She pressed her lips together. “Yes, poppet, yes, you did. But it doesn’t look like you had many options.”
She walked over to me and gave my shoulder a squeeze. It was the first act of affection she’d shown toward me in the three weeks I’d been there, after all those hugs and kisses she’d bestowed upon me as a child. I wondered if it was because she’d become so used to being alone that she’d forgotten.
“I’m scared,” I said, finally letting out the words that had been twisting and turning inside my head night after night. “I’m really scared.”
“I know you are,” she said, not offering any empty promises that everything would be all right, and for that I was strangely grateful. “When you were a child you used to get more scrapes and bruises on your legs than your brothers combined. Don’t tell them that I told you this, but they used to cry and cry, and you, well, you just brushed yourself off and got on with whatever it was you were doing. You were the strongest of the four of you, always have been. You’re going to come through this. You’ll be all right, Olive, I know you will.”
* * *
When the time finally came, I packed a suitcase as I would if I were going away on a family trip, not to some Catholic boardinghouse where disgraced women gave birth.
“Are you sure I can’t have the baby here at home?” I asked. As the months went by, Aunt May’s house felt like a safe haven and I was terrified of what would happen once I left its confines.
“You’ve got the baby to think of now, Olive,” she said. “They’ll find a home for your child. That is still what you want, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said quietly, though all of this just felt so wrong. I couldn’t raise a child, not like this. I was young, I had no husband, and there were so many things I wanted to do with my life, but the thought of giving my baby away to strangers was excruciating.
“That’s what your mother wants for you, too. She gave me strict instructions to follow, so that you can get back to your family where you belong. The sooner you get through this, the sooner you can get back to your old life. Now, come on”—she put her weight on my suitcase and zipped it closed—“we don’t want you missing that train.”
She placed her hand on my belly, now firm and tight, about the size of a watermelon. “It won’t be long now.”
* * *
When I arrived, it was nothing like I’d expected. The name Birdhouse Lodge sounded quaint and peaceful, but women were four or even six to a room in bunk beds, nuns enforcing that everyone take shifts scrubbing the floors, cleaning the bathrooms, cooking in the kitchen and earning their keep right up until they gave birth.
At forty weeks I waited for my turn, terrified of the pain that was to come, that we’d all heard in the screams from the delivery room and that we’d seen in the blood that we’d washed from the sheets and towels. Up until this point it had all felt unreal. I hadn’t discussed my body’s transformation with anyone, not even Aunt May; I’d just watched my stomach grow and grow in stunned silence. But now that I was surrounded by other women with the same fate, hearing their screams, seeing their sadness, it all became frighteningly real. I lay awake at night petrified of dying, of never having the chance to live out my dreams. This is just temporary, I kept telling myself when I was down on my hands and knees scrubbing the kitchen floor, this will be over soon.
And then, one afternoon when I carried the bucket of water to the outdoor drain, I had to set it down suddenly. I’d managed with every task asked of me up until that point, trying to just get on and get this done, but at that moment it all felt too much. Everything felt too heavy—the bucket, my legs, my stomach. Extra weight seemed to be pushing down on me, even my shoulders seemed to be pulling downward. I slumped to the ground.
When one of the nuns, Sister Margaret, came to me, I told her I had to go to the bathroom, and when I did, a clump of something jellylike came out of me with my urine, which she told me was a sign that the baby would be here soon. A few hours later, after I was allowed to rest, I tried to get out of bed. I thought I needed the bathroom, but I didn’t make it: warm liquid pooled around me. After that, everything happened so fast. The contractions started, light tightening at first, but they soon progressed to painful clenching that gripped me so hard I could barely breathe. I was taken to the delivery room and positioned in the delivery chair—a school desk–like contraption with footrests to push down on and a hole where the seat would be. Other pregnant girls came in with clean towels and buckets of water, stealing terrified glances my way.
No one had prepared me for any of this, and I didn’t really understand what was happening to my body, but I’d told myself I wasn’t going to cause a fuss or yell or scream for the whole house to hear, that I was going to get through this and move on. But I couldn’t control myself. The pain became so intense it made me vomit. At times I thought I’d pass out from the agony, and I hoped I would, that I would just wake up when all this was over, but the nuns gave me smelling salts to revive me when I felt faint, and when the doctor came, he gave me a combination of morphine and scopolamine, which dulled the pain and made me woozy. I pushed and pushed and pushed, as they told me to, and the girls took away blood-soaked towels, returning with clean ones.
“There’s a lot of blood,” the doctor kept saying. “Bring more water.”
The morphine made me hot and sweaty and then cold and delirious; I was in and out of consciousness.
“Wake her up!” I’d hear someone yell, and I’d be jolted back to consciousness with the smelling salts.
“Push!” the doctor yelled. He sounded desperate, and I knew something was wrong. “Harder, push now!” He placed his hands on my stomach and pressed down. I screamed in pain.
Finally, I felt it happening. It was excruciating, but I knew it was almost over now, so I gave it all I had until I heard the sound of catlike cries.
“It’s a girl,” someone said, and I felt so relieved, but I could feel myself slipping into sleep again. The baby was wrapped and cleaned and brought to me briefly. When I held her she seemed so small and fragile; she looked at me and stopped crying for a moment, her deep blue eyes searching, confused, seeing things for the very first time.
“No time for that,” the doctor said. “Get her to the bed!” And I was picked up under the arms and shuffled to a bed nearby where they frantically stuffed towels between my legs.
When I awoke, I’d been moved to the recovery room, and Sister Margaret sat in a chair by my bed. She was holding the baby in her arms.
“Thank the Lord,” she said, standing. “She’s awake.”
I looked at the tiny bundle in her arms, wrapped in a blanket and fast asleep.
“What happened?” I asked, my throat hoarse. She brought a glass of water to my lips and I gulped it down.
“You’ve been asleep for two full days, we couldn’t wake you,” she said. It felt as if it had been longer. The doctor came over and took my temperature, looked in my eyes, listened to my heart.
“You’ve been very lucky,” he said finally. “You had childbed fever. Many women don’t make it through that, but the fever seems to have broken.” He looked at me seriously.
“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?”
“We’ll have to monitor you for a few more days.” He looked from me to Sister Margaret as if there were something else. “You hemorrhaged a lot of blood. There was a rupture in the uterus. We were able to stop the bleeding, but I’m afraid it’s done a significant amount of damage.”
“What does that mean?”
“Miss McCormick, it means you won’t be able to have any more children. Your uterus is torn.”
I’d thought, from his tone, that he was going to tell me I was dying.
“What about the baby?” I tried to get out of bed to get a look at her again. When I tried, the pain wouldn’t let me. “The baby’s okay, though, isn’t she?”
“Yes, yes,” the nun reassured me. I strained to sit up and see her face and felt a tremendous amount o
f love for the little creature, not quite like a mother, I supposed, but as if she were my baby sister. Her tiny features, her pink hands, her dark wisp of hair. I wondered if it was only relief that she was out in the world now and safe. I squeezed my eyes shut. Was she safe? She was so tiny, fragile, helpless. What would become of her?
“Is she going to live?”
“Yes,” the doctor said. “She’s perfectly healthy.”
“Good,” I said, trying to remain practical. “And me?” I asked, forcing myself to change the subject. “Will I live, too?”
“Yes,” the doctor said, almost cracking a smile. “Yes, Miss McCormick, you’re going to live. I just had to inform you of the news…” He paused and regained his serious expression. “The news that you won’t be—”
“I understand, thank you, I understand that,” I said. “It’s okay.”
The truth was, at the time I thought that it would be. I’d never even considered becoming a mother before, so the news that I couldn’t go through all this again wasn’t as devastating as they might have expected it to be. I’d been so focused on everything else that life had to offer. As the pregnancy had progressed and my stomach had grown, I’d felt a tremendous amount of responsibility to this baby, to make sure it was healthy and do my best to find her a good home, but I hadn’t considered changing my mind about the adoption. If I did, I’d be alone, I’d be disowned by my family, I’d be poor, and that was no way to raise a child. Anytime my mind wandered into those murky waters, I had reminded myself of this.
It was a full week before I was strong enough to walk around unaccompanied, and once the baby was deemed to be in good health and cleared of any abnormalities or deformities, which would have made it too difficult for them to find adoptive parents, I was told by Sister Frances it was time to leave. Tall and masculine looking in her black-and-white nun’s habit, Sister Frances wore thick glasses and had yellowing teeth.
“What will she drink if I just leave like this?” I asked.
“Evaporated milk, that’s what your money goes to—care and feeding of the girl.”
“And what do I do about these?” I looked down to my engorged breasts.
“The milk will dry up when you’re away from the baby. It’ll take a few days, but it’ll happen. Your body knows what to do.”
“Shouldn’t I take her home for a little while, just until she’s a bit stronger, and bring her back in a couple of weeks?” I said.
“Are you planning on keeping her?” she asked, her eyes squinting at me through her glasses.
“No,” I whispered.
“Then she stays,” she said. “This is a baby we’re talking about, not a piece of furniture.”
“I know, I didn’t mean it that way.” I was already feeling awful for doing this to the poor child, abandoning her, but I told myself it was for the best. I knew she deserved a family who desperately wanted a baby, whose lives and hearts had room for her.
“It just seems wrong to separate a baby from her mother so soon,” I persisted, glancing up at her, then looking away. It was the first time I’d used that word, “mother,” and it felt strange on my lips. “She’s so helpless.”
“Yes, well…” She made the sign of the cross, and I wondered what she must think of me. “The Blessed Mother will take care of her now.” She made the sign of the cross again. She must have thought one cross wouldn’t suffice—this poor child needed as many as she could get. “We will find her a home as soon as possible. The younger they are the more likely they are to be taken in, so the new mother can feel an attachment, as if she’s her own.”
She swaddled her and carried her to the door. “Now strip your bed and take your sheets to the laundry room, then sign your papers on the way out.” I stood frozen, though my mind was darting from one thought to the next. Should I do something, say something?
“Peace be with you,” she said, walking down the hall with the baby in her arms. And I wondered if that would ever be possible again.
* * *
It took four weeks of wearing a girdle day and night at Aunt May’s house and dining on nothing but broth and cucumbers before I could fit into my old clothes again—and just as long for the bleeding to stop. Though I looked almost the same from the outside, I was plagued by the notion that my father and brothers would notice a difference in me. I wondered if I’d been changed from the inside out.
When she found me sobbing into my sheets those first few weeks, Aunt May assured me that it was normal for me to feel that way, that sometimes women who gave birth cried a lot for no reason, even if the baby was wanted.
“What if nobody wants her?” I said one night. “What will become of her then?”
“Someone will want her,” she said, smoothing the hair back from my face. “She’s going to grow up and have a good life with someone who loves her very much. I promise you.”
CHAPTER THREE
The house on Marlborough Road in Flatbush, Brooklyn, was painted a cool mint with pink and dark green trim around the eaves and windows. All the houses on Marlborough Road were new, lined up in different hues with wraparound porches and picket fences. My parents had been sold on the location because it was desirable for families who wanted to be close to Manhattan but had an appetite for a more suburban life.
It made sense for my mother, who wouldn’t have lasted five minutes cooped up in a city apartment, and for my father, who planned to commute into Manhattan each day but would want to return home to dinner in a proper dining room and retire to the backyard for a beer after. My brothers settled in fairly well. George had started Brooklyn College in the fall and had already joined the men’s basketball team, and Junior, though he missed his buddies back home at first, soon made plenty of friends at his new school. My oldest brother, Erwin, had been out of the house for four years already. He’d joined the navy the minute he turned seventeen—after watching so many young men go off to war when he was in his early teens, he’d vowed to do his part as soon as they’d take him, so he hadn’t even seen the new house.
The first few days after arriving in Brooklyn, I tried to quell my eagerness to bolt out the door and head into the city. I knew if I was too eager, it would backfire.
I helped my mother around the house; she’d made new curtains and wanted me to help her replace the ones she’d hung in the living room. She didn’t speak of the baby, the birth, or my time with Aunt May, so I didn’t speak of it either. It was as if the whole thing had never happened.
“What do you think?” my mother asked. “Will you look for a job in a little clothing store, like before? Maybe you’d meet some nice girls, make some friends in the neighborhood?”
“I don’t think so, Mother, being a shopgirl is very dull.”
“I don’t think it would be dull if you worked somewhere like Lord and Taylor, that gorgeous department store on Fifth Avenue.”
I rolled my eyes. The thought of selling perfume just about sent me to sleep.
“Your father’s heading into the city tomorrow morning, why don’t you see if you can ride in with him.”
“I could do that,” I said, perking up. “I mean, I suppose I could keep him company, take a look around while he’s at work.”
“Wonderful. I’d come along with you, but I’ve got some neighborhood ladies coming for tea tomorrow, and I need to bake a sponge cake in the morning.”
* * *
The next day, while my brothers were still sleeping and my mother was cooking breakfast for my father, I slipped on a yellow georgette crepe blouse and my shepherd check skirt with the big pockets. I’d been eating like a bird for the past month, anticipating meeting Mr. Ziegfeld at some point in the near future, and the skirt even felt a little loose around my waist, thank God! I buttoned up my boots, quickly removed the pins from my hair, arranged my curls and slipped into the kitchen holding my father’s briefcase.
“Good morning, Papa,” I said, sitting with him at the kitchen table. “I was thinking I might accompany you into the
city today. I’m going to inquire about finding work, too.”
“You don’t have to do that. Your mother probably needs you here.” He shoveled a forkful of eggs into his mouth and washed it down with coffee. “I don’t know if you should wander around Manhattan unescorted.”
“Actually, it was Mother’s idea, and now that I’m finally here in New York City I’d better catch up and learn how to get around, don’t you think?”
The truth was I hadn’t a clue how to get around Manhattan, but there were streetcars and taxicabs and I had a feeling I would know exactly where I needed to go.
* * *
It was a cool March day and the energy of the city was pulsating. My father’s office was on Wall Street, so I asked the driver to drop me near Lord & Taylor.
Men in blue serge suits and charcoal pinstripes walked past me in a hurry, everyone tipping their hats against the chilled spring air. The men in this town were well dressed and handsome. Fifth Avenue was dominated by streetcars, which shared the road with the occasional horse-drawn carriage. I looked up at the enormous ten-story building, which took up an entire city block from West Thirty-eighth Street to West Thirty-ninth. I’d never seen a store so large. When the wind calmed for a moment, I felt the rays of the sun shining between the buildings that sprouted up from the concrete sidewalks. A warm summer wasn’t too far off; I could feel it.
Walking through the glass doors, I was amazed to see that people were already browsing and shopping. A dazzling selection of beaded evening purses, sequined headbands, tiaras and hair clips sparkled up at me, and I felt a thrill as I pictured the costumes and headpieces of the stage. I could feel it, the pressure of the headpiece, the contracted abdomen, the pinch of the dance shoes, as I walked toward the audience, arms outstretched, receiving the applause.
“Welcome to Lord and Taylor.” A lithe young woman startled me. “Can I assist you with the accessories, miss?”
The Show Girl Page 3