Celestial Timepiece

By Joyce Carol Oates

Originally published in Glamour, August 1992.

Collected in Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque.

Adapted version illustrated by Laurenn McCubbin in Sexy Chix and Drawing Lines.

Don’t You Trust Me?

This occurred early in the second year of The Edict, when the first wave of arrests, fines and imprisonments, and frequent deaths had run their course; and all but the most desperate women were likely to accept the new conditions, and have their babies, as The Moral Law of The Land decreed.

Except: she had no choice. She was a student, she had no money, no hope of employment before graduation. Her mother, divorced and very poor, would be devastated. She simply could not have a baby, and she would not. “I know what must be done”—her resolve gave her a fierce, determined courage, and kept terror at bay.

Yet weeks passed, as, fearfully, obliquely, she made inquiries about where she might find a doctor willing to perform the outlaw procedure. She spoke only with those female friends whom she believed she could trust. Under The Maternal Statute, even making such inquiries was punishable as a misdemeanor. She could be fined a thousand dollars, and expelled from college.

Nor could she trust the young man who had impregnated her —her lover who was not really her lover, hardly more than an acquaintance. She avoided him, now. He knew nothing of her condition. The mistake, jointly theirs, she would accept as solely hers.

Rumors were rife, too, of men turned informers to The Bureau of Medical Ethics, who betrayed even their own wives, out of malice. And greed; informers were paid as much as five hundred dollars for information leading to arrests.

Even so, with friends, she hid her desperation and spoke in careful, detached terms: “I have a friend who made a mistake, and who really needs help …”

In this way she was led, at the start of her second trimester, to Dr. Knight.

I can’t go through with this, she thought—no: in an hour it will be over, and I’ll be free. Climbing the rickety wooden outdoor stairs to Dr. Knight’s office, at the rear of a row house on South Main Street. It was ten-thirty p.m. on a weekday. In her bag were sanitary napkins, a change of underwear, and eight hundred dollars cash. She’d borrowed from virtually everyone she knew.

She rang a buzzer. After a moment the door was unbolted, and opened, and there stood Dr. Knight—“Come in. Hurry. You’ve brought the money?”

She stepped inside, and Dr. Knight shut the door behind her and bolted it. He’d been smoking—the air stung her eyes. And there was a close, stale, faintly sweet odor as of garbage, stopped drains.

She saw to her surprise that there was no waiting room, nor any nurse or attendant. What appeared to be a kitchen table had been placed in the center of the drafty, dim-lit room, beneath a powerful light hanging from the ceiling; in a corner, on the linoleum floor, was a mound of damp, soiled towels. Dr. Knight was tall and fattily muscular in the torso, with dyed-looking shiny black hair, hornrimmed tinted glasses, a gauze mask hiding the lower half of his face. He wore a long white apron badly stained with blood, and smooth, tight-fitting surgical gloves.

“Here. Disrobe, and put it on. Hurry.” Dr. Knight handed her a soiled cotton smock, and turned away, to count his money.

She did as instructed. Terrified, her hands shaking so badly she could hardly undress, no she was resolved, she’d made her decision and knew herself fortunate: in an hour I’ll be free. Trying not to gag at the odors, nor to notice the linoleum floor with its dark starburst stains. Trying not to hear Dr. Knight humming to himself as, at a sink, he washed his hands briskly—his gloved hands.

He beckoned her to the table, which had a chipped porcelain top, also stained. Stirrups had been attached to one end. She sat at this end, facing Dr. Knight and an aluminum stand bearing gleaming gynecological and surgical instruments. Panicked, she thought. The instruments are shiny, that must mean they’re clean.

Of course, “Knight” was not the man’s name. He had a real name, he was a real doctor, no doubt attached to one of the medical clinics in the city; very likely a member of the politically powerful PFF—Physician Friends of the Fetus. He had not come so highly recommended as a “Dr. Swan” and a “Dr. Dugan,” but his fee was considerably lower.

She’d begun to sweat, and shiver. Now lying back on the cold table top, her feet in the stirrups, and her legs spread. Unasked, she told Dr. Knight how long it had been since her last period. She thought to impress him by being precise. Dr. Knight made a chuckling sound, looming over her, his eyes shadowed inside the tinted glasses, his curly graying hair given an aureole by the powerful light beyond his head. The gauze mask was damp with spittle, covering both his nose and mouth. He said, “Can’t wait to get rid of it, eh?”

This was meant to be a joke—a bit gruff, but not at all hostile.

He was a kindly man. Dr. Knight. She was sure.

More seriously, he said, “It’s a simple medical procedure, no big deal. In and out in eight minutes.” But when he began to insert the cold, sharp tip of a dilating instrument into her vagina she panicked, and skidded back on the table, whimpering. Dr. Knight swore, and said, “D’you want this, or not?—it’s up to you. But no refund.”

She could not hear, quite. Her teeth were chattering convulsively.

She whispered, “Could I have some—anesthetic?”

“You gave me eight hundred dollars. That’s all.”

Chloroform, an option, would have been another three hundred; she’d believed it would be too much of a risk, anyway—rumors were spreading that as many women were dying of carelessly administered chloroform as of hemorrhaging and infection. Now, terrified, she wished she’d borrowed the extra money.

No: stay awake. Ar soon as it’s over, walk out free.

Dr. Knight said again it was a simple medical procedure, vacuum suction, a minimum of pain and blood and he had appointments through the night so did she want to cooperate, or not— “Don’t you trust me? Eh?” There was something touchingly sulky and even hurt in his manner, beneath the masculine annoyance. Don’t you trust mel had been her lover’s query too, forgotten until this moment.

She forced herself to slide back down the table, and gripped the sides hard. Feet in the stirrups which were somewhat wobbly and bare, shivery legs spread wide. She licked her lips and whispered, “Yes.”

And shut her eyes tight.

Photo: United States Supreme Court by Thomas Hawk.