Aunt Hagar's Children 2

I've noticed a common occurence in all of the chapters; they all seem to have pregnant women in them. I'm not sure at all what the meaning behind this is, but I've noticed it a lot. In the first chapter Ruth isn't pregnant but Aubrey tries to get her pregnant and she does have an infant. There might be a meaning of new life, as in the new life they all made for themselves in Washington, D.C. as opposed to an ancestry of slaves in the south. The chapters have still been ending at the climax of the story and we never find out what happens. This is especially confusing in , "A Poor Guatemalan Dreams of a Downtown in Peru." In this chapter, Arlene, Avis, and Eulogia seem to have shared the memories of all the "miracles" of death that happened around them. They know each other's minds. I think that at the end of the story, Arlene is seeing into Eulogia's experience of the bus ride with the newlyweds. Also, she could have been seeing "the afterlife" because they are driving through a town called Buena Serra, or "Sweet Goodbyes," and it seems to fit in pretty well with her husband thinking that he's about to die. Also, Arlene seems to know when people are going to die, and she turns to her husband and "shows him what the path ahead would be like" (161). This makes me think she is leading him happily and readily into death. I think they are somewhat old at this point and might be ready for it. A thought that came to me after reading this chapter, is that Arlene, Avis, and Eulogia seem to be kind of "grim reapers." People around them just all seem to drop dead. Apart from this, they have a psychic kind on connection and can see into each other's memories, and see where they are all coming from. They seem to share telepathic powers; they can see something in their minds that they did not experience themselves. An interesting website about telapathy is http://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/t/telepathy.html . I think it's very ironic how Arlene is a very intelligent scientist, yet she has this ability that can't be explained by science.