Free Imperative Fate by Paige Johnson

on the cold cobblestone before she could cough on the ashes.
    No second thoughts, no hesitance. He’d face rejection no more; he’d be celibate by circumstance no longer. With his stocky build and boorish strength, he easily crushed her out of sound, pinned her in just the position he desired.
    By 3 in the morning, a new slit up the leg of her cranberry dress and cold moisture spangling her skin, Mama walked home, murmuring comforting sayings, groggy, flummoxed, and on uneven footing.
    Rudy disappeared like an ashen fog.
    Despite the throb and stink marring her body, she’d not acknowledge the attack until days later; Daddy made her face it.
    Daddy never cared for what family is supposed to do; he cared for doing what is right.
    He was all set to turn his brother into the cops, but Mama threatened to leave him if he did. “It’s not worth all the trouble; I’d been drinking, I barely remember anyway,” she said through clenched teeth. “I don’t want to have to.”
    But then, of course, there was the complication of me; I was growing inside her, a culmination of opposite hatred, missed potential, and tarnished fate. I was a fast-track to finding more faults in her and Daddy’s relationship: Daddy was a fastidious Conservative. She was a bleeding-heart Liberal. Daddy was a Southern artifact. She was a New England yuppie. Daddy wanted to raise a family with traditional values somewhere in his home state of Texas. She wanted nothing to do with that “bourgeois” kind of living.
    Resentment would slowly bleed through the cracks.
    She’d remember all of this every time she’d look at me.
    She knew that; she opted to get rid of me before I was fully formed and she’d have to admit I’m as human as her, regardless of what culture fabricates.
    Twice as furious as when he’d found out she wanted to protect Rudy, Daddy stuttered: “An a— A-Abor—” He couldn’t so much as say it straight through. “You won’t even admit what that fiend did to you, convict or testify against him, but you’ll take it out on the child?! Carol, I’m sorry, but—”
    “It’s too late. I’ve already scheduled it,” Mama insisted with cinched brows. “I don’t need this, this other pest, this other parasite. I can be done with it before it starts.” (Funny, how her tone never changed as I grew into a bigger “clump of cells.”)
    Grimacing, Daddy wiped the sweat from his forehead and refused to hold his tongue. “You’re running away from the wrong problem, Carol. You’re going to be playing into Rudy’s hand, making more regrets, self-inflicted ones. I won’t let you do this. If the child’s Rudy’s, the child’s just as much mine. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Calm down. Let’s take a step back. Let’s take this heartbreak and let the other heart beat. This is just a progression of how we’d end up, right? Married with children. The child can still have blond hair and green eyes, be sound of mind. We’ll make this work. Don’t act on misplaced revenge.”
    Daddy saved my life before I even knew him.
    He never totally convinced Mama of my need or place in this world, but his trying eyes were enough to keep her home on the scheduled date.
    Daddy gave up drinking and Mama gave up her job. They moved to Texas and eloped, never muttering the means of me and staying far from family to keep it a secret sore. Their history nearly eluded me, in fact, but Mama had become grossly embittered after 16 years of silence, 16 years of me. She was done with my trouble-making and attention-seeking attitude without Daddy there to placate me, off “wheeling and dealing” as a Senate leader.
    She waited until he was home to reiterate my “worthless founding” with more pernicious zeal, challenging him to look me in the eye and “play Daddy” once again.
    Naturally, I was shaken, but everything just reinforced my admiration for Daddy and amplified my ire for Mama. Daddy was right; her choice was always to be