Part Five
* * *

It's hard for me to remember the next few hours, but I remember he was there. And there was pain, and a tremendous weight was moving downward in me, and through me, and out of me. Somehow we did it.

He was there for this. He was the one who cleaned up the mewing, crying thing that was my daughter, who wrapped her in the blanket I had brought, who held it. I held it too, as I lay there.

A baby. A beautiful, perfect baby.

I looked up at him.

"I checked," he said softly. "All you have to do is take it to the hospital and leave it with them. No questions."

I began to weep. There, beside me, was my baby.

Oh, I love you. I love you so much.

"I can't," I said.

Simon regarded me. His eyes were wet with tears.

"You'll keep her?" he asked.

A bottle in one hand, a glass in the other. Bruises on my mother's face.

Welfare whore.

I sobbed. Simon, so close, went blurry through my tears. For an instant, a perfect instant, I imagined him, and I, and my baby, together. For that instant I saw us, a family, a mother and a father for my baby, loving it, caring for it, watching it grow. A nice house and a nice neighborhood and no bottles and no bruises.

My daughter made a sound, squirmed a bit in my arms.

You deserve this, I thought. You deserve to have parents who love you, who can care for you. You deserve a life free of screaming and anger and drinking and hate and bruises.

I love you.

But I cannot give this life to you.

The words hurt as they emerged.

"I can't."

I blinked back the tears, there in the dark, a nearby streetlamp our only light. And I saw that Simon was crying as I did, that there was the pain of this in him too. For a long time we wept, and I held my baby, close, because I knew it would be the last time.

I loved her too much to be selfish.

#

In time, the tears stopped coming. I felt a little better now, felt that I could stand. Simon watched me closely, and then he said the words that I could not.

"I'll take her to the hospital, if you want."