Cindy wanted to cut a new deal with God, but so many things were happening between her legs she found it impossible to concentrate. She propped herself up on her elbows and looked down. "Let me see it," she said. She waited, but the only reply she heard was the sound of labored breathing. The sweat on her forehead ran down the bridge of her nose into her eyes. She used her naked shoulders to wipe it away, turning her head to the left, then to the right, and then tilting it back to relieve the ache in her neck. It didn't help. She looked over the yellow stained sheet covering her midsection, down to the frizzy gray hair of the old woman's head. "It's not a coat hanger—is it?" The old woman looked up. "Relax," she said in a gravelly voice, and horked out a smoker's rattling cough. Feeling the damp lung air on the insides of her thighs, Cindy jerked her knees together, digging the crusty edges of the leather strap into her ankles. "Cut it out," the old woman said, and went back to work like a plumber under a sink: cigarette smoke, squinted eyes, dirty shirt, tool in hand. Everything but a flashlight. Cindy dropped her head back on the table and fingered a ring on a gold chain around her neck. A naked light bulb hung at the end of a cord above her face. Give me a sign, Lord. Flicker. Brighten. Dim. Nothing. She chased rainbow spots on her retina. What do you want me to do, go blind? She waited for an answer, staring. The bulb glowed steady as the sun. Warm fingers penetrated her body—then something sharp and cold. Her back snapped into an arch; a grunt escaped her throat and her fingernails dug into a plastic daisy on the shower curtain covering the table. She struggled back onto her elbows, breathing hard, straining to keep her arms from splaying out on the sweat-drenched plastic. "What ... are you using?" she said. The old woman stopped a moment and looked at her wearily, as if she'd heard this question many times before. Blinking slowly, she with drew the instrument and held it straight up, like a lightning rod. Cindy eyes widened. It was a stiff wire about a foot long with a slight banana-shaped curve, one end hammered into a tiny spatula, the other wrapped in electrician's tape to form a handle. Its black paint had been worn off long ago, removing any sign that it once had, indeed, been a coat hanger. It was so bizarre, so unlike anything Cindy could imagine being inserted into herself; she thought it was meant for someone else. "It's just a tool," the old woman said. "Now lie back and relax." She lowered the wire beneath the sheet and returned to work. "Listen to the radio," she said in the tone of a busy mother talking to a pestering child. Cindy laid her head back and placed her forearm over her eyes. Get me through this. Lord and I swear I'll never have sex again. She peeked at the light bulb. No sign. And no surprise: she'd cut that deal six months ago. She lifted the ring from her chest and looked at the crystal intaglio of an angel standing with her wings at rest, sword in hand, foot resting on the severed head of Satan. It felt like a hundred years ago that Mike had given it to her. She'd have to leave it as collateral until she could scrape together the rest of the two hundred, but lose it? Never. It was the only item of value she owned, the one thing she'd never let go. She laid the ring in the hollow of her neck and touched it, eyes closed, wondering once again how she got into this mess. She'd already been over the causes a hundred times—an unlucky time of the month, her boyfriend Bobby's perpetual sexual motion, a broken condom, assuming he'd used one—but she was tired of this line of reasoning, sick of blaming herself. It was time to look at the big picture, the forces beyond her control. Put that way, the answer was obvious: the Nazis. If it hadn't been for them, Mike never would have been drafted and gone ashore at Omaha Beach, or been killed on some muddy French road fixing a flat in a rainstorm, leaving her a widow at the age of twenty-four. If it hadn't been for Adolph, she never would have been fooling around with guys like Bobby, filling voids, satisfying urges, looking for a new husband, a job, anything with some hope attached. Amazing, wasn't it? A sawed-off German with a Charlie Chaplin mustache and one ball (so they said) had reached halfway around the world, taken away her husband, killed him, and now had placed her spread-eagle on a kitchen table. . . She felt something strange happening in her pelvis and pictured Uncle Tad building a ship in a bottle. Play a game, she thought. Guess which is worse—the physical pain or the idea of the thing. It didn't work. She took a deep breath and expelled everything inside her. Everything she could. Adolph, nothing. You’re the one who broke the rules, Cindy. You’re the one who pays. She lifted her arm from her eyes and looked at the brown Philco radio on the kitchen counter, a coffee cup stuck to its top. Glenn Miller's "String of Pearls" started up. Well, what do you know? God's finally talking. It was the same song she'd heard over and over the night she'd gotten pregnant. Rubbing it in, but talking. Another jab inside her pelvis, another phlegm-rattling cough, over her midsection, another tightening of her thighs. She saw a Listerine ad in her head with mouth germs as big as centipedes. A wave of nausea rolled over her, stinging her throat with soured French fries and chocolate shake. Another phlegm-soaked cough from the old woman spewed over her skin, but this time she didn't move. Funny, how fast a person gets used to things. She remembered her honeymoon with Mike at a lake in the Ozarks, the run-down room they'd paid for in advance and couldn't afford to leave. The first night she'd found a roach in bed she'd turned on the lights and sat up half the night reading old Look magazines. But after a week of swimming and sunbathing and making love, she found herself sleeping like a baby, flicking the bugs out of bed in the morning as if they were cookie crumbs. It had amazed her even then how fast people adjusted, learned to cope, and handled whatever came up. Like her friend Annabelle, who turned tricks all night but still managed to fix her kids a hot oatmeal breakfast before passing out. Dear Annabelle. If she can handle it, so can I. Alls I have to do is keep hanging on for a bit little longer. A few more minutes, and tomorrow morning I'll be making roly-poly and singing Winnie-the-Pooh songs to my sweet smelling little girl. She closed her eyes and pictured the kitchen ... the ironing board, the radio, the black- and white-speckled oven. She could almost smell the sugar and butter and cinnamon baking. ... The old woman worked with intense concentration now; the critical moment was almost here, the moment when she'd find the canal to the uterus and carefully, steadily, push the rod into the pear-shaped womb. Once inside, she'd move the rod back and forth, rotating it as she went, scraping the lining with the little cobra head, hoping to hit the egg or at least create enough havoc and bleeding to wash it away. The concept was simple; it was the execution that was tricky. Not all cervices and uteruses were alike. She hadn't done this for years and at seventy-four her hands and nerves weren't what they used to be. She must have performed hundreds of these things before she'd quit, but the truth was, anatomically speaking, she had no idea what she was doing. She knew if you punctured the intestinal wall and contaminated the rod with feces, you'd give the girl blood poisoning. She knew if you scraped too much and scarred the womb too badly; the girl would never have children. She knew there was an artery in there someplace, but she'd never hit that before, and didn't plan to now. Oh, she'd heard rumors of problems cropping up now and then—some of her girls coming down sick, a few going to the hospital. But what doctor did better? Since she'd started in the twenties, she'd been arrested only three times, tried once, and convicted of nothing. No sir, she'd performed a valuable service and everyone knew it, including the police. All she wanted was to perform one more now. A pure-vanilla; get-the-bleeding-started, send the-girl home, garden-variety job. She reached under her wooden stool and pawed the linoleum floor, nearly tipping over the shot glass. Keeping an eye on the girl's face, she knocked back the rest of a Seagram's Seven and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand like a cowboy. After setting the glass on the floor, she picked up a dishrag and mopped the sweat off her forehead. Her nose ran, so she wiped that, too, and drew the cloth over the back of her neck. The soothing feel of it reminded her of hot summer nights when her husband would take a pitcher of beer off a block of ice and rub it gently on the back of her neck. My, oh my, what she wouldn't do for a cold draft right now. She dropped the rag to the floor, blinked away the fog, and pulled her wooden stool up a few inches. God, how she hated this part; if only there was a way around it. Stop stalling and get on with it. A muffled cough, a tug at her bra strap, and she was ready. Using her fingers as a speculum, she moved the steel rod slowly up-ward, toward the girl's canal to the womb, or where she thought it should be. Slowly, she pushed the rod deeper into the flesh. Easy now . . . take it easy. She pictured the protruding cervix as a compass: if the went deeper all around it, the center had to be the opening. She decided to go north first. She angled the tip of the rod upward and nudged. It sank a bit and stopped. So far, so good. She pulled it back an inch, rotated it to the east, and pushed again. The rod sank farther there, too. Good. Gonna be easy She drew it back slightly and went south. No problem. Then she drove it in to the west and…It didn't go. Hmm. Maybe she hadn't gone west far enough. She pulled the tool out and lifted a Ray-O-Vac flashlight off the floor. Spreading the girl with her fingers, she shone it into her passageway. Hoping to see the cervix, No dice! She set the flashlight down and reinserted the wire hanger, pressed it toward the girl's right side, and started the probe again. "Keep going," she muttered. It didn't. A bolt of pain shot up her sciatic nerve into her hip; she groaned and leaned back on the stool. "What's the matter?" the girl asked. "Nothing", sweetie. Everything's just fine." She sat still a moment, waiting for the pain to ebb, wondering what kind of geography she had in here. She took a deep breath. No way to tell without going in to check. If she could, She withdrew the rod. The girl lifted her head. "Is that it?" "Not yet, honey. Lie down." The old woman made her right hand as small and round as possible, squeezing her fingers together until the bones and cartilage hurt. Then she inserted it into the girl's body. The girl didn't react, but the old woman wasn't surprised. This far into the thing most girls were used to weird stuff going on down there. She pushed her fingers in farther—the girl's body tensed—then more—it squirmed—then the knuckles—The girl screamed, "Oh, Jesus! What are you doing?" The old woman knew if she could move past the pelvic bone into the soft, roomy center, everything would be fine. What the hell; she'd had girls who could take her whole hand without a whimper. Not this one. "Oh, my God! Stop!" The old woman grimaced and gave a shove. "Stop!" The girl screamed, grabbing the woman's wrists. The old woman withdrew her hand and peeled away the girl's fingers. "Oh, Jesus, that's it!" the girl cried. "That's got to be it!" The old woman found the dishrag on the floor and began mopping the girl's face. "Thought you said you had a kid," she said, making conversation. The girl covered her face and didn't answer. "It must have had to be a cesarean," she said, seeing that it wasn't. She stared at the girl's midsection, wiping blood off her fingers like an auto mechanic staring at a muffler. “Got yourself into some real trouble here, didn't you, partner?" she said, dropping the rag. "One thing I know for sure. Whoever the hell did this to you wasn’t your husband." At her age, girls rarely went through this if they were pregnant by their husbands. The old woman stood up, gently lifted the girl's hands from her face, and laid them next to her sides. Her eyes were wet and swollen, her cheekbones white from the pressure of her palms. She looked up at the old woman with pleading eyes. "Is it over yet?" "No, dear. Not quite." "I can't do this anymore." "You don't need to do nothing', sweetie." Using a corner of the dirty sheet, she wiped away the girl's tears and stroked her matted hair. "Just hold on tight and it'll be over in a jiffy." The old woman took the girl's left hand and massaged it, then placed it in the loop of a leather belt, buckled it, and did the same with her right. The girl tried to lift her wrists, turning her head to see them. The old woman said, "It's just to keep you from grabbing me again." "I don't want to be tied down," the girl said. "I can't reach my chain. It's twisted." Her ring had become trapped under her shoulder and the chain was cutting into her skin. The old woman lifted it off the girl's neck, placed it around her own, and tucked the ring down the front of her shirt to keep it out of the way. "When I give it back, we'll be done," she said. She shifted her weight on the stool, reached into her breast pocket for her cigarettes, and with the ease born of a thousand repetitions, jerked the pack downward, popping a cigarette halfway out. Her lips pulled it the rest of the way; she lit it, blew out the flame, and tilted her head back to exhale. After a second drag she reached under the stool and laid the cigarette across the empty shot glass. Her shoulders slumped. There was no escape. Holding the coat hanger, she pushed the girl's knees apart and once again guided the wire into her body. The cobra head bumped up against something she thought—hoped—was the cervix. She probed around it briefly, and then returned to the place where she thought the opening should be. This had to be it. She'd been there too many times for it not to be. She reached down, found the burning cigarette on the floor, took a final drag, and crushed it into the empty shot glass. Then, exhaling smoke, she pushed the wire toward the womb. She felt the girl flinch but heard no cry. Good. I'm inside. Carefully she pushed it in farther, waiting for the sensation of the tough uterus wall to be transmitted down the wire to her fingertips. One more inch now half an inch, maybe just a little more and she'd feel the back of the womb. Nothing. She wiped the sweat off her forehead with the crook of her arm.Never mind. Probably still a ways to go. She pushed the rod in more—she couldn't tell how much—but still felt nothing. She stopped anyway, she was in far enough. Had to be. She started to scrape. "That feels funny," the girl said. "Almost done, sweetie." She scraped for a few minutes longer, and then withdrew the rod slowly. It was bright red, which was good. She watched to see what happened next. At first it was a trickle, what she expected. Then it was more—maybe the girl didn't clot so well—then it was heavy—maybe she… It was a flood ... blood spurting out the girl's body in pulses to the beat of her heart. Jesus. The old woman wiped the sweat off her upper lip with her fingers, leaving a mustache of red under her nose. She mopped her forehead with the dirty dishrag and stuffed it between the girl's legs. "What happened?" the girl asked. "Nothing', sweetie. You're bleeding, but you're supposed to." The old woman pressed the rag into the girl's center and held it there. Feeling the heat of her body's liquid oozing through. After pushing the cloth inside as far as it would go, she stood up and walked to the bathroom, pulled the light cord, turned on the faucet, and lowered her hands under a stream of cold water, watching the girl's blood make red swirls around the chipped porcelain and disappear down the drain. A dirty glass caught her eye; she filled it with water and watched it tremble as she brought it to her mouth. She took a swallow, set the glass down, and examined her hands. They were pink and clean the hands of a working woman. Hands she'd seen many times before, glistening as they cleaned celery or rinsed dishes or gave her grandson a bath. Maybe they were shaking a bit, but they were clean. Goddamn it, they were clean. She looked into the mirror. The mustache of blood startled her; she wiped it off with her wet fingers and dried her face with a crumpled towel. Why the hell did you agree to do this? She asked her reflection. You told her you hadn't done one of these for years, but she wouldn't listen, would she? Well, never mind. She's free, white, and twenty-one. You’ve done your best. She shook another Pall Mall from the pack and lit it, holding the first rich puff of sulfur and tobacco until the scars on her lungs ached. She exhaled slowly at the mirror, softening the lines in her face. My God, Look at you. You’re so old. The silence from the kitchen caught her attention; she lifted the spotted glass and carried it back to the table. The girl lay chilled and quivering in a pool of blood, its edges spilling off the table onto the floor. Her head was turned to the side, eyes staring across the room. The old woman brought the glass to her parched lips, but she didn't drink. "Ray," the girl whispered. The old woman put the glass down and unbuckled the leather straps. "You're going to be all right, honey. You just lost some blood." ". . . Scared," the girl whispered. "Now listen to me. There are not nothing' to be scared of." ". . . Want Ray," she said. The old woman released the girl's hands from the straps and lifted her head to make her sip some water. "Who's Ray, sweetie?” “He the bastard that done this to you?" Water dribbled down the girl's chin. "Forget him. He is not here." She wiped the girl's mouth. "They never are." The old woman pulled the sheet up around the girl's neck and held her hand and felt her body begin to quiver. At first it was a tremble. Then it was a shake. Then the table legs creaked and popped as the girl's body sank deeper into shock. The old woman grabbed her arms and was holding them down when the kitchen door opened and a face peered into the room—the face of a pretty little girl of six or so with freckles and red hair and large, anxious eyes. "Mommy?" she said. The young woman on the table rolled her head to the side. "Ray," she whispered, reaching out. The little girl stood next to the kitchen counter trying to comprehend what she was seeing, understanding nothing, fearing everything. Her lips parted as if to speak, but the old woman said, "Ssh, not now," and she stayed quiet. Seeing her mother's outstretched hand, she walked to it on tiptoes, like a ballerina, and laid her fingers in its palm. It didn't close. She looked into her mother's eyes, which were deep and brown and had a glycerin-shine. "Mommy?" This time there was no response at all. The little girl's face begged the old woman for an explanation, for deliverance; finding none, she turned back to her mother, eyebrows lifted. Waiting for a sign of life. Her mother's fingers remained limp. She tugged at the hand gently at first… “Wake up. Sleeping Beauty!—then more firmly—Mommy, stop playing!—then frantically.” shaking her arm up and down, pleading with her to come back to life. In a moment her freckled face turned elastic and she began to cry, still clinging to her mother's hand, refusing to let go of her lifeline even though it had snapped before her eyes. The old woman dropped her forehead onto the young woman's chest and listened to the little girl begin to wail. “Shit” she whispered to herself. “And my last one too.”