“Evaporated milk, that’s what your money goes to—care and feeding of the girl.”
“And what do I do about these?” I looked down to my engorged breasts.
“The milk will dry up when you’re away from the baby. It’ll take a few days, but it’ll happen. Your body knows what to do.”
“Shouldn’t I take her home for a little while, just until she’s a bit stronger, and bring her back in a couple of weeks?” I said.
“Are you planning on keeping her?” she asked, her eyes squinting at me through her glasses.
“No,” I whispered.
“Then she stays,” she said. “This is a baby we’re talking about, not a piece of furniture.”
“I know, I didn’t mean it that way.” I was already feeling awful for doing this to the poor child, abandoning her, but I told myself it was for the best. I knew she deserved a family who desperately wanted a baby, whose lives and hearts had room for her.
“It just seems wrong to separate a baby from her mother so soon,” I persisted, glancing up at her, then looking away. It was the first timeI’d used that word, “mother,” and it felt strange on my lips. “She’s so helpless.”
“Yes, well…” She made the sign of the cross, and I wondered what she must think of me. “The Blessed Mother will take care of her now.” She made the sign of the cross again. She must have thought one cross wouldn’t suffice—this poor child needed as many as she could get. “We will find her a home as soon as possible. The younger they are the more likely they are to be taken in, so the new mother can feel an attachment, as if she’s her own.”
She swaddled her and carried her to the door. “Now strip your bed and take your sheets to the laundry room, then sign your papers on the way out.” I stood frozen, though my mind was darting from one thought to the next. Should I do something, say something?
“Peace be with you,” she said, walking down the hall with the baby in her arms. And I wondered if that would ever be possible again.
It took four weeks of wearing a girdle day and night at Aunt May’s house and dining on nothing but broth and cucumbers before I could fit into my old clothes again—and just as long for the bleeding to stop. Though I looked almost the same from the outside, I was plagued by the notion that my father and brothers would notice a difference in me. I wondered if I’d been changed from the inside out.
When she found me sobbing into my sheets those first few weeks, Aunt May assured me that it was normal for me to feel that way, that sometimes women who gave birth cried a lot for no reason, even if the baby was wanted.
“What if nobody wants her?” I said one night. “What will become of her then?”
“Someone will want her,” she said, smoothing the hair back from my face. “She’s going to grow up and have a good life with someone who loves her very much. I promise you.”
CHAPTER THREE
The house on Marlborough Road in Flatbush, Brooklyn, was painted a cool mint with pink and dark green trim around the eaves and windows. All the houses on Marlborough Road were new, lined up in different hues with wraparound porches and picket fences. My parents had been sold on the location because it was desirable for families who wanted to be close to Manhattan but had an appetite for a more suburban life.
It made sense for my mother, who wouldn’t have lasted five minutes cooped up in a city apartment, and for my father, who planned to commute into Manhattan each day but would want to return home to dinner in a proper dining room and retire to the backyard for a beer after. My brothers settled in fairly well. George had started Brooklyn College in the fall and had already joined the men’s basketball team, and Junior, though he missed his buddies back home at first, soon made plenty of friends at his new school. My oldestbrother, Erwin, had been out of the house for four years already. He’d joined the navy the minute he turned seventeen—after watching so many young men go off to war when he was in his early teens, he’d vowed to do his part as soon as they’d take him, so he hadn’t even seen the new house.
The first few days after arriving in Brooklyn, I tried to quell my eagerness to bolt out the door and head into the city. I knew if I was too eager, it would backfire.
I helped my mother around the house; she’d made new curtains and wanted me to help her replace the ones she’d hung in the living room. She didn’t speak of the baby, the birth, or my time with Aunt May, so I didn’t speak of it either. It was as if the whole thing had never happened.
“What do you think?” my mother asked. “Will you look for a job in a little clothing store, like before? Maybe you’d meet some nice girls, make some friends in the neighborhood?”
“I don’t think so, Mother, being a shopgirl is very dull.”
“I don’t think it would be dull if you worked somewhere like Lord and Taylor, that gorgeous department store on Fifth Avenue.”
I rolled my eyes. The thought of selling perfume just about sent me to sleep.
“Your father’s heading into the city tomorrow morning, why don’t you see if you can ride in with him.”
“I could do that,” I said, perking up. “I mean, I suppose I could keep him company, take a look around while he’s at work.”
“Wonderful. I’d come along with you, but I’ve got some neighborhood ladies coming for tea tomorrow, and I need to bake a sponge cake in the morning.”
The next day, while my brothers were still sleeping and my mother was cooking breakfast for my father, I slipped on a yellow georgette crepe blouse and my shepherd check skirt with the big pockets. I’d been eating like a bird for the past month, anticipating meeting Mr. Ziegfeld at some point in the near future, and the skirt even felt a little loose around my waist, thank God! I buttoned up my boots, quickly removed the pins from my hair, arranged my curls and slipped into the kitchen holding my father’s briefcase.
“Good morning, Papa,” I said, sitting with him at the kitchen table. “I was thinking I might accompany you into the city today. I’m going to inquire about finding work, too.”
