If I made money in Europe and was successful, then maybe I could return to New York able to afford a proper place to live. It might be my only chance to show that I was fit to take care of a child. An opera singer was not a chorus girl. I crossed the street, walking absently with the flow of people on the sidewalk, not knowing where I was going. I went down several more blocks, thinking one thing, then turning it on its head, feeling a glimmer of hope in one instant, feeling useless the next.
One thing I knew: I couldn’t keep falling back on the hooch to quiet the constant questions in my head, to dull the pain of all these feelings. Instead of walking into a speakeasy, I headed in the direction of Saint Agnes. I was certainly no churchgoer, but I was desperate. Maybe just being in the presence of nuns would give me the grace I needed. Dinnertime was approaching, and it wouldn’t kill me to make more of an effort with some of the girls there. A distraction, maybe, and at least they didn’t know anything about me or my past.
I sat down at the dinner table, a little sheepish for not being more sociable until now, but the girls from my floor made a space for me.
“Come and sit with us, Olive,” Betty said.
“Are you coming from work?” Helen asked.
“No, just back from visiting a friend. I had some time before my shift tonight, so I thought I’d come down for dinner.”
I helped myself to a plate of boiled chicken and carrots set out in metal dishes on the side table. The last time, the only time, really, that I’d spoken to the other girls, Kay had been about to go on a datewith a stockbroker, so I asked her how it went. She laid her head on the back of the chair and smiled, pretending to fan herself.
“Yes, tell us, how did it go?” Betty repeated, laughing. “She hasn’t stopped talking about him since.”
“He took me to the Hotel Lafayette for French food, it was grand! And I’m seeing him again Thursday!”
We laughed at the exaggerated way she swooned about him; she was obviously smitten. The girls at the other end of the table joined in, too. I’d seen them in the halls but didn’t know their names. Once the laughter subsided, one of the girls, freckle faced with ginger hair, still seemed to be chuckling. I looked over to her and realized it might be something else.
“Do you need water?” someone asked. She put one hand to her throat and the other was holding on hard to the edge of the table. Her face was getting pinker and pinker and she didn’t seem to be getting any air in or out.
“She’s choking!” someone yelled. Sister Theresa and Sister Dorothy ran into the room. “Someone help her, she’s choking!”
“Olive,” Sister Dorothy shouted, “you know what to do.”
I immediately stood up from my chair but then froze. I had no idea what to do.
“Olive!” she screamed this time. “Dosomething!”
“Do what?” I screamed back. The girl was collapsing forward now onto the table, her face turning a darker shade of red. “I don’t know any first aid.”
The nuns ran to her side. Sister Dorothy gave one mighty blow to her back and then another and another, but nothing seemed to be helping. Everyone was crowding around her now, watchinghelplessly. Sister Theresa pried her mouth open and swabbed around the back of her throat with her fingers. At last a piece of carrot dropped to the table, and the girl gasped for air.
“Thank the Lord,” Sister Theresa cried out, falling back, making the sign of the cross. They got the girl back in her chair and sitting upright. Everyone was fussing over her, getting her water, rubbing her back, but Sister Dorothy had a steely glare for me.
“Olive, in the office in ten minutes,” she said, and walked out of the room.
The girls were turning toward me, wondering, no doubt, why a nurse’s assistant couldn’t have done more. I hurried up to my room and packed my belongings back into my trunk—there was no point in prolonging this, and I rushed to get it done. I closed up the trunk with trembling fingers and went downstairs to Sister Dorothy’s office.
“Take a seat, Olive.” There were three older nuns sitting in the room, staring at me gravely, and Sister Theresa squeezed into a corner seat.
“It has come to our attention that you have not been entirely truthful with us.”
“I’m very, very sorry,” I said. I had said that so many times over the past few weeks, and I meant it. They had been nothing but kind.
“Obviously, you do not work as a nurse.”
I shook my head, my eyes glued to the floor.
“And we havejustlearned,”—she paused to glare at Sister Theresa—“that not last Thursday but the Thursday morning prior, you returned to the house later than usual, after the sun was up, smelling not of hospital disinfectant, but of cheap perfume and alcohol. You do not even workata hospital, do you, Olive.”
“No,” I said. I couldn’t believe Sister Theresa had spilled on me, but when I looked her way, she was sobbing quietly into her handkerchief. They waited for me to speak again, and the silence was painful. “I’m a show girl.”
One of them gasped. If I hadn’t been in such dire circumstances, I might have laughed. God forbid a show girl was in the house.
“I work at the Three Hundred Club, singing mostly, a little dancing,” I said. “I knew you wouldn’t let me stay if I told you the truth.”
“You’re absolutely right, we wouldn’t have. We do not condone that kind of lewd behavior among the girls who are in residence with us, and we certainly don’t appreciate being lied to,” Sister Dorothy said. “I’m afraid we are going to have to ask you to pack up your things and leave immediately.”
