Chapter 10
CHAPTER
NEW YORK CITY
Coffee burned Elsa’s throat on its way down, but she barely even noticed.
She sat at the writing desk in the parlor of her apartment with only the ticking clock and the soft rush of traffic outside to fill the predawn quiet.
Spread before her was the folder of papers she’d brought home from Linus’s secret office yesterday.
Securely packaged in a box on the corner of the desk was the Spix’s macaw.
Leaning back in her chair, Elsa cupped her hands around the mug and sipped.
Yesterday afternoon, she’d used a fingernail file and buffer to groom the blue parrot’s feathers after its misadventure in Barney’s mouth.
Wesley and Jane had returned after the storm and noticed her change of attire.
They’d been shocked she would borrow “that gardener’s shabby dress” but had left her in the dining hall after that, where Crawford finished packing the china.
Elsa glanced at the macaw again, her pulse fluttering with the anticipation of presenting it to the museum. This bird and its significance, she understood.
She could not say the same about the documents in Linus’s folder.
An article from the Carnegie Station for Experimental Evolution warned of the dangers of the recessive trait of the feebleminded.
Another article tucked between advertisements for women’s footwear was headlined “New Aristocracy Will Be ‘Human Thoroughbreds.’” This was eugenics, the field Mr. Spalding was in at the Eugenics Records Office on Long Island.
Elsa flipped to another paper and found a drawing of a tree emblazoned with the words “Eugenics Is the Self Direction of Human Evolution.” At the base of the page, each tree root was labeled with a different branch of study.
The largest roots supporting the eugenics tree were genetics, anthropology, statistics, biography, and genealogy.
Other roots were labeled politics and law.
Elsa wondered if Mr. Spalding inherited his interest from his uncle Linus or if it was the other way around.
After swallowing more coffee, she shifted the documents and found papers full of family trees, but not like any she’d seen before. The top halves of each page were designated Normal Line and Degenerate Line, and at the bottom were totals for both.
Elsa took off her glasses and squinted to read the fine print.
Smaller charts identified in each category the number of people in that line who were criminal, alcoholic, grossly immoral, feebleminded, epileptic, insane, neurotic, died in infancy, or died young.
The normal line produced a far smaller number of each than the degenerate line.
Coffee souring in her stomach, Elsa cleaned her glasses on a handkerchief before replacing them.
As she browsed the files, it didn’t take long to find a pamphlet with the solution for better humans: careful and deliberate marriages, sterilization of society’s undesirables, and new immigration laws.
“If we can breed perfection into horses, pigs, and cows,” the pamphlet quipped, “why leave human evolution to chance?” Paper-clipped behind that literature was a stack of flyers from state fairs advertising Better Babies contests.
“Good morning!”
Elsa startled at her roommate’s greeting as if she’d been suddenly pulled from a deep sleep. If only she’d been dreaming.
“You’re up early.” Ivy yawned, pushing her hair behind one ear. She’d already washed and dressed for work, and Elsa hadn’t registered a single sound.
“I was too tired last night to look at what I’d brought home from the mansion, and too curious not to dive into it before work today. Listen, have you ever heard of Better Babies contests? At state fairs?”
Frowning, Ivy grabbed a mug and poured herself coffee before bringing it to the sofa in the parlor. She curled her legs beneath her and tasted the brew before responding. “I’ve been to a few state fairs but never saw that in my life. Is that some kind of eugenics thing?”
Elsa nodded, then began reading from the file.
“‘A physician scores a baby in precisely the same way as a judge of experience in livestock scores cattle. . . . It is first necessary to establish a standard and then to compare each entry or specimen with what is known as a one hundred percent, or perfect, product.’” A chill raced down her spine.
“A ‘specimen’ that is a ‘perfect product’? Are we sure they’re talking about human beings here?” asked Ivy. “And whose standard are they using, and how did they choose it?”
Elsa turned her chair around so she could fully face her friend. “According to this, infants are lined up for judging, and then doctors and nurses record each one’s weight, chest circumference, and mental capacity—although how you do that with babies, I couldn’t guess.”
“I’m sure all the babies loved strangers doing that.”
“Babies too shy to participate in the tests lose points,” Elsa paraphrased.
Ivy’s eyebrows disappeared behind her bangs. “You have got to be kidding me.”
Elsa passed her the document. “Look, there’s even a scorecard printed in Woman’s Home Companion magazine so everyone can judge babies on their own.
” She waited while Ivy read the parameters.
Official judges used a thousand-point scale, with one hundred points for physical measurements, two hundred for mental and psychological fitness, and the rest for physical appearance.
Winners at state fairs were awarded silver trophies.
“This is a scream,” Ivy declared. “Did you read this part? It says, ‘Underneath the inviting charm of the idea is a serious scientific purpose—healthy babies, standardized babies, and always, year after year, Better Babies.’ And then there’s something about Better Babies leading to Fitter Families. ”
“Oh, good, so you can enter your entire family into the livestock competition, is that it?”
“That’s the idea.” Ivy laughed and handed it back to her.
Elsa didn’t feel like laughing. She felt like she was going to be sick.
“Come on, let’s hit the dining room before the breakfast crowd. Want to?” Ivy slipped her feet into her pumps.
“You go on ahead,” Elsa told her. “Bring me back a blueberry muffin and cheese, though, would you?” She didn’t want to admit that her interest in these files wasn’t the only reason she wasn’t up for breakfast today.
Sparing herself the jaunt to the dining room may make the walk to work a little easier.
“You got it.” Ivy left the room.
Standing, Elsa kneaded her fists into the small of her back, stretched her leg, then went to refill her coffee, all the while trying not to think of how she might score in a contest devoted to the perfect human product.
She shuddered.
Back at the desk, she opened the curtains before sitting again. Light spilled through the window and landed on the folders Linus had been hiding from his wife.
Elsa moved the folder from the bottom of the stack to the top and opened it to find several blank forms titled Individual Analysis Card.
They were two-sided, with room to record medical history and physical, mental, and temperamental traits.
The last section was for the description of physical appearance.
Odd.
Linus van Tessel had been an explorer and collector in his prime, not a doctor or researcher—as far as Elsa knew, at any rate.
Was eugenics a hobby he picked up when he was too old to gallivant about the globe?
Maybe the Eugenics Records Office, or ERO, had recruited him to gather information for their files.
With his bent toward capturing and studying birds, he had an obvious affinity for biology, and she’d seen a copy of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in that secret den. Perhaps his interests included anthropology, too.
Elsa fanned through the blank forms until she saw one with fields filled in.
At the top of the page, Linus had written “my copy,” which she could only assume meant that he’d filled in another one just like it and submitted it to the ERO.
Before she had time to wonder why he’d complete one for himself, she saw the name: Danielle Petrovic.
Elsa skimmed over the first couple of sections, which contained her basic information, noting that her parents were listed as “Croatian with unknown pedigrees” and that “frequent earaches” and “visual avoidance” were recorded.
Under the Mental and Temperament headings, the form contained lists of adjectives that the recorder was meant to either cross out if they did not apply to the individual or underscore if they did.
But it was Linus’s handwritten comments that stopped her.
Child cannot speak at the age of nearly four years old.
Fixates on certain objects she must have with her at all times.
Subject is painfully shy and quiet but also demonstrates episodes of manic outbursts during which she screams, hits her head, pulls her hair, makes repeated inhuman noises, or sustains a groan for an inordinate length of time.
She will kick and bite and has struck her own parents with no reasonable provocation.
Subject demonstrates complete lack of intelligence and inability to learn. Feebleminded at best, with a likely trajectory toward insanity or even criminality, given subject’s reaction to not getting her own way.
Burden on society.
Mother not likely to bear more children given her age.
Elsa sat back, stunned, and read the file one more time. Danielle, a burden? What did that mean, exactly? What had been Linus’s intention when he completed this form and, presumably, sent a copy to the ERO?