Chapter 16
Carol started having contractions just before dawn on Christmas Eve.
Within half an hour, the nurses had her packed up and ready to leave.
Bad weather was on its way, and it was decided that as soon as the nurses on day shift arrived, the night nurse would take her to the hospital.
Better safe than sorry. By the time I made it downstairs, Carol already had on her fur-collar coat and the matching hat, and the night nurse held her suitcase.
I asked if I could run upstairs and get dressed and come along to the hospital, and the nurse looked at me like I’d asked to borrow a thousand dollars.
“I’ll be fine, dear,” Carol said. The way she said it, it was like she could have been talking to anyone.
I knew she had other things on her mind, to say the least, but still, her coldness hurt my feelings.
We’d spent so many hours outside talking, and those hours had been the only parts of my time in New Jersey that didn’t feel lonely.
Once she left, those times would be over. I’d never see her again.
“I’ll miss you,” I said, my voice wobbly.
She smiled like what I’d said was funny.
She turned to me, though, holding out her arms. Because we were both so pregnant, I had to come in on one side of her.
I held on to her a little too long. I’d forgotten how it felt, having another person put their arms around me. The last person I’d hugged was Mae.
“Now, now.” She patted my shoulder. “We’ll always have Paterson.
” She was about to say something else when her breath caught, and she stepped away quickly.
The nurse looked at her watch and told her to keep breathing.
We helped her over to the bench by the door, and she leaned forward, squeezing our arms, until the contraction was over.
I’d never seen Carol look scared or even upset about anything, but I could tell she was frightened, and I was glad to be at her side.
But almost as soon as the contraction ended, a day nurse came in, all bundled up, kicking snow off her boots, and said the roads were still okay but they wouldn’t stay that way for long.
And then both nurses were helping Carol down the front steps to the night nurse’s car. I didn’t have on shoes, just socks, so all I could do was call out good luck, and hope that she would hear me.
—
The rest of Christmas Eve was probably my hardest day that winter.
Even if Carol hadn’t left that morning, I think it still would have felt especially long and gray.
The nurses seemed gloomy, too, probably wishing they could be home with their families instead of trapped in a big house with a bunch of sad, pregnant girls.
They got some of us to bake and ice cookies, and I helped with a jigsaw puzzle.
But most of us, myself included, wanted to try to nap the day away.
Sleet tapped on the windows, and we could hear the wind, and the trees creaking.
At dinner, the lights of the chandelier flickered more than once.
The whole time, I kept wondering how Carol was doing.
The nurses said the hospital had a generator, and that they were sure she was fine.
I knew they’d never tell us if something went wrong. Or if Carol really did keep her baby.
I was surprised by how low I felt. I’d only known Carol for a few weeks.
But the feeling I had made me think of when my mother took both Bobby and me to the county fair and bought us each a red helium-filled balloon tied to a string.
This was an unusual expenditure for her—Bobby and I were used to being told we couldn’t have everything that caught our eye.
But neither of us had ever seen helium balloons before, and we were so taken by the wonder of them that she made an exception.
She tied the strings to our respective wrists, but Bobby’s hands were still small, and I don’t think he understood how quickly the balloon would leave him behind if it got the chance.
Within ten seconds, up it went. My mother tried to console him, telling him the balloon was just trying to get to heaven where it would be happier.
He didn’t buy that at all, or he didn’t care.
He was crying, begging my mother to get it back.
I felt so bad for him I tugged the string of my balloon off my wrist, but I let go before he had a good hold of it.
So up my balloon went as well. What a sorry sight we must have been, the three of us standing there together, looking up, watching those balloons get smaller, until we couldn’t see them at all.
—
I made myself wait until Christmas morning to open the three cards I received by way of Arkansas.
Irene and Roberta had each sent a card wishing Mae’s mother and me a Merry Christmas, and Irene enclosed a little candy cane, smashed to pieces on the journey north.
The third card was from Mae, and when I opened it, a five-dollar bill slipped out.
In the card, she wished me a Merry Christmas from everyone, and apologized for just sending cash.
She’d been so tired all winter, she wrote, which made sense, as she, too, was pregnant, and getting close to the homestretch.
I wrote her a thank-you note so it could go in the post the next day, then went to the common room, where I shook my New Testament and hairbrush out of my stocking.
I went down to the office to thank the nurses.
One nurse said that I was most welcome and wished me a Merry Christmas.
But the other nurse asked if I knew anything about the Baby Jesus missing from the nativity set in the dining room.
I told her I didn’t, and she gave me an earful anyway, letting me know whoever did take the Jesus might think she was pretty funny, but that set had been in her family for generations, brought over from France by her great-grandmother.
She said she’d brought it to the home trying to be nice to us girls, and this was how we thanked her for the trouble.
I almost got smart with her, as I didn’t like being accused, but then I saw this nurse was trying not to cry, and I understood: That little silver Jesus was her red helium balloon.
The other nurse tried to change the subject by looking out the window and saying how surprisingly warm it was outside, and didn’t the ice look pretty, like so much glitter?
I asked if I could borrow the coat. On my way out of the office, another girl came in, and that same mad nurse started in on her about the missing Baby Jesus, so at least I knew not to take it personally.
And as soon as I got outside, I saw that the other nurse had been right about how pretty the ice on the trees looked now that the sun had come out, everything catching the light, even the melting ice dripping from the trees and the house’s eaves.
It sounded like I was out in the rain, but I was dry, the sun warm on my face.
“Can you hear that?” I whispered, and waited, though the porcupine was never active at that time of day.
I still felt my words would reach it. “It’s not all so terrible out here.
” I put a hand on either side of my belly, swaying a little, and thought about the porcupine swaying with me, content.
It didn’t know it was going to end up with somebody else.
“They’ll be better for you,” I said, as if I knew them, or anything about them. I only knew they’d be married.
After a while, my hands got cold enough that I pushed them both into the coat’s pockets, and I felt something hard in the right pocket.
I pulled it out and found myself looking down at the metal Baby Jesus, partly wrapped in a torn envelope.
The envelope had a stamp and a postmark from Greenwich, Connecticut.
The return address was in Greenwich as well.
Later that day, when no one else was in the dining room, I tucked the Jesus back into its crib. As Carol knew very well that I would.
—
My roommate Helen was gone all day on Christmas.
Her mother had picked her up that morning, and she returned in the evening, humming “Silver Bells,” her long hair not just freed from its braid, but curled at the ends and shiny.
She carried in a portable record player, along with several records she hadn’t even opened yet.
She plugged the player in by her bed, then asked if it would bother me if she listened to a few records before lights out.
Her politeness startled me. I’d remembered Carol saying that I should go easy on Helen, and I’d done my best to do just that. But I didn’t think she even knew my name.
“Sure,” I said. “That’d be nice.”
“Okay, great.” She fanned four different records out on her bed. “Which one do you want to hear first?”
I thought, huh, maybe a certain someone was visited by the ghost of Jacob Marley in chains, and was forced to see her past, present, and the future if she didn’t change her rude ways.
But really, I guessed Helen was just in a good mood after spending a happy day with her family.
One of her records was an Ella Fitzgerald, the one where she sings Cole Porter songs.
I chose that one, and soon enough, Helen and I weren’t alone.
As I said, we mostly kept to ourselves in that house, but let me tell you: If you want to get a bunch of lonely pregnant girls in a home for unwed mothers to shamble into your room on a winter evening and make themselves comfortable, or as comfortable as possible, start playing “But Not for Me” at an even moderate volume.
You won’t have to wait long. By the time that song was over, I was sitting on my pillow, my knees pulled up to my belly, so two other girls who wanted to listen could sit on the edge of the bed.
Helen took more requests. She had the soundtrack for South Pacific, so of course somebody wanted to hear “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair.
” As soon as it was over, someone else asked if we could hear it again.
Still, I was enjoying myself, singing along, and all of us pretending to scrub out our hair whenever the chorus came on.
But then that song ended and somebody saw Helen’s Mel Tormé record and asked to hear “Blue Moon.” I almost got up and left.
I had no interest in thinking back to that night on the beach when Leonard first said he loved me, and I first said I loved him.
The memory now carried a searing pain, and a longing for what wasn’t coming back.
Still, I stayed where I was, half nestled under my blankets.
Just hearing the title of “Blue Moon” already had me thinking of that night.
If I got up and went downstairs, I’d be thinking of it while cold.
Another girl, Wanda, appeared in our doorway. She said we had to turn the song off immediately, unless we all wanted bad luck.
“It’s not bad luck,” Helen said, but she turned off the record.
I didn’t wonder why. Wanda had arrived at Shaded Acres the week before, looking like someone tried to cut off all her hair with a knife.
It had grown back a little, and one of the nurses trimmed the ends.
But Wanda was hard to be around without feeling uneasy, as she was always picking her fingernails down to the quick, and I’d twice seen her slap her own face.
“Yes, it is,” Wanda said. She scratched at one of her arms, hard enough to make me wince. “A blue moon means you’ll be betrayed. And just hearing that song might make it happen.”
“What’s a blue moon?” Helen asked. “I thought it was just how the moon looks when you’re sad.”
I didn’t know. I only knew the expression, “once in a blue moon,” meaning not very often. But the girl with the scar on her face, Beth, said a blue moon was the second full moon of the month, which didn’t happen very often, and never in February.
“I always heard it was a good thing,” Beth added. She was up next, due any day. She sat on my desk with her knees splayed, fanning her face with a magazine. “Seeing a blue moon. And maybe hearing the song. It means you get a second chance.”
“It means betrayal,” Wanda said. I’ll say this for Wanda: She’d clearly been given an unfair share of troubles in life, but she had beautiful eyes, large and almost sea green. She scanned our faces, one at a time. “A blue moon means you’ll be betrayed. And hearing the song might do it, too.”
“Too late,” Beth said, and I laughed, as did another girl on my bed. I think we were all a little surprised to find out, so late in the game, that we could joke around like this, and find some comfort in one another. For me, that feeling didn’t last, as Wanda’s gaze fell on me and stayed there.
“It means you’ll be betrayed in the future,” she said. “The moon where I lived turned blue last fall. I was soon betrayed.”
She really talked liked that, Wanda. You half expected her to drop the act and laugh at herself. She never did.
“You mean from the fires in Canada?” Beth asked. “It was all the smoke from it. Where I lived, the moon turned more of a lavender.”
Another girl acted like she knew exactly what Beth was talking about, adding that the moon had turned brown where she lived, and that her mother thought an atom bomb had gone off, and was sure the end was nigh.
Then Helen piped up and said the moon where she was looked pink from the fire.
I seriously wondered if they’d all gotten together to play a joke on me.
I didn’t remember the moon over St. Pete ever turning any crazy color.
Years later, when I was again working at a library, I looked up news for Canada in the summer of 1950.
Everything those girls told me that night was true.
The fire started in June, in a forest in British Columbia, growing and blowing east, burning through the summer and into the fall, when a six-hundred-mile stretch of its smoke drifted across the Great Lakes, darkening skies as far south as Georgia.
Farmers reported having to milk cows at odd hours.
Birds sang as if greeting the dawn at two in the afternoon.
All over, people were calling the police and radio stations, asking what to do, as they truly thought that the world was ending.
I didn’t know any of this, that night at the home, and so I stayed silent, half listening as the other girls discussed how the moon looked from their respective homes.
The only other girl who didn’t join in was Wanda.
She stayed in the doorway scratching her arms, showing no interest in the conversation as it moved on.
When she did talk, it was only to maintain that she’d seen a blue moon in the fall, and that she was sure, still, of what it meant.