I only knew that I didn’t want mi tía Isabela involved with any other decision or event in my life.
“She will make me have an abortion,” I told him.
“You want to have a baby?”
I didn’t answer, but I could see the same future he saw—another young, unmarried woman, a Mexican woman, returning to a life inches above poverty, to a world where she would not have respect or any man eager to take her as his wife and be a father to her child.
But I would do it, I thought, perhaps with foolish determination. I would cross that border again.
Dr. Jensen shook his head. “Okay, let’s just stay calm,” he repeated. “Everything will be fine.”
He left me sitting there, stunned.
The tears that had started and stopped started again.
I felt them moving down my cheeks, but I didn’t wipe them away.
They dropped onto the backs of my hands like drops of salty rain, like drops of the sea upon which Adan and I had conceived the child forming inside me.
What was the greater sin?
Letting a baby come into this world under these circumstances?
Or sending the baby back to the peacefulness of the third death, forgotten before he or she could be remembered?
I sat there waiting for the answer.
20
Adan’s Gift
“Now you’ve gone and done it, you absolute fool!” mi tía Isabela practically spat at me the moment she entered my room. She hadn’t been back since that first day. “Why did you have unprotected sex? Sophia told me she gave you protection the night before you went on the boat. Have you no brains at all? Are all you Mexican girls just stupid?”
“You’re a Mexican girl,” I said defiantly.
Ironically, one of the consequences of her putting me here was to give me a sense of security. She couldn’t reach me, torment me. She had given up her control.
“That is an honor I’m glad to refuse,” she said, and flopped into the chair. For a long moment, we simply stared at each other. Then she smiled. “I am not going to arrange for an abortion for you, Delia. As they say, you’ve made your bed. Now you sleep in it. The harder your life becomes, the more you’ll appreciate what I offered you. You could have had a life like mine.”
“No, gracias, Tía Isabela. Your life is an empty promise. If you didn’t love yourself, you’d have no one to love you.”
Her eyes nearly exploded. “You insolent…this is too much. You don’t need any more psychiatric treatment. Stupidity is not a mental illness. I’m going to end your stay here. You can go right back to Mexico now instead of later. Arrangements will be made immediately. And you’ll leave with exactly what you came with and no more.”
“No,” I said.
“No?”
“I can’t leave with what I came with, Tía Isabela. I came with hope and love, with prayer that somehow we would be a family.”
She nodded. “I wouldn’t expect you to accept any blame for any of this. Not that I care, but I’m sure you’ll go back telling anyone who will listen that it was all my fault.”
“No. I don’t think I’ll mention your name,” I said.
Again, her face tightened, and her lips stretched so that two pale white spots of rage formed in the corners. “I can tell you now, don’t bother ever to write to me to ask for any help.”
“And you, mi tía, don’t write to me to ask for any help, either.”
This brought a smile and a laugh to her face. “You are a little crazy after all,” she said. “Now I don’t feel so bad about sending you here.”