"What if he drinks?"

Nellie and I have a mutual friend, a girl I went to highschool with and with whom Nellie used to go to church. A year or two ago, Christy suffered a miscarriage and Nellie was heartbroken for her. Last winter, however, Christy and her husband had a beautiful healthy baby boy. As far as I knew, the whole family was doing great down in Texas—so it was somewhat of a surprise to me one afternoon when Nellie began telling me how worried she was for them. “I want to call Christy’s mother, but I’m afraid,” she said, extremely agitated.

            “But why? Why are you afraid?” I was confused.

            “Because maybe the baby is sick. Or maybe he died. I’m afraid to ask. And I can’t speak English—how could I ask her? What words would I use?”

            “Well,” I tried to think of some simple words she’d remember and be able to pronounce, “you could ask, ‘Baby good?’”

            “But what if he’s dead?”

            I lifted my eyebrows in bewilderment. “Why in the world would he be dead? He was just fine last time you spoke to them, wasn’t he?”

            “And even if he isn’t sick, it’s still no good because he’ll probably smoke.”

            I hadn’t the foggiest notion where that had come from. “What? Who smokes? Christy’s husband? Nellie, what are you talking about?”

            “No, no,” she explained, “the baby boy.”

            “The baby? Nellie, what do you mean? He’s just a baby. He doesn’t smoke!”

            “But he will grow up so fast, and then maybe he will smoke.”

            “Or maybe,” I shook my head at her, “maybe he will grow up and not smoke!”

            The tiniest glimmer of relief washed across her face. “Maybe he won’t smoke?”

            “Yes,” I assured her. “There is a very great possibility that he will not smoke.”

            “Oh,” she began to relax a little, until a new dreadful thought occurred to her. “But what if he drinks?”