Do the animals keep silent for fear of attracting predators? Nancy would have drawn a horde of predators by now, if she were in the wild.
Suppertime is near. I ought to go inside. The day’s meager warmth is rushing up and dissipating with the light. Though the wool cape I brought from home does spread wide enough to cover my belly and keeps the bulk of me warm, my feet are numb inside their slippers, and my fingers are stiff from the cold.
Yet I fear the news inside.
Dear God, please hold Nancy and her baby in thy Light.
Will I scream as Nancy does?
*
At supper, a jubilant Delphinia made an announcement: Nancy and her baby boy are well! Whereupon we regained our appetites and gave thanks and enjoyed the cheese and hot bread and the cobbler made from a donation of last fall’s apples.
Delphinia stood squarely in the doorway as we left the dining room, passing encouraging words to each resident, reaching an arthritic hand to pat one upon her shoulder, to push a lock of hair behind another’s ear. I placed myself last in line. On reaching her, I requested permission to visit Nancy on First Day, the day after tomorrow, before chapel. She consented. Then I asked whether the Haven’s solicitor had found any trace of my baby’s father through his Pittsburgh colleague. That flame still flickers in me.
“No word from the Pittsburgh office,” said the elderly matron. “But don’t lay much hope in this, my dear. Our solicitor has gained support only a dozen times in over two hundred cases.” He also has convinced a few dozen men to marry the women they wronged, she added, though most of the women were distrustful and married in despondency, only because they lacked another means to food and shelter. Yet the hardworking Ladies’ Committee of this charity considered those cases a success—“which they were,” noted Delphinia drily, “unless those people had wanted happy lives.”
I joined the others in the parlor, agitated by fruitless thoughts of Johan. But the tiny stitches calmed me down.
This must be why we choose to embroider our evenings away. After stirring hot vats of laundry, wringing out the steaming cloths, and hanging them on lines; after scrubbing floors on our knees, helping Cook peel potatoes and knead heaps of dough, wiping away the grime that falls to every surface from the city air, and unpacking crates of donated supplies left at the back gate, we should want nothing more than rest. But without work to occupy us, our minds wander to places of uncertainty and dread. Better to sit in an upholstered chair, lean toward the orb of a gas lamp in the parlor, and draw a brightly threaded needle in and out of a dishtowel or an apron. Better to form lovely flowers than to consider that the promise of our youth has bloomed and died.
We also do this piecework because the goods are sold at a shop, through Anne’s arrangement. The coins earned go directly to the Haven, to defray the costs of our keep. Each woman costs the Haven four dollars ninety cents a week, but most can’t pay so much and won’t earn it by embroidering, either. Most of us will leave with a debt. I’ll be here longer than most, so I’ve given Anne some of the money I came with.
Now that I’m diary-keeping again, I can hardly bear to pause my pencil. I never realized it till now, but writing and Mother must be linked for me. For even as I balance this notebook on my abdomen and draw a hand across its page, the memories come flickering of my small slate and the hours I passed learning to form letters at her knee. Perhaps that’s why I lost my urge to write when she died two winters ago, and why resuming the habit is so profoundly settling. For writing works upon me like her soft hand on my brow.
Mother was a God-loving woman with an independent mind, a beacon in our Meeting, a model of common sense and tenderness. She and I didn’t always live in accord—I dashed out many lines that prove this, especially when she dismissed my thoughts without adequately considering them. And I feared her standards, for she brooked no infringements of the Discipline. But her fierce devotion and the control she exercised kept our family united. She had strength enough to fill in for our wavering and doubts. As soon as she was gone, Father, Peter, and I began to split apart—from one another and inside ourselves.
With her gone I’ve felt no Spirit anymore, not in my silence or in my talk. Yet in writing here, I begin to sense a glimmer of it.
Ah—a sharp jab inside. This baby kicks and turns day and night, and even seems to lean into my palm when I apply it to the orb of my belly. Steadily my little one comes more to life, while my feeling for its red-haired father shrinks.
One day that feeling will be no larger than a pea and will grow dry and wrinkled. One day I’ll throw that shriveled pea to the dirt and crush it beneath my heel.
Third Month 18, First Day
I’m trembling from what I’ve just seen.
In my months here, I’ve come to dislike the superintendent. Yes, Anne means to help us; her devotion of time and funds to this hard cause is only admirable, and she does much good. She speaks regretfully of the “limits of our institution,” wishing for the funds and space to keep women and babies together longer and to find families for all the infants. As she tells us, no other charity in the city protects and hides those who’ve taken but a single misstep or been shamefully abused.
Yet Anne’s punishing nature hinders her kind intentions. She works us hard, save for one period a day, despite our increased need for rest. She restricts our every word and deed—we can’t leave the premises, at threat of expulsion; we can’t speak of our pasts and how we came to be here; we can’t even laugh when rare levity strikes, for to her we laugh in the face of God, before whom we ought to be somber and repentant. We do speak in quiet voices of our histories when we can, to unburden ourselves and be known to one another, but the threat of discovery makes our hearts beat out of time. And now I’ve learned that she doesn’t even allow us peace during the three weeks of motherhood we’re allotted before we must leave to make room for another.
A short while ago I took breakfast with Gina and the others, then traveled a long hall to the recovery room where Nancy lay. Bars and shutters covered its windows. The door had extra locks on its hallway side to keep girls in at night, since several early occupants had fled without their infants, to escape the responsibility of keeping or placing them. I couldn’t help but compare this barren room to the homely chambers I saw new mothers resting in when Mother and I brought meals to their families. Those women barely stirred for weeks, except to nurse, while others kept up the household.