In the summer, he always greeted me with some such pious announcement. He would remind me that my father was in a state of mortal sin because he had not been to confession or Mass for seven or eight years, and he would ask me if I did not long to be baptized. He himself, with his eight children, received the Blessed Sacrament every morning at the six o’clock service and on Sundays entertained the priest, Father Mulcahy, at breakfast after the eleven o’clock Mass. Once he had come to my father’s shop, beseeching him to deliver himself up to the mercy of God. His big brown eyes had been full of tears. But my father had only confounded him by saying, “I know my own mind. I am no boy.”

I said nothing in reply. He released me, lowered his head, and dangling his hands between his outspread knees, murmured, “Always remember, Señorita, that you and your poor father are in my prayers.”

“Thank you, Mr. Gonzales,” I said and slipped over on the step. “I’ve got to go to school now.”

“Yes!” he cried, slapping his knee. “And I to work must go. I’m afraid to look in the pit. I’m as sure as my name is Jesus Francisco Gonzales that the hydrangeas were frozen last night.” He stood up and started down the path, but pausing at the corner of the porch he faced me once more. “How is your mother, sweetheart?” I answered that she was well enough, only a little tired, for I was remembering how soundly she slept when I left the house.

The Mexican winked at me. “Tired of carrying the little one?”

“What?”

“I mean your little brother or sister or whichever it is Our Savior intends it to be.”

“I don’t know . . .” I began, but he cupped his hands round his plump lips and whispered loudly, “Your mother is going to have a baby, muchacha.”

2

When I came home from school that afternoon, my mother was not in her accustomed place beside the stove, a most surprising fact, for she was a creature of tenacious habit, and had, since I could remember, taken up her place there an hour before sundown to idle over a glass of strong and bitter tea. She would rise, as I entered, and embrace me as if I were an intimate friend for whose visit she had been impatiently waiting, and then, drawing me to a chair beside hers, she would rub my cold hands between hers and say, “Oh, Sonie, how cold you are! Oh, the darling little hands all red!”