The Anti-Abortionist

"Hey, Sara. Look at this one. Isn't it cute?"

Sara dropped the gold beaded evening bag back on the table. Part of the beads that made up an elaborate flower were falling off anyway. She glanced up at her mother. Ma was standing a few feet away on the brown front lawn smiling expectantly as she held up by its tiny sleeves a stretch knit baby sleeper suit, the kind that snapped up the front, in pastel pink dotted on the left chest with a tiny white teddy bear embroidered in on the left chest.

"What do you think, honey? There are all kinds of baby things here." Ma gestured towards a yard sale table behind her piled high with sleepers, blankets and tiny booties and sneakers and little pink dress shoes. "We could get enough here to last until the baby goes to school."

Sara pulled her dark blond brows together in a furious scowl. "Really, Ma," she chided furiously, drawing curious attention of several nearby customers and effectively shutting off her mother's beautifific smile like a switch had been flipped. Sara saw it and was ashamed of berating her mother in front of a yard full of strangers, but she pressed on doggedly. "I thought we already decided. I'm going first thing in the morning to the clinic."

Ma shot out a small pout, carefully folding the tiny baby pjs before placing them in the center of the stack of baby clothes. "You decided," Ma said, the accusation not quite escaping her tone. "If I had my way..."

"You can't have your way, Ma!" Sara snapped, coming up next to Ma so none of the nosy neighbors could gather fodder for the well oiled gossip mill that passed for visiting in this suffocatingly small town. Sara bent her brown head and whispered fiercely while she and Ma pretended an interest in bent cardboard boxes full to bending with cheap costume jewelry and cloudy marbles. "The fetus belongs to me. My body. I decide what happens next!"

Ma pursed her lips while her faded grey eyes took on a an angry sheen, the hue of barn wood aged in decades of sun and rain and wind, assumed a sheen that did more than just suggest disappointment with her only daughter – her only child. "And I suppose the fetus – oh, how I hate that word! – the baby doesn't have any say?"

Sara sighed and turned towards Ma, her lips parting in an argument, but Sara thought better of it and instead dropped the brooch of feathers in imitation pearls and stalked across the slight slop of the front yard towards Ma's old bottle green pinto.

Ma stomped behind, working her considerable girth behind the steering wheel and turned to Sara, the fury and hurt twisting in her expression. "How dare you! How dare you run off when I'm trying to reason with you?"

"You are not trying to reason with me, Ma. You are trying to lecture me. Just like you always have. Just like you did about Johnny."

Ma's brushy salt and pepper eyebrows shot up. "Indeed? And if you had listened closer before you let yourself get mixed up with that Johnny you wouldn't be expecting a baby now. And you wouldn't be thinking of murdering him. Or her."

"Good heavens, Ma! Don't start again with that. I told you this before. Dr, Freemont said the baby – fetus – isn't a human being until twenty two weeks. I'll only be ten weeks when I have the procedure tomorrow morning.

Ma slammed the car door as she slid behind the wheel. Ten weeks, ten years. It makes no difference to me, Sara. Murder is still murder."

"But Dr. Freemont said..."

"Dr. Fremont be hanged!" Ma snapped, her soft voice becoming hard in anger. "Dr. Freemont doesn't know anything. Least of all anything about when a baby – not fetus - a baby starts living."