Lilli de Jong Read online

  This admission of fault stunned me. My mother would never admit a flaw. I hoped to tell Anne later that her error was nothing compared to the good she does.

  “Did you find Mary?” Sally called.

  “No.” Anne’s discouraged face showed that her heart extends even to the unrepentant. “I denied Mary her release,” she continued, “because the man who’d offered to take her in was a scoundrel. But I do understand that it’s wearying to be locked inside this house.”

  Then she told us a story. When she and a pair of concerned doctors opened this institution ten years ago, the inmates had been sent out to walk, under veils, from four to five each afternoon. But the nature of the humble group was soon recognized, and they were hounded by a growing crowd. The veiled girls returned with their souls beaten and began refusing to go out. So Anne turned the hour’s walk into a rest.

  “I should have expected the cruelty,” Anne added. “My younger sister took her life when she faced such hatred within our family. That’s when I gathered doctors and friends to create this charity.”

  There was no sound, no stirring, in the dining room then. Whoever had a forkful of food suspended in her hand retained it there. All eyes avoided the others. We filed out soon in silence, and all the evening, scarcely a word was spoken.

  Third Month 21

  It’s not yet dawn. Gina is sleeping in the bed beside mine. The yellow flicker of my candle softens the whitewashed walls.

  I want to report my conversation with Gina earlier this night. Beset by cramps and the crashes of a thunderstorm, we were unable to sleep. We took up our needlework and began to converse, whispering so as not to disturb those in the room beside ours. Gina unraveled a wool scarf she’d found in the donations closet and began to knit a hat for Nancy’s son. I continued knitting socks for my baby, with feet perhaps three inches long; Gina said even this would be too big.

  Gina’s hands moved with startling quickness, for she used to produce children’s goods for a fine shop in her native Italy, and she made fast progress on the hat. Then she put it aside and unfurled a square of white lawn, threaded a needle with green thread, and drew it through. I asked quietly what she was embellishing.

  “A piece to cover my baby—what is the word?”

  “A receiving blanket?”

  She nodded.

  “Has thee chosen a name?” I craned my head between our beds to read the initials at the bottom of the cloth. She had previously stitched them in blue and was surrounding them with green leaves and vines.

  “Don’t see.” She covered the area with a hand already curled and stiffened from overwork. Then she rolled up the bottom of the cloth and began instead to add a vine at its top.

  I was a little offended at her secrecy. “Why can’t I see?”

  Gina hesitated, then confessed. “I put a letter for the family name.”

  “Won’t that name come from the family who adopts thy baby?”

  She glanced at me as her needle flew. “My—husband’s parents are taking us.”

  “Husband?” I asked. “Husband’s parents?” How could this be true?

  It isn’t quite; it has become the claimed truth. The Haven’s solicitor had good luck in his attempt to gain support for Gina. He wrote to her lover, Stefano, at the home of his parents, who’d known Gina during their courtship. It turned out Stefano had died while laying railroad track. When Stefano’s mother opened the solicitor’s letter, it served to alert her to the existence of a grandchild.

  Even a bastard grandchild was too alluring to reject. So this woman, Angela, hatched a scheme and came to the Haven to convince Gina to take part. Now Angela is spreading the word that Stefano and Gina had married in secret before he died. When Gina and her baby leave this place, they’ll take up residence with Stefano’s parents.

  Though she’d done it by lies, Angela had accomplished a splendid feat. I looked up from my knitting needles, expecting to find a glow on Gina’s smooth cheeks. But her face was wan against her profusion of dark locks, and her lips quivered. She stabbed her needle in and out of the cloth.

  “Why is thee unhappy?”

  She spoke as if each fact was a shred of bone pulled from a mouthful of food. “I told Stefano we made a baby. He said he didn’t love me. He wouldn’t see me anymore. Now I pretend I am his widow, only because they want the child.”

  “What does thee want?” I asked. How seldom one is asked this question, and how clearly it portends one’s happiness.

  She spat her answer. “To go home to Italy. But I have no money for the boat. And I have to go back alone.”

  “Thee can sew beautiful things and sell them,” I offered. “In a year or two, thee can leave the baby with its grandparents and go home.”

  Gina’s countenance became still, like the wind before a storm. Then she erupted in sobs. “But how can I leave my baby?” She stopped sobbing abruptly and began embroidering at a fevered pace.

  “Thee could marry here and make a new home,” I tried. “Widows marry.” With her full-featured loveliness, Gina would draw many suitors.

  But she jerked her head side to side. “A real widow could marry. Not me.” She pushed her needlework away and raised a hand to the silver cross on a chain at her neck. “God knows the truth.”

  I didn’t understand, since she is a Catholic. “Couldn’t thee confess and do penance and be absolved?”

  Gina shook her head vigorously. She’s already taking on that weight for one lie, she said—the lie that makes her baby not a bastard—partly because the baby will be better off. But if she undertook a marriage under false pretenses, she’d be lying in a church. “You don’t know. That goes straight to God.” She stared at me, shaking her head, and a tear fell to the blanket below. I reached between our beds to touch her shoulder, but she shrugged my hand away.

  “Doesn’t Angela go to church still?” I asked. “And isn’t Angela lying?” As soon as I said these words, I berated myself for my idiocy.

  She moaned. “Oh, what I did! I made her a sinner, too.”

  I said Angela chose this path on her own, but Gina remained dismal. She calmed herself by reminding us that dark thoughts are bad for our babies. We fell into silence, since we had no other sort of thoughts to offer.

  Gina blew out the candle and fell to sleep, and a ferocious feeling constricted my throat. I asked myself, What do I want? And the answer made me queasy.

  I still want Johan to love me. I want his unusual way of thinking to guide me in seeing common things afresh. I want to feel his silken skin against my own. I want his tender care extended to our baby. I want to do what we spoke of doing, our hands touching over the oak table one night after the others had gone to bed: explore a strange city, join in marriage with no encumbrances from Meeting or family, fill a house with furnishings he builds for us, bring children into our intimate world. He promised to make a canopy bed—a canopy bed! I’d make curtains to surround it. And tucked between them, we’d lie together….

  Instead of all that, I’ll give our baby to an adoption agent and return to the small house in Germantown that the de Jongs have occupied for nearly two hundred years. I’ll enter again the unpleasant realm of Father and Patience—a thought that brings dread and halts my breath.

  Yet there will be good parts to returning. When I step into that house, my months of hiding will vanish like a dream. I’ll be me again, returned to the place that formed me. I’ll find comfort in Mother’s kitchen, where each cast-iron pot and wooden bowl and stirring spoon is known to my hands. I’ll treasure the things she chose or made, the signs of her attention that inhabit every cranny, the green shoots in our gardens that prove her influence endures. Within hours I’ll have loaves of dough rising in the hollow beside the hearth, a ham blanching on the stove, a pot of spring greens boiling. I’ll set the table and light our lamps as dusk descends.

  I can breathe in now and feel a hint of the peace that used to gather in that hour before supper. When Peter and I were small, unless a cri
sis in some other family propelled her out, Mother would sit in the rocker beside the hearth and read Bible tales to us. Young Peter rested upon her lap, I sat at her feet, and together we basked in the bubbling of pots, her clear-toned voice, her violet-water smell.

  What a gap yawns between those days and now, with Mother in the ground and me seated on a hard mattress, heavy with child and grieving over our coming separation.

  At six the waking bell will ring, and our usual round of chores and meals will begin.

  Third Month 24

  I’m close to delivery! Dr. Stevens has started me on her protocol: a bitter quinine tonic, a concoction for preventing constipation and headache, and chloral hydrate at bedtime to encourage rest. The medicines nauseate me and dull my senses, but they haven’t lessened the only symptom I minded, apart from the cramps—which is nerves.

  My nerves are growing ever more bothersome. I spend rest hours in the courtyard and can only stare into the air, dizzied and weak. I keep believing that the constant twinges and pulling pains mean that delivery is imminent.

  I described my condition to the doctor this morning, lying flat on the cot in her examination room as she felt gently along my belly.

  “You could have these symptoms for days,” she replied. “Perhaps another week.”

  “Another week?” I protested. “That would be maddening!”

  Amusement raised the corners of her lips. “Many find it so.” And in a moment, nodding her small head: “Good. The baby’s heartbeat is robust. Its body is head down, legs up.” She reached her slender arm up past my protruding belly and patted my crown. “Simply wait, and stay as calm as you’re able.”

  I mentioned that her medicines are making me feel ill.

  “You should be grateful for them,” she scolded. “Doctor Prestweiss developed this protocol for the married women at his retreat. They’ll remove any blockages or weakness that otherwise might make you sick after delivery.” I made no reply. “My use of this protocol has kept the death rate here extremely low, Lilli—four mothers in over four hundred births. And only one of those died from childbed fever.”

  Though these numbers were meant to be encouraging, I made a frightened face as I rose to my weary legs.

  “You should be grateful,” she repeated. “Last year at the city hospital, forty-two women per hundred died of childbed fever.”

  How appalling! I did express my gratitude before shuffling off to make way for her next patient.

  Like her colleagues at the Woman’s Medical College, some of whom I’d met in Germantown, Dr. Stevens is imbued with the fortitude of one who aims to improve the lot of her sex. The clothes on her slender form are wrinkled, and more of her hair escapes her bun and cap than remains tucked within them; to me these things are to her credit, for she focuses on what matters more.

  But please, Dr. Stevens, don’t let me become the fifth mother to die here! And don’t let my baby die!

  Each time the muscles of my belly tighten in a cramp, I wonder whether my time is nigh. I wonder what will become of me and my baby when we leave this place. I wonder what young woman will take my bed, and what happens to all the desperate girls whom Anne must turn away. At the window I stare out to the far-off stars and think, What is the purpose of all this suffering?

  I know the Bible’s answer, the one I heard at Meeting and from Mother’s lips a hundred—no, five hundred times.

  Do not despise the Lord’s discipline,

  nor lose courage when thee is punished.

  For the Lord disciplines those whom he loves,

  as a father the child in whom he delights.

  What terrible love. Right now, I’ve half a mind to refuse it.

  I’ve swallowed my drams of chloral hydrate. A stupor overtakes me. I hope to sleep till the morning bell.

  Third Month 25, First Day

  I’m confined to my room, spared even from attending chapel, because last night I rose from bed to take part in silliness despite my medicated condition—and I fell from a chair in the bath!

  The folly began when three giggling girls from next door came to our room, guided by a candle’s light, and presented the irresistible idea that we all view our bellies in the mirror by the tub. It’s the only mirror in the house, vanity being against the rules, and was placed in that room only to ensure we don’t go about with soap on our faces—judging from its high placement on the wall. But no doubt inmates before us have put it to this other use.

  One by one, prodding each other forward, we stood upon a chair in our nightgowns to peer at our enormous stomachs. There was much excitement, whispered at first, until we got to squealing over each belly whose rotund contours were revealed. When my chance came, I climbed onto the chair, pulled the cloth of my white gown close, and turned to see the full effect. An enormous ball of baby protruded at my front, and I wondered, Who is in there? and then, How will I get such a large thing out? When I turned again to step down, my foot slipped and twisted, and I fell to the floor.

  I needed help to stand, for my ankle couldn’t bear weight. Then Delphinia burst in, having been roused by our noise. She demanded we return to our beds. She scolded me particularly—“I expect better of you”—and fixed me with a stern look. She stayed and helped me wrap my ankle all the same. To judge from the twitching of her lips, I’d say she found our exploits at least a tiny bit amusing.

  However amusing it was, I’m stuck in bed today, lying at a slant because my belly is so tight and full that I can’t lie flat. I’m as near to bursting as an overripe plum. In any position, my bulk impinges on my breath. How will this large human exit my small frame? Who is in there?

  Stay calm, Dr. Stevens advised. I’m trying.

  A little while ago, Delphinia brought me a breakfast of boiled eggs and toast. I told her of my occupation with book and pencil and how my supplies are running low. She agreed, upon my promising to reimburse her, to buy some inexpensive notebooks and pencils for me, the next time she goes out.

  * * *

  An hour or so has passed. I remain in bed. Delphinia has brought up a new roommate, Sophie, to take Nancy’s place! She seems frightened and is very far along in her pregnancy. I meant to smile in welcome, but the drugs are causing peculiar effects (sweating and flushing, with my vision and hearing and reflexes strangely dulled). So when Sophie dashed a wary look at me, I felt uncertain whether I was offering back a pained or a pleased expression.

  The unfortunate girl can’t be more than fourteen. Her eyes are hooded by darkness, and there are long scabs on her bony back and legs. I observed them when she returned from her bath and was dressing in clothes from the donations closet.

  I think she was whipped.

  She rests now in the bed beside mine, and with eyes shut she has taken on the aspect of a deer, gentle and delicate. The rough smell of our lye soap and another odor, a strange one, rise from her. On the wall above her head hangs a square of linen that bears an embroidered motto of this place: “Through hard work we are redeemed.”

  I’d guess a lack of work was not the cause of her predicament.

  * * *

  It’s a late hour; I’ve awakened again with pains, despite the dose of chloral hydrate at bedtime. Gina snores gently, her face as pretty as the drawing in a fashion advertisement, with its gentle expression and pale skin and the brown curls that fan across her pillowcase. Little Sophie is moaning in her sleep. My mind is heavy, for now I know what brought Sophie to her sorry state.

  Anne called us to the parlor late in the day, demanding that we all attend. With painstaking slowness, Sophie and I descended a flight of stairs and walked to the parlor, where the chairs had been arranged to face the front, just as they are for chapel. Anne stood where the reverend would stand, but with her back to us. Her statuesque form was clad in muddy boots and a dampened cloak. I sat beside Nancy, my head hardly reaching to her shoulder, and I watched her dandle William in her lap, relishing her delight.

  Then Anne turned to us. Several girls gasped t
o see her face, it was that angry.

  “A cruel article concerning our institution appeared in The Day this morning,” she told us. “The reporter admitted that he wasn’t granted admission to the place—of course he wasn’t!—but said he’d spoken with a woman ‘intimately acquainted’ with it, whose name he couldn’t give.”

  She said the woman claimed this charity had turned her from a moral person who’d made but a single mistake to the one the reporter saw before him: an inebriate nursing her newborn in a brothel. The details of how this charitable institution had made her a drunkard and a prostitute in such short order were absent, but the reporter slandered our refuge nevertheless.

  “And what was that reporter doing in a brothel?” Anne demanded, brandishing her arms. “Doesn’t this cast doubt on his qualifications to write of virtue?”

  However slight his qualifications, the man took it upon himself to describe Anne’s establishment as providing nothing more than “the care and shelter of the deliberately vicious.” The way of the transgressor is not made sufficiently difficult here, he claimed, for the inmates enjoy three meals a day, meals that often include apple pie and mutton.

  The cook had made those special dishes only during Mary’s brief stay; a few girls smirked with satisfaction at this strong hint that Mary was the turncoat. But Anne’s concern lay with us, her remaining charges. She looked us each in the face directly; I shook inside when my turn came to brave the knifepoint of her stare. Then she spoke with cutting force: “I don’t expect you to speak well of this place. No. I expect you never to speak of it at all. That is our gift to you: that you can leave this episode of your lives behind. But if you hold any malice in your heart against us, you may not have this gift.” She pointed toward the front door. “I demand that you leave my institution at once. Leave us now, and never show your face here again.”

  When no one stood, she moved on to her next demand, requiring us to do what previously she’d forbidden. She told us to reveal how we came to be with child, so that no one might be mistaken for an unrepentant sinner. She prodded each along, demanding that she tell her truth, or Anne would tell it.