“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.
Chapter four
FEBRUARY WINDS KICKED UP A FRESH DUSTING of winter outside Stanley’s bedroom window. Triangles of snow pressed into the ledge’s corners, as if taking refuge from the punishing squall. Inside his rented room, Stanley rubbed his stinging eyes with thumb and forefinger. He’d spent his entire Saturday studying, and still felt ill-prepared for Monday’s exam. Mining law. His most difficult class, and the most important one, if he intended to make a go of it in Scranton where politics and coal were a dirty business. Scranton. The word swelled inside Stanley’s brain, squeezing out the likes of Pennsylvania Coal Company v. Mahon and The Anthracite Coal Strike Commission of 1902.
Scranton. Home. Violet.
And there he was again, imagining her in that red dress on New Year’s Eve. The neckline dipped in the middle and curved up and around her breasts. A channel between two seas he ached to explore.
Stanley shook his head to loosen the vision. He couldn’t afford to get lost in her. Not tonight. He looked at the open textbook on his desk in front of the window. Clarence Darrow stared back at him in a photo taken at the Lackawanna County Courthouse in downtown Scranton. Someone had snapped it the day Darrow gave his closing argument to the Anthracite Commission in support of the striking miners. Stanley eyed the speech included on the page. We are working for democracy, for humanity, for the future . . .
Darrow’s words usually bolstered Stanley, especially when he flagged in his resolve to finish school before marrying. Violet would wait, he’d tell himself in the darkest part of night when longing took its shot at reason. With a law degree, he’d be able to feed his family and fight for the miners, who deserved better working conditions and higher wages. His own father had died in the mines, and though he had mostly been known for his cruel ways, Stanley still wanted to honor him and all the men who’d lost their lives to coal. Yes, he missed Violet. But what of it? There were families back home who’d never see their loved ones’ faces again. Stanley simply had to hold out for three more months. A small price to pay for their future. Violet knew that, even if she had been sulking when they’d said their goodbyes at the train station on New Year’s Day.
She would wait. She’d promised.
It was no use. The thought of her in that red dress washed over him again. Stanley shut his eyes and pictured Violet standing across the street on her porch just before midnight on New Year’s Eve. There she’d stood in that dress (oh, how he loved her in red), no coat, laughing, waiting for someone to open the door. “It’s my turn to be the first-footer,” she’d called out, rubbing her arms for warmth. According to Welsh tradition, the first foot to cross the threshold in the New Year should belong to someone with dark hair. “I almost forgot,” she’d said, grabbing the coal bucket from the steps. Fuel in the hand of the first-footer symbolized work and warmth, two gifts all mining families needed.
Violet hadn’t waved Stanley over that night. Her parents didn’t approve of their relationship. Owen, her father, had loved Stanley for as long as he’d known him; he’d carried the boy out of the mine the day he’d lost his hand, but even he couldn’t abide a mixed marriage. “Unevenly yoked,” her father had said. “Protestants should marry Protestants. Catholics, Catholics. Says so in the Bible.”
Af
ter Stanley’s father died, the widow Lankowski raised the ten-year-old as her own son. She brought him to live in the only Polish home on Spring Street, across from Violet and her family, so Stanley understood Owen’s way of thinking. Most Catholics from up at St. Stanislaus felt the same way.
That’s why Stanley had to finish school before asking Violet’s father for her hand. The lot of a lawyer’s wife was far better than that of a miner’s, and Owen Morgan knew it. Would he rather she end up with someone poor just because he was Protestant? Someone like Tommy Davies? A nice enough fellow who’d lived next door to Violet all her life, baptized in the Providence Christian Church. But what did any of that matter if Tommy Davies would never be able to give her the life she deserved on a miner’s wages, or worse yet, make a widow of her before her time? Owen understood the dangers of that life, and Stanley was convinced that like most fathers, he wanted better for his daughter.
His purpose renewed, Stanley turned his attention back to his textbook and began reading.
“Don’t shoot!” The door inched open, and a pasty arm poked into the room, waving an envelope like a flag of surrender.
Stanley watched as Evan Evans stepped inside, laughing good-naturedly as though they’d shared in the joke.
Evan Evans had been the neighborhood bully as far back as Stanley could remember. Bad enough they’d grown up one block away from one another, but fate had somehow thrown them together in the same rooming house a few months earlier, when Evan took a job with the railroad.
“I’m trying to study.”
“My mistake.” Evan held the envelope to his nose and inhaled loudly. “I thought you’d want to hear from . . .” He paused. “Now that’s odd. It’s the widow’s return address,” he held the letter up to the light and squinted, “but the signature reads, Your Violet.”
“Where did you . . . ?” Stanley jumped up and grabbed the envelope.
Evan shrugged. “Someone must’ve seen the Scranton postmark and put it in my box.”
“I’ll bet.” Stanley sat back down with the letter in hand and turned toward his books. He’d had it with Evan Evans and his dirty tricks—in grade school he’d tell on classmates any chance he got, running his mouth about the gossip his no-good mother concocted, and worst of all, picking on Violet after her sister died.
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