She Had No Choice by Debra Burroughs

few moments.
    “ What a handsome young man you are,” Ysenia said to the second baby boy as she cleaned him up and wrapped him in swaddling, as well. She gave the babies to Sofía, one at a time, to nurse. Sofía was in shock. First her water had broken a month early, and then the surprise of two babies instead of one. With Ysenia’s encouragement, she was eventually able to cradle the first son and began to nurse him.
    “ Are you doing okay, Sofía?” Ysenia asked her. “You look exhausted and you had, well, quite a surprise.” Ysenia started cleaning up the rags and bowl.
    “ I shouldn’t have been surprised. I am a twin, and twins do run in my family.” Her words were soft and she was getting drowsy. “I just had no reason to think…” She grew very quiet. Ysenia turned back to her and noticed Sofía had fallen asleep. So she took the baby out of his mother’s arms and put him down to sleep.
    When Carlos returned home from work about an hour after the delivery, Ysenia met him at the door. Carlos was a little startled by her at first, but he knew it meant the new baby had come.
    “ Sofía went into labor today…” she started to say.
    “ Is it a boy?”  Carlos asked excitedly.
    “ Well, yes and no,” Ysenia answered.
    Surprised by her answer, he didn’t know what to think.
    “ What do you mean – yes and no? What kind of foolishness is that?” Carlos sounded irritated by her response.
    “ What I mean is that you do have another son. In fact, you have two more sons. Twins!”
    His eyes got as big as saucers. His heart started to pound. He was excited and terrified at the same time. He felt weak in the knees and grabbed a chair to sit down and catch his breath for a minute.  Two more mouths to feed now, he thought to himself. Where will the money come from? He was starting to panic, his mind was racing.
    Ysenia watched him for a moment, her brows knitting together in a frown. “Don’t you want to see your sons?”
    He looked at her blankly. Then he ran his hand over his face as if to wake himself up from a dream and remembered that he had new sons – two more sons! He got up from the chair and rushed into the bedroom to see his new sons. “Ay caramba!” was all he could say, with a look of shock and panic on his face.
    They named the boys Arturo and Alfredo. Now they were a family of six. Eva was four by this time and Eduardo was almost two. Sofía had her hands full with all the young ones, taking care of them all by herself. Carlos was no help with the children, he was often at the bar when he was not at work. The burden to feed and raise four children was ever-present. Because of that pressure, the family almost lost little Alfredo.
    Carlos was happy about having two more sons, as most men are, but soon that excitement turned to worry. There were two more children to support, to feed, and to clothe. Work had been leaner than usual, and money was tight, very tight. Over the ensuing months, worry turned to stress, which turned to desperation.
    When the twins were about nine months old, Carlos found out that another farm worker in the camp and his wife couldn’t have children, and his wife badly wanted a baby. To ease some of the financial pressure, Carlos started thinking maybe he could give her one of his baby boys. When he came home from work one night, during supper, he told Sofía about the childless couple. He suggested to her that they give one of the twins to them.
    “ We don’t have enough money to feed all these kids, Sofía. I think we should give one of the twins to Imelda and David to raise.”
    “ What!?”  Sofía was shocked. “Give away one of my babies? No, Carlos. Por favor, no.”   How could a mother give up one of her own children? This was unthinkable to her.
    “ Don’t ask me to do that, Carlos,” she told him, shaking her head, panicking at the thought of it. “I can’t do that. No, I can’t do that.” She resisted the idea. But Carlos pushed hard,