CHAPTER 3 Nancy

TORONTO | SUMMER 1979

Nancy Mitchell pulls on her red rubber boots and navy rain jacket in the front hall of her parents’ house as butterflies flutter in her stomach. She doesn’t like lying to her mother, but she has to extract herself from their argument in time to meet her cousin Clara.

“We’re already late for Susan’s birthday party, Mum,” Nancy says. “I have to go.”

Her mother exhales irritably. “I don’t think it’s appropriate for two young girls to be out at parties in the dead of night unescorted.”

Nancy tries to shake off her mother’s admonitions. Frances Mitchell was born and raised in England until her parents moved her and her sisters to Canada when she was only fourteen. But she’s clung to the cultural values of decorum and propriety her entire life. They ground her. They make life stable and predictable. A set of rules to live by.

“We’re not girls, Mum, we’re old enough to vote now, remember?”

“Well, where is this party, anyway? You haven’t said.”

“Oh, leave her be, Frances,” Nancy’s grandmama croaks from the rigid-backed chair beside the living room window.

“Well, I worry,” Frances says.

“Yes, but all of motherhood is just chronic low-level fear at the best of times, dear. You know this. And besides, a woman is entitled to a few secrets, after all, now, isn’t she?”

Frances shoots her mother a withering look and storms off into the kitchen. A few seconds later, the smell of Comet cleaner fills the air. Every time she and her daughter have an argument, Frances vents her frustration by donning a set of rubber gloves and scrubbing her kitchen to within an inch of its Formica-topped life.

Tonight’s argument was—once again—triggered by Nancy’s need for independence. The fact that she’s decided to move out of her parents’ home to attend university in the same city has caused Frances to cling to her with even more vehemence than normal, and Nancy doesn’t have the patience for it anymore.

She plants a kiss on her grandmother’s papery cheek. “Thanks, Grandmama. I hope you’re feeling better. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Flipping the oversized hood on her rain jacket, Nancy shuts the door behind her with more force than she intended and ventures out into the rainy night. She knows she did nothing to help avoid tonight’s argument, but she’s been on edge all day in anticipation of her appointment tonight with Clara.

Unlike her mother, Nancy isn’t one to shy away from bending the rules—or, if the occasion calls for it, outright breaking them—but sneaking out to see an illegal abortionist isn’t exactly within her comfort zone.

She agreed to it without really thinking, but her misgivings have increased since she first said yes a week ago. Clara called last Wednesday night and begged Nancy—choking on her words with sobs that became more and more fractured as her panic rose—to come with her as she gets an abortion. She had heard about a man who would do it for eight hundred dollars, she said, and no one ever needs to know.

“Does Anthony know?” Nancy asked her. Clara’s boyfriend Anthony has a temper like napalm; it sticks to anything he throws it at and burns everything in his path.

“No, of course not. He wouldn’t let me. You know that.”

That’s exactly the answer Nancy expected. She sighed and dropped her voice. “Are you sure about this, Clara?”

“Yes!” Clara wailed. “Mom and Dad’ll kill me. This isn’t a choice. There’s no other option, Nancy.”

“But, I mean, is this guy legitimate? You hear horror stories, you know? What if he’s some quack?”

“I don’t think so. The friend of a girl I work with at the diner used this guy, and everything was fine. That’s who told me about him. He’s out in the East End.”

“Is there…” Nancy hated herself a little for asking it. “Is there anyone else who can go with you?” She held her breath for the answer, curling the phone cord around her index finger.

“No,” Clara said. “I need you. I need a girl with me, and you’ve always been the closest thing I have to a sister.” An overstatement. “I can’t do this by myself. Please help me.”

And so Nancy waits underneath the misty glow of a streetlamp outside Ossington Station at nine o’clock on this rainy Friday night in August. She can’t see much through the downpour, but as a small silhouette emerges in the darkness, she suspects—given the hunched shoulders and harried pace—that it’s Clara. Nancy raises a hand and the figure hurries toward her. Her eyes are wide, the gray-blue standing out against her pale face. She throws her wet arms around Nancy’s neck, and Nancy can feel her shaking.

“Try to stay calm, Clara,” Nancy says, pulling away. “It’ll be over soon.”

The girls enter the subway station, drop their tokens into the metal box. They land with a clink, one after the other, on top of the hundreds of other tokens from that day’s commuters. Normally it’s a sound Nancy quite likes. It’s the sound of going places. Of visiting friends or adventurous Saturday afternoon excursions to the St. Lawrence Market. She loves just walking around the city, popping into shops, galleries, or cafés whenever the mood strikes her, discovering new and peculiar oddities and hidden gems within the boundaries of the city she loves so much. But tonight, the sound seems to echo off the walls of the quiet subway station with eerie magnitude.

They hurry down the stairs to the train platform, breathing in the smell of the subway: somehow damp and dusty at the same time, with pungent undercurrents of rotting garbage and urine. Their fellow travelers are all staring down the dark tunnel in impatient anticipation for the distant light of the train and the rush of wind that precedes its arrival. When Nancy and Clara finally board, they take two seats right across from the doors.

She notices Clara is staring resolutely at the empty seat across from her, her face white above the small gold cross hanging around her neck. Nancy’s never known anyone who got an abortion. Or at least, she thinks with a jolt, no one that she knows of. She isn’t entirely sure what to expect, and that makes her nerves tingle. She’s the type of person who’s most comfortable when she has all the information, for better or worse. But tonight it feels like she and Clara are groping blindly with only the vaguest sense of direction.

After several stops, Clara glances up at the map on the wall above the doors, stands, and clears her throat. The sound is small, like a little girl’s. Nancy rises from her seat as the car lurches to a halt.

On the street outside the station, Clara pulls a crumpled piece of paper out of her pocket and squints at it in the light from the streetlamp overhead.

“This way, I think,” she mutters.

They turn right toward a side street that takes them deeper into a shabby neighborhood. The farther they wander into the deserted streets, the more nervous Nancy becomes. The unfamiliar houses are packed in tightly and seem to bear down on them. After ten minutes’ walk and two backtracks, they arrive at the address. It’s a triplex building with peeling paint and sagging eaves. A rusted screen door hangs drunkenly off its hinges. The lights are on in the unit on the top floor, but the main floor is dark. They can just see a peek of yellow light through a gap in the basement curtains.

“He said side door,” Clara says, but she doesn’t move. She looks confused, as though she isn’t quite sure why they’re standing in the middle of this strange street in the pouring rain.

Nancy licks her dry lips. “Clara? Are we… do you still want to do this?”

An overwhelming part of her hopes her cousin will say no, she’s changed her mind, let’s go on home and we’ll figure it out somehow. But instead she nods. “Yes.”

Nancy swallows the sour lump in her throat and follows Clara down the lane between the houses. It’s pitch-black and the pavement shimmers with rain.

Clara knocks on the back door. A light flickers to life through the glass above and they hear a series of locks being turned, then a man appears in the crack of the door. He has a rough, reddish brown beard and round glasses perched on a slightly sweaty face. He takes in Clara and then looks behind her at Nancy.

“Which one of you called me?” he asks.

“Me,” Clara answers.

“Do you have the eight hundred?”

“Yes.”

“Let me see it, girl.”

Clara unzips her coat and withdraws a wad of twenty-dollar bills from the inner pocket. Nancy’s jaw clenches. She knows Clara’s been saving her tips from the diner to pay for school. She’ll have to work double shifts now to make up for this.

“Okay, then,” the man says. “Come on in. Be quick about it.”

He opens the door wide and Clara steps over the threshold. Nancy hesitates a moment before following. She regrets this decision like hell, but there’s no point abandoning Clara now that they’ve come this far, and as the elder of the two girls, she feels responsible for her cousin. The man leads them down a narrow, bare staircase to the basement apartment. The damp and cold increase with each step. When they reach a small bedroom at the back of the unit, Nancy’s stomach flips at the sight before her.

In the center of the room is what appears to be an old wooden dining table covered in a sheet with a small flat pillow at one end. The sheet is black. Nancy realizes with a lurch that it’s likely because it’s stained with blood from all the women who have lain on that table before. It reminds her of the black draping at a funeral.

There’s a small stool at the bottom of the table beside a metal cart that looks like it was found in the garbage bin behind a hospital. It’s vaguely medical, but rusted and missing a wheel. In the corner, there’s another small table with a large bottle of rubbing alcohol, a garbage bin, some silver instruments, towels, and a radio that seems conspicuously out of place. It’s the instruments that draw Clara’s eye, and her head starts to shake.

The man closes the door behind them. “All right, then, take off your pants and underwear and get up on the table.”

Nancy jumps at the click of the lock and feels her heart rate accelerate into overdrive. The man still hasn’t told them his name. “Clara…” she says.

“Okay,” Clara whispers, and does as she’s told. Nancy’s instinct is to face the wall in an attempt to give Clara some privacy, but there’s no point. The room is small and there’s no blanket or anything to cover Clara. There will be no dignity in this experience, and by the set of Clara’s jaw, Nancy can tell she’s too determined to not be pregnant to bother with something as insignificant as her dignity.

“Drink this.” The man hands Clara a bottle. It doesn’t have a label, but Nancy hopes it’s alcohol to numb the pain. Clara drinks three large gulps and splutters in disgust. Some of it drips down her chin, and Nancy steps over to her to wipe it away. It smells strange.

“It’s my own little cocktail,” the man says with a half grin. “Good for the nerves at a time like this. The ladies seem to like it, anyway.”

Clara closes her eyes, but tears pour out the corners, falling back into her blond hair. Her bottom lip is trembling. Fear skitters down Nancy’s spine. She can’t imagine how Clara must feel. Nancy takes her hand, squeezes it tight, but Clara doesn’t return the pressure.

At the table in the corner of the room, the man pours rubbing alcohol on the tools—knives, scalpels, some kind of long stick, and other instruments—then he settles himself down on the stool at the bottom of the table and places the items on the tray beside him. He pulls on a pair of blue surgical gloves, snapping each of the cuffs into place. It hits Nancy now—what’s about to happen to Clara’s body, the things she might see and hear and smell.

“I’m right here, okay?” Nancy murmurs into Clara’s ear, brushing her damp hair back off her forehead. Clara’s half-conscious now with whatever this guy gave her to drink.

“Tell her to bite down on this,” the man says to Nancy, passing her an old belt. She has to force down the vomit that surges up her throat. There are dozens of teeth marks all along the edges of the brown leather.

“Jesus Christ,” Nancy mutters.

“He’s not gonna help you in here, honey.”

Nancy ignores the man. “Clara, bite down on this. Come on.” She feeds the belt between Clara’s teeth with difficulty, but Clara finally bites it. “I’ve got you. You’re going to be okay.”

The man picks up one of the instruments and peers between Clara’s legs. Nancy can hear the clicking of the tools. The chemical stench of the rubbing alcohol is burning her nostrils. He clears his throat, then switches on the radio and turns it up full-blast.

Nancy jumps again, her nerves already frayed like a cut rope. “What the hell?” she bellows over the music.

“Trust me!” he calls across Clara’s bare legs. “This isn’t my first rodeo, baby!”

It takes less than a minute for Nancy to understand why he’s blasting the radio. Clara’s eyes snap open and a scream issues from her mouth that could wake the dead. Her once-loose grip tightens on Nancy’s hand.

“Hold her down!” the man shouts at Nancy. “She can’t move!”

Sickened with herself and the man in equal measure, Nancy presses down on Clara’s chest with her free hand as “Sweet and Innocent” by Donny Osmond blares through the tinny speakers.

Out on the street, all the neighbors hear are the cheery upbeat notes, the saccharine lyrics of the teenage crooner. The song Nancy will associate with this night for the rest of her life. The song that will make her want to smash her car radio with a hammer and flee from a friend’s party two hours early.

Clara’s screams continue as tears drip down her temples, soaking the black pillowcase beneath her blond hair as Donny belts out his ballad to a girl who was just too young.

---

The subway doors slide shut and the train starts to move, transporting the girls back downtown the way they came, away from the horror of that dank basement. A sob bursts from Clara’s mouth, followed by the tiniest whimper.

“Oh, Clara,” Nancy says. “It’s over now. It’s going to be okay.”

“Thank you, Nancy.”

Clara rests her head against Nancy’s shoulder, and Nancy awkwardly extracts her arm from between them and pulls Clara into a half hug. They stay like that for several stops, swaying with the rhythmic motion of the train. It’s nearly midnight now, and their subway car is mercifully empty.

When they’re two stops away from Ossington, Nancy gently nudges Clara. “We’re nearly there.”

Clara doesn’t respond. Her head is heavy against Nancy.

“The next station is Ossington. Ossington Station,” the monotone voice announces through the speakers.

“Clara,” Nancy says again. “Come on, stand up.”

No response.

“Clara?”

Nancy dips her head to get a better view of Clara’s face.

It’s deathly pale, and her lips are blue.

“Clara!” Nancy shakes her cousin’s shoulders, her own heart hammering in her throat. Clara’s eyes open a fraction, and she moans a word Nancy can’t make out. “Come on, get up, we need to get you home now.”

“Arriving at Ossington. Ossington Station.”

The train begins to slow. Nancy reaches underneath Clara’s small arms and lifts her up. She’s so tiny, it isn’t that difficult, but as she hauls Clara to her feet, Nancy gets a full view of the subway seat beneath her. Underneath her rain jacket, Nancy breaks out in a cold sweat.

The seat is so soaked in blood that the fabric is shining.

“Oh shit! Oh Jesus. Fuck!”

Clara’s head lolls on her neck like a child’s doll. When the subway doors slide open, Nancy half drags her off the train onto the empty platform. The whistle sounds and the train pulls away from the station, whipping Nancy’s hair back as it picks up speed. Clara moans again.

“Clara!” Nancy gasps. “Clara, I need you to help me get you up the stairs. I need you to walk. Please!”

Clara blinks at her through heavy eyes, and mouths something Nancy can’t hear. But she does lift her legs, slow and weak, enough to help Nancy get her to the top of the stairs. The station is empty. There isn’t even anyone on duty in the tollbooth.

Nancy backs into the crash doors out onto the street, still dragging Clara with her like a medic hauling a body off a battlefield. It’s stopped raining, and the air is heavy with humidity and the smell of mud. She heads for the traffic lights on Bloor Street one block down.

After what seems an eternity, Nancy spots an approaching cab.

“Taxi!” she screams, throwing her hand in the air. It pulls over to stop in front of her. Propping Clara up with one arm, Nancy struggles to open the door with the other. She nearly dumps Clara into the car, then throws herself in after her.

“We need the nearest hospital,” Nancy snaps at the driver.

“You want St. Joe’s? Probably closest.” He meets her eyes in the rearview mirror. “Hey, she don’t look so good, she better not be—”

“Just drive!” Nancy shouts at him.

He shakes his head and speeds away from the curb without signaling.

In the back seat, Nancy gives Clara another small shake, smacks her cheek as forcefully as she dares without hurting her. “Clara, stay with me. Just stay with me. Stay with me.”

---

Nancy has never sat in a hospital waiting room alone before. She’s waited with her mother during her Grandmama’s many illnesses in recent years, but sitting in a waiting room with your parent is entirely different. There’s someone older and wiser to be the point of contact for the doctor, someone to get you a cup of tea and tell you it’s going to be okay. Tapping her rain boot on the tile floor and biting her nails nearly to the quick, Nancy suddenly feels far more adult than she ever has before. She’s responsible for someone here. She’s the point of contact.

Nancy arrived at the emergency room with Clara half-conscious and hanging off her shoulder as blood dripped onto the white tile floor beneath their feet. Nancy kept her mouth shut as much as possible with the triage nurse. Her mother—a woman with an impeccable sense of etiquette which she carried with her like a piece of heavy luggage when she immigrated to Canada—has always taught Nancy to mind her own business, reciting her favorite idiom ad nauseam: “Just keep yourself to yourself.” Why Nancy arrived at the hospital doors with Clara half-conscious and bleeding isn’t anyone’s damn business. Their job is to treat their patient. But on the other hand, this isn’t some innocent heart attack or unlucky car accident. Clara’s injuries are the result of something illegal. As she thinks about the possible implications, Nancy’s heart hammers somewhere in the region of her tonsils.

She looks down now and notes the bloodstains on the calves of her jeans. She’ll have to wash them in the bathtub tonight before her parents see them. She hopes her mother won’t be waiting up for her. A moment later, her stomach flutters as the doctor bursts through the swinging doors. He’s tall, with a dark buzz cut and a face like a thunderstorm.

“You! Girl!” he barks in Nancy’s direction. Half a dozen other people in the waiting room look up in mild alarm.

“Y-yes?” Nancy says.

“Come with me.” He beckons with an imperious hand, and she follows him back through the swinging doors into the bowels of the emergency room, the place you only go to if someone you love is really in trouble. Apparently, Clara is.

“You need to start talking about what happened to your friend,” the doctor demands. “You barely said a word when the triage nurse asked you what was wrong. You just said she’s bleeding a lot, which she is. She’s hemorrhaging, actually. It’s really bad.” He crosses his arms. “Start talking.”

Nancy’s tempted to, she really is. Clara is in serious condition, but that’s nothing compared to the trouble they’re going to be in if she confesses that Clara underwent an illegal back-alley abortion.

“Is she… is she going to make it?” Nancy parries the doctor’s question with one of her own.

“I think so, yes. But barely. We need to know exactly what’s going on so we can treat her fully. She’s unconscious now and can’t tell us anything. We’re transfusing her. She lost a lot of blood. A lot of blood.”

“So, she’s going to survive.”

He shakes his head, and for a moment Nancy fears the worst. A rush of cold hits her veins before she realizes he’s judging their behavior, not Clara’s fate. “Yes. She will.”

“Okay. Thank you.” Thank God.

“But you want to know what I think?” He steps closer to Nancy. He smells like rubbing alcohol and pine aftershave. “I think she had a little problem and the two of you decided you’d take care of it yourselves. Is that what happened?”

Nancy freezes, fighting the shiver she can feel rising in her body. “No.”

“No?”

“No. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’ve been around a long time,” the doctor says, “and you know what? When we get girls in here hemorrhaging, it’s because they attempted an abortion and perforated an organ. This kind of shit not only kills babies, it kills women, too. That’s why it’s illegal.”

Nancy can feel the anger coming off his body. “We didn’t attempt any abortion.”

Half true.

“Well, I happen to think you did.”

He stares her down, and they end up in a stalemate. She’s not going to say any more, and he knows it.

“This is the end of my shift, but you better be prepared to answer some questions for the doctor that’s relieving me. Because I can tell you one thing: If she suspects the same thing I do, she’s going to be calling the police before she even thinks about discharging your friend. You can go ahead and lie to them and see how far that gets you.” He points to a small observation room to Nancy’s left. “Sit,” he orders. “And wait for my colleague to come talk to you.”

Nancy doesn’t even think about arguing. She steps into the room, settles herself down on the chair, and waits. The pure white panic she felt when she saw all the blood on the subway seat dissipated somewhat once they took Clara into the emergency room, but it’s rising again now. She’s tapping her foot incessantly.

She looks up at the wall of the exam room. The clock says it’s nearly one in the morning. No wonder her eyes are itching. Nancy watches the hands move as the minutes tick by, knowing she’ll arrive home horrendously past her curfew and will have to face the consequences later.

The ward is quiet. All she can hear is the sound of a few doctors and nurses calling to each other, the occasional collegial laugh, the beeping of machines in the distance. Nancy leans back in the plastic chair and closes her eyes.

Twenty minutes later, a doctor appears at the door, her face grave. She looks about fifty, with a high forehead and graying brown hair pulled back into a low bun.

“Hi, there, Miss…?”

“Nancy. My name’s Nancy.”

“Okay. Nancy. I’m Dr. Gladstone.”

“Um, hi,” Nancy says, standing. “How’s Clara? The other doctor said…” She trails off.

Dr. Gladstone glances over her shoulder, then steps over the threshold of the room and closes the door behind her. Nancy takes a step back, unsure what’s happening.

“We’re pretty sure we know what happened here,” Dr. Gladstone says. “My colleague suspects certain things. Certain illegal things.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Nancy says. She doesn’t plan on answering any of this doctor’s questions, either.

“Your friend is lucky to be alive.” Dr. Gladstone pauses, lowers her voice. “Listen to me carefully, Nancy. I don’t actually want you to say anything specific. But if I’m on the right track, I need you to give me some indication that that’s the case so that I can provide the right treatment for your friend. Can you do that for me? There’s no reason for me to call the police. I know my colleague threatened that, but that’s not how I operate. I need you to trust me.”

A long moment stretches out in the tiny space between them, then Nancy nods and scratches her nose.

“Okay, thank you. That’s all I need to know. I’ll record this as a spontaneous abortion. A miscarriage,” she adds in response to Nancy’s blank look. “I’ll have a look at her uterus and make sure all the tissue has been removed so she doesn’t get an infection.”

Nancy lets her breath out slowly. “Thank you,” she says, and means it.

“But I need to tell you something,” Dr. Gladstone says quietly. Nancy leans in to hear her. “If you, or a friend, or any other girl close to you ends up pregnant when they don’t want to be, you need to call around to doctors’ offices and ask for Jane.”

Nancy’s brow knits. “Jane?”

“Jane. Call around, keep asking for Jane, and eventually you’ll get what you need.”

“But I don’t under—”

“Just tell them you’re looking for Jane.”

Dr. Gladstone turns on her heel and opens the door, then heads into the brightness of the emergency room corridor. Her white cloak whips out of sight, leaving Nancy alone in the exam room.