‘Yes.’
The girl got me a chair and put it down beside Vida. I sat down in the chair and looked at Vida. She was so alone there in the bed. I reached over and touched her cheek. It felt as if it had just come unconscious from an operating room.
The room had a small gas heater that was burning quietly away in its own time. The room had two beds in it and the other bed where the girl had lain a short while before was now empty and there was an empty chair beside the bed, as this bed would be empty soon and the chair I was now sitting in: to be empty.
The door to the operating room was open, but I couldn’t see the operating table where I was sitting.
My Second Abortion
The door to the operating room was open, but I couldn’t see the operating table from where I was sitting. A moment later they brought in the teenage girl from the waiting room.
‘Everything’s going to be all right, honey,’ the doctor said. ‘This won’t hurt.’ He gave her the shot himself.
‘Please take off your clothes,’ the girl said.
There was a stunned silence for a few seconds that bled into the awkward embarrassed sound of the teenage girl taking her clothes off.
After she took off her clothes, the girl assistant who was no older than the girl herself said, ‘Put this on.’
The girl put it on.
I looked down at the sleeping form of Vida. She was wearing one, too.
Vida’s clothes were folded over a chair and her shoes were on the floor beside the chair. They looked very sad because she had no power over them any more. She lay unconscious before them.
‘Now put your legs up, honey,’ the doctor was saying. ‘A little higher, please. That’s a good girl.’
Then he said something in Spanish to the Mexican girl and she answered him in Spanish.
‘I’ve had six months of Spanish I in high school,’ the teenage girl said with her legs apart and strapped to the metal stirrups of this horse of no children.
The doctor said something in Spanish to the Mexican girl and she replied in Spanish to him.
‘Oh,’ he said, a little absentmindedly to nobody in particular. I guess he had performed a lot of abortions that day and then he said to the teenage girl, ‘That’s nice. Learn some more.’
The boy said something very rapidly in Spanish.
The Mexican girl said something very rapidly in Spanish.
The doctor said something very rapidly in Spanish and then he said to the teenage girl, ‘How do you feel, honey?’
‘Nothing,’ she said, smiling. ‘I don’t feel anything. Should I feel something right now?’
The doctor said something very rapidly to the boy in Spanish.
The boy did not reply.
‘I want you to relax,’ the doctor said to the teenage girl. ‘Please take it easy.’
All three of them had a very rapid go at it in Spanish. There seemed to be some trouble and then the doctor said something very rapidly in Spanish to the Mexican girl, He finished it by saying, ‘¿Como se dice treinta?’
‘Thirty,’ the Mexican girl said.
‘Honey,’ the doctor said. He was leaning over the teenage girl. ‘I want you to count to, to thirty for us, please, honey.’
‘All right,’ she said, smiling, but for the first time her voice sounded a little tired.
It was starting to work.
‘1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6…’ There was a pause here. ‘7, 8, 9…’ There was another pause here, but it was a little longer than the first pause.
‘Count to, to thirty, honey,’ the doctor said.
‘10, 11, 12.’
There was a total stop.
‘Count to thirty, honey,’ the boy said. His voice sounded soft and gentle just like the doctors. Their voices were the sides of the same coin.
‘What comes after 12?’ the teenage girl giggled. ‘I know! 13.’ She was very happy that 13 came after 12. ‘14, 15, 15, 15.’
‘You said 15,’ the doctor said.
‘15,’ the teenage girl said.
‘What’s next, honey?’ the boy said.
‘15,’ the teenage girl said very slowly and triumphantly.
‘What’s next, honey?’ the doctor said.
‘15,’ the girl said. ‘15.’
‘Come on, honey,’ the doctor said.
‘What’s next?’ the boy said.
‘What’s next?’ the doctor said.
The girl didn’t say anything.
They didn’t say anything either. It was very quiet in the room. I looked down at Vida. She was very quiet, too.
Suddenly the silence in the operating room was broken by the Mexican girl saying, ‘16.’
‘What?’ the doctor said.
‘Nothing,’ the Mexican girl said, and then the language and silences of the abortion began.
Chalkboard Studies
Vida lay there gentle and still like marble dust on the bed. She had not shown the slightest sign of consciousness, but I wasn’t worried because her breathing was normal.
So I just sat there listening to the abortion going on in the other room and looking at Vida and where I was at: this house in Mexico, so far away from my San Francisco library.
The small gas heater was doing its thing because it was cool within the adobe walls of the doctor’s office.
Our room was in the centre of a labyrinth.
There was a little hall on one side of the room, running back past the open door of the toilet and ending at a kitchen.
The kitchen was about twenty feet away from where Vida lay unconscious with her stomach vacant like a chalkboard. I could see the refrigerator and a sink in the kitchen and a stove with some pans on it.
On the other side of our room was a door that led into a huge room, almost like a small gym, and I could see still another room off the gym.
The door was open and there was the dark abstraction of another bed in the room like a large flat sleeping animal.
I looked down at Vida still submerged in a vacuum of anaesthesia and listened to the abortion ending in the operating room.
Suddenly there was a gentle symphonic crash of surgical instruments and then I could hear the sounds of cleaning up joined to another chalkboard.
My Third Abortion
The doctor came through the room carrying the teenage girl in his arms. Though the doctor was a small man, he was very strong and carried the girl without difficulty.
She looked very silent and unconscious. Her hair hung strangely over his arm in a blonde confusion. He took the girl through the small gym and into the adjoining room where he lay her upon the dark animal-like bed.
Then he came over and closed the door to our room and went into the forward reaches of the labyrinth and came back with the girl’s parents.
‘It went perfect,’ he said. ‘No pain, all clean.’
They didn’t say anything to him and he came back to our room. As he passed through the door, the people were watching him and they saw Vida lying there and me sitting beside her.
I looked at them and they looked at me before the door was closed. Their faces were a stark and frozen landscape.
The boy came into the room carrying the bucket and he went into the toilet and flushed the foetus and the abortion leftovers down the toilet.
Just after the toilet flushed, I heard the flash of the instruments being sterilized by fire.
It was the ancient ritual of fire and water all over again to be all over again and again in Mexico today.
Vida still lay there unconscious. The Mexican girl came in and looked at Vida. ‘She’s sleeping,’ the girl said. ‘It went fine.’