“Now that we’ve composed ourselves,” Miss Wellwood said, “I believe we can have a productive conversation.”
She smiled from behind her desk. The man behind her did not smile. He hung, framed in gold and painted in oils, looking up from his desk, frozen in the middle of writing a sentence, forever annoyed at being interrupted, pen eternally hovering over a piece of paper. The resemblance between Dr. Wellwood and his daughter was striking, especially now that she had stopped smiling, too.
“Young lady,” she said. “Look at me when I’m speaking to you. Are you capable of having a productive conversation?”
Neva made herself meet Miss Wellwood’s steel-gray eyes.
“Yes, ma’am,” she heard herself say.
Miss Wellwood displayed gray teeth.
“You see?” she said. “When we make an effort to put our own problems aside and respond in a civil manner to those trying to help us, things go so much more smoothly.”
Miss Wellwood’s small office contained enough furniture to fill the rest of the house. Neva felt grimy and full of snot surrounded by all this dark, glossy wood. It had been hours since her cheeseburger, and the smell of lemon-scented furniture polish made her mouth water. An enormous grandfather clock loomed behind her, and every tick sounded like a breaking bone. Another air conditioner rumbled in the window beside Miss Wellwood, and Neva shivered inside her dress.
“You’ve joined us at an inconvenient time,” Miss Wellwood said. “We prefer our girls to arrive on Friday or Saturday so they may adjust to our schedule over the weekend. Due to the urgency of your situation, however, we allowed your father to deliver you today, so you will simply have to catch up. Before you arrived, the girls received their weekly lessons from Mrs. Conradi, a teacher sent by the Board of Education to assist them in maintaining their schoolwork. Today is also the day when Dr. Vincent examines our girls in the clinic. Have you seen a doctor for your condition?”
She made herself nod.
“Speak up,” Miss Wellwood said.
“Yes, ma’am,” she said.
Dr. Rector had been her doctor all her life; he’d given her vaccinations, he’d stitched her chin when she was learning to ride a bike, but after she told him about her condition his face went hard and he spoke to her like a stranger.
“You’ll have a complete examination when Dr. Vincent holds clinic tomorrow,” Miss Wellwood said. “He is in attendance every Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. Tomorrow you will also have your first interview with Miss Keller, our social worker, who comes Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Have you spoken with a social worker before?”
Neva wasn’t quite sure what a social worker did. Weren’t they for juvenile delinquents?
“Young lady, I asked you a question,” Miss Wellwood said, and she looked like the portrait of her father again. “Have you spoken with a social worker before?”
The cold air made Neva feel thick and stupid. She shoved her hands into the pockets of her dress, and her fingers brushed something hard. The bands around her chest loosened slightly.
“No, ma’am,” she said. “I haven’t spoken with a social worker before.”
In her left hand, she turned her dad’s wedding ring around and around her fingers.
“You will find Miss Keller quite competent,” Miss Wellwood said, “despite her youth. Wednesday, Mrs. Conradi will return, but as she will be leaving us for the summer on Friday, any educational plans you have will be put on hold. Your father says you are keeping up with your geometry and biology lessons, and we have a classroom for quiet study. Starting in June, a bookmobile will visit twice a month containing a selection of grade-appropriate books.”
She picked up a pen and made a notation in Neva’s file, and Neva saw that she didn’t wear a wedding ring. Miss Wellwood laid a typewritten sheet in front of her.
“These are the rules of Wellwood House,” she said. “As it is my family home, and you are a guest, I expect you to behave accordingly. First, and foremost, all girls must be cooperative. Those who don’t cooperate are asked to leave.”
Neva squeezed her dad’s wedding ring.
“Yes, ma’am,” she said.
“Second, to protect the privacy of our girls, do not tell anyone your family name or your hometown. You are also not to use your Christian name.”
This sent a little thrill through her. She could be someone else. Patty Duke was really named Anna Marie. Maybe she’d name herself Patty? Or why not something exotic like Rosalind or Cherise? This was the first good news she’d heard in ages. She could be someone different, someone without a past, someone glamorous.
“I think of you as my garden of girls,” Miss Wellwood continued. “And I have been called to protect you during this time of your flowering. While you are here, you will be called…” She pulled an index card from a drawer and consulted it. “Fern.”
Neva opened her mouth to protest, but Miss Wellwood was already moving on.
“We strongly discourage our girls from discussing their pasts,” she said. “No hobbies, no family talk, no tittle-tattle about where you went to school. You are here for a single purpose, which is to shed your sin and face your future. However, I realize you are at an age when you have a tendency to reminisce, so if you find you must say something…” Miss Wellwood flipped the card over. “You are from Baltimore. We don’t have any girls from Baltimore at the moment.”
I’m Fern from Baltimore, Neva thought. This is getting worse and worse.
Miss Wellwood continued down the typewritten page. The grandfather clock ticked off her sentences like a hammer beating iron.
“You are expected to be neat and well-groomed at all times,” she said. “Be prompt to meals. Lights out at ten p.m. To protect your privacy, all outgoing and incoming mail will be delivered to this office, where it will be sanitized for your safety. There will, of course, be no contact with outsiders while you are here. On Saturdays, girls who have earned the privilege are allowed to go into St. Augustine. You may see Mrs. Deckle for details. If you have any sundries or personal items you need to purchase, you may do so at that time. If you have spending money you must give it to Mrs. Deckle for safekeeping. We keep the curtains closed at all times, and there is no congregating outdoors. Our neighbors do not want to see you flaunting your disgrace. Smoking is limited to the screened porch in the backyard, and no more than five girls may use that facility at any one time. Finally, you entered Wellwood House by the front door today. The next time you use the front door it will be to go to the hospital to have the baby, and the time after that will be to return home. Back and side doors only, please.”
Neva continued to roll the ring between her fingers. It felt precious, like an artifact of a lost civilization, the only link to her old life.
“Do you have any questions?” Miss Wellwood asked.
“No, ma’am,” Neva said.
Miss Wellwood began putting her index card away.
“Do you understand exactly why you are here?” she asked.
Neva needed Miss Wellwood to know she was not a bad person. She needed her to know that she was prepared to act like an adult.
“Because I’m…with child, ma’am,” she said.
“You are here because you acted like a barnyard animal,” Miss Wellwood said. “You took the glory of your womanhood and threw it in the mud. Look at me.”
Neva stared at Miss Wellwood’s yellow-and-brown kerchief. She couldn’t meet her eyes.
“I have handled hundreds of girls like you,” Miss Wellwood said. “You are not the first. You will, unfortunately, not be the last. You will do as you are told, because I know what is best for you, both from my experience and from the experience of my father. You will follow my instructions and the instructions of Dr. Vincent and Nurse Kent with absolute obedience. Your experience will not be painless. Genesis, chapter three, verse sixteen, ‘In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children.’ The pain of childbirth is Eve’s curse. A reminder that you are here because you broke two of the Ten Commandments—committing adultery and dishonoring your mother and father—and this suffering is your penance.”
Neva’s eyes grew hot.
“But when this is over,” Miss Wellwood said, and her voice softened, “you will present the gift of your child to a deserving family and you will return home and forget this ever happened. You will sever your connection with Wellwood House the instant you walk out our front door. That is the gift we offer you. If you obey me in all matters, when your time here is over and your crisis has passed, it will be as if this never happened.”
Neva wanted that so badly. What had Hazel said?
Follow the rules and you’ll be home before you know it.
“Mrs. Deckle will show you to your room,” Miss Wellwood said. “And I will see you for dinner in two hours. Now, what is your name and where are you from?”
She’d reached the end of the line. There was nowhere else for her to go. Guy hated her, school had suspended her, Mom and Dad wished she’d never been born, Aunt Peggy and Uncle Albert had thrown her out, Deb wasn’t talking to her, she’d lied to Hilda, Mrs. Linton hadn’t even waited a day before giving Edith Clegg her part in the senior play, and now she’d wound up here. But if she was good, if she did exactly what they said, if she followed the rules and accepted her punishment, it would be like this never happened. She could have her old life back. She wanted that so bad. She didn’t want this baby. She didn’t want to be an unwed mother. She wanted to be a normal girl again. She wanted people to stop hating her.
She met Miss Wellwood’s eyes.
“I’m Fern,” she said, and took a deep breath. “From Baltimore.”
Mrs. Deckle didn’t show her to her room. She didn’t even look up from her typewriter when Fern came out of Miss Wellwood’s office. Instead, she said, “Top of the stairs. Room three. No putting up posters.”
Fern grabbed her suitcase and lugged it out of the office as Mrs. Deckle’s typing rained down on her back. She limped down the hall, dragging her suitcase, the humid air thawing her frozen, air-conditioned skin, making her nose run.
“Watch it,” a pregnant girl said, weaving around her.
Something must have ended or something must be about to begin, because girls suddenly filled the hall. Their maternity dresses were as bright as Easter eggs, their voices rose and fell like tropical birds, their hair was set and curled and sprayed, and they veered around Fern, calling and laughing over her head as she crept between them.
She couldn’t believe they were for real. Their bellies stuck out, they displayed their disgrace, they flaunted their sin. Fern had been walking around in two rubber girdles, hunched over inside her poncho, for so many months she didn’t think she’d ever stand up straight again, and here they were, strutting up and down the hall, no girdles in sight, rubbing the evidence of what they’d done in everyone’s faces, and Fern realized that this was what had made her dad leave without saying goodbye. He’d seen these girls and realized she was one of them now. She wasn’t the baby he’d bathed and dressed, the little girl he’d taught to ride a bike, the daughter who’d sat beside him in the garage reading sci-fi paperbacks in the summer. She was an unwed mother now and he hadn’t been able to bear the thought of it.
With both hands, Fern hauled her suitcase up the Pepto-Bismol waterfall until she stood at the top, wiping her nose on the back of her hand. Her legs felt like rubber, her head felt full of glue. She saw a door shiny with pink paint and a hand-lettered card tacked to the middle reading 3. She didn’t even think about knocking because if she stopped moving she wouldn’t be able to start again, so she pushed the door open, dragged herself inside, and dropped her suitcase on the bare wooden floor.
A fan sat on a plain, straight-backed chair beside the door. To her right stood a poorly made bed with an extravagant blue tapestry on top. Beaded necklaces spilled from a straw basket on a shelf above it next to a warped paperback copy of Steppenwolf. A wardrobe stood at the foot of the bed, one door half-open, full of someone else’s clothes. On the floor beside it stood a slowly churning lava lamp with soothing red globs twisting over and around each other in the glowing yellow water.
A second bed stood in front of the door. On its pillow rested an old stuffed dog that had probably been yellow once but was now worn with age, its ears tattered, its nose frayed. Wedged under the window on the opposite wall, with its sun-faded blind pulled all the way down, stood a third bed, covered with a tight gray tucked-in blanket. A striped pillow made of ticking lay at its foot with a white pillowcase folded on top.
The Florida sun had been cooking the room all day and the air felt like soup. Fern knelt on the rattling iron bed, pulled down on the blind, and let it snap up with a loud crack that showered her with paint chips. She couldn’t budge the window, no matter how hard she strained. Defeated, she rested her forehead against the warm glass. On the other side, trapped between the screen and the window, were gray spiderwebs, fuzzy with dust. A dead wasp hung upside down in one of them, and she stared at it, too tired to move, until it feebly twitched one of its legs. That got her moving. She didn’t want to see the spider come.
She turned on the fan. It rattled to life and squeaked as it turned its blind head from side to side. It needed oil. Fern’s body felt wrung out, her girdles felt too tight, and her underarms smelled sour, but right now all she could manage was to lie down on her creaking bed and roll over to face the wall. She clutched her dad’s wedding ring and listened to girls walk around the big wooden house, calling to each other.
Her parents had told Chip and Midge she’d gone to stay with Aunt Peggy in Montgomery for summer drama camp. She hadn’t heard her dad say anything to Aunt Peggy about where they were going. Knowing her mom, she wouldn’t want to hear anything about a Home. No one would write, no one would call, no one outside this house even knew where she was, except her dad, and he hated her. She’d never felt more alone.
She would do whatever they told her to do, say whatever they wanted her to say, eat whatever they told her to eat, just so long as they let her go back to the way things were before.
Behind her, the door swung open and feet clumped across the floor, then stopped. Whoever it was looked at her, and she wondered if she’d been wrong to turn on the fan.
“I guess Buddha was right,” Rose said. “Life really is suffering.”
Fern didn’t answer. She didn’t move. She didn’t want to make herself a target for this mean pregnant girl. She would keep to herself and every day would be one day closer to getting rid of this baby and going home.
Tired springs squeaked as Rose sat on her bed, and then nothing for a long time.
“You’d better get used to it,” Rose finally said to Fern’s back.
Fern knew girls like Rose expected answers or they’d make things worse for you.
“Get used to what?” Fern asked the wall.
“Your old man promised not to leave without saying goodbye,” Rose said. “He shouldn’t have lied to you. But you’d better get used to it. In here, everyone lies.”
Then Rose got up, stepped onto Fern’s bed, and, with one grunt, she raised the window and fresh air poured into the room.