A Violet Season (17 page)

“I can’t get up,” she told him, and he ventured one step closer. “Get your father.”

“He’s gone over the ridge,” Oliver said.

“Then get Aunt Harriet.”

Harriet was not an early riser, and Ida knew it would be some time before they returned. She would have to rouse herself. She returned Mary to the cradle. Then she set her feet on the floor. She thought deliberately about how they met the floor at the pads of her toes, the balls of her feet, her heels. Surely she could stand. Surely she could walk across the room to the washbasin. And she did. Once she was up, she imagined it might be all right. She would feed the babies and dress and make it to the station on time. Then she looked in the mirror above the basin and saw that the skin on the upper mound of her breast was flaming red. Anabel gurgled in the cradle.

Ida knew it was mastitis. She’d had it once with Oliver. She remembered a story her physician father had told, of a woman in Schenectady who’d died after an abscess the size of a plum had burst inside her breast. The first thing she must do was let Anabel drain that breast.

Wrapping a shawl around herself, Ida stepped one foot after the other into the kitchen. The boys had stoked the fire, and she put the kettle on. Anabel began a staccato cry from the bedroom, but she would have to wait. When the water was boiling, Ida tempered it with cold water from the pump and poured it into the washbasin. She dipped a washcloth in the hot water and wrung it out, then sat in the rocker and pressed the warm cloth to her breast. Sweat trickled from her forehead, and she wiped her eyes on the shoulder of her nightgown. In a moment, milk began to drip from her nipple. Anabel was crying with some force, and when Ida settled the baby on her lap, she latched on with a vengeful suck that made Ida cry out. She thought of what she’d done in childbirth. By the time she’d had Alice, her third baby, she’d learned she must let go rather than fight the pain, for it would always win. She tried this tactic again, resting her head on the back of the rocker and breathing deeply. As she exhaled, she sat inside the pain itself, a great room with a cold floor and a light so bright it hurt to look. With each pull of the baby’s tongue, that light stabbed at her. But it would be over soon, and then Harriet would be here to help.

By the time Oliver brought Harriet, Anabel had finished and was fussing in her cradle. Ida sat spent in the rocker, her nightgown loosened to release the heat from her chest, her eyes closed, too sick to care for any modesty in front of her boys.

“What can I get you, Ida?” Harriet said close to her, and Ida opened her eyes.

“Snow,” Ida said. “Some snow in a towel.”

“Oliver,” Harriet said over her shoulder. “Get Dr. Van de Klerk.”

“No,” Ida said. “I want to see Mrs. Schreiber.”

*   *   *   

When Ida awoke, Mrs. Schreiber was standing at the bedside with her hands on her hips. “I hope they’re paying you well,” she said.

“Not well enough,” Ida said, trying to smile.

Mrs. Schreiber gently lifted Ida’s nightgown from her breast. “Oh, my dear,” she said. The heat of the infection was rising; Ida’s collarbone felt warm now, too. Mrs. Schreiber fingered Anabel’s sling, which was hung over the bedpost. “Here’s the culprit, I would imagine,” she said. “It’s put pressure on your breast and backed up the milk. I’m sorry, Ida. I shouldn’t have suggested it.”

“I couldn’t have lived without it these last few months.”

Mrs. Schreiber dropped the sling, and Ida wondered whether she was thinking she might not live at all.

“We’ll start with a comfrey poultice. I’ll make it up while you nurse them. But chew this first.” She reached into her basket and held out a clove of garlic. “It’ll get at the infection.”

Ida chewed the garlic until her eyes and nose watered. Mrs. Schreiber followed the remedy with a large cup of water. Then Harriet brought the babies into the room.

At the sight of Mary’s wide-open, wailing mouth, Ida faltered. “You’ll want something for the pain,” Mrs. Schreiber said. Ida nodded, and Mrs. Schreiber gave her a piece of bark to chew on. “The chewing will help distract you as well,” she said, though Ida doubted it.

She took Mary first, latching her onto the fevered breast this time. She cried out, then allowed a low moan to rumble in her throat as she paddled through the pain, on and on as if across an endless lake. Finally Harriet threw a cloth over her shoulder and took Mary from Ida. Mrs. Schreiber lifted Anabel out of her cradle and settled her in Ida’s lap to drain the healthy breast. Even the surge of milk through Ida’s left breast seared in the right.

When the babies were done, Mrs. Schreiber sat at the edge of the bed and opened Ida’s nightgown wide, then laid a warm poultice over both breasts. Ida breathed deeply, and the scent of comfrey breezed over her. “This will do for today,” Mrs. Schreiber said, wiping her hands on her apron. “You make another tomorrow,” she said to Harriet. “And Ida, I want you to drink half a cup of this tea every hour until there’s some improvement.” She pulled
a pencil and a small notebook from her apron pocket and wrote down the recipe, then left two paper packets on the nightstand, labeled “mullein” and “lobelia.”

“I’ll get the first pot started before I go,” Mrs. Schreiber said, and she touched Ida’s shoulder as she stood.

Harriet lay Mary in the trundle bed and took Ida’s hand, and Ida was swamped with gratitude and humility. The pain allowed her no words, so all she could do was squeeze Harriet’s hand tight.

*   *   *   

The next day Harriet returned with a young woman whom Ida recognized from Frances’s Christmas party. “This is Cook’s niece, Delia,” Harriet told her. “She’s come to care for you.” Ida wanted to ask who would pay for her services, but couldn’t in front of the young woman. Probably Frances and Harriet had agreed they’d rather pay for help than be up with Ida themselves.

So Delia moved in to cook and clean and care for the babies and sleep on a mattress behind the curtain in the front room. She was quiet and helpful, bringing the babies when they needed to nurse and leaving Ida to her thoughts and her sleep the rest of the time. Later, Ida would have no memory of that first week, slipping in and out of fever, her consciousness a series of disjointed sounds until she surfaced to nurse again. At one point she wondered whether the babies were being fed by someone else, for she felt she wasn’t nursing them as often as she should, but she was too tired to ask or to care.

Mrs. Schreiber had apparently instructed Delia, for twice a day she prepared the poultice and offered Ida tea every waking hour until she was near sick of it. Preoccupied with his own worries, Frank didn’t ask where the medicine and the advice had come from. He seemed not to understand how gravely ill Ida was, though it was a relief somehow not to have his attention. He slept upstairs again and came and went with hardly a word. Ida thought of the day the cow had calved and how protective Frank had been
with her. He never sat at Ida’s bedside to stroke her arm or whisper encouragement in her ear. Only Reuben surprised her by sitting with her often, saying little as he read his lessons or whittled a soft piece of wood. He had taken on the task of keeping watch, perhaps imagining his vigil would ensure that she would stay with him.

One afternoon Ida heard the anxious scrape and stall of ice plates shifting on the roof, until in brief succession they slid heavily to the ground in the late-winter rain. The sound called her back into time. The fever broke, and the redness receded from high on her breast. After a few days, she began to regain her strength. Delia continued to make the poultices, and Mrs. Schreiber came to call again and changed the recipe. “You’ll be just fine,” she said. “Another week and you’ll be up and about. But take your time. It isn’t often they let us stay in bed.”

In her thinking time, Ida imagined all the places Alice might be: a roaring factory, a poorhouse, the bottom of the East River. Sick with worry, she mentally planned her trip to the city all over again. Easter was coming, the final rush before the growing season ended. Likely Harriet wouldn’t agree to take Mary and Jasper again until after the holiday, and Ida would have to call on Jennie Morton once more. She hoped her unused ticket would be honored. Some days she thought of just getting up and leaving, for Delia was there. Then she would attempt the long walk to the outhouse, her shawl poor protection against the damp March air, and stumble to her bed too exhausted to take another step. How long would it be before she’d have the strength to travel? How long could Alice wait, or was it already too late?

When she wasn’t thinking of Alice, Ida imagined how her life could be if Anabel were gone when she recovered. Mary was such an easy baby. She was nearly sitting up on her own. She could amuse herself with a jingling rattle or some other little toy. She needed to nurse just five times a day and usually slept all night. What a joy it would be to have only her to care for. Dr. Van de Klerk had been to
call while Ida was fevered. She would tell Frank that the doctor had said to send the baby away. He would listen to the doctor.

*   *   *   

By the end of the third week of her illness, Ida’s right breast still felt sore to the touch, but it was no longer agony to nurse. After nursing Mary one evening and then Anabel, Ida fell asleep without any supper. Anabel woke in the night to nurse, then Ida slept hard again until morning, when Delia brought the baby to her along with a breakfast tray. Anabel finished quickly, and Ida shouldered her to pat her back and bring up the air. She called to Delia to bring Mary but received no response.

“Delia?” she called again, and the girl appeared in the doorway. “I’m ready for Mary. Is she in the kitchen with you?”

Delia stood still and spoke not a word. Ida felt a rushing throb in her breast and knew before she spoke what had happened.

“Would you bring me the other baby, please?” she asked again.

Delia took a step into the bedroom and folded her hands at her waist, and her voice quavered as she spoke. “Mr. Fletcher took her away early this morning.”

*   *   *   

Ida worked hard to resign herself to Mary’s leaving. She didn’t want Frank to see she was disturbed. In truth, she often awoke at night with a start, thinking she’d heard Mary’s cry. Then she couldn’t get to sleep for thinking where that baby was. Though she had written faithfully to Mary’s father, she’d received just the one suspicious reply, and she had no confidence that the baby was with him, if he even existed. So where had she gone?

Ida feared Frank had done something terrible. She dreamed that Alice and the baby were together in a dark, formless cave, starving while they waited for help. Alice’s face was bony and sharp, and she put Mary to her breast, though she had no milk.

T
he
Poughkeepsie Daily Eagle News
reported that nearly a million violets were shipped by the Underwood growers for Easter, and Ida reckoned the figure was about right. Easter had become a frivolous holiday, especially in the cities, with elaborate greeting cards and showy fashion parades. On the farm, the weeks leading up to Easter were among the most harried of the season. It was the final push to pick and ship as much of the harvest as possible before the beds were turned over and the growing season ended. Housework was set aside for the week leading up to Easter Sunday in order to ship the violets. In the last few days of the rush, Ida finally dressed and walked up to the packing room to contribute her share of the work. She wasn’t able to stand as long as the others, but she did what she could.

Even Frances was in the packing room with Ida and Harriet and her two older girls one evening that week after the regular help had gone home. Though the greenhouse glass on the sides of the packing room let in some evening light, eventually they had to light a lantern, and the shadowed work became harder on the eyes and a great deal more tedious. Ida was surprised to see that Frances was still adept at bundling the violets: gathering a nosegay in her left hand, arraying the shiny galax leaves around it, then wrapping
it with the long, loose end of string that the picker had left and tucking the string between the stems. Another of them would fasten on a boot to keep the nosegay moist and lay the flowers at an angle in the packing boxes, wrapping them with white waxed paper to protect them during shipping. Conversation among the women from town was often lively around the packing table, but in the evening everyone was eager to finish, so they worked in rapid silence, racing the setting sun.

The Easter rush ran right up to Sunday morning. When Norris and Oliver climbed up in the wagon at five
A.M.
to make the last delivery to the Coburg depot, several workers stood about and applauded. Then everyone rushed to do morning chores and eat breakfast and dress for church. Afterward there was another grand meal at William and Frances’s house, cooked on Frances’s new Sterling range, which she had shown off to every woman who entered the house, but which she would rarely use herself. Ida was glad to see Delia there, helping Cook with the meal. She had been sent home the week before, after spending the entire month of March caring for Ida. After dinner, Ida slipped into the nearest greenhouse to bunch up a few fragrant bouquets for Delia to take home.

Another season had nearly ended. Ida had only one baby to nurse, and that baby was finally calming. Her own health was recovered. The yellow buds of the daffodils were about to split, and color was returning to the grass. Ida paid a call to Jennie Morton and then Harriet. The first day they could agree upon for Ida’s trip to the city was a Friday two weeks hence.

On the Tuesday before Ida’s trip, as she sat in the rocker after lunch with Anabel at her breast, both of them suspended between waking and sleep, there was a tentative knock at the door. Ida released the baby’s suction and fumbled to fasten her corset and button her shirtwaist. Jasper got up from the floor, where he’d been playing with his toy soldiers, and ran to the door. Ida lifted the
baby to her shoulder and shook the milk lethargy from her head as she followed Jasper to see who had come to call.