“No. I have no interest in appealing to men rationally. We need to terrorize them. We should be in control first. And then they can ask us for the permission to vote. Men need to be held accountable for their crimes against humanity. There needs to be a reckoning.”
George looked at Jeanne-Pauline, waiting for her to continue, to offer some sort of specifics. But Jeanne-Pauline didn’t continue. She stared at George as though confident George could read her mind if she chose to. George chose not to. George was frightened of some of the ideas in Jeanne-Pauline’s mind.
As George was leaving, Jeanne-Pauline took a magnifying glass out to read with. She held it up to her face. Her eye floated around it like a fish in a bowl.
* * *
As much as she found delivering babies difficult, George had come to hate performing abortions even more. She had stopped a year before, declaring it was too much for her to bear. When the girls came, they were so desperate and distraught, it would take her at least a day to be able to get rid of their moods. Their moods would cling to her like a smell.
But then a beautiful girl with strawberry-blond hair and wearing a green coat showed up, looking as though she might jump off a bridge if she were turned away.
Every girl who walked into the brothel looking for an abortion knew they were taking a risk and that their lives were endangered. But they didn’t really expect to die. Unwed mothers always thought they were immortal and untouchable. They came to see George because they wanted their lives back. They wanted to have wonderful lives. Whenever something was ruining your life, you began to value the old life that had been taken away from you so much more. They came to her terrified. They considered having a baby a fate worse than death.
George was known for keeping girls alive. In many ways the abortion was a simpler procedure than delivering a baby. It was quiet and it was less messy.
George looked the woman up and down. Her green coat had been mended several times in an effort to keep it from looking tattered. The tips of her black boots had been carefully painted. Her fingernails had been clipped and her face was scrubbed clean. She had made herself immaculate. She even smelled like lilacs.
But the most magnificent thing about her was all her strawberry-blond hair. Despite all the obstacles that had been put in her path, she didn’t think she could truly rail against fate because she had been blessed by a full head of perfect strawberry-blond curls. Not every girl had been given that. And her curls had always gotten her a little bit extra in life. When she was younger, her mother would send her to the butcher and not her other siblings, because the butcher always gave her a slice of meat that was a little bit bigger. People were always giving her a slice of life that was a tiny bit bigger. And that tiny bit was what she built her personality on.
She called George “sir” and held both her hands. The poor girl was idiotic enough to still believe the answer to one’s problems were men. She was happy to see a male doctor because now her medical needs would be properly attended to. She told George her story. The owner of the shoe factory where she worked had gotten her pregnant. He had told her to come here. He had given her the address. He was the only one who knew. The whole affair had been a secret between them. He had made her keep it a secret. The girl thought secrets were special and made two people closer together than anybody else. She didn’t know secrets were the enemy of women. Women should beware of the word “secret” at all costs.
George led her into a room where there was a bed in the middle. It was at the back of the house, away from everything else. It did have somewhat the feel of a cell. But that was so the sounds of screaming women in labor were not so loud in the rest of the brothel.
The girl took off her green coat. The white dress didn’t have a single crease in it. George could see there was a slight stain at the bottom that had been scrubbed at. Despite the presence of faded stains all over the dress, it gave the impression of being clean. It looked as clean as the dress the Virgin Mary must have worn when she went door to door looking for a place that would give her an abortion. When she took off the dress, her petticoats were tattered at the bottom, like an envelope that had been messily opened with a finger and not a knife. Her poverty was revealed the more she became undressed.
It turned out the strawberry-blond girl had kept the baby inside her as a possibility much longer than she should have. And that possibility reacted very strongly to being negated. It no longer thought of itself as a possibility but as a hard truth. It saw its mother as a host. Like all children, it came to see its mother as a vessel to satisfy all its needs. When a mother neglects her child, the child reacts with an unprecedented fury.
The girl was sick for two days. Her face was covered in sweat; it made her look dewy. She looked as though fairies had placed a spell on her. She was enchanted. There was nothing George could do for her now. She was going to be led away into the woods. And on the morning of the third day, she was dead.
* * *
What could they do with the corpse? George made sure to put the green coat back on the girl. She had gone through so much trouble to keep it in good condition, it seemed only fair she should show up at the gates of heaven or hell wearing it. They folded her body into a large trunk. George looked at the girl once more. She was curled up as though she were a dreaming child. They hurried the body out of the brothel in the middle of the night. As they exited the brothel, snowflakes landed on their faces, melting into crocodile tears that steamed down their cheeks.
George reflected that the girl would not get a chance to say good-bye to anyone. She would not get to say good-bye to her siblings. She would not get to say good-bye to her parents. She would not get to say good-bye to her cat. She would not get to say good-bye to her neighbors. She would not get to say good-bye to the girls who worked on either side of her on the factory line. She would have to be replaced by another girl on the line. The girls on either side of her would have to slightly adjust themselves to the presence of a new body and then she would be gone.
What would people think happened to this girl? They would think she had been murdered. It was better for them to believe she had been abducted. Then they would believe that some sort of injustice had befallen her. Then she would at least evoke some sympathy. If they found her body in its actual state, everyone would think what had happened to her was her own fault. She had spoiled herself. She was a whore and perhaps it was better she was dead.
No one in the brothel thought it was George’s fault. But she knew that no matter what anyone told her, she would blame herself. George had never killed a woman before. She felt like a murderer. She wanted to be prosecuted. She wanted to confess. She never wanted anyone to mistake her for an innocent. They should all know she was a murderer and treat her as such.