small piece of protoplasm that would soon be taken from her body. The room held three other women. Two were Mexican and one was a worn-out blonde with an acned face and hopeless eyes. All of them were poor.
A middle-aged, Spanish-looking woman in a neat white blouse and dark skirt appeared at the door and called her name. 'Francesca, I'm Mrs. Garcia,' she said in lightly accented English. 'Would you come with me, please?'
Francesca numbly followed her into a small office paneled in fake mahogany. Mrs. Garcia took a seat behind her desk and invited Francesca to sit in another molded plastic chair, differing only in color from the one in the waiting room.
The woman was friendly and efficient as she went over the forms for Francesca to sign. Then she explained the procedure that would take place in one of the surgical rooms down the hall. Francesca bit down on the inside of her lip and tried not to listen too closely. Mrs. Garcia spoke slowly and calmly, always using the word 'tissue,' never 'fetus.' Francesca felt a detached sense of gratitude. Ever since
she had realized she was pregnant, she had refused to personify the unwelcome visitor lodged in her womb. She refused to connect it in her mind to that night in a Louisiana swamp. Her life had been pared down to the bone-to the marrow -and there was no room for sentiment, no room to build falsely romantic pictures of chubby pink cheeks and soft curly hair, no need ever to use the word 'baby,' not even in her thoughts. Mrs. Garcia began to speak of 'vacuum aspiration,' and Francesca thought of the old Hoover she pushed around the radio station carpet every evening.
'Do you have any questions?'
She shook her head. The faces of the three sad women in the waiting room seemed implanted in her mind- women with no future, no hope. Mrs. Garcia slid a booklet across the metal desktop. 'This pamphlet contains information on birth control that you should read before you have intercourse again.'
Again? The memory of Dallie's deep, hot kisses rushed back to her, but the intimate caresses that had once set her senses aflame now seemed to have happened to someone else. She couldn't imagine ever feeling that good again.
'I can't have this-this tissue,' Francesca said abruptly, interrupting the woman in midsentence as she showed her a diagram of the female reproductive organs.
Mrs. Garcia stopped what she was saying and inclined her head to listen, obviously accustomed to hearing the most private revelations pass across her desk.
Francesca knew she had no need to justify her actions, but she couldn't seem to stop the flow of words. 'Don't you see that it's impossible?' Her fists clenched into knots in her lap. 'I'm not a horrible person. I'm not unfeeling. But I can barely take care of myself and a walleyed cat.'
The woman gazed at her sympathetically. 'Of course you're not unfeeling, Francesca. It's your body,
and only you can decide what's best.'
'I've made up my mind,' she replied, her tone as angry as if the woman had argued with her. 'I don't have a husband or money. I'm barely hanging on to a job working for a boss who hates me. I don't even have any way to pay my medical bills.'
'I understand. It's difficult-'
'You don't understand!' Francesca leaned forward, her eyes dry and furious, each word coming out like
a hard, crisp pellet. 'All my life I've lived off other people, but I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm going to make something of myself!'
'I think your ambition is admirable. You're obviously a competent young-'
Again Francesca pushed aside her sympathy, trying to explain to Mrs. Garcia-trying to explain to herself-what had brought her to this red brick abortion clinic in the poorest part of San Antonio. The room was warm, but she hugged herself as if she felt a chill. 'Have you ever seen those pictures people put together on black velvet with little nails and different colored strings-pictures of bridges and butterflies, things like that?' Mrs. Garcia nodded. Francesca gazed at the fake mahogany paneling without seeing it. 'I have one of those awful pictures fastened to the wall, right above my bed, this terrible pink and orange string picture of a guitar.'
'I don't quite see-'
'How can someone bring a baby into the world when she lives in a place with a string picture of a guitar on the wall? What kind of mother would deliberately expose a helpless little baby to something so ugly?' Baby. She'd said the word. Twice she'd said it. A painful press of tears pricked at the backs of her eyelids but she refused to shed them. In the past year, she'd cried enough spoiled, self-indulgent tears to last a lifetime, and she wasn't going to cry any more.
'You know, Francesca, an abortion doesn't have to be the end of the world. In the future, the circumstances may be different for you… the time more convenient.'
Her final word seemed to hang in the air. Francesca slumped back in the chair, all the anger drained out
of her. Was that what a human life came down to, she wondered, a matter of convenience? It was inconvenient for her to have a baby right now, so she would simply do away with it? She looked up at Mrs. Garcia. 'My friends in London used to schedule their abortions so they wouldn't miss any balls or parties.'
For the first time Mrs. Garcia visibly bristled. 'The women who come here aren't worried about missing
a party, Francesca. They're fifteen-year-olds with their whole lives in front of them, or married women who already have too many children and absent husbands. They're women without jobs and without any hope of getting work.'
But she wasn't like them, Francesca told herself. She wasn't helpless and broken anymore. These past few months she had proven that. She'd scrubbed toilets, endured abuse, fed and sheltered herself on next to nothing. Most people would have crumbled, but she hadn't. She had survived.
It was a new, tantalizing view of herself. She sat straighter in the chair, her fists gradually easing open in her lap. Mrs. Garcia spoke hesitantly. 'Your life seems rather precarious at the moment.'
Francesca thought of Clare, of the ugly rooms above the garage, of the string guitar, of her inability to call Dallie for help, even when she desperately needed it. 'It is precarious,' she agreed. Leaning over, she picked up her canvas shoulder bag. Then she rose from her chair. The impulsive, optimistic part of her that she thought had died months before seemed to have taken over her feet, seemed to be forcing her to do something that could only lead to disaster, something illogical, foolish…
Something wonderful.
'May I have my money back, please, Mrs. Garcia? Take out whatever you need to cover your time today.'
Mrs. Garcia looked worried. 'Are you sure about your decision, Francesca? You're already ten weeks pregnant. You don't have much more time to undergo a safe abortion. Are you absolutely sure?'
Francesca had never been less sure of anything in her life, but she nodded.
She broke into a little run as she left the abortion clinic, and then a skip to cover the last few feet to the Dart. Her mouth curved in a smile. Of all the stupid things she had ever done in her life, this was the stupidest. Her smile grew wider. Dallie had been absolutely right about her-she didn't have a single ounce of common sense. She was poorer than a church mouse, badly educated, and living every minute on the cutting edge of disaster. But right now, at this very moment, none of that mattered, because some things in life were more important than common sense.
Francesca Serritella Day had lost most of her dignity and all of her pride. She wasn't going to lose her baby.
Chapter 20
Francesca discovered something rather wonderful about herself in the next few months. With her back pressed to the wall, a gun pointed to her forehead, a time bomb ticking in her womb, she learned that she was quite intelligent. She grasped new ideas easily, retained what she learned, and having had so few academic prejudices imposed upon her by teachers, never let preconceived notions limit her thinking. With her first months of pregnancy behind her, she also discovered a seemingly endless capacity for
hard work, which she began taking advantage of by laboring far into the night, reading newspapers and broadcasting magazines, listening to tapes, and getting ready to take a small step up in the world.
