Читать книгу All Waiting Is Long - Barbara J. Taylor - Страница 10

Chapter three

AS SOON AS VIOLET LEFT THE ROOM with Mother Mary Joseph’s handkerchief, Lily walked to the door on Muriel’s orders and looked down the hallway in both directions. “Coast is clear!”

“Not for long,” Muriel called from the other end of the room, “what with all your yelling. Now, hurry up. Chapel will be over soon. And who knows when that sister of yours will get back.” She reached into her top drawer, pushed aside a crumple of nightclothes, and pulled out a pile of magazines. “If the Reverend Mother catches us, we’ll have to scrub floors for a month of Sundays,” she said, fanning the magazines out on her bed like a winning hand of pinochle.

“Can she really make us do that?” Lily’s eyes dipped toward the contraband.

Muriel grabbed her nightgown and draped it over her curly red locks, making a pious face. “With our own toothbrushes.” She tied the gown’s arms around her forehead, fashioning a nun’s wimple for her makeshift veil. “Here at the Good Shepherd,” she said in Mother Mary Joseph’s unsteady falsetto, “unwholesome pursuits will not be tolerated.” Muriel lifted a pudgy thumb and started ticking off the rules. “No tobacco. No cards. No alcohol. No profane language.” She unfolded her pinky with a flourish. “And no suggestive literature.” She cleared her throat and stretched her voice another octave. “It’ll rot your very soul.”

“I’ll not scrub one floor,” Lily said, as she considered the consequences for the infraction she was about to commit. “And I’m not afraid to tell her that,” she added, though her voice lacked conviction. She sat on the corner of Muriel’s bed and fingered the magazines. True Story, True Romances, Modern Screen, Movie Monthly—all scandalous, though none very recent. Why, Gertrude Olmstead was on a November 1928 cover of True Story, and she hadn’t been heard from since talkies became the rage.

“I’d like to be a fly on the wall when you tell her that one.”

“Who?” Lily picked up the December 1929 True Story with a picture of Clara Bow on front.

“Mother Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.” Both girls erupted into laughter. “Oh!” Muriel pressed her hands against her belly. “He’s a real scrapper,” she said, rubbing a tip of elbow or knee poking up.

Lily grimaced. “What was that?”

“He’s kicking.”

Lily looked at Muriel’s belly, stunned.

“You didn’t know?” Muriel swung around sidesaddle, reached for Lily’s hand, and placed it against her stomach. “Here,” she said. “Feel that?”

When the baby kicked again, Lily pulled her hand away and wiped it on the blanket. “How awful!”

“Awful? Happens to everybody.”

“Not me!”

“You too, silly.”

Lily’s mouth dropped open.

“First you feel flapping inside,” Muriel squinted, “but soft, like a hummingbird’s wings. After that, the kicking starts.”

Lily’s eyebrows sprang up.

“I’m just starting my seventh month,” Muriel said, “so you should be showing any day. Probably just need to put a little meat on those bones.” She picked up a 1925 Movie Monthly with a picture of Priscilla Dean on the cover. The headline read, “Ladies in Peril.” She scooped up the remaining magazines and buried them in the open drawer. “Didn’t your mother teach you anything?”

Lily shook her head and moved to her own bed. Clara Bow peeked out from under her arm. “She said I’d already had quite an education, and that nature would take care of the rest.”

“How ’bout that sister of yours? She’s no spring chicken. Imagine she’s been around the block a time or two.”

“Violet? Hardly. She’s too busy mooning over Stanley. Stanley, Stanley,” she singsonged. “That’s all I ever hear.”

“What sort of fella is he?”

“Sweet enough, I suppose. Not much taller than Violet. Educated. Finishing up law school right here in Philadelphia.”

“How romantic. Will she see him?”

“No!” Lily slapped the magazine onto her lap. “He doesn’t know a thing, and Violet swore it would stay that way. He thinks we’re off in Buffalo visiting our relations.” She picked up the True Story and smoothed its pages. The publication’s motto, Truth is stranger than fiction, stared up at her. “It’s bad enough the widow knows, but Mother couldn’t be stopped. She said Catholics know more about worldly matters.”

Muriel closed her eyes and smiled. “Is he handsome?”

“Promise you won’t tell?”

Muriel nodded so vigorously that her wimple and veil slid off her head, down onto her pillow.

“I couldn’t say.” She leaned in and whispered, “I’ve never been able to get past the hand.”

“What’s wrong with his hand?” Muriel scooted toward the edge of her mattress, closer to Lily.

“It isn’t there.” Lily drew back and shivered. “For as long as I’ve known him, he’s always just had the one.”

“Born that way? I’ve heard of that. A woman oughtn’t look at a crone or a cripple when she’s in the family way. It’ll mark the baby for sure.”

Lily considered the warning. “It’s different with Stanley. Lost his hand in the mine when he was a boy. Came this close to dying.” She pressed a half-inch of air between her thumb and forefinger. “He swears it was Violet’s voice that brought him back.”

“Now there’s a romance story if I ever heard one. And what about you?” Muriel rolled her copy of Movie Monthly and rapped it against Lily’s headboard. “Do you have a sweetheart waiting for you back home?”

Lily considered the question. She loved George Sherman Jr., but that didn’t make him her sweetheart. Or her his. He’d told her to come back in a few years after she’d “grown up some,” but that hardly meant he was waiting for her. She’d seen him around town with those other girls. And he’d certainly never want her now if he knew she was expecting. “I can’t say for sure.” Her eyes teared up. “How about you? Do you have a beau?”

“Promise you won’t tell?” Muriel leaned in.

“Cross my heart.”

“I’m a married woman,” she said, stretching out a ringless hand. “All very proper.”

Lily examined Muriel’s unadorned fingers out of politeness. “Why not tell?”

“Pa would kill him.”

“Is he mean?”

“My pa? He’s wonderful to me. Says I’m his little princess.” Muriel wrapped her arms around her stomach. “I’m the only girl in a family of nine.” She trembled. “So naturally he favors me.”

“What’re you going to do when the baby comes?”

“Take him home, of course. Raise him with his daddy.”

“Or her. Could just as easily be a girl. Even Carol what’s-her-name said so.”

Muriel winced. “It’s a boy,” she directed toward her belly, as if issuing a command, “no matter what Carol Kochis says.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Just has to be, is all.” Muriel shivered again.

“What’s he like?” Lily asked. “This husband of yours?”

“He married me for my green eyes.” Muriel tipped her head, batted her lashes, and laughed. “Men always notice my green eyes.”

“Same here,” Lily said, “except mine are blue.”

Muriel opened her magazine to a story called “Love Bound,” with a picture of a happy couple standing alongside a train. “My husband’s a conductor for the D&H Railroad.” She paused, then nodded. “Yes, that’s it. He travels all over the country.” Muriel closed her eyes. “Said he’d take me with him. Far away where Pa can’t ever hurt me again.”

“But I thought—”

The sound of footsteps carried up into the room. Muriel leaned over, snatched Lily’s magazine, mated it with her own, and shoved them in the drawer. “This is just between us.”

Women and girls filed in from the evening service, heads still bowed in either prayer or obligation.

A thickset nun—all girth, no stature—squeezed in behind them. “Lights out in twenty minutes.” She backed up into the hallway and disappeared.

“Sister Immaculata,” Muriel said as she grabbed for her nightclothes. “A homely sight, even for a nun.”

Lily watched as some of her roommates scurried toward the bathrooms, nightclothes in hand, while others undressed alongside their beds, Muriel among them. Lily wondered at their immodesty while she pulled her own gown out of the drawer and made her way to the washroom.

* * *

Sister Immaculata returned exactly twenty minutes later, barking, “Bed check!” She walked the length of the room, crossing off names on her clipboard. “DeLeo?” Check. “Mancini?” Check. “Kochis?” Check. “Lehman?” She looked around and called again. “Lehman?”

A rather pale-looking girl, no more than eighteen, followed her swollen belly through the doorway. She pressed one hand into her back and used the other to hold onto the footboard she passed. “Sorry, Sister.” She paused one bed away from her own to catch her breath. “I slow down a little more each day.”

The nun sneered as she marked off the name, and proceeded up the aisle. “Dennick?” she said in front of an empty bed. “Judith Dennick?”

“She’s being delivered,” someone offered from a bed in the front of the room. “Breech birth. Had to call the doctor.”

Sister Immaculata made a notation on her clipboard and took a few steps forward.

“Hartwell?” Check.

At the sound of her last name, Muriel offered up a smile that tried too hard and went unnoticed.

As the nun stepped forward, Lily focused on the three fleshy chins protruding from her wimple.

“Morgan?” Check.

“Other Morgan?” She spun toward Lily and glared. “Where’s your sister?”

When Lily froze, Muriel answered with that same smile. “I believe she’s with Mother Mary Joseph.” The nun scratched something on her clipboard. “Besides,” Muriel said, “I imagine she can come and go as she pleases, seeing it’s Lily who’s with child.”

The many-chinned nun yanked the cord on the nearest ceiling light. “We’ll see about that.” She marched toward the door, pulling each of the three subsequent cords as she passed.

Muriel crawled under the covers and turned her body in Lily’s direction. “So what did you mean when you said you couldn’t say for sure if you had a sweetheart?”

Lily tipped her head toward the empty bed. “Where do you think Violet got to?”

“Pipe down!” someone yelped from across the aisle. “Six thirty comes early.”

“Don’t worry,” Muriel whispered, “Mother Mary Joseph’s a talker. Probably running Violet through the other nine Commandments, seeing they already covered the one about honoring your parents.” She laughed lightly.

“Thanks, Muriel.” Lily grabbed a handful of sleeve and soaked up tears as they sprang to her eyes.

“Good night.” The words attached themselves to a yawn. Muriel rolled over on her side and nuzzled the pillow. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“Sweet dreams.” Lily lay still, listening to the sound of the other women, a despairing dirge of prayers and whimpers. After some time, she turned toward the window and added her voice to their song.

* * *

Violet stood at the sink rinsing the infant’s soapy skin with handfuls of warm water. Stinking whore. She shook her head to loosen the words, but each spiny syllable dug into her skull like barbed wire.

Mother Mary Joseph returned to the kitchen carrying a gray two-piece sleeping suit. “It’s a little big,” she said, holding it up to the light, “but it’ll do for now.” The thick, sweet smell of Fels-Naptha soap wafted up from the nightclothes and filled the room.

Violet lifted the baby and wrapped him in a towel that had been warming on the radiator. “Reverend Mother, I think you should know—”

“Normally, we bathe the children in the nursery,” the nun interrupted, setting the sleeping suit on the already blanketed table, next to the talcum powder, rash cream, mineral oil, diaper, and pins, “but not at this hour. No sense waking the other children.”

“This Dr. Peters . . .” Violet carried the boy over to the nun and handed him in her direction.

Mother Mary Joseph walked past the pair, struck a match, and lit the front burner on the stove. “A little gruff.” She warmed a bottle of milk in a shallow pot of water. “A fine man though.” Nodding toward the mineral oil, she said, “Rub his head good. Nothing makes a baby look neglected more than cradle cap.”

Violet poured a few drops of oil on her palm and worked it gently into the boy’s yellow-crusted scalp. “Should flake off in a day or two.” She creamed, powdered, diapered, and dressed the infant with a deft hand.

“You know your way around a baby.”

“I practically raised Lily.” Violet bent down and inhaled. “Nothing smells sweeter.”

“And your mother?” The nun shook a few drops of milk onto her wrist.

“She had a hard time of it for a while.” Violet settled the boy on her lap and explored the opening in the roof of his mouth with her finger. “Now, about that doctor.”

Mother Mary Joseph handed the bottle to Violet, sat down, and caressed the baby’s sunken cheek. “Can’t be more than a month old, poor thing. He’s wasting away. Probably never had a proper feeding.”

Violet tipped the bottle toward the right side of his mouth, away from the cleft. He started sucking, but seemed to take in more air than milk. A moment later, the little bit of liquid he’d consumed leaked back out through his nose in a fit of sneezes. “You better do this.” She lifted the bundle toward the nun.

“Sit him up,” Mother Mary Joseph replied, not moving from her seat. “That’s right. Now point the nipple down a little. Good.”

The infant quickly fell into a satisfied rhythm of suck, swallow, breathe. In ten minutes, he’d finished the bottle and expelled a boisterous burp without any coaxing.

The Reverend Mother tickled the boy’s chin and looked at Violet. “Now, keep doing that every three to four hours, and he’ll get some weight on him in no time.” She stood up and grabbed the washcloth to wipe his face.

“But I’m here to look after Lily,” Violet said, keeping her eyes on the boy.

“A little late for that.”

“If you’re suggesting . . .”

“I’m sure you won’t mind helping out.” The nun’s words rolled over Violet’s. “Babies get born here.” She nodded in the direction of the front entrance. “Or left in that cradle. Either way, we don’t have enough hands.” The infant started to fuss a little, and Mother Mary Joseph walked over to the cupboard on the wall opposite the sink. “People losing jobs every day. Can’t afford another mouth to feed. It would break your heart if you let it.” The earthy smell of potatoes and onions wafted up as she searched the shelves. She found a bottle of vanilla extract, tipped it onto her finger, and ran it along the baby’s gums. “We’re full up,” the nun continued, “but God as my witness, the Good Shepherd has never refused a mother or a child, and as long as I’m alive, we never will.” She turned as the doctor strolled into the kitchen.

Violet looked up. “Speak of the devil.”

“Thank you again for all your help this evening, Dr. Peters. We might have lost Judith and her newborn if you hadn’t come when you did.” The Reverend Mother cleared a spot at the end of the table. “Sit.”

“Another time. Good Shepherd babies don’t arrive during bankers’ hours,” the doctor cackled. A bit of spittle caught at the corner of his beard and hung there. He set his medical bag on the table and put on his topcoat. “And once again,” he placed his hand on Violet’s shoulder and squeezed, “I apologize for any misunderstanding. When I saw you with that,” he paused as if considering his next word, “child, I assumed . . .”

Violet bristled and opened her mouth to speak.

“No harm done.” The Reverend Mother turned to Violet. “Dr. Peters has been with us for nearly ten years. And I daresay, he loves our unfortunates as much as we do.”

“Happy to do the Lord’s work,” he said.

Just then, the infant started to cry. Violet tipped the neck of the vanilla bottle onto her finger and rubbed the liquid along the baby’s gums. Glaring at the doctor, she shrugged his hand off her shoulder without another word.

* * *

Violet tiptoed through the dormitory doorway and headed down the aisle. She stopped to tuck the blanket around Lily’s bared feet before continuing past her own bed to the window. Puffs of frigid air invaded the room where expectant mothers either slept or tried to. Violet pushed her thumb against a pane, melting tendrils of frost. She pressed again with her other thumb, and a heart appeared in the midst of the icy strands.

“Vi, is that you?” Lily squinted toward the moonlight.

“Go back to sleep,” Violet said, flattening her palm against the window, supplanting her flimsy heart with a sturdy handprint. “It’ll be morning soon enough.”

Lily mumbled something incomprehensible and closed her eyes.

Shrill winds raged outside; the frosty glass shivered against its tired frame. Stanley, Violet thought. How was it that a person could be so close, and yet so far away?

If he’d married her early on like she’d wanted, married her before going off to law school to save the world (and her reputation, or so he’d said: “Let me prove to your father that I’m worthy of your hand”), Stanley would be with her now. He’d help her make sense of a world where mothers abandoned their babies in the name of duty, or selfishness, or God. If he’d married her before going to the University of Pennsylvania, as he used to say he would, she’d be surrounded by her own children now, and not the Good Shepherd’s brood. So what if her parents spurned her? It wouldn’t be the first time. She’d spent the better part of a year as an outcast after Daisy’s death.

Daisy. Everyone had blamed Violet for the tragedy, except Stanley. Even her mother thought she threw that lit sparkler out of jealousy. Violet had been jealous of her sister, it was true. With one year between them, Daisy got the store-bought dress, since it was she who was being baptized that morning, while Violet wore one of her sister’s hand-me-downs. But they’d made up that afternoon when they’d found the fireworks their father had bought for the evening’s Fourth of July celebration. It was Daisy who told Violet to hold them while she lit the match. It was Daisy who said the first one wouldn’t light. And Daisy who told her to keep a lookout for their parents and that nosey Mrs. Evans, causing Violet to turn away when the sparkler unexpectedly caught fire. She didn’t throw that firework out of jealously. She tossed it out of instinct when the flame burned her fingers. Daisy knew that. Violet saw forgiveness in those blue eyes the moment the sparkler touched the hem of her sister’s dress. Folks around Scranton still talked about Daisy—the little Morgan girl who sang hymns for three days as she lay dying. God called home an angel, they’d concluded, as if they knew God’s ways. Yet, for months, many of those same good Christians assumed Violet had hurt Daisy on purpose. Assumed an eight-year-old girl could kill her sister. Was that God’s way?

Violet had spent the rest of that year looking in from the outside. As awful as it was, she learned early on she could endure it, endure almost anything with Stanley close by. How ironic that Stanley should be so near, as Violet stood in the mothers’ ward of an infant asylum, sworn to secrecy.