Marie brightened with kind intention. “When will your review appear? I love your clever words.”
Henry gave out a loud squall.
“Ah!” groaned Clementina, gesturing at me. “This nurse can’t quiet him!”
Letitia raised her head—piled with elaborate curls like Clementina’s—and swallowed her bite of tart. “He must prefer his mother,” she said sweetly. “I know my Lizzy does.”
Marie concurred. “I don’t take on the menial parts—the feeding and the changing. But when my boy needs comfort…” She made it plainer. “Well, no one’s as good as Mother.”
Clementina blanched, but Letitia pressed further. “We won’t mind if you hold him, will we, Marie?” She looked at her friend.
“Oh, no.” Marie shook her petite head side to side.
Clementina stood and thrust her arms toward me. I passed Henry over and laid the rag that catches his spit-up across the beaded shoulder of her bodice. She sat with Henry and fixed a sympathetic look on her face, but she kept his body at a distance, as though he were a muddy boot. He wailed louder and twisted his head toward me as Clementina struggled to contain him. She pushed his bottom down onto her lap. Her guests watched closely, raising forks to mouths.
“What’s gotten into him?” said Clementina. “Nurse, fetch what you need to swaddle him. I don’t know why you insist on keeping him free.”
I flinched at her dishonesty as Letitia whispered loudly, “These nurses never do as we ask. You’d think, for as much as we pay…”
I was rising from the settee to do as Clementina had commanded when she screeched. On her lap, beneath Henry, a stain spread across her lavender skirt.
Placing Henry on the floor, she grabbed the rag from her shoulder and dabbed at the urine. Her friends looked on with widened eyes, then applied themselves to their tea, faces tight in disciplined composure. Henry raised the pitch of his wail and thrashed his legs. Clementina lifted him and thrust him into my arms, where he mouthed me frantically. Turning to her guests, Clementina brightened her demeanor and bared her teeth. “Please excuse me a moment.”
“Of course,” said Letitia, a smile starting at one corner of her mouth. “We’ll have a chance to catch up, won’t we, Marie?”
“Very good,” Marie said airily, looking at nothing with studied innocence above the rim of her raised teacup.
Clementina rushed out—nearly colliding with Margaret, who was en route from cellar to kitchen and who backed against the wall with a bucket of coal to each side. The lady raced upstairs, and I followed—assuming that, in her company, I may use those stairs. She entered her bedroom and slammed the door.
I walked into the nursery and peeled off Henry’s clothes. After cleaning and diapering him, I settled in the rocker to nurse. From down the hall I heard Clementina’s angry movements. Soon, in a different gown, she stood at the opened nursery door. The sound of laughter rose from the parlor.
“You humiliated me,” she hissed.
Hardly! I took a long breath in and out, knowing I’d best not speak. No wonder two nurses had already failed to please her. Perhaps they’d even left by choice.
She stormed down to her purported friends. I rose with Henry to shut the nursery door and sat again. Soon he was nodding off, yet I didn’t dare leave, in case he awoke in distress and cried, and she found this humiliating as well, with her friends to witness once more that she would not—could not—comfort him.
*
It’s deep in the night. The house and street are silent, save the ticking of the grandfather clock in the foyer two stories down. I’ve just nursed Henry and returned to my room, and again I’m ridden with guilt. Because even as I find Henry’s intimacy with my body jarring, my heart must incline toward this baby. He responds with eagerness when I enter his room, and the very act of nursing unites us in a deepening calm.
Yet there is a difference between this sympathy and what I feel for Charlotte. When Henry’s in distress, my response is tolerable. I can finish folding a blanket, or slice an apple, or write a few more words. Whereas I used to feel Charlotte’s very breathing in my body, and when she cried, a knife’s tip scored my heart.
Thus, with Henry, I can rest.
So even as I worry over Charlotte, a secret part of me is glad to be more free.
Fourth Month 20
I sent a note by post to the wet nurse Gerda this morning, inquiring in simple language how Charlotte is faring. If she can’t read, I hope she’ll find someone who can. I asked her to answer with a letter or a messenger and promised to repay any costs—though I have but a few dollars remaining, till I’m paid on the first of next month.
Then, with Henry fed and sleeping, I started down the back stairs to get my instructions from Frau Varschen. I stopped on hearing her loud words.
“She’s mixing up the household! Talking alone with Mr. Burnham!”
My skin shrank. The man had entered the nursery before leaving for his office, while I was dressing Henry; he was pleased to see an increase in the baby’s vigor. The visit had taken no more than a minute.
“I don’t mean to be contrary,” tried Margaret, “but Mr. Burnham only wanted—”
“Shush!” said the cook. “There could be trouble, I’m telling you.”
They fell to silence. I waited briefly, then descended the stairs and opened the door into the kitchen. Margaret sat at the table, her head bent over a plate of beans. Frau V. kneaded dough on the lid of her trough, picking up the heavy heap and slamming it down repeatedly. The stove burned hot, and the cook’s face was pink and sweaty.
“Shall I start on the soup?” I asked, the pulse quick at my throat.
Frau V. nodded. “We need beef juice for my bean soup, and the bones are boiling.” She gestured toward a pail. “Take some beans and sort out the dirt and rocks.”
I filled a plate and sat beside Margaret. As we searched for debris, I felt much unrest and sensed the same in Margaret’s quick breaths. The cook broke the quiet.
“How do you like this house?”
“It’s well built,” I said, “with good materials.” I looked up at the exposed beams of the kitchen ceiling, which are incredibly thick, then at the stone hearth, where a rack of lamb roasted over a pan. The aroma made my mouth water.
“But it’s far from the finest house on the block. Are you used to finer?” The cook gave a laugh, then applied the back of her wrist to wipe sweat from her temples.
“Oh, no. I’m used to a small stone house with nothing fine about it, except my family.”
Margaret piped in. “Where is this house? How many sisters and brothers?” She dumped her beans into a pot on the stove and got another plateful from the pail.
“The house is in Germantown,” I said. “I have a brother. He’s twenty-one, which is two years younger than me.” In my mind I added, and I don’t know where he is anymore.