the bathroom and emptied his mouth. Even so, he was somewhat affected by the knockout drops he’d put in the liquor.
When Marie regained consciousness, she was in Bucko’s car. She did not feel at all well. She looked at Bucko behind the wheel, but saw him in a confused haze. “What time is it?”
He checked his watch as they passed a street light. “One-thirty.”
Half an hour past her extended curfew. Not good, but not tragic. What was definitely not good was how she felt. “Stop the car, Bucko!”
“We’re almost at your house,” he protested.
“You’re gonna have an awful mess to clean up.”
He stopped as abruptly as he could on the slippery street. She leaned out of the car. Bucko was glad he’d stopped.
She said no more. She was using every ounce of her young and normally healthy constitution to regain self- possession.
With a determined effort Marie survived her mother’s concerned scrutiny. She made it upstairs to her room by putting one foot in front of the other and telling herself over and over, “It isn’t that far.” She was glad her stomach had emptied outside. There was no way she could have done that quietly in the bathroom. Without removing her clothing she fell into bed and was in a dreamless sleep immediately.
She woke abruptly about 10:00 a.m. She felt terrible. Her mouth felt as if it were coated for the winter. She tried to remember, but all she could recall was the dance, going to Freddy’s house with Bucko, the bedroom, and then, vaguely, coming home.
Something was missing. The bedroom. She tried harder to remember. Bucko brushing the coats off the bed. The beginning of a wrestling match. The drink.
Her mind was clearing. There was something peculiar about her clothing. It didn’t seem to fit her correctly- tight where it should have been loose and vice versa. She began removing it. Her gown was slightly off center. Ditto her bra. Someone had dressed her hurriedly.
There were flecks of blood on the inside of her thighs. She checked herself more carefully with a small hand mirror. She found the sticky white matter. It had to be semen. She’d read about that.
She’d been raped. Drugged, then raped.
Marie was overwhelmed by a flood of emotions, all of them negative: anguish, shame, horror, humiliation, outrage, great fear-and guilt, guilt, guilt. For the first time she understood how one person could seriously contemplate murdering another person. She would know the feeling once again when, many years later, a televangelist/publisher would threaten to reveal something more than this secret.
Marie managed to get to confession before Christmas. She confessed that she’d had intercourse, which was probably not technically correct. Bucko had raped her. But she confessed it just to be on the safe side. She did not want to die and have God tell her, “You should have confessed the whole thing. You know what you were taught about being the near occasion of sin and all.” This time she didn’t get just a few Our Fathers and Hail Marys. For a penance she got five rosaries and the Stations of the Cross and a hellfire-and-brimstone lecture.
After much deliberation, she concluded there was no way to retaliate against Bucko Cassidy. There was nothing she could do except to act as if he didn’t exist. Which didn’t seem to bother him. Nothing bothered him as long as his athletic body stayed in one fit piece.
The real and deadly serious problem arose a month later when the normally regular Marie was two weeks overdue for her period. And she had begun to feel, not unwell, but peculiar. As if something deep inside her was changing.
She was pregnant. She’d never been before, of course, and she hadn’t passed or failed any pregnancy test, but she knew it. She knew she was pregnant. Her emotional response escalated to terror and panic. There was only one person in whom she could confide. Not her mother, father, a priest or nun. Alice. Outside of the priest in the confessional, which was protected by its anonymity, Alice was the only one who knew what had happened to Marie at Freddy’s. Now Alice alone knew about the pregnancy.
Alice’s eyes were wider than they had ever been. “What are you going to do, Marie?”
“Oh, Alice, I don’t know. I’ve thought of everything: keeping the baby, giving it out for adoption. But either way I’d have to tell my parents. I can’t, I just can’t do that. Which leads to thinking about the Ambassador Bridge and a short winter swim in the Detroit River.” Marie could speak calmly, almost dispassionately, because by now she was drained, physically, emotionally, and tearfully.
“Suicide! Marie, that’s impossible! I won’t let you do it. I’ll stay with you twenty-four hours a day!”
“Alice. .” Marie would have laughed, had not laughter also been gone from her life. “Alice, don’t be silly.”
Neither of them spoke for quite a long while.
“There’s one other possibility.” Alice spoke softly, guardedly.
Marie studied her friend. “Alice! Abortion?”
“I know, I know; it’s out of the question,” Alice said. “I’ve heard everything in religion class you have. But, think about it. Just think about it.” Pause. “You can’t commit suicide. That’s worse than abortion. Not only would you kill the fetus, if there’s one there, but you’d kill yourself. You can’t tell your folks. I can understand. I couldn’t do that either. What’s left?
“It would be a blessing-don’t get me wrong now-but it would be a blessing if you miscarried. It could happen. I read that happens sometimes just because it’s a first pregnancy. Maybe we could look at an abortion like that-as a planned miscarriage.” Alice looked intently at Marie.
Marie twisted her handkerchief between restless hands. “I don’t know. I don’t know. Besides, how could I get one? Where would I go? Not only is it a sin, it’s against the law. I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
Alice, hesitantly, “I have a friend. .”
“Alice!”
“. . who has a friend who does this. Right out of her home.”
“Her home?”
“Uh-huh. How much money can you get hold of?”
“Babysitting, odd jobs, I’ve got about $50 in savings.”
“And I’ve got about $40.”
“Alice! I couldn’t let you-”
“My friend says this woman charges between $100 and $150. Maybe she’d do it for $90.”
“Alice!”
But the decision had been made. Both Marie and Alice-especially Marie-felt strongly conflicting emotions. Neither of them believed in or wanted abortion. But there seemed no alternative, no alternative whatever.
The abortionist, after considerable haggling, finally agreed to the $90 fee. Alice accompanied Marie to the modest neighborhood home. Marie accompanied the woman into the bedroom. It occurred to her that nothing seemed to be sterile or even very clean. But she was too frightened and defensive to complain or question.
The procedure was simplicity itself. A long plastic stirrer was inserted roughly through the vagina and planted firmly in the cervix. Marie screamed. Alice ran to the bedroom door, but it was locked. The woman instructed Marie to leave the stirrer in place. Over the next two or three days the stirrer-and the fetus-would be expelled. So-words that held no meaning-there was nothing to worry about.
Alice saw Marie home. She would have stayed with her, but Marie was too sick to tolerate company. Her mother bought the explanation that it was the flu. That gave Marie the opportunity to go to bed and stay there.
Inside Marie foreign things were happening. The mucous plug had been pierced and a serious infection had begun. The irritation had opened the cervix. It was only a matter of time, two days in fact, before the stirrer was expelled, followed by the ravaged fetus.
Marie was in misery such as she had never before known. She had a high temperature, fever, spasms, chills, and hemorrhaging. She was rushed to the hospital, where the doctor in emergency convinced her he’d be able to help much more efficiently if she told him all she could. He performed a D and C and administered massive doses of
