Lilli de Jong

by Janet Benton

  On instinct, I entered my parents’ bedroom and opened the trunk Patience had brought from Ohio. Beneath sundry effects I found a small cloth purse. I pulled open its strings. Inside it held a listing of these items from a Philadelphia pawnbroker’s shop and twelve dollars remaining in bills and coins. Patience had pawned precious things that by rights were mine.

  Her treachery ought to have been evident to me before; in her months with us, though she had no paying situation, she’d come home with a new gown, a hairbrush, a hat, hairpins, and a pair of shoes. She’d been gilding herself with my inheritance.

  Quivering with outrage, I took every bit of the remaining money, added it to my cloth purse, and secreted the purse beneath the lining of my valise. I decided this was more a restitution than a theft.

  Then I hid some of my remaining items—including my diaries, some leather-bound books, a few trinkets, the silver spoons from a box in the kitchen, and my wedding lace—between the blankets in the trunk at the foot of my bed. I hoped against evidence that respect would keep Patience from searching that trunk and pawning what she could. Many more items that rightfully belonged to me were arrayed throughout the house, but they’d have to wait till I had a home worthy of the name, if they remained by then.

  I waited by the warm kitchen stove for Patience to return.

  “I know what thee did,” I said as she unloaded vegetables and meat from our wicker basket. With the confidence of the wronged, I pushed my face into her ruddy one. “Father doesn’t look kindly upon thieving, and neither does the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”

  Her face blanched. In such an unfamiliar role I shook and sweated, but I managed to effect a trade: her secrecy for mine.

  That evening I told Father I was taking a governess position downtown to save money for further education. I could get a position at a different school, I said, if I had more training. To my mixed relief and disappointment, Father neither spoke a word against the plan nor found reason to doubt it. The next morning, when I traveled downtown on the same railway car that Peter and Johan had taken, I was embarking on a very different journey.

  At a newsstand, I obtained the morning’s papers. I sat on a bench and scoured the advertisements for any place that might shelter me. There were many notices from midwives who offered housing and medical services, but I hadn’t near enough money to pay the prices listed. I found one notice of a women’s refuge run by the city, but its name included the word Magdalen, which gave away its nature as a place that served women of the night—and the description expressly excluded those who were with child. At last I found a discreet listing in the Public Ledger for the Philadelphia Haven for Women and Infants, which offered shelter to “friendless women” and listed visiting hours that very afternoon. I prayed that I was correctly perceiving the nature of the place.

  On that bench I sat for several hours, my hands in the pockets of my cloak, my mind a whir of regrets and supplications to my Inner Guide. For months I had failed to consult it, much less to follow its edicts. Perhaps this is why it stayed silent as I sat and suffered.

  At last, avoiding puddles of slush and animal waste as best I could, I walked to a stuccoed edifice on Tenth and Fitzwater Streets, arriving shortly after the opening time. Climbing its few marble steps, I entered an arched doorway into a foyer and joined a line of twenty or so creatures at least as miserable as me.

  We didn’t speak to one another. Each head and face was hidden by a hat or bonnet and a shawl. One after another of the applicants filed into the office and dragged herself out again, having been deemed insufficiently worthy by whatever person was judging them inside. On departing, some cried out threats of killing themselves or their babies, saying they’d prefer that to the almshouse or the street. My body was atremble by the time my turn came to sit upon the bench opposite the desk of the inquisitor.

  Stern and long-faced, she introduced herself as Mrs. Anne Pierce, the superintendent of this establishment. She began her inquisition gently. “What brings you to this shelter?” “How far along do you judge yourself to be?” Then her questions grew more pointed, so that I thought her last name, Pierce, was apt. “Have you been with child before? Was this man your first lover? How many times did you lie with him? Did others think you good? Have you ever been taken before a magistrate? Have you broken any law? How often do you drink alcohol? Do you take patent medicines regularly?”

  I blessed my upbringing, for I could truthfully reply yes and never and no in their proper places. She stood and paced the small area behind her desk, three steps one way, three steps the other. Her tall form was clad in a gown that was demure in color and design but made of costly wool, of the sort that only expert weavers can produce, in the old way, by hand. On such small observations I focused my thoughts, fearing the chasm that yawned behind them, into which I’d plunge if she would not take me in.

  At last Anne Pierce sat and proclaimed her decision. Upon considering the virtue of my previous life, and impressed by my former employment as a schoolteacher, she considered me deserving of a bed at her charity.

  “Our furnishings are spare,” she informed me, “and our rations, meager. But we will protect you from the damages of publicity and offer you a chance for repentance and reformation.”

  I expressed my gratitude, saying that I asked no more.

  She demanded to know my lover’s name then, saying it was necessary for admission, so that her solicitor could try to procure damages and support. The money, she explained, would reduce my burden and help pay the Haven for my care. Spelling it out for her as she wrote—JOHANNES ERNST—and hearing him described as “the male offender” made the situation bitterly clear.

  “The promise of marriage,” said Anne, “is one of the oldest lies in the lustful man’s book—often laced with exclamations over the woman’s beauty.”

  How right she was.

  As I sat in her office, then followed directions to the Haven’s one empty bed, I considered my foolishness. I hadn’t known Johan well enough to give him my trust. He’d left his parents and siblings in New Jersey to come to Philadelphia; as explanation he’d offered only that his youngest brother would inherit the farm, so he needed to find his own situation. Had there been other reasons underlying his departure? Had he left in disgrace? Or had he been taken by the same wanderlust that carried him next to Pittsburgh? For that matter, was his family an upright and responsible one, as I’d assumed, or were they a pack of wastrels?

  How can one truly know a man, if one considers him as a singular being? The individuals in a family fit together like pieces in a puzzle, forming a larger picture, making clear the nature of the whole and its parts. But Johan came to me unmoored, careening, a piece set free.

  Now I’m the same, a puzzle piece without its puzzle, careening among other unmatched remnants. My body shivering on a stone bench in the courtyard of an institution for the shamed and exiled. At last, confessing my story to a page.

  If I strain my ears, I can hear poor Nancy’s cries.

  How ill prepared I am for my turn on the birthing table. I’ve only seen our horse give birth, and some sheep and cows in the neighbor’s barn. They betrayed discomfort merely by the twitching of their legs and the pleading of their widened eyes.

  Do the animals keep silent for fear of attracting predators? Nancy would have drawn a horde of predators by now, if she were in the wild.

  Suppertime is near. I ought to go inside. The day’s meager warmth is rushing up and dissipating with the light. Though the wool cape I brought from home does spread wide enough to cover my belly and keeps the bulk of me warm, my feet are numb inside their slippers, and my fingers are stiff from the cold.

  Yet I fear the news inside.

  Dear God, please hold Nancy and her baby in thy Light.

  Will I scream as Nancy does?

  * * *

  At supper, a jubilant Delphinia made an announcement: Nancy and her baby boy are well! Whereupon we regained our appetites and gave thanks and enjoye
d the cheese and hot bread and the cobbler made from a donation of last fall’s apples.

  Delphinia stood squarely in the doorway as we left the dining room, passing encouraging words to each resident, reaching an arthritic hand to pat one upon her shoulder, to push a lock of hair behind another’s ear. I placed myself last in line. On reaching her, I requested permission to visit Nancy on First Day, the day after tomorrow, before chapel. She consented. Then I asked whether the Haven’s solicitor had found any trace of my baby’s father through his Pittsburgh colleague. That flame still flickers in me.

  “No word from the Pittsburgh office,” said the elderly matron. “But don’t lay much hope in this, my dear. Our solicitor has gained support only a dozen times in over two hundred cases.” He also has convinced a few dozen men to marry the women they wronged, she added, though most of the women were distrustful and married in despondency, only because they lacked another means to food and shelter. Yet the hardworking Ladies’ Committee of this charity considered those cases a success—“which they were,” noted Delphinia drily, “unless those people had wanted happy lives.”

  I joined the others in the parlor, agitated by fruitless thoughts of Johan. But the tiny stitches calmed me down.

  This must be why we choose to embroider our evenings away. After stirring hot vats of laundry, wringing out the steaming cloths, and hanging them on lines; after scrubbing floors on our knees, helping Cook peel potatoes and knead heaps of dough, wiping away the grime that falls to every surface from the city air, and unpacking crates of donated supplies left at the back gate, we should want nothing more than rest. But without work to occupy us, our minds wander to places of uncertainty and dread. Better to sit in an upholstered chair, lean toward the orb of a gas lamp in the parlor, and draw a brightly threaded needle in and out of a dishtowel or an apron. Better to form lovely flowers than to consider that the promise of our youth has bloomed and died.

  We also do this piecework because the goods are sold at a shop, through Anne’s arrangement. The coins earned go directly to the Haven, to defray the costs of our keep. Each woman costs the Haven four dollars ninety cents a week, but most can’t pay so much and won’t earn it by embroidering, either. Most of us will leave with a debt. I’ll be here longer than most, so I’ve given Anne some of the money I came with.

  Now that I’m diary-keeping again, I can hardly bear to pause my pencil. I never realized it till now, but writing and Mother must be linked for me. For even as I balance this notebook on my abdomen and draw a hand across its page, the memories come flickering of my small slate and the hours I passed learning to form letters at her knee. Perhaps that’s why I lost my urge to write when she died two winters ago, and why resuming the habit is so profoundly settling. For writing works upon me like her soft hand on my brow.

  Mother was a God-loving woman with an independent mind, a beacon in our Meeting, a model of common sense and tenderness. She and I didn’t always live in accord—I dashed out many lines that prove this, especially when she dismissed my thoughts without adequately considering them. And I feared her standards, for she brooked no infringements of the Discipline. But her fierce devotion and the control she exercised kept our family united. She had strength enough to fill in for our wavering and doubts. As soon as she was gone, Father, Peter, and I began to split apart—from one another and inside ourselves.

  With her gone I’ve felt no Spirit anymore, not in my silence or in my talk. Yet in writing here, I begin to sense a glimmer of it.

  Ah—a sharp jab inside. This baby kicks and turns day and night, and even seems to lean into my palm when I apply it to the orb of my belly. Steadily my little one comes more to life, while my feeling for its red-haired father shrinks.

  One day that feeling will be no larger than a pea and will grow dry and wrinkled. One day I’ll throw that shriveled pea to the dirt and crush it beneath my heel.

  Third Month 18, First Day

  I’m trembling from what I’ve just seen.

  In my months here, I’ve come to dislike the superintendent. Yes, Anne means to help us; her devotion of time and funds to this hard cause is only admirable, and she does much good. She speaks regretfully of the “limits of our institution,” wishing for the funds and space to keep women and babies together longer and to find families for all the infants. As she tells us, no other charity in the city protects and hides those who’ve taken but a single misstep or been shamefully abused.

  Yet Anne’s punishing nature hinders her kind intentions. She works us hard, save for one period a day, despite our increased need for rest. She restricts our every word and deed—we can’t leave the premises, at threat of expulsion; we can’t speak of our pasts and how we came to be here; we can’t even laugh when rare levity strikes, for to her we laugh in the face of God, before whom we ought to be somber and repentant. We do speak in quiet voices of our histories when we can, to unburden ourselves and be known to one another, but the threat of discovery makes our hearts beat out of time. And now I’ve learned that she doesn’t even allow us peace during the three weeks of motherhood we’re allotted before we must leave to make room for another.

  A short while ago I took breakfast with Gina and the others, then traveled a long hall to the recovery room where Nancy lay. Bars and shutters covered its windows. The door had extra locks on its hallway side to keep girls in at night, since several early occupants had fled without their infants, to escape the responsibility of keeping or placing them. I couldn’t help but compare this barren room to the homely chambers I saw new mothers resting in when Mother and I brought meals to their families. Those women barely stirred for weeks, except to nurse, while others kept up the household.

  Nancy greeted me warmly, though her skin was ashen and her brown eyes were ringed with darkness. “Sit,” she said, pointing with her chin to a chair by the bed. I sat, and she moved her head to indicate the swathed package in her arms, giving it a winsome smile. “Here’s my little lad.”

  The baby looked not unlike a newborn mouse, with minuscule hands and a pale, wrinkled face. The sides of his head bore cotton gauze, apparently covering damage from the forceps. His eyes were hooded by swollen, nearly translucent lids.

  “Lovely,” I murmured, attempting sincerity.

  She sniffed his scalp and moved her lips over its coating of pale hair. “He’s the sweetest thing.” She leaned to kiss his nose. The baby gazed vaguely in her direction, his eyes swimming with devotion.

  At first I felt startled at her fondness for him, since she’d spoken harshly of the servant who was his father. Then I looked at my bulging belly, where my own baby had begun to kick and wiggle, as if sending out a rhythmic message. A surge of nausea passed through me; a squeezing force took up my heart. And all at once I understood: Nancy can’t help but adore her son. She grew him inside, and pushed him out in mighty suffering, and now this tiny creature needs her—belongs to her—as no other person ever will.

  And I will feel the same. I won’t merely love the baby inside me when it shows its face. I’ll adore it with all the fierceness that ever bound one creature to another.

  “He’s beautiful,” I told Nancy, sincerely now.

  “Don’t it seem a miracle?” She leaned into her pillows. “How they come from inside us. It don’t seem possible.”

  She held up her small charge; I thought she wanted me to hold him. My arms tingled, anticipating his weight, and I moved them forward for her to make the transfer. But she pulled the baby back to her chest. She’d meant only to give me a closer look.

  “He’s got all the parts he should have, in all their proper places.” She reddened. “I had a mind he might…”

  I nodded, recognizing the belief she held. Many of the inmates are afraid their babies will be malformed because they were conceived out of wedlock.

  “I’m calling him William, after my dad.” Nancy raised a hand to scratch her nose, and the baby’s head lolled back at an alarming angle. “Oh! I forget how weak he is!” She propped u
p his neck and stroked his cheek, staring.

  “May I hold him?” I asked, unable to resist.

  She began moving him to me, but his distress grew with stunning quickness. His limbs pushed against the swathing cloths; his mouth opened into a bawl that revealed pink gums and a glistening interior. So she opened her dressing gown and guided his mouth to her. With his head in the palm of her hand, she lowered her thin face to gaze upon him. As he sucked, his face and body slackened into complete ease.

  I cleared my throat, embarrassed to see her naked breast. Then I scolded myself for prudery. For what could be more natural than an infant taking nourishment from its mother?

  “He needs thee,” I said. Could I say nothing more useful? But Nancy locked her eyes with mine, and a flicker of joy passed between us. Then she dampened it.

  “We mustn’t rejoice in the offspring of our sin.” She was quoting the young Reverend Williams, who often preaches here. He wants us to feel nothing but a gray desperation at the births of our children, followed by a grand relief at giving them away.

  Just then an infant’s cries erupted in the hall, and Nancy stiffened, appearing to dread their advance. Anne strode in, holding a baby as new as Nancy’s but with a febrile hue.

  “Feeding him again?” Anne demanded. Her tall body was as tensed as an archer’s ready bow.

  Nancy’s excuse tumbled out. “He was crying, and I knew he’d stop if—”

  “If nothing.” Anne pointed toward a clock on a corner table. “You’re to keep track on that clock and save half your milk for this baby, as we discussed. It’s her turn now. At even hours you nurse this one, and at odd hours, you nurse your boy.”

  Nancy put her finger in William’s mouth to dislodge him, then pulled her gown closed. Again he transformed in seconds, his face pursing tight, his limbs jerking. With unsteady hands Nancy laid him in the bassinet, where he continued his protest. On the front of her gown, wet blotches formed and grew.