me. She had been my last hope.
After leaving her office, I sat in my car for what seemed hours, bawling my eyes out,
all the time thinking, Why me, God, why me?

The thought entered my mind that we should
go to England, but how could I ever get enough money to pay
for three
airfares? What would my family say anyway, about taking in a family of three, or what
would be four? The situation was impossible. Then, when I was at the lowest point of my
despair, I received a phone call from a close friend. She told me she had talked to
someone she worked with who had taken his girlfriend, on more than one occasion, to have
unwanted pregnancies terminated. She had the phone number of the doctor, plus special
instructions for calling him, and I prayed that this would not be another brick
wall.

The call had to be made from a public
telephone. Then he would call back, perhaps after checking the number, all of which I
thought was odd but I suppose in the days of illegal abortion they had to be careful.
When I talked to the man, he told me I needed to have three hundred dollars in cash and
that I had to phone him again on the day of the procedure from a different public phone.
Then I would be given an address. It was a great relief to learn I could bring someone
with me as I had heard that I might have to go alone to cut down the risk to the
abortionist of exposure. My friend agreed to accompany me.

I borrowed the three hundred dollars from
friends and the big day finally arrived. Paralysed with fear we set off for the mystery
rendezvous. I felt like a low-life criminal. I kept thinking this must be a nightmare
and hoping I would soon wake up. The previous night, I had lain in bed thinking and
wondering. How had I arrived at this terrible point in my life? Wasn’t it only
yesterday I had boarded a ship with my GI husband, headed for a new and wonderful life
in America? What had gone wrong? Was I being punished for something?

We made the call from a public telephone, as
directed, and received the address of the clinic. It was in a slum area on the south
side of Chicago; we knew the area to be one of the so-called black ghettos. My teeth
were chattering and I was trembling with fear, but glad that I wasn’t alone. We
found the address, which was a large commercial-type building. We’d been told it
was a clinic but there was no sign outside to indicate such. Filled with dread, we
pushed open the door and went in. There was a hand-lettered sign on a bulletin board in
the hallway, which read, ‘Health Center’. The building was old, dark and
dirty inside, with paint peeling off the walls. The entrance-hall floor was marble, and
a flight of marble stairs with wrought-iron railings and banisters led up to a second
floor, which disappeared into the darkness. I remember wondering why there were no
lights on.

As we stood there looking around, an
upstairs light flicked on and a nice-looking man of about forty called to us.
‘Please come up,’ he said. ‘I’ll be ready for you
soon.’

‘Here we go,’ said my companion.
‘Just hang on for a little while longer.’

I managed a weak smile but I was shaking
uncontrollably as we climbed the long, curved stairway. If she hadn’t been holding
my arm tightly, I’m sure I would have either run away or collapsed.

The young man ushered us into a small
office, invited us to sit down and introduced himself as the doctor. I glanced around,
hoping to see some evidence of his professional status but there was none. At that
juncture, I knew I was at the point of no return and had accepted my fate.

‘Do you have the money?’ he
asked.

I rummaged in my handbag, produced the
envelope containing the fee and handed it to him.

‘Please excuse me for a moment,’
he said, and left the room.

‘He’s gone to count the
money,’ my friend whispered.

‘Probably,’ I said.

‘Oh, shit, what if he doesn’t
come back? What if we’ve been ripped off?’ she said.

Before I could respond, he reappeared.
Phew, I thought.

He sat behind his desk and explained,
‘I use two different methods for the terminations I perform, but I need to examine
you before I know which method will be best for you. The first would be what is called a
D and C. That’s where we dilate the cervix slightly and use an instrument to
scrape the inside of the uterus. The other way, if your pregnancy is too far advanced,
is to pack the uterus with an irritant, which then causes you to have a miscarriage.
Either way is completely safe, but the latter takes longer to come to
completion.’

It all sounded terrible and confusing to
me, but I said nothing and just nodded my understanding.

He told my friend to wait in his office then
took me into an examination room, told me to take off my pants and lie on the table.
Again, as much to take my mind off what was happening as anything, I scanned the walls
for medical diplomas and saw none. There was no covering on the worn, cracked-leather
examination table. He did not give me a gown to put on, or cover me with a sheet, and it
was freezing cold. With a gloved hand, he shoved my legs apart and examined me.

‘Hmm,’ he muttered.
‘You’re much further along than I’d hoped.’ My heart lurched and
I was afraid he was going to tell me that he couldn’t help me, but he did not. He
sat me up and explained the only method available to us at this point was the packing he
had described earlier.

‘Do you still want to go ahead?’
he asked. I nodded, yes, and lay down again, still shaking.

‘Take deep breaths and try to
relax,’ he said, but I could not.

He began by dilating the cervix, using a
series of gradually larger instruments. He had warned me that there would be pain but I
had not anticipated how excruciating it would be. He gave me a wad of bandage to bite
down on so that I would make no noise. Tears streamed down my face into my ears and I
was screaming into the sodden wad in my mouth. At last, when the cervix was open enough,
he started inserting what felt like yards of what I hoped was sterile gauze bandage. As
he worked, he explained that this would set up an irritation that would cause a
miscarriage. He reiterated that this had been the only option left open to me. When I
thought I could take the pain no longer, he said he had finished. He removed the
instruments, and then, leaving a length of the bandage taped to the inside of my thigh,
he told me I could get up. When I tried to stand, everything went black. I felt myself
sway and knew I was going to pass out. He grabbed me by the arm and steered me into a
chair, where I sat, cradling my stomach, while he gave me instructions for what to do
after I got home.

He explained that I should start having
contractions in about twelve hours. When that happened, and when I was
sure they were strong and regular, I should gently begin pulling the gauze bandage
out, but definitely no sooner. He said it would be bloody and to do it over the toilet,
adding that the miscarriage would occur shortly after that and then it would be all
over.

He walked me back into his office and I
heard myself groan as the world spun and a blanket of black wafted over me. Hanging on
to the edge of his desk, I willed myself to remain conscious, then sat on the closest
chair.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘Drink
this straight down. It will steady your nerves and raise your blood pressure.’ He
handed me a shot of whiskey.

I took one sip, but the smell of it made me
heave, and I vomited all over his filthy carpet.

Just then, my friend came back into the
office; she had been outside smoking. She looked at me with sad eyes, and put her arms
around me. Self-loathing choked me and I was filled with disgust at what I’d just
been subjected to. I was also disgusted at the law that drove women to such extreme and
dangerous procedures. I was shaking violently from head to foot and heard the doctor
tell my friend that I was probably in shock.

‘Come on, let’s get you
home,’ she said, as she led me out into the hall and down the stairs. I almost
laughed when I heard the door slammed and locked behind us.

‘They want to make sure we don’t
try to come back for a refund,’ I told my friend, but neither of us was laughing.
I wondered if that man had really been a doctor, but at that point I didn’t care.
I couldn’t wait to get away from the awful place. All I wanted was the security of
my own bed.

When we got home, my friend made me a cup of
tea, made sure I was comfortable, and then had to leave. Exhausted, I climbed into bed,
pulled the covers over my head and finally went to sleep. When I woke up, I had no idea
what the time was: it was dark and the house was silent, and I wondered where my
roommate, Deborah, was. She should have been home by now. Wayne and Robin had gone to
spend the weekend with their grandparents and my roommate had promised she would help
with them when they came home the following day if I was not feeling well. I got up and
went to the kitchen where I found a note from Deborah saying that she and her children
would be away for a few days so she couldn’t help, after all. So, there I was,
alone. I would just have to deal with it.

A few hours passed before I started having
minor contractions. All of this time I’d been feeling like a stuffed turkey: there
was tremendous pressure inside me from the packing that the doctor had inserted. Every
time I went to the toilet, I expected to see something, but I really didn’t know
what to expect. I paced up and down in the apartment with the hours seeming to drag by,
but at last the contractions became more regular and intense. When I was sure they were
coming at regular intervals, and more than the prescribed twelve hours had passed, I
went into the bathroom to begin pulling out the bandage.

The whole thing was surreal. I slowly
removed the yards of gauze, thinking and fearing that I could pull my insides out if I
wasn’t careful. I could feel large blood clots coming out with the bandage, my
head was spinning and I was heaving with nausea, but I knew I had to stay
conscious and strong. I decided to have a bath with water as hot as I
could bear, and lay there in the numbing heat, crying, but I knew I had to stay active
for the contractions to continue.

As time went by the pain continued and I was
bleeding heavily. Every once in a while I would feel intense pressure and would sit on
the toilet to pass large blood clots, all the time thinking that one might be the actual
foetus. I was too petrified to look. Sometimes the pain would cause me to double over
but that made me strangely happy because I knew I was in the midst of a miscarriage and
it would soon be just a memory.

After a couple of days, the bleeding was
still heavy and I was soaking dozens of pads. I was no longer having contractions but
was still in excruciating pain. I hadn’t known exactly what to expect so I thought
this was normal, but eventually, with growing concern, I called the doctor at the
clinic. He said it sounded as though I might not have finished aborting yet and I should
give it a while longer. In the back of my mind, I kept thinking of how long I had been
in labour with my two children and that this was probably no different. Dr Crown had
always said that my babies never wanted to leave me, and although I only ever thought of
this pregnancy as an unwanted foetus resulting from rape, and never as an actual baby, I
understood that the process might be the same, so I waited.

For the rest of that week I was barely able
to function and take care of the children. I was still in pain and bleeding, and each
day it had been harder to put on a happy face. The following weekend the children were
off again
for their weekend visits and I was relieved as I was feeling
tired and in need of rest. I believe it was late on a Saturday evening, after I had
taken a nap, that I got out of bed, found I’d been lying in a pool of blood and
fainted. When I came to, I was so weak that I could hardly move but I knew I needed
help. I managed to get to the telephone and called all my closest friends in the
apartment building but no one was at home. In desperation I thought of the only other
friend who lived close by and that was Pete Huber. He was an old friend of
Palmer’s but now totally disapproved of him and his treatment of me and the
children; he often phoned to see how we were getting along. Pete lived just a few blocks
away so I called him.