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field-hockey team and who was prescribed them by her doctor to lose weight. And I was used to hiding where I went in the evenings from my parents, what I did and especially who with.
    My friend Mary took me to see her doctor, a female physician in another part of town. She had a growth charton her wall too, but she’d never measured me before, so that was OK.
    Mary was frightened; she wasn’t used to concealing things or maybe she was just used to covering up all the normal things, like that she’d gone all the way with her boyfriend, the one she’d been going steady with for a year and a half, or that she’d got drunk at a friend’s party last Saturday and had to spend the night.
    I didn’t have a boyfriend; I got pregnant from a guy who never called again and I was drunk every Saturday night.
    After school, Mary drove me to the doctor’s in her mother’s custom built silver Cadillac, the one with the horn that played the theme from The Godfather when you pressed it. (Her father was in the meat trade.) Every once in a while she’d press it and we’d laugh; more out of politeness than anything else. She was obviously trying her best to cheer me up and I was grateful for her kindness.
    The doctor took a blood test and examined me as I sat in my little paper gown on the crinkly paper strip that covered the examining table. The office was on the 7th floor of a modern block, overlooking the traffic that led into the mall below. I concentrated on the pale blue of the sky as she felt my breasts and shook her head sadly.
    ‘They’re pregnanty,’ she announced. ‘We’ll get the test back tomorrow, but I can tell you right now, you’re pregnant.’
    I know, I thought. I know.
    Mary wanted me to tell her mom because that’s what she would do. But I knew I’d have to do the rest on my own. I made an appointment, but had to wait another month before I could have the abortion.
    In the meantime, I told my parents I had an ulcer, which they believed without questioning. Every morning at around 4:30 am, I was sick. And every morning, my father woke up at 4:15 and made me a small bowl of porridge to settle my stomach, which he placed by the side of my bed. Then he’d pad off upstairs in his red robe, feeling his way in the darkness to catch another hour and a half’s sleep. He never asked if he should do that; he just did it. Like so many things in our house, even acts of kindness occurred in silence. I wondered if he would do the same thing if he knew the truth. I think he would.
    My skin got bad and my mouth tasted metallic. In my locker at school, I kept an enormous box of saltines, which I ate in the hundreds. My diet diminished to saltines, mashed potatoes, and porridge. Anything else was just too exciting. No matter how much I ate, I still got sick. And no matter how often I threw up, I was still hungry. I was more afraid of gaining weight than of being pregnant.
    The operation cost two hundred and thirty dollars. My parents gave me two hundred dollars in cash after I managed to convince them that I needed a new winter coat and the rest of it I paid for out of my allowance.
    Finally the day came, a Saturday morning in early March. It was raining, softly misting when I left the house.
    I told my parents I was going to go shopping with my friend Anne and then I drove myself to the clinic and checked in. It was early, around 9 am. The waiting room was full of flowered cushions, pleasant prints, and bright, soft colours. There were little clusters of people – a young couple holding hands and whispering to each other, a girl with her family. They’d obviously tried to make the waiting room as sympathetic and normal looking as possible, but despite that, no one wanted to look at one another.
    You had to meet with a counsellor before you did it. They took us in one at a time, in such a way that you never passed any of the other women in the hall. I was led into a little office where a young woman with short brown hair