by Jane Steen
“Get back to work, Nell. And you others will come with me to the kitchens on the double.” Miss Dee pushed her large form through the small group of mute, sullen women and led the way toward the other end of the building.
As she turned to go, Tilly, the straggler of the group, stepped back in my direction. But whatever she was about to say was cut short by the lean, callused hand that grasped a fold of her skirt.
“Now don’t you go making trouble, Tilly girl.” Blackie’s rasping voice held a hint of menace. “Miss Nell’s my friend, see. And little Tessie. And I look after my friends.” Blackie gave what might have been a grin, a gruesome glimpse of red, puffy gums and three yellowed stumps of teeth.
Tilly pulled away, muttered something vicious under her breath, and hastened to catch up with the group. I gave Blackie a smile indicative of deep gratitude and held out the ring to Tess, who had been listening from her hiding place behind the door. She squealed with delight and slipped the ring onto her little finger, then clapped her hands and bounced up and down on her toes a few times. She looked as if she were about to hug Blackie, but the old man immediately stepped back and picked up his toolbox.
“I’m done here, Miss Nell. You look after little Tessie, now. And remember to make Donny’s clothes nice and long.” He turned on his heel and left, humming loudly.
I sighed, indicating to Tess that she should sweep the floor. The incident, insignificant as it was, had reminded me that I was just one inmate among many in a place where we had no power even to order our days. The baby inside me kicked vigorously, and I put a hand on my belly. I had to avoid trouble for the sake of this child; however relieved I would be to give it up for adoption, it deserved my care and my vigilance for its good health.
TEN
On Christmas Eve, we inmates attended a service in the refectory. The women, who loved to sing, bawled and yodeled away, while I, increasingly uncomfortable in a standing position, endured the baby’s pokes and acrobatics and longed to be excused to use the chamber pot and sit in a chair. I almost wished it were an ordinary Sunday service; interminable as Pastor Lombardi’s Sunday sermons were, at least I could sit down.
Later that day, Mrs. Lombardi arrived in the Women’s House with her children: a boy of ten with a round, cheerful face and sandy hair, and two girls aged around eight and six, both dark-haired and olive-skinned like their mother. An old lady, Mr. Lombardi’s mother, was huddled in thick shawls against the cold; I presumed that it was she who looked after the children while Mrs. Lombardi worked. It struck me, not for the first time, how unusual it was that a married woman, with children, of my class—for Mrs. Lombardi and I were social equals, of that I was sure—spent her days working out of the home. Mr. Lombardi must indeed be an unusual specimen of husbandhood.
I liked the enlightened Mr. Lombardi, even if I did not appreciate his sermons. He was a broad-shouldered, deep-chested adult version of his son, as muscular as any farm worker. His eyes shone with intelligence and love for his wife as he watched her make the rounds of the inmates, wishing each one a Merry Christmas with a kind word and a smile.
It was a most festive occasion. Mrs. Lombardi arranged for a large quantity of hot cocoa and cookies to be served, and her children had made small gifts of candy, hair ribbons, and little tracts to pass around to each and every one of the two hundred or so women present. More Christmas carols were sung—I was sitting down by this time and enjoyed them—and then the Lombardi family left, gifts in hand, to visit those women who were confined to bed by illness. Tilly was one of them: I’d heard that she had given birth to a strapping boy three days earlier.
This was the first Christmas I had ever spent apart from Mama. Oh, how I missed her! But even if family visits were encouraged—and they were not, as they tended to unsettle the inmates—my mother’s health would not permit a fifty-mile journey over frozen roads in this arctic weather. I fervently hoped that she was well. I would even have welcomed the sight of my stepfather just to have had news of Mama, but Mrs. Lombardi had told me that the Board of Governors only inspected the Farm twice a year, and that would not happen until the weather became more clement. My isolation from the world was quite complete, and I was surprised how powerless this made me feel.
That Christmas Eve night I stood at the window of the bedroom looking out across the expanse of snow that stretched toward the gate of the Farm, broken only by the tracks of a sleigh. The silence resembled the stillness of death, the land locked into the deep frost of winter and all life buried far beneath the soil awaiting the return of the warmth.
I felt myself akin to the roots and bulbs waiting to burst forth into a renewed existence. When the baby was born—my mind tried to slide past this rapidly approaching point in the future—weaned, and adopted, I would return to Victory to begin again. And I would stay by my mother’s side and be a better daughter to her, on that I had made my resolution. For now, I was locked inside this not unfriendly place, waiting for the life I carried to break free of its own confines and become a separate being that could follow its own destiny.
“Merry Christmas, Mama,” I whispered under my breath, toward the tall iron gate that marked where the world began.
Suddenly my belly went rigid with a squeezing sensation that seemed to go from the bottom to the top of my abdomen. The baby, who had been kicking determinedly at my ribs, became quiet. My heart began pounding in fear; could this be the start? Should I call someone?
I returned to my bed and waited, the fear gripping my throat and paralyzing my limbs. But nothing else happened, and eventually I relaxed. I lay there with tears sliding silently down my cheeks until my eyes closed on the silent Christmas night.
ELEVEN
The passage of five weeks brought more snow, and yet more. Much of the time it was fine, tiny ice crystals that skittered across the snowpack like minuscule dancers in the fierce wind.
That morning, though, a regular blizzard hit us. The snow blew so thickly against the window that I saw nothing but a shifting mass of white, with occasional glimpses of the black night beyond. I opened the curtain to watch, hoping that it would abate, and soon. But it was as relentless as what was happening to me. I sat on the edge of my bed listening to the other women sleeping around me, clutching the blanket I had wrapped around my shoulders so hard that the fingers of my right hand throbbed with pain. I couldn’t move them. I was rigid with fear.
The squeezing sensations in my abdomen that started on Christmas Eve had reoccurred at regular intervals in the last five weeks. Mrs. Lombardi told me that they were quite a common occurrence and that I should only be concerned if they started happening close together. So when I awakened to the now-familiar sensation long before dawn that day, I lay in my bed with my eyes closed, trying to relax back into another hour or two of delicious sleep.
But soon I realized I had become fully and irrevocably awake. My senses seemed unusually alert; I could hear every tiny sound in the room and every soft touch of the snow on the windowpane.
I used my chamber pot as quietly as I could and then broke through the thin crust of ice in the water-jug—we had a small fireplace in our room, but the fire never lasted the night—and poured a little into the basin to splash my face, gasping at the shock of the frigid water. I groped for my hairbrush in the dark and spent ten minutes brushing my hair, willing the squeezings in my belly to stop. But they didn’t. The hours crept on so slowly that I could have screamed with impatience and fear, and all the while my belly hardened and relaxed, not painful but increasingly uncomfortable.
It was happening. I knew I should call someone, but I remained sitting on the edge of the bed as if by remaining motionless I could put off the dread reality of giving birth. Why now, when the snow was so thick? I closed my eyes, trying to block out the white menace that brushed its fingers of death so softly against the wall of my room.
Eventually I could stand it no longer. Why didn’t the snow stop? When was the morning
coming? I forced my painful fingers to unlock and my chilled legs and arms to push me into a standing position and lurched awkwardly to the window. Nothing could be seen but white flakes that hurled toward me as if they were attacking.
I felt something give way, and a sudden rush of warm liquid cascaded down my legs. I let out a strangled cry of surprise and fear and heard stirrings from the other beds.
Sad Lizzie was the first to work out what had awakened her. “What is it, Nellie?” she quavered in her plaintive, worn-out voice. “Are you unwell?”
I was crying with fear now, like a little girl. “I—I—I th—think it’s—it’s the baby,” I managed to force out between my gasping sobs. I felt Lizzie approach me and give a squeak as her bare feet encountered the damp floor. Then a golden light suddenly flared up in the corner of the room. Ada, silent and practical, had lit the oil lamp.
All three of them gathered round me and exclaimed over the incontrovertible evidence that I had begun giving birth. I could feel their hands on me, leading me away from the window, back toward my bed.
Tess, a small plump angel in her white nightshirt, looked gravely at the other two. “Mrs. Lombardi said we must call her when Nell has her baby. She always comes when the women have babies. She must come now.”
Mrs. Lombardi was in her home three miles away. Three miles across the snow. I couldn’t stop the scream from forcing its way out of me.
“No! It’s dangerous! It’s too cold, she’ll die in the snow, she’ll get lost and d—d—d—-die …” I pushed away the hands trying to soothe me.
Footsteps sounded in the corridor outside, and Agnes, who was in charge of the refectory and slept on our wing, burst in.
“Who’s screaming? Is that Nell? What’s wrong with her?”
Tess tipped her head to peer up at the tall woman. “She’s having her baby, Miss Agnes. She’s very frightened. She says Mrs. Lombardi will die if she comes through the snow.”
“What nonsense.” Agnes grasped me by the shoulders. “Lie down, Nell. I thought you were more sensible than this.”
But my rational mind had deserted me. I heard no more of what the women were saying over the sound of my sobs as I tried to make myself clear; Mrs. Lombardi should not be sent for at any price. The more they tried to persuade me to lie still on the bed, the more I resisted, and I dimly realized that the room was filling up with women.
Suddenly a violent stinging sensation in my nose and sinuses jerked me out of my crying fit and back into awareness of the room around me. I coughed and spluttered while tears, not only of emotion but of physical reaction, ran down my face.
Agnes had held smelling salts under my nose. “Now listen to me, Nell Lillington,” she said, pushing me firmly—she was a large, strong woman—onto the bed. “You will do harm to yourself and your child if you carry on in this ridiculous manner. You lie down on the bed like a good girl, and let Lizzie take a look at you. Ada, get that fire lit. Tess, Mary has already gone to the kitchen to make tea. You bring up a pot and cups for all of us, and don’t forget the sugar. The rest of you, out of this room.”
Tess gave a delighted squeak and ran to the door; hot tea with sugar was a rare and coveted treat. The other women left the room with many backward glances. I watched Agnes’s pocket warily in case the smelling salts reappeared, the violence of my sobs abating.
“That’s better,” said Agnes with approval. “Having a baby is nothing to get hysterical about. Good heavens, child, what will Mrs. Lombardi think when she gets here?”
The mention of Mrs. Lombardi’s name brought a new wave of fear, and I drew breath to shout again, but the swift movement of Agnes’s hand toward her pocket changed my mind. I lay my aching head on my pillow for the first time in hours; it felt wonderful. The inexorable movements of my belly were becoming pains, frequent and insistent. I did not resist as Lizzie pulled up my nightdress and inspected my lower half thoroughly, running her hands carefully over me and spreading my legs wide.
“We have a little while yet, I think,” she said to Agnes. The big woman nodded emphatically and left the room.
“Now, my little dear,” said Lizzie gently, smoothing back my tangled curls with her soft, leathery old hand, “don’t you worry yourself. Agnes has gone to make all the preparations, and I’m here to help you. You’re a fine, healthy girl, and I see nothing in your shape or the way the baby’s lying to give me any worry about you both. Just relax and let things happen in their good time.” I had never heard such assurance in Lizzie’s voice and smiled despite myself.
My terror did not entirely subside, but before long too much was happening in my body to make fear seem relevant. Women passed in and out of the room, and I became aware that the fire was lit, another lamp had been brought, stocks of clean linen and other necessaries had appeared, and sips of sweet tea refreshed me at intervals. I felt the touch of hands on me, cleaning and soothing.
With the lamps lit I could not see if the snow had stopped, and after I had asked about it for the tenth time, Ada silently drew the drapes to shut out the world. Gradually, the glimmer of gray-white daylight worked its way round the edges of the thin curtain while I gave in to the sensation of the baby forcing its way out into existence. I had never felt so helplessly in the grip of a physical force; my fear gave way to awe as my whole body was invaded by a new sensation, intensely painful and yet quite bearable.
A flurry of movement above me brought an impression of snow and cold into the room, and I opened my eyes, having fallen asleep for a minute between contractions. Mrs. Lombardi bent over me, her lips curved in a sweet smile.
“What’s this I hear about you not wanting me to come, Nell? You see, I am quite safe. What a winter we are having!”
I laughed weakly with relief, but my laughter turned to tears.
“I want my mother.”
Mrs. Lombardi took off her thick woolen cloak and hung it over a chair near the fire. She came toward me, lightly touching my forehead with the back of an ice-cold hand. I did not believe that her journey had been an easy one.
“Of course you do, Nell dear. And I am sure she is anxious to hear news of you. In a short time, you will be a mother yourself, and I will write a word to your parents to give them the news. In the meanwhile, you must be as calm and cheerful as you can, for your baby’s sake. This will soon be over.”
TWELVE
My little girl had a sleek head of bright copper hair, and the women exclaimed that they had never seen a newborn child with hair that color. Her skin was translucent white when she was at rest, bright pinkish-red when she cried, and softer than the finest velvet. The eyes that squinted up at me from a puckered-up face were a cloudy shade of green-blue.
I called her Sarah Amelia: her second name was for my mother, of course, and the first because “Sarah” simply popped into my head when Lizzie, her withered face radiant, placed the little swaddled bundle in my arms.
I scrutinized her face, wonder and puzzlement chasing each other around my brain. What was I supposed to do with her? She would not be my responsibility for long indeed. But it had not really occurred to me that for a while, I was expected to look after her. She was no longer the mysterious force that somersaulted in my belly and kept me awake at night. She was, indubitably, a person.
A sudden spasm passed over the person’s face and her mouth moved convulsively. Her face screwed up into a crumpled red ball, and she began to make squawking noises. I looked at Lizzie in alarm.
“You must put her to the breast,” the old woman said. My answering expression must have been a perfect picture of mingled astonishment and apprehension, because Lizzie, usually so gloomy, was still gasping with laughter when she took Sarah from me and showed me how I must adjust my nightdress.
Mrs. Lombardi sent my parents a letter announcing that I was safely delivered of a girl, and I wrote a brief note on the end stating her name and sending my love. I did not want to write anything more, as I knew t
hat Stepfather would read the letter first. I would have to find some way to communicate with Mama, whom I missed with a constant ache in my heart.
I found it hard to believe that I was myself a mother. The first shock of feeling a tiny mouth clamp onto my nipple with the strength of a terrier intent on its prey led me inexorably toward my initiation into the mysteries of dressing, cleaning, diapering, recleaning, and rediapering this small yet incredibly messy being a dozen times a day. At first, these tasks seemed to take up every waking moment; I had little time to think. When Sarah slept, my own eyes closed immediately, and I would sleep like a stone until awakened by the plangent wail that meant I was expected to do something.
I had help, of course. My three roommates waited on me hand and foot; there was always one of them who seemed to be excused from her regular duties to attend to me. Mrs. Lombardi suggested that I be moved to a tiny bedroom sandwiched between a storage room and the staircase so that Sarah did not disturb the other women with her crying but laughed when Tess and Lizzie said “No!” simultaneously, and Ada shook her head with emphasis.
“Very well,” said Mrs. Lombardi, “the vote of the majority carries the matter. I have never, since I came here, seen a child so welcomed; but then, this is the first baby born in the House for many years. In the dormitories, the women usually complain about the babies’ crying and are happy when they leave.”
Our small fire burned constantly now, and the room, although not very warm, was comfortable enough for Sarah. I clad her in the tiny boots, mitts, and hats that Bet had knitted, and her bright hair peeped out from under a lacy cap fastened with a button. As the days went by and Sarah began sleeping for longer stretches, I asked for my sewing to be brought to me. I had recovered from my initial exhaustion and even read one novel supplied by Mrs. Lombardi, but I was not fond of books and soon became bored with idleness.
