PENNY'S PILLOW was damp with sweat when the noise wrenched her awake. Glancing around the strange room, filled with the faint glimmer of sunrise, she wondered where she was. But as that inhuman bawling tore through the open window, she remembered. In seconds she was dressed, then dashing out the door, across the dew-damp lawn where she nearly tripped over the enamel pan she had left there the night before. The geese slept soundly, their heads tucked beneath their wings, as she bolted to the edge of the pasture. The Holstein pressed against the gate, the boards creaking against her bulk. Left in the pasture all night and aching to be milked.
"I'm coming, girl," Penny called out before slipping into the barn to hunt for the milking pail and stool.
"Easy now." She set the stool down and positioned the bucket under the udder. Her mother had taught her to milk cows, had told her not to be afraid of them. Honestly, the animal frightened her less than the woman in the farmhouse.
The memory came back to her of shattered sleep, charging up the stairs in the night to the screaming baby, who needed to be fed and changed. She didn't want to think about the look the Maagdenbergh woman, still groggy from the ether, had given her when she had burst into the room, switched on the light, and tended to the baby.
After carrying the milk to the kitchen, she fired up the stove and set water on to boil so she could sterilize the baby bottle. Dr. Lovell had told her to keep the baby on sugar water for a second day, yet it seemed a shame when there was such an abundance of milk. Outside the geese awoke and the chickens squawked, wanting to be fed. They would have to wait until after breakfast when she carried the leftovers and slops out. In the woodlot, the birds sang louder than they ever had in town, as loud as though it were the first day of creation. Except they didn't sound sweet but savage, like wild things that would peck out her eyes if she gave them half a chance.
She went into the pantry to see what she could cook for breakfast. There on the shelf, between the soup cans and boxes of oatmeal and Cream of Wheat, were at least twenty packets of Dr. Nod's Sleeping Powder. Enough to kill a horse, Penny thought. She grabbed an open box of Cream of Wheat from the shelf and returned to the kitchen.
When she carried the breakfast tray up to the bedroom, the Maagdenbergh woman's face was pale, her lips colorless, her eyes swollen with bruised-looking circles beneath them. Penny stepped forward, about to say that she had to change the baby's diaper and her napkin. But in the Maagdenbergh woman's silence, she found it hard to speak. Although she didn't seem to have the strength to lift her head from the pillow, the woman's eyes were sharp and full of fire.
"Who are you?" The way she framed the question, it sounded as though she were asking her for far more than her name.
"Penny Niebeck." But even this information Penny offered indecisively. The Maagdenbergh woman's scrutiny left her reeling, uncertain who she really was. "You saw me at Renfew's yesterday morning," she added, but the woman regarded her blankly, appearing to have forgotten the incident.
"Who sent you here? There was a doctor yesterday, as I seem to recall." She spoke harshly. "Did he put you up to it?"
"You were looking for a hired girl."
For a second she looked as if she were going to laugh. "You came for my ad?"
"I'm not staying. I'll be gone as soon as you're on your feet again." It seemed best to be honest about it.
She nodded. "You're too young for this." Then her voice trailed off, her face going white as the bedclothes. "Is there tea?" She sounded feeble as she glanced at the tray on the bedside table.
Penny poured her a cup, but when she tried to give it to her, the Maagdenbergh woman's hands were so unsteady, she feared she would spill it all over herself. So Penny pulled her up a little, leaned her against the bedstead, and held the cup to her mouth, tilting it so she could drink. The woman's eyes were downcast. Penny sensed her pride, her rage at her own helplessness, at this terrible intimacy neither of them had bargained for. She drank four cups of tea before allowing Penny to start spooning the Cream of Wheat into her mouth. In the silence following breakfast, Penny gave the baby her bottle and changed her diaper. Even though she had done it a few times already, it still terrified her, trying to fasten the fresh diaper around those twitching legs, making sure the safety pin was pointed away from the baby's flesh so it wouldn't poke into her belly if it accidentally came undone.
Now came the most embarrassing part. Penny picked up the box of Kotex napkins Dr. Lovell had left on the dresser. "Excuse me, ma'am, I have to..."
"I'll do it myself. Just help me to the bathroom." Grabbing the bedpost, she pulled herself upright and planted her bare feet on the floor. Penny put an arm around her and walked her to the bathroom across the hall. She thought about the stitches she had down there. Even walking must hurt.
"Thank you," the Maagdenbergh woman muttered, taking the box of Kotex and shutting the door.
On the second day, when Penny carried up the breakfast tray, she found the Maagdenbergh woman nursing the baby at her breast. The woman pulled up the sheet, blocking Penny's view. Penny set the warm sterilized bottle of cow's milk on the bedside table, but the Maagdenbergh woman ignored it. Although it seemed to sap the life out of her, she kept on nursing, even managed to burp the baby before sinking back into the bedclothes.
"She's been eating and drinking," Penny told Dr. Lovell when he arrived a few hours later. "She still seems pretty weak, though."
"Needs her iron." He handed Penny a bundle wrapped in gray butcher's paper. "Put that in the icebox. That's calf liver. Now let me go up and have a look at her." After he had washed his hands, Penny led him up the stairs.
"Who is it?" Pushing herself upright, the Maagdenbergh woman glared at the doctor.
"This is Dr. Lovell, ma'am. He's here to—"
"Thank you, Penny," he cut in. "I won't be needing you just now. Why don't you go down to the kitchen and start frying that liver for Mrs. Egan's lunch?"
"She will stay right where she is." The Maagdenbergh woman turned to Penny. "As long as he's here, I want you here, too." She grabbed Penny's wrist, her fingers sinking into her.
Dr. Lovell proceeded with the examination. Each time he touched her, she flinched and squeezed Penny's wrist. "Will you hurry that up?"
"I'll have to come back in a few days to remove your stitches," he said thinly. "Now, if you would be so kind as to provide the information I need to fill out your daughter's birth certificate, Mrs. Egan."
"My name is Cora Viney."
Dr. Lovell cast an exasperated look at Penny. "Have you chosen a name for your daughter?" He got his fountain pen and a form out of his bag. From where she stood, Penny could make out the heading: CERTIFICATE OF LIVE BIRTH.
"Phoebe Helena." Her voice was less grating now. "Phoebe Helena Viney."
Penny had never heard the name Phoebe before. It sounded pretty, like some kind of songbird. Meanwhile Dr. Lovell filled out the form, using the marble-top dresser as a writing surface. The baby lay wriggling at her mother's side, her mouth opening in a silent cry. Releasing Penny's wrist, the Maagdenbergh woman picked up the baby, rocking her gently.
"I need the mother's full name and date of birth," said Dr. Lovell.
"Cora Elizabeth Viney," she said. "May 11, 1898."
"Birthplace?"
"Puerto Natales, Chile."
"Ma'am, I have no time for—"
"Puerto Natales, Chile," she said again. "It's written on my birth certificate if you don't believe me. Do I have to spell it for you?" Impatiently she rattled off the letters.
Penny glanced at her sideways. So she had been born in Chile, not Argentina, as Mr. Renfew had believed. It was still all the way at the bottom of the world. Maybe her foreign birth accounted for some things and explained her strangeness.
"Do you have any other children that are now living?" the doctor asked.
"None."
"Any fetal deaths? A fetal death would be, for example, a miscarriage..."
"You don't have to tell me what fetal deaths are." She spoke in a tone of quiet rage that left a chill on Penny. "Yes. One." Her eyes seemed to sink all the way back in their sockets.
Dr. Lovell was silent for a moment. Then he glanced up and cleared his throat. "Ma'am, I'll need the father's full name, age, and date of birth."
"Unknown," she said with a ghastly smile.
"Surely you don't take me for an ignoramus," he said. "I think you know that lying about a child's paternity is a crime."
"That certificate isn't worth anything until I sign it." She wrapped her arms around the baby. "You'll never get a signature from me unless you write unknown."
The baby opened her mouth to suck, rooting against her mother's chest. As she started to cry, the front of the Maagdenbergh woman's nightgown— my nightgown that she's wearing, Penny thought—darkened as her breasts began to flow.
"Get him out of the room." Although she addressed Penny, her eyes were on the doctor, glowering at him until he walked out the door.
"There aren't very many educated city women who do it that way anymore," he whispered when Penny followed him out into the hallway. "But it figures, doesn't it? She has to be so contrary."
After she finished nursing, Dr. Lovell showed her the filled-out birth certificate. She inspected it for what seemed to Penny to be an absurd length of time.
"How can you purport that my daughter was born at three forty-six P.M. if you weren't even there?"
Dr. Lovell pursed his lips. "It's an estimation, ma'am. Do you have any objection to that?"
Peeking over her shoulder, Penny saw that he had followed the Maagdenbergh woman's instructions—after Father's Name, he had written unknown. Finally she took his fountain pen and signed her maiden name at the bottom.
When Dr. Lovell left, Penny prepared the Maagdenbergh woman's lunch of fried liver and creamed spinach, and served it to her with a glass of fresh milk.
The Maagdenbergh woman's argument with the doctor still rang in Penny's head as she fished the dirty diapers out of the soaking pail and plunged them into the bubbling wash kettle on the stove. Sweat poured down her face as she put the diapers through the wringer, then hung them up to dry. The sheets soiled from the Maagdenbergh woman's labor took a good boiling and a bottle of bleach before they looked decent again. She washed the tea towels that the Maagdenbergh woman had used when she burped the baby. By the time she took the laundry down from the line and folded it, she had to start preparing the evening meal.
Penny regarded the pile of clean diapers and then her raw wrinkled fingers. It hardly seemed worth the effort, considering that by the next day the diapers would all be filthy again.
After serving the Maagdenbergh woman's supper of fried liver and mashed potatoes, Penny threw the leftovers in the slop pail and dragged it out to the chicken coop. She poured half the mess in their feed dish. When the roosting hens bustled over to eat, Penny stole their eggs, still warm from their feathered bellies, and tucked them inside her apron pockets. She fed the rest of the slops to the geese, who didn't attack her anymore. When she walked down to the barn to put the cow in for the night, they followed her, but kept a respectful distance.
At the end of the day, Penny concluded that her work here was harder than anything she had ever done at the Hamiltons'. When the Maagdenbergh woman and the baby went to sleep, Penny bathed in cool water and decided to turn in early. It felt a little funny to be sleeping in Roy Hanson's bed, though. She kept picturing him with his elaborately pomaded hair and his strutting walk. Her mother used to say he reminded her of a bantam rooster. He'd certainly left his mark behind on the room—there was a cigarette burn in the rug and an old almanac with his name in it. When she drew back the sheets, she noticed something sticking out between the mattress and springs. Tugging on the end, she pulled out a slim booklet with a blazing red cover and curlicue letters spelling The Gallery of Love. She snorted. Since when did men like Roy Hanson read romance stories? When she opened it, she found no stories at all, just pictures of naked ladies. Some of them were plump with monstrously large bosoms. Others were so slender, it looked as though a person could break them as easily as snapping a twig. Their lips were painted, their cheeks darkly rouged. Some of them had long loose hair tumbling down their backs. Some had bobbed hair; others had elaborate coiffures. They posed on velvet sofas and bentwood chairs, their lacy underthings falling off them like petals from a flower. The pictures made her giggle, her hand clapped to her mouth.
Then she turned to a picture that made everything stand still. She didn't hear the kitchen clock ticking, didn't hear the cicadas outside. If Phoebe had started screaming, she wouldn't have heard that either. On a satin-covered bed, a man embraced a woman. This time the man's body was revealed. He was beautiful and young with his long muscled legs, his smooth chest, his slim hard hips. His penis rose from the hair of his crotch. Penny tittered, nervous and uncertain, the blood rushing to her face as her eyes traveled up his body to his arms, his hands that cradled the woman's face. She was pretty. Delicate and blond, not as heavily made up as the other ladies in the booklet. Her eyes were locked with his. The way they looked at each other, that gaze that was as tender and fierce as the way the Maagdenbergh woman looked at her baby, but different. Of course it was different. The man's face was so gentle, the way his dark hair fell over his brow. Penny felt as though she was in the same room as them, not looking at a book of dirty pictures. She studied the way the man's eyes drank in the woman with such longing.
Penny's hand shook when she finally turned the page to a picture of a naked lady riding a rocking horse. Were there any more pictures of that man? Stuck between the pages of the booklet were loose pictures of more naked bodies. Flipping through them, she came to a picture of two ladies kissing and fondling each other. The sight was so preposterous that she quickly flipped to the next loose picture, which made her nervous laughter die. On a bearskin rug, a woman cowered on her hands and knees. She was gagged, her eyes bulging in pain. A hairy man came at her from behind and mounted her like a dog. In one hand he held a horsewhip. It was so ugly and hurtful, yet for half a minute or more she couldn't look away. Her throat clamped shut as she nearly choked on her own saliva.
She remembered the way Roy used to visit the Hamiltons' kitchen and mooch coffee off her mother, the way he used to gawk at her mother's behind. Did he think about her mother when he ogled these pictures? Something hard struck her in the belly. Did her mother let Mr. H. do such hateful things to her? Penny told herself she was sick for even looking at such pictures. She burned The Gallery of Love in the kitchen stove, but as the flames consumed the photographs she felt a flicker of regret that she was burning the picture of the beautiful man along with all the others.
Taking her suitcase, she marched upstairs in search of another bed. The house was silent, the Maagdenbergh woman's door shut. Penny pushed the other doors open to see what lay behind them. With a flick of the electric light switch, the rooms revealed themselves. The bathroom, a room that looked as if it had once been a sewing room, then a second bedroom where lilies bloomed on chintz curtains. There was a secretary desk and shelves of books. Penny sat gingerly on the lace-covered bed. This room was at least as nice as Irene Hamilton's. True, it didn't have a window seat, but look at the silver-backed brush on the dresser. Look at that lamp with the fringed satin shade. She pulled the switch and was bathed in a circle of light. Her bare feet touched the edge of an Oriental rug, and then her mind was made up. For her few remaining days at the house, she would sleep here. Her place as hired girl was in the room off the kitchen, but after all she had been through, would the Maagdenbergh woman hold it against her for wanting to stay in a nice room? It made it easier to change the baby's diapers in the middle of the night. If the Maagdenbergh woman needed her, she'd be right across the hall.
She went to the bookcase and pulled a thick book off the shelf, puzzling over the words in a language she couldn't read. It was probably Dutch. Old man Van den Maagdenbergh had come from Holland when he was young, or so she had heard. At first glance, the foreign words were incomprehensible, then she realized it was the Bible. Irene thought she was so important because she was learning French in high school. Had she ever even looked at a Dutch book?
Another book had its spine sticking out from the others. Someone must have been reading it recently. Self-Reliance and Other Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson. The closely set paragraphs looked tedious until she found a marked page and an underlined sentence: "If solitude is proud, so is society vulgar."
Vulgar. Roy's awful book of pictures paraded through her mind. Solitude. She considered her lonely trips to Renfew's to buy bleach, the loneliness that was eating away at her like the laundry soap that ate into her hands when she washed that endless stream of diapers. Solitude. She conjured up another picture, this time seeing it as something beautiful—standing at the edge of a pristine lake, toes in the calm water.
Flipping through the book, she came to the inner leaf. In the top right-hand corner was the Maagdenbergh woman's name, her married name, written in beautiful handwriting. Mrs. Cora Egan. She had brought this book along when she ran away from her husband, carried it all the way from Evanston, Illinois. Penny reckoned it was probably one of the few things she had kept from her old life.