The Gilded Hour (4 page)

She remembered the war and the way the ground shook and the air itself seemed to scream. And when the worst had passed and everything and everyone was gone, she remembered the day Mrs. Jamison came to fetch her away from home. They boarded the steamboat
Queen Esther
on the big wide muddy green Mississippi and she watched the city disappear behind her.

Sophie would not share her story with Mrs. Campbell because people—most especially white people—born and raised in the north could not, would not understand what New Orleans had been. Sophie hardly understood it herself.

But her unwillingness to answer questions roused her patient’s suspicions. Between contractions she wanted to know how long Sophie had been a midwife, how many births she had attended. A deep line had appeared between her brows. “You do have training, I hope. Dr. Heath wouldn’t send someone without training.”

“Yes,” Sophie said, unable to keep the sharp edge out of her voice. “I am a fully trained physician.”

There was a startled pause. “Oh come now,” Janine Campbell said with a half laugh. “You don’t believe that yourself.”

Sophie could have recited the names of the seven black women who graduated from medical schools in Philadelphia and Montreal and New York before her, but it would do no good; she could no more relieve Mrs. Campbell of her willful ignorance than her labor pains. Instead she said, “I’m going to make you some tea that will help move this child along.”

•   •   •

M
IDMORNING
S
OPHIE
PUT
a large, very loud boy with tufts of gingery curls in his mother’s arms. Mrs. Campbell, panting still, lay back against the pillows and closed her eyes.

“He’s a fine healthy baby,” Sophie said. “Alert and vigorous.”

“He is disgustingly fat,” said his mother. “I wanted a girl.”

The baby rooted and found the nipple; she arched her back as though to dislodge a pest and let out a small shuddering sound.

As Sophie worked to deliver the afterbirth Mrs. Campbell lay staring at the ceiling and ignoring the infant at her breast. From the window Sophie had opened came the sound of the street on a busy Monday morning. Horse carts, omnibuses, hand trucks; knife sharpeners and fishmongers calling out for customers, the wind rocking the spindly apple trees that took up most of the tiny yard behind the house. Nearby a dog barked a warning.

Sophie hummed to herself while she bathed the baby, cleaned his umbilicus, dressed and swaddled him. He was solid and hot and full of life, and he had been born to a mother who could see him only as a burden.

There were tears running down Mrs. Campbell’s face to wet the pillow when Sophie put her child back into her arms.

Women cried after giving birth for all kinds of reasons. Joy, relief, excitement, terror. Mrs. Campbell’s tears were none of those. She was exhausted and frustrated and on the edge of the dark place where new mothers sometimes went for days or weeks. Some never returned.

“I don’t like to cry,” she announced to the ceiling. “You’ll think me weak.”

“I think no such thing,” Sophie said. “I imagine you must be very worn out. Do you have no sisters or relatives to help you? Four little children and a household is more than anyone should have to manage without help.”

“Archer says his mother raised six boys and never had a girl to help. He told me so when he first came courting, back home, that was. I wish I had thought it all through right then and there. I’d still be working at the Bangor post office. In my good shirtwaist with a sprig of forsythia pinned to my collar.”

The most Sophie could do for her was to listen.

“The worst of it is, he wants six sons of his own. It’s a competition with his brothers, and I fear he won’t let up. He’ll keep me breeding until he’s satisfied. Or I’m dead.”

As Sophie worked, Mrs. Campbell told her things she would be embarrassed to remember in a few hours. If Sophie said nothing, the new mother would be free to forget about the secrets she had whispered, and to whom she had said them.

Mrs. Campbell was drifting off to a well-earned sleep when she suddenly shook herself awake.

“Have you heard about Dr. Garrison?”

Sophie was glad she was facing away in that moment, because it gave her a chance to school her expression.

“Yes,” she said. “I’ve followed along in the newspaper.”

There was a long silence. When she turned around Mrs. Campbell said, “If you are a physician, could you—”

“No,” Sophie interrupted her. “I’m sorry.”

Mrs. Campbell heard only the regret in Sophie’s voice, and she pushed harder. “Another one too soon will kill me, I know it. I have money saved—”

Sophie set her face in uncompromising lines as she turned. “By law I can’t even talk to you about contraceptives or—anything similar. I can’t give you a name or an address. If you know about Mrs. Garrison, you must know that the mails are not safe.”

Mrs. Campbell closed her eyes and nodded. “I do know about the mails,” she said. “Of course I know. Mr. Campbell makes sure that I know.”

Sophie swallowed the bile that rose into her throat and reminded herself what was at stake.

W
HEN
THEY
HAD
shepherded the children off the ferry, Mary Augustin let out a sigh of relief to discover that there were three omnibuses waiting for them. Even better, as far as she was concerned, were the four sisters who had come to help with almost thirty desperately frightened and unhappy children. Ten children and two sisters in each omnibus was manageable. Sister Ignatia was difficult in many ways, but she had no equal when it came to planning.

Mary Augustin had just crouched down to encourage a trembling and teary six-year-old called Georgio when an older man came off the ferry, walking very slowly. As soon as he was on solid ground he simply sat down where he stood and began to fan himself with his hat. There was sweat on his brow and his color was ashen. This might be simple seasickness or something far worse; Mary Augustin tried to get Sister Ignatia’s attention, but at that moment a scuffle broke out in the crowd of people waiting to board for the next crossing.

Two dockworkers stood nose to nose shouting at each other, both of them strapped with muscle and both decidedly drunk. Punches were thrown and bystanders darted out of the way, some laughing and others looking disgusted, while all the time the old man sat and fanned himself and tried to catch a breath. Mary Augustin divided her attention between moving the orphans farther away and the old man who might be having a heart attack, and so she only saw what came next from the corner of her eye.

One of the longshoremen shoved the other with such force that he went staggering back with an almost comical look of surprise on his face. Bystanders jumped out of the way of his pinwheeling arms, and in fact the man seemed to be losing momentum when his feet got caught up in someone’s canvas sack. In his last desperate attempt to regain his balance he
flung out both arms, and one fist slammed into Salvatore Ruggerio, eleven years old, newly orphaned, who had gone closer to watch the fight but now stood frozen with shock.

Man and boy went over the edge of the dock, backward. There was a single heartbeat of utter silence, and then the crowd erupted.

Sister Ignatia was shouting, her voice like a bullhorn over the noise. “Move the children! Get them away!”

And still Mary Augustin hesitated, turning to watch as three men, one of them in the long navy coat of a patrolman, jumped into the water. Just beyond him the old man Mary Augustin feared was having a heart attack had jumped to his feet to watch the drama, as nimble as a boy of ten.

•   •   •

O
NE
OF
THE
omnibuses had already left and so Mary Augustin got her charges onto the second one as quickly and calmly as could be managed. She was hesitating about whether to go see if she was needed on the dock when Sister Ignatia came marching up and grabbed her by the elbow to turn her around.

Her color was high but otherwise she wasn’t even breathing hard. “The boy knocked his head. That patrolman”—she pointed with her chin—“wants the third bus to take him and that idiot drunkard to St. Vincent’s.” She paused as if an unwelcome thought had come to her and then shouted over her shoulder, as forceful as a general.

“Officer! We’ll take the boy to St. Vincent’s and nowhere else! Do you understand me?”

The patrolman, young enough to be Sister Ignatia’s grandson, swallowed visibly and nodded, but she had already turned her attention back to Mary Augustin. “So you’ll have to get all the rest of the children into this bus. Sister Constance will come along and you’ll just have to squeeze together. I’ll see about the boy—” She hesitated.

“Salvatore Ruggerio.”

“Ruggerio,” Sister Ignatia echoed. “And send word when I’ve spoken to the doctors. Now get these children away. They’ve seen enough.”

•   •   •

R
OSA
R
USSO
CONFRONTED
Mary Augustin as soon as she had climbed up into the omnibus. Anger and sorrow and disappointment all vied for the upper hand, but anger won.

“My brothers,” she said. “They took my brothers away.”

The separation had been inevitable, but it would have been handled more sensitively if not for the chaos on the dock.

Mary Augustin said, “There are two buildings at St. Patrick’s. One for girls and one for boys. You can see the boys’ building just across the way, and that’s where your brothers will be.”

At least to start,
Mary Augustin added to herself.

Since she had come to the orphan asylum she had seen children handle such separations too often to count. More often than she cared to remember. Some of them were too numb to react at all, while others collapsed or struck out. Rosa simply stood her ground. Her eyes were swimming with tears but she didn’t allow them to fall. She seemed to be struggling to say something, or not to say something.

“Come sit by me,” Mary Augustin said. “And I’ll answer your questions as best I can.”

But Rosa went back to sit next to her little sister, the two of them sharing their seat with other girls.

It was just then that she realized that the omnibus had turned from Christopher Street onto Waverly Place. She was wondering if the driver knew where he was supposed to take them when Washington Square Park came into view and she made her way forward to the box, swaying with the jerking of the bus over paving stones.

The driver was no more than a boy, but he handled the horses with ease and took no offense at her question.

“Your little ones need quieting,” he said, keeping his eyes on the road and the traffic. “Upset as they are. I thought I’d take them through the park, distract them a little from that sad business at the ferry.”

It was something Mary Augustin had yet to figure out, how it could be that some city dwellers were so coarse and rude, while others showed tremendous kindness and generosity of spirit. She thanked the driver and went back to her place, signaling to Sister Constance that all was well.

And in fact the children had quieted. All of them were turned toward the windows, leaning against each other to make the most of the space available, pointing to things they couldn’t name. With some effort, she summoned her Italian and tried to put names to things they asked about.

They pointed to trees and walkways and children being pushed in
prams, to the houses that lined Waverly Place, tall redbrick homes that must look like palaces to children who grew up in tenements.

Rosa Russo wanted to know what kind of people would live in such a place, if they were kings and queens.

“Just people,” Mary Augustin told her. “Families.”

Her eyes narrowing, Rosa said, “Do you know any of those families?”

Mary bit back her smile. “Not in these houses. But down the street”—she pointed down Waverly—“you see the building with the towers?”

“A church,” Rosa said.

Mary Augustin was sure it wasn’t a church, but neither did she know what such a grand building might be. The driver rescued her by calling over his shoulder.

“That’s New York University,” he said. “Looks a lot like a church, I’ll grant you that.”

“Rosa,” Sister Mary Augustin said, “I do know somebody who lives just ahead, and so do you. Dr. Savard, who examined you before we got on the ferry. She lives a little beyond the university, with her aunt and cousin in a house with angels over the door, and a great big garden, as big as the house itself. With a pergola. And chickens.”

There was absolute silence while Rosa translated for the other children, and then a dozen more questions came shooting at her. Mary Augustin answered and Rosa translated while the horses plodded forward under trees heavy with buds just beginning to open to the sun.

•   •   •

T
HE
DUTY
SERGEANT
at 333 Mulberry looked up through a twisted thicket of graying brows and ran his gaze over Jack Mezzanotte, from beard stubble down to the highly polished shoes and back again. Then he shook his head slowly, like a long-suffering teacher.

“Better get a move on, Mezzanotte. They’re about to start the meeting without you.”

“Had to change,” Jack called over his shoulder as he sprinted up the stairs two at a time. Really he should have stopped to see the barber—he ran a hand over the bristle on his jaw—but better unshaved than late. He paused long enough to make sure that his collar was straight and slipped into the back of the room, where thirty of New York’s detectives sat talking among themselves, steadfastly ignoring the men at the front of the room.

He found a chair next to his partner in the last row. Oscar Maroney had a dearly held theory, one Jack had never been able to disprove: it was best to be humorless and forgettable while in the station house. Invisibility was a valuable skill that had to be practiced. But today Maroney was violating his own rule, because the expression on his face was anything but blank. Oscar was not just unhappy, but unhappy in a way that he would not be able to keep to himself.

“Brace yourself, Jack.” Maroney could summon, temper, or banish his brogue as needed, and now it simmered just below the surface. “Comstock’s on the hunt for victims. Pardon, I mean volunteers.” He wrinkled his substantial nose and lifted a lip at the same time so that his mustache jumped. He had a wide range of insulted, angry, accusatory, and reproachful expressions, and he used more than a few of them now.

Jack turned his attention to the front of the room, where the captain stood leaning against the wall, arms folded, chin on his chest. Front and center was the focus of Oscar’s hate. Anthony Comstock, dressed as he always was, summer and winter, in a black wool suit somber enough for a pulpit.

The postal inspector was a squat, solid plug of a man with muttonchop whiskers that stood out like bristles on the face of a boar, a shiny pale pate, and a small mouth as well defined as a woman’s. He had the censorious gaze of a bantam rooster, his eyes darting back and forth, ready to draw blood to keep his flock in line. Eager to draw blood. He was a bully of the first order, the worst Jack had ever seen in a career populated by bullies.

Baker knocked on the wall to get their attention, and Comstock threw his shoulders back and raised his arms like an orchestra conductor.

“My name and mission will be well known to you,” he began. “I am Anthony Comstock, senior inspector of the Society for the Suppression of Vice
and
special agent to the post office by appointment of the postmaster general of the president’s cabinet. I’m here to talk to you as officers of the law about a matter of grave importance.”

He drew in a ponderous breath that filled his cheeks and escaped with a soft hiss.

“Any God-fearing, thinking man knows that lust is the boon companion of all other crimes. In their wisdom the Congress of this great country has vested me with the responsibility to stop the posting, sale, loan, exhibition,
advertisement, publishing, dissemination, or possession of the obscene and profane. You will all be familiar with the kinds of materials I’m talking about—” He paused, brows raised, as though he hoped someone would contradict him. Jack saw now that there was a small box beside him on the desk on which he rested a fist as if to keep some vermin safely within.

“His own personal treasure chest,” Maroney said in a low voice, following Jack’s gaze. “The Larkin brothers are determined to have it before he leaves the building.”

There were five Larkin brothers on the force, two of them sergeant detectives sitting in the front row, two more roundsmen on duty somewhere in the city, and the youngest new to the force. Good officers, for the most part, but irreverent practical jokers of the first order, a leaning that would have cost them friends if they had not practiced on each other with such obvious enjoyment. But they couldn’t be called incorruptible.

Of course, Comstock was by far the biggest crook, and worse, he was spiteful, vengeful, and mean to the bone. In Comstock’s case Jack could not begrudge the Larkins whatever larceny they were planning.

Comstock was saying, “It is also my duty to seize any drug or instrument of any kind that may interfere with conception or bring on abortion. Items I have seized range from informational booklets to objects made of rubber and designed for immoral purposes. The punishment for the guilty is severe. Anyone engaged in these pursuits is subject to a sentence of hard labor for a minimum of six months and a maximum of five years, and a fine of up to two thousand dollars.”

He paused to survey the room. Most of the squad looked back at him as if they were deaf and hadn’t taken in a word, while a few others—Maroney among them—were openly contemptuous.

“In the last years we agents of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice have seized and destroyed more than twenty-five tons of obscene tracts and photographs, six hundred pounds of books, some twenty thousand stereopticon plates, almost a hundred thousand rubber articles, six hundred decks of indecent playing cards, forty thousand pounds of aphrodisiacs, and eight tons of gambling and lottery materials.” He looked around the room but did not find the acknowledgment he believed his due. He coughed nervously and went on in a grimmer tone.