The preacher rebuked the “sinful child” inside her and prayed against it. He sent Marigold away with the words, “Go and sin no more, child.” They were words that never left her, because they were all wrong somehow.

“I hate it,” Helen went on. “I wish it would just go away.”

“Don’t say things like that. It ain’t good for the baby.”

Helen laughed. “Well, I don’t care. I don’t want this child, and I ain’t gonna keep it.”

“You’re not serious.”

“’Course I am. I never asked for a child.”

“You don’t mean you’re going to go and . . .”

“Ladies in my line of work don’t raise young’uns, sweetie. Ain’t the place for ’em. I don’t know what other choice there is.”

“You could change your line of work.”

“Change? I’m too late for changes.”

“You can do something else.”

“Are you out of your mind? Men can’t find enough work to feed their families, and they actually got trades they can claim. My only trade is sin, sweetie.”

“You could start a new life. We could do it together. Two people is better than one. We could do something new, go somewhere else.”

“I am what I am, honey. That’s how it works. People are what they are. You don’t get second chances.”

“But maybe you are something else, and you just don’t know it. Maybe this ain’t you.”

“You’ve lost your mind.”

“Maybe you were meant to be something more. Maybe I am too, and we just don’t know it. Maybe somewhere down inside us there’s more.”

“I wish you could hear yourself. This is crazy talk.”

Marigold suddenly felt foolish for saying such things to deaf ears. She twisted the water from a pillowcase and watched the foam make swirling designs in the water. Even so, she knew there truly was something inside her that was waiting to get out. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but she felt it.

Helen lit another cigarette. “How about we talk about what’s for supper tonight? I could eat a horse.”

But Marigold was too lost looking at suds in the washtub. The white foam made pretty shapes in the tin basin of gray water.

Helen called from the porch, “Hey! You hear me?”

But Marigold wasn’t listening. She was thinking of Maggie. Always Maggie. She was wondering about the way Maggie talked. Could she talk? Could she walk? Was she alive?