Usually Girls leave the St. Margaret Home within months or even weeks of giving birth; most return to their families, but Tilli invents reasons to stay, readies herself for the Sisters’ requests before they can voice them. She welcomes frightened new Girls who’ve heard about this far-away mansion where they can learn to play the harp, to paint and embroider. But first they must learn how to take care of the children already there. In the Big Nursery on the second floor she introduces them to the older children, shows them how to coax them out of sadness before it can close around them. How, the Girls ask, and Tilli says by just loving them, by singing to them and making shadow animals against the wall with their hands and hers. In the Little Nursery she shows them how to bathe infants so that even the fussiest ones stop crying. She warns them about people who want to adopt babies. “They’ll be all nice to you, but once they have your baby, they don’t want you. Some lie about where they live so you can’t find your baby again.”
She coaches the Girls in fainting—collapse gracefully or lurch toward the ground. “Fainting gets you out of church, you and at least two Girls who get to carry you out.”
“I don’t want to get out of church,” says the newest Girl, Marlene.
But the others practice fainting. A game who can faint the fastest, lie still the longest without moving her eyelids.
Marlene has prayed to give birth in church, proof of immaculate conception. Since she doesn’t know how this baby got inside her—just as it happened to the Jungfrau Maria—she vows to raise it just like the Jungfrau Maria raised her Baby Jesus. And if that means lamenting at the foot of his cross when he’s a man, Marlene will make that sacrifice, too. Soused by religion, she is a bad influence on other Girls, especially Hedda who sleeps on the narrow bed across from her and becomes Marlene’s best friend because both are determined to keep their babies. The Sisters worry they’ll sway other Girls who have signed adoption papers. Keeping a baby can be romanticized by Girls if they don’t get separated right away.
One Sunday the wife of the blacksmith stays after Mass and surprises Hedda and Marlene with a generous offer: they and their babies can live in the room above the smithy in return for housework and letting the wife of the blacksmith help with their babies. She has the sad and hidden gaze of barren women who forever yearn for babies. Her husband doesn’t believe in adoption, she says, but has agreed to her plan.
Whenever Tilli takes Wilhelm out in the Kinderwagen—baby buggy—she wants to keep walking, take him to a place far away. As her outings with him get longer, the Sisters suspect she’s going maternal on them. They’ve seen this happen with other Girls and it devastates them.
“Not good for Tilli.”
“Or for Wilhelm.”
“Trying to replace her own baby.”
“It prolongs her heartache.”
“Poor girl.”
“Wilhelm also gives her joy.”
“I’ve written to the parents. Twice,” Sister Hildegunde says. “They won’t take her back.”
“Tilli won’t understand.”
“They say Tilli is immoral.”
“Oh, please!”
“That she seduced her younger brother.”
“Younger? She only has one brother and he’s her twin.”
“They say she’ll do it again.”
“The only ones immoral are those parents. They chose the boy over her.”
“And she’s such a considerate girl.”
“Warm-hearted.”
“A good worker.”
“What if we sent her upstairs to work with the older children?”
“Older than her own child. Older than Wilhelm.”
“She has been Wilhelm’s wet nurse. Think of the bonding.”
“It could have been any other Girl.”
“But it wasn’t. I tried to get Wilhelm used to other Girls, but he refused to nurse.”
“But to separate her altogether from Wilhelm … it’s not right.”
“Not altogether. She’ll still see him.”
“Whatever we do, we must preserve Tilli’s dignity.”
“Her dignity, ja.”
“Just less time with Wilhelm.”
Concerned about Tilli’s attachment to the boy, Sister Franziska carries him upstairs for more frequent visits with Lotte.
“I need your help in the nursery,” she tells Lotte one afternoon.
“I can’t.”
“At least your presence.” She situates Wilhelm in his mother’s arms.
“Tilli likes taking care of him.”
“Tilli is too devoted to him.”
“She loves him.”
“Some Sisters worry she’s gone maternal!”
Sisters can be so naive, Lotte thinks. It has to do with being virgins. Soul this and soul that—and what of the body?
“She’s still a child…”
“Who gave birth to a child.”
“I don’t know how to be near children.”
“I have seen you with your children and—”
“—and they died.”
Sister Franziska holds her gaze, fearless of Lotte’s pain, though a pain like that can blind you, lay bare your own pains raw and sudden. “I’ve known you all your life—as a child, a woman, a mother—and you were always loving and patient.”
She coaxes Lotte into helping her.
“Just one hour tomorrow. This once.”
And then again.
“Two hours.”
Soon, half days.
“We can pay you.”
“You’re giving me so much already.”
As Lotte assists Sister Franziska and tends to newborns in the Little Nursery, she feels a generation older than the pregnant Girls, though she’s just twenty-five. Sister teaches her all she knows about keeping their Girls alive during and after birth: bleedings; cold compresses; enemas mixed from linseed tea and new milk and laudanum.
“Each child we help into the world,” Sister Franziska tells her, “makes our losses more bearable.”
Your losses too? But Lotte doesn’t know how to ask.
Easier to talk with Sister Franziska about what needs to be done. Like how to bind their breasts after delivery. “Above all we must be merciful,” Sister says. “We must not do it too soon. We must not wrap the bandages too tightly.”
As Lotte digs herself into training, Wilhelm stays in the Little Nursery where Tilli watches over him. Other Girls want to play with him too, but they have to ask Tilli first. She allows them to play house with Wilhelm and her, but she gets to say how. The Girls take turns being Wilhelm’s Mutti and Vati; they laugh when they get him to crawl after a ball they roll from one wall of the nursery to another; they like to dress him up with clothing from the bin that’s stocked with knitting and sewing projects the Old Women do for the St. Margaret children.
When Sister Franziska decides it’s time for Wilhelm to stay with his mother every night, Lotte doesn’t object. Doesn’t object when he leans against her, little breath warm. Guilt is no longer her only lens. Joy manages to claim a few minutes of her days. Wilhelm sleeping next to her lifts her hours from limbo. Soon she looks for him during the day, ventures to the nursery; it surprises her how content Wilhelm is with the other children: he reaches for them, laughs. Instant siblings—don’t think that don’t—
One afternoon she finds him with Tilli on their hands and knees, imitating the Sisters’ black dog, Verrückter Hund. Crazy Dog.
Tilli stands up. “I’m just visiting for a few minutes.”
Wilhelm coos when Verrückter Hund rolls over, folds those absurdly long legs against his belly, makes himself a small bundle.
Lotte crouches, pats the white fur on the dog’s sturdy neck. “When did you learn to crawl so fast, Wilhelm?”
Everyone wants a bit of Wilhelm, Tilli thinks. Other children, Pregnant Girls, the old Sisters. And now his mother. Who rubs the dog’s pink belly. Pink. Wilhelm crawls around the dog. Hits his head against a chair and screams. His mother scoops him up, kisses his head, whispers to him, but he’s inconsolable, stretches his arms toward Tilli, only stops crying when Tilli bends toward him.
At first Lotte is relieved. But why then do I feel resentful?
And from Tilli a small triumph. Lotte needs me.