A woman is breathing heavily in agony, digging her short, brittle nails into the kitchen carpet. Her husband, fast asleep two rooms over, is unsuspecting of his wife’s biting her lip until blood runs down her chin and collects on the silken wool beneath her. She will scrub the floor later. Bleach will suck up the remains of her late night mishap as she stains it again with salty tears shed over a life she would never have. When the child comes, it slides gracefully onto a bed of towels and before it can take its first breath, before it can ever open its eyes to take a glimpse of the wonders of the world, she covers its mouth and nose with her palm, delicately, determinedly, until its tiny fists unclench and the world collapses around her. Around both of them but only she will live to cry herself to sleep, muffle screams in her pillow and yet fail to regret it.

Women can’t be handymen, the very term excludes them from the craft. They can’t carry on names and businesses. They get raped on the street and beaten by their husbands on Egyptian cotton sheets. It doesn’t matter that her husband doesn’t mind. That he would have loved a daughter and her for giving him one. She is the one making this call.

One child, one live child, is all you get. And hers is going to be a son. When the morning comes, she will wrap it in a soft pink blanket, one she was given when she was only a child herself, and place it next to him. She will tell him it has never taken a breath in its life and it will have been the truth. She will say that she didn’t want to wake him during the night. The nurses at the hospital will know but refrain from asking questions.

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Leonie Milde is an English major from Frankfurt, Germany, working as an editor and writer for militaryingermany.com. One of his poems has been published in Napizum magazine.

Photo: Ryan Graybill