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| Jane |
Thanksgiving, 1966. I am in a small room in a residential hotel in San Francisco's tenderloin district, eating takeout turkey and the fixin's with my neighbor, Victor. I am in self-imposed exile, thousands of miles from relatives and friends. I'm not paying attention to the television Victor has turned on, full of programs designed to get viewers in the holiday spirit. I gave birth to my first daughter Rebecca a week earlier and left the hospital a few days without her a few days ago. Several weeks later I would sign a document giving up the right to be her mother.
My mind is racing. Why had my life gone so horribly wrong? How did it happen that at age 24 I had given birth to a baby, sired by a man who was not committed to me. Should I keep her? How would I care for her? Would she be better off if I kept her? "I can think this through," I think, but I can't.
