My Notorious Life (32 page)

Now I mixed the solution and took the female syringe from among Mrs. Evans’ tools and filled it. I brought it to Greta by the window. Little stutters of breath came out of her.

—I will have to bathe you now, I said.

Greta did not speak, only looked at me with eyes white and bulging like a horse gone down in the street. —Do it. Hurry, Gott d*** you.

I administered the solution directly into the narrow neck of the organ within, pressing the bulb and as I worked she moaned and vomited again and I was sick myself. I went across the room and was sick where she did not see me and then went back to her. Her skin was pale as eggshell and clammy. Shaky I fed her sips of water while she whimpered and was so dizzy, she said. I gave her the last dose of laudanum I had left over from Mrs. Evans. —Keep that down now it’s all I have. It will dull you down.

After you have cleansed her you must grip a roll of gauze which again with the long instrument you will guide into the opening, but only so far as where you can pack it, leaving just a tail of material about an inch or two protruding down into the cavity for it will open the portal and nature will ease the rest of the way.
I done this with trepidation and difficulty over fifteen minutes as my patient thrashed and tossed her head wild on the pillow, the sheet clamped between her teeth.

—There, there, shh. Done, I said at last.

My friend wept. I climbed next to her in the bed. —I am sorry, I am so sorry. I stroked her poor infested hoory head and cried along with her. It would be a choir when the babies awoke, I told her, the four of us crying for a bottle. —If only you and me had ourselves some gin, I said, and she laughed at that but not for real.

—In thirty minutes, I said, —maybe longer, the bleeding will start up strongly, and you’ll have cramps so terrible you will feel you are dying but you won’t die, and after some hours you’ll remove the gauze plug and be relieved of the rest of the obstruction once and for all.

—If I die, she said quietly, —you will take Willi.

—Yes.

—Promise.

—Yes.

—Thank you, she whispered.

*  *  *

Many hours later while she slept at last, I took the basin. Inside was no more than small clots of viscera, soft like giblets. I tried not to see it but failed, and whether it was from accident or some terrible fascination I could not avoid confronting the fruits of my mercy. It was a red clump not bigger than a walnut. There in its midst was a pale tracing outlined in the shape of
a hand, like the stump-fingered hand of a wee monster or a fish if fish had hands, the bones translucent. It was the tiny mitt of a salamander which is a fairy spirit who lives in fire. To the fire is where this sprout was given, for it was not alive yet, no more than a seed is alive, never quick at all, at all. What came to mind then was that Bible Mrs. Evans read, the words something like
better the miscarriage, for it never sees the sun, nor knows anything, and better is the one who has never existed for it knows not the evil that is.
And I reasoned that to deliver it now was only to prevent a death or a doomed orphan, to save my friend, and my friend’s son. Still I shuddered, for a spirit had passed its touch along my spine. Did I feel I had done a murder? No. I felt I had done a mercy. And yet I was altered ever since, for the tracing of bone I seen was the outline of what might have been and now wasn’t, because of me, and I knew myself after that to have the soul of a midwife, who could live with the complexities.

S
ome hours later Charlie’s boots thundered on the stairs, and then he was at the door hungry for his dinner. I went with our daughter in my arms and stopped him.

—Don’t go in.

—How can you keep me from my own house? For what reason? His temper was up, fast. —Out of the way.

—Greta’s here. In our bed.

—With a customer? What? Have we started a cat house?

My nerves was unraveled enough already and so when he called my friend a flagabout I flown straight off the handle and shot him across the face with the flat of my hand. —What do you know about anything? I cried, shocked at myself.

And he slapped me back, right across the cheek.

Annabelle started up crying and he’d have struck me again, if she hadn’t. —Da, she sobbed, with her two year old tears, —Da! as he reeled away, into the hall.

—I’ll be leaving now then Mrs. Jones before I wale on you again, he said, flexing his knuckles.

—Charlie.

—I’m gone. He started down the stairs.

—Da, Annabelle cried, her voice echoing in the stairwell. —Wheresa mousie, Da?

Charlie stopped. He clutched at his heart for she had got him right in it.

—Mousie? she said. It was a game Belle had with him, for he’d convinced her he had a creature named Whiskers in his pocket. —Da?

Unable to resist her Charlie returned, smoldering at me and winking at his daughter, the whole family in a welter of confusion. He reached in his pocket where he pretended to find the mouse. —Here he is! he cried. —Whiskers! Acting like he was not furious he placed the pretend creature on Annabelle’s head, and ran his fingers down her back and pointed toward the floorboards. —Look! he cried, as if it had run off. —Gone.

And our little girl laughed and laughed. It never failed. —Again!

I quieted her and sent her toddling back inside where I could hear her call for us through the door I shut, so she would not see her father leaving her mother once and for all because of what I done. —Mam!

—There’s no call to use your FISTS, Charlie said, his voice scary.

—There’s no call to say Greta’s a HOOR.

—She is, though, ain’t she? I saw her myself in the streets flagging about in her petticoat.

—And you never mentioned nothing of it?

—It’s well known in the taverns your Greta’s a dirty shake, Charlie said. —AND she has a child.

—That same child is here too. Her boy.

My husband cursed. The print of my hand was red on his cheek, his eyes dark. —The devil is going on, he said, helplesslike and confused.

—Charlie, I cried now very quiet so the neighbors would not open their doors for a free drama. And I told him. What I done. Scrape, I said. Blood. I said it was in the bin.

—H***, he said, and worse. —You want to tempt the devil on us, is that right? And the traps?

—Greta ASKED me.

—If she asked you to light yourself on FIRE, would you do it?

—It’s what she WANTED. To save her own life. And the boy’s too.

—But it’s not right.

—It’s not wrong neither, is it? If I didn’t, she’d’ve done it herself, with a piece of whalebone from a corset.

—Then LET her do it herself. Do you want to bring the traps on us and lose everything? All our earnings?

—She would die, don’t you know? What’s more the traps don’t care and never bothered Evans and they won’t bother us over this neither. It was the one time.

—Is that what you were doing there, then, on Chatham Street?

—None of your business, I said. —It’s women’s private matters.

He stared at me like I was a stranger. Like he imagined in grim pictures what I done with Mrs. Evans. What I done for my friend. I feared what he thought of me, and how I would disgust him, and that he would leave me. —What else would you have me do? I cried. —Leave Greta on the road? With her boy no bigger than a minute? Weren’t me and you orphans once? And don’t we know their chances? And don’t we see them on every corner? The little ones with no mothers?

With each of my questions he flinched. —Well, he said, and steadied himself against the banister. —I’ve seen her boy—

He stopped then. In all the words he didn’t say it was plain he was brooding about when the traps found him years ago, starved on the docks, singing McGinty, three years old, same size as Willi and dirty as a pigeon nest. He never did know why his own mother lost him.

—I’ll be off then, he said, very gruff. —It’s not a man’s place.

He didn’t say where he was going or if he’d be back. He only took off clattering down the stairs, despite my calling after him and our wee girl crying inside for her Da and that Mouse.

*  *  *

I made supper. Greta half slept on the bed with her boy quiet beside her. Annabelle played on the floorboards with her bucket of corks, the stoppers of malt bottles and mustard jars, all of them made into cork dolls by her Dad. He’d carved heads in the corks and drew faces on. No matter that she had a real china doll now like I never had, buttercup hair and rosebud mouth. She liked these poor corks better, giving them nonsense names: Gagala and Glowpin. Watching her play so sweet I cursed my own hot temper, sorry I hit Charlie and argued. For sure he’d never come back this time because of what I done for my friend.

And my friend was in a bad way. She stirred in the bed and then stood up gingerly. She glanced at us where we ate our salt pork and apples and walked over to the chamber pot. Vomited right in it.

Her son sat on the bed and whimpered. —Ma.

—Axie, said Greta. She held her belly doubled forward, and I went to the bed where I gave her whiskey and took her boy up in my arms.

—C’mon son, I said, and brung him over to Annabelle playing on the floor. The two
Kinder
as Greta called them watched each other very solemn. Annabelle then presented the boy a cork. He took it in his grimy fingers. Tasted it. She smiled and tasted one, too, copying him. They had a laugh over it, the monkeys.

Greta was back on the bed now. —Pull your knees to the chest, I said. And she folded herself into an egg, her eyes shut. All night the poor woman bled and moaned and cursed. I lay alongside her and crooned soft words. I helped her to sit and walk and helped her back to the bed. I emptied the basin. She would die, I thought. What had I done? There was nothing left of her. Her face was the boiled color of suet.

Charlie did not come home. Not by supper the next day. Not by midnight. He was dead drunk in a cat house. Was he?

Annabelle asked, —Where’s my Da?

I snapped at her, —He’s back when he’s back.

—He’ll have some trinket on the side somewhere, Greta said, with a smirk, feeling better, evidently. —
Ein kleines Schmuckstück.

—Don’t say that. Don’t say
Schmuckstück
to me.

—They all do.

—They don’t, I said. —Not all.

—I would know.

—So you would, wouldn’t you? I said, very nasty, but she gave me a look so hurt I took it back. —Sorry. Still, was she right? The idea had its rat teeth in me again. That Charlie had a piece of trade somewheres.
Schmuckstück
. He was with her at this minute. While I emptied the bin in the gutter and bottled tablets in the kitchen, he whispered in her baubled ear. He loomed over her painted lips in pictures formed by my jealous demons. I was half mad with imagining it.

*  *  *

Days passed. My friend and patient Greta was not dead. She was well, brushing her hair, minding Willi and Annabelle. There they were on the floor, banging spoons on pots. Willi was cleaned up nice, too. His hair was the pale color of wax beans, not dark like his mother’s. She said his father was a big Swede in military boots. She sang the children beer hall songs and called them
Liebchen
and made them little rolls sprinkled with sugar called kugel and irritated me with her habit of eating sunflower nuts and dropping the cracked shells like black scabs all over the floor. I was more than irritable, I was beside myself.

At dinner on the fourth day Charlie walked in.

—Halloo, he said, wary like he might sail off again if the wind was wrong. —How’s the women?

Belle charged him and he swung her up and kissed her. Greta left us alone, taking the children to the back room.

—Did you miss me? Charlie said.

I kept up chopping the cabbage, shredding it to white ribbons.

—Mrs. Jones, I asked a question. Did you miss me?

—Where’ve YOU been? My knife whacked the wood block with angry chops.

—In Trenton, New Jersey, where I contracted with an agent to sell your Remedy. Thus earning us fifty percent of what business she does, so don’t cast your disbelieving eyes on me, Mrs. Jones.

—Four DAYS you were gone.

—Four days is a blink. A swallow of spit. Four days. Pfft.

—Where were you in FACT?

—Like I said. Contracting an agent in Trenton.

—What more was you contracting?

—You’re a jealous f***ing cat, aren’t you? Where ELSE was I supposed to go, then, with you running a hoors’ hospital here in my own home and saying it’s a woman’s place not fit for a man?

—YOU said that, not me.

—Who would blame me if I sought comfort elsewheres? he cried —Which I did NOT. Instead yours truly was sleeping on a hard bench of a traveling coach in my working boots and laid up in a terrible inn and here I am back now. And yet when I ask, did you miss me? you chop the cabbage like it was my own head! A fine fiddler’s welcome. He stormed
about the room, swallowing whiskey, flinging his shirt off, collar and cuffs, so I seen the old pale scars on his back again and was reminded anew I wasn’t the only one with no mother. The two of us never would trust no one, I thought. I nursed my suspicions over him and prepared for further argument.