Becky and the Baby

 

(The following is a chapter from my memoir, “Burnin
g the Furniture.” In light of the pending Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade, I thought it appropriate to let you know what the abortion landscape will look like.)

 

I wasn't surprised when Becky said she was pregnant. This was her fifth pregnancy. She was nineteen. I was annoyed, anxious and afraid of what we'd be facing. The previous four had been illegally aborted and I was pretty sure that’s what she had in mind for this one. I hadn't been a part of anything that preceded this pregnancy and my only real involvement would be in its termination.

Becky and a longtime acquaintance whose real name I won’t use (we’ll call him Jim), groped at a heated weekend romance for about six months, early in 1969. He could only visit on weekends because Camp Lejeune was three-hundred-seventy-five miles east, on the coast, but I was surprised how often he covered that distance miles for a few hours of lust. He had hitchhiked, flown in private planes, taken the bus, bummed rides from friends going west and hopped an outbound tractor-trailer. He hadn't ridden the rails yet, but I guessed it to be only a matter of time.

Becky hung out at the cabin I lived in because home was difficult. Her dad drank heavily and her manic-depressive—bi-polar, these days—mother had unpredictable, radical swings in mood. Becky was given the run of the cabin and I liked having her around because she kept the place clean, she played with my kid, Jennie, who was about a year old and she was nice to talk to. Jennie’s mama, a beautiful German who married me to get out of a bad home situation, had left shortly after Jennie’s birth.  I had girlfriends who wondered who the hell Becky was and why she was at my place all the time, but I told them it was none of their business. Not many of them could get past that, but I guess by that time I had developed a certain loyalty to Becky.

She was a not-especially-pretty, dirty blonde, straight-haired, big girl with high hips and slate blue eyes too large for her small, triangular face. She had a thick waist, a large, round bottom on high hips, smallish, pointed breasts and narrow shoulders. Becky rose an imposing five-feet-ten, two inches taller than Jim and a shade taller than me, though she appeared to tower over both of us.

She was quiet most of the time, but when she was comfortable, as she was after a while, she could talk for hours. She was intelligent and sensitive, though she spent a good bit of time trying to hide that, especially when my pal was around.

She and I had sex two or three times, but I felt guilty about it because she was my buddy’s girl. I don't think she thought much about it at all. Sex was simply trade to her. Make her feel good, you could have it. She'd been used so much in that way that I don't think she enjoyed it, regardless of who the guy was. She told me she'd never had an orgasm and didn't think she could.

Jim was often a heavy drinker who was loud and too attentive, especially to women, whom he’d paw to distraction. He was photographer, peaceful duty in wartime.  He photographed visiting generals, base news items and awards ceremonies and I suspected that his duty frustrated him because he felt it beneath his capabilities. He had a square jaw, wide shoulders, small waist and he walked military erect. His hands were small and looked fragile, though the palms were calloused. Jim’s forehead was broad and his brow sloped forward, giving his eyes a dark, deep-set, brooding appearance. He rarely smiled, but when he did, he exposed small, even teeth, slightly off-white. There was that dimple that he hated for what it implied.

Jim was often angry and narrow, but he could also be tender and caring, as he played a sonata by Mozart on the piano, or clandestinely wrote a thoughtful short story or poem. He was often a contradiction, an enigma, a living oxymoron. Jung would have pointed to this Marine when talking of the duality of man.

He'd been abandoned by his mother, betrayed by his father and grew up in an institution. He was chaos.

Still, Jim was my pal despite and because of it all.

If I knew he would be in for the weekend, I wouldn’t make a date and if he unexpectedly showed up, as he did sometimes, I sent the girl home and he, Becky and I hung out. I don't know why I preferred being a third wheel, but it worked out that way.

 

*

It was a nasty, bone-painful January day, claustrophobic and between the holidays and spring relief. Nerves flapped and Becky and I were in the cabin alone on a Saturday morning, with the day's first coffee and the paper. She looked at me for a long moment. "I'm late," she said.

"For what?" I said, probably the only twenty-two-year-old in Western North Carolina who didn't know instinctively what that meant.

"My period. I'm late."

"Oh. Very?"

"Nearly a month. I'm pretty sure."

"You mean pregnant?"

"Yes. Pregnant. God! I hate this. I hate those damn rubbers; they kill spontaneity and the pill makes me sick and the diaphragm slips out. Besides, [her Marine] won't wear a rubber, anyway. Says that's my job.

"I don't want to get another abortion, but I don't know what else to do. The abortion guy said last time that if I kept doing it, I might not be able to have kids when I'm ready. He said I could bleed to death easy. It hurt so much. I swear it must be as bad as having the baby."

She paused, crying, her face distorted as the tears cascaded off her chin onto her pajama top. I moved to the couch, sat beside her, put my arm around her. I didn't know what to say, so I didn't talk.

"If Daddy finds out, he'll kill me. I told him and mama about the first one and he beat me with his belt until I bled. Mama was screaming and he was cussing and I was crying. It was awful. Me and mama went to Charlotte and got it done. Daddy didn't know until after we got back and all he said was where'd I get the hundred dollars and how I was going to pay it back? He said if I ever did it again ..."

I squeezed her shoulder.

"That's when I stopped going home regular. At first, I'd stay away for a couple of days, then a week or so, then a month. Mama worried, but he didn't care, long as I wasn't there for him to have to spend money on. But he'd threaten me every time he'd see me."

"When will you know for sure?" I finally said.

"I know. Really. This ain't new. But I'll wait 'til the end of next week and go to a doctor I know. We'll kill a rabbit and I'll set something up in Charlotte. Can you help me with the money until I can raise it and get it back to you?"

(There was a test at the time wherein a woman’s fluid was injected into a rabbit and if the rabbit died, she was with child. An American researcher named Maurice Friedman adapted a test developed in Nazi Germany by two Jewish doctors, who escaped the Holocaust using mice. Friedman later said that the only reliable test was to “wait nine months.” The rabbit, in his test, always died.)

"Sure," I said. "I don't have it all, but Mike will have much as we need."

"I don't like him," she said. "He gives me the creeps. Can we get the money without him?"

"Becky, you know about beggars and choosers," I said. "We're not the choosers and there's worse people than Mike to deal with. He's always been good to Jim and me and we need to have an older guy on our side anyway, just in case anything went wrong."

"OK," she said, without conviction. "I just wish we didn't have to."

"Maybe we won't. Maybe this is a false alarm. You still believe in God, don't you?”

"Sort of," she said.

"Then pray."

 

*

Becky's gynecologist confirmed what she already knew and it was left to me to talk to Mike, to arrange some money and maybe even get him to drive us down in his 1965 Continental. I always liked that big burgundy ship. I remember the first time I saw it, I marveled at the leather seats, the sound system before there were sound systems, the sheer comfort. “What kind of gas mileage does this thing get?" I asked.

"What difference does that make?" he said. "Gas is thirty cents a gallon." It made a difference to me because I made ninety-five dollars a week, which wasn't much even in 1969.

I'd first run into Mike at the Riverside lounge where he brought in twenty-five newly killed rabbits to be skinned and barbecued out back. He asked Jim and me to do it for a few dollars, free food and beer and we said, “Sure.”

Mike was retired military and a successful insurance salesman.

Becky didn't know anything about Mike except that he leered at her. I expect he had probably kept his eyes too long on her breasts one day or maybe called her "honey" once too often.

"When do you want to go?" he answered my question without even broaching the illegality of the abortion, which wouldn’t be legal for another three years, the expense, the time involved, the medical risks or the fact that Becky was a teenager who was all but a runaway. It would have been unlike Mike to respond any differently. I always wished Becky had understood him a little better.

"Becky said the doctor has an opening early next Friday and I can still make work if we can get back into town by about six-thirty or so," I said. "I have to cover a basketball game that evening." This was a Thursday, so we had a day more than a week to get ready. I wished we could just go on down and get it done.

 

*

"Have you told Jim?" I asked Becky.

"Oh, God, no!" she said, louder than necessary.

"We gotta tell him. He's the father and he has a right to know."

"Why? The baby's in me, not him. I'm the one who’ll either have to carry it or suffer through the abortion. He doesn't have to do anything. He just got his rocks inside me without thinking. It's mine and it's mine to get rid of."

"Calm down, Becky," I said, as evenly as I could. "How would you feel if the roles were reversed, if you had made him pregnant? Don't you think you would want him to tell you, to give you the opportunity to support him?"

"Dan, he's not going to support me, no matter what I do. He's just going to say, 'Well, you fucked up, didn't you? Take care of it.' That'll hurt me worse than just going ahead and having the thing and not telling him anything about it now or ever."

"If you don't tell him, I'm going to have to. He's my friend and he's your friend and he has a right to know that a baby he created is going to be aborted. He probably will act like an asshole, but at least we have to give him the chance."

I called him that night at the little apartment he had just off base and he was about half drunk. Becky was right about his response. He asked, "Whose is it?" That made me so mad I slammed the phone down.

He called me the next day at work, apologized and asked if I'd get Becky to call him early that night. She called from the bedroom and they talked about 30 minutes. I finally went in and gave her the hurry-up sign because long distance calls were expensive and I didn't have much money. She was off in about three or four more minutes and came into the living room looking calm and relieved. "He was so nice," she said. "Thanks for making me call him." I wasn’t surprised because he was sober.

*

The appointment in Charlotte was at the office of one Dr. Belding, a tall, dashingly handsome African-American (“Black” in the vernacular of the time) physician who had all but openly set up an abortion clinic in the middle of the most segregated part of Charlotte. Belding closely resembled maverick Congressman Adam Clayton Powell of Harlem, who was later thrown out of Congress as a crook. He was known all over the state for his outspoken opposition to abortion laws—which he considered especially burdensome for poor people—and for his waiting room, famous for its privacy, its cheer and its expensive booze.

We didn't have any trouble finding the clinic because Mike knew Charlotte and everybody in town knew how to get there. It was in a plain, government-looking, one-story brick building with a glass front door and swinging saloon doors just inside—I swear to God—leading to the receptionist.

Dr. Belding met us out front and took us to a waiting room. "You must be the patient," he said extending his hand to Becky. "Yes, sir," she said, her head down. "Perk up, young lady," Belding said. "We'll have you fixed up in no time at all. You just go with the pretty nurse here and she'll get you ready."

He turned to me and stuck out his hand. "Mitchell Belding," he said. I smelled liquor on his breath.

"Heard a lot about your waiting room," said Mike, laughing a bit too loud.

"Well, come right on in this way," said Belding. "We have several waiting rooms and I'll settle you into a good one." We walked down a hallway and stopped at a curtain. Belding pulled it back and we entered a plush lounge with stereo, television and full wet bar.

"You gentlemen help yourselves to whatever you want. I'll be back in a bit. I gotta clean me some chitlin’s." He grinned and walked out of the room.

 

*

The tall, slender, caramel-colored, exotic nurse led Becky through a maze of rooms toward the back of the building, which was a great deal larger than it appeared from the outside.

The procedure room was brightly lit, but the decor was functional and from the minimalist school: an examination/operating table with stirrups and knee supports in gleaming chrome in the center, a brushed chrome instrument stand with dilators, speculum and curette neatly placed in a chrome pan, large cotton swabs, syringes and vials of penicillin, Demerol, Ergotrate to control bleeding and morphine.

She undressed, hanging her clothes on a lone rack and slipped into the green hospital gown, which stopped at mid-thigh, much like the miniskirts she wore so often. She climbed onto the table, lay her head on the pillow and said, "How long?"

"Just a few minutes," the Jamaican nurse sang in her melodic accent, as she prepared the Demerol injection. "You'll feel drowsy directly.” The nurse wet and lathered Becky's pubic area and shaved her in minutes. She swabbed the entire vaginal area with antiseptic, then left the room.

When Belding and the nurse re-entered the room together moments later, Becky was not yet totally under the influence of the Demerol, but the quiet conversation between the doctor and his assistant sounded miles away and the words were not clear. He looked closely at Becky, pulled her gown up around her waist and picked up the speculum, an instrument that looked like it had two fingers, used to spread the vagina. He inserted it and locked it in place with a screw clamp. The Demerol kept Becky from feeling the pain.

Belding inserted the tenaculum forceps, which appeared to have dragon's teeth on the end, into the vagina and locked them onto the neck of the cervix, holding it still. He inserted the curette, a long steel stick with a scraper on the end and scraped the wall of the uterus raw with it. The fetus was aborted in minutes.

Becky bled heavily after the curette scrapped an artery. Belding looked closely to be certain the uterus was not punctured. The light he wore on his head glared inside Becky and he detected no puncture, but he couldn't be certain. Had he had the time—if this had this been legal—he would have checked again in a couple of hours.

He packed the entire area with sanitary swabs to soak and retard the bleeding and gave her an injection of Ergotrate to constrict the blood vessels.

Belding burst into the waiting room with a smile that was as out of place as the wet bar. "Done," he said in triumph. Mike held his fourth bourbon and branch water, as he handed Belding an envelope with a hundred dollars inside.

“Let me give you a few instructions,” said Belding, sliding the envelope into his lab coat. “Lay her down in the back seat of the car and let her rest all the way home. She may feel faint, short of breath, nauseous and she'll sweat a lot. Put her in bed when you get home and be sure she gets plenty of rest for the next three or four days. She'll lose a pretty good bit of blood and she'll be tired. Don't worry about the blood loss unless it becomes excessive and pools. Do you have a family doctor?"

"I think so," I said. "I'll find out."

"Is he somebody you can trust with this?"

"I think he's the one who told Becky about you." There was an irony in that: respectable doctors didn't perform illegal procedures, but they didn't hesitate to refer their patients, some of whom were wealthy. That is one of several reasons Belding was able to operate so openly. Nobody dared touch him because some of his clients were powerful.

"If anything at all happens," said Belding, "call her physician. He'll know what to do, especially if he referred her. Good to do business with you gentlemen. My nurse will bring your girl out in a few minutes."

He didn't even know Becky's name, I thought.

 

*

On the way home, Becky, who rarely complained, began to moan, softly at first, then more acutely as the miles passed. We stopped at a Texaco station near Hendersonville to check on her and found her dress and the back seat covered in blood. “We’re getting her to a hospital,” Mike said with a certain urgency.

We were all scared—both for Becky and for ourselves—when we walked into the St. Joseph’s emergency room. We had a teenaged girl in serious difficulty and two guys who had literally driven her to it, illegally. Would Becky be OK? Would the doctor report an abortion? What would this cost since Becky didn’t have insurance? And, well, would Mike’s leather interior be ruined forever?

We paced a stark, spare waiting room for two hours and spoke occasionally. I bit my nails, Mike smoked constantly. A young man—not much older than me—finally entered the room and walked straight over to Mike. “You Becky’s father?” he asked.

“Close as you’ll get,” Mike said.

“She’s going to be fine. She was ruptured badly during the abortion, but we got the bleeding stopped and she’s young and healthy. It wasn’t her first abortion, was it?”

“No,” I said.

“Well, one of you is going to have to stress to her that abortion isn’t birth control. It’s also extremely dangerous, unregulated and damn-well illegal. No matter what I think, or what she thinks, or what you think about the need for it, that’s the simple fact: it is not legal and you can do time for this. If it eases your mind any, I’m not going to report it because I’d consider that a breach of ethics. But please, please, please be careful.”

I don’t know that anybody was especially concerned at that moment of the potential for Becky to be barren, but it came up later. She’d played on the edge with her abortions but didn’t suffer long-term effects. She was married a couple of years after this incident and last I heard, she had five children and was happy. I was glad about that. She’d had enough of the other side.

I spent the Saturday after the abortion cleaning Mike’s back seat, and it shone when I finished—not a speck of residue—which pleased him. He quietly paid the $150 emergency room cost and when Becky found out, she smiled and said, "I think I might have been wrong about Mike."