ATD: unanswered questons

[bandwraith at aol.com]

"Still, there's lots of room to wiggle around in in that sentence."

I think she's carrying. The two sentences before:

     Once she had thought had chosen, together,
     to resist all penance at the hands of others. To
     reserve to themselves alone what lay ahead, the
     dark exceptional fate. Instead...

say, to me, that she will no longer have the choice of resisting
"all penance." "Instead," because she is now alone, and,
ironically as hell, pregnant, she's going to have to accept
penance from some quarter- which might, given her
nature, be a worse punishment than just being alone.