“He must’ve had a reason,” Mr. Davis said. “Anyhow, it’s no concern of ours. She don’t live here no more.”
“That’s why I’ve come to speak to you. Minnie needs a good home. The prosecutor has sent her to the girls’ reformatory in Trenton. If she doesn’t have a respectable place to go, she could be sentenced there for several years, and I know you wouldn’t?—”
“A reformatory!” Mr. Davis said. “It’s worse than we thought.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” Constance said hastily. “If the judge had a word from you, she might be able to come home.”
“No, no. If it’s as bad as all that, the reformatory is the only place for her. We should’ve sent her years ago,” said Mrs. Davis.
“But it’s meant to be a punishment for a crime, and I don’t think?—”
“If there wasn’t a crime, she wouldn’t be in jail,” Mr. Davis said. “Go on back to New Jersey and tell that girl I said to repent.”
Constance looked to Goldie for help. For a long-limbed girl, she’d managed to make herself very small. She sat with her legs crossed, her arms folded over her chest, and her chin down. As soon as she realized Constance was about to speak to her, she bolted out the front door and down the street.
“You heard me,” Mr. Davis said. “Go on, now.”
Constance stood and looked down at the two of them, as gray and miserable as the dingy furnishings and piles of mending that surrounded them, and understood that she was outmatched. If a case could be made to the Davises to take their daughter in again, she clearly wasn’t the one to make it.
“I’ve never seen parents so hardened against their own child before,” she said. “You’ve put your principles above your family, and you’ll be the poorer for it.”
“It isn’t for you to judge,” Edith said. “Go on, like he said.”
She left Catskill in a downtrodden frame of mind. She hated to hear a father speak so approvingly of putting his own daughter away. It was becoming all too easy for parents to turn their unruly children over to the state. Some of them regretted it once their tempers cooled, but by then it was too late: once a child was sent to a reformatory, a remorseful parent couldn’t do a thing about it. Constance had heard of mothers who pleaded to have their daughters back, because they needed the help at home, or even because they were moving away and didn’t want to leave anyone behind. None of that mattered. Every sentence was served in full.
But it didn’t seem that the Davises would ever want Minnie back.
SHE STOPPED NEXT in Pompton Lakes to see about Edna Heus-tis, arriving at Mrs. Turnbull’s boarding-house just as the girls were sitting down to supper. A maid brought her into the dining room, where five boarders looked up at her with expressions of friendly curiosity.
“Did they make you take a test to become a lady officer?” asked Fannie, a freckle-faced girl with hair the color of butter.
“Do they only let you arrest other girls, or could you arrest a man?” said Delia. “I might nominate a man for the honor.”
Just then Mrs. Turnbull walked in with a covered dish. “If you’re here to see Edna, she works a split shift tonight, so she gets home a little later than the other girls. She isn’t in any trouble, is she?”
“Not at all. I said I would look in on her, that’s all.”
“Then you might as well wait for her, and let me fix you a plate.”
The only other supper on offer would have been something cold from the jail kitchen a few hours later, so Constance accepted and sat down with the girls. She took the opportunity to ask each of them in turn if their mothers and fathers were bothered by the fact that they’d gone to work and lived on their own. Two of the girls said they hadn’t any parents and had been under the care of an aunt or some other relation, who had been all too happy to see them grown and looking after themselves. One of them said that her father was “no good” and her mother “not much better” and that she left home as soon as the factory would hire her on. She hadn’t heard a word from her parents and hoped not to. The other two were a bit vague in their answers, but gave her to understand that they had reached some accord with their families and lived in a state of uneasy truce, sending more money home than they would like, and less than their families wished to receive.
“After we pay the rent, there’s hardly nothing left,” Pearl said.
“You get all your meals and your laundry,” Mrs. Turnbull shot back. “Nothing’s stopping you from living with your mother.”
“Then she’ll take all my wages.”
“Did you expect to make your fortune at the powder works? Clear these plates.”
Constance jumped up and helped the girls with the dishes. Just as she finished, the door opened and Edna Heustis walked in wearing her factory apron and cap. When she saw Constance, she stepped back uneasily, wrapping the corner of her apron around her fingers.
“I’ve only come to check on you,” Constance said. “Can we go upstairs?” Edna scampered up the stairs ahead of her and opened the door to her room.
“Is something the matter?” she said, when they were alone.
“I only wanted to see you, and to know that things have worked out for you. The judge asked me to check on your welfare, remember?”
“Oh.” She sat down heavily on the bed. “I’m fine. I took a split shift, because it pays a little more, and in the middle of the day I come back here and help with the cleaning, for a reduction in my rent. I haven’t the time to get into any trouble.”
“You look exhausted,” Constance said.
“I’m not,” she insisted. “I’m only trying to earn a little extra.”
“Why? What’s happened?”
“Nothing! It’s not illegal to work a few extra shifts, is it?”
“Of course not,” Constance said, “but you sound a little desperate. If something’s the matter, you ought to tell me.”
“I’m just—I want to raise money for the war.” That was as much as Edna could bring herself to say. She was afraid that if she told the deputy what she intended to do, she might be prevented or her parents might be told.
“That’s good of you, Edna, but I don’t want you to wear yourself out. Are you sure there’s nothing else? Sometimes when a girl is desperate for money, there’s another reason for it.”
“What do you mean?” She looked alarmed.
“No trouble with a man?”
She laughed. It was an unexpected sound in the room. “Of course not!”
“It’s not so outrageous as that.”
“I suppose not, in your line of work.”
Constance looked around the room and saw the pamphlets on relief efforts and the Red Cross leaflets. “Are you going to learn some nursing?”
“I might,” Edna said.