I hung up, disappointed enough to cry. Phone calls were restricted, and Miss Oldenburg, the matron, had a list of people each girl was permitted to be in contact with. Only two phones for our use in the home made for a constant line of girls in the hall, where the phones sat out in the open, affording no privacy. Curious ears could always overhear every word of a girl’s conversation.
I’d expected Mama to answer, so it was a shock when Carmen picked up, and more of a shock to learn that Aunt Hattie was there. I instantly remembered she was coming for a visit, but so much had happened since I came here, it was a wonder I remembered anything about my past life, as I refer to it now.
I’d so wanted to hear Mama’s voice that, when Carmen abruptly hung up, I came close to sliding to the floor and sobbing. But already I was at the point of needing help to get up again, and there was no help anywhere in this hell hole. If Mama knew, it would kill her.
That first evening when Mama had brought me here, the matron was on her best behavior. She had escorted us into the designer-decorated visitor’s salon, where girls are allowed to go if and when they ever have a guest.
“I’m Olivia Oldenburg, house matron. We are so glad, Mrs. Morgan, that you’ve chosen Happiness House as the place for Julie to complete her term.”
Mama seemed encouraged and relieved as she reached to shake hands with Miss Oldenburg. By the time we’d finished having coffee and cookies, Mama was pouring out her upset over my pregnancy to this skinny woman who wore a black dress with long sleeves that looked like funeral attire and from whose French twist not a hair went astray.
It wasn’t until Mama kissed me goodbye and the heavy oak door was closed and locked behind her that Miss Oldenburg revealed to me the realities of Happiness House.
“All right, Julie, get your bag and follow me. I’ll take you to the sleeping area,” she said, her drawling friendliness changing to a tone of brisk, no-nonsense when we were alone.
Even though I hadn’t brought many items of clothing with me, the bag was heavy with school books so I could keep up with my class, my address book, two extra pairs of shoes because my feet were already swelling, and a few cosmetics to keep my spirits up. Mama had said, “If you let yourself go, you’ll become depressed.”
I struggled up the first flight of stairs with Miss Oldenburg throwing impatient glances over her shoulder at me.
“Couldn’t we use the elevator?” I asked.
“That’s for delivery men and the help. Exercise will be beneficial for you and the baby.”
So I’d struggled on with my bag. As it turned out, there was no help and no delivery men either. The elevator was for parents or visitors who insisted on seeing the accommodations.
Miss Oldenburg got aggravated enough with my slow pace that for the last half of the third flight of stairs she gave me a hand.
“This bag is so heavy, one would think you were planning on making this your permanent home,” she chided as we lugged it over the top step.
The door of one room was open off the hallway, and I automatically headed toward it. Inside, curtains of flowered chintz hung over the two windows, and a matching bedcover decorated the single bed. A private bath adjoined the room.
Miss Oldenburg jerked my arm as I took a step inside.
“That is only the model room.”
She had led me into a long dormitory space two doors farther down the hall. At least twenty beds, ten on each side, lined the walls, with about six feet of space between the two rows and about three feet between each bed. Stopping midway into the room, she pointed to a small, iron bedstead with a thin, unmade mattress on a set of springs.
“I’m supposed to share a room with only one other girl. That’s what my mother is paying for.”
She jerked her chin up at my astonishment and gave a snort.
“Dream on. If you’d read your documents carefully, you’d have seen that was never stated. Sometimes there are only two girls in here, but this time of the year we usually have a houseful. Lots of lovey-dovey goes on during the cold months, and that, unfortunately for you, is the case. Yours is the last available bed. If you don’t want it, you can call your mother and have her come back and get you. I have a waiting list a mile long.”
I was too stunned to speak.
She tapped the toe of one high-heeled shoe.
“Staying or going?”
“Staying,” came out, sounding half strangled when I answered, dumbfounded at the extent to which we’d been misled.
“Then make up your bed. You’ll find clean sheets in the laundry room next door. It looks like someone has absconded with the pillow. Look around, and when you find a bed with two, help yourself to one.”
“Where are the other girls?”
“In the rec room. They’ll be here before you know it. The bell for lights out rings at nine thirty.”
She walked, business-like, to the door, and the fading echo of her heels clacked out of the room.
The springs had squeaked when, left alone, I sank down on the bare mattress. I don’t know how long I sat there, staring ahead without “seeing” anything.
How could this ever have happened to me?
I was in with the popular girls. I made good grades. I was from a good family. Even though Mama and my father were divorced, and my father was a drunk who had sired an illegitimate child, like Mama said, we had good bloodlines.
The answer came swiftly in the form of the memory of that night when I told Farrel, “I’m ready.” With it came, at long last, the recognition of my ignorance and the naiveté that had allowed me to trust him. I put my hand on the bulge in my belly, the consequence of my terrible need for acceptance and love. I had brought this on myself. It was done and could not be undone.
In reality, Farrel bore half the blame, but that wasn’t the way the world looked at it. The girl bore full responsibility to use the only surefire birth control in existence—the word “no.” And following that dictum was the undisputed rule that failing to use that little word would bring all the blame down on her head. Farrel would never bear any culpability, and he would never suffer the consequences I had to suffer.
That thought had brought the remembrance of Frances lying in the coffin, so pale in her red dress. Maybe I would have been better off had I gone the route she went and was now lying in my own coffin.
Beneath my hand, there came a movement. For a moment, I didn’t understand, and then a thrill the likes of which I had never known went through me. My baby had moved. The doctor had said it would move sometime between sixteen and twenty-five weeks, and then the child would become an inescapable reality for me. Now that had happened. The baby was a real person, and it was alive because I was alive. At least I was half alive.
That was what had saved me on that awful day and helped me to get the sheets and make up the bed so I wouldn’t collapse on the stained mattress.