Carmen said yes.

My mother said, “Well,” and let the word sit there, and my aunt looked at her plate.

And at some point in that year — I do not know exactly when and it does not matter — my mother began telling people.

That is the fact that makes the rest of this account make sense and it is the one that gets left out.

She told her sister.

She told two women at her church.

She told my cousin Dara.

She told the woman who did her hair, who I know about because eleven years later that woman said something to Carmen in a grocery store.

She told them that Carmen could not have children.

Not that we were having trouble.