My Notorious Life (15 page)

I know how to cook a turtle soup and how to make biscuits rise. Also how to mix throat powder and the plaster for gowt. I can do remedies and medicines. Our mother axed would I find you and Joe. It was her dying wish dearest Dutch I do not know where they buried her or Kathleen but I promised a solemn oath to find you and Joe. She made me swear I would and I will.

How I would get the letter to Dutch, I didn’t know. It never occurred to me to write to Mr. Brace or search out the Dix, so I wrote not expecting my words to find their intended reader.

Dutchie where is Joe? I have not had no news of him nor you for these two years. Please tell me how you are and do you still remember me? I promised our Mother I would take care of you but that promise is broken. Before she died I promised again to find you. Far away there in Illinois do you think of me? I am called Annie now. Please write back to me please. I am sorry for the news of our Mother and having to tell it to you.

Love your sister Axie Ann Muldoon.

It was an ignorant attempt written by a low girl of the wretched class but that was not my concern. What I cared about was my promise to Mam and how would I get my letter to Dutch? I folded the pages and tucked them beneath my pillow. The paper was crumpled and stained from days of labor, and there it stayed for weeks as I sucked my tortured thumb and gnawed my knuckles through all the nights, and every day worked upstairs and downstairs and grew further into a small weedy girl with a head of long black hair which I kept braided and under my cap like a secret tangled fury to be unraveled. My own face surprised me when I caught a glimpse of it in the mirror with its big red mouth and dark fringe of lashes and the
look of an angry wound about the blue eyes. Red spots erupted from my face like evidence of the terrible wrongs inflicted on me. My fingers was grimed with ash from the grates and blacking grease off the stove. Some days I sang Bantry Boy in the kitchen with Mrs. Browder and other times I banged the pots and cursed, so that she called me Axie the Dread. She watched me lately like she wished to catch me up to no good.

*  *  *

—What is this? Mrs. Browder demanded one morning when I came in from the clothesline. —What is the meaning of this?

I was frightened, for Mrs. Browder had a temper when she drank and had marrowed me good on occasion, once for eating all the grapes and another time for hoarding crackers in my apron. She had an apple in her hand and three walnuts, along with the pages of my letter, the paper gray with pencil and effort.

—I moved your cot to retrieve an onion that rolled underneath, and this dropped out from the folds of the bedding.

—It’s only the one apple. I swear it.

She brandished my paper. —What is THIS?

—It’s mine. Give it to me.

—You never said you had a sister. Or a brother.

I began to cry.

—There now love, there there, tell Mrs. B.

—I am not your love. I am no one’s love.

—There now, sure you are, so you are. She coaxed me until I told her at last about Mr. Brace and the two Dix and the orphan train and the Reverend Temple and his wife. She listened with watery eyes and murmured Poor Lost Lamb, then took me by one hand with the letter in the other and pulled me up the stairs to Mrs. Evans, who was reclining on her sofa. She sat up and blinked at the light. —I’m just resting, she said. A dew of sweat was on her forehead.

Surely I would be put out now. For lying. For stealing Mrs. Evans’ good paper. For saying in the letter that Dr. Evans had a wart on his eyelid.

—Read this, said Mrs. Browder.

Mrs. Evans read. Her face grew soft and she put her fluttery hand on the flat bone of her breast. —Why didn’t you tell us you had a brother and sister?

—I’ll never do it again, I told them.

They were not angry. Mrs. Evans gave me a lozenge, as well as an envelope and a stamp, and showed me how to address the letter so it would go to the General P.O., in Rockford, Illinois. Kindly Forward, she wrote on the outside in her witchety writing.

—You should have asked us to help you find them, Mrs. Evans said. —I’ll write to the Children’s Aid Society myself. Your Mr. Brace is very famous, did you know?

I did not know. I did not care. His nose was an eggplant.

Then she told me to run down the street and post the letter, which I did, fast as my boots would go.

That night in a corner of the kitchen ceiling the ghost face of my mother Mary Muldoon floated above my cot in a gauze, the fringe of her eyelashes dark against her pale cheek.
You must find them,
her spirit said again as it always did. I chewed my sheet and nursed my thumb till morning.

Weeks passed and then months, but I heard nothing. Not a letter or a word. Mrs. Evans got a communication from the Aid Society: We regret to say that we are unable to keep records of all the orphans who travel on our trains. They did not have any address for either Dutch or Joe Muldoon. It seemed my sister and brother was lost to me for good now, worse than that Clementine in the song Mrs. Browder sang sometimes while mixing tallow and lye for soap.
Dreadful sorry. Gone forever.
But Don’t Despair, said Mrs. Evans, for the mail kept arriving regular, didn’t it?—One day when you least expect it, you will get word, said she. —Someone will turn up.

*  *  *

It was true that strangers turned up on our doorstep daily, and while none of them was a Muldoon of my dreams, Frances Harkness arrived at 100 Chatham Street one May evening when I was fifteen years of age. It was Sunday, Browder’s day off. Mrs. Evans and the doctor were gone to see a play on the Bowery. I was in the library reading by the last light of the window—The Principles of Midwifery, a chapter called Plurality of Children or Monsters about mongoloids and attached twins—when the front bell rang.

—Go away, said I under my breath.

My instructions was never accept a patient when nobody was home. I kept reading in my struggle with words such as parturition and ligament. I
was eager to get to the chapter called Case Requiring the Crochet. The bell rang again with great urgency.

—D*** you, I cried and flang the book. Through the window I spied a bonneted woman leaning on the door and doubled over, her hand across her mouth. I went and opened the door.

—You must help me, she said, gasping. She was about twenty years of age, freckled, with ginger hair in ringlets.

—The midwife is not at home.

—Please, she said through her teeth. —Help.

—Mrs. Watkins of Lispenard Street will attend you.

—Please, let me in. Her face contorted, and she pushed past me into the house.

—Oh my, she gasped. She sank to her knees and reared her head back. And I am sorry to say she reminded me of a cur baying at the moon. Her breathing was rapid and keening. —I am going to have a baby, she said, like I hadn’t guessed. —Please cover me.

I ran to the clinic and came back with a rubber sheet and a blanket, and as she tossed and turned, in a sweat of fear I placed the rubber sheet beneath her and the blanket over her knees. Though I now had traveled twice with Mrs. Evans to attend a laboring female and witnessed the PARTURITION of two more mothers lying-in upstairs here on Chatham Street, never had I acted the part of midwife at the blessed event itself and now I prayed mightily for Mrs. Evans to get here fast and spare me the spectacle. But the guest on the floor was wasting no time and with embarrassment she requested quite urgent that I help remove her undergarments, PLEASE NOW, so I did, but not willingly. The sheet made a tent over her knees. She moaned and carried on so I was afraid that because Mrs. Evans was not here, this girl would die like Mam. I did not know her name. I only held her hand for dear life and ran for water and a cloth to bathe her head, but she pushed me away viciously and labored on, until she was in one long spasm too far down in her own pain to shoo me off. The veins stood out in her neck till her face was the color of beetroots.
Press the right hand steadily against the fundament below the birthplace
was the lesson I remembered, and so while I was revolted to look, I done what I could by pressing firmly to prevent her rupture, so nervous and disturbed. Remembering a further lesson I felt gingerly around the little neck for the navel string and did not
find it. As there seemed not more for me to do I held on to the stranger’s hands till she gave a curdled cry and lay back.

We both was crying now for different causes and it took a moment before I mustered the courage to lift the blanket while she cried, —Don’t see! Then I raised a corner of her damp skirt, and there in that mess of blue roping and red gore was a baby boy. I picked him up. He was slippery but I laid him on her stomach and folded a corner of the blanket around his naked form. —Do not move from there, I said, like she might escape.

In the clinic I found the catgut sutures and the bandage shears. My patient remained spent and breathless on the floor.

—What are you doing? she cried when she saw the shears.

—The cord. You have to cut it.

—Don’t cut anything, she cried in fright. —You are only a child.

—I am the midwife assistant, I told her, promoting myself.

Helpless against me, she closed her eyes. For the second time in my young life then, and no less frightened, I tied a baby’s umbilicus, cut between the ties. I brought the infant to the mother’s shoulder and settled it there naked. At last we heard the Evans keys in the door.

—Mrs. Evans!

—What’s all this? the doctor said.

—Annie, what’s happened here? Mrs. Evans knelt down beside the patient, who looked up with fear.

—She nearly had it on the steps outside, I said. —I had to let her in.

Mrs. Evans gave me a peculiar look. —Run and get a basin, then. Go on, quick.

I ran and got the basin. Mrs. Evans was on her old sorry knees and had her hand on the patient’s abdomen, but addressed me now, instructing, —See here, Annie, watch. You must never pull the cord to expel the mass, but only press on the stomach gently. Mrs. Evans pressed on the patient as she talked. —You’ll wait till she delivers the afterbirth on her own, hear? It’s only when some fool comes along and pulls that you get the flooding and fevers, because when it breaks and a portion remains behind it festers until it’s deadly.

Which happened to my mother, I thought, and prepared to ask a question, but Mrs. Evans ordered, very brisk, —Now Annie you’ll bring me gauze pads and bandages.

When I came back, she handed me the full basin, covered with a cloth.

The bowl was heavy as I brung it down the stairs and the mess in it sloshed about. In the kitchen, I lifted the cloth and there lay a reddish pudding in a translucent white sack, with veins like dark worms branching from a stalk. This was the mystery then, was it? Afterbirth. A dark mess of meat. Out back the pit was covered in black flies. They jumped up and swarmed when I dumped the bowl. I buried the whole works over with dirt and went back inside, up the stairs, where my employer handed the baby to me. —You’ll clean him up with a damp sponge, she said.

In the clinic I laid him on the table. He was no bigger than a minute. His black eyes stared at the air like it was interesting. The branches of blue veins was a netting under his scalp, and his heart beat in the soft fontanel there. I stroked his wee cheek and his mouth turned toward the touch of my hand. I washed him and brought him back to his mother, whose face broke with helplessness and wonder.

—Mrs. Harkness will stay upstairs tonight, said Mrs. Evans.

With great effort we got Frances to her feet. She smiled very weak at me and said shyly, —I do not know your name.

—This is Annie, said Mrs. Evans. —She is my assistant.

Thus without ceremony nor a raise in my salary of ZERO dollars was I promoted official.

*  *  *

In the early morning two days later I went upstairs to lay the fires, and there Frances was, nursing her infant. —Good morning Mrs. Harkness, I said.

—Good morning, said she, very quiet, —but I am not Mrs. anyone.

—Why not? I said.

—His father died.

—I am sorry for your loss.

—I loved him, she said, and looked down at the child in her arms. —I still do.

These words startled me, as I had not heard this variation, about Love. Previous to now all I heard was about Liars and Sweet Talkers, and Good-for-Nothing Sots such as Mr. Duffy, and Scoundrels who Forced a girl alone in a room. I busied myself at the fireplace, adjusting the damper, and listened for more such information. I was not disappointed, for while Frances
Harkness did not linger long at Chatham Street, she taught me a lesson I carry with me to this day.

—Could you help me to get out of bed please, Annie?

I took her hands and pulled her to her feet.

—Thank you. Slowly she went to her satchel and removed a packet of papers, which she put under the pillow of the bed.

—Those are his letters? I asked.

—You are very forward.

—I was raised wrong.

—Well. Since you asked. He wrote me every day. A poem or a letter.

—I am sorry for your loss.

—Thank you, she said, sadly. —Not everybody is.

—Who isn’t?

—My mother and father. They did not like him. He was a schoolteacher.

—I never did like a schoolteacher myself.

—Ha, she laughed. —Then you don’t like me.

—You’re a schoolteacher?

—Not since I was found to be in disgrace.

I got up and took the coal scuttle with me toward the door.

—Can’t you stay for a while? she asked. —I used to read poetry in the evening with my students. Would you read with me? A book was open on the bed beside her.

—I am not so good of a reader, I said, shy in front of a schoolmistress.

—I will teach you then, indebted as I am to you for your kindness in my hour of confinement. I do love Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Do you know her Sonnets from the Portuguese? Sit a moment longer. It’s been so long since I had any company. Please stay.

She made me sit beside her on the bed and opened her book and had me read aloud very halting.