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Show ^3 and I get damned to hell." Then he went upstairs. I'd hear him xaxttx pounding around up there, and then it got quiet. Helen got up from the £a floor where she fell against the wall and got baby Joseph and me and Neda and made us kneel by the kitchen table v/ith her. We said the rosary for the conversion of Red. "Please God, please make Red a Catholic." I thought Helen held the numbers then. Red was going straight to hell and good for him. When I'd made First Communion I sold my soul to God on the bargain that if Red didn't convert, I'd go to hell instead. One day, driving downtown to buy me shoes, I told him about it. I've never seen Red more philosophical. He just stared over the xxxxxx steering wheel and bent his fulrry white eyebrows at the road. "Well," he said. "Maybe we'll be lucky and the devil will get us both." I didn't understand. But Helen xixi started ballooning up with Andrew and things quieted down. Helen spent more and more time on the couch, her face getting puffy and the veins in her legs growing into great purple tubes. Red put them up on pillows for her. Sometimes they even kissed, Late in the pregnancy Helen started having me and Neda in the bathroom when she bathed. She'd make us help her undress, then Neda sat on the scale and I sat on the toilet while Helen washed herself, sponging water over her mountainous stomach and huge blue breasts. She'd put out* hands over her womb. "Ska "See," she said. "It's holy in there. Little Andrew's in there. He's my savior. A holy baby." "How'd he get in there?" "That's where babies come from." Her stomach pulsed under our hands. Helen smiled like she did when she prayed. "Everything is going to be different sooft," she said. "Different than Joseph?" I asked. "Much different," said Helen. "After Andrew, everything will change a in some way." I started to dread being in there, watching Helen bathe with that holy look on her face. I tried to imagine being in there where Andrew was. Was Red ever in there? Andrew almost killed Helen. The quack who aaia delivered Joseph hqH packed Helen with wadding because she bled so much after |
