The Address, page 20
Marianne’s movements became stronger, her arms wide out, then up above her head, her legs extended in long, clean lines. For a moment, Sara forgot where she was. The bare room might as well have been a London stage, and Marianne a debut ballerina in a skirt of layered gauze. Her hair whirled about her as she spun on one leg, the other wrapping around and back out, the momentum turning her around and around. She finished and gave a low bow, her aged body still limber, the steps fixed in her memory.
For a moment, no one stirred, mesmerized. Nurse Garelick indicated for the other nurses to sit and took a seat herself at the center table. No doubt the dance had transported them away from the mundane tasks at hand, to a place where beauty and kindness were still possible.
But when Sara got a glimpse of Nurse Garelick’s profile, her heart sank. A vein throbbed on her forehead, her eyes shone with a shrewish ferocity. The unexpected grace of Marianne had enraged her further.
“You’ll keep dancing until I say you can’t.”
Marianne did so, but less committed to the steps this time, her eyes never leaving Nurse Garelick’s face. After ten minutes, she had become a ghost of her former self, all energy sapped by the unexpected exertion. After twenty, she fell to her knees.
The bell rang, but Nurse Garelick put up her hands and everyone stayed seated. “More dancing. Jump around like you were doing before. You’re pathetic. A weakling. A sad, old lady.”
The other nurses joined in, teasing and laughing at the woman. Tears slid down Marianne’s face; her mouth was slack with exhaustion.
“Get up, you old bitch. Get up.”
Sara silently willed for the woman to do so. They had to be excused soon, and then she’d take her upstairs to bed and tuck her in. Show her some kindness.
Marianne was on her hands and knees, trying to get a foot under her to stand, when Nurse Garelick strode over and shoved her with her boot so hard she collapsed on the stone floor.
“Enough!”
Sara raced to her side, not caring what happened. If only all of the other women would do the same, they could overpower the nurses, take over a boat, and ferry themselves to safety and sanity.
“You’re the maniacs, how could you do this to a poor old woman?” She held Marianne in her arms and looked up.
Nurse Garelick’s expression, which she expected to be full of hate, was not. Her eyes shone, her cheeks burned red. She was happy. The thought of having another person to torture was a pleasure in her sick mind. Physical pleasure. The thought turned Sara’s stomach.
Her baby. The world slowed down for a second as she saw Nurse Garelick’s black boot draw back, but she didn’t have enough time to protect herself. The impact landed on the exposed side of her torso, hard, her body sliding a few inches across the floor. Her breath left her lungs in a rush and she groaned, releasing the woman and wrapping her arms around her own belly. The next kick struck her hip bone, reverberating through her pelvis.
A deep-throated cackle was the last thing Sara heard as Nurse Garelick’s boot connected with her temple.
CHAPTER TWENTY
New York City, January 1885
Sara stared out of the window into another bleak dawn. She’d been locked up for five days now, and other than resting on the cot, allowing her sore ribs to heal, she spent hours standing at the window. During the day, she could hear the shouts of the nurses rounding up the inmates after their walk, but other than that, no human noises reached her ears. Her meager ration of food was shoved through an opening in the bottom of the door. For the first two days, the silence was a respite from the commotion of the place, but now she was desperate for a human touch, a smile, something that acknowledged her presence in the world. By the third day, she’d looked around to try to find something with which to kill herself, but the bed had no metal springs, nothing sharp. She considered smashing her head against the bare walls.
The door to her room opened and she jumped at the sound, her ears unused to the squeaking of the hinges.
“Mrs. Smythe, you’re out.”
“I’m out?” A burst of joy collected in her throat. Had Theo finally come?
An unfamiliar nurse smiled. A missing front tooth gave her grin a menacing air. “Not out like that. You’re back on the main ward. Back to hall six.”
Of course. How stupid to think she would be released.
But being with the other women was a consolation. Natalia pulled her over to sit with her at breakfast and insisted Sara eat her own piece of bread. “We must build you back up. You look like a ghost.”
Sara dutifully nibbled at the hard crust. “What happened to Marianne?”
Natalia shook her head. “They took her away. I hoped maybe you were together.”
“She won’t last long.”
“Enough about her. You must fatten up. No more jumping in to help. That is only punished around here.”
“I know. I realize that now.” As she said the words, part of her humanity eroded away.
Natalia patted her shoulder. “Don’t blame yourself. This place is broken, bad. Stay alive. That’s all you have to do.”
Eat, sleep, and breathe. If only it were that simple.
“The good news is we haven’t seen Nurse Garelick since. We think she was sent somewhere else.”
After the first hour of sitting, her panic began to rise like a fast-moving fever. She wanted to run like Marianne had, to dance, to move.
She had to figure out how to manage this if she was going to survive. She’d read about monks in Asia who sat for hours and days at a time without moving. They’d lower their breathing until it was almost like they weren’t alive, and somehow reach a transcendent state. How odd to think that they did it voluntarily, as a way of life.
Maybe if she had something to focus upon. She considered her girlhood, the hours she’d traipsed the long paths that wound through meadows and wandered barefoot in the sand along the ocean.
She settled on her mother’s vegetable garden and, in her mind, explored it inch by inch. The golden ring of marigolds that kept the caterpillars away. The gangly stalks of Brussels sprouts, the squat cabbages all in a row. At one point, she picked up the heavy fragrance of the lilac bushes that stood along the far fence. The time flew by instead of crawling.
Soon, instead of dreading the hours of sitting, she looked forward to the daily session as a way to escape the dreariness of the asylum. To replace the weak winter light that seeped in the barred windows with the image of a sun-drenched bed of pansies.
After three weeks, Natalia linked arms as they stood at the end of a session. “I looked at you and you seemed so peaceful. Like you were off somewhere else.”
“I was, in a sense.” Sara filled her in and, after the next time, Natalia described her own ruminations—of her mother’s vegetable garden in Tuscany. “We left when I was five, so I didn’t think I’d remember much, but it all came back. Even the taste of a fresh tomato.”
On their walk together, each would take a turn sharing where they’d traveled during the day’s session. They described in great detail their favorite dresses, songs, and books, and as the weather improved, Sara’s outlook did as well.
As long as she spent the time looking backward and didn’t think too far ahead, the panic in her throat remained a flutter instead of a roar.
By the end of June, the ice and snow was a distant memory, as were her days at the Dakota and the hope that Theo might come to her rescue. To her astonishment, the baby had survived Nurse Garelick’s onslaught and was active, especially at night. A few days earlier, she’d swapped dresses with one of the women in her ward who’d lost a good deal of weight from the terrible diet. The new dress draped around her with plenty of room to spare. Natalia had given her a pointed look as they went into breakfast but hadn’t asked any questions.
During the weekly bath, she used a towel to cover herself as she dipped in and out of the dirty water left by the other women. No one changed the water in between inmates, so if a woman got stuck at the end of the line, it was a brown soup. But Sara deliberately hung back so the previous occupants of the tub would be busy dressing and she could do her ablutions without an audience.
One bright morning, she and Natalia waited with the others to get their daily work assignments.
“Mrs. Smythe and Mrs. Fabiano.” The nurse checked their names off on her clipboard. “Report to the mat factory.”
Natalia and Sara shared a look of wonder. The factory was a move up, for the more docile and well-behaved patients. Sara stifled a squeal until they were outside, walking with the other women to the building that housed the workplaces: scrub brush making, mat making, and the laundry. The orderly pointed to a large, sunny room at the back, where rags had been piled on top of wooden tables. “The others will show you how.”
“At least we won’t have to work with lye anymore,” murmured Natalia.
Sara’s hands were raw from the soap, and she imagined the jar of hand cream that once stood on her bureau at the Dakota. She could picture it perfectly in her mind, the pretty label covered with faded roses. Hopefully, Daisy had been able to take it so it hadn’t been wasted. The thought made her sad. What had happened to her meager possessions? Had the spoils been divided up among the housemaids? Or had they been summarily tossed out or burned in the furnace?
“You all right?” asked Natalia.
When Sara’s thoughts ran away like this, the darkness in her head would begin to grow, like a tumor. She pointed in the direction of the worktables. “Imagine, we even get our own stools to sit on.”
“Like a queen’s throne.”
They sat at a table near the window, and one of the women guided them through the process of ripping the rags into long shreds, coiling them up before stitching them around and around to create an oval. Sara reveled in holding a thread and needle in her hand. The only sign that this was an asylum versus a true factory was the quiet gibberish that occasionally erupted from a few of the women.
“I’m beginning to understand what they’re saying,” said Natalia, after they’d been at it for an hour.
“The way I see it, we’re all sane and the rest of the staff and doctors and superintendent are the lunatics.” Sara pointed at the head nurse, who was asleep at her desk. “Completely daft.”
“I like looking at it that way.” Natalia glanced over at Sara, who instinctively pulled in her stomach. “You won’t be able to hide it very soon.”
Sara put a hand over her belly in a protective motion. “What do you mean?”
“You are with child.”
The simple statement brought pricks of tears to Sara’s eyes. “Yes.” The past couple of nights, in the depths of the bitter darkness, she’d imagined another world, one where she hadn’t ventured to the States. Where she’d stayed as head housekeeper at the Langham and never faced the corrosive effect of her own shame, her downfall. But she could no longer deny the truth, even to herself.
“What are you going to do?” Natalia leaned in, her frown deepening the furrow between her eyebrows.
“I’m not sure what I can do. I’m amazed it survived Nurse Garelick’s attack. But it’s moving, growing.”
“He or she, not an it.”
“I can’t think about it that way.” Her chest seized up and she fought to breathe. “What will I do? What will they do with me once they find out?”
Natalia placed her hand on Sara’s, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “I believe there’s a place at the Charity Hospital for unwed mothers on the island. Maybe you can go there to have the baby?”
“I heard the nurses talking about it. For ‘husbandless women and fatherless children,’ they said. Always defined by a man, as if it weren’t enough to be simply a woman or a child.”
“Who is the father?”
She shuddered, unable to say his name. “He doesn’t know about it, or that I’m here. And he’s not free.”
“You will need help, when the time comes.”
“What do they do with the babies that are born at the hospital? Do you know?”
Natalia shook her head. “I’m sure they don’t want the baby on their hands, another mouth to feed. This could be your key to getting out of here.”
“Or it could be an excuse for them to lock me up for good and take the child away. As a way of further punishment.”
A couple of the women sitting at the adjacent table glanced in their direction. Sara was certain they were foreign and didn’t understand English, but she lowered her voice. “I don’t know what to do. What should I do?”
Natalia reached up and patted her cheek, her touch a cool salve. “Don’t worry, we’ll figure it out. Do you know when the baby will be coming?”
In spite of her determination not to think ahead, she’d done the calculation over and over. “Middle of August, I believe.”
“I’ll ask around, try to find out if this has happened before. Nurse Alden is the kind one; I’ll bring it up with her.”
“Would you?” It took everything Sara had to not fall into Natalia’s arms and burst into tears.
“Yes. We’ve made it this far; let’s see if we can make your situation work to your advantage.”
A week later, during their walk, Natalia pulled Sara around the corner of the asylum, out of view of the nurses and other inmates.
“What is it? Is something wrong?”
Natalia’s eyes sparkled. “No, not wrong at all. Yesterday, I found Nurse Alden sitting in one of the offices working. Alone.”
“Tell me what you learned.”
“She said that any inmate with child—and they have a few each year—is indeed sent to the Charity Hospital on the island, to the ward for unwed mothers.”
“The hospital is for the people in the workhouse, right?”
“Yes. It’s going to be rough. But less rough than here, I would guess.”
“How do we know, though? What if it’s worse? The orderlies there are used to vagrants and drunkards and the like.”
Natalia lifted her chin and laughed. “We are madwomen, don’t you remember? Do you think they are below us?”
“What are you ladies doing here?” Superintendent Dent strode over, pipe in hand. “You’re not supposed to be off on your own.”
“Sorry, Superintendent Dent.” Natalia did a combination head bow and curtsy, which seemed to mollify him slightly.
He waved a hand. “Off you go. Breathe in the fresh air; it will help clear the mind.”
“Yes, sir.”
The next week, as they were at the beginning of their shift in the mat-making factory, the head nurse called out from the doorway and motioned for Natalia and Sara to grab one of the baskets of completed mats.
“These need to go to the penitentiary. Leave them by the front gate. Don’t go inside. Here’s a note in case anyone asks what you’re doing.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Sara could hardly believe her good luck. They each took a basket handle and followed the road south. The walk provided a long-forgotten taste of freedom.
A fresh breeze blew in from the west as they trod down the dusty road. The prison resembled a castle, with tiny square windows and turreted roofs. A rough wooden fence extended around the front entrance, with an iron gate in the center. Together they peered in.
Men in black-and-white-striped uniforms marched by in tight formation, each man pressed into the back of the one in front of him, while guards with rifles and sticks watched. One of the men noticed the women and whistled, and the guard lifted his stick and beat him soundly across the shoulders.
Unwilling to draw any further attention to themselves, Sara and Natalia crept away. Natalia pointed to the building next door. “The hospital.”
Indeed, women in nurse uniforms stood outside the front entrance, enjoying the warm summer sun.
“Come with me.” Natalia led Sara up to the side of the building. “Nurse Alden said the place for the women and babies is on the first floor.”
They peered in one window. The room had clean floors, whitewashed walls, and a bare bulb that hung from the ceiling. Plain linens and pillows adorned the beds, the blankets tucked in neatly around the corners. A couple of women sat in chairs, holding their babies as a nurse fussed around them.
Tears came to Sara’s eyes. “It’s so civilized.”
“Wish I could get a pillow. Almost forgot what it was like to sleep with one until now.”
“This will do, won’t it?” Sara looked to Natalia for confirmation that she wasn’t imagining things.
“It will do very well. Tomorrow you go to Nurse Alden and tell her the truth. Ask her if she can arrange for you to have the baby at the Charity Hospital.”
“But we don’t know what will happen after I’ve had the baby.”
“Women without husbands are put out on the street after two weeks. You’d be on your own after that, and with a child. No one will take you in or have you, but you can leave the baby with the Foundling Asylum on Lexington and Sixty-Eighth.”
“I couldn’t do that, put my own child in an asylum.”
“You could until you found work, a place to stay at least.”
Natalia was right. Sara would be unemployable with a baby. But she didn’t want to consider that right now. “One step at a time. First, I have to get Nurse Alden on my side and get placed here when it’s time.” She gave Natalia a hug. “Thank you for taking such good care of me.”
“Of course.”
“If I do get out, I’ll come back for you, I promise.”
“I know you’ll try.” Natalia’s chin gave a wobble, the first time Sara had seen her friend break down. “Maybe I can get with child as well, and follow your lead.”
“With Superintendent Dent, you mean?”
Natalia laughed in spite of herself, and Sara put one arm about her friend as they headed back to the asylum. When the baby kicked, Sara gave it a reassuring caress.
