Love Is Not Enough  “Six abortions; are you crazy?” she had said to her. ”What am I supposed to do? I don’t want to have babies. I want to finish school.” “Why don’t you stop sleeping around with men?” she said to Cynthia. “I can’t,” Cynthia said.             And yet, according to Cynthia, her last abortion had almost killed her. The procedure used what was called “the Instrument,” and the man who performed it was a professional nurse who did it in the privacy of his own apartment. The man had a good reputation and his fee was moderate. Cynthia therefore decided to use his services this time.  When she met him he gave her two choices: she could either have sex with him and have the procedure for free or pay him twenty cedis.  She took one look at the man’s drooling face and opted to pay.  As the man began scraping her insides with an instrument that looked like a big needle, the pains were so horrendous she screamed and yelled and begged him to stop, but the man urged her to endure the pain a little longer if she did not wish to have a baby. And of course she did not. It was a long, agonizing twenty minutes and when it was over, the man asked her to go home and wait for a few days before the bleeding would start.                    Cynthia said it did not take long after reaching home before her lower abdomen felt like it was tearing away from the rest of the stomach. The pains were unlike anything she had ever experienced. She could not bear it and she screamed and hollered. Her mother and two sisters gathered around her demanding to know what was wrong with her. She could either tell the truth and save her life or be silent and lose it. She chose to tell the truth and was rushed to the hospital. A doctor operated on her immediately. She was bleeding internally and they learned afterward that if they had delayed sending her to the hospital, she would have died. The man was later arrested, but as far as she knew, nothing was done to him. He was able to bribe his way out and most likely was continuing to perform the crude abortions on poor innocent girls. And all this happened to Cynthia and the other girls because they slept with men. She vowed again to herself that she would never ever have a relationship with a man. She would not torture her body for their sake.              Her mind went back to Billy. He was still asking to see her even after she had turned him down. Well, let him come. She would be very pleasant to him as long as he kept his feelings of love to himself. She was thankful for the books he was bringing her and gazed at the books arranged carefully on the wall next to her bed. If he continued to bring her books, soon she would have her own small library.             But she would never allow herself to be distracted by any one.  She would give neither her heart nor her body to any man, and that included Billy.