After the Fire by Jane Rule Page A

Red had turned her attention to her chores did the questions and concerns clamor in Henrietta’s head. The baby’s illegitimacy concerned her socially rather than morally. How would Red’s other employers react? Milly, Henrietta supposed, would enjoy being intolerant, but she was about to need Red’s help rather badly, and Red might keep her pregnancy from her for a while. About Miss James Henrietta wasn’t as sure. She might take it in her stride, or she might be grievously disappointed in a young person whose independence she identified with and admired. Sadie no sooner made a surprising entry into Henrietta’s mind than Henrietta knew why she was there.
    It was Dickie’s baby! How could Red not even have bothered to go to his funeral? Had he forced her? Surely, if she’d been raped, Red wouldn’t want the child. Sadie … she’d be sure to know. Would she blame Red the more or could she be glad of a grandchild? Henrietta couldn’t imagine Red tolerating such a grandmother for her child.
    The whole island would know. How did Red think she could handle all that disapproval, all those claims? By ignoring them, of course, by isolating herself and the child, with a dog for a companion! If only Red would talk like an ordinary human being, share her fears, her plans, Henrietta might be able to help her, to defend her against criticism, Well, if Henrietta didn’t know it was Dickie’s baby, she couldn’t say, and that would be Red’s logic. Not liking to lie herself, she wouldn’t ask anyone else to do it for her.
    At lunch, Red was distant, and Henrietta didn’t try to raise the topic of her pregnancy again though she was bursting with advice about diet and exercise. She had to remind herself that, just because her pregnancies had been like illnesses, there was no reason to assume Red’s would be. She didn’t drink or smoke—she said there were less expensive ways to kill yourself. When Henrietta offered her a second helping, Red raised a warning eyebrow and then accepted.
    “I’m going to take care of myself,” Red said then. “You don’t have to worry.”
    “Will you promise me, if you need anything, you’ll say?”
    Red nodded.
    “Will you let me help get things ready for the baby?”
    “My mother whored to keep me in good clothes,” Red said. “This is going to be a thrift shop baby.”
    “Is she still alive, your mother?” Henrietta asked cautiously.
    “She’s in jail,” Red said.
    “And your father?”
    “She never said,” Red replied. “She probably didn’t know.”
    Henrietta could not tell what emotion Red masked with that indifference of tone. These were facts Henrietta had long since supposed, and so they came as no shock to her. Her only concern was to treat this fragile confidence in a way that would encourage Red to say anything she needed to.
    “I turned eighteen last fall,” Red said. “Nobody can touch me.”
    Milly, having seen her gynecologist to tell him she was finally resigned to the operation, was irritated to discover that, because it was elective surgery, she would have to wait for a hospital bed. Forbes, with all his real estate deals, had always thrived on the policies of the Social Credit government, and, while Milly thrived with him, she supported the Bennett dynasty, though she had always wished they all looked less like petty criminals. Now that she lived in genteel poverty and couldn’t bribe her way to the front of the line, she was less sympathetic with the budget cuts which had created the shortage of hospital beds.
    “I don’t know when,” she had to tell her daughter when she phoned.
    “How can it be elective surgery?” Bonnie demanded.
    She didn’t come right out and accuse her mother of lying, and anyhow Milly hadn’t lied. She had simply said “tumors” and let Bonnie suppose what she would. But Bonnie was losing her original sense of urgency and complaining about difficulty at work if she didn’t know when her mother would need