Lilli de Jong

by Janet Benton

  Nancy and most of the others flushed pink and said “rape” or “violation.” When asked to name the male offender, several said he’d been a stranger. Nancy named the employer upon whom she had depended; at this, Gina turned in her seat to view our former roommate with a puzzled stare. Some of the girls identified a relative—one, a cousin; another, an elder brother; in Sophie’s case, it was her father, and he had whipped her when he learned his seed had sprouted. The girl’s voice was hushed when she spoke; her face was pinched and pained.

  Gina and I were the only ones to claim breach of promise of marriage—the only ones whose condition could be explained by untempered passion and poor judgment. Gina spoke haltingly, her face expressing both mortification and a hint of gratitude that she didn’t have a worse story to tell. Then I told of my own indulgence in the flesh and of trust given undeservedly. Sophie’s eyes bored into me as if to say, “You know nothing of true degradation.” With this I had no argument.

  Then Anne read from the lengthy reply she’d sent to The Day, in which she bemoaned the prejudice heaped upon the Haven, the small numbers of women it is able to assist due to meager funds, and the many more who go without help. I recall eloquence along the lines of this: “It is a sad commentary on the community that a girl—perhaps a mere child—is cut off from help and hope, and finds every door fast shut through which she would return to an honest life. Surely one opportunity for reformation may be allowed.”

  Not only did Anne draft her defense this morning, but then she rushed for hours through the city, from door to door, and through the force of her intentions has prevented all but one donor from withdrawing their pledges. A doctor even agreed to make the mortgage payments for the entire year.

  Thus Anne has saved this institution from having to close and cast its occupants into the street.

  Once she’d finished her recounting, we rose to our feet and clapped as one, and surely others felt as I did—that this woman has, by her courage and her sympathy, given me hope for the world’s salvation.

  Third Month 26

  Sophie entered labor this morning, not long after starting on her chores. The birth was quick. With sorrow we passed the tidings ear to ear: her baby boy was stillborn. She rests now in the recovery room’s second bed, alongside Nancy.

  The infant being stillborn shouldn’t surprise us, Delphinia said at midday, and it shouldn’t scare us, either. Sophie arrived even more poorly nourished and roughly treated than most, and she was too young to have carried a baby well.

  Later this afternoon, Dr. Stevens gave me an embarrassing and painful examination. With me lying on my side, she reached her hand in to measure the dilation of what she called my os uteri. “Opened to the size of a penny, nearly,” she said. “Your labor will likely begin tonight.”

  I’m frightened. This diary is my one true friend; if only it had the power to pray with me.

  Third Month 27, midday

  Pains woke me in the dark and have occupied me since. Sally has taken temporary charge of the infant Mabel so Nancy can sit with me, as she wishes to help me through. She says it’s fine to write while she sews beside me.

  A strong one. The pain rolls over and flattens me, as if I were a sheet of paper beneath the roller of a press.

  To think that every person I’ve laid eyes on had a mother who endured hours or even days of this!

  Delphinia came in to report that the delivery room is being aired and washed with carbolic acid and is almost ready for my arrival. Sophie left, she told us. An aunt took her in.

  Another surge, so strong that I could barely breathe.

  Each one assaults me slowly, rises to a vicious peak, and—at last—subsides.

  Nancy’s face is puffy from tears. She needs to replace the cloths at her breasts often. Though she’s still nursing Mabel, her breasts are weeping out William’s share of milk.

  He’s gone, her William. She couldn’t pay ten dollars to the adoption agency that works with the Haven in order for them to find him a loving family, so he was sent to the foundling department at the city almshouse—the dreaded Blockley. Nancy believes he’ll be placed out with a family soon.

  She gave him up after eleven days, instead of the twenty-one days we’re allowed. Anne advised against it, not only because she wished for William to get a solid start through Nancy’s milk, but also because she believes that three weeks of motherhood will strengthen our spirits. Yet she had weakened Nancy’s spirit by having her care for two.

  Nancy said it wasn’t the strain of nursing two, however, that made her relinquish William early. She simply found it too heartrending to adore him when she knew they had to part.

  Another wave of agony takes over, then recedes. If only there was a way to be freed of my own flesh!

  Nancy reminds me—the only way through is to endure.

  She fetched my gold locket from my valise. Through each contraction I hold the slender oval between my fingers and imagine its picture of Mother inside, its strand of chestnut hair tied with a black ribbon.

  I can write no more. I pray to have good news soon.

  NOTEBOOK THREE

  Third Month 31

  My baby was born two nights ago. Seven pounds, five ounces in weight, and twenty inches long.

  I lived the agony, yet somehow I marvel and disbelieve that she came from inside of me!

  How is it that every mother discovers this miracle, yet doesn’t proclaim it in the streets?

  When the doctor said the head had crowned, I reached between my thighs, and my fingertips met a scalp. There was a hardness. On top of that was hair as soft as milkweed floss. I gave two more mighty pushes, and the whole body emerged.

  A girl! A joy. Her breathing and color were deemed acceptable. Things were done to me and to her, as if at a shadowy distance, until she was placed upon my chest.

  And there she thrummed, a singular human, giving off a vibration as familiar as my own.

  I thought, I already know thee.

  Of course! Because in me she came to life.

  She squirmed to my nearest breast and opened her tiny mouth to claim its nipple. I saw then how her hair grows in a spiral beginning at the peak of her head, as if she rotated while forming. With her weight upon me, I let my fingers follow that path. I leaned my head forward to her scalp and inhaled, finding her smell—the intoxicating, slight smell of her scalp.

  She seems so unformed and pliant, so thoroughly helpless, apart from her glossy eyes. These are fully opened and inquiring. Dr. Stevens has deemed her the most wakeful newborn she has ever seen. “Your baby stares,” she noted, “as if she could eat the world with her eyes.” She said most babies shut out the world by sleeping.

  Already, dear Charlotte, thee distinguishes thyself.

  I’m calling her Charlotte, but her new family will give its own name.

  There are nineteen days until we part.

  She’ll never know: her father’s hair is also red.

  * * *

  I never knew it was so draining to care for an infant. From seeing others tend them, I understood nothing of how urgent each action feels. And I didn’t know how such moments, stacked together, sap one’s strength, or what great weight the word tired can carry. I haven’t slept more than an hour continuously since—since: I can’t remember when.

  At least I’ve worked out a way to write while she nurses. A pillow on my lap, this book upon it, and her body by its side. What a thrill, to do something other than stare at the plaster wall and count the clock’s ticking while she sucks!

  She sucks and sucks. She sucks some more. My full milk hasn’t yet come in, but she has to suck or else she frets, then cries. My body feels her cry as if it were a bell ringing to announce a fire.

  “Wakeful and watchful,” the doctor called her. To that I’ll add, in constant need of soothing. My nipples are split and scabbed. She sucks away the scabs each time she applies her grip, and new ones begin to form as soon as she detaches.

  * * *

&n
bsp; Another small respite, with the baby drowsy at one breast and a notebook on my thigh.

  I want to know: What is it that enables mothers to continue feeding, cleaning, holding, and pouring forth concern, throughout the days and nights, despite this drastic lack of sleep? I should be crippled by it—I am crippled by it—yet I go on.

  It seems my every self-protecting limit has dissolved.

  This baby has broken my will! The will that used to protect me above all, and some new one has grown in its place. This new will makes me serve her needs and has no mercy for me.

  Bless Nancy. She strokes my forehead with her dry, wide palm when I grow discouraged.

  We’re in the recovery room together, Nancy and Mabel, Charlotte and me. We’ll stay in this room until others require it. Anne considers it best to keep the mothers apart from the mothers-to-be, so our meals are brought to us. Mabel mostly sleeps, leaving Nancy with little to do, so she holds Charlotte now and then, and looks wistfully upon her, no doubt thinking of William.

  Someone must hold Charlotte, or else she bawls and shakes her arms and legs; her face grows red and blotchy.

  But I mustn’t blame her for always needing to be held. How startling this world must be! A vast stretch of unbounded air. How can she be expected to lie alone in such hugeness, when she is used to living in a dark womb that supplied her everything?

  My problem is how deeply she affects me.

  The doctor cut the fleshly cord that connected us, but an invisible one has taken its place. I begin to suspect that this one can be neither cut nor broken.

  Fourth Month 1, First Day

  My full milk came in last night. Now Charlotte gulps, and milk trickles from the sides of her mouth. How marvelous: I am a mammal! Kin to the cats and cows that nursed in our neighbors’ barn, and to all the furry mothers of field and forest.

  And Charlotte? Like any newborn mammal, she nurses furiously, gulping and gulping. On completion she emits a belch, with her belly grown as rotund as my breasts.

  She looks at me now, with glittering eyes and slackened jaw. I look back, gratified.

  There are new sensations to get used to. The sharp pain that shoots across is the milk rushing into the ducts, Dr. Stevens said. Then comes a tingling and a burning as the milk flows out, which she explained is also typical.

  Apparently my dishevelment is beyond the typical. When Delphinia brings meals to Nancy and me, we trade pleasantries and recite the mealtime prayer of this place: “Lead us this day in right action, Lord, that we may become living proofs of Thy grace.” But this morning Delphinia could hardly speak for staring at me—at my hair unbrushed and falling from its combs, at the shoulders and front of my wrapper dotted with spit-up milk, at the clothing I’ve piled on willy-nilly to keep me warm.

  “A mother should care for her appearance,” she instructed. Her silver hair was pinned back neatly, and her clothing, though softened by wear, was orderly.

  “As if I wouldn’t care for my appearance,” I replied, “if this baby gave me the chance.” Though in truth I spend most of the precious minutes while Nancy holds Charlotte in writing, not primping.

  Delphinia took pity. She brushed my hair, pinned it into a fresh bun, and refreshed my supply of clean clothing. Her ministrations brought on relieving sighs, and when Charlotte began to nurse again—her strong mouth pursing and pulling—my weariness had eased, and once more she seemed the dearest being on earth.

  Her father was almost so dear to me.

  I don’t think of him when she nurses, or when her legs travel the air like an upside-down chicken’s as I clean her bottom, or when I rinse her diapers in a tub or fold her laundered clothing or stare at the clock as she sucks and the hours crawl by. The orbs of her cheeks are nothing like his big, broad-cheeked face; her pert lips and urgent sounds resemble not his wide mouth and well-spoken sentences. I don’t think of him even when I stroke her red hair.

  I think of him when she looks into my eyes and seems to say, Thee is my only love.

  Her father loved me thusly. Or, I believed he did.

  Fourth Month 3

  The day is sunny and blustery. Wind whips pollen and tree blossoms into the window screens. Through the bars on the recovery-room windows, I see the other girls hanging damp laundry on the clotheslines that run along one side of the building.

  Mabel left yesterday, taken by an adoption agent to a family with several other orphans, leaving Nancy free. She went soon after to an intelligence office to apply for housemaid positions. But before Nancy stepped out the door for the first time in months, she fretted, for she would have to lie. She couldn’t tell honestly why she’d left her previous household or why she hadn’t asked that household for a letter of reference. She practiced telling me she was new to Philadelphia and had labored in homes far from here—but the fabrications tangled on her tongue.

  She did return to the Haven with a new position, as the maid in a rooming house for women. Then she passed her last afternoon and night on the bed beside mine. Sometime before dawn, I woke to stifled cries and saw her face buried in the flannel that had covered William. Perhaps she was seeking whatever scent of him remained.

  When she woke early this morning, she converted that blanket to a scarf. We had our breakfast, brought in by Delphinia. Then, sighing with anxiousness, Nancy dressed in the maid’s uniform she’d brought here, a black cotton gown with a white apron and cap rimmed in eyelet lace. She added cloths inside her corset and chemise to absorb the milk that would drip from her, since she’d no longer have a nursling to relieve her of it. Delphinia brought her a pretty hat and coat from the donations closet, which cheered Nancy.

  In the foyer, we gathered to say goodbye—Delphinia, Gina, Charlotte, and me. Nancy flitted among us like an anxious bird, distributing her parting affections. We roommates shared no information that would allow us to find one another. As Anne has advised, we must pretend never to have been in this place. So the finality of our parting added to its sadness. With one last sigh, her green eyes flashing with wetness, Nancy moved her tall self out the door and down the marble steps and out of sight.

  Her flannel scarf has set me thinking. I’d planned to feed my notebooks to the kitchen stove before departing. But perhaps I won’t. In the privacy of night, in my narrow room in Germantown, I’ll want to recall my months here and the baby I left behind. These pages can serve as my scarf of words.

  * * *

  Without Nancy and Mabel with me, I have more chance to think. I want to draft another letter to my baby.

  1883. 4th mo. 3

  Dearest Charlotte,

  I find myself concerned as to thy proper upbringing.

  Most of all, I want thee to be loved. After this, I want thee to honor the Light of God within thy mind and heart.

  And then—dear one, before marrying, do guard against excessive passion—with the fierceness of a sheepdog protecting its flock from wolves. Thee may inherit a weakness. Please! Be intent on resisting.

  Where does thee live, Charlotte? Has thee grown up within a caring fold? If only one day I could see thee.

  I won’t even know thy name.

  Never mind. I can’t possibly copy this and leave it for her.

  Fourth Month 6

  What a morning! My milk was blocked. Delphinia dipped cloths in hot water and applied them to my chest. The heat relaxed me, but no liquid came when Charlotte sucked. It seemed my milk had turned to paste. My baby cried and kicked, which caused me grief, which used up my last remaining strength—whatever stores I had squirreled away in my bones.

  I lay Charlotte in a bassinet, a place she hadn’t tolerated before. At first she cried quietly, as though to assure herself that she wasn’t being weak by consenting to rest outside my arms. Finally the two of us slept, and my milk came loose, and I woke soaked to the waist. She drank from me in ecstasy.

  There is something fierce and wild in her. Her legs and arms appear spindly and frail, yet she kicks and fixes her grip on my clothing and sucks
with the power of an animal.

  Without Nancy, I have no one to talk with and no one to hold Charlotte a little. An animal panic begins to overtake me at being in this room around the clock. A woman after labor must stay as still as possible, said Dr. Stevens. But soon, she said, she’ll let me take Charlotte outside.

  Fourth Month 9

  Charlotte is twelve days old. Delphinia wheeled us from the recovery room to the courtyard this morning, and I rose from the chair and walked a few circles around the stone path to invigorate my legs. Oh, how the outside air brightened and cleared my mind! As if I were a window wiped free of dirt. The tree branches were beginning to push out their dainty slips of green, and overhead, the early birds flitted about, carrying bits of dried plant matter for their nests. Then a breeze came on, and Charlotte smiled to feel the cool air move against her skin. This was her first time outside, her first smile! I told Delphinia, who claimed the smile was a sign of indigestion.

  For warmth I’d wrapped Charlotte in a blanket, but she wriggled free and waved her limbs. Delphinia laughed. “I’ve never seen the like! An infant who doesn’t like to be swaddled!”

  But I understand. I, too, can’t bear to be confined. Not long ago, I thought nothing of the actions I could do on my own—prepare a meal, hold a conversation, buy goods at a market, explore shelves of books in the library, plan a lesson. Now it’s hard even to reach for my slippers or to raise a bite of food steadily to my mouth. For I must do every single thing with Charlotte in my arms.

  How can one baby demand so much? To keep her resting and not wailing, I must lie fixed in place while she nurses or dozes, her mouth tight on me like a manacle—no matter if I’m hot or cold, at ease or pressed into an uncomfortable position, whether I have an urgent need to relieve myself or change clothes or function in some small way as I used to. Her weight makes my arms throb from the near-constant holding, day upon night upon day. My legs grow numb and begin to jerk, till at last I must move, let the numbness turn back to sensation, and all the while endure her cries.