I like your hair. It’s darling. Quite Edie Sedgwick.
Ruth pats her head nervously. Thank you. She demurs.
Just then Agnes appears at her elbow. Can we go? She simmers impatiently, shooting daggers at Teddy, who seems amused by her animosity.
I guess. Yeah.
So can I see you again, my nightingale? Teddy says.
Sure. Why not? Ruth writes down her mobile number on his pad of paper as Agnes pulls her away.
That guy was BIZ-arre, a hungry Agnes scowled as they stood in the queue for the 24-hour bagel shop on Brick Lane.
I don’t know. I liked him.
He gives me the creeps. I’ve seen him before at parties. I think he’s gay, you know.
Ruth shrugs. Why would I care if he’s gay? In her mind that was better. That would mean she didn’t have to sleep with him.
Will you go with me to the clinic Monday? They are eating the warm dough wrapped in wax paper while walking through the nocturnal teem of Brick Lane, the puddles reflective in the street.
Why?
I need to have a little, you know, doo-hickey done.
Ruth’s heart thuds. Is it Olly’s? She doesn’t know why she asked this.
Ruth…Agnes sighs heavily, tossing her half-eaten bagel in the nearest bin. I don’t want to talk about it.
Okay. Ruth tries to think of something to make Agnes smile. I’ll buy you an ice-cream cone afterwards.
Agnes smiles weakly. Okay.
The two girls link arms, walking home, their costumes suddenly ridiculous in the hangover of early morning.
I live my part too—only I can’t figure out what my part is in this movie.
— Edie Sedgwick in Andy Warhol’s
Kitchen
Agnes smokes cigarettes for breakfast, watching the blankness of the street outside the window. Human ants scurry across occasionally. Agnes doesn’t look at them. She looks beyond them. She is wearing red high heels that have scraped off white flakes of paint on the windowsill and a red bandanna that pulls her red hair off her face. She isn’t wearing any makeup. She looks paler, her own shadow.
Ruth eats Green and Black’s chocolate ice-cream with a fork. The flatmates don’t talk. They listen to music. Nico’s “Femme Fatale” fills the room with melancholy. Agnes smokes and Ruth tiptoes around her, watchfully. Mindfully. Agnes is in trouble, she thinks. That’s the old-fashioned way of putting it. She’s in trouble. She feels very important somehow. She has never taken a friend to get an abortion. A friend in her condition. That’s what they say. In your condition. What is the condition, exactly? If then, then what? Well, they all now knew the if then. Ruth was still unsure about the then what. Ruth thinks back to that night and imagines that their coupling on the bed with Olly was the sordid conception. And in a way, bizarre as it sounds, that the baby was hers as well.
Agnes is late for her appointment. She is quickly beckoned by a white coat and clipboard. Ruth sits on a hardback chair and pretends not to stare at the women occupying chairs around her. Each one to their own chair, their own private thoughts. There is a heavy mood to the waiting room. They are all women from the neighborhood. Faces of ripe fruit, wrinkled raisins. Most of them are veiled and dressed in long robes. Bengali she guessed, Muslim most likely. Ruth did not know exactly. She knew that Bangladesh was between India and Pakistan. (Actually, India is in the middle). There was some kind of war, it was terrible, that was all she knew.
A woman in a burqa. She is covered except for her hands. She has heard of burqas on the news. The First Lady begging the camera to free these women of their coverings so itchy and so hot. Ruth wonders what it would be like to hide away from all of the staring eyes of the street. She thinks that she would like to wear a veil. Or maybe just a glamorous black headscarf, like Jackie Kennedy. She imagines herself in the part of mourning widow, following her husband’s coffin while being followed by the TV. On the woman’s lap an expensive leather handbag is perched. Ruth looks around the room. On all of the laps rest various leather handbags in competition pradas guccis marc jacobs. One woman reaches down and scratches an ankle. There are brown little children playing on their mother mountains. They are allowed the freedom of shorts and colorful T-shirts. Occasionally they are admonished in thick tongues but mostly they are allowed to roam, to flirt with other strangers in the room. Ruth smiles at a boy with a map stain on his forehead. He pretends to play shy, hiding behind his mother mountain. She looks away, already bored with the game, perhaps nervous the mother will chide him disapprovingly.
A man sits several seats down from the burqa woman with the prada handbag. She wonders whether he’s her husband. She has seen families strolling slowly down Brick Lane. The older women stroll behind, perhaps as a sign of respect. Ruth looks at the little girls and wonders if as their bodies lengthen they will be wrapped in garbs of solemnity. But now they are allowed to be mischievous, allowed to play. Ruth’s mind is absolutely void of thoughts. It must be the sugar, the tension in the room. She is struck with this impression of not really being there, in the waiting room. Not really there. She has escaped inside of herself. She stares and stares. When she was a little baby in a stroller Ruth’s mother told her she was happy just sitting and regarding the world with the sternest of expressions. She had soft staring gray eyes that did not blink, uncanny as a cat’s. She sat and stared and stared, regarding the towering populace with an element of remove, even then.
Ruth doubled over onto the chair, as if praying. Stomach cramps. All she had consumed all day was smoke, heavy feelings, and chocolate ice cream. All she had left was a hole inside. All she had left was a searing ache.
Ruth watches a solemn procession of veiled women walk up the stairs. They advance towards the front counter like slowly moving mountains, mountains, mountains. Like dark ghosts. Each woman takes a bag of condoms from the receptionist at the front desk and proceeds back down the stairs. The package quickly disappears underneath the black hollow of their sleeve. She feels she is somehow witnessing a delicate ritual between Brick Lane wives, that she is not supposed to be there during this silent parade. It seems since she’s got to London she’s always stumbling upon parades and rituals beyond her comprehension.
Finally Agnes walks out.
How are things? Ruth asks.
Agnes pats her stomach. Flat. She is parroting Julie Christie in
Darling.
Ruth knows this.
Do you feel okay?
Agnes shrugs. She takes out her compact from her purse and applies lipstick, streaks of red around and around the track fiercely.
They say I might have some discomfort but otherwise good as new.
Agnes appraises herself from each angle. She says hello to herself her old self. Puff puff puff the shine away from her nose, and then a satisfied snap shut. She slips her compact back into her purse. She looks around the waiting room. Uggh. Let’s get out of here.
She does not want to go immediately home. So they take the train and get ice cream cones from a Cadbury cart and walk around near Leicester Square, around the Mall. To an outside observer they are two girls light as air enjoying the first signs of spring.
Agnes is silent for a long while. Then she suddenly begins talking, to the sky, to the buildings, to the cars. Talking, talking, talking. Not to Ruth. Almost to herself. Ruth tries to listen, although she feels awkward seeing this different side of Agnes, Agnes without the armor. Eyes weak and exhausted.
Finally, Agnes speaks. It was horrible. Horrible.
The abortion? Asks Ruth. I mean, the procedure?
No, no. She pauses. All of it. I felt so—violated. Like some horrible creature had invaded my body. I needed to get it out. I would have reached inside and torn it out if I could. My body threatening to distort beyond all recognition. She shudders, and looks with distaste at her ice cream cone, as if startled to find it in her hand. Wordlessly, she hands it over to Ruth, who alternates licks with each hand.
Agnes is silent for a long while. They walk over to a park where they can sit on a bench and watch the ducks. Ruth wonders whether it’s a painful sight to see momma duck trailing her little bits of fuzz. Agnes lights a cigarette and sits there smoking at the ducks. When she is done with her cigarette she throws it into the water, lights another one. Finally, she continues her private monologue.
My body some public, disgusting domain. Waddling around like some gross aberration. People feeling they can touch my stomach. People giving up their seats to me on the bus. It’s like, fuck off. I don’t want that. I want to be me, me, this self-contained thing.
Does the father know? asks Ruth. She realizes this is a stupid thing to say.
Agnes does not respond. There was no father, she says, finally, almost dreamily.
You mean, that…
Now sharply, as if she had woken up. There. Was. No. Father. She turns towards Ruth. Alright?
Ruth nods, doesn’t say anything.
Smokes furiously. I felt like I was walking around with a big scarlet letter P on me. P for pathetic.
How about KU for knocked up?
Agnes laughs, relents. W/C. With child.
There’s multiple meanings to that, Ruth quips.
That’s what I felt like. I felt like someone had taken a giant shit inside me.
They sit for a while and stare off into nothingness, each to their own thoughts.
Agnes starts talking about a film she saw the other day. Talking. Talking. Talking. Running of the mouth. Have you seen Have you seen Have you seen. Ruth lets her talk. And then And then And then. Lets her film synopsis bathe over her as she watches the ducks. Two men with dark sunglasses are watching them. She can feel them watching her and Agnes, admiring their attractiveness. She can sense they are talking about them, wondering whether they should come over, wondering which one they want, weighing their chances, their choices. She hopes they won’t come over. She wonders if Agnes sees them too. If this is who she is performing for, her always audience.