by Helen Wells
While Cherry was still popeyed, Mai Lee changed the subject. “I’m starving,” Mai Lee pleaded.
Cherry refused to go into an orange-painted basement eerily flickering with candlelight, insisting it looked like “a witch’s cave.” Gwen insisted that the place was clean and served good steaks. But Cherry said, “I’ll take less romantic atmosphere—like Bertha, doggone her—and more electric lights!”
They stopped to gaze at a garden restaurant with red-and-gold lacquer balconies which trailed leaves and tinkling glass chimes. From within they heard music. The restaurant offered authentic Chinese food, prepared at your table.
“Authentic, indeed!” Mai Lee demurred. “Haven’t you heard there’s no chop suey in China? And no French pastry in France?”
Next they hesitated before a very pretty New England type of restaurant with maple tables and chairs, Currier and Ives prints, an inviting fire, and Yorkshire pudding and roast beef.
“Those blue walls would be the right color for the furniture. Wouldn’t it, Cherry?”
“Bertha would like this place,” Josie said mournfully.
Vivian pointed out that this restaurant was no novelty for any of them. “We’ll take refuge here when we can’t digest any more Basque or Armenian or Creole cooking.”
Finally they went to the Jumble Shop, a many-roomed restaurant in an old, red stone house. Here the walls were hung with paintings by Village residents. They ate well, thinking guiltily of Bertha.
They strolled home along the foot of Fifth Avenue, pausing to look at the great, white, sculptured arch framing the entrance to Washington Square Park.
Something crossed Cherry’s line of vision. It was a man in a silk hat and a woman in ermine, merrily driving along in a foreign car about the size of a matchbox.
On the walk back to the apartment, they met an East Indian woman swathed from head to foot in pale yellow veils. They bumped into a man tootling an enormous French horn as he strolled along. They dodged three excited people arguing and gesticulating in Spanish.
By now, Cherry did not even bat an eyelash.
“That’s funny,” Vivian said, as they turned into their own quiet side street and approached No. 9. All the lights in their apartment seemed to be out. “I left a light in the living room.”
“Maybe Bertha has gone to bed.”
“Or left us for good.”
They groped their way into the darkened apartment, feeling more apprehensive than they cared to admit. It was a relief to see a crack of light from the back sitting room. Its door was closed. Cherry cautiously opened it, and groaned at what she saw and smelled. The other girls, sniffing, pressed forward.
“Bertha Larsen! Have you lost your mind?”
“I have made up my mind,” Bertha said stubbornly, not even turning.
A bucket of bright blue paint stood on the floor. On the table, on each wooden chair, on the rickety sideboard, Bertha had thoughtfully daubed at least one blob of blue—“So that we’re in for it,” Cherry sighed, “and can’t back out.” The windows on the garden were masked with newspapers, so the janitor could not see in. It was stifling in here, without air and with the heady smell of paint. Bertha wore a small, grimly satisfied smile.
“All right, be angry with me,” the big girl said. Her voice was suspiciously shaky. “But I could not look at this dirty furniture one minute longer. I had to put clean paint on it.” She gave the table a determined lick with her dripping paintbrush. “I had to do something!”
The other five stared at her and at the furniture with horror-stricken faces.
“But when did you get the paint?”
“This afternoon, while the rest of you were moving furniture.”
“And this is why you wouldn’t come out to dinner!”
“Nor let me stay here with you,” Gwen said, very subdued.
“Yes.” Bertha unhappily stirred the paint. “I know, you are afraid the janitor will be angry. Well, Cherry can explain to him.”
“Why me?” Cherry wailed. “I didn’t go ahead and paint without permission. Oh, golly, we may have to pay for the furniture or get sued or some thing!”
“Well, it was your idea, Cherry,” Bertha Larsen said, stubborn again.
There were frightened murmurs of “Yes, it was Cherry’s idea” from the other girls. The irritated gaze which they had turned on Gwen, earlier that day, now was transferred to Cherry.
Cherry swallowed hard. She knew the girls would stand by her, but being ringleader in a situation like this was uncomfortable. Cherry could not even feel angry with Bertha: poor Bertha was so unhappy in this place that she had simply lost her head, rolled up her sleeves, and “done something.”
“Well,” said Cherry. “Well.” She ran her hand through her curly hair. “So I have to square us with the janitor.”
“Yes!” they chorused, even Gwen.
Cherry looked the Spencer Club firmly in the eye. “All right, I will. Who’s scared? Pooh. I did think up this disaster. I’ll think up some way out, too.”
It was sheer bravado. Cherry had not the slightest idea what she was going to do. “But I’m certainly not going to let this turn into a crisis,” she thought. Everyone was tired and homesick, Bertha was still a little angry, the apartment was a shambles, the beds were not made yet—“Somebody’s got to ‘do something,’ as Bertha says. And it looks like I’m elected.”
“Huh?” said Gwen. “What are you muttering about?”
“Just this.” Cherry grinned cheerfully and announced, “Here’s a plan of action, kids. At least the janitor doesn’t know yet. I guess he won’t pop up through that trap door again. We have a little time to think. And point two, maybe Bertha was right. Anyhow, the die is cast. We can’t unpaint the furniture. So let’s spend the week end painting the horrible old stuff!”
There were halfhearted but relieved murmurs of assent. Bertha put down her paintbrush and smothered Cherry in a large embrace. Gwen gave Cherry a rueful look and suggested painting the janitor blue, too.
Saturday and Sunday they painted. There was nothing else to do. Cherry kept up a cheerful front, and everyone almost had fun painting—except Cherry. For how she was going to get out of this fix, she only wished she knew. Every time she looked at her blue-stained hands, she shuddered.
“Oh, well. I have a talent for trouble. But I have a talent for wiggling out of it, too!”
CHAPTER III
The Visiting Nurses
BRIGHT AND EARLY MONDAY MORNING, THE SPENCER Club trooped out of No. 9 to report for new careers. The September air was crisp, and the city moved at a brisk pace. The girls marched along in their blue uniforms, sputtering with anticipation.
On Friday they had reported to headquarters of the Visiting Nurse Service on Murray Hill, had their applications checked over a final time, and been advised where to buy their uniforms. These were navy blue, well tailored and worn with a little white piqué bow and a navy felt roller hat.
Cherry liked the uniform for its crisp good looks, and respected it for the humane work it symbolized. She, and all the girls, wore their navy blue proudly. Their hands were a little blue too, from paint.
This morning they headed back to Madison Avenue headquarters for the first training lectures. New York roared and glistened all around them. As they mounted the steps of the stately white stone house, Vivian confided:
“Wish we were going sight-seeing this morning, instead of working!”
“Never mind,” Cherry promised her. “Once we get under way on our jobs, we’ll do New York. Thoroughly.”
Gwen held open the black iron grille door. “We’ll see New York thoroughly on our jobs, too. Come on!”
Bertha, Josie, and Mai Lee, bringing up the rear, were too excited to talk. All of them in their brand-new blue uniforms stared at the visiting nurses busily coming and going through these offices and halls. These young women—and many mature women, too—had a special look in their faces. It struck Cherry at once. It was as if all the suffering
they had looked upon, and all the help they had given, had called forth that compassion in their eyes.
“Are you new nurses?” a woman in a suit said to them. “Report to the auditorium, please.”
They found the auditorium and took seats in a row. The big room was crowded with other young women in the same blue uniform. All of them seemed grave, realizing what they were undertaking.
An older woman mounted the platform. Instantly the room became silent and attentive.
“Good morning!” She smiled at them and put her hands in her jacket pockets. “I am Mrs. Clark. Before I begin our lecture, let me congratulate you young women on becoming visiting nurses. There is no finer work—and you are urgently needed.
“I suppose you know what a visiting nurse is and does. She’s the young woman in blue you’ll meet hurrying over a country road in her little car to care for a sick farm child. Or you’ll find her down at the water front nursing a stricken barge captain. She’s the nurse who’s welcomed with a sigh of relief by a sick mother and five small, bewildered children.”
Mrs. Clark said this was a branch of public health nursing. Girls who entered this field must like people, for visiting nurses treated everyone who needed them, regardless of race, creed, color, or ability to pay.
“No call for help goes unanswered. None has or ever will. Last year our New York service gave nursing care to nearly five million sick people!”
Impressed, Cherry and her friends exchanged glances. Mrs. Clark explained that the service was paid for by the contributions of public-spirited citizens.
“You will find yourself,” Mrs. Clark said, “being much more than a nurse. You will be friend and sometimes social worker, as well. Most important, you will be a teacher, instructing people in good health practices, nutrition, child care, and general hygiene. Try,” she urged them, “to prevent sickness as well as to cure it. Try to help people improve their everyday living conditions.”
Mrs. Clark made it dramatically clear how well this work paid off. In 1900, a child born in New York could expect to live only about thirty-four years. Now the normal life expectancy was well over sixty. Besides, the yearly death rate had been cut in half!
“Visiting nurses,” Cherry thought, her eyes bright, “bring the gift of life.”
Mrs. Clark told the nurses that each one would have her own district, eventually, and would answer calls for help in her own area. The service was divided into some fifteen centers, which were then subdivided into the nurses’ districts. The service cooperated with doctors, hospitals, clinics, social service agencies, settlement houses, the Department of Health. It ran mothers’ clubs for the instruction of expectant mothers. It provided nursing service in more than thirty day nurseries for preschool children of women who must work. It went into factories and met industrial accidents. It helped keep a vast population healthy.
“Golly,” Cherry breathed. “There’s more to this than taking temperatures!”
“You’ll help check epidemics,” Mrs. Clark told the listening young women. “You’ll teach new mothers how to keep the youngest generation healthy. You’ll watch out for solitary, aged people and chronic invalids who have no one to turn to except the visiting nurse.
“If your patients can pay the charge of a dollar and seventy-five cents for your three-quarter hour visit, well and good. Fifty per cent cannot afford to pay anything. But you’ll find people, who can’t really afford to, pressing on you fifty cents or a quarter or even five cents—out of sheer gratitude.”
After lunch, Mrs. Clark announced, she would show the girls exactly how they would work.
Cherry rose and followed the Spencer Club out of the auditorium. A faint fleck of blue paint on a fingernail reminded her sharply of her predicament with the janitor. She sighed and tried to concentrate on the problem.
“What are you daydreaming about?” they innocently asked her.
“Oh, nothing,” Cherry said a little bitterly. No one had been worrying much about the awful janitor since she had made her reassuring speech. No one except her. “Guess I convinced them too well, darn it.”
They went down the steps of the white house into the brilliant sunshine of noon. Madison Avenue was thronged with people pouring out of skyscrapers, going to lunch. Off the six girls went, in search of restaurants.
The near-by restaurants seemed elaborate, crowded, and alarmingly expensive, at least on the salary of a beginning visiting nurse. They found a glorified sweet shop and went in. Heads turned to look at their blue uniforms.
“We’re conspicuous.” Vivian squirmed, as they were shown to a table.
“They’re looking at Bertha’s blue hair,” Cherry said pointedly. The others giggled happily.
The New Yorkers, after one summarizing glance at them, quietly looked away again. “In a city as big as this,” Cherry guessed, “people have to mind their own business or they’d be falling all over one another—by the millions!”
“I want people to notice me.” Gwen sat down and tossed her red head. “I’m mighty proud of this uniform.”
“I feel official,” Josie Franklin stated. “Do I look official? Just think, kids, we nurses can go anywhere, practically, and do anything, almost, and—and not get murdered.”
They laughed. Bertha, who had recovered her motherly and serene air, said, “Who would murder you, Josie?”
“Well, we’re going into the slums, aren’t we?”
The others hooted at her. “Poor doesn’t mean bad. Wait and you’ll see.”
“No gangsters?” Josie looked disappointed.
“Here, Miss Franklin.” Cherry thrust a menu card into Josie’s hands. “You’re apparently weak-headed from hunger.”
Mai Lee sat very quiet, far off in her thoughts. The others prodded her and she sighed. “It’s just that this work is going to be wonderful.”
“It’s the kind of nursing every nurse dreams of doing,” Cherry summed it up happily.
They had some debate about what to order. There was a nice choice of sandwiches and hot dishes, but the dessert list was positively dazzling. Waitresses carried ice cream confections that made staple foods seem pointless. Cherry joked that there was as much nourishment in sugar and cream as in prosaic bread and potatoes.
“I’m going to have a dessert luncheon,” she announced. “Lemon meringue pie, whipped cream apple betty, and a chocolate soda. Boy! I’ve always wanted to do this!”
“You can’t!” said too-plump Bertha wistfully.
But they all did, Bertha included.
Back to headquarters and the auditorium they went once more. Now there was a black leather kit on the table on the platform, rather like a doctor’s bag.
Mrs. Clark picked up the bag and, article by article, showed them the contents. Cherry was amazed to see how much emerged from that one compact bag.
On top lay an apron and a bundle of paper napkins. Then Mrs. Clark took out baby scales, glassware for treatments, a hypodermic set, forceps, scissors, rubber tubing, masks, cord, dressings and ties, syringe, tongue depressors, applicators, an enamel basin for sterilizing, an enamel cup, cotton, vaseline, thermometer. Out of the very bottom of the bag came record forms, soap solutions, a towel, and hand lotion for the nurse’s use.
Gwen hissed, “That bag’s a miniature hospital!”
“Always,” Mrs. Clark was saying, “take the articles out, and return them, in exactly the same order. It will save you hunting for things.” Cherry foresaw bag practice, at home.
Vivian was worried. “That bag looks awfully heavy.”
It weighed only seven and a half pounds, Mrs. Clark said. She slung it comfortably on her shoulder by its long strap. Like the blue uniform, that bag was the badge of the visiting nurse. It assured her safe entry anywhere. Josie audibly sniffed.
“The first thing to do when you go into a home,” Mrs. Clark said, “is to ask for a stack of newspapers. Poor families haven’t many household goods, or sickroom equipment. But you can use newspapers to make substitut
es. Use them as a table cover before setting down your bag. Be very, very careful not to carry infection from one home to another!”
Cherry began to imagine herself going on her first visit. What sort of home would it be? Mrs. Clark’s cool voice went on:
“Take off your hat and coat and explain to the family right away about the nursing service we give. Then see the patient. Wash your hands before you take out your equipment. Of course you’ll wash your hands again and sterilize your equipment in boiling water before returning it to the bag.”
Josie wiggled and Gwen blew out an impatient breath. All this was familiar basic hygiene to the nurses.
“Now then! As you examine and treat the sick person, teach the rest of the family—a little at a time. Show them how to take care of the patient until you come back again. Show them how to prepare for your next visit, by getting newspapers, clearing the kitchen table, arranging a tray for the bedside treatment. Teaching is as big a part of your job as nursing. Remember that.”
Mrs. Clark went into detail. Cherry, with the others, felt overwhelmed by this big helping of new information.
The visiting nurse would keep records of the patient and also of every other member of the family. She would help with all their problems, physical, emotional, or financial. Where she found a family in serious difficulties of any sort, the nurse would report it to her supervisor at the center, so that a welfare agency might be called in to assist.
“This certainly makes me feel responsible!” Cherry thought. She noticed that the entire Spencer Club was sitting up straighter.
Then there was a surge of excitement. Mrs. Clark said each nurse would now receive an envelope listing the district and center she was assigned to. Would they please stand in line?
Now with sealed envelopes in their hands, the Spencer Club disengaged itself from the other blue-clad nurses. They tumbled out of the building and, unable to wait, opened their envelopes right there on the sidewalk.