CHAPTER 8 Evelyn 
SPRING 1961
“Well, then,” Sister Teresa barks, “it’s time for you to go to the hospital. Stay here and get your birth bag from underneath the bed. We will call you a taxi.”
Evelyn holds her belly as a wave of panic washes over her aching body. “A taxi? Does—does someone come with me? What do I do?”
Without answering, the Watchdog sweeps from the room, her habit whispering along the floorboards. Evelyn takes shallow breaths, squirming to get comfortable on her hard mattress. She looks at Maggie, sitting up in bed with her legs crossed, her huge belly resting in her lap like a heavy sack, arms wrapped around it. Louise and Anne peer over at her from their beds, their eyes reflecting Evelyn’s fear in the golden light of their bedside lamps.
“Are you okay?” Maggie asks.
Evelyn shrugs and lets out a ragged laugh. “I don’t know, Maggie. I don’t know.”
She woke up to the pain a few minutes ago with only a faint presumption that she was probably in labor. It’s only now, as the cramps have begun deep in her pelvis and hips (“contractions,” Sister Teresa called them a moment ago), that Evelyn realizes how entirely unprepared she is for this. Throughout the months she’s been at the home, Sister Teresa, the nuns, and Father Leclerc have only ever focused on what should happen after.
After you get out of here, you can move on with your life.
After you give birth, you’ll go find a nice boy and get married, do this properly next time.
After, you can pretend like this whole big mess never happened.
After.
The ordeal of childbirth was never discussed. The during. The thing itself. The girls have all come here to give birth, yet that’s the one thing no one has prepared them for.
“What happens now?” Evelyn asks aloud, alarm rising in her voice. “What’s it like?”
But no one answers. Maggie just cradles her belly, Anne stares up at the water-stained ceiling, and Louise closes her eyes tightly as though trying hard to imagine she’s somewhere else. The only girls who can answer are the ones who are already gone. The ones who stay on to pay off their keep are kept in separate postpartum quarters, assigned different tasks.
Despite Evelyn’s surge of determination that she and Maggie needed to find a way to escape the home, she wasn’t able to come up with a feasible plan for such a rebellion. They weren’t wanted at their family homes, and there was nowhere else two pregnant girls could go. They’d end up begging on the street. Maggie was right. The maternity home was their only option.
With a crushing realization, Evelyn finally accepts in this moment that the home, this system, is just one big well-oiled machine. Every cog is carefully designed for a specific purpose: selling children to desperate couples. The girls don’t actually matter. It’s nothing but a baby factory disguised as a reform mission, and it’s Evelyn’s turn to churn out the next product.
Bile rises in her throat at the thought, and Evelyn releases the sob she’s been fighting against. Maggie rises from her bed and steps across to Evelyn’s, pulling her into as tight a hug as she can with their bellies bumping between them.
“I’ll miss you, Evelyn,” Maggie whispers. “Good luck.”
“Excuse me!” The Watchdog is back at the door, snapping her reprimand. “Have you forgotten yourselves? No physical contact between inmates!”
Evelyn glares at the Watchdog over Maggie’s shoulder, and feels a rush of pure hatred for the woman. The girls pull apart. Maggie nods encouragingly and offers Evelyn a smile that doesn’t quite meet her eyes. Evelyn picks up the traveling case she prepared last week, wipes her eyes with the back of her hand, and follows the nun out the door.
The taxi pulls up outside the hospital. Evelyn rubs one hand along her belly and clenches the handle of her traveling case with the other. Her knuckles stand out stark white with the effort it takes for her to cling to these last few hours, the shred of precious time before everything changes. For now, her baby is still her baby, and the impossible gravity of saying a final goodbye to her child hasn’t yet weighed her down, cracked her like splintering wood.
“Here we are, miss,” the driver says, looking over his shoulder at her. His voice has a little purr on the r’s, a Scottish lilt.
Evelyn nods once and reaches for the door handle.
“No, no, sweetheart, ye stay put. Let me get the door for ye.”
The driver darts around the car, head bent against the cold spring rain that pours down and beads on the windows. The yellow and red lights on the outside of the hospital glitter through the raindrops like Christmas. The door opens beside her and the driver reaches in.
“I’ll take yer case, miss,” he says.
He transfers it into his other hand, then holds out his forearm to steady her as she gets out of the car. She managed to compose herself throughout the contractions in the back of the taxi, clenching her teeth against the pain, but this gesture from a stranger brings the tears back to her eyes. She stands on the slick sidewalk and he hands her the case with a small smile.
She offers him the bills. “I’m sorry. I can’t tip you. This is all they gave me.”
“S’okay, miss!” he says, taking the money. He doesn’t even count it, just stuffs it into his pocket. “You take care of yerself, now, and God bless ye and that babe.”
The rain is soaking her face. “Thank you, sir.”
And without thinking about what she’s doing, Evelyn takes a step forward and wraps her arms around the man. His body stiffens in a moment of hesitation before he responds in kind, patting her head with a paternal hand, and Evelyn feels more connected to the world and to her own body than she has in months. She closes her eyes and breathes in the unfamiliar smell of the man.
“Thank you,” Evelyn mutters again in his ear. The rain drips off his hat, landing with a tickle on her nose.
“Least I can do, miss,” he answers, then releases her. “I’ve got a daughter about yer age. I wouldn’ wan’ her comin’ here all alone like this.” Their eyes meet again briefly before he jogs back around the front of the car and hops into his seat, shutting the door with a dull thud.
The taxi pulls away from the curb as another contraction grips her and she nearly doubles over on the sidewalk. Resigning herself to it, she stumbles to the doors of the hospital. Her globe of a belly precedes her, announcing the title of her shame as her traveling case smacks against her damp thigh.
Two young women in the lobby stare at her through the glass door, their mouths moving. Neither of them comes to help as Evelyn struggles with the door. She keeps her head down, avoiding their eyes.
It’s not that she’s too young, she knows. Plenty of girls her age have babies. It’s that—like the taxi driver said—she’s alone. She’s come to the hospital to give birth with no chaperone or companion at all. No husband, no mother. The conclusion is drawn long before Evelyn has even reached the reception desk.
“Um, excuse me,” Evelyn says to the nurse. She has bright red hair and gray eyes, lips stained around a pinched mouth that loves to gossip. “I, um, I need to…” Her voice drops. “I’m here to have a baby.”
“St. Agnes?” the nurse asks loudly. Her voice echoes into the white space.
“Yes, how did you—?”
The nurse stands and indicates that Evelyn should follow her. “This way, come on.”
Evelyn’s wet shoes squeak on the tile floor as she trails the nurse down the hallway like a waddling duckling. She can feel her face burning hotter with each person she passes, and breathes a sigh of relief when they finally step into the elevator and the doors close, offering a moment of privacy and dignity, however brief. The nurse presses the number 4 and the elevator lurches upward.
“The matron from St. Agnes’s called and told us to expect you,” the nurse finally says.
Evelyn nods and looks up at the floor indicator.
“You’re not the first,” the nurse continues. “And you certainly won’t be the last. Just don’t think too much about it. It’ll be over soon.”
The doors open. Evelyn blinks away the tears that have sprung to her eyes again and tries to keep up with the nurse’s quick pace. They make a right turn, then reach a set of doors with a sign declaring the hallway beyond it the maternity ward. To the left is a waiting area full of chairs. There are two men sitting in them, bleary-eyed under a cloud of thick cigarette smoke. One of them is sleeping, slumped over in his chair. The other has his ankle crossed over the opposite knee, cigarette in one hand, flipping through a newspaper laid out in his lap. Like he’s sitting in the park on a Sunday afternoon with not a care in the world.
The nurse pushes through the doors and Evelyn follows.
“That man back there,” the nurse says, not making eye contact with Evelyn. “Wife is in labor bringing their sixth baby into the world. Told me she only ever wanted three. Poor thing.”
They pass a couple of rooms, and Evelyn catches glimpses of pink bedspreads, yellow curtains, and bouquets of flowers propped up in vases. The nurse leads her down to the last room at the end of the long hallway, and Evelyn’s breath hitches. The tiny room has a sad, institutional air about it. Lank beige drapes hang over the single window, a thin wool blanket covers the narrow bed, and the floor space is limited even further by dozens of brown cardboard boxes stacked four feet high along two of the walls.
“It’s a bit of a squeeze in here, I’m afraid. It doubles as a storeroom for the ward.” The nurse pulls a hospital gown out of a small metal dresser beside the bed, thrusts it into Evelyn’s free hand. “Get changed into that. Settle yourself down in bed and the doctor will come see you when he does his rounds later on.”
Evelyn nods, takes the gown.
“There’s a bathroom across the hall if you need to pee.” The nurse pauses, a flicker of compassion in her heavily lined eyes. “What did you say your name was?”
Evelyn clears her pinched throat. “Evelyn.”
“Evelyn what?”
She’s been denied her own last name for so long now. The question stirs something inside her, a thirst for something true. “Taylor. Evelyn Taylor.”
“All right, Evelyn Taylor, I’ll let the doctor know and we’ll start you a chart.” She turns to leave.
“What happens?” The words burst from Evelyn’s mouth before she can stop them.
The nurse lets out a sigh. “They don’t tell you girls much, do they?”
Evelyn shakes her head. “No. Nothing.”
The nurse shrugs a shoulder. “It’s not really for me to say, but it’s painful. Be prepared for that. And it could be a long night. You girls are usually here for a few days if nothing goes wrong, then you’re discharged back to the home.”
“What do you mean, ‘if nothing goes wrong’?”
“If there are no complications with the birth or the baby. If you start to heal up okay, if there’s no infections.”
Evelyn’s face burns with embarrassment at her own ignorance, but she’s desperate to know what’s coming in the home stretch, the final stage of her ordeal. “What do you mean, ‘heal up’?”
The nurse’s eyes flit to the clock on the wall. Someone’s being paged over the speakers. She meets Evelyn’s eyes. “Honey, having a baby rips you up. All between your legs will be sore. You’ll probably have stitches. And if we have to do a cesarean, you’ll have a big incision.”
Evelyn can’t keep up. “What’s a—what you just said?”
“A cesarean section, a C-section. It’s when the doctor has to cut you open to get the baby out. But he’ll try not to do that, don’t worry.”
Evelyn’s panic tightens in her chest. “What do you mean, ‘cut—’ ”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t have time for this. I have to get back to the desk. Get your gown on and get into bed. Good luck.”
She turns and leaves Evelyn alone in the room. Evelyn lays her traveling case down beside the narrow bed and peels off her wet stockings with difficulty, leaning over her enormous belly as the contractions squeeze and pulsate. She cries out once, but bites down on her bottom lip, pinching her eyes shut against the pain. A minute later when it finally subsides, Evelyn opens her eyes, breathes in deeply, then lets it out in a long exhale. As the nurse said, this could be a long night.
Down the corridor, a woman lets out a cry. She hears a man’s stern voice responding, then the ticking of the clock on the wall. It counts down the seconds for her—the time she has left before her baby is born, before she might be cut open by this faceless butcher-doctor.
Evelyn blinks back fresh tears and wrestles her body out of the rest of her clothes, folds them neatly, and sets them down on top of the small dresser. They’re still damp, and she wonders if someone will offer to hang them up to dry. She heaves herself into the bed and pulls the beige wool blanket up over her belly and breasts. She glances to her left. She’s become so used to Maggie’s presence in the bed right next to hers. She wishes they could go through this together, as they have every other stage of their pregnancies.
The clock ticks away another few minutes of silence before another contraction begins. Evelyn throws her arm out to the side, reaching instinctively for a hand to hold. She needs someone to help her through this, to brush her hair off her sweaty face, whisper that it’s going to be okay, that she’s brave and doing great. That her baby will be in her arms soon, a beautiful baby girl with eyes like a summer morning. But her hand closes on thin air, and in that moment she’s positive she has never in her life felt this utterly, profoundly alone.
Three hours and several painful contractions later, the doctor comes to her room. He introduces himself as Dr. Pritchard, then, without telling her what he’s doing, lifts the sheets and blankets and starts feeling around between her legs, pushes his fingers up inside. Evelyn gasps; she wants to weep with humiliation. He declares her only eight centimeters dilated, whatever that means, and tells her he’ll come back later. Evelyn stumbles out of bed, fills a glass of water, and flops right back down, exhausted.
She labors alone all night, listening to the crooning of the maternity ward nurses as they comfort the other women. She strains her ears, trying to catch any snippet of their conversation that might tell her what to expect as the contractions become more and more frequent. She wonders, while writhing on her hands and knees at one particularly low point in the night, whether she might be dead. What if no one is coming to check on her because she’s a ghost? Maybe she’s already given birth and died in the attempt and her poor lost soul is stuck in this hospital storeroom, laboring for eternity.
But when the contractions are nearly constant and Evelyn starts to feel an intense pressure between her legs, her only instinct is to start screaming for help, and—finally—it comes. Dr. Pritchard breezes into the room with one of the maternity nurses, and she pushes and cries through the searing pain until her baby enters the world in a bloody, slimy burst.
Evelyn hadn’t been prepared for any of it, but the sound of her baby’s first cry feels like Christmas morning. Like her heart has been split into two and is now part of this tiny person in the doctor’s hands. The doctor actually smiles at Evelyn over the top of the sheet.
“A baby girl. You’re going to make some nice couple very happy, Evelyn.”
Evelyn can barely register what he said, because here is her daughter. Purple and pruned, her face scrunched up tight in protest of the coldness of the room, spluttering as she takes her first breaths. But she’s the most beautiful thing Evelyn has ever seen. She’s shaking with relief and something more overwhelming and deeper than anything she’s ever felt before.
The doctor cuts the cord and hands the baby to the nurse, who walks her over to a counter beside the sink, and Evelyn watches her back as Dr. Pritchard snaps off his bloody gloves and hands her a clipboard and pen, pointing to a line at the bottom, marked with a red X. He tells her she has to sign it before she’s allowed to hold the baby. Evelyn signs the sloppiest signature she’s ever written. She isn’t even looking at the clipboard; she can’t take her eyes off the nurse.
“You sit tight now, and I’ll be back to finish off with the afterbirth and then stitch you up,” the doctor says, sweeping from the room.
Evelyn ignores him. She sees her baby’s little arm flailing over the crook of the nurse’s elbow until they’re bound tightly in a swaddling cloth. She’s crying, and it makes Evelyn’s heart ache with the most bittersweet mix of elation and anguish. She struggles to sit upright and feels a throb between her legs as something warm and wet trickles out. She doesn’t look down.
She reaches her arms out to the nurse, hands trembling. “Can I hold her? Please?”
“See if she’ll suck,” the nurse says, tugging Evelyn’s gown down to expose a heavy breast.
Evelyn holds her baby close, watches as the little pink mouth noses around her nipple. After several more minutes and lots of tears, the baby latches on, and even as Leo’s face flashes into her mind, Evelyn instantly knows she has never felt pure love until this moment. She clasps her baby as close as she can, strokes her wisps of brown hair, the impossibly soft skin on the back of her neck.
“Oh my God,” she says with a shaky laugh. “She’s so real.”
The nurse nods. “I’ve got a little girl, too. It’s sort of like looking at another version of yourself, isn’t it?”
The nurse glances at Evelyn, who is so focused on her baby that she doesn’t look up to see the depth of sadness in the nurse’s eyes. If she did, she would see that the nurse’s conscience weighs so heavily that some nights she has trouble sleeping.
“Well, I’ll leave you to it, dear. Dr. Pritchard will be back in a few minutes.” She quietly walks from the room and closes the door behind her, leaving Evelyn alone with her baby.
“Hello, sweet baby,” Evelyn whispers into her daughter’s ear. Like it’s a secret, just between the two of them. She kisses the wet silky top of her head. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
They keep Evelyn and her daughter in the hospital for over a week; they want the baby to gain more weight before she’s discharged. There’s no one waiting for this bed in the forgotten corner of the maternity ward, and so they stay.
The kind maternity nurse brings her a proper housecoat from the ward closet to wear over her nightdress instead of the hospital gown, and on the second day, Evelyn shuffles down to the waiting room in her own worn-out slippers to scrounge up some outdated beauty magazines for a bit of entertainment. She has a novel, too, a smart copy of a mystery one of the other new mothers left behind. Her husband brought it in for her and she didn’t want it. Evelyn can’t help but wonder what this experience would be like if things had gone differently and she had Leo to bring her presents and flowers and well-wishes from their loved ones, massage her feet, lie to her and tell her she looks fresh and beautiful.
Not at all tired, my dear. Don’t you worry.
Evelyn promises herself that she’ll tell Maggie everything she can about the labor and birth process before her friend has to undergo the same experience. She’ll be separated into the postpartum dormitory once she returns to St. Agnes’s, but plans to whisper the details to her friend during Bible study or outdoor time. She’ll sneak into Maggie’s dormitory in the middle of the night if she has to. Anything to make sure Maggie has the information she needs to be prepared for not just the labor, but the overwhelming love she’ll feel when her child is placed in her arms. It’s that love that has made Evelyn happier than she has been in over a year. Maybe ever.
Her favorite thing to do is walk down to the nursery to visit her baby. Sometimes there are other mothers or fathers there, but often it’s just her alone, pressing her forehead and hands against the glass, eager to get as close as she can to her daughter. Evelyn’s hands itch when she isn’t holding her, and she’s even feeling phantom kicks in her belly. They’re only bringing her to breastfeed once a day now. The doctor says formula is far better for her baby’s health, but she misses the feeling of that little rosy mouth.
On her fifth day at the hospital, Evelyn wanders down to the incubators in the late afternoon with a Styrofoam cup of weak coffee in her hand. There are two men there today, a tall redhead in his twenties, not much older than Evelyn, and an older gentleman with some dignified gray flecking his black temples. Evelyn pads up behind them, keeping her eyes downcast. The sense of shame has worn off a little over the past few days, but she still worries the other parents will know where she’s from, or notice there’s never a man there with her, gazing at the babies like these proud fathers do.
“Which one’s yours?” the older man asks the redhead.
“That one”—he points to a bundle wrapped in blue—“with the name card George. Named him after my father. Our first.” He smiles, his hands in his trouser pockets.
“Atta boy.” The older man claps him on the back like a hockey coach with his star player. “Congratulations.”
“Thanks. And you?”
“Right there,” the man indicates with a nod. “Gracie. Our sixth and hopefully last, but you never know. Sometimes there’s just no stopping it, eh?” He nudges the young father, who chuckles.
Evelyn sidesteps down the hall to put some space between her and the men, but they don’t even seem to notice her.
“Lots of spring babies,” the man goes on, a farmer observing his reaped crop. “Never seen so many in here at once. I like looking at all the names. Interesting to think who they’re gonna grow up to be. What kind of families they come from. Mostly good stock. You do see a few coloreds in here from time to time, though. Good smattering of Jews, too.” The younger man’s smile falters. “I’ve seen another one off in the corner like that before, too. Never any name tag like the others.”
Evelyn realizes he’s pointing at her daughter. Sister Teresa had told them it would be easier to say goodbye if they didn’t name their babies. Besides, no one had asked her whether she even had a name picked out.
“And that one there’s tiny. Doesn’t look like it’s thriving like the others are.”
Evelyn is stung. How was she supposed to have given birth to a fat baby, with the rations they’re fed at the home?
“I’ve wondered before if they’re diseased or something,” the man continues. “I asked one of the nurses about it once. I said, ‘If there’s something wrong with that one, I don’t want it in with my kid and the other healthy ones!’ But she said it’s just where they put the whores’ babies, you know. They get adopted anyway, so no sense putting a name on it that’s only going to be changed.”
The new father frowns, takes a step back from the glass. “Well, I should get back to my wife.”
“All right, son. Congratulations again to you and the missus.”
“Thank you.” They clasp hands and the younger man turns and wanders back down the hallway.
Evelyn’s mind is reeling and she feels like she’s going to be sick. She ducks her face to hide her swelling red nose, tries to follow in the retreating father’s wake, but the older man is too quick for her.
“Hello, there, sweetheart!” he bellows, and Evelyn gags on the stench of stale cigarettes. “Didn’t see ya there. Come to visit your little one? Which one is it?”
She can’t answer. Instead she turns and flees back down the hallway, crashing through the doors of the maternity ward, shuffling as fast as her stitches allow while the ties of her housecoat flap behind her. She doesn’t stop until she reaches the end of the hallway and realizes there’s nowhere left to run.