“Nope, not hardly,” I answered. “But you could never put a couple of one-night stands past a woman either.”

“I know that’s right,” Kim agreed. “We’re only human. But what are you gonna do if she is yours?”

“I’m gonna deal with it. But first, you know, I have to see what everything looks like.”

“Well, good luck with that,” she told me.

“Thanks.”

After I hung up the phone with Kim, I didn’t know if I wanted to talk to my sister anymore. How different would her opinions be? And how guilty would I feel about talking to her after knowing that I had asked her to do what Michelle had not done. But I would have told Michelle the same thing if I was given the chance. She had taken things into her own hands. How would my sister view that?

I didn’t get a chance to make up my mind whether to talk to my sister or not because she called me that next minute, and I decided to pick it up.

She said, “Yeah, like I was saying earlier, I think that, umm…well, I’m just not ready for this. I mean, if he’s not gonna be, you know, involved in it, then…I mean, it doesn’t make any sense to do it.”

I didn’t want to say anything. I just listened. But once I thought that she was finished, I asked her, “What if he decided to be involved?” I was speaking more so for myself.

Juanita answered, “You know, like you said, I have to stop fooling myself, Tee. I mean, that’s not gonna happen. He obviously doesn’t want anything to do with me now. So I have to pretty much pick up my pieces and just move on.”

“When you plan on getting it done?” I asked her.

“Umm, I’ll just make an appointment for next week sometime.”

That didn’t sound too definite to me.

“Are you sure?” I asked. That would be the last time I would ask her about it.

“I mean…I don’t know.”

That’s what it sounded like. My sister didn’t have a clue what she wanted to do. I assumed that she would be the same after she had the baby. So she would have to figure that answer out for herself soon. Real soon. But I wouldn’t make any more judgments or comparisons on her until I had settled my own situation.

I said, “Juanita, nobody can push you to do what you don’t want to do, but understand that it goes both ways. You can’t expect to push anyone else to do what they don’t want to do either. So all of the guilt trips and tantrums and all of that, it won’t mean anything.”

“I know,” my sister responded. But I don’t believe she did. When you’ve known someone all your life, you know what they’re gonna do before they do sometimes. And as soon as things failed to go well for my sister and her child, she would make sure that everybody knew about it.