Another week passed, and each morning, Francesca darted for the toilet the moment her eyes opened, her fears solidifying as the illness didn’t abate. But it wasn’t an illness. She knew the truth, even if she didn’t want to believe it—couldn’t understand how this had happened to her—and she begged for a reprieve from God, for her menses to come. She stared at her bedroom ceiling, painting fantasies in her mind of taking devilish herbs or falling hard intentionally to knock loose the inspector’s seed. Then came the image of the young woman in her village who had painfully and slowly bled to death when she’d taken matters into her own hands. Francesca couldn’t risk it.
She closed her eyes against the invading memory of the foul inspector. Their exchange was supposed to have been simple and worth the cost, and was it? Yes. She mouthed the word to the ceiling as the smoky pictures of her fantasies faded. She didn’t regret her actions, even now. She’d prefer to suffer in America on her own than to suffer at the hand of her father.
If only she didn’t have to give up so much—again.
The Lancasters wouldn’t keep her on their staff and in their home while she was pregnant. They cared too much about their reputation and propriety among their social circles.
You have another option, a voice whispered inside her. You could give the baby away.
She covered her face with a pillow. She didn’t know if she could live with herself, abandoning a child just as she had been by her mother. But what was she to do? The future had never looked bleaker.
She yearned for Maria, for Sister Alberta. What would the nun think of Francesca’s condition? Francesca didn’t care. She needed her friend more than anything in the world in that moment, even should Alberta condemn her actions. Francesca sat up in bed and reached for a sheet of paper and pen on the bedside table, suddenly anxious at last, to write a letter to her faraway friend.
The words poured onto the page. She described her job as cook, her soft bed, and the magnificent home where she spent her days. She described the many new dishes she’d learned to prepare. She talked about her new friends, and the way her English improved daily. At last, at the end of the letter, she told Sister Alberta about Maria. Maria’s bravery as they crossed the ocean, her translucent skin and the way her voice had become little more than a whisper, her humor until the last.
She dropped her pen as the pain rolled over her for the hundredth time, stealing her breath. She’d hoped her new life would fill some of the void inside her, but she was foolish to believe anything could ease the wound of losing her sister. Maria was gone. And she’d have to learn to live with the ever-present throbbing in her chest: the grief that, at times, still felt like a fire ravaging her insides.
As much as Francesca had longed to leave home, and as much as she had longed for a new life, sometimes she felt her solitude as keenly as a knife. She wasn’t one of them, the Americans, or the Germans. She was all but invisible in the ways that mattered. She could walk through the door and be lost in a sea of faces, disappear into the infinite city never to be heard from again, and it would make no difference to anyone. Not even Alma or Fritz in the end. They had their family, their traditions, and their work. She was an extra, a woman who would never quite be a part of their circle. A woman who would never quite belong.
Frustrated by the endless circling of her thoughts, she folded the letter and slipped it into an envelope. She couldn’t yet bring herself to share her dirty secret, especially without knowing herself what she’d do with it. At least she had time before her body changed—time to make a plan. She sat on the edge of the bed, her eyes tracing the light blazing around the corners of the blue cotton drape at the window. She attempted to clear her mind and listened to the sound of Claire’s soft snores. The sun had risen, and though it was still early, she decided she might as well start her day. It was Sunday and she had most of the day free.
The first thing she’d do was go to mass and to confession. Perhaps God would see her through this, if she would do as He asked of her: pray, confess her sins, do His will. Be the good Catholic woman Sister Alberta had tried to teach her to be. Francesca had never felt connected to Alberta’s cold and distant god, but now she had no choice but to try.
She pulled on her nicest dress of light-green cotton the color of spring leaves, her boater hat with black ribbon, and plain but comfortable gloves. For a final touch, she fastened on her mother’s brooch. After a quick bite of bread and coffee, she began the long walk to Alma’s. Her friend could show her to a Catholic church, and after mass, Francesca would join the Brauers at the park.
Where Fritz would be.
Fritz. The warmth he lent as he escorted her home. The way a light burned in his eyes when he felt strongly about something. How he listened to her as if all she had to say mattered.
Ave Maria, she had to stop thinking about him. There wouldn’t be any room for him in her life, not with a baby. He’d want nothing to do with a woman who had traded her body to ensure her future.
Desperate to ease the ache in her chest, she turned her attention to the scenery. She mused over the quiet of a Sunday morning. The roar of trains and carriage wheels to which she had grown accustomed was all but gone. When she approached Chatham Square, there were only a handful of the usual street urchins and prostitutes about who normally haunted the plaza. Even one of the most boisterous and wretched corners of the city lay beneath a blanket of slumber.
As she walked, she read the signs that she could understand, noticing the way the languages and the building styles often changed from one neighborhood to another. She’d heard there was an Italian section of town near Alma’s, but she hadn’t yet seen the place where many of her countrymen landed after passing through the halls of Ellis Island, if they didn’t leave for Chicago or go north to Boston.