Fair Play

by Deeanne Gist

  “The nursery’s upstairs.” Miss Addams led them to the second floor and two rooms of babies. Brass cribs lined the walls. Some of the tots slept, others stood at the railings. Some cried, and yet others crawled along the floor.

  “Miss Chaffee, we have a foundling for you. He’s come all the way from the World’s Fair.”

  Miss Chaffee touched her toe to the floor and set her wicker rocking chair into motion. A hint of fine facial hair dusted her upper lip. The baby in her arms looked doubly small against her large girth. “The fair?”

  Miss Addams crossed to a crib and lifted a crying baby from it, then repeated the story Hunter had told her.

  “My stars and garters. The poor little tyke.” With a sideways nod, Miss Chaffee indicated the beds lining the walls. “Well, set him down in one of those and I’ll get to him as soon as I can.”

  Billy glanced at the cribs. There were so many. How long would it be before Joey was picked up again? With him not being of a fussy nature, she feared he might be overlooked while the other babies received all the attention.

  “Did you say you had two nursemaids?” Billy asked.

  “Yes.” Miss Addams returned the child she held and picked up a different one. “Miss Rorabaugh works across the hall. She’s all full up today, too.”

  “I see.” There were only two vacant beds. With slow, heavy steps, she headed toward the one closest to a window so Joey could enjoy the sunshine. When she reached it, she stood beside the crib, her arms about the baby, his heartbeat next to hers.

  She thought of his sweet presence beside her throughout the night. Maybe she could keep him, after all. Perhaps if she rearranged her schedule? Her habits? Her work? But she knew better. There was no possible way. She was having enough trouble attracting patients. Adding a baby to the mix would be impossible.

  She had no one to watch him. And if her practice ever did start to flourish, she’d need to be able to work at any time of the day or night.

  A baby in the crib beside them pulled itself up into a standing position, then bounced in excitement, hoping to be picked up.

  Billy gave it a smile. “Hello. This is Joey. He’s going to be your neighbor.”

  On a shelf above the tot, a neat stack of diaper cloths caught her eye. Perhaps she should change Joey before she left.

  She retrieved a cloth, then laid him in his crib.

  “I want you to know,” she said, lowering her voice so only Joey could hear, “there isn’t a shadow of a doubt in my mind that your mother wanted you.” She unwrapped his swaddling. “But the world is full of tragedy, and nothing short of that would have parted her from you.”

  Kicking his legs and waving his arms, he gurgled.

  She unfastened the pins holding the old diaper on. “I’ve delivered many a baby to mothers out of wedlock. Some had been violated by unconscionable men. Some had been forced to sell themselves in order to survive. Some had simply anticipated their wedding night, only to discover there wasn’t going to be any wedding after all.”

  His flailing fist landed on his mouth. He immediately began to suckle it.

  “But in every case, Joey, every single case, those mothers were racked with grief. Inconsolable. And the only reason they gave their babies up was because they knew in their heart of hearts someone else could provide their precious child with a better, healthier, happier home than the one they faced on the street.”

  Of a sudden, she wondered if Joey’s mother lived in the Nineteenth Ward. Would she hear of the child who’d been abandoned at the fair? For surely his story would be told among the workers of the house and the people of the neighborhood. Would she come to see him? Claim him? Or would she only have a peek without revealing her secret?

  But, of course, she might not be here at all. She might be one of the women from the brothels they’d passed earlier today. Or she might be a woman from the country who’d come to the city, fallen into trouble, and couldn’t return home with a child or she’d be disowned by her family. Whatever the case, Billy knew his mother was thinking of him and mourning her loss and his.

  She secured the new diaper. “So you see, you were loved the most because your mother was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice and give up the one thing she wanted more than anything else on earth . . . you.” Pulling his gown over his legs, she tapped him on the nose. “And don’t you ever forget it.”

  He looked at her then, his bright blue eyes holding hers.

  Her throat closed. She couldn’t leave him. She couldn’t. She turned to look for Hunter, but he was right there. Right behind her. His dark eyes as troubled as hers.

  “It’s not too late,” he said. “You can pick him up, walk straight out of here, and take him home with you.”

  Moisture rushed to her eyes. “I can’t.”

  “You can.”

  Biting her lip, she turned back to Joey and ran a hand across his soft, bald head. “I’m sorry, my sweet. I’m so, so sorry.”

  With careful, tender motions, she swaddled him one last time, then leaned over and kissed his forehead. “Good-bye,” she whispered.

  Then she turned and walked from the room.

  NEWSBOYS, CHICAGO14

  “He saw a group of children huddled under an outside stairwell, two young boys hawking newspapers, and a fruit stand selling apples for ten cents a peck.”

  CHAPTER

  16

  Hunter caught up to her at the cable stop. “He needs a playground.”

  “He needs a mother.”

  He barely caught her words over the noise of the street, she’d spoken them so softly. But catch them he did.

  Leaving the babe had been hard. For both of them. And much as she tried to hide it, her eyes still held a telltale sheen.

  Sighing, he settled his hat back onto his head. “Miss Addams said she’s a member of several women’s clubs here in town. She thinks she might be able to find a good family to take him.”

  Billy raised her gaze to his. “She does?”

  “She does.”

  “How soon?”

  “I didn’t ask. And until then, I want to make preparations for the other eventuality. The one where no one rescues him from here. And if that’s what happens, then I want him to have a playground.”

  He glanced down the street. No evidence of a cable car yet. “Whoever abandoned him knew a guard would find him.” He looked at the toes of his boots. “It’s a tremendous responsibility. One I take very seriously. I’d never be able to live with myself if I didn’t do something to ensure he had a place to play other than a saloon and a reading circle.”

  She crinkled her brows. “But you can’t just leave him a bunch of five-cent pieces for the cable fare to Garfield Park. What if he decides to spend the money in a saloon instead?”

  “I agree. That’s why I’m going to make him a playground.”

  Her lips parted. “Make him a playground? How? Where?”

  “Here in the neighborhood. Someplace within walking distance.”

  “Where would you get the land? Every square inch is filled with these hovels.”

  “We haven’t seen the whole neighborhood. There’s bound to be a lot somewhere.”

  “What about the equipment? The sand? The builders?”

  He rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t know. But I need to figure out something. I’m heading back to Texas as soon as the fair’s over. That leaves me five months.”

  “Hunter, you work six days a week. You don’t have time to build a whole playground by yourself.”

  “I’ll manage.”

  “How?”

  He scowled. “I just said I’d figure out a way. Which means I’ll figure out a way.”

  He swept his gaze about the street, pinpointing spots where undesirables might be lurking. But he only saw a group of children huddled under an outside stairwell, two young boys hawking newspapers, and a fruit stand selling apples for ten cents a peck.

  “Let’s assume,” she said, “you somehow find some land
. Who, then, is going to pay for the equipment?”

  “I’ll make it.”

  “Who’s going to pay for the materials?”

  He drummed his thumb against his trouser leg. “You could wear the horns off a billy goat, you know that? Are you purposely trying to make me mad?”

  “No, I’m trying to be realistic. I’m not saying it’s a bad idea. It’s not. It’s a wonderful idea. Not just for Joey, but for all the children. It would be a great boon to both their physical and mental well-being. But there’s a lot to consider. There’s the financial side—which is no small part—but there’s also the little things. Things like making sure the swings aren’t too high off the ground. And the poles are stabilized and firmly planted. You’d need to be certain the surface isn’t too hard, that there’s a fence between them and the street, that the equipment is spaced so it doesn’t endanger—”

  “Enough!” He held up his hand. “I haven’t asked for your help. I haven’t even asked for your opinion. I simply stated I was building a playground and that is that.”

  She propped her hands on her hips. “Well, you can’t do it by yourself. You can’t. You need some help. My help.”

  “Your help?”

  “Yes. I’d have a much easier time raising the funds.”

  “How do you figure that? Didn’t you just move here from Boston? Do you even know anybody in Chicago?”

  She hesitated. “Well, not really. I have many, many connections in Boston. And I’ll admit to having next to none in Chicago. But I could still join the Chicago Women’s Club. I could see if Miss Addams would give me an introduction to some of her benefactors. I could ask Mrs. Palmer at the Woman’s Building for suggestions. And I could help you with all the little things you might have overlooked. Besides, I only work three days a week. I have much more time than you.”

  “What about that shingle you have hanging on the corner of Congress and Forty-third? I thought you spent your off days there?”

  She paused. “I do.”

  “What about those patients?”

  Shifting her weight, she tracked a tired swayback horse clomping up the road. Its wagon held a mound of odds and ends and a peddler at the reins.

  “Any rags?” the man shouted. “Any bottles? Any junk today?”

  Hunter scowled, wondering when the poor old horse had last been groomed, then he forced himself back to the matter at hand. “How many patients do you see per day out there?”

  She hesitated. “Not as many as I’d like.”

  “What’s the number?”

  She tugged at her gloves. “It varies.”

  “Approximately, then. Twenty a day?”

  She gave her head a negative shake.

  “More or less?”

  “Less.”

  “Ten patients a day?”

  Another negative shake.

  He raised a brow. “Five?”

  She pressed her lips together.

  “Three?”

  She brushed a nonexistent speck from her skirt.

  “Any?”

  A nod.

  “What then?”

  She lifted her chin. “One, if you must know.”

  He studied her, then gentled his voice. “Per day or in all?”

  She bit her lip. This time she watched a rickety frame house being rolled away by a horse and two men, most likely to make room for some factory.

  Swiping a hand across his mouth, he grappled for something to say. It didn’t take much to figure out what had happened. She’d received one call, then word had spread that Billy Jack Tate was not a man.

  Indignation on her behalf welled within him. They should at least have given her a chance. He’d seen plenty of doctors a lot worse than her. A lot. She might not be a man, but she wasn’t half bad as far as doctoring went.

  Still, if she couldn’t even muster up two patients, how in blue blazes did she expect to find donors for him? “Why haven’t you called on all those women to help establish your practice?”

  She shrugged. “I didn’t have access to Mrs. Palmer until I started at the Woman’s Building. I didn’t even know about Miss Addams. And I hadn’t gotten around to joining the Chicago Women’s Club. I’d started instead by getting to know the leading surgeons in the city, then I’d simply assumed my credentials would speak for—”

  “Run, sheep! Run!” a young boy down the street screamed.

  Whirling around, Hunter had his gun out and feet spread before he realized it was just a game.

  The group of huddling children darted out from underneath the stairwell, squealing as they tried to reach their designated “sheep pen” before the “foxes” beat them to it.

  Sighing, he eased his gun back into his waistband. “If you’re offering your help, Billy, I certainly won’t turn it away. I know you care about the babe as much as I do. But I’m figuring you’d have to to take down your shingle in order to do what you’re proposing and I don’t want you blaming me for that.”

  She swallowed. “It would just be for as long as it takes to build a playground. I think Joey’s worth it. Don’t you?”

  Joey. Joseph. That had been a shock, her naming him that. But it hadn’t taken him long to warm up to the idea. The fella needed a name. Might as well be one of his. And by all that was holy, he’d see to it that the boy didn’t grow up someplace without a tree or play spot free of dung and vermin.

  Still, he could do it on his own. He didn’t want her help if it meant she’d have a knot in her tail the whole time.

  “You want to think about it before you decide?” he asked. “Just to be absolutely sure?”

  Sighing, she nodded. “Yes. All right. Let me think about it.”

  A cable car approached. Raising his hand, he gave a whistle. She settled in and he kept his arms at his sides, but he couldn’t help notice hers looked awfully empty without Joey in them.

  CHAPTER

  17

  Billy lay on the unforgiving, putrid yellow sofa of her little hall bedroom on Congress Street. The couch boxed her in on three sides by back and arms of equal height and served as her Procrustean bed—six inches too short. Fortunately, Procrustes wasn’t there to lop off her redundant parts.

  Still, her cramped legs kept her from sleeping well on the best of evenings. Tonight there had been no sleeping at all. She stared at the plank ceiling. Minute cracks between the boards allowed her to have fleeting glimpses of the tenants in the room above and, when she was standing, in the room below. They, too, had glimpses of her. A disconcerting thought.

  But there was no movement upstairs now. No movement below. No movement outside. Nothing but stillness and darkness.

  She pulled her braid from underneath her and plopped it over her shoulder. It had only been one day since they’d taken Joey to Hull House. One day since she’d offered to remove her shingle from the corner drugstore. What in the world had she been thinking?

  She hadn’t. Clearly. Hunter said he’d build the playground. She should’ve simply left it at that. But even now she couldn’t imagine how he’d do it. Not by himself. And if he was going to do something for Joey, she wanted to be a part of it, too. But did she really need to take down her shingle?

  She maneuvered onto her side, her cambric Mother Hubbard nightgown twisting about her legs. Lifting up her hips, she wrenched the fabric free, then settled back into her crouched position.

  Though only a quarter moon was out, she had no trouble seeing the room’s outlines, for her eyes had long since adjusted to the darkness. The Morris chair, which she could convert into an examining table, took a place of honor in the middle of the floor. She’d hung a curtain across a small bookcase to cover her books on one side and her instruments and medications on the other.

  Her washbowl and slop bucket remained hidden in the closet while two cane seat chairs sat against the opposite wall. An oversized sign she’d made to fill the window of her second-story room rested beneath the sill, allowing for a cool nighttime breeze.

  No on
e but she had ever seen her carefully prepared office. She’d had only one person come for help and he’d made it no farther than the front door of the building. When she’d followed the boy to his home, his mother’s ailment had been nothing more than a bunion.

  The clock downstairs gave two gongs. She sighed. The three hundred dollars she’d saved for starting her practice had dwindled down to half that amount. Then, when the position at the Woman’s Building had presented itself, she’d foolishly spent a month’s wages on a new gown and undergarments. She couldn’t afford to take down her shingle. She couldn’t.

  Rolling to her other side, she faced the back of the couch and again untwisted her nightdress. Neither could she afford to pay thirty dollars a month for an apartment when no one came to call and she had free lodging at the Women’s Dormitory.

  Last week she’d thought to bribe God into gracing her with patients by committing the Book of James to memory. She’d chosen it because it only had five chapters.

  Now she wished she hadn’t. For today she’d memorized the last verse of chapter 1.

  Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

  She covered her head with her arm. She’d looked after Joey in his distress. She’d taken him in and fed him and clothed him and kept him warm. She’d taken him to Hull House, where he’d be looked after by loving women with a passion for the poor.

  So why was she feeling so unsettled? But she knew why. Joey wasn’t the only orphan on the West Side. There were hundreds of them. If not orphans in the strictest sense, then at least orphans during the days while both parents worked. And Hunter had presented her with an opportunity to help. An opportunity to make their lives a little bit brighter. An opportunity to look after them in their distress.

  She curled herself up tighter. Did it have to be either-or? Couldn’t she do both? Start a practice and build a playground?

  She closed her eyes. She didn’t see how. She was already away from her apartment three days a week. Building a playground would require even more time away. It wasn’t something she could do from home.