She indicated, with the chapped brown hand of nails bitten to the quick, the obstinate curve prodtruding through her college sweatshirt that bore the logo of the school she had just been accepted to. She pulled the fabric up, revealing a round firm mass of foreign flesh already lined with silver stretch marks; it bore, thought Sarah, a stunning resemblance to a basketball.
"Look!" repeated Mary, and then she was in tears. "It's almost three months. I know I still can, but it's like I already chose the other way, you know? And last night I showed Alex and..." Here, her voice became a high-pitched squeal, and, combined with the crying-mucous in her throat, it reminded Sarah of that time her father found her fugitive hamster on the roof dying in a rain gutter. She grasped Mary's hand without thinking.
"And?"
"Nothing. He didn't care."
"He wouldn't give you the money?"
"Oh, he gave me the fucking money." She suddenly sounded very far away. It was awhile before either of them spoke, and when Mary once more broke the silence, it was like an alarm clock to Sarah.
"You want a bucket or what?"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Her father was sealing envelopes at the kitchen table when she got home, the newfangled sort that you don't have to lick.
"So how many babies did you save today?"
Her father continued his work as before, no response. Sarah went to the sink for a glass of water. She had shared a deathly sulky dinner of fried chicken with Mary and was now desperately thirsty--for water, for conflict, for truth. A desperate flame licked her insides like a devil's pitchfork.
"Why do you care so much?"
"I care about protecting human life."
"But it has nothing to do with you."
"Nothing to do with me?"
And suddenly her father was no longer the meek servant licking envelopes, but an angry, red-faced prophet. Sarah felt the bubble rising in her belly again, rising and rising, until it finally reached her heart and burst. And then she was drowning under his words. His screams.
"I don't have a right to have an opinion about murder? In my own country? In my own neighborhood? How about my own house? Don't you have to do with me? What if you got pregnant? What if you killed your baby?"
Sarah had shrunk to the floor, hugging her knees to her chest. Crying.
"Oh god."
And then he was on the floor with her. "There, there," he said. "There, there."
