A Promise of Ruin

by Cuyler Overholt

  In our weekly sessions, however, I’d been intrigued to discover that contributions by class members, when they were allowed to occur, could be therapeutic in their own right. My patients seemed to gain a sense of safety and a relief from tension by sharing their stories with others who’d suffered similarly and were more able to view their experiences in a new, salutary light. I had, accordingly, been gradually deviating from my formal training, forging a new path dictated solely by the results in my classroom.

  Today, as always, I arrived at the Holy Trinity Church complex a few minutes early so that I could rearrange the chairs and go over my notes in the basement space that Reverend Palmers had provided for me. As I started down the path to the parish house, I spotted one of my newest patients, Martha Crimmins, leaving the church at the end of the service, accompanied by her adolescent daughter. Martha stopped at the fork in the path and said a few words to the girl, who leaned forward to embrace her. To my surprise, Martha stiffened and pulled back, averting her face. The girl drew back in turn. Martha started briskly toward the parish hall as her daughter looked sadly after her.

  I remembered this encounter twenty minutes later, after I’d finished my introductory lecture on fearing to love again—a fear expressed by many of my class members, who’d all experienced the death of someone close to them—and opened the floor for discussion.

  “I’m not afraid to love my daughter,” Mrs. Crimmins immediately volunteered. “My only fear is that she won’t love me back.” She glanced at the other women seated around her, who were all listening sympathetically. The youngest Crimmins girl had died from burns after setting her dress on fire, which left Mrs. Crimmins with only one surviving child.

  “She seems to have withdrawn from me since her sister’s death,” Mrs. Crimmins went on. “It breaks my heart when she doesn’t return my affection.”

  “Wasn’t that Clara I saw coming out of church with you, just before class?” I asked.

  “Why, yes. She always comes with me to the second service.”

  “It looked to me as though she tried to embrace you, but that you turned away.”

  She regarded me with frank astonishment. “Oh no, you’re quite mistaken. She pulled away from me. She always does.”

  She clearly believed what she was saying. And yet, I was equally certain of what I’d seen. I regarded her in silence for a moment, trying to reconcile the two. Mrs. Crimmins had just told us that she wasn’t afraid to love again…but I wondered. I remembered a journal article I’d read recently about forces that worked on an unconscious level to keep painful or unacceptable thoughts out of a person’s awareness, forces that one of their main proponents, the Austrian Sigmund Freud, was calling “defences.” What if fears outside of Mrs. Crimmins’s conscious awareness were affecting her behavior? What if, without even realizing it, she was keeping Clara at a distance to protect herself from the pain she’d have to endure if she lost her as well? Dr. Freud had suggested that a person could project ideas that were unacceptable to his conscious mind onto someone else. Perhaps this was what Mrs. Crimmins was doing when she assigned her own desire for distance to her daughter.

  I was awestruck by the possibility, amazed once again by the lengths to which the human mind might go in its attempt to avoid pain and psychic disequilibrium. And yet, unfortunately, by holding Clara at a distance, Mrs. Crimmins seemed to be creating the very loss of connection with her daughter that she so feared. My mind reeled at the irony.

  “Perhaps,” I said to her gently, “we should talk a little more about how you and your daughter have been getting along.”

  • • •

  I emerged from the cool basement thirty minutes later into another scorching day. The heat rose up in waves from the pavement, carrying manure dust and the smell of burning asphalt with it. My successful class had buoyed my spirits, and the withering heat could not dispel the sense of optimism I felt as I pulled my veil down against the dust and struck out uptown on foot, determined to discover something useful on Teresa Casoria’s behalf.

  I’d spent a good part of the previous evening poring over the charity directories in my father’s library, looking for an institution that might suit my purposes. My plan was to search for other Italian women who’d been abducted into prostitution but had escaped or been rescued, and try to learn what I could about the man or men who had taken them. I’d assumed there would be a large number of shelters for former prostitutes where I might find such a woman, and hoped I might be able to locate one near the Harlem Italian colony.

  My assumption, however, had proved incorrect. There were plenty of charities dedicated to helping destitute women “of good character,” or girls “still innocent” who’d been saved from the jaws of evil, or even women recently liberated from prison—but only a handful seemed interested in helping the fallen. And of these, only two were anywhere near the uptown colony.

  I was familiar with one of them: the House of the Good Shepherd at the foot of Ninetieth Street, by the East River. Run by Roman Catholic nuns, this “home” had accommodations for eight hundred inmates and was a primary city depository for women who’d been arrested for disorderly conduct or been committed by their parents for incorrigibility. Although I had no doubt that excellent work was being carried out there, with so many girls arriving through involuntary channels I suspected it must be operated more as a reformatory than a refuge. There had been newspaper reports of escape attempts over the years, and of at least one accidental death after a girl attempting to climb down from her room on a rope of knotted sheets fell to the court below. I doubted that either the management or the inmates of such an establishment would be eager to speak with me.

  I was looking for a different sort of place, where the girls had come willingly in search of a new life and might therefore be open to telling me about their start in the old one. I was hoping I’d found just such an establishment in the Goldstein Women’s Home. Located on 102nd Street on the approximate border between Jewish and Italian Harlem, the twenty-four-bed refuge billed itself as “open to friendless and fallen women of all religions, space permitting, no questions asked or references required.” It sounded like a good place to start.

  There was no shade on the sidewalk, and I’d only walked a few blocks before my shirtwaist was sticking to my back and my collar was rubbing against my clammy skin. I eyed some children licking a giant block of ice on the corner, coveting a lick of my own. Even the free horse shower at the stable across the street looked enticing. I was more than ready to get out of the sun when I finally reached my destination, a four-story building with “Goldstein Women’s Home” painted in white across the top of the brick facade. Through the yellow gingham curtains that framed the window front on the bottom floor, I could see an earnest-faced young man folding pamphlets at a desk. I pushed the door open and walked in.

  The man looked up at my entrance. He had long, disheveled hair and wore a threadbare waistcoat. “Can I help you?”

  “I’d like to speak with Mrs. Goldstein, if she’s available.”

  “She’s handing out pamphlets down the street.” Looking me up and down, he added, “If you’re here to make a donation, I can get her for you.”

  “Oh no, I don’t want to interrupt her work. I’ll just go speak to her outside.”

  “You can’t miss her. She’ll be standing in front of the Swann Hotel.” He held out a handful of the pamphlets. “Could you give her these for me? She ought to be nearly out by now.”

  I took the pamphlets, glancing down at one as I walked out the door. BLINDNESS! INSANITY! DEATH! FOR YOU, YOUR WIFE, AND YOUR UNBORN CHILDREN. IS THIS WHAT YOU WANT? I opened it up and sucked in my breath. An extremely lifelike sketch of a phallus took up the entire left page, with a red, hand-painted syphilis chancre on its head. I looked furtively up and down the street before scanning the rest. On the right side was a smaller sketch of a crying infant with a full-body rash, and be
low it a list of the symptoms of syphilis and gonorrhea, ending with the warning, THERE IS NO CURE—ONLY PREVENTION! A telephone number followed, with instructions to call for more information.

  I closed the leaflet and peered down the sidewalk. A sign for the Swann Hotel hung from a pole over the sidewalk three doors down. Half of the tiny incandescent bulbs that rimmed it were burned out, while the other half still glowed feebly in the bright light of midday. A short young woman with a scuffed leather bag at her feet stood below it, holding a thin stack of pamphlets. She had an arresting, angular face under a mass of wiry copper curls shoved haphazardly under a nurse’s cap. She stood with her shoulders squared and her head lifted, like someone expecting trouble and ready to meet it head on. She was a far cry from the prim, middle-aged, vaguely saintly woman I’d been expecting.

  As I started toward her, a man came out of the hotel with a cigar between his teeth and a walking stick hooked over one arm. The woman stepped into his path, holding up a copy of the pamphlet. He stepped left, then right, while she deftly mirrored his moves, making it impossible for him to avoid her. Finally, with a growl that even I could hear, he grabbed the pamphlet and jammed it into his pocket.

  Although it was a Sunday, raucous voices and music from an out-of-tune piano wafted out of the bottom-floor windows of the hotel, suggesting that liquor was being served inside. I glanced at the upper stories. After the Raines law went into effect, prohibiting Sunday liquor sales except at hotels, hundreds of saloon owners had rushed to add upstairs bedrooms and kitchen space to their establishments. Since these accommodations were generally of the roughest sort, and since there was no legitimate demand for the sudden influx of space, the great majority of these new “hotels” had quickly become venues for prostitution, where pimps arranged assignations with customers from the downstairs saloon. If that’s what was going on inside the Swann, it would explain why Miss Goldstein was distributing tracts about venereal disease at the door.

  Her eyes brightened on sight of me. “Are you the new volunteer?” Her voice held the inflection of the Russian Jewess, softened by at least one generation in America.

  “No, sorry. The man inside just asked me to give these to you.” I handed her the pamphlets. “I’m Dr. Genevieve Summerford. I was hoping to speak to you about the women in your care.”

  Her keen brown eyes searched mine. “What’s your interest?” she asked, her manner as forthright as one might expect of a woman who could hand out pictures of diseased phalluses in broad daylight.

  “I’m trying to find an Italian girl who I think may have been abducted and sold into prostitution. I’m checking asylums like yours, looking for any girls who may have—”

  “Just a minute,” she interrupted, pushing past me as a pair of young men approached the hotel entrance. “Gentlemen,” she called out, “a moment of your time.” Pressing a leaflet into each of their hands, she launched into a condensed version of the message it contained. As they sidled, horrified, toward the door, she pulled two small tins from a bag around her waist and thrust one into each man’s pant pocket. “Call the number on the leaflet to get more!” she shouted after them as they escaped into the hotel.

  She turned back to me, pushing a curly wisp of hair from her eyes. “You were saying?”

  “What was that you put in their pockets?” I asked in disbelief, pretty sure I knew the answer.

  “Rubber cots,” she confirmed, wiping the sheen from her brow with the back of her hand. “The pimps won’t make the customers wear them, so I must try to convince them myself.”

  I glanced up and down the street again. “What about the police?” The leaflets were bad enough; if the police caught her handing out contraception devices, they would certainly throw her in jail.

  “The police?” she repeated with a smirk. “The police on this beat are regular customers here, and they’re happy for the free goods.”

  It took me a moment to digest this. “And the owner? He doesn’t consider you bad for business?”

  She shrugged. “We have an understanding. He lets me stand here on Sundays, and I don’t tell his wife what goes on upstairs.”

  She elbowed me in the ribs, nodding toward two more men who were coming up the sidewalk. “Here,” she said, handing back some of the leaflets. “Help me give these out, and then I’ll answer whatever questions you want.”

  My dismay must have been apparent, for her amber eyes flashed with impatience.

  “A doctor of medicine you say you are?” she demanded.

  “That’s right.”

  “And eliminating disease is your calling?”

  I made no reply, seeing where this was going.

  Stooping to unclasp the bag at her feet, she pulled out a handful of tinned condoms and thrust them toward me.

  I threw up my hands. “Oh no. I’m sorry, Mrs. Goldstein, but I wouldn’t have the nerve.”

  Her shrewd eyes assessed me. “It’s Miss Goldstein, but you can call me Pauline. And if you want information about my girls, you’ll find the nerve.” She grasped one of my hands and folded it over the tins.

  I glanced toward the approaching men. “But…how do I know which ones are here to see the women?”

  “I know, and I will tell you.” She jerked her chin toward the second of the two men coming toward us. “Starting with that one there. In the checkered cap.”

  I drew a bracing breath. For Teresa, I told myself and prepared to accost him.

  • • •

  Over the next thirty minutes, we had the opportunity to impress our message on some dozen or more men. I found it difficult to believe at first that they could really all be here for assignations—but a furtive something in their gaze at our approach seemed to confirm it. I gradually warmed to my task, inspired by Miss Goldstein’s zeal. It was for their own good, after all. The only way to prevent the transmission of venereal disease, apart from abstention, was to use a protective sheath, but since the dissemination not only of contraception devices themselves, but also of information about their use had been illegal for the last several decades, many young men weren’t aware of this. Even if they were, they were frequently so ignorant of the ravages inflicted by the disease that they chose to engage in unprotected relations regardless. All too often, it wasn’t until their wives or newborn children exhibited symptoms that they even realized they’d been infected.

  “Where did you receive your nurse’s training?” I asked Pauline during a lull in traffic.

  She looked puzzled. “Oh, you mean this?” she asked, touching her cap. “It belongs to a friend of mine. I just wear it when I’m handing out leaflets so people will listen.”

  Before I could express an opinion on this unorthodox conduct, she elbowed me in the ribs again to alert me to an approaching customer.

  When we had exhausted our leaflet supply, we returned to the shelter, where the earnest young man at the front desk was now painting the finishing touches on a placard.

  “This is Jacob,” Pauline told me. “A true friend of our cause. When he isn’t writing articles for the daily Forverts, he’s here, helping me and my girls.”

  I introduced myself and shook his hand, tilting my head sideways to read the words on the placard. VOTES FOR WOMEN! MEETING TONIGHT AT COOPER UNION, 7:00 P.M. I smiled up at Pauline. “So you’re a suffragette, as well as a savior of lost women?”

  Her eyes flashed reproachfully, in a way that was becoming all too familiar. “Tell me only, how is it possible to be one and not the other? Without power, women will never be treated with respect!” She gestured toward the only two chairs in the narrow vestibule. “Now come, sit,” she said, her temper abating as quickly as it had flared, “and tell me more about why you’re here.”

  I sat beside her and told her about Lucia and Teresa and what I’d learned so far. “If someone is abducting Italian women and forcing them into prostitution, I thought I might
find a clue to their identity by trying to interview some of their prior victims.”

  “Most certainly, these abductions are taking place,” she said.

  I blinked at her. “What makes you say that?”

  “Because three of their victims have been sent to me in just the last four months.”

  “Sent here, to your shelter?”

  “The Chicago Law and Order Society asked me to house them, after the state’s attorney’s office conducted raids on some of the worst dens in that city. According to the Society, all three girls were taken captive upon their arrival in New York by Italians who were strangers to them.”

  Three of them. I could hardly believe my luck. “Could I speak to them?”

  She shook her head. “These girls I keep only until they are healthy enough to travel. The Society gives me the steamship fare to send them home. The first one left a month ago, and the second one last week.”

  “But the third one? She’s still here?”

  She hesitated. “Her body is here. As for her mind, I cannot say. She has been with us for over a month but still refuses to leave her room. She never talks about what happened to her. I know only because of the Law and Order Society’s report.”

  I sank back in my chair. If the girl was still in shock, I wasn’t going to be able to question her about her abduction. Trying to force her to talk about it before she was ready would not only be unproductive, but might even worsen her distress. “What’s her name?”

  “Caterina Bressi.”

  “How old is she?”