This afternoon I strolled the Haven’s courtyard, where the crocuses and daffodils have opened their blooms completely. How grateful I was for that square of green tucked between two wings of the building that confines us. I took small breaths of humid air, because I have no room for filling breaths. Then all at once an inmate named Mary—a small person in a constant state of agitation, with muscles as taut as an out-flung whip—opened the French doors to the courtyard and ran past me.
She held a wooden chair before her and yelled to someone behind, “I’ll show you!” This threat was garnished by indecent expletives. Placing the chair before the high fence that separates the courtyard from an alley, she stepped up and—as best she could—cleaved her body to the planks. Despite the impediment of her round belly, she clambered to the top and heaved herself to the other side, to freedom. I heard a thud and the pattering of boots on bricks. My spirit trilled to picture Mary running free, though reason tells me she was better off confined.
Anne and Delphinia came rushing out, followed by a crowd of girls with their heads craning forward. I doubt anyone was truly sorry to find Mary gone. She’d proved crude and unrepentant after admittance; she’d never ceased her railing against the doors being locked to prevent us from going anywhere except this courtyard and the clotheslines; she’d even brought in alcohol and partaken of it by evening, and her roommate Sally told us that intoxication had made Mary’s language fouler. But Anne and Delphinia took a walk through nearby streets to try to find her while we inmates settled down to spoonbread and beans.
With our supervisors absent, Sally informed us of a note Mary had received from the father of her baby, entreating her to come back. Knowing of his wayward nature from Mary’s testimony, Anne had refused to approve Mary’s discharge.
A ways into our meal, Anne entered the dining room and took her place at the head of the table. Though her carriage was prim, the purple half-moons beneath her eyes revealed fatigue. She breathed in audibly and released a sigh. “I aim to take in only girls of good moral character,” she said, “but my judgment can be flawed. I owe you an apology.”
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.