Free Azrael by William L. Deandrea

the Hudson Group, they’d told her it was a racist organization. They were in favor of Israel. They were for Welfare cuts. Just read their editorials.
    Tina thought about it. She decided at last that she didn’t give a damn about Israel, one way or the other, and since when had the Arabs who went around blowing things up been black people, anyway? She also decided that if people had jobs, they wouldn’t need Welfare.
    So she told the Hudson Group she and her baby would be there as soon as they could. When they arrived in Kirkester, Tina found a clean town, quiet, fresh air. A nice place to live. At the job, she found some people to be friends with. Mostly, they were also graduates of the program, but there were a few local girls, too. White girls. They had a program up here, too, which was so far off the beaten track that even the poor people were white. Tina had seen stories on the TV news about poor white people, but she had never really believed in them.
    There was day care for the babies, with a trained nurse there at all times. Since the place was running twenty-four hours a day, what with one publication and another, there was night care, too, and Tina was allowed—encouraged, even—to leave the kid there to go to night school and get her diploma.
    She used to go around pinching herself, feeling maybe guilty over doing her best for years to screw up her life, then falling into something like this.
    Then the bill came due, and little Clara (that was Grandma’s name), a good and beautiful child, had just ... died.
    After Tina had gotten out of the hospital, where they’d sent her for “hysteria”—they’d be hysterical, too, they went in to check on their baby and found the poor little thing dead—she’d headed for the nearest church.
    Looking, she thought, for an explanation. If there had been sin involved, it had been Tina’s own. Why take an innocent baby?
    Mr. Nelson had looked up at her apologetically. He had sandy hair that fell across his forehead, and only some creases around his eyes kept him from looking exactly like a farm boy caught sneaking a fingerful of chocolate icing from the cake.
    “I can tell you, but you’ll get angry.”
    “Mr. Nelson—”
    “You can call me Will, if you like.”
    Tina didn’t think she could be shocked, but the idea of calling a preacher, a white preacher, by his first name came close.
    “Mr. Nelson,” she said again, “I already am angry.”
    So he told her. “The world,” he said, “is the place where we prepare for the next world. If we do His will, follow His plan for us, when our work is finished, He calls us home.”
    “You’re right,” Tina said.
    Mr. Nelson looked surprised.
    “It is making me angry. That kind of talk might be all right if I’d lost somebody who’d lived a life. My baby’s work wasn’t done, for the Lord or anybody else. She didn’t even get the chance to start. ”
    “Didn’t she?” Mr. Nelson had asked.
    “Are you crazy?”
    “Think of what you’ve already told me. You were wild, drinking, sleeping around. You talked about sins, you know, those are the worst kind, because they waste God’s gift of life. Your own life. But what happened when you found you were going to have the child? You didn’t destroy it. You didn’t abandon it. You made up your mind to straighten out your life so your child would have every chance. And you did. You’ve got a new life. You’re a respectable person with a future. And you’re not going back, are you?
    “But I don’t have my baby. ”
    “No, you don’t. And don’t let me or anybody tell you not to grieve. But believe me, Clara’s life, short as it was, was not wasted. As I said before, her work was done.”
    Tina was bitter. “You still didn’t tell me what her work was.”
    “To save you.”
    She looked at him. “I was crazy to come here.”
    “I told you it would make you angry. There’s just one more thing I want to say.”
    “Might as well.”
    “There is a