“You keep it or you don’t. I don’t want you not to. This choice doesn’t have to do with anyone but you.”

Which made the choice for me. Which made it his choice in the end.

The day of my abortion, the sky smelled like smoke. It was cold. Wind carried the sunlight like noise. The glare showed cigarette butts like rusty gadgets on the ground, soaked by rain and dried again. A homeless woman tapped my knee as I walked by. Her lips were chapped and pink like candy. “Hey, lady,” she said, “you wanna help another lady out?”

I gave her a ten-dollar bill. I knew I’d remember this day for the rest of my life, and I wanted to remember being generous.

The Planned Parenthood clinic was in a dingy building off Third. On the sidewalk outside, two old men bundled in sweatpants and knitted sweaters leaned against the brick walls with handmade signs. YOU NEVER MET THE BABY YOU ARE KILLING, said one. The men looked cold and tired. I was ready to snap at them if they said anything to me, but they didn’t. They just stared as if waiting for me to talk to them.

The receptionist was a woman with hair woven in tight rows against her scalp. Her nails were long and painted with acrylics. Each one showed a tiny ocean frosted with sunset. Her thumb held a leaping dolphin. “I’m Luella,” she said. “How can I help you?”

“I’m here for an abortion,” I said.

“A termination?” She handed me a clipboard and a pen with a chewed cap. I wondered about the woman who’d chewed that cap. Had she been nervous? Had her choice been harder than mine, her fetus larger inside of her, its limbs more shapely?

The waiting room was full of anxious teenagers and people without health insurance. I passed a bearded man who looked up and checked me out before he went back to the dirty personals section of his magazine. I sat across from a boy in baggy jeans who listened to his headphones with half-shut eyes. His posture was remarkably upright. The chair next to him held a white purse and a gold quilted jacket—his girlfriend’s things, most likely. She was probably in there right now, getting what I was going to get.

There was a crate full of children’s books by my feet. FREE, said a sign. PLEASE TAKE ONE OR MORE THAN ONE. The boy took off his headphones and picked up a square hardcover called The Big Moose’s Dictionary for the Big, Big Woods and laughed nervously, waving it in my direction. “Pretty funny, right?”

I nodded politely.

“I mean, a kid’s book, here.”