When the girls came into the dorm from downstairs, someone commented that the empty bed was filled. Another said, “She’s dead to the world.”
I was faking. If I pretended to be asleep, I wouldn’t have to deal with them when I was so tired. Besides, I wanted to be a fly on the wall and listen to what they had to say. It proved disappointing. The rest of their talk was broken pieces of conversations, and not much of that except from the girl who’d taken my pillow.
“Pilferer,” she said.
“What?” asked another.
“She a pillow thief,” the girl said.
“Didn’t you steal hers?”
“Watch yourself,” the accuser said. “There was nobody in that bed then.”
The approaching clack of Miss Oldenburg’s heels, followed by her police-woman’s voice announcing “lights out” prevented my sneaking a peek at the true pilferer.
Gradually, the sounds of shifting to find comfortable positions and pillow fluffing changed into the regular breathing of sleepers.
I lay awake in blinding darkness until dawn streaked into the window next to my bed, comforting me enough to doze off. But after what seemed like only a minute I jerked upright, unable to remember where I was. Panic flushed through me until I saw the girl sleeping soundly in the next bed. She lay on her side, facing me, strings of her brown hair in clumps across her cheek. Along the rows of beds on both sides of the room, the other girls lay sprawled in slumber.
I eased up to make an urgent visit to the bathroom. At the door I looked back, fearful that with my futile efforts to keep the bedsprings from squeaking I had awakened someone. No one was stirring. The thought went through my head that they must have gone to bed completely exhausted to continue sleeping so soundly after the sun came streaming in.
The spotless latrine ran alongside the dorm room. I went in, as I had the night before, and used one of the twelve toilets in the long row. At least there were doors on the stalls. A row of sinks lay opposite them, and off to the side stood the shower stalls. Only two for twenty girls.
As I slipped back into the dorm room, a deafening siren went off. My frayed nerves made me flinch. The other nineteen continued drowsing until the siren jarred through the house a second time.
“What was that?” I asked the girl next to me as she swung her legs over the side of her bed.
“Miss Oldenburg’s version of reveille. I noticed someone new had moved in when I came up last night. Welcome to the Hell Hole. Breakfast is at quarter to seven. If you miss it, you don’t eat again until lunch, and believe me, by then you’ll be starving. Hurry. It’s six fifteen now.”
“Surely, that gives us plenty of time,” I began, but she cut me off.
“Not with twenty of us to shower and use the latrine. My name’s Marty, by the way.”
I stuck out my hand. “Julie.”
“I bet you believed everything in the brochure, didn’t you? The cooling system is the only good thing about this place. We better put our showers off till later.” Marty began pulling on the clothes lying on the foot of her bed. “Yep. You ended up here because it was the cheapest, didn’t you?”
I nodded.
“Don’t feel bad. We all did. Get dressed, quick. I’ll show you the dining hall, better known as the hog trough. You see, we don’t dine there. We gobble down what we can in the fifteen-minute breakfast period.”
There were no eggs and no meat on the menu this morning. Two cross-looking women servers, also pregnant, practically slung platters of pancakes on the tables. There were pitchers of milk and syrup and plates of butter.
“Do they bring us coffee?” I asked Marty.
“Coffee’s not allowed. Not good for the babies. Wait’ll you taste the milk. Powdered. Made up fresh every meal, though. At night you can get iced tea, but no refills, and no lemon.” She seized the platter near us the instant the server put it on the table. “Grab what you want before someone else gets it.”
The pancakes were runny in the middle. The little bit of syrup remaining by the time the pitcher came to me was all that made them palatable.
“Surely they serve eggs and bacon some mornings,” I murmured to Marty.
The girl across the table heard me.
“On Sundays. The rest of the time it’s like today, or cereal.”
“You forgot grits day,” said another girl, whose voice sounded like that of the pillow pilferer. “So called because that’s all we get for breakfast on Saturdays. Fried grits, plain grits with a pat of butter, or cheese grits. Pick the cheese ones. The others suck.”
She sat alone at the far end of our table. The top of her blonde head revealed dark roots. I thought she must spend a lot of time in the sun. Her skin resembled a tan leather pocketbook at home in Mama’s closet.
“My name’s Kay,” she said. “I got knocked up in the backseat of the snazzy convertible my rich boyfriend drives.”
I gave a sardonic laugh. “Backseats seem to be in vogue this year.”
Her tough look softened. “Sorry I had your pillow. My back was hurting so bad I used it under my knees. Didn’t help.”
A bell sounded the end of breakfast. Miss Oldenburg materialized seemingly from nowhere and stood at the head of our table.
“Julie, come with me to my office. We have some things to go over. The rest of you, get busy.”
I looked with questioning eyes at Marty.
“Don’t let her push you around, and don’t sign anything until you’ve read it over at least five times. Don’t give in. She’ll try to make you.”
“What would she want me to sign?”
Marty’s face registered surprise, but she had no time to reply. Miss Oldenburg moved behind me and gave me a slight push.
“I’ll get you some maternity clothes and meet you at my office,” she said. “Shake a leg. I haven’t got all day.”
I saw through the open door that Miss Oldenburg’s office was in meticulous order. A few moments later she came down the hall carrying a stack of clothes—three skirts with tops and two pairs of slacks. She took a seat behind her desk and shoved a single page document toward me.
“Sign for the clothes. You’ll be expected to return them after the birth.”
Obeying Marty’s instructions, I read every word before signing my name at the bottom of the page. The document was harmless enough, confirming that I had been given clothing, as promised in the brochure, and would return it when I left Happiness House.
She stuck the paper in a file jacket and retrieved another document with lots more pages.
“Your first work assignment is latrine maintenance.”
“Work assignment?”
She looked at me with wide eyes. “Yes, work assignment. You didn’t imagine you’d be sitting around contemplating your navel all day, did you?”
“I . . . I didn’t know . . . we had to work. Nothing was said about that in the information papers.”
“This is one of the least expensive maternity homes in the state. We require you work off the difference between what it costs to get in here and what it costs to get in a Cadillac version of a refuge for wayward girls.”
I stood up. “I’m not a wayward girl. I only did it once, and with only one—”
She rapped her pencil on the desk. “Sit back down, and spare me your protestations of innocence. It’s obvious from your condition you disregarded the rules of God and society by engaging in premarital sex, and now you must suffer the consequences.”
“What about the boy? Shouldn’t God and society put some of the blame on him?”
“A man can’t help himself. A woman can. It was up to you to say no.”
Her face reflected the same suppressed rage that echoed in her voice, making me wonder what her story was.
“In short, you’ve made your bed, Julie, and now you must lie in it, unless you want to leave here.” She reached for the phone. “I’ll call your mother right now to come get you, if you want me to.”
I longed to say, “Yes, call her. I won’t stay here another day.” But thoughts of Mama wringing her hands in despair—and of the shame she and I would endure, and of my poor baby and the disgrace it would bear being labeled a bastard—made me shake my head and swallow the pain in my throat.
“Then you’ll conform to the rules and regulations of Happiness House?”
I nodded.
“I can’t hear your head rattle,” she said and pressed her lips together.
“Yes, I will.”
“Good. I suspect you have more strength of character than you’ve thus far revealed. You’ll join the latrine team for this first week. You’ll make it sparkle, as I am sure you found it to be upon your arrival.”
At least I had an indoor job where it was cool.
“What other work assignments are there?” I ventured.
“Inside jobs include waiting tables, doing laundry, washing and drying dishes after meals, vacuuming and dusting, that sort of thing. Outside the girls water the grass and flowers, weed the beds, plant seeds, and sweep the walkways. I have a man come once a week to mow. I don’t believe pregnant girls should be doing anything as strenuous as pushing a mower.”
If I hadn’t been so distraught, I’d have laughed in her face.
“Do we have any choice?” I asked, thinking that the blonde girl with skin the shade of tanned leather must have had all the outside jobs.
“No. I assign them. That’s the way I run things. The latrine team gathers in the supply room in,” she looked at her watch, “ten minutes. Before you go, I need you to sign these papers.”
“What are they?” I asked as she passed them to me.
“Consent forms to give your baby up for adoption. There’s no need for you to read them now. Just sign them. I’ll give you a copy when you leave here that you can read back home at your leisure.”
“I won’t sign anything without reading it first.”
“You do plan to give your baby up, do you not?”
“I . . . I’m not sure.”
“What do you mean, you’re not sure?”
“Just that. I’m not sure yet. I’ll let you know later.”
“You must sign them before you are allowed to leave here. The sooner you sign, the better . . . for your own peace of mind.”
Wild to get out of her office, I snatched the papers and moved toward the door.
Her voice stopped me.
“If you have any idea of keeping the child, what are you doing here? If you go home with a baby, you’ll suffer the same shame you would have if the town had witnessed your entire pregnancy.”
“I’m still not signing the papers until I read them. And that’s the way I run things.”