“You’re right. I’m in no shape to drive. Drink doesn’t usually get to me.” We both turn to the empty bottle of rum.
“You can sleep on the sofa. Just wrap up in the quilt.” He flops down without argument.
What else am I going to do? I can’t send him out on the snowy roads in this condition. He’d end up in a ditch.
“Here’s a pillow.” I hand him the green quilted one from the back of the rocker and notice I’m none too steady myself. It would amuse me if it weren’t for the worry that my reputation could be ruined; a midwife is supposed to be of good moral character.
By the time I let the dogs out and get them back in, build up the fire, and blow out the lamp, Hester is snoring quietly. I dim the kerosene light and sit down in the rocker. “Silent night, holy night,” I sing softly, remembering what he told me about the bloody battles of the last Great War. “Sleep in heavenly peace.”
In the morning when I limp downstairs with a headache, the veterinarian is gone.
14
The Vanderhoffs
I’m surprised to say that I’m counting the days until Bitsy returns. Only a few months ago, when Mary asked me to give her daughter shelter, I had reservations. Only a few weeks ago, I almost packed her suitcase and shooed her out the door. Now Christmas has come and gone and New Year’s Eve too, which I spent watching the snow fly like sparks through the light from the lantern on the porch. I’m not sure why I put the Coleman lamp out there and turned it up high. Was it a signal to the vet that I might want company?
Whatever it meant, he didn’t come . . . and I ate my black-eyed peas and home-canned collard greens alone.
Alone, I think. I was alone when I worked at the Vanderhoffs’ home too, though a different kind of alone. Alone surrounded by people.
After working at the Chicago Lying-in Dispensary as a milkmaid for more than a year, I was hired by the mother and father of one of our premature babies to return with them, as a private wet nurse, to their Lake Forest home. It seemed, at the time, like a good plan. The pay was better, I’d have my own room, and they promised to keep me as a baby nurse and nanny when my milk ran out.
Unfortunately, my life in the three-story brick home on Colonial Avenue wasn’t as pleasant as I’d expected. The rest of the house staff, the cook and the upstairs maid, resented me. Every three hours I breastfed the baby, as Dr. Shane from Lying-in had ordered, and kept the nursery and my adjoining sitting room tidy, but other than that I had no duties at all. When I offered to help in the kitchen, the cook turned away and Beatrice Vanderhoff, the baby’s mother, shooed me upstairs.
Breastfeeding the infant around the clock meant there was never a day off. What’s more, the couple’s first child had died of smallpox and the parents refused to let me take Baby Gerald out in the pram. Augustus Vanderhoff, a lawyer with a firm in downtown Chicago, a heavy man with a handlebar mustache and an annoying tic that made him look like he was winking, had an expansive library next to the parlor, and I was allowed to read his books. Other than that, until the weather warmed up, there was nothing to do.
For five months, I lived there, lonely and bored, before I grew daring enough to explore the house. One Sunday afternoon, when the maid and the cook were on their half-day and Mr. and Mrs. Vanderhoff had gone to a charity tea for Hull House, I took off my shoes and tiptoed upstairs to the third floor.
The first room I entered was an empty round turret with windows that looked out in every direction. I thought of asking if I could have it for my sitting area, but it was much too far from the nursery. The other three bedrooms were for guests, nothing much there but empty armoires, soft beds, and velvet-backed chairs.
Back on the second floor, I ended my investigation by peeking into my employers’ bedchamber, which was dominated by a huge maple four-poster bed. I’d never seen such a bed, and I crept in and lay down on it, smoothing the deep rose coverlet under my hands. Little Gerald was still sleeping in his wicker bassinet down the hall, so I continued to poke around. It was the first time I’d had fun for almost a year.
Pushing open the door to the walk-in closet, I ran my fingers through a row of my mistress’s gowns. Some of the dresses I’d never seen her wear, like the blue satin floor-length one with ruffles and the deep purple velvet with leg-of-mutton sleeves. The far end held the master’s clothing, only four suits, all black, a few white shirts, and a mourning coat.
Returning to the main room, I sat down at the vanity. The smell of my mistress’s perfume, Lily of the Valley, in a frosted glass atomizer, intrigued me, and I gave it a spray. In the mirror, a young woman, pale from no sunlight, her hair wound up tight in a chignon, her gold wire-rimmed spectacles perched on her nose, stared back. Momentarily, I was ashamed to see myself snooping . . . but only a little.
Careful not to disturb things too much, I lift the lid to the embossed silver jewelry box and one by one hold the lady’s necklaces up, imagining I’m a rich debutante getting ready for a party. There’s one ornament I particularly fancy, an emerald pendant on a thin silver chain. On the lower shelf of the velvet-lined box, I discover a gold ring with a solitary ruby. I slip it on and admire my hand. Then the kitchen doorbell rings.
Red alert! I jerk up, almost tipping over my stool, and look around wildly to see if there’s any evidence of my trespassing. When I try to slip the ring back into the box, it’s stuck on my finger.
The back doorbell rings again. I lick and pull, lick and pull, but the ring won’t come off! It’s probably only a deliveryman at the back door, but if I don’t answer soon he’ll wake the baby. All the way down the back stairs, I keep licking and twisting the ring on my finger, and just as I skid across the kitchen floor it slips off and I stuff it under my chemise. It wouldn’t look right for a lowly wet nurse to be seen with a huge red ruby twinkling on her hand!
I’m surprised to discover, when I unlatch the back door, that the person ringing isn’t a delivery boy. It’s Mr. Vanderhoff.
Betrayal
I should have known right away that something was off, but I’m innocent that way, always have been.
“Hey, thanks, kid. Took you long enough. You the only one home?” Mr. Vanderhoff slurs. He smells like he’s been swimming in gin. This was before the Eighteenth Amendment, and alcohol was still legal. “I lost my key.” I stand back against the kitchen table. He’s never called me anything but Miss Murphy before. “Mrs. Vanderhoff home yet?”
“No. No one’s here but little Gerald and me. I thought you might be the coal man.”
For some reason Augustus Vanderhoff thinks this is funny. “Coal man! Give me a hand here, honey. I’m feeling kind of weak.” I offer him my arm as men do with ladies on the street. Not weak, I think. More like drunk.
“Upstairs,” he commands as we careen through the kitchen. Twice he almost falls, and he throws his meaty arm around my waist for support. Besides the stench of booze, there’s the sickly odor of cigars and aftershave.
“I just have to get to my bedroom,” he mumbles.
The bedroom! I hope he’s too inebriated to notice if anything’s been disturbed. I can’t even remember if I closed the door. If he passes out, I think I can put the ring back.
The master suite door is still open when we stumble around the corner, but Mr. Vanderhoff is too drunk to notice. He circles around, takes me in his arms as if to dance, and begins to warble a ragtime. That doesn’t work. He can’t get his feet to do the two-step, and he falls over onto the big bed, taking me with him. I jump up quickly and straighten my skirt.
“My shoes, kid.” The big man is lying on his back with his hands under his head.
Where does he come up with the “kid” appellation, anyway? I’m not a child, and I’m not a floozy he picked up at the saloon. He sticks his legs out over the side of the bed.
I step reluctantly forward and undo the laces of his high-top ankle boots while he pulls off his shirt collar and unbuttons his vest. As I yank off the second shoe and drop it onto the floor, his legs circ
le my waist and he pulls me toward him, laughing.
“Mr. Vanderhoff!” I shout into his face. His oiled mustache has a smell of its own, a sweet sickly cedar smell. “You don’t know what you’re doing!”
He yanks me down on him. “I know all right.”
I can feel his enlarged organ against my belly, and I’m sick to my stomach with fear. This man isn’t playing around, and he’s stronger than you’d think for his state of intoxication.
“Let me see those boobies little Gerald gets to play with.”
“Mr. Vanderhoff!” I shout again as he rips the buttons from my navy blue work blouse and gropes for my chemise. My milk is already leaking, and he squeezes my breast and licks his thick fingers. We struggle silently. What would a cry for help get me? There’s no one home. No one to hear. I bring my elbow down on his nose, and that makes him bellow.
“You damn tart. Who do you think you are?” Then he gets rough, grips me tighter with his legs while his hands keep ripping at my shirtfront. My arms are now pinned, so I use my only weapon. I spit in his face.
This time there’s no expletive, but his eyes darken. I can tell he doesn’t care about intercourse, doesn’t care about the cost to his reputation or his family, he intends to hurt me. He pulls up my skirt and rips down my bloomers, but instinctively I go for his man parts.
It wasn’t like I thought to do it. My brain stopped when he first grabbed my breast, but my knee slams into his testicles.
“You bitch!” he growls, the fight suddenly out of him. While he rolls back and forth with his legs drawn up, I pull up my bloomers and run down the hall. Sobbing, I grab the crying baby, who was awakened by the commotion, and lock the door so there’s no easy way for Mr. Vanderhoff to get in unless he crashes through panels like a rutting bull, and if he tries that, little Gerald will have to be my protector. Mr. Vanderhoff is a father, for God’s sake, not crazy enough to attack me in front of his son. I don’t think he is, anyway. Just in case, I take the baby with me into my small clothes closet and brace my feet against the door.
There are no words to my tears as I open my torn navy top for the baby. No need to unbutton. No buttons left. They popped off on the satin bed cover. As I pull out my breast, the ruby rings plops out of my chemise and falls into my lap.
“Rock-a-bye baby, in the treetop,” I sing softly to quiet the baby, “when the wind blows, the cradle will rock.” Tears run down my face. I’m still afraid that Mr. Vanderhoff will find me, drag me out of the closet, and force himself into me.
It isn’t as if I’m a virgin. I was with Lawrence. I gave birth to his baby. If I don’t struggle too much, the rape itself might not be too physically painful, but there would still be injury, a wound that starts in the vagina and goes straight to the heart.
I slip the gem back onto my little finger. Now what? I can’t get back into the bedroom to return it, and I can’t stay in this home any longer. Seeing Mr. Vanderhoff every day at breakfast and dinner . . . I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. My fate is sealed. I must leave tonight.
But what about the baby? I wipe my wet face. My little baby . . .
Not my baby, I remind myself, swallowing hard. Not my baby at all, though he feels like mine and I’m the one who nurses him and cares for him . . . but no matter. Gerald is theirs, the cold Mrs. Vanderhoff and the randy Mr. Vanderhoff. Gerald is theirs. I look down at the chubby-cheeked five-month-old. He lets go of my nipple, milk dribbling down his chin, and gives me a grin that would melt Antarctica. For a moment I think of kidnapping him, but that would be folly. I’d be hunted down and imprisoned for life.
At dusk, hours later, my head resting on my rolled-up wool cloak, I wake, still lying with the baby on the floor of the closet, and hear voices, then the clip-clip-clip of Mrs. Vanderhoff’s hard high-heeled shoes coming down the hall. The door to her bedroom squeaks, and I freeze. Will she see on the bed the buttons that popped off my blouse? Should I try to tell her about Mr. Vanderhoff’s behavior? Would she believe me? What if she notices that the ruby ring is gone?
“What the hell do you mean, leaving me at the tea?” she starts out on her husband in a high, insistent voice. “Even Mrs. Palmer could see you were soused, and she’s half blind. I’ve never been so embarrassed . . .” Mr. Vanderhoff mumbles apologies. She yells some more.
I wait, but no one comes to my room. No one calls me to supper. No one asks for the baby.
At midnight, by the twelve chimes of the downstairs grandfather clock, I creep out of the closet, put the baby into his bassinet, and pack my few belongings. Then, in the still hours, while the rest of them sleep, I nurse baby Gerald one last time, wetting his golden hair with my tears, tuck him in, and slip down the back stairs with my old satchel.
Rain drips from the eaves as I stand on the back porch. I have forty dollars in my pocketbook, money I saved from my weekly stipend, the ruby ring sewn into the hem of my cloak, and nowhere to go nor a friend in the world.
15
The Midwife
“What’s wrong, honey? You in some kind of trouble?” whispers Colleen, the yellow-haired waitress at the café across from the train station in Pittsburgh. I know her name from the stitching on her white uniform dress.
Tired and scared, I took the first train out of Chicago, not caring where it went, sure that the coppers were after me. Up until that day, I’d never been more than fifty miles from Deerfield.
Next thing I know, I’m getting out of a cab in front of Mrs. Kelly’s house in Homestead. Colleen told me there was a midwife, a lady who delivered babies all over town, who might know of a job for a wet nurse. My milk is already leaking, and I tried to express it twice in the lavatory.
Embarrassed by my wrinkled attire and my sad, limp hair, I knock on her door.
“Yes?” It’s a tall, dark-haired woman with an aquiline nose, dressed in a flapper outfit and smoking a cigarette; not what I’d expected.
“I’m Lizbeth Snyder , a wet nurse from Kansas City, looking for work.” (Afraid of the coppers, I’d come up with the idea of Kansas just five minutes before.) “Colleen, the waitress at the café near Union Station, told me a midwife, Mrs. Kelly, lives here and could maybe help me find work.”
“Sophie! Get down here. There’s a girl with breast milk all over her front!”
The flapper turned out to be Nora. She talked like that, kind of brassy, but she’d grown up in Shadyside, in a Victorian mansion, and could speak properly when she wanted to.
Mrs. Kelly trotted down the stairs, a big woman with graying black hair pinned up in a bun. None of the trendy flapper girl clothes for her. She wasn’t fat and she wasn’t skinny, just a tree you could lean on.
“Well, dear me! Come in.”
Sitting in Sophie Kelly and Nora Waters’s apartment over the bread shop, having tea, I was at once comforted. Nora brought me one of her clean white long-sleeved work blouses, and Sophie lent me her brush. I couldn’t tell them why I’d landed in Pittsburgh, and they had sense enough not to ask.
The midwife insisted that we go right away to see a lady who had just delivered twins and might need a girl like me. She lived a few miles away with her husband and two other children in one of those big homes near Friendship. Sophie was like that; if there was a problem, she went straight at it like a bull toward a red wool shirt.
As luck would have it, there was no work for a milkmaid with the family in Friendship or anywhere else, but Mrs. Kelly, a hospital-trained nurse turned midwife, admired my grit, or maybe just took pity on me, and offered me their back bedroom upstairs. There was only a cot, a chifforobe, and a small table, nothing much, but with the two women, I felt really safe for the first time in days.
This was 1913, just about Christmas. Mrs. Kelly bound my breasts with comfrey leaves until my milk dried up, and Nora found me a job on the line where she worked at Westinghouse. The United States was gearing up for the Great War, over many objections, and Pittsburgh was booming. I didn’t care if the factory made munitions or who got killed wi
th them. I had friends and a home. I was happy.
Nora and Sophie
It was months before I figured out that Sophie and Nora were lovers. I caught them kissing in the kitchen, and I don’t mean a smooch on the cheek either. Nora’s blue eyes shimmered, and she had her hand down Mrs. Kelly’s blouse. Not that I minded; I’d known other lesbians when I worked at the Majestic.
When you’ve been a milkmaid for other people’s babies; lived in other people’s homes; lied about your age; stolen jewelry; run away with nothing but your cloak, your favorite painting, and your mother’s old Bible and hymnal, you accept that people survive and find happiness however they can.
At first, I always called Mrs. Kelly “Mrs. Kelly” instead of “Sophie” because she was old enough to be my mother, though forty-four doesn’t seem old now. I called Nora “Nora” because she was thirty-four, more like a girl, though now that I’m thirty-six, I don’t feel at all girlish.
In the fall, the three of us moved to a little row house near Kenny’s Park, the one they later turned into Kennywood, the place with merry-go-round rides and an arcade. The two-story white clapboard had a huge living room with a bay window. There was a larger kitchen and a trolley stop one block away. We took the streetcar to work or into the city when we wanted to go to a rally, a free concert, or a baseball game at Forbes Field. It cost only a nickel either way and with Nora and I each making seven dollars a week, we could afford the extravagance.
After work and on weekends, Nora distributed birth control information on the downtown Pittsburgh streets, and sometimes I went with her. At night Nora and I would go to the Crawford Grill in the Hill District, where we heard Duke Ellington and some of the local jazz musicians, like Erroll Garner and Billy Strayhorn. And then there were the gardens and the zoo at Highland Park. Mrs. Kelly liked that.
The Midwife of Hope River Page 10
