After the Fog by Kathleen Shoop Page A

temples.
    “What’s a method?” Johnny said.
    Sara Clara leaned across the table, “Family planning. Margaret Sanger? Surely having a nurse in the family means y’all are enlightened on these matters.”
    Johnny drew back, face crunched up.
    “Marital Relations?” Unk’s gravelly voice cut in.
    Henry shot his hands into the air like someone scored a touchdown. “Holy Christ! Do we have to talk about this?”
    Rose cleared her throat, working around the table, getting to the bottom of the first pan of eggs.
    “Humph. They could adopt the baby out, you know,” Sara Clara said. “Why Buzzy, didn’t you say that mill nurse Dottie Shaginaw wanted to adopt a baby?”
    Buzzy looked at Sara Clara as though she suggested he lop off a limb. “Adopt out? Are you nuts? If you have a baby, you keep it; it’s not some extra dog for Pete’s sake. You raise the kids you make. That’s that.”
    Rose’s careful plunking of buttery eggs onto plates faded to scraping burnt grease so hard that the screeching of metal on metal silenced the discussion. Rose shrugged and went to the sink. She tossed the pan into it and ran the water trying to blot out the conversation at the table for a moment, but then couldn’t stop herself from listening as the conversation resumed.
    Buzzy stabbed at his eggs. “You know an adopted child is never treated the same as the real kids in the family. Better off dead. Besides, Dottie’s a little off center if you know what I mean?”
    “Off center?” Johnny said.
    “She likes…well, other nurses, if I could put it delicately, Johnny boy.”
    Nonsense. Rose fumbled a second skillet of eggs, making it crash back onto the burner. The breakfast table was not the place for this type of talk—about adoption or Dottie. Diamond Dottie with a child? She was still a child herself, cocooned in her girlhood home, spoiled by wealthy parents, only working as a nurse out of boredom. If she really cared about people in need she’d be a community nurse.
    But off-center? Rose didn’t believe that. Dottie was much too interested in flirting with Henry every chance she had to be even a little interested in women. And, she certainly couldn’t handle a baby. Rose picked up the frying pan without a potholder and dropped it immediately, bouncing some eggs out of the pan. She scooped up the eggs and glanced over her shoulder to everyone staring at her again.
    “Excuse me. Sorry. I didn’t say anything.” Rose pursed her lips, irritated by all of them. She pushed the plug into the drain and filled it with hot water and soap. She shuddered as she replayed Buzzy’s words in her mind. He could be so cruel. He knew Rose had grown up in an orphanage, and had desperately wanted to be adopted. It’s not as though Rose were still in that situation, but to hear such heartless statements regarding unwanted children…well, Rose thought, unwanted said it all.
    Rose shivered even in the heat of the kitchen. Was it the change of life already? She was only thirty-eight. She told herself Buzzy didn’t know what he was talking about. Trouble was, his ideas weren’t any different from most folks.
    Rose was half-listening to her family when she heard Magdalena’s voice come over the din of the others. “Well, I suppose this is as good a time as any to say this.”
    Rose turned to her daughter, rubbing her arms to stave off the goose bumps crawling up them. She wondered if Magdalena was going to request they all say a prayer for her and the test she needed to take.
    Magdalena straightened in her chair. “I’m quitting school to start an apprenticeship with Ms. Hakim. She said I’ve got a stunning ability to sew a straight, tight line, that I could babysit for her in between learning to perfect my dressmaking skills.”
    The silence in the room was as startling as Magdalena’s announcement. Everyone gaped at Rose, clearly waiting for her response.
    She could not think. Her hearing must be going. She grabbed the skillet with