The Naked Storm. C.M. Kornbluth
began to chuckle, and the chuckling got out of control. It grew to whoops of laughter that racked her like sobs. There was an alarmed thundering on the stairs behind the partition. The Nilsens were in full retreat from trouble. They didn’t want to get involved; it was their religion. All they wanted was seventeen-fifty a week for the nicely-furnished room with bath and kitchenette, eavesdropping privileges while she was home and rights of visitation while she was gone. But they didn’t want to get involved as they had often said when she was drumming up a meeting or circulating a petition.
She threw herself on the prim daybed, whooping at how wrong they were and how very, very funny it was. When the spasm passed she lay there, relaxed and sniffing occasionally, feeling light and disembodied. It had been so very, very funny, the idea of her having or needing an abortion. It was an off-color joke, but it was a joke.
Slowly she rose and went into the bathroom to undress. Dress, knitted slip moulding her, 32 bra, B cup—she squared her shoulders and squinted in the too-high medicine chest mirror. They were quite all right, she assured herself grimly even if she didn’t wear indecent uplift bras like the kept wives at the Club. If what you wanted was to do your bit to save the nation from its enemies foreign and domestic, a sound grasp of parliamentary law was more to the point.
She unhooked the garter belt, incongruous satin over faded, tired, thigh-length snuggies going into their third Chicago winter, and peeled off her stockings. The snuggies were bulky. Of course that was where Mrs. Nilsen had got her brilliant idea. You try to keep sensibly warm in a Chicago winter and dirty-minded old so-and-so’s conclude that you’re a loose woman. As if she had the time for such nonsense!
Under the snuggies her belly was flat. Perhaps not good enough to win any prizes, but certainly not bad enough to get her kicked out of bed by a reasonable man—
Startled at the trend of her thoughts, she snatched her dressing gown from the hook on the door and belted it firmly around her. That was that. Cover the body and forget about it.
Virtuously she washed her underwear in the bathroom sink and draped it to dry along the shower-curtain rod, dropped a little-girl printed flannel nightgown over her head and went to bed.
She couldn’t sleep.
The old fool’s hissed accusation still rang in her ears. Twisting on the narrow bed she thought: if I went in for that kind of thing I wouldn’t have an abortion. If I got caught I’d go someplace in the southwest where they don’t make a fuss about legitimacy on the birth certificates and I’d have the baby and bring him up. We could live on the income and maybe get one of those adobe houses in Taos cheaper than this place and I could brush up on my piano and try painting again. Of course party work would be out, so the whole thing’s out of the question. First things first; there aren’t enough of us to squander our time.
She thought of her father for the first time in weeks and clearly saw in the dark the thin, cynical face which had been so attractive to so many women; she heard in the silence the thin, cynical voice that charmed them with its cruel wit and grace. What fools they were! she thought violently. If they’d lived with him as long as I had to they would have known better. But they never did. They came and went, and she was always there and he was always graceful and brilliant and mocking until she wanted to scream: Be dull for an hour, can’t you? Be kind and normal for just a little while or I’ll go crazy! I can’t keep up with it!
Well, she brooded, her wish had come true. Throat cancer, inoperable, had made him quite dull for eighteen months, and then he was gone, following the mysterious figure of her mother into limbo.
Thank God there had been hard work and Americanism to fight for after that. Thank God she had inherited some of his diabolical word-brilliance and none of his twisted ethics. Thank God there was work for her to do in the world.
She fell comfortably asleep at last.
Upstairs the Nilsens buzzed and muttered, wondering who the man was.
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