by Janet Benton
“Bless thee for finding this out.” I rose from bed with her hand to steady me.
She shook her head, distraught. “Don’t bless me. I should have taken her away.”
I descended to the second story in my bedclothes. In the hallway mirror outside Clementina’s bedroom, I saw my disheveled state—the swollen, red skin around my eyes from crying, the many hairs straying from my bun like torn filaments of spiderwebs. I burst in on Clementina, who appeared to be arranging her clothes into outfits for the season.
“Please forgive me,” I said. “I have to fetch my daughter at her wet nurse’s and bring her here. She’s been in an unsafe situation for ten days.”
Clementina gave a sigh. “I’m concerned about your milk,” she replied. “We need to build it up again. Strong emotions will injure it.” She pulled more skirts and bodices from her wardrobe, considering how well they went together; her leisure increased my agitation.
“I’ll be much happier when my baby’s faring well,” I said, trying to keep my voice soft. “Besides, she might unblock my milk and increase my supply for Henry.”
Clementina removed a satin-trimmed polonaise from her massive wardrobe and laid it atop a skirt and overskirt of brown satin. At last she nodded yes, and I took a full breath in and out. “But only,” she said, her face stern, “until your milk is re-established and pure enough. For Henry.”
I thanked her and started from the room.
“Wait,” Clementina said. “How far is this place?”
“A few miles north.”
“I doubt you’re strong enough to walk, or even to take a streetcar or a train.”
“Oh.” I turned to her. I hadn’t one coin remaining for my fare.
“Take our carriage and driver.” She looked me up and down. “As long as you neaten your hair and change to suitable dress.”
She returned to her task, and I didn’t dare ask another question. So I went to the kitchen to find out how to get the carriage. Since the cook was only waiting for her dough to rise, she offered to walk the several blocks to the stable while I changed my clothes. I wanted to embrace her, but she brushed my arms away.
“I only do what’s right,” she said.
The carriage is here!
Fourth Month 29, First Day
My darling has taken her fill many times since yesterday and slipped into a happy stupor. But I can never get my fill of her. I stare and stare, as in her rightful place she breathes and rests, milk clinging to her tiny lips. I feel giddy and uncoordinated, like a bee covered in pollen, unbalanced and heavy from touring flower after flower.
The stuck milk of recent days is bursting out, and it’s more than my little one can hold. Periodically I lean over a bowl on the washstand and squeeze my breasts, and milk sprays in all directions. I tasted a drop from my finger; it was sweet and light and left a powdery texture on my tongue, perhaps from the sugar in it.
Margaret’s description was too restrained to have prepared me for Gerda’s street. The carriage driver referred to it as Drunkards’ Alley and said even the street cleaners avoid it, to its inhabitants’ detriment. The air stank from heaps of manure that were circled by hordes of insects. Piles of rags, bones, and rotting rubbish littered the dirt. The front doors of many of its two-story shacks hung off their hinges; most windows were covered in boards or newspaper. And naturally the Burnhams’ shiny green carriage drew attention there. As the horse brought it to a halt, barefooted children in ragged clothes ran up, holding out their hands and calling, “A penny! A penny for food!” I rose from the padded bench, stepped out, and walked to the house, feeling heartless for not giving them coins but having none.
Gerda’s shack had a functioning door. I knocked on it as children whispered behind me: “Who is that? Why is she here?” No answer came from within, so I called, “Gerda! Please open the door!” In quick response came a baby’s cry.
I knew that cry! The flimsy door easily gave way. I pushed into an unlit, smoky space that appeared unoccupied. I walked around a table of rough boards to see, along the back wall, three crates. I stepped closer; each crate contained a baby, tied down by strips of cloth fastened to the lattice of the crate. One was my Lotte, bawling by then and clumsily craning her head toward me. I praised her with every cell in my body for holding on to life.
I untied the stays and picked up her thin and trembling form, then knelt to collect the blanket and clothes piled by her crate. I felt I had to leave immediately—as if I were a thief. The other babies looked desperate, worse than mine, with bulging eyes, and limbs that lacked the will to move. But I only said a prayer for them, sick at heart and sorry, then rushed out to the street.
I stood on the packed dirt, my stunned baby blinking against me. From his perch behind the horse, the carriage driver stared. An old man was resting on a log before the next shack over, smoking a pipe and stroking his whitish-yellow beard. He spit to the ground, then called to me.
“That yer baby?”
I nodded. “Can thee tell Gerda I’ve taken the baby named Charlotte away?” By then Charlotte was rooting at my shirt, causing my clogged breasts to ache. I opened the carriage door and raised my foot to a step.
“Gerda might not notice yer baby’s gone,” the old man called, “and she won’t know the name.” He took the pipe from his lips and gave a dry laugh, more like coughing. “Don’t know why a lady like you would hire a baby farmer. Undertaker’s here least once a month.” He shook his head side to side, then took a puff from his pipe, concluding, “Public Health oughta shut ’er down.”
Indeed. Charlotte writhed against me, seeking milk. I felt my breasts responding. “Report her to Public Health,” I urged the man, “for the sake of the babies.”
He puffed and said nothing.
Children were touching their palms to the carriage, to its green sides warmed by the sun. Several had tied shreds of cloth to its tall wheels, which would give them some amusement when the wheels began to turn. The driver shooed them off as I shut the door and dropped to the cushioned bench.
As we began to move away, I pulled the curtains closed. In the filtered light I held my baby to me and kissed her, my tears wetting her grimy face. Her body shook, and she gave a terrible wail.
If hearts could break, mine would have then. For I had my answer as to how she’d fared: she’d suffered our time apart with all the force of her little being.
Her clothes smelled of smoke and dampness, her diaper stank, and her breath bore the odor of alcohol, betraying Gerda’s medicinal method of quieting babies. But her scalp held a hint of her real smell, slight and sweet. As I kept my nose to her head and inhaled, my breasts began to release their milk! She attached eagerly to my unwounded side and choked at the volume but kept sucking until her belly grew taut. Then she fell to sleep, like a baby kitten.
On arriving back to my room, I undressed her. Her ribs were visible, and her arms and legs were far thinner. Beneath her sodden, stinking diaper was an aggravated rash, red in front and worse in back. She vomited onto her chest and gave out unhappy cries as I washed her with a cloth and cool water from a pitcher, then patted her dry. I used Frau V.’s calendula and comfrey salve to dress the rash.
When I finished, as if applying a salve to me, she stared lovingly upward, made whole by our reunion. But I despised myself for putting her in the care of a woman I’d never met. If Margaret hadn’t gone to Gerda’s—I cringed to think. If my darling had died…
She wears no diaper now, since her rash will heal better in the air. Frau V. told me this when she came upstairs to examine Charlotte. Based on the lack of fever and the keenness remaining in her eyes, the cook predicted that she’ll gain her weight back quickly.
I believe she will recover. It must be so.
I find myself intoxicated by her face at rest—the flawless skin and its faint flush of pink, the delicate dusting of red-blond hairs at her temples, the nostrils that puff slightly with each breath, the bud-like lips so softly parted. Upon my lap, this
treasure sleeps a leaden sleep.
Fifth Month 3
Payday was two days ago, the first of the month, and Clementina had nothing for me. To start, for the time I was sick, she considers me not to have been in her employ. “Surely you understand,” she said, hardly giving me a glance as I stood before her desk, the last in line. Worse still is that she docked all my remaining pay for the doctor’s visit and medicine, and I owe her fifty cents more. Frau V. and Margaret got their money, and of course I don’t begrudge them. Yet it was awfully hard of Clementina to give me not one cent for all my efforts since I’ve arrived here. And even though Dr. Snowe examined me and pronounced my milk safe for Henry, and I’ve begun feeding both babies, the mistress says she’ll pay but half my wage until my bastard is accommodated elsewhere. I haven’t dared to put Charlotte in her sight, but I did protest that she’s still thin. The lady was unmoved.
“Inside this house,” she said, “your care belongs to Henry.” She said to obtain newspapers and find a place for Charlotte right away.
She fails to understand any position but her own. What to her are defensible shifts in our financial arrangement have the effect of leaving me penniless. She feels no obligation to consider others apart from how they serve her.
And how am I to pay a wet nurse to take my Charlotte?
Clementina and her doctor forbade me meat and sweets; I relished a chunk of ham and a slice of pecan pie in the kitchen.
Today Henry’s umbilical cord stump fell off—a little late, observed Frau V. while she poured warm water into a kitchen basin. We gave the slippery fellow his first bath, which startled and pleased him.
There’s more to tell. Frau V. called for me before supper, and I went to the kitchen by the back stairs, carrying Charlotte. The cook washed her hands and dried them, then sat at the table. Charlotte watched with some of her former alertness but elicited only a fleeting smile from the cook, who had something else occupying her mind.
“Sit down,” she said, gesturing. “I know what I’m talking about.” Her face pushed out, daring me to defy her.
“Yes?” I sat as directed.
“I spoke with the mistress about your situation. You must contact your baby’s father to demand support, as a condition of your employment. Either that, or you must begin a civil suit against him.”
Why would Clementina care? She certainly doesn’t care a whit about Charlotte. I said this, and here is Frau V’s interpretation. The lady may not understand why I keep my child, but she does value my services and character. When Frau V. suggested to her that my life following this employment would likely be disastrous, a spark kindled in her heart.
With Charlotte in my arms and her eyes moving from the cook to me, I had the courage to speak honestly. I said I appreciated their concern but was not prepared to reveal the existence of our baby in a letter to Johan—which might only increase his wish to stay away. Nor would I seek restitution in a court proceeding that would be published in the newspapers. I offered instead to write my brother through the post office, as she’d earlier told me was possible. If he sent news, then I’d decide whether to write Johan with a request for support.
We wrestled with our differences. Finally she relented as to my writing Peter, saying she would explain my points to our mistress. But she wanted me to tell Peter about Charlotte and to have him urge Johan to make reparations.
I assured her that Charlotte and I will get by on our own after my time here, for surely others will see our virtue and not block our progress toward a decent life.
“Get by on your own?” Frau Varschen said. “Be seen as virtuous?” Behind her thick glasses, her eyes lifted to the ceiling and back to me. “I doubt it.”
“Why?” I asked. “I’m young, I have skills, I have principles—”
“Principles? Bah! If only everyone had them. How can you make it alone with a bastard? Do you want to end up a strumpet?”
“Of course not.” I stared at her, aghast. “That won’t happen to me.”
She rolled her eyes skyward again. “So why does it happen to so many like you—because they love to be poked by drunken strangers?”
I blushed. “I’d guess not.”
“Something bad happened,” she said, “and no one gave them a second chance.”
A bad feeling took up residence in my stomach then.
Be that as it may, I wrote to Peter in the manner I’d described. I used Clementina’s fine parchment, which Frau V. procured with permission. I struggled over what to write and decided on this.
1883. 5th mo. 3
Peter de Jong
General Delivery
Pittsburgh, Penna.
Dear Peter,
No letter has come from thee or Johan. How is thee faring? How is Johan? I am not well. Please consider returning, or at least write me immediately, care of the Burnhams, 18xx Pine Street, Philadelphia, Penna.
With love and concern, thy sister,
Lillian de Jong
Frau V. may have pulled this mule onto a path unwillingly, but now I’m trotting down it, and my spirit is aflutter with the possibilities. Perhaps Peter will return, or offer us shelter in Pittsburgh. Perhaps the hole that has threatened to swallow us will fill with solid earth instead!
Fifth Month 5
I’ve just nursed and changed Charlotte, then Henry, then Charlotte, then Henry. I run from one to the other, up and down the stairs, day and night. Apart from strict necessity, what keeps me rising to my tired feet? It must be the delight these babies bring.
Henry reveals deep dimples when he smiles. His brown eyes open wide. He gurgles when I place him on the changing table. Charlotte, by one week his elder, stares upward and grins while I clean her, making a percussive sound that seems to be a laugh. Within seconds she can go from smiling openmouthed to pursing her brow to pressing her lips in discomfort to belching and sending curdled milk to the folds of her neck to grinning toothlessly again.
I carry her around and around in our limited realm of garret and third-story hall, showing her things. I point out my window at the birds perched on the roof across the street, amuse her with silly facial expressions, let her try to trace a crack in the wall’s plaster. I sit before my trunk and help her touch my clothing and shoes, a brush, a hair comb. She grabs my clothing in her clenched-up fingers. Her grip is so powerful that a stocking tore when I tried to make her release it.
Her growing plumpness soothes my conscience.
I brought her to the kitchen today, and Frau V. showed me how to place her on her stomach. For a few seconds at a time, Charlotte held her arms and head up, as if flying.
“Our baby learns quick,” said Frau V., patting my daughter’s diapered bottom.
Of course Clementina is correct; I reserve my finest care for my own baby.
Frau V. has me drinking nettle tea to rebuild my strength. Soon, she said, nothing will remain of my wound but a bluish scar.
Fifth Month 7
With never sleeping more than two hours straight because of a suckling at my breast, I can barely follow a simple train of thought, much less form a plan for Charlotte. But Clementina grows ever more stone-faced toward me, and I need to earn full pay. Albert has forgotten to bring the papers. Frau V. promises she’ll bring one tomorrow.
There’s trouble here. The Burnhams often argue in the dining room. And lately, while I nurse one or the other of my charges in the night, bitter tones pierce the darkness. Worst was last night, when from Clementina’s bedroom came yelling and the sounds of objects and bodies shifting, and then a bout of sobbing from her. She hasn’t emerged today. Margaret has said nothing of it but brings meals to her mistress’s room. Albert skulked out early.
This afternoon I brought the infants behind the house to the narrow yard and settled us on a blanket. Simply breathing the air born of such rampant blooming and sprouting did us good. Henry lay on his back, cooing at passing clouds. When a breeze blew over and the leaves flitted about, Charlotte dashed her head side to side, openm
outhed.
The newness of such things as clouds and leaves to them is marvelous.
Yet something has me bothered. I’ve been shown today two instances of desperation among the flying creatures. At early light I woke to squawking from the tree below, and out our window I spied a father swallow, greatly agitated, defending his nest of babies from a hawk. A parcel of will he was, flinging himself before the hawk every which way it traveled, poking his beak into its side, until finally it desisted. And later, on the blanket out back, while Henry drank at me and Charlotte moved her limbs, a mother robin flew at a hawk, flapping her wings into its head and screeching, then aiming all her force like an arrow into its side. She attacked until the harried giant left her nest alone.
These parents must risk their lives continually to win their babes another day.
My Lotte nearly died by being too far from my protection. Frau Varschen was right: I hadn’t understood the danger.
Fifth Month 9
The cook brought in the Public Ledger this morning. Among the many advertisements for wet nurses was one placed by a woman describing herself as a healthy Irish Catholic mother seeking a baby to nurse because she had lost her own baby at birth. She claimed to offer a clean home and asked one dollar fifty cents a week, which was higher than some. Margaret said the address was ten blocks southwest of here, in a section known as Shantytown.
I sent a note asking to come right away, and the woman sent back a rough but legible note saying yes. Clementina granted me freedom to go and gave me a dollar-fifty advance on pay. So now I owe two dollars to her, which she noted in a leather-bound account book on her desk.
With dread I packed the light cotton clothes and blankets and other things I’d sewed for Charlotte, dressed her, and plunged us down the alley and into the street. Every noise fascinated her—the clacking of horses’ feet on cobbles, the carriages and wagons bouncing past. As we drew nearer to the nurse’s address, vendors called vigorously from their carts, offering oysters or pepper pot, asking to grind scissors or fix an umbrella or buy a household’s rags. A woman stepped out her door to pour a bucket of filth into the street, and I had to jump aside to keep my boots from being flooded. We passed a factory emitting smoke and an awful grinding sound. Yet Charlotte’s eyes never stopped roving with joyous vigor. Holding her neck high, she graced the area with her gleeful smile. I began to suspect that there’s a kind of ecstacy to be found in giving oneself over to a clamor.