Choice Words

by Annie Finch

  “The women you sent this time were very thin and weak. The majority had infectious diseases. Nevertheless we managed to use all of them—no survivors. We await your next dispatch in two weeks’ time. With thanks and best regards.”)

  When Graciela came home, Ecks was reading the paper and the girl was sleeping lightly on the sofa. Without making a sound, Graciela went to the little cooking area hidden in a cupboard. Ecks followed her and explained what was happening. Graciela made some tea in silence, anxious not to disturb the girl. She had no other luggage apart from her bag which hung from the back of the sofa.

  They drank their tea without a word; Graciela showed Ecks a letter from Morris which had arrived that morning. It was addressed to both of them and related some episodes of his stay in Africa. But mainly it talked of Percival and his mother, Eve. There was a special section for Graciela in which Morris wrote about the practices of cliterodectomy and infibulation effected on young girls in various countries; he also marked the areas that Graciela should visit to see for herself and offered to accompany her. Morris described how at the age of twelve—normally after the first menstrual period—the women (or children?—he asked) were taken away from their villages and led to secluded areas where their clitoris and labia were excised by means of knife, sharp stone, or any other cutting object. The vagina was then sewn with coarse thread or thorns. This process practically sealed the girls’ vulvas. The cuts would scar over within a couple of weeks, if they did not turn septic and lead to death from infection, of which there were many instances. The survivors were then returned to their villages, where they were now considered ready to be sold as brides, concubines or auctioned at the clothes and fruit markets. Infibulation was repeated whenever a girl was to be resold, or whenever the owner decided. In certain communities, Morris explained, this practice had the character of a ritual, an offering to the gods. Whoever purchased a girl had the right to test the effectiveness of the infibulation before paying the price.

  Graciela was choking on her tea, something she often did when she tried to eat too many biscuits with it.

  “A delicate business,” whispered Ecks mockingly. “Coach-loads of pregnant women, infibulated girls, and whales committing suicide on the Atlantic shores where they should know the fish are all poisoned.”

  “I think I’ll go,” said Graciela, playing with the edge of her paper napkin.

  “Let us infibulate,” continued Ecks with his tendency to repeat the things that disgusted him, either to exorcise or accustom himself to them.

  “It was kind of Morris to invite you,” he added in a tone of voice which Graciela was unable to interpret. “But why didn’t he invite me? I could leave my job as abortion guide and become the official infibulator in some African kingdom. I would insert the thorns with extreme delicacy and even paint them bright colors to incite fresh buyers.

  “If you go, don’t forget your great-grandmother’s chastity belt, the charming iron one with spikes. And mind you close it well with two turns of the key. Doña Zacarías would be very happy in her tomb, knowing that her favorite belt was coming to the aid of her great-granddaughter.”

  When the girl woke up—she said her name was Lucía—they offered her tea and biscuits. Ecks played some music and then went to bed because the journey the following day promised to be uncomfortable as well as long. But he was unable to sleep. Whenever he shut his eyes he saw huge thorns or soldiers in uniform.

  Translated from the Spanish by Psiche Hughes

  ABORTION

  Bobbie Louise Hawkins

  Dr. Gore was an abortionist. Hearts broke before his eyes. Young women sat in his office with their faces blanked as they thought of their altered future. Given that face and the mother who had learned about him from a friend who was a nurse and who didn’t know whether he would help but who knew he was all she had, he was an abortionist.

  Contempt and blame was the commonplace response to knocked-up girls in 1948 boondocks America. I expected it. I was ashamed. I had been a fool and I had been caught. He ignored my mother, who sat crying. It wasn’t her fault—it was mine, and he despised me for it.

  He rode a dangerous edge. Every time he agreed to save this latest mess, he put himself and his own future in the balance. All those girls and women left bleeding and butchered by the clothes-hanger brigade made him someone for the authorities to benignly neglect. They could change their mind without notice. Every girl like me put him into jeopardy. He would say so to supplicants who were in no position to hear it. He saved us despite our inability to see his humanity in it.

  He looked at me and growled, “It’ll cost a hundred dollars and I don’t want her to pay it, I want you to pay it.”

  I said I would. I felt the hope in it, that my life might be salvaged. I would have promised anything. I would have promised even more hundreds of dollars I didn’t have.

  The abortion was done in his examining room on his half day. He couldn’t use anesthetic because I had to walk out when it was over, looking as normal as I could manage. His nurse was in the reception room. My mother was in his office. I lay on his examining table with my feet in the stirrups and my knees straddled. I did yell once and my mother came through his door, her face twisted with fear, straight into the sight of my spread legs and the bloody mess. Dr. Gore and I both yelled at the same time, telling her to get out.

  At home, I cramped and moaned and my mother hovered in the small hallway outside my door, calling to ask whether I was all right. I didn’t want her in the room where I hugged my pillow and lay in a tight knot. I was not all right and I was graceless enough to not keep it to myself.

  My stepfather was remote, negligible, resentful. The couple would have quick flaring exchanges. She wished now she hadn’t found the doctor. She was sure that something was very wrong, that I might die. My stepfather, a man with a usually gentle nature, was sure I wouldn’t die and told her so, fiercely. No such luck, they’d have me forever.

  One sunny afternoon I was being driven to Santa Fe by a friend. As we passed Dr. Gore’s street, he said, “I have to stop here for a minute,” turned left, and stopped in front of Dr. Gore’s office.

  “I won’t be long,” and he was gone.

  I sat waiting, feeling anxious, and, as I had feared, the doctor walked my friend back out to the car. We were formally introduced. He recognized me but didn’t let on.

  We left, continued driving north.

  One of the things I thought was that I hoped he didn’t think this particular friend was responsible for my pregnancy.

  On the drive to Santa Fe I learned that Dr. Gore was admirable, that he went regularly to the scattering of houses in Tesuque Canyon, alongside Route 66, and doctored the Mexican families there without charge. I don’t know whether it was then that I learned he had been badly wounded during the Second World War and, like many who were given morphine for their pain, he had become addicted.

  His addiction finally caused him to lose his license. He was arrested for misuse of drugs, found guilty, sentenced, and put in prison. I knew about all this because Albuquerque was still a small town in those days. The local newspaper was bound to be moral about a doctor discovered to be a criminal.

  When he came out of prison he got a job in a mental institution. He was hired as an “orderly” but used as a doctor. That might have given him some consolation, that he was needed. I hope it did.

  He deserved better than that.

  FROM COME IN SPINNER

  Dymphna Cusack and Florence James

  Dallas looked at her questioningly.

  “It’s about a girl who I know. Well … I don’t exactly know her, but her sister works with me, and she’s got into trouble, and”—the words came out with a rush—“I thought you might be able to tell me the name of some doctor who did that sort of thing.”

  A professional mask slid over Dallas’s face. “I presume you mean an abortion?”

  Deb nodded. She felt her face flush under Dallas’s keen glance.
/>   “When did this happen?”

  “I … I can’t tell you exactly,”

  Dallas looked at her professionally. “Deb, if you want me to help you, it’s no good beating around the bush.”

  Deb looked at her blankly. It took a few seconds before Dallas’s meaning penetrated her mind. “Good heavens,” she gasped, “why Dallas, surely you don’t think … whatever could put such an idea into your head?”

  “You mean that it is not for yourself?”

  “Of course it’s not. Why … how could you think such a thing.” Dallas shrugged her shoulders. “Have a cigarette and we’ll get this business clear.”

  Deb puffed furiously, virtuously, indignation mounting. She felt like walking straight out of the place. That Dallas should think that of her. Dallas of all people!

  Dallas went on with infuriating calm. “You’d better tell me what you know.”

  Deb controlled her indignation. “It’s an AWAS, Mary Parker’s the name—her sister’s the hairdresser over at the salon.”

  “Won’t the man marry her?”

  “He can’t. He’s already married and his wife refuses to divorce him. Mary and he have been on the same station for two years, and then he was sent to the Islands. It was his final leave.”

  Dallas sighed. “‘Final leave.’ How often I’ve heard that.”

  “But you can’t help being sorry for her.”

  “You’d be less than human if you weren’t. In the ridiculous social set-up we have, it’s always the girl who’s penalized. Nobody worries about the man.”

  “He seems to be a decent enough fellow.”

  “But he hasn’t got to take the consequences. He’ll go on serenely to promotion while the girl gets a dishonorable discharge, and when the war’s over he’ll return to the bosom of his wife. I can never see why, when they regard VD as an occupational disease for men in the army, they shouldn’t regard pregnancy in servicewomen in the same light.”

  Deb felt more and more depressed.

  “What do you expect me to do?” Dallas asked briskly.

  “Well … I thought maybe … you might … you could suggest something.”

  “If you mean you hoped I might do something, I’m sorry, my dear, that’s quite out of the question. I’m not afflicted with the particular brand of sentimentality that regards it as murder to remove an unwanted fetus and at the same time applauds mass slaughter in war, but I can’t afford to risk my future in a profession for which I have worked very hard, for the sake of one or even one hundred little AWAS, however sorry I feel for them.”

  Deb was silent, fidgeting with the spoon on her saucer.

  Dallas got up and leaned on the railing. “I’m so sorry for women. Whichever way they turn, most of them are caught. It doesn’t matter whether they’re driven by love or lust, they’re the ones who fall in. If I had a daughter—as I won’t, because society says unless I’m prepared to tie myself up to some man legally, I have no right to bear a child—but if I did have a daughter, I’d teach her very early that the only real salvation for women is work.”

  “It’s all very well for you to talk like that, you’ve got brains and ability and you can stand on your own feet. You don’t seem to need a man permanently, though goodness knows you always have plenty of them around. But what is there for the average woman if she doesn’t get married? Only an underpaid job and a back room in some cheap boardinghouse. And anyway most women are romantic and if you gave them their choice they’d rather have love than a career any day of the week.”

  “You misunderstand me. I have nothing against marriage or love, but love as we know it is too wild and unpredictable a passion on which to build a whole life. And even marriage, unless love develops into something more lasting than the most thrilling romance—for instance, into a partnership such as Tom and Nolly have—destroys itself and usually the woman with it.”

  “Well, I can think of a lot more attractive things than what Tom has reduced Nolly to,” Deb replied with heat.

  Dallas smiled and looked round at her. “It may surprise you, Deb,” she said, “but do you know, if I weren’t so fond of being myself, I’d choose to be Nolly. She’s that person so rare in the world today—a fulfilled woman.”

  “Well, if that’s your idea of fulfillment, it certainly isn’t mine, and so far as I’m concerned, you can have it on your own.”

  Dallas went on without answering her. “When I see a happy woman, I generally find that she is good at something outside of romantic love. How I’ve come to loathe those words, romantic love! Boiled down all they mean is that women have let themselves be sold the idea that sex is a substitute for life, instead of seeing it in its right proportion as only one part of living. There comes a time for everyone when sex, merely as sex, fails you. And then, when your heart’s shattered into little bits, there’s no better cement for putting it in usable shape again than the knowledge that you’re really cracker-jack at something else besides love.”

  She stood silent for a few minutes looking out over the harbor, her eyes the same sparkling grey as the water under the western sun.

  “And now,” she said, turning back to Deb, “what are we going to do about your little AWAS? Has she got any money?”

  “Her sister and she can rack up the twenty-five pounds between them.”

  “Hasn’t the man sent her any?”

  “He doesn’t know yet.”

  “I’m afraid there’s not a reliable doctor about town who’ll do it for under forty these days.”

  “Forty pounds!” gasped Deb. “Someone said twenty-five.”

  Dallas shrugged her shoulders. “Supply and demand, my dear. The price has gone up—wartime inflation, like everything else. But even then the only man I really could guarantee has retired and bought a property somewhere in the wilds!”

  “Is there anyone else at all you can recommend?”

  “I’m afraid there isn’t. But perhaps I could find out. Is it urgent?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid it is. She’s got less than a week’s leave left in Sydney.”

  “That certainly complicates things. I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Deb. I’ll make a few discreet inquiries tomorrow, and if you ring me between six and seven in the evening, I’ll probably have found someone. I have surgery at seven so don’t ring then. And for heaven’s sake don’t mention my name to a soul if I do find anyone.”

  FROM “STANDING GROUND”

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  They were coming: two of them. The trembling began in Mary’s fingertips and ran up her arms into her heart. She must stand her ground. Mr. Young had said stand your ground. He might come. If he came, they would never get past him. She wished Norman would not shake his sign like that. The shaking made the trembling worse. The sign was something Norman had made himself, not one Mr. Young had approved, even. Norman had no right to do everything himself that way. “This is a war,” Mr. Young said, “and we are the army of the Right.” We are soldiers. They were coming closer, and the trembling ran down into her legs, but she stood firm, she stood her ground.

  An old man standing on the sidewalk ahead of them was holding up a sign on a stick, and when he saw them he began to shake it up and down. It had some dark words on it and a picture of what looked like a possum. “What’s that?” Sharee asked, and Delaware said, “Road kill.” A woman popped up beside the man. Delaware thought she might be an escort. She was calling out to them. Sharee asked, “Who’s she?” and Delaware said, “I don’t know, come on,” because the man was making her nervous. He had started making a kind of chopping motion with the sign, as if he was going to cut them down with the dead possum. The woman was pretty and nicely dressed, but instead of talking softer as they came close she yelled louder—“I’m praying! I’m praying for you!” “Why doesn’t she go to church?” Sharee asked. She and Delaware were holding hands now, and they walked faster. The woman danced in front of them like a basketball player trying to stop a shot. Her voice had gone up into a scream, s
hrill, in Sharee’s face: “Mom, Mom! Stop her! Stop her, Mom!” To shut out the screaming woman Sharee put her free arm up over her eyes and ducked her head down between her shoulders as they hurried up the four steps of the building. The man was also shouting now. Delaware felt the edge of his signboard strike her shoulder, a terrible feeling, not a pain but a shock, an invasion. It seemed like she had expected it, had known it would happen, but it was so terrible it stopped her and she could not move. Sharee tugged her forward to the metal-framed pebble-glass door of the clinic and pushed at the door. It did not move. Delaware thought it was locked and they were trapped, outside. The door opened outward fast, forcing them back. An angry woman stood there saying, “There’s an injunction against you getting on this property and you’d better not forget it!” Sharee let go Delaware’s hand and ducked way down and hid her head in both arms. Delaware looked around and saw where the angry woman was looking. “She’s talking to them,” she said to Sharee. “It’s okay.” She took Sharee’s hand again, and they went inside, past the angry woman, who held the door for them.

  They were in there now. They had got in. And Pitch Defilement was laughing at him inside the door, standing there laughing. Mary was talking in her squealy voice. Screaming and squealing and devil laughter. Norman raised up his sign and swung it down, driving it edgewise into the grass along the sidewalk in front of the Butcher Shop. Squealy Mary jumped aside and stood staring at him. He pulled the sign out and stood it upright. He felt better. “I’m going for a cup of coffee,” he told Mary. Walking to the coffee shop, five blocks, carrying his sign erect, he thought all the time of what was going on inside the Butcher Shop. How they laid the girl down and gassed her and spread her legs and reached inside and found him and pried and pulled him out with the instruments. Stuck them into her, farther and farther in, grasped and pulled him out quivering and bloody. Stuck the knives up in between her legs and she writhed and moaned, showing her teeth, arching her back, gasping, panting. They pulled him out and he lay limp and little, dead. “God is my witness,” he said aloud, and struck the stick of his sign against the pavement. He would find a way in. He would get in there and do what must be done.