THE WRONG ONE
By Roberta Allen

"It was a boy, definitely a boy," said the boyfriend, still holding the wet rubber basin, "but there was something wrong with it. It didn't look right."

Weakly, the girl said, "How could you tell? It was so small." She raised herself slightly from the hotel room bed to look at him. How did he know how a ten-week old fetus should look? When he pointed It out in the basin, it was just something pinkish, almost transparent, amid the blood and slime and muck.

That morning a nurse had performed the illegal procedure while the boyfriend waited nervously outside the room. When it was over, the nurse had said it would be several hours before she would abort.

Their doctor friend, who had found the nurse against his better judgment, had wanted her to keep the baby, almost as much as her boyfriend did. The doctor, who was married, had even introduced her to his girlfriend and their three-year old son. But nothing could make her change her mind.

Neither the girl nor her boyfriend had a job or a permanent address: they were looking for a place to live though they could barely afford their fleabag hotel.

Lying there she thought about her boyfriend's children: three to date, and all with different girlfriends. How many more were there to come? Wasn't he saying the fetus was ill-formed to punish her: to make her feel she had failed as a woman; to make her feel incapable of having a healthy son? She thought about the fetus. She thought about the boyfriend. Clearly, she had killed the wrong one.

© Copyright 2004 by Roberta Allen
first published in Gargoyle Magazine
for more information, see Roberta Allen's homepage