She sneaks over, an 85-year old kid with a secret. “I had an abortion,” she whispers. I don’t believe it. In the 1940s? How? “You can always do it on a college campus,” she says. Maybe she’s confusing her late-stage miscarriage, a boy, when the doctors eventually opted to save her. Fifty-five years later, my Ivy League mother is muddled. I’m holding the soap she just tried to eat. “You don’t understand! You could have had a brother!” she's shouting. But in her troubled state, she’s not doing the math. If the boy had lived, she wouldn’t have had me.
Lee Reilly writes about care, women, and family (oftentimes her own). The author of two nonfiction books, she hosts Shannaghe, a residency, in Belfast, Maine. Facebook: @reillytide Instagram: For Lee @leereilly.writer For Shannaghe @shannaghe.maine