“And yet what, Mother?” Maud said impatiently. “We are two different people with different minds.” Maud prickled defensively on her sister’s behalf. She had never understood why her mother was so hard on Julia. But she was genuinely worried about Julia and needed her mother’s advice, so she pushed down her irritation and tried again.
“I don’t understand why we’re different,” Maud said, choosing her words carefully. “She’s kind and caring, but she doesn’t seem to know how to take her own part—the homesteading life is so hard. I hear stories all the time of women growing ‘shacky-wacky,’ terrible stories. I try to help her, but sometimes, Mother, it’s as if she resents my help. In the end, she does as she pleases.”
“So much suffering falls upon women,” Matilda said. “Imagine how much work we could do for the cause if we were not constantly being tossed like a ship during a storm. A woman’s life is punctuated by these squalls that push her from her right course. A mother’s health, her child’s health. It is hard to imagine a greater right than the right to the health of your own body. It’s why I fight.”
“And how could the vote help us with any of that?” Maud asked.
“I don’t exactly know what women will do with the power of the vote, but I’m sure it will be something to behold. Imagine an army of women doctors—don’t you think they might hurry up and find a cure for childbed fever? Don’t you think they might look for a way to ease our labor pains? I don’t know how the vote will help, but I’m sure that it will.”
“And before we arrive at that glorious future? What about Julia?”
Matilda stood up, smoothing her skirt, and crossed to the window, staring out through the gap between the houses to the vast expanse of parched brown prairie grass beyond.
“Julia lacks strength.”
Maud continued to be haunted by the scene in the cabin the night of Jamie’s death, but she could not betray her sister’s confidence by sharing it with her mother.
“Julia needs to take her child and move into town,” Maud said. “She can leave James to tend to the claim.”
“And what’s stopping her?” Matilda said.
“Nothing but money. They will lose everything if they let the claim go. I’ve asked her to let Magdalena stay with me.”
“That is very kind of you. Why would she not agree? One less mouth to feed for her.”
“Because,” Maud said, “she doesn’t trust me not to die.”
Maud saw a look of utter seriousness cross her mother’s face. “Never fear, my dear Maud. I have not arrived unarmed.” Matilda lifted the lid of her traveling trunk, wedged into a corner of the parlor, and dug around until she extracted what she was looking for. She laid it on the table in front of Maud with a thump.
Maud read the title aloud: “The Science and Art of Midwifery, by William Thompson Lusk.”
“Your dear grandfather tutored me in anatomy, physiology, and the natural sciences,” she said. “I may not have achieved a medical diploma, but I’ve not lost my brain. There have been significant advances in the science of midwifery, especially as it pertains to childbed fever.”
Matilda opened the heavy book and began to read: “?‘When summoned to a patient, the physician should go armed to meet the sudden emergencies of obstetrical practice. He should go provided with chloroform, Magendie’s solution of morphia, ergot, the perchloride of persulphate of iron, and a small vial of sulphuric ether—’?”
Maud, suddenly dizzy, leaned back in her chair.
“You’re pale,” Matilda said. Reaching into her trunk once again, she extracted a bottle of brandy, poured some into a glass, and handed it to Maud.
“Revive yourself. I don’t mean to upset you, but I want you to know that I’ve made a study of it. You will not suffer from puerperal fever again.”
Maud smiled weakly at her mother and sipped the brandy.
“?‘Ergot for flooding,’?” Matilda continued to read, “?‘scrupulous cleanliness of the environment and careful cleansing of the perineum with a carbolic solution—’?”
“Mother, please,” Maud said faintly.
“You will be fine!” Matilda said. “I promise you, Maud, that I will do everything in my power. And that includes making sure that you are treated with chloroform. The idea that a woman’s labor pains are God’s punishment for the original sin…!”
She fell silent, then went back to her trunk, where she dug again, and this time produced a second thick tome.
Maud read the title: “The Key to Theosophy, by H. P. Blavatsky?”
“I’ve made quite a study of this one as well.” She flipped the book open.
“Isn’t that just occult and superstition?” Maud asked.
“Just the opposite. It is an inquiry into the philosophical realm. Strictly scientific.”
“Scientific?” Maud said. Her skepticism was evident in her voice.
“Madame Blavatsky believes in the Astral Plane—when people die, they are not really gone. They pass into a different dimension. That makes sense to me.”
Maud listened in silence. She was not devout, but she and Frank attended the local Episcopal church, where she found comfort in the familiar hymns and prayers of her childhood. She had no desire to look for newfangled theories about other worlds and Astral Planes. Although she decided now to tolerate her mother’s beliefs, she had lost all interest in spiritualist practices that night at Cornell when she had summoned the spirits by whacking her knee on the underside of a table.
“So, Mother. If I understand correctly, you’re doubly prepared. You’ve come up with scientific methods to keep me safe in childbirth, and if they fail, you’ve got a brand-new religion that promises that if I die, I won’t really die, I’ll just pass to an Astral Plane?” Maud’s tone was light, but she was vexed. Her mother had become disenchanted with organized religion, convinced that the church’s patriarchy was setting back the cause of women’s rights and women’s suffrage. She had begun to look for spiritual truths elsewhere—lately becoming fascinated with Native American beliefs and with spiritualist practices.
“I’m not speaking lightly. I will keep you safe,” Matilda said firmly. “I am giving you my solemn promise.”
Just then, Frank waltzed into the room with a big smile on his face.
He spotted the book on the table, picked it up, and started perusing it.
“Theosophy,” he said. “I hear that’s the latest thing.”
* * *
—
HARRY NEAL BAUM WAS born without incident on December 17, 1889. Matilda’s iron fist ensured the strictest adherence to modern hygiene, and so the third, fourth, and fifth days passed without a sign of fever. By the time the New Year had passed, with mother and baby both thriving, Maud realized that the dark cloud that had haunted her constantly for the last nine months had finally lifted.
She was seated in her immaculate room, dressed in a nightgown, her hair freshly brushed and pinned. Baby Harry was asleep in a wicker bassinet next to the bed, and sun was flooding in the windows, which were framed with white lace tie-backs, casting a gentle light on the sleeping baby and picking up the golden highlights in Maud’s hair.
The door pushed gently open, and Frank stood at the threshold. Maud looked up, smiling, but when she saw Frank’s face, she said, “Frank? What is it?”
Frank’s lower jaw quivered, then clenched, and she saw tears filling his eyes.
“Frank! For the love of God. Is it one of the boys? What is it?”
Frank crossed the room and sank wearily onto the edge of the bed.
“No, of course not. The boys are downstairs, playing with their iron train. It’s nothing like that…”
“What then?”
“Northwestern National Bank.”
“What about them?”
“They’ve taken our store for failure to pay the mortgage.”
CHAPTER
20
ABERDEEN, SOUTH DAKOTA
1890
Matilda wouldn’t let Maud get up until a full fourteen days of convalescence had passed, so day after day, Maud lay in the front upstairs bedroom with stacks of inventories, IOUs, and bills of sale surrounding her on the covers. Frank had brought them to her, all jumbled up in a crate, asking if she wouldn’t mind taking a look. As she pieced them together, Maud started to see what had happened. As times had gotten harder, Frank had extended credit to cash-strapped farmers and had collected on fewer IOUs. Finally, it had caught up with him, and there was no money left to pay the bank.
After Maud spent a while poring over these sad records of the store’s declining income, her neat rows of figures revealed the truth: Baum’s Bazaar was doomed. Selling all of the inventory would settle their bank loan and leave them a bit of money to spare. Enough, Maud hoped, for Frank to figure out another line of work—although what this would be was not evident. Frank’s business was not the only casualty of the hard times. The local economy was in a tailspin after the failed wheat harvest. People were selling their belongings at cut rates and leaving town. Aberdeen’s booming prosperity of the previous year was over.
“You are adept with a printing press,” Matilda told her son-in-law one evening when they were all in the parlor. “I’ve seen how you hand-printed those advertisements, and many of them were clever.”