Unwanted Child

Word Count 1493

My grandmother told me that she tried everything she could to abort my father when she found out she was pregnant. In 1945, it was considered indecent for good Catholic Italians to get pregnant at the age of forty. It meant she was still having sex with her husband. Besides, she already had two grown children. She contacted the local mid-wife who knew all the old ways of the old country. She fixed potions for her to drink and elixirs to insert. The baby continued to grow.

In desperation, she threw herself down a flight of stairs and, in her words, jumped off the top of the refrigerator. Nine months later, my father was born to a mother who had tried countless times and in countless ways to kill him.