by Chamber Four
The day after I arrived in Honolulu, Dad took me to the doctor to get shots for the trip to Japan. A nurse with syringe poised above my arm asked me if I was pregnant. I thought about this question. If I said no, I would get the shot and the baby would probably be damaged. If I said yes, she might not give me the shot and I wouldn’t be able to go to Japan.
I took a deep breath and said “No.” The moment the shot hit my arm, I blacked out. When I woke up I was laying down on a cot. Now I’d have to go through with it.
* * *
My dad and I landed at the Narita Airport in Tokyo, and went directly to the clinic. We were quiet on the way, overwhelmed by the thousands of huge bright-colored billboards and the frenzied traffic. Our car jerked back and forth, weaving through the chaos of the city streets, ending at what looked like a small apartment building. Dad checked the address, which was written both in Japanese characters and in English on the gate.
Our overnight bags in hand, we climbed the stairs of the clinic and added our shoes to the others neatly lined up on the top steps. A nurse met us at the door, and communicating with smiles and gestures, led us through the hallways of the clinic.
It was more like someone’s home than a hospital. We passed by what looked like Western bedrooms, with four poster beds and dressers. All the paintings on the walls were Japanese style though, beautiful and serene—a stark contrast to the decidedly UN-serene way I was feeling. The food-mixed-with-bleach odor that permeated the place, combined with anxiety, brought back the old morning sickness that I thought I was passed.
We were shown into an office to wait for the doctor. The room was lit by a single lamp, which made the room feel dusky. The room was small and cluttered, with shelves full of books and a tea kettle on a hot plate. On the desk there was a model of a woman’s pregnant body that you could take apart to see how her insides fit together. I rubbed my stomach.
Finally the doctor came into his office. In perfect English he explained the procedure. He pulled out a photograph of a fetus at my baby’s stage of development, its limbs and features easily identifiable. I hadn’t realized how developed the baby was at four months. You could see that this was a human being, with arms and legs and the beginnings of a face.
My pregnancy didn’t show yet, and I hadn’t felt any movement. Until then it had been all me, about Nick and our parents. But looking at that photograph, I fully realized that I was about to end a life.
“This is a second trimester procedure,” the doctor said, looking directly at me. “We’ll have to induce labor. It will be painful.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off that picture. My father didn’t say a word.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” the doctor said.
I went through the last few months in my mind. I had shots that probably damaged the baby. I spent my entire college fund on this trip. My father and I had flown thousands of miles. The baby’s father had bucked me from a motorcycle, and he wanted nothing to do with me or the baby. I was sixteen.
I nodded.
* * *
One summer day when I was twenty and newly married, I ended up back in the old neighborhood just long enough to transfer buses. I stood at the intersection of the main drag and the street where I’d lived with my mom and my sister, around the corner from the Sokovs.
I felt like that sixteen-year-old again, the girl who’d had to make such a wrenching choice. Any woman who has an abortion handles it in her own way. My way was tearful. My baby was gone, and so was my dream of creating a happy family—the chance to replace the intact family I’d lost when my parents divorced. While I waited for the bus that day, I thought about what it was like to go back to Hawaii from Japan, broken, guilt-ridden and miserable. My dad took me to McKinley High once we were back in Honolulu and signed me up. After that, I got on the city bus almost every morning and rode straight past the school to the stop near the beach. Going to school was the last thing on earth I wanted to do. Instead, I spent my time sleeping on the sand, wading in shallow water, reading—a sixteen-year-old in mourning. I cried, I slept, I walked, I cried, I read, I cried. Then I got back on the bus and rode to the high school where my dad picked me up, like I’d been there all day.
When we first got back to Honolulu, I went to the emergency room with a painful infection—a complication from the abortion—and then laid awake nights worrying that I would be sterile, worrying that when I died, sterile and alone, I’d go to hell. I had nightmares that the doctor in Japan kept the bodies of the babies he aborted and was doing experiments on them, that there were incubators at the clinic that kept the babies alive for some twisted, sadistic reason.
On top of that, my dad, stepmother and I were crammed into a 38 foot sailboat. Nerves were beginning to fray all around. I was half angry and half grateful that my dad had kept my trip to Japan a secret from the other boaters on our dock. I liked that he was protective of me, but I knew a big part of the secrecy was that he was mortified by my situation.
On Thanksgiving we were invited to dinner with another live-aboard family at the marina—turkey dinner in a sailboat galley. They were from California, spending a few months in Hawaii on their way to the South Pacific. That night the conversation turned to the differences between the Hawaiian Islands. I listened as one by one everyone named their favorite island and what they liked about it. Suddenly all eyes were on me, and I realized that I was expected to have a preference too.
Aha, I thought. So, this had been the cover story. This was what my father had told his friends at the marina: he had taken me on a tour of the islands when I first arrived. The only problem was that he forgot to let me in on the lie. I had no idea what to answer because I’d never been to any other island besides Oahu.
After a long, embarrassed pause I said, “I guess I like Oahu the best.” I felt a rush of humiliation, a deep knowledge that my father was ashamed of me. It would have been liberating to tell the truth, but I didn’t want to make my dad feel worse by telling the truth right there in front of everyone. I wanted to save him from me, from being the dad of a wayward girl.
In my dreams that night I was back at the clinic. I saw a nurse walk into my room and approach a cupboard with floor-to-ceiling wooden doors, and as she opened the doors hundreds of blood soaked sanitary pads spilled out onto the floor, cascading from the top shelf in wave after wave, and then the pads became bloody fetuses silently falling, and falling...
On the first of December I found a pay phone and called my mom back in Seattle, collect.
“I can’t stand it here Mom,” I sobbed into the phone. “You have to let me come home.”
“What does your father say about that?” she wanted to know.
“I don’t know. I don’t care.” I blubbered. “I just want to be home.” I thought if I could just get home, I could leave the nightmares behind.
My parents gave in and booked me on a flight back to Seattle. Holiday decorations began to appear in store windows all over Honolulu—Santa on a surfboard, Mrs. Claus in a hula skirt—and steel guitar Christmas carols started playing at the mall. I’d been away from home for just two months, but it seemed like so much longer.
The night before I left Hawaii, my father took me for a drive. Monsoon rains pelted the car as we pulled into the parking lot of the marina. Deep puddles merged into one huge lake and the smell of wet asphalt seeped into the car. The constant drone of water insects almost completely eclipsed the traffic noise from the highway. I could tell Dad had something to say to me and I knew he was stalling. He hadn’t said much at all as we drove, and I guess he figured it was now or never.
“Joycey, I know this has been hard for you,” he began.
“I know how much you love babies,” he said. “But you’ll have more babies someday.”
I looked outside at the rain hitting the pavement.
“Just remember, you don’t have to tell anyone about this... no one’s business... upsetting to everyone... boys you’ll meet... marr
ied someday...”
I couldn’t look at his face. “I just want to go home,” I said. “I just want everything to be... I don’t know... normal.” Whatever normal was now.
* * *
A few days after I got home I got a call from Nick. Hearing his voice on the phone was like hearing an air raid siren—startling, adrenaline producing, strangely exciting. Like my brain was issuing an urgent message: WARNING! WARNING!
He wanted to talk. I was nervous—I didn’t know how it would feel to see him again—but I told myself it was the right thing to do. After all, he was the baby’s father. He had a right to know where I’d been and what I’d done. I’d see him again, just this one time, to explain.
The morning before we met up I looked hard at myself in the mirror, trying to decide if I looked any different on the outside. It was hard to tell. I put my hair in a ponytail, and then took it out. Put lipstick on and then wiped it off. Put liner around my eyes and mascara on my lashes and left it on. I probably changed five times before I settled on an outfit.
We met outside on the sidewalk, halfway between his house and mine. We said hello awkwardly and sat down on a corner bulkhead. My hands were shaking, so I pushed them into my pockets. I was glad I’d worn the pants with pockets.
It had only been a couple of months since I’d seen him, but I felt so changed that I expected him to be different too. He looked the same though, handsome in that Eastern European way. His straight blond hair still fell across that broad Russian forehead and brushed his eyebrows, same as always. He still had those ridiculous cheekbones, those blue eyes.
I studied his face, and as my eyes moved to his neck and down to his muscular arms and square hands, a kaleidoscope of butterflies took flight inside my gut and flew straight up into my chest. Against my will, against all my good sense, that old familiar sensation shot through me, that electric charge I always got around him. After everything, I felt that same damn feeling.
“I heard you went to Hawaii,” he said. “I wanted to go over there and find you and bring you home. You know, just show up at the dock and yell your name until you came and found me.” It sounded like a scene from a movie.
I watched his mouth as he took a drag off his cigarette... Lord, that mouth.
“You didn’t though,” I said. Images of his basement floated into my mind, his bedroom with the lights dimmed and the music playing, all hot breath and... I pushed them away.
“You should’ve told me where you were,” he said. Smoke streamed slowly out his nose and between his barely parted lips. “I had to find out from your cousin.”
“I didn’t think you cared where I was,” I said, looking down at my hands. Moments passed. I forced myself not to touch him.
“So,” he asked me. “When is it due?”
I looked up at his face and tried to decide if he really didn’t know.
“I went to Japan, Nick, can’t you see I’m not pregnant anymore? I had... an... ah... abortion.” I felt my face color. I hadn’t said it out loud before that moment.
Nick acted surprised, but I thought it seems pretty obvious.
And then he looked right into my eyes and said, “Jesus, Joyce, you killed my baby.”
I couldn’t breathe.
“Don’t say that,” I finally managed to squeak out. “Jeez Nick, what was I supposed to do?”
He didn’t have an answer to that—I didn’t really expect him to. We sat there without talking for a few minutes. Finally he took a small box out of his pocket and opened it.
“I got this for you,” he said. It was a diamond ring with rubies, my birthstone.
“What is this for?” I was surprised, and confused.
“It was supposed to be an engagement ring,” he said. “I guess now it’s a promise ring.”
I took the ring and tried it on. I probably should’ve turned it down immediately, but now the battle seriously began to escalate between my good sense and the butterflies. Maybe he really loved me after all. It made me feel a little less abandoned, less foolish. Maybe I wanted to pretend for just a little while that I could keep it and we could patch things up and I could take him back and it would all be like it used to be, only better. That it—that he—would be different.
“Thank you. It’s beautiful.” I held my hand out so he could see how it looked. Which was a mistake, because it made him smile, that smile that had started all the trouble.
“What will your mother say when she finds out about the baby?” I asked him. I hadn’t seen Nick’s parents since the day his folks coerced him into proposing.
“She’ll say that you did what was good for you,” he said. “But not for me.”
Clouds started to gather. I pulled my sweater tight around me.
“My mom doesn’t know I’m meeting you. She would be so mad,” I said.
“She hates my guts,” Nick said.
“She really does,” I said.
We said goodbye like we’d see each other soon. Even after I walked away, I could still smell his scent. I could so easily have turned back.
But a voice inside me—a voice that had been waiting for the chance to be heard—argued that I could choose something different. The voice reminded me of the motorcycle ride, the blonde in the convertible. I didn’t have to give in to my feelings, it said. I could choose to move on and see what else the world might have for me. It was very convincing, that voice. And so, I pushed down every bit of feeling I had for him, and turned the corner toward home.
The next day I went to the post office and mailed the ring back to Nick, and I didn’t see him again until that day, many years later, when I was waiting for the bus.
There I stood—waiting on the sidewalk in the old neighborhood, looking up the street, watching for the bus. Just then, whoever is in charge of the universe got a seriously quirky whim and sent Nick out the door of Al’s Tavern right next to the bus stop. I quickly turned my back and tried to be invisible, but Nick saw me and came over to say hello.
He was disheveled, as if he’d been in the tavern all afternoon, and he squinted as his eyes adjusted to the daylight. His blond hair looked stringy and unwashed, and his face was blotchy, as if he was allergic to his own facial hair.
“I’m married now,” I blurted out, first thing. “I’m on my way home. My husband is waiting for me.” I bit my lip to keep it from trembling. I was annoyed with myself for being afraid of him.
“You look good,” he said, slightly slurring his words. “You working?”
“Yeah, working. Going to school,” I nodded.
“You live around here?” He sucked on his cigarette.
“U-District,” I said. I knew I was blushing. I felt sweaty. “You still at home?” I asked him.
“Yeah.” He smelled like beer. Lots of beer, and stale smoke.
“Got a job?” I asked him.
“Nah, not yet.” He put his hand over his mouth and stifled a burp. “Sorry,” he said, with an embarrassed grin. He ran his hand through his filthy hair and swayed slightly, unsteady on his feet.
I backed up a step or two.
Then, like a golden chariot sent from the gods, the #24 bus pulled up and we said goodbye. I sat down close to the driver and watched out the window as Nick walked away. He turned and peered back at the bus, but I don’t think he could spot me through the window. Seeing him in such rough shape was startling. I didn’t know what had happened to him, I just knew I was shaken, that he had scared me, and that I was glad to get away from him.
I sank into my seat and watched the city go by. It had been a long while since I’d had a nightmare. They’d become less and less frequent, until they almost disappeared. The baby would be four years old now. I knew that for the rest of my life I would count out how old that child, that teenager, that man, would be at every turn. For years I would look at every little blond kid and wonder if that’s what he would’ve looked like. But I would never, ever regret my decision to send back that ring.
&nbs
p; I met my husband Gary at the college where I got a scholarship and after forty years, against all odds, we’re still happily married. He is everything that Nick wasn’t—steady, reliable, even-tempered. We had three kids, and then decided to adopt a fourth. I hoped that helped to even the score with the universe—I took one life, and I gave one little soul a home.
Scowler
By Ron Spalletta
After our fight, I rode my not-suitable-for-a-dramatic-exit
bicycle to the museum and the new exhibit we were going to see
together. In the ransacked tomb of a lesser-known, upper-level
regional administrator of later ancient Egypt it was clear
the gold was gone, as were all things potentially precious. The rings,
necklaces and other bodily ornaments were stolen with the body,
but the skull was dropped, an upturned cup on the smashed sarcophagus.
Also left were seven hundred miniature boats.
Each carried some small carving of a need for the hereafter: servants, priests,
incense, food, cooks, craftsmen and their shops and tools, an entire city
on a tiny flotilla ready to cross the river to meet Osiris
and begin anew. Spells and incantations covered every surface
of the tomb, a thorough map of the underworld and its monsters
was etched into the wood near the mummy’s head.
I imagined your loud voice booming among the glass cases:
Why are the boats so small? Will the figures come to life? Which organs
will he put back in first? But I stopped, distracted, when I saw the sandals:
one pair, life-size, left out and ready for when the mummy awakens.
