CHAPTER 4 Evelyn

LATE FALL, 1960

Evelyn wakes suddenly as a high-pitched moan floats into the room from the dormitory across the hall.

It’s the early hours of the morning. That time just before dawn when the light is blue-gray and everything is silent, the world is waiting for the curtain to rise, and the night dwellers—the nocturnal animals, criminals, and thieves—are slinking back to the darkness of their dens before the sun breaks on the horizon.

Evelyn was dreaming of her own bed. The bed at her parents’ home, with its knotted pine posts and headboard, comfortable mattress, and goose-down pillows. The soft flannel sheets her mother used during the winter for added warmth. The walls of her bedroom covered in textured wallpaper and the thick pink rug under her feet when she swung them out of her bed in the morning. Not like this place, St. Agnes’s, where the scratchy carpet slippers have no padding in the soles and are too tight for her frozen feet.

Evelyn lies on her side in bed, struggles to pull the thin sheets and blankets over her body to seal out the chill, but no matter how hard she tries, her feet, shoulders, or elbows are still exposed to the cold air of the dormitory she shares with three other girls. All “fallen” women, all young. All waiting in a polite queue, allegedly to be redeemed.

In the bed next to hers, Margaret shifts. Her roommate hasn’t been sleeping lately. Although the house rules forbid it, Evelyn and Margaret have become fast friends over the past few weeks.

She arrived the day after Evelyn, appeared in the doorway as Evelyn unpacked her suitcase into the tiny dresser at the foot of her bed.

“Call me Maggie,” she said, when Evelyn introduced herself. “How long have you been here, Evelyn?”

“Oh, just since last night. Did Sister Teresa do your intake?”

“Yes. These rules are mad. And I suppose this is the prison uniform, is it?” Maggie asked, holding up a drab gray shift dress.

All the “inmates,” as Sister Teresa calls them, were given the same day dresses and nightgowns. The term reflects the grim, punitively militaristic environment the nun has curated within the home. The staff keep the girls busy with cooking and cleaning, shining shoes, and scrubbing the laundry they take in from the neighborhood to subsidize the home’s upkeep. They have scheduled outdoor time in the back garden only at predetermined hours of the day, and under strict supervision. The home is intended to be a place of anonymity. The girls aren’t allowed to talk about much with each other. No one uses their last name. No one is supposed to talk about how they got pregnant. But the one thing all the girls whisper about, obsess over, is everyone else’s due date. It’s the first thing each new girl gets asked.

Maggie is due two weeks after Evelyn, so they’re on this ride together. Evelyn takes each turn just slightly before Maggie does, twitching the wheel and leading the way for them both. The girls don’t have their own mothers or older sisters to provide guidance during their pregnancies, and the nuns certainly can’t—or won’t—offer any. The physician who comes in to see the girls never answers any of their questions. Ignoring his patient, he talks to Sister Teresa as though the pregnancy is a rather uninteresting science experiment he’s reporting on, like phases of mold growth. And so, with this dearth of information, the girls turn to one another for support, though never under the watchful gaze of Sister Teresa, or the Watchdog, as they call her. Because, after all, St. Agnes’s is a place where everything is kept hidden.

Another moan rings out from down the hall and Maggie opens her eyes. Her thin arm rests protectively over the curve of her tiny belly. She’s only just beginning to show. “Do you hear that?” she whispers.

Evelyn nods. “It woke me up. I think it’s Emma.”

“She told me last week while we were in the kitchen that she wanted to change her mind about the adoption, but…” Maggie trails off. Evelyn shakes her head. They both know that changing one’s mind isn’t an option at St. Agnes’s. “She’s been crying a lot in the mornings. I don’t think she has anyone in her dormitory, you know, like this.” Maggie offers Evelyn a weak smile.

They hold each other’s gaze for a while in silent conversation. Eventually Emma’s sobs subside, the echoes sinking into the faded wallpaper of the hallway. These walls have absorbed many years’ worth of anguished cries. Whispered pleas and prayers.

Evelyn shivers so violently that her teeth start to chatter. “It’s so cold. It feels like winter already.”

“I know. Come here.” Maggie gestures for Evelyn to join her in bed, scoots herself over as far as she possibly can on the narrow mattress. Four inches, if that.

Evelyn throws her own pathetic blanket over her friend before lowering herself onto Maggie’s bed. Maggie stifles her laughter while Evelyn tries to settle in. After a minute of struggling, they find a comfortable position and Maggie burrows her head into the crook of Evelyn’s neck.

“I asked Sister Agatha last week to see if she could scrounge up some extra blankets somewhere. She said she’d try, but the dormitories are full right now, so there isn’t much of anything to spare,” Maggie says with a sigh.

The home is staffed by three nuns who live on the premises along with Sister Teresa and Father Leclerc. They go about their business and carry out Sister Teresa’s bidding with a quiet resolve. Only Sister Mary Agatha is patient with the girls in a way the other staff aren’t. She’s diminutive in stature, plain and pale, and reminds Evelyn of a house mouse. She’s also genuinely kind, a welcome counterbalance to Sister Teresa’s snide aggression. She’s the only member of the staff who calls the girls “miss,” and she’s sweet with the babies. Evelyn thinks it’s a bit of a shame Sister Agatha decided to take the veil. She might have made a wonderful nanny.

“Hey, what’s your last name, Evelyn?” Maggie whispers now from beneath Evelyn’s chin, interrupting her thoughts.

“Taylor,” Evelyn says, and the contraband confession triggers a lurch of excitement in her chest. “What’s yours?”

“Roberts. It’s nice to meet you, Miss Taylor.”

Evelyn smiles. “It’s nice to meet you, too, Miss Roberts.”

Silence for a while as they both warm up.

“What do you want to do when you get out of here?” Maggie asks.

After is something Evelyn’s been thinking about a lot lately. She hesitates, unsure how her friend will react to her answer.

“I, um… I’ve been thinking about going to university. Maybe medical school.”

Maggie gasps, and Evelyn worries their roommates will wake up, but they don’t. “Really? That’s a big idea. What makes you want to do that?”

Evelyn chews the inside of her cheek. “It’s something I’ve thought about for a long time. The boys in our families are always told they can do or be anything they please, right? But us girls are just meant to get married or be teacher-spinsters for the rest of our lives.” She feels Maggie’s body quake with laughter. “It’s true!”

“I know it is,” her friend says. “My mother’s the same way.”

“Since I won’t be getting married anymore, I just thought… if I have the chance now, I might want more than that.”

“What kind of doctor would you want to be? There are all kinds, aren’t there?”

“M-hm. I’ve thought about maybe being a doctor that deals with bones.”

“Bones?”

“I don’t know.” Evelyn shrugs, considering how best to articulate what the possibility means to her. “I guess I’d like to be able to put broken things back together. Or maybe I could work on patients’ hearts, you know. Try to help save people like my poor Leo.”

Maggie looks up at Evelyn. “You should do it. Really you should.”

Evelyn smiles. “Maybe I will, Miss Roberts.” She pecks Maggie’s forehead with a kiss. “Maybe I just will.”

“Dr. Evelyn Taylor,” Maggie says slowly. “It has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”

Maggie drifts off, but Evelyn’s mind is too occupied to sleep now. It won’t be long before their day begins. Just as the one before, they’ll attend prayer in the parlor room, then eat breakfast in the dining room. One-third of the girls cook breakfast for the whole household each morning, assisted by a couple of the nuns. After breakfast will be knitting, sewing, and other dull tasks, then lunch, prepared by another third of the girls. Their afternoons are dedicated to cleaning and chores. Dinner is cooked by the remaining third of the inmates. After dinner there’s time for Bible study or other reading from the miserable collection of books on the parlor shelf before bed at ten o’clock sharp. Every moment of every day is scheduled down to the minute.

Evelyn casts her brown eyes up at the white ceiling with its dark rings of water stains, then around the room at the other girls, who are still sleeping. At the end of each bed is a small dresser for their things, but no mirror or other vanities. Those are not permitted in their dormitories or the communal bathroom. Sister Teresa tells them they should be focusing their energy and attentions inward—on growing their babies—and outward—praying on the misdeeds that landed them each in this lamentable predicament. Though she knows how each girl became pregnant from their intake meeting, the Watchdog still treats them as though they have all chosen to sin, that they are the seductive mistresses of their own misfortunes and should consider themselves lucky the Church has allowed them houseroom during their pregnancies.

And despite the rule against it, most of the girls do talk to one another about how they got pregnant. After all, there isn’t much else to talk about.

Fifteen-year-old Louise in the bed across from Evelyn became pregnant by her brother’s friend, who was seven years her senior and full of pretty promises that evaporated the moment she said the word “pregnant.” And Anne, asleep over by the window, resorted to selling her own body out of financial desperation when her husband abandoned her and deserted to British Columbia with his secretary.

A couple of weeks ago, Maggie confided in Evelyn that she herself had suggested to her parents that she go visit her aunt in Scotland for the duration of her pregnancy, and give the baby up for adoption there. She told Evelyn she had figured it might be easier to put a continent between her and any temptation to find the child later on, but her mother had declined without explanation. Maggie didn’t tell Evelyn exactly how her pregnancy came to be, but Evelyn has her suspicions.

Evelyn hasn’t talked about her own pregnancy to anyone but Maggie. She told her the truth: that she wasn’t even aware she was pregnant when Leo had the heart attack. A ticking time bomb, the doctors had said in hushed tones as Evelyn crumpled into the wooden chair in the hospital waiting room. Just a defect lying in wait. Bad luck, they muttered.

Evelyn buried her fiancé in a state of numb grief, tossed a bouquet of white roses onto his lowered coffin instead of carrying them with her down the aisle at their wedding. She hadn’t even considered what might be next for her when she realized she’d missed her period that month. She was still wearing her black mourning dress, floating on a wave of heartache that led her straight to St. Agnes’s front door with no resistance.

She should have protested, refused, she thinks now. But then, where would that have left her? Living on the street with a baby? Good girls aren’t supposed to get pregnant out of wedlock, but if you do, you “do the right thing for everyone”—a phrase she heard her mother recite at least a dozen times—and you give up your baby. It’s as simple as that.

But it certainly doesn’t feel like the right thing for Evelyn; this baby is all she has left of Leo. She wishes she could keep it, but her parents won’t allow it. They made that much clear to her when they arranged for her to come to St. Agnes’s in the first place. At no point did anyone ever ask Evelyn what she wanted. This baby is growing inside her, but she has no say in its fate. Is she even allowed to call herself a mother?

The single tear that has been quivering at the corner of her eye falls hot against her cold cheek and is quickly absorbed into the thin pillow. Evelyn takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, trying to expel the dark thoughts into the cold air of the dormitory, but they hover over her and Maggie, entwined together on the narrow bed. She can’t escape them. They’re part of the punishment, the penance the girls pay in this secluded cell in a forgotten corner of the city. There are no dreams here, there is no light. The darkness will linger. For some, only months. For others, years. And others still will never see the light again.

These girls are fallen. And they will all pay for their redemption.