At seventeen, it was natural that I should succumb to hormonal, instinctive drives. The time was ripe, the summer hot and full of love and the promise of a future together.
My breath caught in my throat when I saw his face. Even our slightest touch produced a shock, bridging the gap between us. We needed to see each other every day, and I gave myself completely to the moment, the chemistry; there was no choice, really.
He invited me to dinner at his parent’s home. His mother was a wonderful, traditional cook, a real Jewish mama. His father kind and soft-spoken.
I invited him to meet my family in Sea Gate. He was entralled with the easy atmosphere, my parents and my mother’s intelligent and interesting cousins.
My father was concerned, asking, “What does that older man want from you?”, but he never expected an answer. It was apparent that I was in love with Sy. My mother never asked any questions. She was a private person, and never presumed to interfere with other people’s decisions, even those of her teenage daughter.
There was no parental discussion about where it was all going. No ultimatum about remaining in school. No warning or education about premarital sex. I was clearly on my own. They did not object to, nor did they guide my direction.
After a few weeks, we were seeing one another exclusively. Today, I remember the summer as a rapid collage of movies, dinner, dancing, evenings in conversation, stolen moments in hospital hallways and late night visits to the obstetrical floor physician’s lounge. Our ardent embraces, all sweaty, breathless and urgent, did not transition to intimate sexual pleasure, not in the repressive 1950’s culture.
We abstained until August, making love for the first time as Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet played on the stereo.
In September, we decided that we would marry immediately, because we simply could not wait. I would quit school, supporting us with a clerical job; he would finish his residency, and then begin a practice in Brooklyn. I predicted a houseful of kids, “Maybe five”. He said, “Maybe two”. It was all great fun and oh, so romantic. We would live happily every after, a perfect plan for a perfect life.
We announced our intention to our families, and planned for a wedding on March 29, 1959
The next few months are a blur in my memory, with wedding plans pretty much in my mother’s hands. In November, I celebrated my eighteenth birthday working as the administrative assistant to the Publicity and Public Relations Director at Roulette Records. My old bosses at Patricia-Kahl Music Publishing had bought the company, and of course there was a job for “the kid
In those days, unmarried people did not live together, so it was almost impossible to find time for intimacy. But, oh we managed it. Making love was our obsession. It just wouldn’t be denied, this driving force
Christmas and New Year’s passed, and we were so in love, relishing our hunger and passion. We never missed an opportunity to make love
In February, something was missed. My period. A “Joan Doe” urine sample was brought to the hospital lab.
I arrived at the Wiener apartment in Flatbush for dinner after work, to find Sy sitting in a darkened living room. The test was positive. What will we do? This jeopardizes all our plans. We couldn’t afford to have a baby. It would be two years until he completed his residency, and then it would take a while for a practice to grow. It is possible that I would have to support us for three or four years. This was a crisis of major proportion, changing everything. He was in despair, lost.
I wasn’t lost, though. There would be no baby, not yet. I suggested that he induce an abortion. After all, he was an obstetrician, he knew all about that. He looked at me as if I were insane. There was no way that he would take that chance professionally, and it was too dangerous. What if something went wrong?
I was on my own, and I would figure this out. I was not going to have a baby now. This is not the way I saw my life unfolding. This was the result of carelessness and stupidity. Yes, he should have known better….but, it was always my body at risk for pregnancy. A teenager’s sense of invulnerability brought me to this reality.
The next day, I confided in one of my friends at the office. Shirley was secretary to the Office Manager/Bookkeeper. A married woman, she knew how to keep a secret, and she had lots of street smarts. She lived in the Bronx, and would ask around the neighborhood. Desperate women will always find an abortionist.
In a few days, she told me she had a friend that could arrange the whole thing. For a fee of $250 in cash, an Italian doctor, unlicensed in this courntry, performed abortions. I earned $70 a week, and was repaying the Nursing School scholarship I had reneged on. Sy earned $125 a month as a second year resident physician. We simply didn’t have the money for this procedure.
During the week, Sy and I went to visit his cousin Anita and her husband, Howard. We asked for a loan, and told them what it was for. They gave us the money. Our wedding was only three weeks away. This whole thing had to be over by then.
My parents would be visiting my father’s sister, Hannah, in Maryland the follwoing weekend, so that would be the best time.
Friday night, March 6th, I went home with Sirley. At 9PM, in an cy cold, slanting rainstrom that lasted all weekend, a woman came for me and we took a taxi to a complex of apartments. I had never been in the Bronx before, and had no idea where I was.
We rode the elevator to an upper floor. A 50-something blond woman opened the door to a well-furnished apartment. The dining room table was covered with a clean, white sheet. She asked me for the money. A tall man emerged from the kitchen and introduced himself as “The Doctor”, no name. He asked me if I was sure I was pregnant. I said “Yes, I had a test at the hospital”. He explained about the procedure and what to expect for the next 48 hours. I took off my panties and climbed onto the dining room table. He examined me, confirming that I was pregnant. He inserted a metal probe into my uterus, packing the vagina with gauze to keep the probe immobile. He injected me with an antibiotic.
He told me that during the next 24 hours, I would begin to abort. I did not have to stay in bed, walking was actually recommended to stimulate the abortion. On Saturday, around noon, I was to return, and he would remove the probe and curettage the uterus.
I would probably experience cramping, but if I encountered severe pain or bleeding, I was not to got to a hospital or doctor. I was to call the blond woman’s answering service, and wait for a return call; I was not to return to the apartment without their prior knowledge.
Leaving the apartment, it was still raining, and impossible to find a taxi. After what seemed hours, we finally arrived at Shirley’s apartment. I undressed and went to bed, cramping already.
I was terrified, and spent the night agonizing over the possible outcome of this dire episode. While a Nursing student, I had seen at least a dozen young girls die of septicemia following illegal abortions. They were brought to the hospital by ambulance or their shamed family, hemorrhaging and running a high fever. Placed in isolation to protect other patients from their virulent infection, and perhaps their tainted virtue. In a few days they died, with no super antibiotics to save them.
And here I was, in isolation too, thinking about the events leading up to the enormous risk I had taken. Sy was on call that weekend, he couldn’t leave the hospital. Everything needed to appear “normal” in our lives. Abortion was illegal. If discovered, abortionists were imprisoned, and “fallen” women stigmatized.
Truth be told, almost every woman in my family had had at least one abortion, including my grandma Gussie and my mother. It was part of the life experience of millions of women during those eras with unreliable birth control. Looking back, I was a fool not to have gone immediately to my mother or Aunt Leonore.
In all my angst, I did not dwell on thoughts about the baby I was aborting; it was the wrong time for this child to be born. This was about my life, my choice. What a farce our wedding would seem, if everyone found out that our “perfect” life plan had gone awry.
It was the 1950’s after all, and the prevailing sexual mores were stifling and hypocritical. Sex was dirty and bad for “good girls”, and becoming pregnant before marriage was the ultimate sin a girl could commit. Would this change our relationship? Would we still have our “happily every after”? Would I be able to have other babies? Would this shameful mistake be found out? Would I live through this?
The night passed slowly, full of pain and dread. Shirley and her husbnad tried to comfort me, and Sy called a few times. But, I was on my own. More alone than I every imagined possible.
The morning was gray, rainy and cold. Finally, Shirley’s friend came for me, with a cab waiting downstairs. We arrived at the apartment complex, and I walked slowly to the front door and into the elevator.
I positioned myself on the dining room table, and “The Doctor” began removing the packing and probe. He cautioned me to stay very still while he inserted a curette into my uterus and began the scraping. I can still see myself, as if detached and watching from the ceiling. I did not move. I knew enough about anatomy to know that a perforated uterus was a very real danger, and the cause of many botched abortion deaths. I held my breath and it was over in a few minutes. My knees were shaking, but I held them apart. He gave me another injection of antibiotic, and told me to get dressed in the bathroom.
I was exhausted, and relieved to be alive, but I knew that complications were still possible. We made our way back to Shirley’s, and I lied down in her bedroom.
That evening, Sy came to see me. He was able to leave the hospital for a few hours. I remember thinking that he had no idea how I was feeling, had little appreciation for what I had just done for us. I was annoyed at his detachment, but in retrospect, perhaps it was my detachment. I was still in stoic, “on my own” mode. I needed to feel in control of this situation.
He left close to midnight, and would return on the next afternoon to bring me back to Brooklyn.
I had no fever; I was not hemorrhaging, and had only mild cramps.
I was whole again, and although a dangerous reality had awakened me to the possibility that teenage romance was fantasy and lust, there was still the promise of a future together, that our love had survived.