The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [200]
"What!"
"Well, it waren’t no baby, but it mighta been, ifn you’d held on to it."
I gaped.
"You mean to tell me you didn’t know you was in dat condition? I sweah ta mercy, you is a strange one. Did you think you is a man, really? I ain’ nevah seen nobody lak you. You seem ta drop outta de sky, no horse nor mule nor bag nor nothin’, dressed up lak a man on de lawn out theah, and den we got so much blood, and you was senseless to boot. Well, it war the bigges’ thing to happen heahabouts in a considerable time!"
I said, "I knew, but I forgot about it."
"I ain’ nevah heard of that befoah."
"Some men shot my husband." I thought that should be explanation enough. I lay down again. The small room was hardly so pleasant, the bed hardly so comfortable. I wasn’t disconsolate just yet, only still wondering, only still taking it in, but I saw despair just ahead, and myself starting to drop toward it. I dosed my eyes against the sunlight and heard Lorna leave the room.
Well, I had suspected my condition. I had just begun to wonder about it before Thomas was murdered, but hadn’t yet mentioned it to him, and then it had seemed beyond my strength to utter a word about it even to Louisa. And then, after I got to Kansas City and became Lyman Arquette, my condition got to be that much more of a secret, even to myself Lyman couldn’t be said to be aware of it, and even Lydia was focused completely on Thomas’s killers. Who was harboring the child-to-be? And it was also true in K.T. that women didn’t’ put too much stock in a child, even a born baby, until it showed its powers of survival. That might not be until the child was one or even two years old. Louisa, with her knitting and naming and announcing, was uniquely sanguine compared to others I’d seen, almost all of whom had buried some. Most women, and I was among the majority, hardly dared let themselves hope for a joyful outcome, much less count on it as Louisa seemed to do.
Even so, I put a pillow over my face to block out the sun, which was filling both windows and blinding me. I was a blank.
Sometime later, Helen came in. By now I was lying quietly on my back, my arms at my sides. I was looking up at the ceiling. I felt closer to being dead than I ever had in my life. Helen looked far away, prettily dressed in a pink wrapper with roses stitched around the collar. She carried a tray with a plate of toast and a cup of tea on it. She looked at me expectantly but said only, "Good morning, Louisa! How did you sleep? It wasn’t such a hot night, was it?"
Louisa! Oh, yes.
She set the tray beside me on the bed.
Sitting down in the chair closest to me, she looked at me kindly for a moment and then said, "Oh, my dear! Lorna told you what happened, didn’t she? I knew she would. She always blurts everything out. You can’t imagine the sort of trouble she gets into with Papa because of it. Last year he got so angry he sent her to my sister. Well! That went wrong, let me tell you...." She paused, then her voice dropped. "Oh, mercy! I do think that if what happened to you were to happen to me, well, I would just die! When I get married, I want the little ones to come, just one after another. I love little ones. But Lorna says what happened to you happens all the time, and she thinks it’s a blessing, really, but it’s hard to see it for that, when..."
It was then that I realized I had lost everything. Something else might have happened: Samson and Chaney might have taken another road, and Thomas and I might have continued to our claim, put Jeremiah away for the night, gone to our little bed. I might have told him of my suspicions. It was August. Our crop would be ripening. Frank would certainly have turned