1910
The photo reprinted in the Inquisitor was the one Arnold Jenkins had taken in her parlor a month ago.
A whole lifetime ago, it seemed. The exposure was all wrong.
The high collar of her dress faded into the background, so her body appeared detached from her head completely.
Her eyes looked wild, wide, unhinged from their sockets.
Madame de Fleur had told her about scientists who’d studied the mediums of Europe, like Eusapia Palladino and Eva C.
The way Madame de Fleur had described it, these women were examined as one might weigh a molting butterfly, not with fear but with wonder at the corporeal transition.
Opal remembered the leather straps with nodes and wires she’d seen lying about the Colonel’s house.
Dixie had called for a public test of Opal’s spiritualist abilities, and now she imagined herself lashed to a chair again, an electrified Medusa, wires for snakes.
Tonight, Opal couldn’t see a single speck of light in the sky.
It was brisk for a spring evening. She wore black to cloak herself in the dark, and she walked twelve city blocks in boots that now felt too small.
Only a certain kind of woman travels alone at night.
The rest are home, protected in their houses, like delicate eggs that might crack if exposed to darkness.
She paced the entrance of the beer caves until Bertie arrived. There, in the lamplight, Bertie looked different, less herself and yet more so. Her eyes held the edges of shadow. They didn’t speak until they began walking, the movement of their bodies a necessary distraction.
“It’s beyond even Charles now,” Bertie said.
“Then you’ll help me get away? We could go to your country house. Your house girl can help. You said so yourself.”
“For two months? Charles would find out.”
They made their way through the tunnel and up the stairs through the memorabilia room.
It was late, and the strikers had gone home.
Through the large windows, the city looked ablaze with light and framed, like a living photograph made just for them.
Bertie found a crate of soap, and she unwrapped a bar and held it to her nose.
“The smell—it makes me feel nostalgic.”
“For your childhood?”
“I don’t know. For the opposite, I suppose. Is there a word for that? Missing what you never had in the first place?”
“I think it’s called being a woman,” Opal said.
Bertie turned and put her hands to Opal’s stomach.
Then she withdrew them, and the spot she’d been touching grew cool.
Bertie had stuffed her maternity corset with a rubber water bag, and now she adjusted it.
From her basket, she produced two pints of milk.
The liquid coated Opal’s throat, and she couldn’t drink more, despite Bertie’s urging.
Dixie Ellison had also learned of Bertie’s pregnancy.
In the papers she referred to Bertie’s baby as “The Heir of Suds.” She complimented Bertie’s tasteful maternity attire.
Dixie reported that Bertie’s face had grown plumper; she described Bertie’s glowing skin, her hair that grew thick and lustrous.
Dixie insisted pregnancy makes a woman more beautiful, more vital.
The work of motherhood does the job of a thousand beauty products.
Outside the windows, Opal observed the city lights; she squinted and imagined they were stars.
Bertie helped her climb the stairs to the laboratory.
Opal pulled the chain and brightness stung her eyes.
Bertie’s makeup was heavy. Not a hair was out of place.
She wore a maternity gown with a bright blue belt, but the material bunched at the waist.
“No matter what happens, I’ll talk to Charles. I’ll convince him to talk to the mayor. You’re an Earthshine Girl. He’s particular about public perception, you know.”
Bertie sat at the table, so Opal sat, too.
Above them the bare bulb kicked out heat, and between them, on the table, a jar of capsules.
Bertie picked it up and examined the contents with curiosity.
The woman never said if she did or didn’t believe in the Other Side.
Opal admired that, how her beliefs didn’t affect her ability to understand what she needed or to take it. A truly self-sustaining woman.
“Where did you get them—your formulas?”
Opal hesitated a moment, then reached for the formulary she’d hidden in the ceiling, beneath a loose tin tile.
The women were intimates now; they knew each other’s secrets.
Opal took faith in that exchange, how they both wanted something they couldn’t have, how they both felt like equals because of it.
Opal held the formulary out for Bertie to take, and she took it.
“My husband was a doctor,” Opal said.
“And what’s this? Oh, that necklace of yours.
” She pulled the necklace from the crease of the formulary, stuffed with those letters, and dangled it on her finger.
“I knew from the start you weren’t a simple factory girl.
” She closed the formulary and pushed it forward on the table.
Opal took it, and Bertie watched as she tucked it back into the space behind the ceiling tile.
“Is there no way you can call in your connections? Surely you know someone who can help—” Opal started to say, but Bertie cut her off.
“Think of what you can do within your means. That’s always the question I ask of myself—the question every woman must ask herself every day if she wants to survive in this world. What power is yours, even if limited? How can you use it?”
The women sat for a while in silence.
M—, OPAL WROTE LATER THAT night. I’ve imagined again and again stepping off that boat in France.
Would you be there? Have I understood you correctly?
All my life I’ve been waiting, and when I discovered I was pregnant, the waiting became measurable, finally.
A new life would soon arrive. I’ve never felt so close to death and life at once with this baby inside of me.
Maybe every woman dies at some point, and then spends the rest of her life on the Other Side, trying to recover the distance. I know what I want now. Rump roast.
If this is my last letter, please know how hard I’ve tried to reach your shore.