And it was that thought that led Anna to realize that she simply could not do it. If abortion was so unutterable that they could tell no one, how could she live with a secret like that for the rest of her life? And of course, God would know.
Anna set her coffee cup on the floor and stretched out on the sofa, exhausted from the weight of the decision. The morning light intensified and fell across her stockinged feet. Silvery dust particles danced in the brightness. Finally, in a state that wasn’t quite sleep but wasn’t really waking either, Anna dreamed, or rather, she remembered. Long ago, and hidden far in the secret recesses of her mind, lay a fragile memory. Now it pushed its way into her consciousness.
Many years ago when she and Paul were newly married, Anna had a miscarriage. They had not planned for her to get pregnant. Yet when it happened, they were excited. They would make the best of things. They would welcome this unexpected baby.
And as the days went by, she began to feel there was nothing she could imagine loving more than having Paul’s baby and being a mother. But when she was in her third month, before they’d even told anyone she was pregnant, Anna had begun to bleed. Lightly at first. Nothing to be alarmed about, the doctor said. But then in the middle of the night, a sudden, excruciating pain gripped her. She felt the contractions of birth, unknown to her before this night. And somehow she knew with certainty that she was losing their baby. Paul had held her and tried to comfort her. She was deeply disappointed, already feeling a bond with the little life that grew inside her, already excitedly making plans for this surprise in their lives.
It had been horrifying to realize that her body was expelling her dream, and she was helpless to stop it. Yet there was astonishment and wonder at the tiny, perfectly formed baby that had come forth from her body that night. Tiny fingers and toes outlined beneath the diaphanous sac that encased it. She hadn’t known it would be like this. It was disturbing, and yet she was awestruck. This was a child. In all the weeks of daydreaming about their child-to-be, it had never quite seemed real to her that she was carrying a baby. And now, here was the reality lying on their bed. Paul had seen it too. Trembling, she’d wrapped the tiny form in a cloth and taken it with them to the hospital, as her doctor had instructed. Afterward, she’d wanted so desperately to ask what had been done with the baby’s body. But she didn’t ask.
And she and Paul had never spoken of it again. Oh, they’d talked about the miscarriage. And had told their daughters, when they were older, about the earlier lost pregnancy. But never again had she and Paul spoken to each other, or to anyone else, about that translucent, flawless, tiny body.
Anna sat up on the sofa with a start, fully awake now. No! She could not allow this little intruder to be flushed from her body—no matter how unwelcome he or she might be. With her miscarriage she’d not had a say in the decision. And now that the choice was in her hands to make, she knew she could not play God. It was not this baby’s fault it had been conceived.
Anna thought of her own two daughters. What precious blessings they were. How tiny and perfect they’d been when they were placed in her arms moments after birth. The child she carried now was no less her own than Kara and Kassandra were. This dawning knowledge washed over her, and an icy finger of chill raced down her spine.
No. No. She could not allow her own flesh and blood to be destroyed, no matter the details of the conception. She suddenly knew that with more certainty than she’d ever known anything in her life.
So now she had to think about what it would mean to go through with the pregnancy. It was almost laughable. Her friends were beginning to welcome grandchildren! And maternity clothes? It seemed silly to envision herself ballooning, waddling, wearing the wardrobe of a young mother-to-be. She thought of Kara’s married friend who’d worn such form-fitting tops during her pregnancy that the outline of her navel was clear to all. Anna actually felt her face grow warm at the thought. Even if she wore more conservative clothing, it would be humiliating. Paul would be embarrassed.
Anna went through the day in turmoil, wavering between disbelief and acceptance, one decision and then another. But with the realization that she could not bring herself to end this pregnancy came a tentative, fragile peace.
Paul arrived home early, and Anna could tell, watching him walk into the house, that he’d thought of little else all day. The hunch of his broad shoulders and the dark circles under his eyes testified what his casual greeting tried to deny.
“Hi, babe.” He gave her his usual greeting kiss and a sad smile. “How are you doing? Do you have this figured out yet?”
“I have some thoughts. But I want to hear what you’ve been thinking first.”
Paul put his briefcase on the floor and shrugged off his jacket and hung it on the hook by the door. He slumped onto a stool at the kitchen counter. “Oh, Anna. I don’t know what to think. I have to admit that I’ve given a lot of thought––a lot––to ending the pregnancy. I think it might be acceptable in this case. I mean…it’s not the perfect solution. I know it won’t be as easy as that. I wish there was some other way, but I can’t see it, Anna.”
He rubbed his temples. “I wonder just how risky it would be for you to go through a pregnancy at your age?” Anger crept into his voice. “I won’t lose you over this, Anna. I won’t!”
“You’re not going to lose me.” She felt stronger just speaking the words.
He sighed and put his head in his hands. “There are just too many things to face if we choose any other route. Every time I think about you going through with it, I hit a brick wall. I can’t see it.” He searched her eyes. “Don’t you feel that way, Anna? I don’t see that we have a choice. Don’t you agree that ending the pregnancy is really the only way we can go?”
“No, Paul.” The strength in her tone surprised her. And Paul too, judging by the way he looked at her. “I cannot have an abortion,” she said.
“You sound…so certain. Have you really thought this through? What kind of future would the baby have? What would we tell people? What would we tell the girls? They know about my vasectomy. They would know the baby couldn’t be mine.”
“I think we’d have to be honest.”
As if he hadn’t heard her, he went on. “I don’t know if this child would have a chance in the world of turning out okay. Its father is a rapist… a criminal! People would eventually find out. And how could you ever explain that––to the kid?” His face was flushed, and his voice trembled in a way that frightened her.
She moved toward him, but he held his arms rigid in front of him.
She shrank back as the words tumbled from his lips in a flood, as though he might lose his opportunity to speak them if he didn’t do so quickly. “I don’t know if evil traits are hereditary or not, but, Anna, I’m afraid no one would want to adopt a child conceived in rape. And I’m not sure I could love it. I don’t think I could pretend. That’s asking too much, Anna…too much …” He let out a frayed breath and hung his head, exhausted and obviously overcome with emotion.
A flash of insight penetrated Anna’s mind. She went to him, put a hand on his shoulder, testing his receptiveness to her touch. When he didn’t spurn her, she took his face in her hands and spoke quietly, making her voice firm. “Paul, you don’t think a child born of a horrible, abusive criminal, a child raised by a man who is not his real father has any hope for the future? Go look in the mirror, honey! This is your story!”
It was true. Paul’s father had brutally beaten his mother—literally within an inch of her life—when she was pregnant with Paul. When she’d been released from the hospital after nearly losing the baby, Shirley had fled to the safety of her parents’ home. There, when Paul was just a few months old, she met Albert Marquette. They fell in love, were married as soon as Shirley’s divorce became final, and on Paul’s first birthday, Albert legally adopted him, proudly giving him the Marquette name. Paul had never known anything but unconditional love from his adoptive father. Albert, fifteen years Shirley’s senior, di
ed when Paul was in college, but there was no denying that he was far more a father to Paul than the man whose genes Paul carried. And Paul had the gentle spirit and compassionate ways of the father with whom he shared not a drop of blood.
Paul looked at her, obviously as stunned as she’d been by the revelation. “But it wasn’t all a bed of roses. I went through a hard time of searching. A kid can’t help but wonder about his biological father.”
Anna knew that was true. Shirley had told Paul his history when he was a young teenager. And though he knew she’d told the truth about his birth father, sometimes—especially when he was at odds with Albert—he pretended that his “real” father had been falsely accused or misunderstood. But as he grew to manhood, he knew in his heart that the ugly story was true. He’d come to accept his heritage and to realize that his true legacy had been conferred by Albert Marquette. And he’d loved the man for it.
“There’s something else, Paul.” Trembling, Anna recounted her remembrance of the miscarriage from earlier that day. “I… I hadn’t thought about it for so many years, and you and I… we never really did talk about it. But don’t you remember, Paul? Don’t you remember seeing it on our bed after I miscarried? That was a baby, Paul! It wasn’t a blob of tissue. It was a perfectly formed baby. I held that tiny body in my hands. That’s what we would be destroying if I had an abortion.” Her voice broke, and she fell silent, incredulous all over again at the memory.
Paul stared at Anna, bewildered. He hadn’t thought about her miscarriage for many years, but with her quiet words, the images came vividly to his mind. He ignored the stab of guilt that came with the memory.
But that baby had been wanted, excitedly looked forward to. This was surely different. Yet Anna sounded so convinced—no, convicted was the word. It truly frightened him to hear the certainty in her voice. In all the wild, disconnected thoughts that had swirled through his head since they’d learned the news of Anna’s pregnancy, it had never occurred to him that he might not have any say in their decision. Of course, he would never force his wife to have an abortion against her will. And yet this situation intimately involved him. Affected his life as deeply as it affected hers.
He sighed. “I understand why you might feel this way. Honestly, I do. But I’m afraid your emotions are clouding your judgment.”
She stared at him, as though she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Tears welled in her eyes. “You can’t mean that.”
“Anna, think about it.” Now he was angry. Couldn’t she see that this was an impossible situation? Surely she couldn’t be serious about carrying this pregnancy to term. It was ludicrous! In fact, it was purely selfish for her to consider such a thing.
“I have thought about it, Paul. I have.” Her tone was even, but he heard the hurt in her voice.
He could see they were getting nowhere with this discussion. It would do him no good to argue with her now. She’d let her feelings carry her wisdom away, and he knew his wife well enough to understand that she could not be reasoned with when she was in a highly emotional state.
He slid off the kitchen stool and pulled his jacket from the hook. “We’ll talk about it later,” he said. “This conversation is not getting us anywhere.”
He left her standing at the counter, open mouthed and in tears. The screen door slammed behind him, and he took off at a jog down the driveway. He didn’t look back but ran, faster and faster, trying to outdistance the piercing guilt that dogged him.
Chapter 10
Paul ran to the end of their street and stopped, out of breath. He felt guilty for walking out on Anna in the middle of an argument. He knew she hated that reaction even more than seeing his anger flare. It was something that came up again and again when they talked about their relationship. Running away had always been his first resort to avoid dealing with issues.
But sometimes Anna simply would not listen to reason. Sometimes his leaving cleared the air for both of them, and often, when he came back to her, whatever they had been fighting about seemed silly and juvenile.
An overpowering weariness came over him as he realized that whatever the ultimate outcome, this argument, in retrospect, would never seem petty or juvenile. Their decision—regardless of who won the argument this time—would change their lives forever, one way or another. They were talking literally about life and death.
There. He’d said it. Despite the remarks he had made with such zeal to Anna, in the back of his mind, he knew that even if abortion might be justified in this case, it was still a death sentence for one. He and Anna might be able to eventually get over the trauma of the whole ordeal of the rape, even the trauma of a decision to abort. But unless they could lie convincingly to themselves, Paul knew they would have to accept the truth: if they chose to abort, a human life would be taken as atonement for one evil man’s sin. Would that innocent life be on Paul’s head forever? And even if God did forgive him, would his conscience ever allow him to put the guilt of the deed behind him? He wasn’t sure.
Though Anna truly was his first consideration, in many ways he was being selfish. He had tried to lay the label of selfishness on her, but he knew his accusation was grossly misplaced. He was the one who was fleeing from the inconvenience and the trauma of this situation.
He’d been honest when he told Anna that he could not imagine a baby—another child—at the end of this hazy, uncertain journey. He didn’t want to imagine that. It would be beyond imagining to have Anna go through such a pregnancy in front of their friends, in their neighborhood, in their church. He couldn’t begin to envision how they could explain their situation to their closest friends, let alone curious acquaintances or his associates at Lindell & Bachman.
But he wasn’t thinking only of himself. He truly was concerned about the future of a child born into such circumstances. This would have been hard enough if it was his child. But there was Anna’s health to consider. He didn’t know all the medical ramifications of pregnancy at forty-five, but he’d read enough to know that it held at least some physical risks, apart from the social and emotional ones.
He turned and jogged back toward home, his head swimming with conflicting thoughts. He felt powerless to sort them out, to make any sense of them whatsoever. He couldn’t remember feeling such turmoil since the night he’d discovered the truth about his birth father. Finally, he trudged back up the driveway and lowered himself wearily onto the concrete steps of the back porch.
He put his head in his hands, unable to physically hold it up any longer. “God, I can’t deal with this! Please don’t ask me to go through this. Help me, Lord…help me…help us …” His spirit pled eloquently with the Almighty, but the sounds that came from his lips were unintelligible moans of anguish.
He wasn’t sure how long he sat that way, but the sky was already darkening when he became aware of Anna’s hands on his shoulders. Up and down Fairmont Avenue, streetlights had begun to flicker on, casting patchy shadows over the rows of greening lawns.
“Paul?” Her voice quivered with recently shed tears. Again, he felt guilt gouge him with an almost physical pain. What was wrong with him? She needed him, and he’d run away from home like a petulant child.
Wordless, he pulled her down beside him on the steps, hugging her close. They sat in silence, listening to the sounds of their neighborhood: lawn sprinklers chirring through their cycles, distant traffic, the occasional high-pitched barking of a dog.
Finally he broke the silence. “I’m sorry I ran out on you again, babe.” He squeezed her shoulder and was grateful to read forgiveness in her response. She put her arm tightly around his waist and rested her head on his shoulder.
“I’m ashamed,” he continued. “It’s pretty sad that I’m having a more difficult time dealing with this than you are. I’m jealous of your conviction. I wish I felt so certain that everything would turn out for good. I can’t say that. Not with conviction. On an intellectual level, I know that God has never let us down yet. I do believe His promise that all
things work together for good, but… This is going to require a step of faith I’m not sure I’m capable of taking.”
Anna pulled back to look at him and smiled sadly. “That’s just it, honey. There isn’t a step to take. Doing the right thing now simply means we don’t do anything.” She patted her stomach. “This baby will grow and…be born. Unless we stop it.”
Strangely, he felt the smallest seed of peace plant itself firmly in his heart. Anna was right. The course was already set. This life had already begun. Unless they made a conscious decision to end its life, this child was already a reality.
A thought came to him: God, in His great power, could have reached out His hand and prevented Anna’s rape, and likewise, He could have prevented the resulting pregnancy. Paul didn’t pretend to fathom a loving God’s reasons for allowing such a tragedy, but because it had been allowed to touch their lives, surely God must have an answer and a purpose in it all. A tiny spark of faith flared within him, assuring him that what he had always believed remained true: his life and Anna’s were ultimately in God’s hands—a place of utmost security. He didn’t know yet what the answers to their dilemma were, but he knew they were there to be discovered.
In that moment, a process began. And little by little, as an act of his will, Paul relinquished a small part of his stubborn self-sufficiency and gave it over to his God.
After many minutes, he put his arm around the woman he loved more than his own life. He pulled her head to his shoulder. “I love you, Anna. Please be patient with me.”
The blare of Paul’s alarm woke Anna. She heard him grumbling around the room and gathering clothes from his drawers, then the drone of the shower lulled her back to sleep. The next thing she remembered was his quick goodbye kiss. He was facing a tight deadline and needed to be in the office by six. She burrowed back under the covers without bothering to reset the alarm.
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