“I don’t feel like it, Jettie.”
“I know you don’t. That’s why you’re gonna do it.” Jettie turned and took
both of Olivia’s hands in hers. “Look, once you get over feeling sorry for
yourself – which I know you got every right to be doing – you got to figure out
how to go on living. I think a nice walk in the sun would be a good start. That’s
how I do my best thinking. Way out here you don’t even have to wear that
damned shroud.”
Olivia started crying and Jettie put her arms around her. “There, there. At
least now you know.”
“What am I going to do, Jettie?”
“What do you want to do?”
“Want? There’s nothing for me to want to do.” Olivia sat up straight and blew
her nose into the handkerchief Jettie handed her.
“In this life there’s always a price to pay for whatever you do. You got to lay
out all your choices and pick the one that looks the least bad to you.”
“That’s what my father always used to say.”
“You can have the baby in one of them places and give it away.” Jettie raised
one hand and started bending back its fingers with the other. “You can –”
“Not now. Please.” Olivia had no patience for this conversation. Without
knowing that Mourning might be the father, Jettie had no advice to give.
“If I were younger, I’d ask you to let me raise it. But then I’m not younger.”
Jettie sounded sad.
Olivia raised her eyes, realizing that to someone like Jettie this predicament
might not seem so awful.
“Would you really have had a baby? All by yourself?”
“Well, anyone would prefer having a husband. Even a useless one would at
least keep you respectable. Certainly is easier on a child. But of course I would
have wanted a baby. Why wouldn’t I? Imagine how different my life would be, if
I had a child to care for. Might even be some grandbabies by now.”
“But the way people would talk about you …”
“What they gonna say what’s worse than what they already do? That’s the
thing about respectability – you can only lose it once. When it’s gone, it’s gone.
Long as you don’t kill no one, ain’t much more they can do to you. Anyway, I
coulda gone off somewhere. Out to Michigan. Claimed to be a grieving widow.
Who would have known the difference?”
She handed Olivia another clean handkerchief, seeming to have an endless
supply of them in her pocket. Jetty gazed out at the fields surrounding them and
then looked back at Olivia.
“I tell you, Olivia, if you decide to have that baby and give it away, I just might ask you to give it to me. You might think it wouldn’t be fair to the baby,
me being old and alone and in my social situation, but I’ve got money put away.
