The Next Day May 1892 Chicago, Illinois

Mary Agnes wakes with a pounding headache. She feels like her head is in a vise, a thud thud thud resonating in her head. She starts to get up but falls back on the pillow.

Where am I?

The cracked ceiling weeps with moisture; faded wallpaper peels from the seams. She bolts upright and her eyes sting. This is not her room.

And her dress! She gasps as she shimmies her stained dress to cover her behind. Where are her stockings? Her shoes? It comes to her in a rush, the dancing, the drink, the narrow alleyway, the kisses, the stairs. And then Rooster on top of her, heaving. What had he called her? Rose?

Mary Agnes moves to the edge of the bed and takes in the rest of the room. She feels ill. On the table, a note.

To my Irish Rose, thanks for a good time. R.

Her legs are sticky as she rushes to gather her ripped stockings and scuffed shoes. She forces the shoes onto her bare feet and balls the stockings.

Where is my purse?

She looks on the chair, beneath the table, and spies it on the doorknob. Opening it, her compact clatters to the floor. The two dollars she had stashed inside is gone. At least she is still wearing her pearl earrings. She feels for her hairpins, stuffs the stockings into the purse, and grabs her wrap. She only hopes she’s remembered the streets in this neighborhood well enough to get back to the boardinghouse.

“LOOK AT THE SCRAPE YOU’VE GOTTEN INTO,” Helen says. “Now what will people think?” They sit on narrow beds in the room they share at the boardinghouse.

“I told you, it’s a waste of time to worry about what other people think,” Mary Agnes says. Do I believe that? “I’ve got enough to worry about on my own.” She runs her hand over her stomach. She missed her last monthly and her breasts are tender. It can only mean one thing, what her gram—and Mrs. Rutherford—warned her about: Fast lads. However will I care for a child? Alone?

As if Helen can read her mind, she says, “Maybe you should go to the good sisters. They’ll take care of everything.”

“Not a chance. I’d like to keep this a secret for as long as I can, Helen. The Coffey girl back home, the one I told you about, taken advantage of by boys in our town? Her parents sent her to the nunnery. They took the babe away from her, Helen. Took her away! I didn’t come all this way to have that done to me. It may seem contrary to want a child under these circumstances, but I can’t blame it on the child.”

“You’ll have to move.”

“That I know.” However will I manage?

Thankfully, she still has her job at Tremont House. But that won’t last long, she’s nauseous most mornings and feels sluggish. It won’t be long before someone suspects that which will be evident very soon.

When she is called to Mr. Winters’ office the following month, it can only mean one thing. She is not even ushered into the manager’s office. The smug male secretary looks at her midsection and scoffs as he hands her an envelope. “That will be all, Miss Halligan.” The word stings.

“Sacked?” Helen says.

Mary Agnes nods. “If the girls have noticed at the Tremont, they’ll certainly notice here. I don’t want that shame piled on top of the shame I already feel.”

The next day, she walks for hours asking at different boardinghouses. No and no are the answers. She crosses into rougher territory, hoping to find lodging soon. It’s snowing and the wind off Lake Michigan runs through her like a knife.

At a rundown tenement off South Robey—far worse than the tenement in New York—she sees a small sign: To Let. Mary Agnes knocks and an older Italian woman opens the door.

“You’ve a room, Mrs.—?”

“Spinnelli. You’d be Irish then? Are you Catholic? I only rent to Catholics.”

Mary Agnes nods. The woman eyes her suspiciously, mumbles, and leads Mary Agnes up three flights of stairs to an unheated attic room, carrying under her arm a set of sheets. Mrs. Spinnelli opens the garret door and plops the sheets on a cot under a dormer window. Beyond the window, Mary Agnes sees rooftops and chimneys and smoke through the snow. It must be thirty degrees in the room, she can see her breath.

“Do you have a blanket?” she asks.

“That will be two dollars.”

“For a blanket?”

“For the week. No charge for a blanket.” Mrs. Spinnelli turns to leave.

“What is the address here?” Mary Agnes asks. “For my employer?” Not that I have a job.

“Just say Mrs. Spinnelli, Back of the Yards.”

Mary Agnes counts herself lucky, cheap lodgings, no questions asked. She will have to watch herself here in this rough neighborhood and secure a new job within a week. She is in no danger of meeting anyone she knows in this part of town. Of course, she will miss the girls at the rooming house and especially Helen. In the meantime, Mrs. Spinnelli does not ask why Mary Agnes has come to her or is willing to pay for an unheated garret. It must be written all over her face.

“We’ll have no male visitors here,” Mrs. Spinnelli says sternly before she leaves the room, eyeing Mary Agnes’s stomach beneath her cloak.

“There won’t be,” Mary Agnes replies. “I’ve no interest in male visitors. None at all.”