The Godmothers

by Camille Aubray

  The moon rose suddenly, as if with great hurry, casting a ribbon of light in their path while the shadows darkened around them. At last they arrived at a large, stately farmhouse, built to be impressive.

  “Your father was born not far from here,” Mama said. “Not in this house; in a smaller one, on a nearby farm. His parents and brothers are all gone. But these people that we are visiting, they own all this farmland we’ve just seen, and they know Papa.”

  “Papa came from a farm?” Filomena asked, confused. As long as she’d lived, her father had always fished, sometimes taking her out with him in his boat full of nets.

  “Yes, his family were farmers,” Mama said. “But there was not enough work here for him. So he came north to find work, and he found my father, who taught him to fish—and then Papa found me. He worked hard, did well. But times are hard everywhere now.”

  Filomena had heard the story of her parents’ courtship before, and it, too, sounded like a fairy tale, of a more highly born princess courted by a noble but poor youth who had journeyed far to find her; yet, today, there was no romantic sentimentality in her mother’s voice. It was the voice of many women like her who had married and had children; it was perpetually weary. Filomena squeezed her mother’s hand in sudden sympathy.

  They’d reached the front door of the farmhouse, and Mama tugged on a cord that was attached to a bell. A servant girl opened the door; she wore a cap and apron, like the girls who worked in the bakery back home. This girl appeared to be only a year older than Filomena, but she had a wary, knowing look. Filomena was tall for her age, even taller than this skinny serving girl, so she drew herself up and stared back.

  The girl opened the door wider and stepped aside so that they could enter a small, dark foyer, which led to a very big room where you had to go down a few steps. This room had a terra-cotta–tiled floor and very formal furnishings: a big sofa and two fat chairs, some smaller tables with lamps, and a sideboard with shelves displaying big china plates with patterns of a shepherdess and her flock. The window curtains were drawn against the sun, but it had already set.

  Filomena thought her mother should remove her dark glasses in such a dimly lit room, but Mama did not, for she was probably embarrassed about her black eye. Filomena decided that they had been invited to a tea party of some sort, and she became enchanted with the pictures on the china plates and cups.

  Then suddenly a signora swept into the room with an imperious, aggressive swish of taffeta skirts. She was a short lady, but this only made her tilt her head and her aquiline nose very high, in a crude attempt at regality.

  “Your daughter is skinny,” the lady said in a surprisingly blunt, coarse tone for such an important person as she evidently was. She, too, spoke the dialect like Papa.

  “She’s healthy and smart,” Mama said defensively.

  The signora shrugged. She called out, “Rosamaria!” and after a curt nod, she turned abruptly and swept out of the room.

  The hired girl returned, and, since the room had grown darker now that night was falling, the girl began to light tall, fat candles all around the room.

  Filomena’s mother now turned all her attention to her little daughter and spoke in a measured tone as if telling her to do her chores. But today Mama’s voice was so low that Filomena had to put her ear almost to her mother’s lips, as if she were being told a secret.

  “When your papa left this place, his family owed money to the signor who lives here. This Boss even paid for Papa’s trip north. Papa has always worked hard to pay him back. We all do, your brothers and sisters and I. But times are hard now, and we have fallen far behind on paying back our debt. Now you must do your part to help repay the debt. Be a good girl, Filomena. Do everything you are told to do here. Do not disgrace Papa, or there will be trouble for all of us,” she added in a warning voice.

  But while she spoke, a brief, tender look had softened her face, and now her lips were quivering as she kissed Filomena. Yet when Filomena hugged her back, suddenly, Mama stiffened her spine, released her, then lifted her chin in a resolute way, indicating there was something difficult and unpleasant that had to be dealt with. Her face seemed to turn to stone in the flickering candlelight. Filomena had never seen Mama quite like this before, and it made her speechless, uncomprehendingly anxious. The servant girl stepped forward.

  “I am Rosamaria,” she said in a neutral tone. “Come with me, Filomena.”

  Although Filomena’s mind could not identify what was wrong, her tummy seemed to know all about it. Suddenly she was seized with a cold, fearful pain that made her feel as if she were sinking to the bottom of a deep well, with no way out. She was still clutching her mother’s warm, soothing hand, but now, decisively, Mama let go of her.

  “Be good,” she said, again in that odd new coldly resolute voice, as if she were trying to convince herself as well as Filomena that this was the way it had to be. Then, with a quick straightening of her shoulders, Mama turned and went out beyond the two pillars. A moment later the front door banged closed.

  “Mama!” Filomena shouted suddenly. “Where are you going, Mama?”

  “Perhaps someday she’ll be back,” the servant girl, Rosamaria, said unconvincingly. “For now, you must come with me.”

  Filomena’s thoughts were reeling. She was thoroughly exhausted, and the fingers of her hand—the one her mother had been holding on to all this time—had gone from hot and sweaty to cold little icicles now.

  “Mama!” she shouted, running to the window and pushing the curtains aside. In the shaft of moonlight she spied the figure of her mother hurrying down the front path, then climbing into a horse-drawn wagon that a farmhand was driving. The wagon took off quickly, guiltily, raising a cloud of dust as it sped down the road until it made a sharp turn and disappeared.

  “Mama!” Filomena shrieked now, running to the front door. The gold knob was too fat for her small hands, but somehow she managed to turn it and drag open the heavy wooden door. She ran down the stone steps, gasping painfully. “Mama! Wait for me, Mama!” she sobbed now, the dust stinging her eyes and blinding her, along with her tears.

  A big man in work clothes was coming around from the side of the house, and with a single expert move, he scooped Filomena up under one arm. There was nothing friendly about it. He handled her the same way he’d have picked up a runaway pig.

  “Basta! Do you want the police to come and take you to the orphanage? That’s a bad house where they put bad children, and they’ll beat you night and day. Is that where you want to go?” the man boomed in a deep voice. He was very strong, and with a few quick strides he had carried Filomena to the back of the house, where there was a smaller, plainer door that led straight into the kitchen.

  A stout woman in a greasy apron was working at a thick wooden table with a meat cleaver. She was chopping up something big and dark and bloody.

  “Here’s the new girl,” the man said, depositing Filomena like a sack of flour on the floor, which was rough stone. The woman glanced up with a sour expression.

  “At least she’s taller than Rosamaria was when they brought her. But they’re always so thin! Thin girls get sick too easily,” the fat lady complained.

  “Better feed her, then,” the man snorted as he went out the back door.

  The woman wiped her hands on her greasy apron, reached out, and, without even looking up, handed a bun to Filomena. “Go on. Eat!” the woman ordered.

  Filomena brought the stale bun to her lips. She chewed and chewed, because in spite of everything, she was hungry. There were still some salty tears in her eyes and somehow they found their way into her mouth, salting her bread. She swallowed hard.

  “Finished? You can sleep over there,” the woman said, busy putting the meat into a bowl to marinate. She jerked her head toward an alcove at the far end of the kitchen.

  Filomena followed her gaze, then walked toward the tiny alcove. There was a flattish straw mat and a tattered cover. No pillow, no lamp, no candle.

/>   The cook carried the bowl of marinating meat through a swinging door to a pantry. When she re-emerged through the swinging door she had taken off her apron. “Someday, if you work hard, you can sleep upstairs like the rest of us,” she said briefly. “And you’d better sleep. We start work at four.” She picked up an oil lamp that had been illuminating the room, and out with her went the last of the light.

  Faced with such overwhelming darkness, Filomena lay down on the mat. In this windowless place, the night was so engulfing that she pulled the blanket over her head, just so that she couldn’t see how wide and endless the darkness was. Her mind was still whirling, but exhaustion took over, and she must have dozed momentarily.

  Then she awakened with a terrible start and could not remember where she was. She seemed to be nowhere at all, abandoned by the entire world.

  “Am I dead?” she whispered. “Maybe Papa and Mama are dead, too. Maybe Mama’s train crashed and killed her and that’s why she can’t come back for me. Maybe a great tide from the sea came upon Papa’s boats and killed him and all my brothers.”

  Filomena lay there quietly, contemplating this. “Well, if I’m dead, the Virgin Mary will come for me and take me to heaven, where the sun shines all the time.”

  She closed her eyes and waited for the gentle Madonna to come and take her by the hand, like a mother who would never let go of a child who loved her so ardently. As Filomena waited, her right hand felt so unbearably empty that she clasped it with her left hand as hard as she could, as if to lock herself together so that she would not crumble into a million fragments in the darkness.

  It was quiet, at first. Then she heard some rustling sounds on the other side of the wall and was seized with a fear of what it could be. A rat? A snake? A wolf outside? A nasty tramp?

  Perhaps it was the choir of angels and saints, whispering about her. What if the saints asked Filomena what sins she had committed in order to cause her parents to cast her out like this? That was what a priest would ask.

  So Filomena lay there, reviewing every transgression, large or small, that she had committed. She searched her conscience strenuously but only ended up more bewildered than before, for she could not honestly find anything to explain why Mama and Papa had thrown her away. She decided that when the Virgin came for her, Filomena would only beg her forgiveness for whatever she’d done, and hope for her protection in exchange for the steadfast love of the penitent child that she was.

  Then Filomena heard a strange, awful wail, a keening cry. It took her a while to realize that this plaintive sound was coming from her own mouth. This would not do. The Madonna would not come for her if she misbehaved. Filomena quickly took both of her hands, one atop the other, and pressed the palms hard against her mouth, so her sobs had nowhere to go but back down her throat and into the dark blackened depths of her own heart.

  2

  Lucy

  Hell’s Kitchen, New York, 1934

  Lucy Marie was exhausted when she left Saint Clare’s hospital on a cold night in March. The emergency room was especially busy tonight: influenza, polio, rickets, and whooping cough among the children; tuberculosis in the homeless people; head injuries and crushed limbs for men hurt on the job or in a fight; syphilis for the prostitutes. Hell’s Kitchen, indeed.

  All Lucy wanted to do was get back to the rooming house where unmarried nurses lived, in time to take a warm sponge bath before all the hot water ran out. She’d had her cup of tea at the hospital; she was too tired to eat. She just wanted to bathe and climb into bed. Tomorrow was her day off. She’d eat then, and wash her red hair with a henna rinse.

  As she turned the corner, an icy wind blew straight off the Hudson River. Lucy shivered and pulled her coat collar up as far as she could, but there was no top button to keep it closed, so she had to hold it. She was only twenty years old, but when the cold sank into your bones, you felt like an old woman.

  “‘Hell’s Kitchen’ should be hot,” she muttered. “Unless hell is made of ice and wind.”

  She narrowed her eyes against the next cold gust, and because of this squint, she didn’t see an old black car pull up at the curb, until two men jumped out and surrounded her. Both wore wool caps and scarves that covered their faces except for the eyes. Each man took one of her elbows, and the taller assailant pushed a gun against the side of her thin coat.

  “Don’t scream, Nursie,” he said calmly in an Irish brogue that reminded her of the old country, “and it’ll be all right.” He smelled of gas-station grease and stale beer.

  “Who are you? What do you want from me?” she said sharply. She’d learned at an early age never to show fear. People could smell it on you, and it emboldened them.

  But they were already shoving her into the back of their car and locking the doors. The shorter man slid behind the wheel. The taller one got in the backseat with her and pushed Lucy onto the floor so that she couldn’t see much out the windows.

  “If it’s money you’re after, you’re out of luck,” she said with more bravado than she felt. “I’ve got five cents and that’s the God’s truth. Take it and let me go.”

  “We don’t want your money,” he growled. This alarmed her. The river was on their left; that much she had been able to see. They were driving toward the Bronx. She’d read too many newspapers and heard too many lurid tales of bodies that had been found under bridges or in the back lots of these boroughs, and nobody knew nor seemed to care about such corpses.

  And no one would care about her, either, come to that. The hospital staff might alert the policemen who hauled people into the emergency room; someone might check their missing persons logs. But there it would end; no family member would seek her body and give her a proper funeral. If these men dumped her in a ditch or the river, and somebody eventually found her, she’d probably end up buried on that pitiful island where prisoners were forced to dig the graves of the poor and the unclaimed. So, she could just say her prayers right now.

  All of this went through her head so vividly that she was surprised when the car arrived at their destination—only a run-down brick house in Harlem, on a street where all the houses were dark, not a single light on at this hour, the better not to see nor hear what was going on out on the grimy street.

  The shorter man stayed in the car. The other—the one with the gun—opened the door and dragged her out with him. He shoved her toward one of these narrow houses.

  The front door was unlocked. It opened on a staircase that smelled musty. He pushed her up the stairs to the top, where there was only one room. He knocked once, and another male voice said, “Come.” Her escort opened the door, thrust Lucy forward, then backed out and closed the door. She did not hear his footsteps continue down the stairs, so he must have remained outside the door.

  The room had a bed, a washstand, and a tiny lamp that shed weak light. Lucy squinted and saw a woman lying on the bed. A tattered bedspread barely covered her large belly.

  “She wasn’t supposed to have this baby. Your job is to get rid of it,” said the male voice from a chair in a dark corner. Although he was speaking to Lucy and watching her, she could not clearly see his face. But she could make out the shape of him—he was broad shouldered, stocky, and powerfully built. “Get it out and kill it,” he said calmly, as if speaking about mice.

  Lucy gulped but steeled herself. “Why me? There are others who do this sort of thing.”

  The girl on the bed spoke pleadingly to her. “Please, Miss. I saw you at the church health clinic once. I know you are good, and you try to help people in trouble.”

  Lucy assessed the situation quickly. Some gangster evidently wanted to keep this girl alive, or he’d have simply murdered her to get rid of the baby as well. This shred of sentiment might be exploitable. The pregnant girl was fifteen at most, and her hair, plastered to her perspiring face, was the same red color as Lucy’s.

  With startling force, Lucy was reminded of herself at this age, in circumstances painfully akin to these, back in Ireland. A s
weet but weak boy had fathered Lucy’s baby but then vanished, pressured by his own family. So Lucy’s father and brother had dragged her into a wagon and driven her to a “home for wayward girls,” which looked like a prison and operated like a laundry from the previous century. Some very odd nuns were in charge. The first thing they did was shave Lucy’s head—to avoid lice, they said—and she joined thirty other girls who scrubbed laundry all day long, until their babies came.

  Lucy didn’t know what cheap kind of doctor the nuns had called, that terrible night when it was “her turn”; but when it was all over, her baby son was dead and Lucy herself very nearly gone. Somehow she’d survived, even though she hadn’t cared to. And somehow, months later, when she did finally wish to live, she’d sweet-talked the man who delivered soap to their laundry into helping her escape to Dublin.

  She’d worked in a hospital just long enough to earn the fare to America. She had no possessions, no baggage; all she’d left behind was her heart, as if it were buried in the small grave along with her infant son, resting beneath the weeds that grew over it, in a makeshift cemetery behind the home for wayward girls.

  “This baby is stuck, I can’t help it,” the girl on the bed whimpered now, beseeching Lucy’s mercy with the eyes of a terrified animal.

  Lucy approached the girl to size up her condition, then concluded that she’d nursed people through worse situations than this—more difficult pregnancies, knife wounds, fatal illnesses. The Catholic hospital had trained her well, for they needed all the help they could get, and the Sisters here were kinder, happier nuns, eager to use a girl like Lucy, recognizing her potential to help them.

  Emergencies invigorated Lucy, so now her adrenaline was kicking in, overcoming her fatigue. She turned and squarely faced the man in the corner, speaking in her professionally neutral Nurse’s Voice, tinged with bossy authority in an Irish brogue that somehow carried weight in situations like this.