Ma wet her lips. "There ain’t no baby. They never was no baby. We was wrong."
– John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 30. This is one of the rare occasions when Ma Joad lies. She is speaking to the younger children, trying to shield them from tragic truth of Rose of Sharon’s stillbirth. She is also partly speaking the truth. For she is not just referring to the baby, but also to the family’s hope for a new life, saying that it never existed.