My Notorious Life (13 page)

In this way, feeding me recipes and coddling over the weeks and months, Mrs. Browder dragged me out of my stupor. —Smile now, it won’t kill you, she said. —That scowl of yours will freeze that way permanent.

And it was no wonder I scowled, as she had me running up and down them infernal stairs every time the bell rang.

—You go up, my legs is old, she said.

—So’s the rest of you, said I, and grinned.

—Get out ya smart aleck. She swatted with her dishcloth.

I did what she said. She didn’t ask me to leave. Nor did the Evans. I cringed when I saw them, tucked my chin down to the top of my apron and pressed against the wall. Mrs. Evans only smiled at me through her watery eyes and said, —Why hello there, Annie, feeling better? The Doctor didn’t seem to notice me, not much.

When the bell rang at the top parlor entrance, I answered it now in my maid’s apron and cap. I thought, this is a fine job, to open the door in new shoes and a fresh apron. To me in my low class ignorance the Evans’ seemed a grand house. The cabinets in the wall was full of dishes &c. Closets opened up to be full of muffs and cloaks and boots. Such bedding and wherewithal they had there: the eyeglasses and gas lamps, hatboxes and buttonhooks, corsets and mustache wax, butcher deliveries of fresh meat, and the milkman and the iceman and the coalman coming regular. The establishment appeared splendid, though I know now that even penny shopkeepers could afford a servant and 100 Chatham was only a common row house, in a dirty area of rag sellers and pawnshops, poteen houses and music halls. The threads of the parlor carpet showed through, and the treads of the stairways was worn down to splinters. A draft came in the cracked glass of the windows, and a smell of must came up from the cellar and tainted the draperies, which was gray and greasy with lampoil smuts. Outside, a riffraff of men loitered on our stoop smoking, and left behind their filthy tobacco gobs and the oily wrappers off their lunches. I gave them hard looks and cursed them for the mess they left me to clean.

I was to instruct callers to sit on the bench and wait. If Mrs. Evans was indisposed, lying on her couch upstairs with a compress on her head, I was to send the females to Lispenard Street to see Mrs. Bird or Mrs. Costello. But, if it was a man in a hurry, asking for the midwife, I was to go get my employer, even in the middle of the night. I was not never to go in the clinic, Mrs. Browder said. This was the room off the front hall with the smoked glass in the door. —Only the doctor and Mrs. Evans go in there. You do not.

I was frightened to go near, and morbid to see it, for I heard terrible suffering sounds coming from within. Vomiting. Crying. Curses. Mrs. Evans saying, —Shh love. Shush. It was the sound of babies getting born, Mrs. Browder said. —And other Necessary Pain. Necessary Pain was not an idea I comprehended, and still do not.

*  *  *

One morning in May, near my fourteenth birthday, Mrs. Browder made a tray of breakfast and said, —You’ll take this to Adelaide in the back room. She’s cast off, poor love. Her father will not have her name mentioned in his presence.

—Why not?

—Because, you thick. Mrs. Browder gave me a look.

I took the tray up to a small room on the third floor and kicked the door open so as not to spill. There I saw a girl in bed, writing a letter. She was about eighteen years of age, and enormous with child. I put the tray down on the side table.

—What are you looking at? she said.

—Nothing.

—You’re right there, she said. —Precisely. Nothing. Nothing at all.

As she wiped at her tears I wanted to ask why was she nothing? For here she was with me to wait on her hand and foot. Her dressing gown had a lace collar and her day dress hanging off the hook was a dark green watered silk with an underskirt the color of celery, and when she wasn’t looking I fingered it, so soft to the touch.

—Hurry with that fire, can’t you? she said. She was a green sour pickle, and when she wasn’t looking I flipped the end of my thumb off the tip of my nose at her. It was wrong to cock a snook like that to a girl who might
die soon like my Mam, when the labor started, but I could not help it. She put on airs. I didn’t like her.

*  *  *

Adelaide’s time came, weeks later, in the middle of a morning. —Stay below stairs, Mrs. Browder said. I lugged in pails from the pump, my palms raw and my skirts wet with spills, up two flights to leave them outside the door. I did not hear Adelaide’s trials and was glad because I knew she was going to die and I didn’t want to pity her.

Toward evening, Mrs. Browder called for me to bring a tray of broth and bread. When I brought it upstairs there was Adelaide, a scrap of infant in her arms. She kept her eyes closed and I seen her face was pale as gravy paste. The baby let out a small bleat. Neither one was dead.

—Do you want to hold him? she asked. —His name is Vincent. She was smiling now and held Vincent toward me. I took him. His black eyes looked up at me, and even as they reminded me of my wee sister Kathleen in heaven, a smile stole over my face.

—He’s nice, I said.

—His father isn’t.

—Who’s he?

—A codfish, she said.

I laughed.

—It’s not funny. He took advantage! It was never my fault. And here I am holding the blame. The shame.

It was me holding the wee shame and I thought how mean it was, that young Vincent was called such names, innocent and small as a drop of dew on a cabbage leaf, as Mam used to say.

—Take my advice, said Adelaide. —Don’t ever let a man in a room alone with you. If he says he loves you, call him a liar. They’re all of them cheats and scoundrels.

—I’m sorry to hear it.

—Not as sorry as me. Don’t ever trust a man who says trust me, hear?

I did hear. It was the first in a long parade of lessons, and I took Adelaide’s words as my MOTTO. Because I seen she was right: Brace said trust me. Dix said trust me. Look what happened. I was abandoned no better than old socks.

Now I left Adelaide and her wee wrinkled infant to carry an armful of bloody linen down the stairs. On the landing, I nearly toppled my employer Mrs. Evans, who was on her way up, her breath shallow with effort.

—Excuse me, ma’am, I said.

—I didn’t see you.

You never see me, I thought to say. I am the mouse in the baseboard. But this time she looked hard at me, and while I don’t know what she saw, I noticed how shadows scalloped under her eyes in puffed sacks of skin, like water blisters. The dots of her pupils were small black seeds in the muddy green of her irises.

—You’ve been here some good long months now, she said. —How are you faring with us, Annie? Mrs. Browder says you are quite useful.

—She puts me to work, I said.

Mrs. Evans tucked stray hairs with a nervous motion behind her ear, and started on her way up the stairs, but I blurted my question before she got very far.

—Will Adelaide die soon? Will she?

—No, she said, startled. —Not unless the Lord has other plans.

—Mam died.

—We couldn’t save your mother. We tried. It was the hemorrhage.

—What’s the hemorrhage?

—Bleeding. Thanks to the stupidity of her assistant.

—What assistant?

—Impossible to say, unless you were there.

—I was there, I said, stricken, —it was me.

Now Mrs. Evans reared back. —You? No. It was someone else. A relative. A neighbor? I don’t recall. You did a fine job, your mother told me. She was proud of you. She said you were a proper little midwife.

I blushed and felt my mother’s praise like a touch. —Was it Bernie, then? My Aunt Bernice.

Now Mrs. Evans pinched her lips and blinked so drops of water pooled in her eyes. She was often sweaty, dew on her skin, even in the cold. —Your Bernie was only trying to help. She did what she did.

—What did she do then?

—She pulled too rough on the cord, perhaps, said Mrs. E. vaguely.

—But why?

—My, you ask a lot of questions.

—I’m told I do.

—So we must get you some answers. She took both my hands in her clammy mitts, inspecting them. —Small, she said absently, —which is an advantage.

—What advantage?

—In my profession it is. We’ll see how it goes with you.

H
ow it went was several days later Mrs. Evans summoned me. —Annie, can you say the alphabet?

—Yes ma’am.

She led me up the stairs where to my surprise she opened the door into the forbidden clinic. Behind the smoked glass I expected more secrets revealed, elixirs simmering, pickled parts preserved. But there was only an examination table, a drapery curtain, and a sideboard full of sharp and gleaming instruments that made the flesh hurt to look at them.

—These medications, Mrs. Evans said, waving her quavery hand at a glass cabinet full of vials and colored bottles, —are to be organized by alphabet.

I peered at them. The handwriting on the labels was spidery, reading Bilious Pills and Liver Invigorator, Tongue Syrup and Soothing Ointment for the Itch. There was Sanative Pills. Vermifuge. Stomach Bitters. Mrs. Evans picked up a bottle of Calomel.

—Where does this go? she asked me, and waited till I placed it to the left of Camphor. This pleased her and to myself I thanked Mrs. Temple and how she tutored me.

—If not for my alphabetical classification, the doctor would be quite at a loss. Mrs. E. looked around vaguely like it was herself at a loss, tucking at her downy hair. —It’s time you learned the system.

—I don’t want to make no mistakes, I said.

—
Any
mistakes, said Mrs. Evans. —You will not make any. She instructed me how to replace the stoppers in the vials, stow them in order, and showed me a little book where the doctor kept his formulas and recipes. When she thought I was not looking, I saw her take a small vial of liquid and put it in her pocket. Her hands trembled, holding up a brown bottle stained with drippings.

—Mercuric Chloride? she quizzed me, and watched while I put it on the shelf next to Mangrove Root. —Very good, Annie, she said, in her dreamy voice, blinking. —You’ll do fine.

*  *  *

Now in the clinic I arranged the vials on the shelf, with Aloes first, Ergot after Enema, Tansy before Tongue Syrup. Over many weeks Mrs. Evans shown me how to follow the formulas, how to tell a dram from a drop, when to use an excipient to bind the powders and when to dilute with wine or bitters, how to use the pill tile and the pill press and the scales.

—A precise dosage is important, said Mrs. Evans. There was three scruples to a dram and eight drams to the oz. One oz. of tansy would do the trick whereas two oz. would kill a woman. A dram of opium was enough to relieve suffering but a fatal dose was two drams. A drop of turpentines was a good emetic but more than that sickens. Use only ergot off the rye husk to make a powder (and remember it’s not a reliable element and may cause harm). The recipes, she said, ought to be followed EXACT.

When I finished a batch of one medicine or another I bottled it and pressed the stoppers down, labeled it and left it for the doctors. I cleaned the mortar and pestle. I wiped up drops of spills and dusted residue off the countertops. When there was patients in the clinic I was to stay below stairs. If any blood was smeared on the table or the floor afterwards, I was to clean it.

—It is only blood, Mrs. Evans said. —If it’s not yours it can’t hurt you.

—Yes ma’am.

—There’s no reason to be squeamish, no matter what you may find in the waste pail. Take it straight out back for burning.

I carried the bin outside to the pit, fascinated to look while I emptied it into the flames. One day I recognized bits of catgut suture snipped and discarded. I saw dead leeches like slices of raw liver. Another day the gauze
was dirty with excrement and yellow matter, still others it was dark with blood, gouts of flesh. I saw shavings of hair and clots of substances in strings of dark elastic liquid.

—Don’t look at it then, if it upsets you, said Mrs. Browder. —It’s just blood.

*  *  *

One morning, I discovered I had blood myself and pain stitched a lining to my insides and doubled me over groaning and when it wouldn’t stop I told Mrs. Browder.

—Will I die? I whispered.

She laughed. —You’re only a woman now, like the rest of us. And let’s hope you don’t die or I’ll have all them stairs to myself again.

It was nothing to worry over, she told me, and I should expect the Visitor every month now, so I should. She tore an old bedsheet, and handed me the strips. —Now you’re on the rag. You’ll wash these in cold water and hang them to dry, out of sight, down the cellar. And listen to me. You’ll be careful, hear? Because I’ve seen the boys in the square watching you and that Greta your friend from next door.

—She’s not my friend.

Greta was the bonded girl to Pfeiffer the shopkeeper. They were German sauerkrauts, all of them. The Pfeiffer family lived over the store, which sold notions, while Greta slept in the back of the shop. She had black hair and dimples, and though we walked to the pump and stood there morning and evening, and hung the wash out back, half the time she did not stoop herself to speak to me. Nor did I speak to her. The sauerkrauts, as Mam called them, did not like Irish nor vice versa. They stank of pickle.