"Oh, that!" Anya said with a laugh as comprehension set in. "if you were hoping for some pointers from those books, forget it! Those books are not real, so what would you like to know?"
"Well . . ." she said again, turning five shades of red.
"Alannah! Tell me - how much do you want to know?"
"It's not so much what I want to know, as what I should know, what I should do, what's expected of me." Alannah said.
Anya gave her a curious look. "So let me ask you this, do you know about babies and where they come from?"
"No"
"About getting pregnant?
"No" Alannah said looking down at her feet
"Stop blushing every time we talk about sex! We're not living in the Dark Ages Alannah! If you are going marry Dominic then you're going to have to know these things, one way or another. Have you ever watched a baby born?"
"No! No, and I don't want to!' Alannah responded almost hysterically. "I heard a girl having a baby one time, and she was screaming! I thought for sure she was going to die! I was told that it was her punishment for swimming in the ocean with no chaperone! There were boys in the water, and that was how she got pregnant -!"
Anya stared at her in total disbelief. "Alannah Ferguson! Tell me you didn't believe that rediculous story. Where on earth did you hear such a ridiculous thing?'
"It's true, it's not a story!" Alannah replied with a scowl. "She was one of the girls at the convent where I stayed just after leaving Ireland. The other girls told me how she got . . . became . . . you know . . . with child-"
"They told you that she got pregnant from swimming in the same water with boys?" Anya said.
Alannah turned to her uncertainly. "Is there another way to get pregnant?"
"Oh my goodness Alannah, yes there is another way of getting pregnant."
"Why are you looking at me like that? But no, she wasn't swimming with the boys! They had been in the water before she was."
"I do believe," Anya told her, "that you need to hear the whole truth about where babies come from. We call this 'the birds and the bees talk.'"
By the time they reached Anya's home, Alannah had heard more than she wanted to about where babies came from. Anya took Tim from his Grandmother, Tresa, and Alannah got down off the buggy and face red and in her usual fashion bit her lower lip because she was nervous. She now had a new understanding of things, and she felt a tad bit uncomfortable. Santiago, came over and kissed his wife and said hello, Alannah looked away from the scene before her, she felt embarassed at having witnessed such an act of passion between the couple. Pierre was in the back, butchering a pig, and even his role as grandfather suddenly took on new meaning her.