The Orphan Collector

by Ellen Marie Wiseman

  A scream built up in Pia’s throat, but she clamped her teeth against it. She fell to her knees again and let Ollie slide to the floor, her arms too weak to hold him. He lay on his back, his face red, and cried harder. In the other room, Max started wailing too. Pia buried her face in her hands and squeezed her eyes shut, hoping the image of her dead mother would be gone when she opened them. This can’t be true! It can’t be! Mutti is not dead. She’s not!

  She dropped her hands to the floor to keep from collapsing and opened her eyes. Her mother was still there, on the bed, covered in blood. Pia moaned and slumped to the floor, her legs and arms vibrating out of control, her breath coming in short, shallow gasps. Violent sobs burst from her throat one after the other, before she could catch her next mouthful of air. Each wail wrenched the strength from her body. Ollie howled beside her, oblivious to the fact that his mother was dead and his life had been changed forever. He reached for Pia’s arm, clutching her sleeve in his small fist. She picked him up and hugged him to her chest, her shoulders convulsing, her mind screaming in terror and grief.

  More than anything, she wanted to lose consciousness, to faint and escape into nothingness, where pain and fear couldn’t reach her. But she had to take care of the boys. She had to go out to the other room and get Max, who was crying even harder now. When she trusted herself to stand, she staggered to her feet, still hugging Ollie, and stumbled out to the kitchen. She hefted Max onto her other hip and carried her brothers back into the bedroom on quivering legs, then slid down the wall opposite the bed, dizzy and out of breath. Her body felt like kindling, her nerves stripped and sparking, ready to burst into flames at any second. Her mind raced and her stomach churned, overwhelmed with grief and horror and disbelief. How could Mutti be dead? Dead? She rarely caught cold. How could she catch the flu? She kept her feet dry. She stayed warm. She even ate sugar cubes soaked in kerosene.

  Pia stared at her mother, bile rising in the back of her throat, the babies howling in her arms. What were she and the twins going to do without her? Who was going to take care of them now? Pia wailed with her brothers, fighting the urge to scream and vomit, the black manacle of grief closing around her shattered heart and locking into place with a horrible, sickening thud.

  CHAPTER TWO

  BERNICE

  October 11, 1918

  For what seemed like the thousandth time in the past few days, twenty-year-old Bernice Groves stared out the third-floor window of her row house on Shunk Alley in the Fifth Ward, trying to figure out how to kill herself. She thought about jumping out the window, but worried the fall would only break her legs, not end her life. Slitting her wrists with a kitchen knife was an option, but she hated the sight of blood. She could swallow the rat poison her husband had brought home before he was drafted, but she didn’t want to die writhing in agony. Her death needed to be as quick and painless as possible. Maybe that made her a coward, but she didn’t care. There was no one left to notice, anyway. Then her eyes traveled to the clotheslines between the buildings, crisscrossing the alley like the threads of a giant spiderweb. Braiding several lengths of it together might make a rope strong enough to hold her weight so she could hang herself. But how would she get that much? She couldn’t very well go door to door asking her neighbors to loan out their clotheslines. Not that they would answer their doors, anyway. Since the epidemic started—Had it been a week? Ten days? Fourteen?—no one dared let anyone but family into their homes, and sometimes not even them.

  No children played in the alley below, no women hurried out to run errands, no men whistled or smoked on their way home from work. Even the laundry lines hung empty. The only living things she’d seen over the past few days were a street sweeper sprinkling some kind of powder along the cobblestones and a brown dog sniffing two sheet-wrapped bodies across the way before dashing down the alley, his nose to the ground. More often than not, she wondered if she was the last person alive on earth.

  It was easy to understand why the man who lived upstairs, Mr. Werkner, had shot his wife and two children before putting a gun to his own head instead of letting the flu decide their fate. While the rest of the city waited in fear and bodies piled up outside the morgues and cemeteries, he had taken matters into his own hands. She would have done the same thing if she’d known a week ago what she knew now. And if she had a gun.

  Hopefully she already had the flu and would be dead soon, anyway. Then she would be with her husband and son. Except she didn’t want to wait that long. She wanted to die now, to escape this wretched grief, this horrible, heavy ache in her chest. She couldn’t stand the agony another minute. The Bible said taking your own life was a sin, but surely God would understand that a mother couldn’t live without her child. Surely He would understand why she longed to be reunited with her son in heaven. Everything she knew to be good was gone. Everything she knew to be true and absolute and fair about the world had been destroyed.

  Maybe she should just stop eating. Not that she had been eating much, anyway. How could she think about food when her baby boy was dead? How could she swallow a bite of doughy bread with sweet jam, or soothe her dry throat with hot tea with honey? How could she do any of those things when Wallis would never taste a strawberry or an egg, eat an apple or a warm piece of johnnycake? It seemed blasphemous to even think about eating when he couldn’t, as if she were betraying him.

  A loaf of bread wrapped in cheesecloth sat untouched in her dresser drawer, along with a pound of lard, a few strips of cooked bacon, and a dozen eggs in the larder, three boxes of cereal, several jars of pears and tomatoes, and a half-dozen cans of beans and carrots on the kitchen shelves. She thought about leaving the food outside her neighbors’ doors, but couldn’t find the strength or desire to pack it up and take it out. And despite her revulsion at the thought of eating, every now and then the desperate gnaw of hunger grew unbearable, as if her stomach were eating itself from the inside out. She tried to ignore it by lying down and hoping she would pass out or starve to death, but an involuntary will to survive always seemed to win and she’d tear into a box of cornflakes, disgusted and crying and hating herself as she shoved them into her mouth. Then, with her hunger abated, she’d make a vow to start starving herself all over again, and beg Wallis to forgive her for being so weak.

  Thinking about her beautiful baby boy, her burning eyes filled and she looked over at him. A week ago, he’d been the picture of health, giggling and babbling and reaching for her with his chubby little hands. Then he woke up with a fever and a cough, refusing to nurse. After two days of trying every recommended cure for the flu—onion syrup, chloride of lime, whiskey, Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup—she bundled him up and ran what seemed like a hundred blocks to the nearest emergency hospital—the local poorhouse, which had been converted after the epidemic started. Crying the whole way, she prayed that the good Lord would save her only child. She’d already lost her husband to war. How much misery was one person supposed to endure?

  But when she reached the hospital, she’d slowed. Every type of vehicle she could imagine crowded the street—trucks and cars and wagons and carts, all of them bringing the sick, the dying, and the dead. Even police cars were bringing in victims. What looked like thousands of people—some wearing yarmulkes and dark clothes, others in babushka scarves and colorful skirts—swarmed the building, trying to get inside. Some sat or lay on the ground wrapped in blankets, while others were half-naked and soaked in sweat, moaning, coughing, and struggling to breathe. A number of them were already dead, their faces as purple as plums, their mouths and noses and eyes caked with dark blood. A colored man stumbled in front of her toward the hospital, begging to be let in, and a white man pushed him backward, telling him to go somewhere else. The colored man collapsed on the sidewalk, then lay there, lifeless. Masked policemen did their best to keep order, while nuns in white aprons prayed over the living and the dead. Beneath a canopy on the sidewalk, Red Cross workers handed out masks and sewed burial shrouds. A chorus of voices cried
out for water and prayed in what seemed like a dozen different languages—English, Russian, Italian, Yiddish, Polish, German.

  She fought her way through the crowd, clasping Wallis to her chest. “Please,” she cried out. “Please let me through! I need help! My son is sick!”

  “Hey,” someone shouted. “Get in line!”

  “Wait your turn,” a woman yelled.

  Bernice ignored them and kept going, pushing and shoving her way through. A policeman and a nun stood guard at the hospital entrance, both wearing gauze masks. When Bernice reached them, the policeman stepped between her and the nun.

  “Please,” Bernice said, trying to catch her breath. “You have to help me. My boy is sick.”

  “I’m sorry, dear,” the nun said. “We’ve run out of room.”

  “But he’s just a baby,” Bernice wailed. “My only child!”

  “I understand,” the nun said. “But there are other mothers with children here too.”

  Bernice looked around, tears blurring her vision. A young, dark-haired woman wearing a scarf over her mouth knelt on the sidewalk beside a pale, coughing toddler, her eyes filled with fear. Another woman held a young girl on her hip, swaying back and forth, trying to comfort her child. The little girl’s legs dangled skinny and limp against her mother’s skirt, and her skin was tinged a strange, bluish gray. A thousand faces stared back at Bernice, some gasping for air, others weary with pain, all knotted in terror.

  Bernice gazed up at the nun. “Why aren’t you helping us?” she cried. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “All of our beds and even the hallways are full,” the nun said. “We’re crowded to the doors, and most of our doctors and nurses are overseas. We’ve put a call out for volunteers, but I’m afraid we’re overwhelmed. I’m so sorry, dear, but you must get in line.”

  Just then, a man carrying a little boy ran up the steps with a wad of money in his hand. He begged the nun to take his son inside, but the policeman pushed him back, threatening to arrest him for bribery.

  Seizing the opportunity, Bernice darted around the policeman and started for the entrance, shoving the nun to one side with her shoulder. Suddenly a woman in a peasant skirt appeared out of nowhere, blocking her way. A feverish-looking toddler slumped in the cloth sling strapped around her chest.

  “Volte!” the woman said. “Você tem que esperar como todo mundo!”

  Bernice tried forcing her way past, but the woman stood her ground, snarling and pushing her back with rough hands. A broad-shouldered man came to the woman’s rescue and got between them, his arms out to keep Bernice at a distance.

  “Não toque nela!” he shouted.

  Bernice didn’t understand his words, but menace filled his voice. She tried to get around them again, but the policeman gripped her by the shoulders and pulled her backward.

  “Come on, lady,” he said. “You can’t go in yet.”

  The immigrant couple kept yelling at her, pointing their fingers and shaking their fists.

  “What about them?” Bernice shouted. “You can’t let them in either!”

  The policeman ignored her. She struggled to get away from him, twisting and pulling and bending, but it was no use.

  “Who do you think you are, trying to stop me from getting help?” she screamed at the couple. “You don’t even belong here!”

  The woman shouted something else, and the nun ushered her and the man away from the door. “It’s all right,” she said to them. “Please, calm down. We’re not letting anyone in ahead of you.”

  The policeman turned Bernice around and took her down the steps, one hand gripping her arm, the other putting pressure on her back—almost pushing, but not quite. At the bottom of the stairs, he let go and went back to his post. She gazed down at her sweet little Wallis, gasping for air and struggling to stay alive in her arms. How could they make him wait in line behind people who should have been looking for help from their own kind? She’d tried minding her own business when it came to the strangers who had invaded her city, but this was too much. Between a German stealing her father’s job and this, she was done being civil.

  She turned and looked up at the nun and policeman again. “What are you doing?” she cried. “Half these people are foreigners. They shouldn’t be trying to get help from doctors meant to help Americans. It’s not right!”

  “We’re here to help everyone,” the nun said. “I’m sorry, but you’ll have to wait like everyone else.”

  Above the din of the wailing, pleading crowd, Bernice heard her heart break. No one was going to help her boy. No one was going to give him medicine or ease his pain. Not until they’d helped the hordes of people who didn’t belong here. It didn’t make sense. The immigrants should have been turned away, not her son. On legs that felt like stone, she turned and staggered through the frightened swarm of tormented and dying people. She would take Wallis home. She would take him home and they would die together.

  Except she didn’t die. She didn’t even get a fever. She didn’t have a cough or as much as a tickle in her throat. The only thing she had was a headache, which always happened when she was distraught.

  Wallis, on the other hand, had died the next morning.

  She’d never forget the last minutes and seconds of her baby boy struggling in her arms, the fear and panic in his innocent eyes, the way he’d gripped her finger in his little hand as he fought for air and life. After a while, his face changed and grew gray, then got darker and darker. Blood seeped from his nose and rimmed the lower lids of his eyes. Then, with one final gasp, his tiny body shuddered and went slack. His hand loosened around her finger, and his eyelids drifted partway closed. She held him in her arms and stared at his face for what seemed like forever, then got up, laid him in his crib, and collapsed on the floor, shrieking over and over until she tasted blood. When she finally stopped screaming, the world started to close in around her like a curtain being drawn. Certain she was dying of a broken heart, she welcomed the relief. Finally she would be at peace, blessed with the knowledge that she would be with her husband and son. She felt like she was floating in a pool of liquid silver, and a smile played around her lips. Then everything went black.

  She had no idea how much time passed before she came to, but the room was getting dark, the grayish light of dusk sliding down the bedroom wall. At first she thought she had fallen asleep and it was all a horrible nightmare; then she bolted upright and looked over at the crib, her heart roaring in her chest. Wallis lay where she had left him, wrapped in his favorite blue blanket, his face the color of a storm cloud, his nose and mouth smeared with dried blood, his eyes swollen shut.

  Dead.

  Her son was dead.

  She covered her face with clawed hands, her mouth twisting in agony, her mind screaming. He can’t be dead! Not my baby! Not my little boy! She pounded the floor with her fists, cursing God and howling, then crumpled forward, still on her knees, slumped over like a rag doll. She cupped her swollen bosom in her hands, her throbbing breasts engorged with milk her son would never drink, her own body betraying her with a painful reminder of all she had lost. She squeezed her breasts and screeched in pain, punishing herself for letting Wallis get sick. She had seen the signs and read the warnings. She should have stayed home until the danger was over instead of going to the parade. She should have kept Wallis safe, away from the man selling balloons and the mobs of immigrants on the sidewalks. She should have shoved the dark-skinned boy away from Wallis’s buggy and told him to keep his filthy fingers away from her son when he had dropped his miniature flag on Wallis’s blanket and reached in to pick it up without asking. It was her fault. Her fault Wallis got sick and died.

  Then, after a few minutes of anguished sobbing, she pushed herself up on her hands and knees, swayed upright, and sat on the bed, her mind reeling. How was her heart still beating? Her lungs still drawing air? She picked up her son with gentle hands and kissed his cold forehead, his tiny lips, his miniature fingers, and prayed that her bleeding, s
hattered heart would kill her and put an end to her suffering. Then she lay on her side on the mattress and cradled him to her chest, hoping her mind would shut down and release her from the pain. She closed her eyes and willed her lungs to quit working, her blood to stop moving through her veins. She cursed God for taking her child, for deserting her in her hour of need. Then she begged Him to take her too. Her prayers went unanswered.

  That was three days ago.

  Now Wallis lay like a stone in his crib while she stared out the window, trying to figure out how to end her life. The radio said the city’s funeral homes were overwhelmed, but she wouldn’t have been able to bring herself to take him to the undertaker anyway, to hand over his tiny body to be embalmed, to be laid in a tiny casket and buried in the cold, hard earth. She couldn’t part with him. Ever. The only thing she wanted to do was to join him.

  Down in the alley, a woman in a red babushka and tiered skirt pushed a wicker pram with wobbly wheels past the row houses. Then she stopped, lifted a baby from the buggy, and entered one of the buildings across the way. Bernice clenched her jaw in frustration. What was that immigrant woman doing out there when the city was under quarantine? And with a baby no less! Was she crazy or just plain ignorant?

  Seeing the woman made her think of the immigrants at the hospital, trying to get help from doctors meant for Americans instead of turning to the witches and wizards they believed could heal them through some kind of sorcery. Wallis might have lived if it hadn’t been for them. Then again, it seemed like the entire neighborhood had been taken over by migrants and Negroes since the war started, all of them looking for work in the shipyard and munitions factory. They weren’t like her and her family, whose relatives had lived in South Philly since the 1830s, when her grandfather had moved here from Canada to work as a stonemason. Now the entire city was teeming with large ghettos housing every type of foreigner she could think of, and they were stealing jobs from real Americans, like her late father, who had worked at the shipyard for over forty years until a German who lived across the way, Mr. Lange, was hired to replace him. Just six days after he was let go, her father had died—liver failure, the doctors said. But losing his job to a foreigner was what killed him.