Abortion but not on demand - The Life of Jane continued

                                Abortion but not on demand


   Jane did track down Don's home but Don wasn't there. She phoned his house or his parents's house in Winetka Illinois. She used a classmate"s phone for she had none in her room. A woman, Don's mother answered  and told her, "Oh, Don's off in Colorado somewhere. He's taking a trip with his fiance and her family."
    "His fiance," Nancy nearly shrieked. Oh no!"
    Then she nearly fell forward on the shiny wooden floor in the apartment she'd come to to make the phone call. The place was being rented by Nancy Chu, a rich Chinese classmate of Jane's who came from Hong Kong . Jane was staggered by the fact that Don was engaged, a fact he'd never told her.
    "What's the matter Jane?" Nancy asked. "You look like you've just swallowed a frog."
    Then Jane told Nancy the real reason why she had used the phone, a fact she not hadn't mentioned to Nancy before. "I'm pregnant and Don's engaged to another woman. What am I going to do? Oh what a mess I've made of my life."
     Nancy Chu had taken to Jane right from the start. They'd met in an empty classroom while waiting for a lecture. Nancy was a bright yellow bundle of energy who was always smiling. "I'm playing the old-fashioned Chinese lady," she told Jane on the day they'd met in the classroom. "You know like the Asians you see in movies like 'Sayonara', the cool calm collected women who never complain.That's my role."
    "But the Orientals in that film are Japanese aren't they, not Chinese?"
    "So? Jane most white people don't know the difference between us two races and don't want to."
     Nancy's father was a rich businessman who thought his eldest daughter was crazy to study  English literature in London. "He wants me to take over his business ," she said. "He knows that the English people don't like us Chinese so we need money to face their prejudice. Hong Kong's a colony of Great Britain you know. The English see us as totally inferior to them."
   " They see us Canadians the same way," Jane replied.
   "But you Canadians are part English aren't you? Anyway you're white. My face sure doesn't look like yours Jane."
    Nancy was her father's favourite child and Nancy had sweet talked her father into paying all her fees and expenses in England. "My mother didn't like this but she didn't have a chance.So here I am."
    "What will you do when you get your degree/" Jane asked this fashionably dressed woman.
   "Probably go back and then I'll have to work in my father's business. But right now I'm studying the poetery of W.H. Auden and Dylan Thomas and I'm enjoying that.." Then Nancy smiled and brushed her short black hair with her hands."After this class let's go out and have  a drink somewhere." And the two of them did.