The Fourth Child by Jessica Winter (best classic novels TXT) 📕

Main Street, ducking under the tape, Jane just behind her but then a cop body-checked her, a big mitt grabbing her shoulder.

“Is this a joke?” Jane asked, one hand on the asphalt, the other pointing over the barricades. “That’s my kid who just ranpast you!”

The cop let go, unbothered, concealed behind his sunglasses. He folded his arms and reassumed his wide-legged stance in frontof the barricades, elbow to elbow with his colleagues, like Jane held no interest for him, and never had. They were a tighteroperation over here on the north side of Main Street, wearing more equipment, not inclined to chitchat.

“Whose side are you on?” one probort shouted at Jane.

“Just let her get her kid,” another probort said.

Two cops down the line nodded at Jane. She slipped between them and under the yellow tape and began pushing into the crowd.“Mirela, where are you? Mirela, come to Mommy!”

“You’re desperate, you lost! You’re desperate, you lost!” the proborts were chanting. Their side was younger. Not all of themwere sensibly dressed for the gray weather. Band T-shirts over flannel. One read fudge-packin’ crack-smokin’ satan-worshippin’ motherfucker. Their side had more women, but not mothers, Jane thought—just college students and lesbians, not women like her. There werewomen kissing each other on the mouth—in greeting, nothing more, but still. She shouldered and elbowed past and through theirbodies in a shush-shush rhythm of polyester coat sleeves and calling out her child’s name. They would know who she was and that she didn’t belongamong them. Jane came against a tall tomato-red coat, her nose pressed against a shush-shushing armpit and a Columbia brand insignia, and she felt the obscure pleasure again, the longing to squeeze her eyes shut and wrap her arms around this body in this coat,push her head inside it, unbutton the buttons on the shirt underneath it, and breathe in the skin inside.

“Mirela!” she called.

“Someone help this gal find her child!”

“She’s here—we’ve got her,” a woman’s voice called out. Jane moved toward the sound.

A pocket had opened in the crowd, a protective circle around Mirela. She turned and turned, smiling and waving at each facewatching her, the rosie in the ring.

“Mirela, thank God . . .” Jane said, reaching for the girl’s arm, but Mirela eluded her and ran over to Bridie, pulling atBridie’s hand, laughing, jumping up and down.

“Aren’t you a charmer!” Bridie said to Mirela.

“Our bodies, our lives, our right to decide!” they were chanting.

“What’s your name, sweetheart?” Bridie asked.

“Babby koowa!” Mirela replied readily.

Bridie’s colleagues tittered. Even here, Jane and Mirela found themselves putting on a show.

Bridie’s eyes fell on Jane. “Ah, Jane, you’ve made it back to us. Hope you had a safe journey. This cutie pie is yours, Ipresume?”

Jane nodded and swallowed. She had her speech prepared. “My name is Jane, and this is my daughter Mirela,” she said over theclamor. “She got a hard start. The first few years of her life were hell. But she had a right to be born, and I’m so blessedand humbled by God to—”

It had felt so right in her head lying in bed last night, and in the shower long before dawn this morning. When she was stillin the shower and the proborts were already here.

“Hey, lady,” a white woman in dreadlocks on Jane’s right called out, “I spoke with God today, and you know what? She’s pro-choice! Andshe told me that my body is mine alone!”

“—I’m so blessed to be given the chance to show her a good life—”

“Ho-ho, hey-hey,” three college-aged protesters on Jane’s left sang in unison, “Operation Failure, go away.”

“I’m not from out of town—”

Someone had given Mirela a glazed doughnut, and she was trying to stuff it into her pocket, backward on her hip.

“I’m not with Operation Rescue,” Jane said. “I live here. I’m from Buffalo.”

They could hear a cop on the other side of the tape, somewhere in the no-man’s-land between the opposing sides, maybe smackin the middle of Main Street. He was trying to give orders over the feedback of a bullhorn. Everyone gasped and covered theirears and Mirela laughed and spun. The cop started yelling. “Everyone has to back up!” he bayed. “Everyone who is not an officerof the law or an identified escort, back up, back up, back up!” She hoped Mirela’s disappearance had caused some kind of diversion,and now the street belonged to their friends.

Jill came up behind Bridie, sidled around in front of her. “Out!” She was pointing at Jane. “Get her out of here!”

“Jane, unless you’ve had some radical change of heart, I think it may be time—” Bridie’s voice was caustic.

“Your kid was trying to tell you something, coming over to our side,” said a young bearded man in a poncho.

“Maybe she was,” Jane said, fixing him with her best earnest gaze. “Scripture tells us always to listen and consider whatour children have to say. Scripture says—”

“Yeah, time’s up, lady. You got what you came here for,” said White Dreadlocks.

“Scripture says, ‘But Mary treasured up all these things, and pondered them in her heart.’ I try to do the same,” Jane said.

Poncho Guy nodded. “Uh-huh. She’s adopted? That girl?”

“Where is she from?” asked White Dreadlocks.

The bullhorn was screeching again, and Mirela laughed at the beauty of the painful sound. Poncho Guy and White Dreadlocksgrimaced and crumpled inside the feedback, and Jane saw her chance to lead Mirela back to their group. They pushed and pulledthrough the crush back to Main Street.

“Racist, sexist, anti-gay, born-again bigots, go away!”

“We don’t want any of your sidewalk counseling! You need your own counseling!”

The pro-life protesters had covered Main Street on their hands and knees. Their bodies were not their own. These were the bodies of vulnerable children, barely able to crawl. Jane watched Phil as he knelt straight down in a puddle—he could have easily avoided it. He was acting out a child’s clumsiness, or indulging his own thirst for martyrdom. “Hold the line!” Phil was shouting from the puddle. “Hold the line! Link your arms and link your feet! Crawl toward the