“Nope.”
“You might visit a couple of them. Just look in the door. If you’re living away from your family, a church can be a help.”
“I ain’t living away from my family.”
After a minute the woman said, “We’re a mission church. So I’m supposed to try to bring you to Jesus. But I won’t if you don’t want me to. Try, I mean. Some people think it’s irritating when I do that. I guess I’m not much good at it.”
Lila said, “I wouldn’t mind talking about something else.”
“Sure. That’s fine.” They were quiet for a while. “So you’ve got family in St. Louis?”
“No, I don’t.” She would think that was what Lila meant. I ain’t living away from my family. She was quiet again. Lila could feel her wondering, and she almost said, I was working in a whorehouse because the woman who stole me when I was a child got blood all over my clothes when she came to my room after she killed my father in a knife fight. I’ve got her knife here in my garter. I was meaning to steal a child for myself, but I missed the chance and I couldn’t stand the disappointment, so I got a job cleaning in a hotel. You can’t say dang or go to movies, and look who you got sitting next to you hour after hour. Look who you been offering half of your spam sandwich. She was laughing and the woman glanced at her. So she said, “You can try bringing me to Jesus if you want to. Might pass the time.”
The woman was quiet for a while. The windshield wipers were groaning and the rain was pounding the glass. She said, “I’d better not. I’d better be trying to see the road.” She said, “You’ve got to come to it in the right frame of mind. Otherwise it’s just talking for the sake of talk. Passing the time. I might be making excuses here. Lord forgive me if I am. But you strike me as a woman with a lot of bitterness in her soul. I don’t mean any offense. I might just make things worse.”
Lila said, “I doubt you could do that.” She was beginning to wonder how well the woman knew where the road was. She would steer away from the shoulder when they started hearing gravel.
“I’m a stenographer.” Her voice was high with nerves. “I learned shorthand in night school. I’m pretty good at it — I’m not good at much else.”
“Well, you’re lucky you got the one thing.” She had no idea what that thing was.
“My mama made me finish high school. I was so mad at her about that. Now I guess I’m glad she did. I wanted to quit and get married. He was five years older. She said, If he loves you he’ll wait. He didn’t. Wait. So I guess he didn’t love me. He went into the army and came back with some girl he met in England. I was upset at the time. Cried my fool head off. Are you married?”
“Nope.” I’m good at chopping weeds. I can change sheets well enough. I was bad at whoring. Lila didn’t say anything, but she almost did. Why would she do that? The woman didn’t mean any harm. She wasn’t going to put her out beside the road for anything she said. If she hitched up her skirt to show her the knife, that might be different. She thought, I’m crazy, and laughed. She thought, I’ve got to stay away from people.
The woman was saying, “I always thought I’d have kids. A dozen of them. And now look at me. My mom said once the war was over and the boys came home I’d find somebody. She’s still telling me I’ll find somebody. I’m beginning to have my doubts.”
Lila said, “I just wanted the one child. I didn’t figure on—” and then she stopped herself. There she was anyway, rubbing her eyes. The woman glanced at her and said, “Well, God bless!”
It was just being out in that great, sweet nowhere that was making her remember. Sometimes they saw a light, mostly it was just darkness and rain. But she didn’t have to see it to know. She could smell it. The window wouldn’t roll up right to the top, so night air came whistling in, a little rain with it, but how could she mind. The woman was helping her regret the child she never had. Lila had thought, That would be the same child who wasn’t the reason my dress was all bloody, who didn’t get me sent off to St. Louis with a slip of paper in my pocket, who wouldn’t be carried out into the secret night under my coat, who wouldn’t wake up to daylight and the birds singing.
Well, here she was in the Reverend’s quiet house, as calm and safe as the good old man could make her. She hugged her belly. “I been waiting on you, child,” she said. “You be good to your poor mama this time. No slipping away on me. Don’t you go slipping away.”
At the bus station in St. Louis that little woman had pulled over and rolled down her window and asked her where she was going, and that was one good thing. Then she wasn’t at the service station at Indianola an hour or so when a fellow offered her a ride in his pickup truck, a shy fellow with rough skin and a bad cough, wanting company. Probably his girl had left him and he wanted just anybody beside him, because he didn’t talk at all.
