Issue 22 - 1992

Coe Review • Issue 22
will want it more than all
of us put together
(which I find out later is untrue:
the next day her son calls offering
to sell my baby for me
as if he’s doing me a favor
but I know he just needs the money)
and the third mother
is really the first mother
from whose womb I came
but she was young too and
so the story goes
she tells me one day
our first meeting in person
my father was in the service but
they all were then
it was Vietnam and he
was handsome she produces a photo
she says he drank a lot
still he wanted to marry her
so he could beat her
probably molest me when
I was too young to speak
he even raped her
after you were born she says
and then wrote to say
he and his new wife would take you
the next day she gave me away
she tells it with tears
but I am grateful and tell her
I went to Europe twice
private education for life
and no one beat me
so now we are friends
one day in a drunken splurge
she writes begging me
please keep your baby
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