The Bus Ride

I didn’t know how much Hans had broken my heart until I got on that bus alone.

I sat in the window seat crowded by the two Arab men who sat with me in the two-person seat. Sitting in the window seat looking out the grease stained window, hours passed by. In the suffocating heat of the day, I could see Israeli soldiers through the window. As the soldiers walked down the road their boots kicked up clouds of dust from the heat baked dusty road.

Passing rubble from bombed out buildings, and an old shelled out military vehicle on the road, the bus drove along. How far from the border with Lebanon it was, I couldn’t really tell. The man sitting next to me kept moving closer. The stench of his body odor was so powerful that I almost started retching.

The nurse had given me instructions about where to get off the bus. I walked up the path to the doctor’s house. The air was thick with heat and humidity. My blue shirt was tight across my lower abdomen. Sweat was trickling down from my neck. Sweat saturated my shirt and the wet spots spread across my breasts. It was not only the heat, but fear, shame, nausea and sadness.

The house had a red banister along the steps and smelled freshly painted, with potted plants as well as beautiful trees and plants growing next to the house. It was reassuring to see things growing. My arm felt heavy. I did not want to knock on the door. I knew I had no choice. I knocked on the door.

*

The Kupat Holim is Israel’s national health clinic. My first appointment with the doctor had been at one of the Kupat Holim clinics. The kibbutz truck had dropped me off there in the town closest to the kibbutz. The truck was filled with grapefruits going to the market. I had probably picked some of those grapefruits.

That day, the waiting room was filled with Jews and Arabs, mostly women. Its walls were concrete blocks, with no posters or pictures on any of them. I was waiting in a prison visiting area. Hot air surrounded all of us. Children ran through the room. The clock on the wall had stopped. It was the kind of clock that I had in my elementary school. This one was covered with dust. It did not look as though it had been telling time for quite awhile.

The chairs were old folding chairs. The little padding that had once been there was now rubbed away. My butt was aching from sitting so long. The back of my shirt was damp from the sweat. My bra was tight. My boobs were big and very sore. Hot. Trouble breathing. Alone in this stark room.

A door finally opened and I was surprised to be called in by the doctor. Looking down at my stomach I felt afraid. Dr. Mendelsohn introduced himself and sat down on a stool by the examining table. He motioned for me to take a seat on the table. The heat was blasting me. This is what a prison cell is like: the walls bare and no window. The doctor’s bushy eyebrows and nose hairs that needed trimming reminded me of my father. His eyes were a dark brown, and when he looked into my eyes, I felt that he could sense my fear. I had trouble explaining myself in Hebrew. He sat with his arms crossed over his chest staring at me.

I kept trying to explain to him, “the kibbutz nurse had done numerous urine pregnancy tests on me, which were always negative.”

“They should have sent you sooner for a blood test,” he said, his worry mixed with anger. For a short while I felt his eyes almost glaring at me. He removed a hankie from his coat pocket and used it to wipe the sweat forming small beads on his brow. He stood up for a moment and walked over to the small desk in the room.  Moments passed with him clearing his throat and blinking his eyes rapidly.

All of the wasted hours I spent back at the kibbutz running into bathrooms to see if my period had possibly started. The bathrooms in the fields where I had been working were disgusting. Newspaper was used for toilet paper and was thrown on the floor covered in shit. My period never started, and in the meantime, the largest measles epidemic to ever hit the country had swept through the entire kibbutz. I was throwing up all of the time and then got sick with the measles with a rash and vomiting for days. I knew I was in trouble when I looked down at my growing abdomen covered with a rash.

I wanted someone to help me. I had no choice but to let this doctor sitting in the exam room help me in any way possible. I could not cope with a deformed baby. I did not want any baby.  The exam room suddenly started to feel cold and I began shaking.

The doctor walked back to where his stool was. He sat down and moved his stool closer to me and started to speak in almost a whisper. His eyes had begun to soften.  He moved in closer to me and I could smell the garlic on his breath. I sensed that his anger was dissipating. He moved in close enough for me to see his nose hairs that needed trimming. I started to relax.  He opened his heart up to me. I knew that somehow he was going to help me.

I could barely hear him as he explained to me in Hebrew, “Abortion is illegal in Israel except under very special circumstances. If someone is going to try and have an abortion in the hospital it must be approved ahead of time by a special committee.”

The doctor looked up at me sitting on the paper covering the exam table. His eyebrows were wild and unkempt.

“You are too far along to wait for the committee to meet. Usually they approve abortions when there is a case of measles but there is not enough time to wait for them to meet and approve the procedure. It will be dangerous to wait much longer.”

Dr. Mendelsohn then spoke to me in English. He turned his head for a moment to see that the door was still closed. His breath still smelled of garlic and his teeth were slightly yellowed. “I can do the abortion in my house. It is illegal but there are many doctors who perform abortions in their homes.”

The doctor explained to me that babies exposed to measles can be born deaf and blind. Their brains are misshapen. Their hearts can be damaged. He kept emphasizing that the brain damage causes mental retardation. He never really asked me if I wanted to keep the baby.

“You will need to ask the kibbutz to approve the money and then we can schedule the procedure. We don’t have much time. It will be too dangerous to wait much longer.” I had to trust him. I was out of options.

A special committee at the kibbutz had to meet and vote on whether to pay for the procedure. The meeting room was in a room off of the dining hall. I could hear workers busy in the kitchen preparing the evening meal. Once again I was sitting waiting for help. My life was in their hands. Waiting. Waiting. Sweat once again rolling down my back. There were subtle flutters in my abdomen. I wanted to ignore these. I did not need to be reminded that there was a baby growing. Headache throbbing. Low back aching. Breasts sore. So hot. Now trickles of sweat forming under my growing breasts.

I knew that the head of the kibbutz really liked me and wanted to marry me. He could not understand why I was living with a German, non-Jewish hippie. I was feeling so desperate at that moment that I wanted to barge into the room where they were meeting and shout out, “Ari. I am ready to marry you.” Marriage was not really what I wanted. What I needed was someone to take care of me and tell me that it was safe to go to the doctor’s house.

I also tried not to think of the great sex that the German and I had. We could fuck all night and get up at four in the morning to go to work.

The door to the meeting room opened. Ari told me they would get the money ready right away.

*

Arriving at the doctor’s house, my hand finally was able to knock – the first time softly and the second time my knuckles hurt from knocking so hard.

The doctor let me in to the house. The room off of the entry way had artwork on the walls and a comfortable looking couch. I wanted to lie down on that couch. Dr. Mendelsohn took the envelope of money from me and led me into a room that looked like it belonged in a hospital. There was a table with stirrups and sterile packs of instruments. There was also a machine there, which I imagined was going to suck the baby out of me. It looked like a grey box with dials. Tubing and a bottle attached to it.  For a moment all I could think of was a vacuum-suck sound.

I was startled to see another older man standing in the room. Dr Mendelsohn introduced me to Dr. Solomon who did not look as kind as Dr Mendelsohn did. His eyes were hidden behind his glasses, which were falling down off of his pointy nose.

“I was worried about how far along you are, so thought it best to have another doctor here in case any problems developed.” I held out my hand to shake the hand of Dr. Solomon, but he seemed not to notice.