I took a spot along the wall and sat upon my valise. The man to my right coughed in his sleep; the cough and the large scrofula on his neck showed he was consumptive. A skinny, buck-toothed, hot-faced woman called for water; someone brought it. Charlotte drank and slept. Despite my fear, I managed to doze—but I woke soon to fingers groping and scratching at my neck, then pulling on the string of my purse.
I slapped away the wily hand in terror. The body slithered into the darkness beneath a set of stairs, and I didn’t dare pursue it. Then Charlotte began to kick. When I peered into the shawl, she flashed her tongue-revealing smile! My heart opened like an oyster, baring its tender part.
I fed and changed her and dozed again. But the cries of the thirsty woman woke me. Again she begged for water. A fountain bubbled close by, so I filled the chipped cup from Margaret and brought it to the woman. There was an ashen dryness to her skin. When she took the cup, the heat of fever touched my hand.
Fearing whatever disease she carried, which Charlotte would be especially vulnerable to, I had a nightmare-ridden sleep. At dawn I opened my eyes to the legs of a railroad policeman whose foot was nudging me awake.
“Move on out,” he said. “The decent folk are coming.”
Already passengers were entering with trunks and crates, and clustering at ticket counters. The sick woman appeared deep in slumber when the policeman reached her spot. But his efforts to wake her brought no response. While I changed Charlotte and applied lanolin to her sore, the woman’s small, death-heavy body was loaded onto a baggage cart and pushed toward the carriage area. No doubt she’d be dumped in a hole in a pauper’s field.
I pulled my body to the street, with Charlotte and the valise. I was afraid to pass another night at the station, so at gathering points I asked vagrants to tell me of inexpensive lodging houses. The ones who answered knew of places for men only; others were too impaired by drink or infirmity to help. I asked after a room at several decent-appearing taverns and was informed by gruff barkeeps that a woman on her own, even a widow with a baby as I’d claimed to be, would likely draw unsavory interest and danger there.
I kept marching and reached a peaceful block of brick row-houses on Clinton Street. Before one house, a carved wooden sign read THE WHISPERING PINES, WOMEN’S LODGING. My hope refreshed, I climbed a narrow stoop and rang the bell.
A crisp-mannered maid welcomed me into the foyer, which was clean and airy. Then the middle-aged proprietress arrived, puffing as she descended the carpeted stairs, struggling for breath against her tight-laced corset. I identified myself as a widow, and she asked to see my baby. Pulling back the shawl, I kissed my baby’s forehead, aiming but failing to bring on her liveliness.
The startled proprietress inquired as to my husband’s name, the date and place of his death, whether I could produce a death certificate, how I planned to pay the lodging cost, whether I had steady work, why my family hadn’t taken us in—and I stumbled in my answers. She pursed her lips and sniffed, as if detecting my lies by scent—or, more likely, confirming my lack of a place to bathe. Then she dismissed me.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “We’re unable to shelter those without work and upstanding reputations.”
I was foolish to have dreamed of any other response at such a clean, pleasant location.
I returned to Broad Street Station, where I sit now, shielded from public view by a baggage cart, scribbling fast while Charlotte rests.
To my eyes, Charlotte and I are still cleaner than the other vagrants. But a string of sobering facts is evident. The longer one is homeless, the dirtier one becomes. The dirtier one becomes, the less charity one attracts. The less charity one attracts, the more likely one is never to rise from the street.
Yet how can I stop us from becoming unsalvageable, when I can only move in circles: changing Charlotte’s diaper and blanket, discarding the used ones because I have nowhere to clean them, buying old bedsheets and rags from a cart and ripping them into squares for diapers and blankets with the aid of my penknife, finding an alley in which to relieve myself, nursing Charlotte, finding water to drink, changing Charlotte and applying lanolin, finding water in which to wash her bottom and my hands, nursing her, buying rags, tearing them into diapers and blankets, buying something of poor quality to eat. These tasks alone could keep me occupied today, tomorrow, and for weeks to come, without our making any progress.
How can I even think of making progress? Each time I nurse, I float into a state of depletion such that I can hardly form a thought, much less a plan. In fact, without a pencil in hand, I can’t think at all.
What keeps me from complete despair is Charlotte. Her diarrhea is less frequent; her appetite increases; her look grows keener. Each improvement is a drop of water for the parched seedling that is my heart.
Sixth Month 9
To be the gainer of charity, one loses more than I knew.
This morning I set out to learn how to survive on the street. I sat in one place and then another, watching, with Charlotte quiet against me. And one thing that shocked me was the many children who spend their days begging and roaming. They are tough and persistent, following quick-moving targets with a repeated “Change for food?” or “Black your boots, sir?” (These ones have boot-blacking kits banging against their short legs.) Many persons drop coins into their hands. Some even sit upon the proffered stool for a boot blacking, despite an unclean rag and poor-quality polish.
These children sweep steps, unbidden, and demand a coin when someone leaves or enters. They sell oranges, newspapers, or pencils. Only the rare ones wear shoes: old boots with flapping soles, or slippers ill suited for the streets. Some wrap their feet in newspaper or rags. It affects me most to see their faces—anxious, cunning, and preternaturally alert, except when they withdraw from the press of traffic to count their coins; then the softness of their youth overtakes them.
Despite their chant of “Change for food?” I haven’t seen them buying victuals. Rather, they pick up packets of cart food that others drop after taking their fill. In my great hunger, I’ve begun following their lead.