her, and she was rubbing her arms vigorously.
She would not say a thing.
Then I realized quite suddenly that I was angry with her. For her to just disappear. For her to befriend me and then vanish.
But I could not say as much so I told her she should sit down & asked her if she wanted something to eat or drink.
“No thanks,” she said, but I wanted to feed her so I went into the kitchen and brought back with me some nice cheese, a Jarlsberg I’ve been ordering once weekly, and nice rosemary crackers.
“Look,” I said, but before I could say anything more Yolanda said “I had an idea.”
I did not want to hear it and I did. I thought, in my anger, that it was going to be something that was meant to take advantage of me. I could tell she was going to ask me for something that I would be wise to say no to—something with money, I thought—but I knew that I would not be able to. All of my life has been like this. I cannot say no. When I am fond of someone I can’t say no to her.
“Where have you been?” I asked, to stall her.
But she would not tell me. She has a habit of going quiet when I ask her things about her life—I do not do this frequently, but when I do . . . she folds her hands and looks at them and looks up at me eventually with a tight little smile. Or she tucks her hair behind her ear and shakes her head slightly from side to side.
“I had an idea,” she repeated.
“What is it?” I asked finally. I cannot move her. I cannot make her do what she won’t, or talk to her as if she were a friend. & this is what brings out the worst in me—the part of me that thinks she is only humoring me and does not hold me in any kind of esteem.
“I was gonna ask if you still needed help,” said Yolanda, & here she looked about the room as if to prove her point. “And if you do, I was gonna see if you needed, like, someone to live here, and I could do that, I could cook for you and stuff, and clean, and I could do it for free. Or for, like, not much money.”
I stared at her. What she was suggesting sounded at once so appealing and so horrifying that I could not find my words.
“You can think about it,” Yolanda said quickly. “Obviously.”
I was doing just that. I was thinking rapidly about everything that would be wonderful about Yolanda living with me her young laughter, her company, the feeling that I have when she is in the house—one of possibility and some sort of a future for myself beyond a slow steady dying. But I was also thinking about what else her presence would mean . . . & how I would eat, & what would happen if I needed her to leave. & what would happen if I committed some embarrassment in front of her, the type that I used to save for when she was not in the house. & where she would sleep, & what would happen when she . . .
“When are you due?” I asked her.
“Three months,” she said.
“Who is your doctor?” I asked her.
She shrugged. “I went to one when I first found out,” she said. “He looked at the baby and said it seemed healthy.”
Now I do not know much about babies but this sounded very wrong to me, & from the shows I watch I know it is important to go more often than that.
“Do you—know if it’s a boy or a girl?” I asked.
“A girl,” she said.
“You wanted to find out?” I said, because I have always thought that I would not want to.
“No,” she said. “Nobody told me. I just know.”
She had her hands on her belly. It was bigger than she was. She had on a dress that was too tight.
I wished that I could light a fire in the fireplace for her, for outside it was finally starting to snow. I could see it through my picture window and it turned my picture window into a scrim. She had come to me, I thought, like Mole & Ratty came to Badger in The Wind in the Willows. Which was read to me as a child. She had come to me very