Terri Campion

Terri Campion

Thanksgiving, 1974

It had been a restless, nightmarish sleep. I lay in my teenage bedroom looking up at the crucifix hanging on the wall above me, trying to remember how to say a rosary. I couldn’t tell if the infant crying through the night in the adjoining room had been my brother Mike’s baby, or the fetus I’d aborted the day before. My breasts were still hard and swollen, with nipples like open wounds. My lower back and groin a piercing reminder of my college transgressions. If only I could stay lost in sleep for the rest of Freshman year. There was a knock on my door followed by the entrance of my mother wearing a full apron with a print of Norman Rockwell’s “Freedom From Want”—the Thanksgiving Dinner painting.

“Room service!” she shouted as she stomped across my room, opened the curtains, and cracked the windows. The splash of warm sunshine along with a gust of frigid air seemed cruel yet healthy. I rolled onto my side and felt a hot stream of blood on the insides of my thighs. I would need another shower.

“Wake up, Sleeping Beauty!” My mother was rooting through the pile of clothes on the floor with her foot. “I’m doing a load of whites.” She bent down to retrieve a grayish white bra. “Got anything else? Where’s your under pants? Don’t tell me you stopped wearing—”

“I have my period!” I shouted, defensively. “They were too bloody. I had to throw them out.” My mother stopped moving to look intently into my face. Fuck me. She had a nose for lies and bullshit and took it as a personal affront. I did not have a poker face and suddenly I was sobbing, and about to tell her the whole horrible truth.

This was a good plan, I thought. Spontaneous, but good. She couldn’t be mean to me if I was crying. Within seconds she was on my bed, taking me into her arms, rubbing my back and rocking me as my tears subsided. I was trying on a few opening sentences in my head like: “Mom, there’s something I’ve got to tell you,” and “It’s not my period,” and “I’m so sorry—” 

“You’re just like your mother!” she said, smiling as she dabbed at my face with a tissue. “I used to go through 2 boxes of Modesses! I felt so clean and slim afterwards!” She held me at arm’s length, looked deeply into my teary eyes. “I miss that.” She sighed then stood. “Don’t get any blood on the mattress, can’t afford to throw that out.”

As soon as she was out of the room, before I had a moment to process what had just occurred, Bridget, my father’s favorite daughter, a Shepherd/Collie mix, was at my bedside, sticking her cold wet noisy nose in my face before setting her sights on my crotch area. She went into her submissive/deferential mode, tentatively lifting one forepaw onto the bed, ears flattening and pointing backwards, her snout both cautious and aggressive as it led the chase, burrowing into the bedclothes.

Was the blood she smelled that of life or death, I wondered? She’d never shown such interest with my period. Whenever we cut our legs shaving, my mother, sister, and I would have her lick the wounds. “Better than an antiseptic!” my mother would proclaim to any horrified onlookers.

Perhaps she sensed a similar type of wound?  I’d never know what went on in her loony canine brain, and I needed to put a halt to this hunt. But the more I averted my body and pushed her away, the more she pounced, growling and yelping in frustration. “Stop! No! Go Away!” I yelled.   

“BRIDGET! GET DOWN HERE RIGHT NOW!”

Our mother’s command alarmed her and she quickly and clumsily unraveled herself from the blankets, bounded off the bed, out of the room, and down the stairs. I hopped out of the bed, into the bathroom, and onto a white shag rug.

As I peeled my pajamas from my bloody and feverish body, I thought, if only my boyfriend could take on an inkling of this misery. Tony had been so callous throughout, as if he had nothing to do with the situation and resented me for it. Which I thought out of character for a poet and English major.

When I told him I was pregnant his response was: “I assumed you had your diaphragm in or you wouldn’t have done that.”

“Done what?”

“Stood like that on the mountain, without a bra, what were you thinking?”

I was thinking how glorious it felt to be so high above the earth, close to the sky and clouds, but answered, “So this is my fault?”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“What are you saying?”

“You should be thinking more.”

“More than you?”

“About this kind of thing, yeah, because it’s your body. Too late now.”

He said he was against the ‘idea’ of abortion. Yet he did not voice any objection when I told him I wasn’t going to carry the baby.

I imagined myself rubbing the bloody Kotex in his face. Maybe then he’d get it! I stepped into the shower and watched the blood swirl into little coral pools before slipping through the drain. I welcomed once again the warm streams of water onto my face, chest, back, then picked up the bar of Dial soap and made suds with my hands before I approached the wounded sinful area between my thighs.

My mother once told me that giving birth felt like pushing a Lazy Susan— while it was spinning! out of your vagina. The pain I was having was the reverse, as if a fully developed fetus was trying to crawl back into my womb.

That’s what I’d said to him from the back seat, where I was curled up in agony. We caught each other’s eye in the rear view mirror, unexpectedly. It was awkward. We wanted to be a quiet witness to the other in that moment. We’d been on the road since 5:00 a.m. from State College, Pennsylvania, to Washington, DC, the closest place to get a legal abortion in 1974. Now we were headed to Delaware County, our home town area.

He refused to stop for me to get a drink to wash the pain medication down. He was just “fed up!” and “pissed off!” because my group of six girls/women scheduled to have the procedure at 10:00 a.m. had been bumped back to the 12:00 p.m. slot. He didn’t want to hear about the woman who held my hand during the operation or the fact that I was awake the entire time. He just wanted:

“. . . to be done with driving and your pregnancy!”

Finally, after forty-five minutes, he pulled into a McDonald’s. I’d had nothing but a few sips of tap water in twenty-four hours and was feeling weak and queasy. I went to the Ladies Room while he got the food. My Kotex was soaked in black blood. Even the tabs that hooked into the belt were bloody. It was an ordeal to properly dispose of one napkin and secure a fresh one in a 3x5 bathroom stall, while wearing a bulky jacket, long johns, and jeans. I hadn’t used a Kotex since I was fifteen. 

Tony was back in the car ingesting a Big Mac when I came out of the restroom. He handed me the bag with my order; vanilla milkshake, apple pie, and Coke.

“You should eat some real food,” he said with a mouth full of bread and burger. I had no response. I was busy washing down a double dose of Percocet with my Coke.

“You shouldn’t take that stuff on an empty stomach!”A spray of food landed on my cheek.

“Ehhh!”

“Sorry.” He reached over with a napkin to wipe it off.

“I’ll do it!” He looked hurt when I pushed his hand away.

We sat and ate in silence.

For the first time in our three-year relationship, I couldn’t wait to get home and away from him. I needed female company. I’d been spending the last week at his apartment, around his roommates—all male.

My roommates at college were temporary and strangers. I didn’t know how or why, but I had become girlfriendless and now I was aching to bond with my mother, divulge the whole ugly murderous calamity, and have her hold me again, rub my back, and encourage me to cry. She’d tell me that I did the world a huge favor by not bringing a spawn of that “Italian son of a bitch” into this world. And we’d laugh. It wasn’t him she hated, but the idea of me with him. She wanted someone taller than him, and from a better neighborhood, with a practical major. My father just hated him.

But I knew this was not possible, no matter who I was dating. Both my parents would violently object to me having sex, let alone getting pregnant, and worst of all—having an abortion. We were Catholic.

Tony dropped me off at my house around 8:00 p.m. He didn’t want to come in.

“How am I supposed to face a living baby?” “Good question,” I answered.

He carried my suitcase to the door and made a run for it. After saying hello to my family and meeting my spanking new nephew, I went straight to my room. Nobody seemed to mind. They were all enchanted with the baby, the first male grandchild.

The hot water ran out, and I was ousted from the warm comfort of the shower. The bath towel was snowy white and smelled like fresh air. I pulled on a pair of white sweatpants and a white sweatshirt, the most comfortable looking options I found in the bureau drawers. I was feeling lonely and as if a dark cloud of sin were hovering visibly above me. I made my way downstairs.

In the kitchen, Roseanne, my brother’s girlfriend, was nursing her baby in the rocker. My mother was at the sink peeling carrots.

“Look who’s up, finally, after thirteen hours!” my mother shouted over the running water.

“Ten,” I corrected her. “I was reading.”

“For three hours?” 

“You must have been exhausted!” Roseanne’s face was glowing with new motherhood and all its joy and attention. It hurt to look at her. I lowered my eyes, and my nephew’s mouth and hands clawing at her fully exposed breast came into view. My nipples twinged in empathy.

“Muttonchops called,” my mother said, referring to Tony’s sideburns. 

“When?” 

“Just now, you were in the shower. Eat something before you call him back!”

 That was good advice. I found a cup of peach yogurt in the refrigerator and took a seat at the table, on the far side of the kitchen, though I still had a full frontal view of Roseanne’s breast.

“Where’s Dad and Mike?”

“They went to get a tree, should be back any minute.” My mother looked over at Roseanne. “Put that thing away before they get here.”

“Do you have your period?” Roseanne asked me as she lovingly bundled up her boob. I pretended not to hear her. She has a sixth sense. She told me so herself when we first met, like a warning. 

“I see things,” she had said, “things not visible to the human eye.” 

I’d immediately disliked her as did my mother and sister, but now we were stuck with her. Of course she knew. Even if she didn’t have a suckling infant at her teat, I’m sure she could see my coal-black aura of death and infanticide. 

The kitchen was cozy and warm. My parents had given it a makeover seven years ago when I was in the sixth grade. The refrigerator and stove were copper-colored, the table and chairs maple, the floor a brick design on linoleum. At school, I would fantasize about the kitchen and feel its warmth, beckoning me to come home. I would miss it, as if it were a puppy. That spring we did get a puppy, Bridget, who was now lying in the doorway of the kitchen, fighting off sleep and growling at the mother and child in her chair. Our tussle half an hour ago vanished from her mind.

“I noticed a Kotex in the bathroom waste basket,” Roseanne said as she pat-pat-patted her baby’s back. Was this a thing with her? Looking through bathroom trash?

 “And I thought that’s really good that Maggie isn’t using tampons anymore because I read an article in The Atlantic that they can cause sterilization in women of childbearing years.” Pat-pat-pat.

“I just ran out of them.” I wanted to slap her so much.

“They’re so toxic and invasive,” she continued with a hint of a long diatribe

to follow.

“That’s a load of crap, Roseanne,” said my mother, the maternal antagonist.

 “I can show you the article if you don’t believe me,” Roseanne said through her permanent smile.

The baby let out a big belch.

“Very good, Jamie, you’re such a good good boy!”

My mother shut off the tap and turned to me holding her nose. “Do you smell that? Roseanne don’t you smell that?”

“Smell what?”

“Poop! Go change your baby!”

As soon as they were out of the rocker, Bridget was in it, grumbling under her breath.

“You took the words right out of my mouth!” my mother said to the dog and continued, “Jesus Mary and Joseph! She thinks she’s the only one on the planet that ever had a baby. Your brother’s an idiot.” She handed me a freshly peeled carrot. 

“Why do you say that?”

“They’re not married, he’s got no steady job, and they’re living on top of a barn. What a mess! Eat your carrot.”

I couldn’t believe my luck! The perfect moment was just handed to me. Topic, conversation, privacy, everything was working in my favor. I so wanted to tell her.

“Mom?” The water was running. She didn’t hear me. I was about to make another attempt when she slammed the tap off and turned to me.

“But, I have to give her credit for not doing the other thing.”

“What do you mean?”

“Getting rid of it.” She said these words in a low whisper, as if even the utterance could send her to hell. “I’ve got no time for people like that.”

I had to go through counseling sessions before they’d give me an appointment for the abortion. The clinic at State College was in contact with the clinic in Washington. Counselors on both sides reiterating It’s your choice, a mantra they didn’t really believe. They also wouldn’t terminate a pregnancy before eight weeks, enough time to get acquainted with your seedling.

I really didn’t believe I had any other choice. Neither of us were from a wealthy or liberal family that could comfortably support us. After my parents went ballistic with the news, I’d be lucky if they ever let me in the house again.

Two years ago, a girl from my high school got pregnant and was sent to a home run by nuns. No one knew where that place was and still, no one had heard from or seen her. Would my parents do that to me? I didn’t want to find out. This had to go away quietly.

I wasn’t given general anesthesia—which I was assured was absolute. I was awake and there was a roaring vacuum cleaner inside my uterus. A middle-aged white woman with hairy forearms, who I’d never seen before, was holding my hand. I screamed, “Is it happening? Why am I awake?”

“There, there,” she said, “you want to be awake for this.”

“No, I don’t!” The suction was delving deeper and deeper. The last scene of Bonnie & Clyde began to play in my head, that slow motion slaughter of gunfire. The woman kept talking. “What is happening to your body is a beautiful thing, you want to be awake for it.” Her face was beatific as she squeezed my hand tighter and droned on, “You want to be awake to experience the beautiful thing that is happening to your body.” I did not have the strength to protest or pull my hand from her grip. I was on a cold steel table, my legs in stirrups with an electrically charged hose inside me. What choice did I have but to succumb? This was to be only part of my punishment.

When the procedure was over, I asked to see it—the product of this beautiful experience. I’d seen one in a pickle jar in an assembly program at my high school a year ago. I wanted to see mine at that moment.

“You’re nosey, aren’t you?” She wasn’t smiling.

“Curious,” I corrected her.

But it was more than that. There was a connection. I’d looked through a biology textbook to study the different stages the fetus was at in those early days.

I’d talked to it every night in my dorm, to give it as much love and spiritual blessings as I could to send his or her soul into a better existence. I knew that whether I was living in a convent, or with my parents, or on Welfare at State College with Tony, carrying a baby would be agony, and I knew I would resent the hell out of it. It would be so damaged by the time it was born, it wouldn’t matter if I kept it or gave it up for adoption.

When I was on my feet, after the procedure, I snuck a look under the table. There, on a steel plate, sat an egg shaped wiry clot of purple blood the size of a plum.

During spring semester there was a buzz in the undergrad English Department. A story had been written about a young woman going through an abortion. It was told from her point of view—so vivid, so real, and heartbreaking. Yet, written by a young man.

He never told me he was writing the story. I wondered how he had manufactured my point of view, since he didn’t want to hear about the procedure, and didn’t go through any of the counseling sessions with me. The only question he ever asked was, “Do these have to go?” referring to my engorged, painful breasts. His contributions were driving to the clinic, and half the expenses.

By the time the buzz got to me, he was already in bragging mode—the story had been a success. He never offered to read it to me or asked what I thought.

This made me feel insignificant, like the fetus. I never read it.