'How I Got Here' by Sarah Freligh

We were driving or rather Ivy was driving and I was calling out the directions the woman had whispered over the phone left at the light, straight for two blocks and warned me not to write down or else a right and another right into a neighborhood of houses crowded together like a herd of dirty cows and here is where Ivy slowed down and went gentle on the accelerator so I could locate number 261, shit brown, rusty shutters, the kind of place we had to go to get unbabied, which is how I’d come to think of it since we didn’t dare say the “A” word out loud anymore. Take care of it, the phone woman had said, something she said she could do for a thousand in small bills that I’d stashed in a fast food bag so I could pretend like I was delivering lunch to the woman who answered my knock, which is when three cop cars, three, screamed around the corner and the woman pointed at me and said, Her, which is how I ended up here, locked up until the baby is born at which point I’m told she’ll be farmed out to a nice home with a mom and a dad, a dog and a yard full of flowers, according to the religious ladies who lecture me daily that I’m to learn from my mistakes which I realize is to never, ever trust anyone when they tell you they’ll take care of it.