And she went through with it. Afterward she would wake up in the night sometimes, saying over and over again, “Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God!” not waking from a dream, but from the remembrance of the smell of blood: her legs up on the bandaged racks and the animal screams that had come from her, and the smell of blood; a smell like no other, like everything ever smelled and nothing ever smelled, hot-smelling, salt-smelling, sweet-smelling; the Mexican doctor with the blood like paint on his rubber gloves and the steel, bloody hook in his hand. And the anesthetic that hadn’t worked and hadn’t worked and hadn’t worked again, so that she had to have her consciousness and her eyes when she would have cut them out with a dull knife not to have them; the pain, the dull, insistent pain, and the sharp, tearing, killing pain, and the basin. If only she had not had to see the basin. She had fainted when she had seen it, but the fainting had printed the sight with acid somewhere inside her.
Waking in the night with it she would ask herself why she hadn’t died then. She had asked herself that a thousand times; why hadn’t she died? Coming back to the border in the car, leaning her head against the glass, her head hitting against the glass of the window as her mother drove the car slowly over the rutted road, the road rutted so deeply that at each jolt she thought she would die, hoped she would die; why hadn’t she died?
It was her mother who saved her. It was her mother who stood by her, found out about the little Tijuana hospital where a Dr. Mendez would perform the operation for two hundred dollars, American; who took her down in the old Hudson and held her hand through the nightmare of pain and blood and anesthetic that hadn’t worked, who brushed the flies away from her eyes when she thought she would go insane because of the flies, whose hand was the thin, bony grip of reality that held hers and pulled her back when she was on the edge. When she thought she would die, had no reason not to die, wanted to die, it was her mother who fought with her and talked and pleaded and ordered her back to life, knowing when to use harshness, when kindness, and who nursed her night and day until fatigue and worry were painted on her face with coarse, cruel brushstrokes.
Then came the weak, lucid feeling when pain and all emotion had dropped from her body like discarded bandages, and only remorse remained. Remorse over the loss of the child, the killing of the child, swept over her and beat into her head until she thought she could not bear the realization of what she had done. And then remorse too was gone, and there was nothing except remembered pain and grief; those hours, so long, when nothing would stay on her mind, as at first nothing would stay on her stomach, when there was nothing to do but stare at the outline of her body in the bed, and the tapestry chair and the white bureau and the mirror. And slowly what at first had been only a vaguely aching lack gathered shape and crystalized. She still loved Jack. She did not want to give him up.
And Jack had come to her.
She heard him first arguing and pleading with her mother. His voice sounded louder, nearer, and then he had come, huge, through the doorway. His shoulders were slumped, the flesh of his face was tight over the bone, his cheeks dark with beard. She called out to him.
And when she heard her voice say his name and saw his eyes, she was sure he loved her with everything that was decent in him. She was sure of it, and it was what she wanted desperately now; he loved her with everything in him that was not cursed by V. With an awkward stumbling motion his arms were around her and his rough, tobacco-smelling, liquor-smelling face was against hers. He whispered words she could not understand into her ear and suddenly she found that it was she who was comforting him, trying to give him strength, and it was she who asked him to forgive.
She saw her mother standing in the doorway. Her hands were working in her apron and her face was twisted savagely. She was screaming at Gene, but Jack was talking hoarsely and Gene looked down and smoothed his hair, saying over and over again that it would be all right; it was all right and they could have another baby as soon as she was well; and when she looked up again her mother was gone.
Jack was half-kneeling beside the bed and half-lying on it. His heavy arm hurt where it pressed against her chest, but she did not try to move it. “You need me, don’t you, Jack?” she whispered.
“Yes.”
“You needed me and I failed you, didn’t I? But I won’t again.”
“No,” he said thickly.
“Yes, I did. But I won’t again.”
“You didn’t. That’s not it.”
“You married me to get away from her, didn’t you? No, I don’t mean that like it sounds. I know you love me. But you wanted someone to keep you away from her because she’s a devil, didn’t you?”
He raised his head and looked down at her. His forehead was creased. He moistened his lips as though he were going to speak, but he did not, and she pressed her fingertips on his mouth.
“I know now,” she went on. “It doesn’t hurt me, Jack. I’m proud.”
He stared down at her, frowning, pain deep in his eyes, as though she did not understand. But she knew she did and when she took her fingers from his lips he did not say anything, and she smoothed her hand over his crumpled black hair, sobbing now, but smiling and talking to him.