Reborn

15

Carol struggled desperately with the stone-faced women who were dragging her toward the kitchen, but they were as determined to hold her as she was to get free, and there were four of them.

"Please, Aunt Grace!" she cried, sobbing in her helplessness. "Please! Don't do this to me!"

Grace wouldn't look at her. She walked ahead, carrying a Gristede's grocery bag. Carol could see swollen purple marks on her neck. Her voice when she spoke sounded hoarse and wheezy.

"It's God's will."

"But it's my baby! Mine and Jim's! It's all I have left of him! Please don't take that from me!"

"God's will," Grace said. "Not mine."

As they entered the kitchen, Grace glanced at the women holding Carol and pointed to the rectangular, paw-footed kitchen table.

"Put her there."

Carol screamed and struggled more violently than ever. For a moment she twisted one hand free and flailed at the women, but they soon trapped it again and subdued her. She used up what little of her strength remained to twist and writhe in their grasp as they each took a limb and lifted her into the air.

Loss of contact with the floor loosed the floodgates of panic and she unashamedly wailed out her fear. She called out to God to save her, to come and tell these maniacs that they weren't doing His will, to strike them dead on the spot for doing this to her.

The women ignored her. They might as well have been deaf. And Grace—Grace stood at the sink, washing her hands and working at something on the counter that was hidden by her bulk.

Then Carol felt the tabletop against her back. She lay pinned and helpless while Grace finished at the counter. When Grace turned, her face was a mask, eyes blood-shot, her skin still mottled from the near strangulation. She was holding a wad of gauze in one of her gloved hands.

"Oh, please, Aunt Grace! Please!"

Her aunt pressed the gauze over her mouth and nose. It was wet and freezing cold, and the cloyingly sweet smell made her want to gag. The fumes stung her throat. Carol struggled but couldn't shake free for a clean breath.

Gradually, despite her fiercest efforts, a tingling, seductive lethargy crept up her limbs and claimed her.