“I wonder what that’s about,” she asked in a voice low enough to be ignored. Dr. Savard looked at her and lifted a shoulder. “The Vanderbilts,” she said. “And their costume ball.”
She had ventured a question and got an answer, but that only brought a hundred more questions to mind. If this went on much longer, Mary Augustin told herself, her brain would be riddled with question marks, hundreds of little hooks set so deep they’d never let go.
? ? ?
THERE WAS A small market at the Christopher Street landing, but most of the stalls had already closed for the day and the ferry was ready to board. A great throng of people were waiting to cross the Hudson to Hoboken: workmen of every description, farm women hung about with empty baskets and exhausted babies, towing young children on braided strings, still whey-faced as they shook the winter off. Draymen leaned on towers of crates or huddled in groups that belched tobacco smoke.
In the middle of all that, a nun who had been identified as Sister Ignatia stood waiting for them. She was the exact opposite of Sister Mary Augustin, from her habit—everything she wore from bonnet to shoes was a stark black—to the round cheeks and sturdy frame. Anna wondered what the difference in color was meant to convey—young or old? Good or bad? And had to bite her lip to keep from smiling.
The ferry let out a shrill blast of its whistle, which saved the trouble of another awkward introduction.
On deck, voices rose high and higher still to overcome the noise of the water and wind and the engines. German, Italian, Yiddish, Gaelic, French, Polish, Chinese, and still other languages Anna didn’t recognize, all in competition. Inside the cabin it would be far worse and so Anna began to look for a spot on the open deck upwind of the smoke and cinders, but Sister Ignatia had other ideas. She cast a stern eye in Anna’s direction and so she followed, suppressing a sigh. Somehow Sister Ignatia managed to make her feel like a first-year medical student, always waiting to be told what she had done wrong.
The cabin air was thick with coal smoke, rapidly aging fish, souring milk, pickled cabbage, wet swaddling clothes, and above all of these, sweat. The smell of hard work, not unpleasant in and of itself.
“Now,” said Sister Ignatia, leaning close to talk directly into Anna’s ear. “How much do you know of what is before you?”
That this nun found it within her authority to question a qualified physician did not come as a surprise. Anna might have said, I have seen and treated smallpox many times, or, I have vaccinated hundreds of men, women, and children and even a priest or two. Or, In the four years since I qualified, I have signed some five hundred death certificates, more than seventy percent of which were for children less than five years old.
The factory towns near Hoboken seemed to always be on the brink of a new epidemic: smallpox, yellow fever, typhoid, influenza, measles, mumps, whooping cough, sometimes overlapping. There were measures that would have put an end to many such episodes, but the mill owners saw no reason to invest in the lives of the workers; there were always immigrants eager for a place in the silk and thread factories. It was only the intercession of the Department of Health that had brought about any change at all.
Now the mill owners were supposed to supply hot water and soap—hygiene was the first line of defense in all matters of communal health—and see to it that newly arrived immigrants had clean drinking water and were vaccinated before taking up work. A few mill owners even complied, for a little while at least. But the epidemics still came, as regular as the seasons. With the result that Anna now sat on a ferry bracketed by nuns.
To Sister Ignatia she said, “Vaccinations are not difficult. As long as there are translators to help explain, I anticipate no trouble. I am assuming there will be enough vaccination quills wherever it is we’re going.”
“Vaccinations.” Sister Ignatia sent a sharp look to Sister Mary Augustin, and when she spoke again her German accent had thickened. “Who is telling you of vaccinations?”
Anna paused. “Wasn’t Dr. Sophie supposed to go with you to vaccinate the mill workers?”
Once the face framed by the bonnet had been very pretty and still was, in the way of many immigrants from northern Europe. Round-cheeked, flawless skin, eyes of a grayish blue. In this case there was also a chin set in the way of a woman who did not tolerate sloppy habits. Clearly irritated, she said, “We are the Sisters of Charity. It is our mission to see to the welfare of orphaned and abandoned children.”
Anna managed a small smile. “Well, then,” she said with deceptive calm. “What is it you need me to do?”
“We are fetching the children whose parents died in the last smallpox outbreak, but the law says no one is being allowed to cross into New York without—”
“A signed certificate of good health,” Anna finished for her. “Italian orphans?”