by Marion de Booy Wentzien

She thinks a lot–no longer about making chocolate chip cookies or homemade applesauce before the baby wakes. If she knew how to sew or stitch, she’d make a quilt in black and shocking pink. In white, with a thicker thread, she’d embroider, “No decisions until you are thirty.” There might be tiny specks of blood here and there on the satin binding. So what? She’d curl up with it every night to watch TV.

She realizes that the decisions she made at seventeen put stakes in her life. When she closes her eyes, it’s almost as if she can see the entire outline of her body, nailed to the peeling orange and yellow linoleum of the kitchen floor. Dusty footprints cover her head and breasts.

Mostly she thinks of her son, now six, who has gone to live with his dad—and the new wife. Has he brushed his teeth, has he said his prayers? Does he miss her?

Marion de Booy Wentzien has twice been a recipient of the PEN Syndicated Fiction Award and has won the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s New Letters Literary Award. The Chicago Humanities for the Arts recently presented one of her stories in their Stories on Stage program. Her work has appeared in Seventeen Magazine, The San Francisco Chronicle, Scholastic Books, Story Magazine, The Sonora Review, Prime Number, The Quotable, The Stone Hobo and other literary journals.