November 1924
Chicago
Joe Teague said he would marry her, but he didn’t want some other man’s brat hanging around.
Though Joe Teague would love Cecily, Madeline just knew!
He’d refused even to meet her. “This is a whirlwind, darling,” he’d told Madeline. “Get caught up in it or get tossed.”
Now Cecily’s little hand was hot and sticky in hers, as Madeline—clutching in her other hand a small suitcase packed with Cecily’s extra dress, three little pairs of clean underwear; let anyone say Cecily didn’t come from people who loved her!—led her up the walk toward the imposing brick mansion. It had taken an hour and a half and four buses to get here, but the place looked as nice as Rosie from the dance hall had promised. Four stories, rows and rows of windows. That was good. There would be light. Which window would be Cecily’s?
Madeline didn’t want to cry. She didn’t want to upset Cecily.
Only three weeks ago, it was, when Joe Teague had pressed up too close, dance after ten-cent dance, then invited Madeline out for a late, late supper. He was wearing gold cuff links and six-dollar shoes. She’d ordered the pork chops with mashed potatoes, sopping up the last of the gravy with a thick hunk of white bread, and he’d said he liked to see a girl with an appetite. Only three weeks ago, and now her life was about to change. “I’ll buy you a house in Oak Park, all right?” he’d promised. “I’ll take you to see the Grand Canyon.”
Madeline was twenty-two years old, and every day she was aware: her looks wouldn’t last forever.
She crouched in the icy gravel drive and looked into the deep blue eyes of her daughter. Tommy’s eyes; Madeline loved them. She caught one of Cecily’s dark curls and twirled it around her finger. Her gloves were new, from Joe Teague. It wouldn’t do for his wife-to-be to have holes in her gloves, he’d said. Don’t you want to leave this whole sad chapter of your life behind?
She straightened her daughter’s wool cap. Tugged at the front of the little hand-me-down coat. Oh, Joe Teague would see his mistake! Madeline would make him see. This was only temporary, today! He wasn’t heartless. He was just a man. Men thought differently about things, but there were ways to set them straight. It just took a little time! And then he would welcome Cecily into their Oak Park home, they would be a family—
A thin woman with gray curls poked her head out the front door of the mansion. “May I help you?”
Madeline stood, alarmed, though she shouldn’t have been. She rested her hand on the back of Cecily’s head. “Yes! My—my daughter.”
The woman’s face softened in sympathy. “Come in out of the cold.”
Madeline led Cecily forward. There were big pillars on either side of the door, tiny octagons of tile forming a pretty pattern on the stoop, a stained-glass fleur-de-lis window in the door. A classy place, Madeline thought with satisfaction, though tears streamed down her face.
The woman, in a brown sack of a suit, asked Cecily what her name was, and Cecily told her.
“My—my husband died,” Madeline said. She had never been in such a soaring room before: marble columns, a wide staircase that started in the middle of the room and split at a landing to go up in two directions. She had never felt so small. “I can’t—can’t afford—”
“We see all sorts of women in your position, ma’am.” The woman did not seem unkind. She picked up a clipboard and asked Madeline for some information, which Madeline, voice trembling, gave. “Don’t worry, ma’am,” the woman said. “We’ll take good care of her.”
Cecily tugged Madeline’s coat. “Mama?”
“Oh, Sissy!” Madeline knelt down and hugged her like she was dying. Maybe she was. Cecily felt so sturdy, so terrifically alive, hot, in her little coat, while Madeline was brittle, cold, drifting away. “You be a good girl like Mama taught you, all right? I’ll be back for you before a mare could shake her tail. I’ll be back. Don’t forget me, Sissy. I’m going to get us everything. It’s just going to take a little time. Don’t forget me!”
Cecily had started to cry, though Madeline knew it was only because she was crying; that Cecily didn’t really understand.
“Here.” Madeline stripped off her new gloves and fumbled to open the clasps of the suitcase. “Look, I tucked in something from your daddy.” She pulled out the prayer card, on which was written Hope begins with Saint Jude. Tommy had brought it home one night early on in their time in Chicago—Madeline had no idea why, or where it was from—and leaned it up against the lamp on the dresser. More than once, she’d caught him gazing at it while he fastened his collar, as if he might actually believe praying to the saint could do some good. Madeline had scoffed every time, made terrible fun of him, in fact, and, after he’d died, she’d pressed the card to her chest and told the saint how sorry she was, and deep down she wondered if she’d prayed a little harder, to someone or something or anything, Tommy might’ve not got killed.
She didn’t think Joe Teague would like the card one bit. “Remember how I told you, Sissy? How this was one of your daddy’s favorite things?” She held the card out to Cecily, who took it in her chubby fingers and frowned down at it.
A gentle hand on Madeline’s shoulder. “It’s best if you go now, ma’am.”
Madeline’s heart pounded. “Her things—her other things are here!” She snatched the card from Cecily and dropped it into the suitcase’s inside pocket, then latched the whole thing up and stood with it in her hand, clutching her new gloves in the other. She didn’t want to give the suitcase over. “You can see how much I love her!”
The woman reached for the suitcase, took hold of the handle gently. “I know, ma’am. You’ll be back just as soon as you can. We can hold her for up to a year before she’s put up for adoption. Would you like me to check that option on the form?”
Madeline finally let go. “Yes, yes! I’ll be back.” She was putting on her gloves. “A year? Don’t be insane. I’ll be back long before a year goes by.”
Cecily was really crying now, though surely she didn’t know what a year meant—did she?
“It’s best if you go now, ma’am.”
Madeline knelt before Cecily again. “This nice lady’s going to look after you awhile, all right, Sissy? I know it’s always been just the two of us against the world, but now you’re going to have so many nice friends to play with!”
“Mama!” Cecily shouted, an objection, as if she understood now, and Madeline grabbed her into a hug again, but the woman was yanking her arm, pulling her up, ushering her out the door with gentle force.
“I’ll be back, Sissy!” Madeline yelled, then the door shut behind her, and she was out in the cold. A light snow had started to fall.
Madeline screamed into the gray of the sky. She screamed again.
A crow cawed.
Snow drifted down, settling on evergreen boughs.
And Madeline set out walking, wiping the tears from her face before they could freeze.