Never Love a Stranger

M
RS
. C
OZZOLINA
tasted the soup. it was rich and thick, tomatoey, and with just the right touch of garlic. She smacked her lips—it was good. With a sigh she turned back to the table where she had been stuffing ravioli with shredded chicken. It had been a long, hot June day but now it was beginning to grow damp. The sky outside had grown darker and she had had to turn on the light in the kitchen.

“These American girls,” she was thinking as her pudgy fingers lightly shaped the dough and poked bits of chicken into them, the sweat damp on her forehead and just over her lips where the slight dark shadow of a moustache was visible. “Planning babies so they don’t have to carry them in the summer! Who ever heard of such a thing? Why in the old country,” she smiled, thinking of when she was young, “they just had them. You didn’t plan children there.” She had a right to think the American girls were foolish. She was a midwife and business had been bad all summer, and she had seven children of her own to feed since her husband had died.

Somewhere in the darkness of the house the doorbell rang. She picked her head up at the sound and cocked it to one side as she tried to think who it might be. None of her customers was due until next month, and she came to the conclusion it was a pedlar. “Maria,” she shouted, her voice echoing through the dim hallways, “go and see who’s at the door.” Her voice was harsh from many years of shouting at her children and at the pedlars on the street from whom she bought most of her foodstuffs.

There was no reply. Again the doorbell rang, this time it had a harsh, strident, demanding tone. Reluctantly she wiped her hands on her apron and went through the long narrow corridor to the front door. Through the coloured panes of glass in the window she could make out a dim shape. She opened the door.

A girl was standing there, a small suit-case on the steps near her. Her face was thin and drawn, but her eyes glowed with the warm, frightened luminosity, much like an animal’s in the dark. She was obviously pregnant, and to Mrs. Cozzolina’s experienced eye was in her last month. “Are you the midwife?” The voice was soft but somehow afraid.

“Yes, madam,” said Mrs. Cozzolina. She knew a lady when she saw one. There was something about them that stood out even when they had fallen upon hard times.

“I’m sorry to bother you but I’m new in New York and I—” The girl stopped a minute as a tremor seemed to run through her body. “My time has come,” she said simply, “and I have no place to go.”

Mrs. Cozzolina was silent for a few seconds. If she took the girl in that meant Maria would have to be turned out of her room and Maria wouldn’t like that. She didn’t like to sleep with her sisters. And maybe the girl didn’t have any money; maybe she wasn’t even married. Automatically her glance went to the girl’s hand. There was a small gold ring on her finger.

“I—I have some money,” the girl ventured, reading Mrs. Cozzolina’s mind. “But I have no room,” Mrs. Cozzolina said.

“You must have,” the girl insisted. “I haven’t time to go anywhere else. And I saw your sign, ‘Midwife’.”

Mrs. Cozzolina gave in. Maria would have to sleep with her sisters whether she liked it or not. “Come in,” she said to the girl, and took her bag.

The girl followed Mrs. Cozzolina through the dim hallway and up a flight of steps to Maria’s room. It was light there and she could look out and see a row of three-storey brownstone tenements and a boy cutting pigeons from his flock with a long pole from a near-by roof.

“Take off your jacket,” Mrs. Cozzolina said, “and become comfortable.” She helped the girl undress and lie down on the bed. “How long ago did the pains start to come?” she asked.

“About an hour ago,” the girl said. “I knew I couldn’t go any further. I had to stop.”

Mrs. Cozzolina examined her. The girl felt a little nervous. This wasn’t how she had planned to have her baby. It was supposed to be in a hospital with George somewhere near by, somehow always hovering in the background to reassure her that things would turn out all right; or home where you could sense the presence of people who loved you and were near you, where you could draw courage from them. This was so different. She was a little afraid.

Mrs. Cozzolina straightened up. The girl was small—she was built small; she would have a hard time. The passageway was too narrow for the baby to come down easily. Anyway, she had about six or seven hours to go; maybe she would dilate more than you could expect. That was always a wonderful thing to see; now a girl turned into a woman capable of bringing forth a child under your eyes. But this looked as if it would be difficult. Mrs. Cozzolina had a feeling about it, but nothing of what she thought showed in her face. “You have some time to wait.” She smiled at the girl. “But don’t worry, it will be all right. I know; I have seven myself.”

The girl smiled back tremulously. “Thank you, thank you very much.”

“Now you try to get some sleep,” Mrs. Cozzolina said, moving towards the door. “I’ll come up in a few hours and see how you are feeling. A little sleep before is always a good thing.” She went out and down the stairs. It wasn’t until she had almost finished cooking supper that she remembered she hadn’t asked the girl’s name. “Well,” she thought, “I’ll do it when I go back upstairs,” and turned to finish her cooking.

The girl had shut her eyes and had tried to sleep, but she wasn’t sleeping. Thoughts kept trailing through her mind slowly, like distant scenes through a train window—home and George. Those were the two important things her mind always came back to: home and George. “I wonder what they think of me now? And George, where did he go?” She was supposed to meet him that day. It was a long time ago.

It had been raining and she had left the apartment to meet him on the corner near the restaurant. The wind had been blowing and she was chilled and had waited two hours before she went home again. She had called his office in the morning and they told her he left last night at his regular time but he hadn’t come in as yet. And he disappeared.

She. hadn’t heard from him since, hadn’t seen him, and she couldn’t understand it. This wasn’t like him. He wasn’t that kind of a man. Something terrible must have happened to him.

She looked out the window and wondered what time it was. It had become dark, and occasionally she heard thunder rolling in the distance and could see flashes of lightning, but it hadn’t started to rain. The air hung heavy and oppressive around her, and she could hear the clink of dishes and subdued voices coming up from the kitchen, and smell the thick, heavy odour of cooking that came in through the partly open window, for the kitchen was directly below the room she was in.

When the children began to come in for supper, Mrs. Cozzolina had shushed them, telling them to be quiet for there was someone upstairs. Maria had made a fuss over her room but by now she had subsided because her mother promised her something when this case was over. They finished eating and Mrs. Cozzolina looked up at the clock on the icebox. It was eight o’clock. She jumped to her feet. The poor thing had been lying alone upstairs for almost four hours and they hadn’t heard a cry from her. The girl had courage, Mrs. Cozzolina thought, thinking of the women whose giving birth was three quarters vocal and one quarter effort on their part.

Telling the girls to do the dishes, she went upstairs to the girl’s room. “How you feeling?” she asked the girl.

“All right,” answered the girl quietly,” I guess.”

“How often are the pains coming?” asked Mrs. Cozzolina, bending forward to examine her again.

“It seems like about every half-hour,” said the girl.

“That’s good,” said Mrs. Cozzolina as she straightened up. But it wasn’t—there was no dilation at all. She went downstairs and ordered the girls to keep hot water and clean towels ready.

It was near midnight when the storm broke loose over the city. It was near midnight that the baby started to come. The girl just lay there quietly, her mouth grimly shut, holding the towel tied around the bedpost and writhing in pain. Her face was white and her eyes were wide, black pools of fear.

It was near two o’clock in the morning when Mrs. Cozzolina sent her oldest son to get Doctor Buonaventa from the corner. And on the way back, she added, it wouldn’t hurt to stop by the parish house and get a priest.

She watched the doctor cut the girl open and take the blue, squirming child from her belly. She slapped the life into it and heard his angry protest at leaving his warm and comfortable shelter. She watched the doctor work frantically to save the girl’s life. And she knew he had lost when he motioned for the priest to take over. And as the priest stood over the girl she knelt by the side of the bed and prayed.

Because the girl was so young and so brave.

Because she had lost her own husband and knew that this girl too had lost.

The girl turned to her and smiled a little. There was a question in her eyes. Mrs. Cozzolina held the crying baby to her and put it down beside her. The girl looked down at it and rested her head against his little head and began to close her eyes.

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