Third Month 25, First Day
I’m confined to my room, spared even from attending chapel, because last night I rose from bed to take part in silliness despite my medicated condition—and I fell from a chair in the bath!
The folly began when three giggling girls from next door came to our room, guided by a candle’s light, and presented the irresistible idea that we all view our bellies in the mirror by the tub. It’s the only mirror in the house, vanity being against the rules, and was placed in that room only to ensure we don’t go about with soap on our faces—judging from its high placement on the wall. But no doubt inmates before us have put it to this other use.
One by one, prodding each other forward, we stood upon a chair in our nightgowns to peer at our enormous stomachs. There was much excitement, whispered at first, until we got to squealing over each belly whose rotund contours were revealed. When my chance came, I climbed onto the chair, pulled the cloth of my white gown close, and turned to see the full effect. An enormous ball of baby protruded at my front, and I wondered, Who is in there? and then, How will I get such a large thing out? When I turned again to step down, my foot slipped and twisted, and I fell to the floor.
I needed help to stand, for my ankle couldn’t bear weight. Then Delphinia burst in, having been roused by our noise. She demanded we return to our beds. She scolded me particularly—“I expect better of you”—and fixed me with a stern look. She stayed and helped me wrap my ankle all the same. To judge from the twitching of her lips, I’d say she found our exploits at least a tiny bit amusing.
However amusing it was, I’m stuck in bed today, lying at a slant because my belly is so tight and full that I can’t lie flat. I’m as near to bursting as an overripe plum. In any position, my bulk impinges on my breath. How will this large human exit my small frame? Who is in there?
Stay calm, Dr. Stevens advised. I’m trying.
A little while ago, Delphinia brought me a breakfast of boiled eggs and toast. I told her of my occupation with book and pencil and how my supplies are running low. She agreed, upon my promising to reimburse her, to buy some inexpensive notebooks and pencils for me, the next time she goes out.
*
An hour or so has passed. I remain in bed. Delphinia has brought up a new roommate, Sophie, to take Nancy’s place! She seems frightened and is very far along in her pregnancy. I meant to smile in welcome, but the drugs are causing peculiar effects (sweating and flushing, with my vision and hearing and reflexes strangely dulled). So when Sophie dashed a wary look at me, I felt uncertain whether I was offering back a pained or a pleased expression.
The unfortunate girl can’t be more than fourteen. Her eyes are hooded by darkness, and there are long scabs on her bony back and legs. I observed them when she returned from her bath and was dressing in clothes from the donations closet.
I think she was whipped.
She rests now in the bed beside mine, and with eyes shut she has taken on the aspect of a deer, gentle and delicate. The rough smell of our lye soap and another odor, a strange one, rise from her. On the wall above her head hangs a square of linen that bears an embroidered motto of this place: “Through hard work we are redeemed.”
I’d guess a lack of work was not the cause of her predicament.
*
It’s a late hour; I’ve awakened again with pains, despite the dose of chloral hydrate at bedtime. Gina snores gently, her face as pretty as the drawing in a fashion advertisement, with its gentle expression and pale skin and the brown curls that fan across her pillowcase. Little Sophie is moaning in her sleep. My mind is heavy, for now I know what brought Sophie to her sorry state.
Anne called us to the parlor late in the day, demanding that we all attend. With painstaking slowness, Sophie and I descended a flight of stairs and walked to the parlor, where the chairs had been arranged to face the front, just as they are for chapel. Anne stood where the reverend would stand, but with her back to us. Her statuesque form was clad in muddy boots and a dampened cloak. I sat beside Nancy, my head hardly reaching to her shoulder, and I watched her dandle William in her lap, relishing her delight.
Then Anne turned to us. Several girls gasped to see her face, it was that angry.
“A cruel article concerning our institution appeared in The Day this morning,” she told us. “The reporter admitted that he wasn’t granted admission to the place—of course he wasn’t!—but said he’d spoken with a woman ‘intimately acquainted’ with it, whose name he couldn’t give.”
She said the woman claimed this charity had turned her from a moral person who’d made but a single mistake to the one the reporter saw before him: an inebriate nursing her newborn in a brothel. The details of how this charitable institution had made her a drunkard and a prostitute in such short order were absent, but the reporter slandered our refuge nevertheless.
“And what was that reporter doing in a brothel?” Anne demanded, brandishing her arms. “Doesn’t this cast doubt on his qualifications to write of virtue?”
However slight his qualifications, the man took it upon himself to describe Anne’s establishment as providing nothing more than “the care and shelter of the deliberately vicious.” The way of the transgressor is not made sufficiently difficult here, he claimed, for the inmates enjoy three meals a day, meals that often include apple pie and mutton.
The cook had made those special dishes only during Mary’s brief stay; a few girls smirked with satisfaction at this strong hint that Mary was the turncoat. But Anne’s concern lay with us, her remaining charges. She looked us each in the face directly; I shook inside when my turn came to brave the knifepoint of her stare. Then she spoke with cutting force: “I don’t expect you to speak well of this place. No. I expect you never to speak of it at all. That is our gift to you: that you can leave this episode of your lives behind. But if you hold any malice in your heart against us, you may not have this gift.” She pointed toward the front door. “I demand that you leave my institution at once. Leave us now, and never show your face here again.”