by Jane Steen
“I missed you too, Tess,” said Mrs. Lombardi, smiling fondly.
Closed doors lined the long corridor. Our breath steamed on the cold air, and I pushed my hands into my pockets.
“Are the doors locked?” I was anxious to get done with this gloomy place as quickly as possible.
“They are closed, not locked. In case there are insects or vermin. Tess, write down what we tell you about any work that needs to be done.” Tess nodded vigorously, her eyes on Mrs. Lombardi.
“Ten rooms for the ladies,”—Tess’s pencil moved carefully across the paper, and Mrs. Lombardi gave her time to write—“and six for the staff. The padded cells,” she turned to address me, “can be converted into storage rooms, and there are two large washrooms at the far end.”
“Those are prison doors,” I said, eyeing the one nearest to us with distaste. “I would not like to sleep in a room with those doors, even if they remained unlocked.”
“Blackie can put on ordinary door handles instead of those iron plates and locks. It will give the wing a much more homey feel.”
Mrs. Lombardi swung the first door open. A bare room with an iron bedstead greeted us. Cobwebs in the barred windows were the only signs of life.
We measured the windows in each room—they were not all the same size—and inspected it for damp or cracks in the plaster. On the whole, the rooms were in good condition and needed only a few alterations to make them pleasant. There were, to be sure, bars on the windows, but the locks could be taken off the casements to admit fresh air. “After all, this is no worse than many a nursery,” was Mrs. Lombardi’s remark.
I did not like the rooms. Some of the beds still had restraints on them, and the hairs on the back of my neck prickled at the sight.
We reached the four padded cells without finding any evidence of damp, rot, or insects. The doors of these last four cells fitted very tightly on account of the padding, and Jimmy had to tug hard to get them open. The padding was torn and streaked here and there with brownish marks. I shuddered, thinking of all the possible reasons for those marks. Were the inmates punished in those days?
The third cell that we opened had a particularly recalcitrant door. Jimmy braced his fat leg against the doorjamb, wrapped both hands around the handle, and tugged with all his might. The door gave, swung open, and something fell out into the corridor. Jimmy jumped back and uttered a word I was surprised he knew.
A noise behind me made me look around. Mrs. Lombardi had crumpled to the floor in a dead faint.
I fell to my knees next to Mrs. Lombardi, ignoring the object in the doorway. Behind me, Jimmy was making a sound like “AAaaaaAAAAaaaaAAAAaaa”; I did not know whether he was upset or laughing. Tess was stuttering words that sounded like “Jo” and “Bey.”
“Jimmy!” I said sharply to the young man. “Be silent at once. This is helping no one.”
He fell silent, and at the same time Mrs. Lombardi began to stir. I shuffled around on my knees so that I was between her and the object, making very sure no part of me touched it.
Mrs. Lombardi opened her eyes and pushed herself into a sitting position.
“Are you all right?” I asked anxiously. “Perhaps you should not stand up just yet.”
“I’m sorry,” she said incongruously. “That was a body.”
“I know,” I said. I did not want to look at it.
“It’s Jo Ma, Mrs. Lombardi. And her little baby,” said Tess.
That got me to my feet, and I turned to face the body. Bodies.
The larger one had been a young woman, wearing a green-striped dress and brown jacket. She had on a muffler, gloves, and knitted hat, from which pale blonde hair escaped in wisps and curls. She would have been shorter even than Tess.
Most of her face was left; only the lips had withered back from her teeth, while the rest had become something resembling leather. A large stain on the floorboards showed where she had lain, huddled up against the door. It was so cold in the insane wing that there was no strong smell, just the musty odor we had all noticed.
Still clutched in its mother’s arms, a little wizened face peeped out from a bundle of blankets, withered eyes half-closed in eternal sleep.
I felt quite calm and detached at that moment. “There have not been any maggots.” I had seen enough dead animals on the prairie to understand decay.
Mrs. Lombardi rose to her feet. Her voice trembled, but she made an effort to pull herself together.
“You are right, Nell. But she could only have been here since the cold weather started. It was cold that day… but I had a fever; I was hot and cold at once. I do not understand.”
“Understand what?”
“I am certain that I accompanied Jo and her baby to the cart that was to take them to Chicago. Dear God, what happened?”
“Maybe she ran away from you, Mrs. Lombardi. Maybe she hid.” Tess had retreated behind me so she could not see the bodies.
Mrs. Lombardi furrowed her brow and sighed. “Jimmy, go and find Blackie. The two of you go to Mr. Ostrander’s house—if he is not already somewhere on the Farm. Blackie will know.”
Jimmy shot off down the corridor faster than I would have expected.
“Tess, will you go find Edie?” Mrs. Lombardi laid a hand on Tess’s arm. “Tell her we need coverings: good, clean sheets. You may tell her what has happened but nobody else. And then go check on little Sarah.”
I knew I would soon have to nurse my baby. But I also knew that Mrs. Lombardi’s request to Tess was designed to keep her from returning to the distressing scene before us.
“Nell, will you stay with me?” Mrs. Lombardi said. Her beautiful face was marred by two deep lines between her brows, and her hands hung limply as she stared at the bodies. “Just until Mr. Ostrander comes. I feel so guilty—I have done a terrible wrong.”
The expressions on the faces of the three men were strangely incongruous. Jimmy seemed placid and detached, Blackie guarded and unemotional. Mr. Ostrander’s face was twisted into a grimace that reminded me of a mask from Greek tragedy.
Mrs. Lombardi knelt by the bodies, praying. I bowed my head, listening to her melodious voice asking earnestly for forgiveness for some sin of negligence and fastened my eyes on the corpses. How did they die? There were no marks of violence or even of struggle to leave the room. The padding on the door was intact.
Hunger or thirst may have caused the demise of these two, but I doubted it. There was something about the way that the young woman was curled up, as if sleeping, which recalled the descriptions that Bet had given me of my father’s body. I hoped I was right and that the easy death of cold had been the end of the little fair woman and her baby.
Mr. Ostrander did not wait for Mrs. Lombardi to finish her prayer. “A body, Mrs. Lombardi,” he gasped. “A body! And a baby too! How can this possibly be? What am I going to tell the Board of Governors?” The pallor of his face made the large brownish blotches on his forehead and left cheek stand out unpleasantly.
Mrs. Lombardi’s lips compressed. “This is Johanna Mauer, Mr. Ostrander,” she said, indicating the remains on the floor, “and baby Benjamin.” Mr. Ostrander did not react; I wondered if he already knew their identity or if he cared at all.
“We should send an orderly to the town for the constable.” This got Mr. Ostrander’s attention; he stared at Mrs. Lombardi as if she had gone insane.
“For an idiot girl and her bastard?”
Mrs. Lombardi’s teeth positively gritted. Blackie winced and began humming softly. Mr. Ostrander took a step backward under the combined force of our glares. “No, no, you are right. But it’s clear what happened. She locked herself in.” He twisted his sandy beard tightly around his index finger.
“Even so,” said Mrs. Lombardi in a tight voice. “We—I have failed her in some way I cannot fathom.” Her voice hardened. “Before we worry about what we tell our governors, let us make arrangements to give these poor creatures Christian burial. I will t
hen write a full report, and if I am to blame in any way, I will bear any responsibility I must.”
SIXTEEN
The need to nurse Sarah became imperative, and I made good my escape. I unwound my scarf and took off my hat and woolen gloves as I jogged down the echoing stairs, aware of the soreness of my breasts but otherwise unable to register much of the world around me. I asked one or two women if they’d seen Lizzie and thanked them for their answers, but I barely saw their faces. My vision was full of the wizened visage of a baby whose name had been Benjamin and who had not deserved to die.
I found Lizzie at last in the refectory. She was walking Sarah up and down, as my baby was fussy with hunger, chewing on her little fist and kicking with her strong legs. I apologized for taking so long and took Sarah in my arms; Lizzie made a few remarks—about Sarah, I think—but again I found it hard to focus. Sarah’s small body felt solid and warm under my hands, a reassuring locus of movement and life. She squirmed crossly against me as I carried her out of the refectory, making a low keening noise and pushing her tongue out of her mouth to indicate her need.
The sewing room was empty, and it did not take long for me to settle Sarah to my breast. She nursed with enthusiasm for a while, for which I was as grateful as she, and then, sated, released my nipple with a broad smile on a face smeared with my milk. She rarely suffered from colic now, and the moments after nursing had become like a conversation between us as I responded to her soft cooing noises with nonsense of my own. As much as I was prepared to relinquish this child, I had to admit that she was less work and more fun than I had originally thought.
I was hungry and thirsty and needed to use the privy before long, and I knew I should return Sarah to Lizzie so that I could attend to my own needs. Yet I found that I was rooted in my chair, my entire body shaking. I saw them again, the young woman and her baby. Presumably they were still lying as they fell, against the bare boards of the freezing, gloomy corridor above. I wondered if they would be buried just as they were, in an eternal embrace. I hoped so. I did not want the young woman—Jo?—to have to relinquish the little burden she had warmed with her last breath.
Her bastard, Mr. Ostrander had called the small bundle of withered skin. So Jo was an unmarried mother like me. A “moral imbecile.” I heard my stepfather’s voice, soft and measured, muted in the plush comfort of our parlor, and felt my jaw clench. No. I—and Jo too, I was sure—were simply young women who made mistakes. A few words drifted back from the endless Sundays spent listening to preachers, something I had never understood at the time. The woman taken in sin; I had never, until now, had an inkling what that sin was. Something about not throwing stones at her unless you did not sin yourself.
Sarah made a sound between a crow of delight and a sigh, and I realized that I had wrapped my arms round her and was holding her close, much like the mother held her baby two floors above. Sarah’s smell enveloped me, an amalgam of scents—the salty tang of my milk, skin that had never been browned by the sun or made greasy by bad food, a wet diaper, and something that was rich and powerful to me, flesh that called to my own flesh like a siren from the sea. I knew at that moment that she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
And if I let her go—could anyone else love her as much as I did? I squeezed my eyes tight to stop the tears bursting forth. Yes, I did love her after all. And if I let her go, my heart would break, and she would not have me near to protect her from the evils of this world. Impossible. She was mine—mine—and I would not relinquish her.
SEVENTEEN
I realized something else that day, as I finally forced myself to rise from my chair and continue with the day’s living. I needed to know what had happened to Jo and Benjamin. I was certain that the lawmen of Prairie Haven, such as they were, would spend little time on two of society’s outcasts who had frozen to death in a place where they had no right to be.
And there was something wrong in the idea of that little woman jamming the door of a padded cell shut and staying there until she and her baby died. Even if she were an “idiot”—I winced at the memory of Mr. Ostrander’s words—I was sure that her instinct would be to save her baby, if not herself. I needed to find out more about her and try to piece together the mystery of a day that seemed to weigh heavy on Mrs. Lombardi’s conscience.
I did not see Mrs. Lombardi again until much later that afternoon. I had finished my machine sewing and moved into Mrs. Lombardi’s large office to take advantage of the waning light while I worked on several pairs of underdrawers for the women. Sarah lay contentedly in her wicker crib beside my chair, screened from the fire but still benefiting from its warmth. She loved to lie on her back and seemed to be intently observing everything she could see.
The dark smudges underneath Mrs. Lombardi’s eyes betrayed the trials of the day. Instead of sitting at her desk as she usually did, she joined me by the fire, bringing with her the scent of freesias but also a slight taint of strong soap. She sat down stiffly, massaging her neck and closing her eyes.
“Is everything all right?” I asked. That was not quite what I meant, but I did not want to bombard her with questions, and I needed some way to open a conversation.
She smiled wearily, watching Sarah who was yawning in contentment. Then her large hazel eyes became serious.
“We have taken care of the remains of our poor friends,” she said. “They are resting in a casket together in one of the barns. Of course, we cannot perform the burial rites until the ground thaws.”
She sighed deeply. “Mr. Ostrander is in a terrible state,” she said. “He is worried that news of this death will reflect badly on the Farm, I think.”
A shudder ran through me as I prepared to ask the question that had been ringing through my bones all day. “Was it murder?”
Mrs. Lombardi looked startled. “Murder? Nobody has imagined such a thing, Nell. The sheriff and a private detective are both agreed that it was a simple accident.”
“How could this woman—Jo?—have found her way into a wing that was locked from the outside?” I asked.
“Ah, but you see that is just the point,” replied Mrs. Lombardi. “Anything could have happened that day, anything at all. When Jo left us—when we thought she left us—on October the seventh of last year, the Farm was in an unprecedented state of chaos. One-third of our inmates and fully half of the staff were ill with a terrible septic throat, which caused an extremely high fever and made the patients quite delirious. Merely a nasty form of pharyngitis, you understand—unpleasant symptoms, but short-lived. I caught it myself in the end, and then I was very ill for two weeks with bronchitis. Those staff who were well were fully occupied in nursing the sick. We were going frantic trying to lower the fever and keep our patients’ strength up. You were lucky you did not come to us sooner; you would not have been impressed to see such an unhealthy matron.” Tiny crinkles showed at the outer corners of her eyes as she smiled.
“And were Jo and the baby sick?” I asked.
“Jo caught a mild form of the septic throat, but little Benjamin seemed immune. Jo was perfectly well by the time she left. And by the first week in October, the temperature had dropped below freezing for most of the day—the shortest fall I have ever known—and that seemed to put an end to the contagion. Or perhaps it had simply run its course.”
“But you became ill.”
“Alas, yes. I awoke the morning of Jo’s departure feeling dizzy and weak, and my throat was unbearably painful. I was sleeping right here”—she gestured to her sitting room, a small room leading off her office—”because I was afraid to return home and transmit the women’s infection to my own children. It was all I could do to dress and put up my hair, but I wanted to be absolutely sure that Jo was seen safely off to St. Jude’s.”
“Was there anyone else there?”
“There must have been, but I simply cannot recall whom. Al
l I can see in my memory is the black carthorse, not one of our own horses. I don’t know why I remember that and nothing else. I don’t even remember how I got back to my own bed; I do know that they brought the doctor to me, but I’m not sure if it was that same day or the next.”
She was silent again, staring into the fire. “I wish I could remember,” she suddenly burst out. “And I should have written to St. Jude’s—I should have—when I was better, but when I returned to my duties, there were so many papers to see to. I suppose I assumed that St. Jude’s would have written to us had Jo and her baby not arrived.”
“Why was Jo sent away?” I asked. “Had you found a home for her?”
“Ah,” Mrs. Lombardi picked at a fold of her dress. “Not exactly. Nell, the story of Jo is a painful one, and I am tired. Could I tell you tomorrow?”
EIGHTEEN
The news of the bodies flew around the Women’s House on swift wings. Tess and I became objects of celebrity and curiosity. The more feeble-minded wanted clarification: was Jo really dead? Why was she here in the House and not gone away? I tried to respond to each woman according to her understanding, but the morning was a difficult one.
By the time I had answered the question, “Where is Jo now?” for what seemed like the fiftieth time, my head was pounding. I frowned in irritation when I heard a familiar wheezing laugh behind me.
“Blackie,” I said without turning round, “It is not at all funny. The poor thing is really dead.”
“Ain’t laughin’ at the poor little mite and her baby, God rest their souls,” explained Blackie. “It’s human nature that amuses me. That Jo were like a fly in a kitchen for the menfolk around here—she kep’ landing on ’em, see, and even the strongest man can’t always keep from swatting at that fly once in a while.”
“You didn’t like her like that, Blackie,” observed Tess matter-of-factly.
