Lilli de Jong

by Janet Benton

  “I left the cannery to nurse him,” Flo said, eyes brimming. “I didn’t know how I would pay rent. But he was too weak. He couldn’t hold the milk I gave him.” Within days he was dead of starvation.

  Drug dosing! Starvation! I looked at my plate, at the gravy pooled to one side, the threads of stewed meat too small to lift with a fork. I wanted to comfort Flo, but I couldn’t. I stood and sought privacy in the kitchen, where my mind flapped and flew into the walls like a wild bird that couldn’t get out.

  I washed dishes in great distress, flushing as if I had a fever, then went to check on Henry. And there was Clementina, sleeping on the braided rug beside his crib. The remains of tears had dried in salty courses down her face. This was a fresh mystery! Had the doctor brought bad tidings? Or did Clementina feel a modicum of tenderness for the one who’d grown in her? Did she suddenly regret her alienation from his care?

  She might have merely needed to be alone, for Albert had been at home, bothering her for company.

  I stepped out and climbed to my room. When Henry woke and called, I listened for her movements. She rose and left. I found no sign of her apart from a flattening of the rug.

  I’d just placed Henry back in his crib, where he’d rolled into a merry ball and was trying to reach his foot, when the front bell rang. Margaret called out that she was covered in coal dust in the basement, sweeping up after a delivery. Clementina must have been nearby, for she answered the door. Her sharp voice told someone to go around the back, and a young boy’s voice replied, “I need to see Miss de Jong, ma’am. My aunt sent me.”

  “You must go to the back,” Clementina repeated. “Take a right at the end of the block, turn into the alley, and it’s the fourth gate on the right.”

  My heart tumbled as I raced down the kitchen stairs and through the hall to the foyer. The boy stood in the open doorway. He wore a high-collared blue coat with brass buttons—an old military coat, much too big—that hung open atop baggy pants tied with a rope. He had a pasty, pockmarked complexion and was very thin.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “He’s my visitor.”

  “He must go around the back,” Clementina insisted. Her nose was wrinkled, for he gave off a pungent scent.

  I turned to her and tried to catch her eye. “Please let me speak with him outside. He’s here about my baby.”

  She ignored me and yelled at the boy: “Leave my doorstep!”

  He started running down the street, and in my slippers I followed.

  “Stop, please,” I called. “I am Miss de Jong.”

  Fortunately he pulled his legs to a halt. We stood against a brick building and caught our breath as traffic barreled past. The boy said in a trembling voice that his aunt Gerda had sent him to say the red-haired baby is fine.

  I thanked him very much for making the trip, then asked whether conditions were good in the house, if it was clean and airy. He emitted a mildly affirmative but unconvincing sound and wouldn’t meet my eye. The reason may only have been shyness, or fright at Clementina’s treatment. But he was not a good emissary for Gerda’s cause.

  Then I asked how many babies she cared for.

  “Three or four,” he said. “It changes by the day.”

  I stood openmouthed as a streetcar bounced by, jammed with riders. This situation sounded like what Flo and Delphinia had warned me about.

  “Please, miss,” the boy said, peering up at me. “I was promised my fare.”

  I had to get my purse, so we walked rapidly down the block, into the alley behind the row of attached houses, and through the backyard gate. He stood outside while I ran past Frau V. and up to my room and down again. I gave him two dimes to pay his streetcar fare and to reward his efforts. He smiled, revealing several blackened teeth, then stepped off as I entered the back door to the kitchen.

  At that moment Clementina stormed into the kitchen to upbraid me for the low quality of visitor I’d received. “The neighbors will think ill of us if we draw paupers to our door,” she said, “and speak with them in full view of everyone.”

  I forced myself not to reply, though inwardly I fumed. Does she expect that I can lodge Charlotte with a queen, who’ll send her courtier in a gilt carriage to report on my baby’s status? Isn’t it enough that my daughter sucks from a woman who feeds many at once, while Henry feasts alone?

  After Clementina left, I made an effort to explain what I’d found out to Frau V., for she looked curiously at me, but I could barely speak. She moved toward me and put a fleshy hand to my forehead.

  “You’re hot,” she said. “Get to bed. I’ll send up yarrow tea.”

  I thanked her. After stopping in the nursery—where Henry was asleep—I ascended to my room.

  But I didn’t intend to rest. I had a plan. I resumed sewing some light sacks for Charlotte, since the air has been unseasonably warm, and her wool and flannel clothes must be stifling. I was using the scraps of muslin and cotton that Margaret had given me from the rag basket, saying no one else needed them.

  When Clementina returned before supper and stomped up toward her sitting room, I met her there. I begged her forgiveness for coming without being called and asked if I might go tomorrow first thing to see my Charlotte at her wet nurse’s house. “With the warmer weather,” I said, “she needs the items I’m making her.”

  “It’s good that you were honest and told me you wanted to go a week early rather than doing so behind my back,” Clementina replied. But she didn’t give permission. She wanted to know why I haven’t given Charlotte up, as the baby causes me such concern and expense. I explained that Charlotte matters more to me than anyone alive. Clementina’s face remained unmoved, and her green eyes scrutinized me, as if to find my true motive.

  I began to shed worried tears, which I hated to do in her company. I had to figure out some way to convince her. My mind cast about for something she might understand. Guessing that she loved music, since she’d gone to hear it many nights, I said that I needed to hold my baby, to hear her particular sounds, because otherwise my spirit was tuneless, like an instrument with no player.

  Clementina’s face fell. She touched her cheek; a sheen came to her eyes. “I’ve known that sensation,” she replied. “How eerie that you’d mention it.”

  I cleared my throat in the quiet that followed. She snapped her attention back to me with a new regard. “Of course you should go in the morning. You’ll take my carriage.”

  I expressed my gratitude and took my leave.

  I suspect I am feverish. It must be due to fevered emotions. The milk that builds up in the four hours between Henry’s feedings does make my breasts ache, but that wouldn’t cause this heat.

  I must wait one night only—several thousand more breaths—and then can see and hold and kiss my plump-cheeked darling, the most accomplished player of that instrument called my heart.

  NOTEBOOK FIVE

  Fourth Month 26

  The household is in a crisis and I’ve become too ill to travel, for my milk is blocked entirely.

  Henry screamed in my lap and shook his legs when he tried to nurse last night, and all the others were awakened. The Burnhams watched through the doorway, clad in dressing gowns. Margaret set off to the kitchen and readied her supplies, then set to hand-feeding Henry again. As she tried to get him to take the bottle, he craned his head toward me and cried, his mouth as wide as a baby bird’s. But once I’d left, he sucked cow’s milk and sugar from the rubber nipple.

  Margaret said he’s suffering at his return to the bottle, spitting up and contracting his legs into his belly. Hearing his distress from my room above makes my breasts throb, but no milk comes forth. Hot cloths and massage have proved useless. Clementina sent for Dr. Snowe, the man who had evaluated my worthiness, and he replied by post that he’ll call tomorrow.

  Perhaps I’ve got influenza, with this fever and the nausea and the dizzy spells. I wouldn’t be surprised, as the windows in this house stay mostly closed to keep out noise and dirt, and the gasli
ghts and stove put out poisonous vapors continually—not to mention the chamber pots and the ever-filling pail of diapers. From now on I’ll keep my window raised.

  * * *

  It’s evening. I’ve pulled myself to the end of my bed to look out, seeking solace in the world beyond my own tiny realm. On the street three stories down, the lamplighter is kindling lamps in a line, creating a string of radiant beads. The sidewalks are swelled with people in fine attire. Hansoms led by powerful horses rush by, bringing their passengers to the theater or some other enchanting place. They all pass onward.

  Now I see two young boys in matching caps and vests; they face wearily in opposite directions, each with a bag of papers around his neck, offering the news to passersby. They look no more than seven and ought to be asleep by this hour. Is their mother right now looking out a window for a glimpse of them approaching, or listening for their staccato steps on the building’s stairs? Or does she work late, too, pasting flower petals together or cracking nuts or performing other piecework? What would she do if they didn’t come back? Someone could kidnap them, like the poor Ross brothers were kidnapped in Germantown, one of whom was never found. That story frightened Peter and me awfully when we were small.

  High up in this slant-ceilinged room, warmed only by a candle and the fetid air rising from below, I’m unable to find a reassuring thought. I send a message into the ether for a passing angel to carry to my baby: Stay well, my darling. Mother will come soon.

  Fourth Month 27

  The doctor arrived this morning in a sweat, having traveled here on horseback. “Today’s my surgery day,” he told Clementina loudly in the hall. “I’ve got two hours till my next operation.”

  Clementina called me to the parlor and stood to his side as he felt my forehead and neck, shot questions at me, looked down my throat and in my ears, and prodded at my chest through my clothing with his sharp fingers. Then, though this was already decided by physical impediment, he pronounced me unfit for nursing. He diagnosed not influenza but something else entirely.

  “She has a breast infection as well as blocked ducts, and her milk is no longer safe,” he told Clementina. “If the blockages don’t open soon, pus will gather and form abscesses, and I’ll have to cut them open.”

  I flinched.

  “What’s the cause?” asked Clementina.

  “It comes of having too much milk. She’ll need to release it more often—if she becomes able to nurse again.”

  If? Clementina glanced at me with a grimace. It seemed she recognized the damage done by her father’s feeding schedule. The doctor took her expression as a sign of concern for Henry, which perhaps it also was.

  “The boy continues to gain weight?” he asked.

  “Several ounces a day,” I replied. I’d been charged with weighing him each morning on a calibrated scale.

  “Excellent.” Dr. Snowe restored his instruments to a leather bag. “A few days of artificial feeding won’t harm such a hearty fellow.”

  This gave me hope that Charlotte—who was hearty when I left her—won’t have declined much in our nine days apart.

  Dr. Snowe ordered me to take a series of hot baths to bring my fevered blood to the surface and cool it. He left a glass pump so I could try to get the milk moving after each bath. Dismissed, I started toward the back stairs.

  “While you’re here, doctor,” Clementina said, “I’d like an ointment—” Just as my ears perked up, the door to the parlor closed.

  This afternoon I took three baths in the kitchen, and what a strain this put on Margaret! For hours, she did little but heat water and pour it in the tub, then haul cooled water out of the tub and heat more water on the stove and pour it in the tub, then bottle-feed and change Henry.

  At the end of it, I’d never been so clean. If I were beef, I’d have been stewed. But my vomiting and weakness persisted, and my breasts were so taut as to be growing shiny. I pumped three times to no avail.

  When the doctor returned at evening, I was unable to walk, so he ascended to my room. In my left breast he found a solid area and declared it an abscess. After putting me in a chair and laying old newspapers around us, he sliced it with a lancet. Blood, curdled milk, and pus ran into his collecting bowl. He pressed on the abscess to release more fluid, and a roaring began in my head from the pain. When the last trickle ceased, he applied strips of linen to my front and had me lie down. Already the pain and swelling were reduced; with what voice I had, I thanked him.

  He went to pull the kitchen bell on the second story and returned to my side. Frau V. stomped upward, audibly disgruntled. But when she reached the servants’ story, apron dusted in flour, she laid her eyes on me and began to stammer. “I had—I had no idea you were so bad off.”

  I tried to reply but wasn’t able, for such a show of sympathy brought my suffering clearer, and I was overcome.

  “You must feed this young woman only cooked vegetables and fruits until I give further instruction,” the doctor told her. “Tend to her wound. And put hot compresses on the other breast, or we’ll have another abscess.”

  Frau V. looked at him peevishly. She isn’t fond of this sour-smelling, imperious man with his twirled moustache. She promised to comply but let out a groan about the extra work as she made her way down the stairs. My debts to her and Margaret grow by the hour.

  Then Dr. Snowe applied cotton and gauze to the wound and offered me ten drops of laudanum in water, promising easy sleep and a pleasant mood. I’d never taken laudanum, for its opium and alcohol are addicting. But I drank the liquid down, and it did put me in a far more comfortable state. He said I can nurse again once the incision has healed enough not to reopen—if the fever is gone and I still have milk. My eyes closed; my head was impelled toward the pillow. He left.

  The rest I had under the influence of laudanum was a peculiar one. Noisy voices rose with unusual clarity from the kitchen, along with the clatterings and clinkings of kitchen work. The sounds felt sharp and irritating inside my ears. Frau V. seemed to have a visitor downstairs, perhaps a servant who’d accompanied a friend of Clementina’s. I’d drift until some sound awakened me, then drift some more. Sometime in the night I heard the outraged voice of Clementina: “As if I’d accept such treatment. Thinking I would be such a woman as that.” And then, “I’m sorry, you say—as if that could fix it.”

  My fever broke in the night. When I surfaced to another day, the house was briefly quiet.

  Fortunately Frau V. is an experienced caretaker of the sick. She changes the cotton and gauze hourly and cleans the wound with a calendula wash. The compresses she brings for the other breast are calling forth enough milk to lessen the swelling.

  Mother’s hands were cool; Frau V.’s are warm and fleshy. Mother’s voice was sedating; Frau V.’s is harsh. But as the cook leans over me, she smells pleasantly of roses.

  Fourth Month 28

  This is my twenty-fourth birthday, and Charlotte is a day shy of one month old! I want no gifts but to touch her tendrils of hair, as soft as the hair at a goat’s throat, and to kiss her cheeks and belly.

  Those gifts won’t be mine today, but I’ve had some lovely surprises. Margaret had asked my birth date at a writing lesson, and she hadn’t forgotten. When she brought my breakfast of cooked fruit, she gave me a pair of sheepskin slippers, saying they’ll warm my feet when I rise in the dark for Henry. And she must have told Clementina, for the lady called me to her bedroom. She sat before her dressing table, surrounded by pots of rouge and powder, an engraved silver tray filled with cut-glass perfume bottles, and an iron curling rod heating over the wick on its stand. She stopped brushing her long hair to hand me a woven shawl of golden-yellow wool. “To cover you while you nurse,” she said, “when you can nurse again.”

  I was moved by her kindness and her optimism. I wrapped the shawl around me, proclaiming it heavenly soft, and thanked her.

  For her part, Frau V. refilled my supply of tinctures and teas and applied a hot linseed poultice. She said m
y cut is healing fast. Then she brought up, from her own garden, a salad of the first tender and delicate lettuces of the season.

  “Don’t tell,” she whispered, “because the doctor said cooked, not fresh. But these first shoots have extra force. To help you recover. I raised seven children on roots and herbs. They all have children of their own now.” She insisted that I nurse Henry soon, whether or not the doctor allows it. “No milk, no job. You’ll be off to the poorhouse, and your baby, too.”

  I intend to heed her counsel.

  This is my second birthday without Mother. The locket with her hair and picture nestles at my neck. The warmth of its shining metal makes it seem alive—though that warmth comes from my own body.

  Which makes me think how, in my very body, my mother does live.

  Perhaps our bodies are like patchwork quilts, made up of kin from decades and even centuries past. Charlotte contains all these patches and offers her own as the next in line—one more reason to cherish her.

  * * *

  Margaret has gotten the afternoon off and is right now rushing to Gerda’s to visit Charlotte. She perceived my worry and decided to take action, since I’m too weak to travel. What a caring girl! I gave her my last coins for her streetcar fare.

  Godspeed, dear Margaret. I hope thee finds my baby well.

  * * *

  Margaret has returned, and my life has shifted on its axis.

  “I don’t like to tell you,” she said upon entering my garret. “But that place is not right for babies. And your Charlotte—her condition isn’t good.” Her blue eyes were intent; her freckled face was drawn.

  “How did thee know which was Charlotte?” I asked.

  “She wore the white gown you said you sent her in, which is filthy now—and she was the only one with red hair. There were three babies, and all looked bad.”

  “Was thee allowed to hold her? Was she thin?”

  “I asked to get close, but the woman said she couldn’t allow that for anyone but the mother. Your baby did look thin. The place is terrible, no more than a shack. The smell was awful. I doubt there’s clean water.”