Frau V. had me turn the soil in the small kitchen garden behind the house. Though they don’t strictly need a garden downtown, where markets are abundant, she prefers the freshest possible herbs and greens in the spring, and roots in autumn.
I was glad to have time in the open air, which was soft on my skin and enlivened me. But being in a garden put me in mind of how I’ve changed. At home I’d loved pushing a shovel into the ground, turning the dirt over, smelling its musty dankness. Today, however, as I shoveled row upon row of good soil, with many worms and a grand brown richness, I felt an aching hardness in my breasts, and an ache in my arms from so many hours spent holding a baby, and a dizzying ache in my mind from thoughts of Johan. Because he abandoned me, I’m committed not only to our infant but to another, and must serve his peculiar parents besides. On my life’s loom, the warp and woof are so disarrayed that I can no longer weave its cloth. Yet Johan, the agent of my disgrace, strolls merrily along his chosen way, with no alteration in his prospects, no lessening of freedom, no suffering on account of our hour of intimacy.
I pictured his long face coming close to mine, seeking a furtive kiss, as he had often done after we’d agreed to marry. I pictured throwing my whole body into him and knocking him to the ground. Liar, thief of my innocence, scoundrel of the lowest order! I wish I could go to Pittsburgh and tell him what his hollow promises have wrought. Yet I see no way to make this happen in my obligated state.
So little is permissible for a woman—yet on her back every human climbs to adulthood.
Fourth Month 25
The morning’s post brought no word from Gerda. My ever-growing anxiousness may explain this peculiar vision that came to me.
I’d fallen asleep in the rocker with Henry in my lap. Not long afterward I awakened, or so it seemed. I felt the cool air from the partly opened window, and the damp of Henry’s diaper. Then, with just as much seeming realness, I saw the lanky figure of Johan stoop to enter the nursery door. He held a worn felt hat to his chest. His eyes were downcast, and he’d grown a scraggly beard. He looked up and stared at me, his look so intense that I felt its heat.
Then the vision vanished, leaving only questions. Is he in trouble? Or is this merely another of the many fearful visions I’ve had since leaving Charlotte, whether sleeping or awake I can’t be sure?
All the rest have featured Charlotte being taken from me—so that madmen can subject her to disfiguring experiments, or because she’s been stricken with some hideous contagion, or thrown in a river. Or sometimes I have simply lost her, having turned my head to follow the flight of a bird and turned back to find her gone, which sends me running about the muddy streets of some village or tripping along the cobbles of a city street, anguished, calling her name.
Now this vision of sad Johan. What can it mean?
I’m becoming like some early Friend, beset by messages and urgings, though mine may come merely from my own fears.
*
My worry over Charlotte grows.
The doctor came to examine Henry at midday, and Clementina sent me to the kitchen. I sat with Margaret, Frau V., and a day jobber named Flo. Flo had come to help Margaret shake the winter’s grime from the rugs, wash curtains, wipe the baseboards, and much else for the house’s spring cleaning.
We ate beef stew together at a table on the back porch, despite the chill and the rain falling beyond the roof. Flo was tall, and her carriage was straight. She wore long braids and had brass bracelets up her arms. The quilted pouch about her neck gave off a penetrating scent. We all spoke of pleasant things, until she learned that my baby is with a wet nurse.
“I hope she isn’t with a baby farmer.” Her voice was smooth and low. “My second baby died that way.”
She’d worked in a cannery at that time and had to put her baby in day boarding, she said. While the mothers worked, the caretaker subdued the infants with rags soaked in sugar water and laudanum—just what Delphinia had described! Within two weeks, her son was down to skin and bones.
“I left the cannery to nurse him,” Flo said, eyes brimming. “I didn’t know how I would pay rent. But he was too weak. He couldn’t hold the milk I gave him.” Within days he was dead of starvation.
Drug dosing! Starvation! I looked at my plate, at the gravy pooled to one side, the threads of stewed meat too small to lift with a fork. I wanted to comfort Flo, but I couldn’t. I stood and sought privacy in the kitchen, where my mind flapped and flew into the walls like a wild bird that couldn’t get out.
I washed dishes in great distress, flushing as if I had a fever, then went to check on Henry. And there was Clementina, sleeping on the braided rug beside his crib. The remains of tears had dried in salty courses down her face. This was a fresh mystery! Had the doctor brought bad tidings? Or did Clementina feel a modicum of tenderness for the one who’d grown in her? Did she suddenly regret her alienation from his care?
She might have merely needed to be alone, for Albert had been at home, bothering her for company.
I stepped out and climbed to my room. When Henry woke and called, I listened for her movements. She rose and left. I found no sign of her apart from a flattening of the rug.
I’d just placed Henry back in his crib, where he’d rolled into a merry ball and was trying to reach his foot, when the front bell rang. Margaret called out that she was covered in coal dust in the basement, sweeping up after a delivery. Clementina must have been nearby, for she answered the door. Her sharp voice told someone to go around the back, and a young boy’s voice replied, “I need to see Miss de Jong, ma’am. My aunt sent me.”
“You must go to the back,” Clementina repeated. “Take a right at the end of the block, turn into the alley, and it’s the fourth gate on the right.”
My heart tumbled as I raced down the kitchen stairs and through the hall to the foyer. The boy stood in the open doorway. He wore a high-collared blue coat with brass buttons—an old military coat, much too big—that hung open atop baggy pants tied with a rope. He had a pasty, pockmarked complexion and was very thin.
“It’s all right,” I said. “He’s my visitor.”
“He must go around the back,” Clementina insisted. Her nose was wrinkled, for he gave off a pungent scent.
I turned to her and tried to catch her eye. “Please let me speak with him outside. He’s here about my baby.”
She ignored me and yelled at the boy: “Leave my doorstep!”
He started running down the street, and in my slippers I followed.
“Stop, please,” I called. “I am Miss de Jong.”