I wanted to leave for Anne’s and Blockley immediately this morning. But Miss Baker wasn’t coming in, for she had many errands in the Burnhams’ absence. And she’d given the day’s leave to Margaret, who had an invitation from her friend to a boat ride on the Delaware River. Since she’d already stayed up late to do what she’d neglected on my account yesterday, I could hardly blame her when she declined to take care of Henry again. When she left, apologetic but blushing with anticipation of her first boat ride, I said I would keep the kitchen fire going, make beef stew for our supper, and prepare two bedrooms for Clementina’s parents, who will arrive with her and Albert in coming days—we don’t know when.
I started on these things, then cleaned and fed Henry and let him lie on a blanket and make his strong efforts to advance. But as he grunted and rocked side to side, trying to use his stomach strength to roll over, I was as impatient as I’d ever been. When he grew fussy, I laid him in his crib. Then I walked about the house like a caged beast. In room after room I shivered, unable to eat or perform more duties, trying to find something to take my mind off my dire preoccupation. Books contained indecipherable letters; even my hand stirring the stew looked foreign, like a hook or a claw. Soon I was gagging with hard sobs. Having no one in hearing distance gave free rein to my distress.
Henry woke and cried again to eat. His call functioned as an alarm that set me into motion. I couldn’t keep hiring hacks, with only ten dollars and change remaining. So I consulted the grandfather clock in the foyer, then a printed schedule, finding that a train going to Ninth and Green was arriving soon at the Germantown depot. I counted out five dollars. That ought to pay my round-trip fare downtown, my fares on streetcars, and the almshouse charge for three days’ care—which couldn’t be more than a dollar or two.
I tucked the money into my small purse, pulled its string to close it, and hung it about my neck. Then I did something that sickened me at heart, something I never would have done if my baby’s life wasn’t hanging in the balance: I painted laudanum, which the doctor had given me during my illness, onto my nipples, and I fed Henry from them. This way he wouldn’t know of his aloneness.
In my anxious arms he fell into a deep and imperturbable sleep. I placed him in his crib and rushed out the door of that otherwise empty house and toward the Germantown depot.
I realized as I ran that I’d left the stewpot on the wood stove; the fire would burn out eventually, but nevertheless the stew might turn to mush and burn before Margaret or I returned. And I was frightened by what I’d done to Henry. I’d never given anyone laudanum before, not even myself. How long would he stay asleep? Had I given him too little, leaving him to wake and cry alone? Had I given him too much? Might one dose of laudanum—it was terribly unlikely—but please, dear God…
I reached the depot, the one near to my house, where I’d said goodbye to Johan and Peter. I barely looked about and kept shawls wrapped over my head and face, and fortunately I recognized no one among the others waiting. As I waited, the nearness of my childhood home brought on prickling sensations, perhaps not unlike what amputees feel in the areas of their missing limbs.
On the train, after paying my fare, I checked three times that the remaining money was still in my purse. Then I focused on suppressing my panic. When at last I arrived at Anne’s, I found much to bolster me: the women had prepared Charlotte’s birth certificate and a letter attesting to my character and my being the baby’s mother, even telling of the fire and of Charlotte being sent without my knowledge to Blockley.
“I don’t know what good a letter from me can do,” Anne said as she handed over the envelope. “It hardly gives you the best provenance.”
I said the letter and the birth certificate would do plenty of good—for how could the almshouse turn away a nursing mother, even an unwed one? I hugged Anne despite her stiffness. Then Delphinia saw me to the door. Unbidden, she gave me coins from her apron pocket, pressing them into my hand—27 cents—along with a buttered roll.
“You’d best stop trying for the day,” she counseled. “Return to your work, if you intend to keep it.”
I sighed.
“Your little one was plump and strong when she left Gina’s?”
I nodded.
“She’ll stay that way a while longer.”
“I have to try today,” I insisted. “No baby there was plump or strong.”
Delphinia squeezed me close and nudged me through the doorway. “Godspeed to you, then.”
I rushed toward Market Street to travel across the river, my mouth pasty from the city soot. The women’s help had lessened my fear, to the point that when I reached Market Street and stepped into a streetcar, it was with an almost jubilant air. The driver raised his reins and the horses were off, bells raucous at their necks. Then I took another streetcar to the almshouse stop and walked through the gate.
About forty small children were running about in rough-hewn garments on a patch of ground. Their bodies looked stunted, and every face I saw had deep pockmarks, perhaps from smallpox. These were the lucky ones who had survived. With a wave I saluted their hardiness.
I’d come to the Children’s Asylum during receiving hours and called myself an applicant, so the robust woman who answered the door let me past. In the dim foyer, I was assaulted by a distinctive smell that mixed the aromas of excrement, old shoes, sweat, boiling soup bones, rancid grease, herbal tinctures, and mentholated unguent. Breathing shallowly, I followed the woman to an antechamber where a thin young man sat at a desk. A closed door behind him bore the words VISITOR OF CHILDREN on its square of opaque glass. The fellow at the desk told me that this official was occupied but that we could start on my application. I said I sought my own baby, two months old, named Charlotte.
He raised his chin, with its short whiskers, and appraised me as someone more income-supplying than expected. “Your own baby?” he replied. “So you left her on a doorstep with a note, and now you regret it?”
I informed him that I’d never surrendered my baby but that she’d been sent by Germantown Hospital because they had no way to reach me. He pulled out a leather book whose cover was embossed with the words ADMISSIONS AND DISCHARGES.
“Three days ago?” the young man asked.
I nodded.
“Two babies were admitted. One estimated to be two months old, the other, six months.” He cleared his throat and ran his ink-stained index finger along the columns. “The younger, number 23259, was given the name Mary Foundling.” He shut the book. “Perhaps that’s yours. But if she remains among us, I cannot say. There’s always a disease running through the nursery. Dysentery. Typhoid. Measles kills the most.” He sighed. “The coroner gives us a list on Fridays.”
Dizzied by his litany, I held to the side of his desk.
“You know about the charge for support?” He stared at me, then stood and fetched a chair from a wall and placed it beneath me. I sank onto it. “You know about the charge?”
“I know about the charge,” I replied feebly.
The door behind him opened, and from the inner office stepped a short and fleshy man. He wore a striped suit and held a gold pocket watch. “Anyone to see me?” He looked about, widening his eyes and furrowing his brow.