After the Fog (32 page)

* * *

Rose bid Cathy goodbye, ignoring her attempts to continue their discussion about Magdalena. Rose stepped into the fog and drew a breath that made her hack into her hand. She coughed violently, knowing she needed to get to her appointment at the Sebastians, fog or not. The air had grown thicker, blacker, coal dust suspended in what would have normally just been grayish fog. Rose tried to wipe it away, but merely displaced it temporarily.

She turned to head down the sidewalk when she realized the fog had hidden the fact that she was standing elbow to elbow beside someone else. She was too distracted to be polite and pushed past the person, plodding past others, doing her best not to knock into anyone else.

Rose covered her mouth as she walked in stops and starts, thinking back to the day she gave Theresa away, the way she clung to Bennett, the scent of his cologne, both comforting and repelling. She repeated Bennett’s words of love and marriage; they would have ten children once he finished school.

The words had blanketed her in warmth on a cold night. While a nurse had administered a strong drug when her cramping grew too great, Rose drifted into sleep reassuring herself that she could convince Bennett she could keep their daughter while he finished college, and could handle anything to ensure they all stayed together.

When Rose awoke from the drug-induced sleep, a blurry outline of a man sat at the end of her bed. She thought it was Bennett. Had he been there all along?

Rose was not fully awake, but her body was shaking at the sight of the man. Mr. Reeve, the director of the orphanage came closer and bent over to whisper in her ear. His hand slid up her thigh, resting just below her pubic bone, squeezing her leg, fingers brushing her stitches as he did.

Rose looked to her right and left—the curtains separating her from other postpartum mothers were drawn.

“You thought you could leave the orphanage, Rose? You thought you could confide our secrets in that slick fella, Bennett, did you?”

Rose couldn’t speak, but shook her head, eyes focused on Mr. Reeve, his face directly over hers. She would never have told Bennett what Mr. Reeves had been doing to her since she could first form a memory.

“Well, I set Bennett straight. Told him you were a slut, whoring around the orphanage, with everyone from the janitor to the fellas in the kitchen. Everyone but me, Rose. I can keep a secret. You will not leave me. I love you Rose. I told him that earlobe of yours was the mark of the devil, that he shouldn’t bother with you anymore.”

Rose touched her ear, sobbing quietly. She couldn’t believe Reeve was telling the truth, but she remembered the relief on Bennett’s face when he stepped into the cab, when she saw him leave the other night.

Don’t blame me, Rose, for Bennett’s departure. I saw him leaving your room. He was cozy with his daddy’s attorney. He was on his way to Harvard. You’re not even a flicker of a memory in that big brain of his.”

Rose shook her head. Make this man go away. “He’s coming back. We promised together. We’re not giving the baby away.”

“I was afraid you might decide that, Rose. You orphans often do this kind of thing.” He shifted on the bed and leaned into Rose. “I told him it wasn’t his. And you signed papers. I watched you and Bennett sign them. It’s done, over. And he’s gone.”

That couldn’t be right. Bennett would never believe the baby wasn’t his. And he had looked her in the eye and promised he would marry her, that they would have more children.

Mr. Reeves lifted the sheets and pulled one of Rose’s legs to the side, examining her like she were an animal. Rose held her breath. She knew better than to flinch away and ignite the man’s anger.

“You were smart to give that bastard child away, yes, to hide the evidence, but I will not see you go. You are mine. You have been since you came to me, since we were first together.”

Rose told herself not to panic, that he couldn’t hurt her at the hospital where doctors and nurses were running in and out, where only flimsy fabric formed walls. But as Rose was completing that thought Reeve pushed on top of her. She gasped, squirming. She dug her nails into his arms, trying to wiggle out from under him.

This was her only chance for people outside of the orphanage to know what he was doing to her. She started to scream and he covered her mouth with one hand. Rose was weak from the sedatives, but she managed to get her teeth into his palm. He hesitated at her bold bite. Rose drew a breath then heard a thunk.

Reeve collapsed onto Rose, knocking her wind out as his full weight hit. When he didn’t move, Rose shoved him over, moving out from under him. She stood, steadying herself with a metal handrail, trying to figure out what happened.

She stared at his unconscious body then focused on the person coming toward her. Sister John Ann, with a cracked water jug in her hand. Rose hyperventilated trying to stuff back her tears, her shame, the truth. The nun embraced Rose and shushed her, telling her not to fret, that she would help.

Rose didn’t know what Sister John Ann understood, exactly, and the nun never forced Rose to tell her what happened. But, she decided right then she would never depend on anyone for anything again.

Sister John Ann seemed to understand that unspoken vow Rose made to herself. She did not let Rose flounder in self-pity or grow weak in bad memories. She kept Rose busy and offered her work: doing chores and learning the discipline that resuscitated Rose’s very being.

At Mayview Rose began her informal, though intensive nursing education. Sister John Ann provided the opportunity for Rose to nurture her first flutter of self-respect. With every biology fact and nursing protocol she learned, Rose felt as though a piece of her broken self was fitted into the place it had always belonged. A new vision of who she was and could be was forming and it wasn’t long before Rose was prepared for formal nursing school.

And as Rose moved forward with no one calling her a slut or a whore, without any man touching her body without permission, she managed to push those characterizations out of her mind. She grew stronger and more determined to succeed in all the ways that would ensure she was safe from harm.

But, unbeknownst to Rose the acts of two men were tattooed on her soul whether she allowed herself to recall the initial sting or not. She was marked in ways no one could see, in ways she’d thought had scarred over. She hadn’t thought the dead wounds required further attention. Slut, whore. She had forgotten the foul names, the feelings that came with knowing that’s what someone had decided she was. She’d forgotten the exact pain that came with the memories until the day she found herself uttering the same horrid sentiments to her very own Magdalena.

Rose nearly buckled over at the thought, but kept moving forward through the fog. How could she have directed such cruelty at her daughter? She would fix that, she told herself, but first she needed to solve the problem that had plagued her for over twenty years.

* * *

Rose knocked on the Sebastian’s front door. The uniformed maid let Rose into the house. It smelled of a recently cleaned pine-lemon. Rose wanted to see Theresa alone. The maid protested, but Rose took the stairs two at a time, hearing the maid’s voice calling for Mr. Sebastian.

Rose laid her coat outside the door on the chair that the Sebastians had placed there the first time Rose had come to examine Theresa. She rapped on the door with the back of her knuckles, a little harder and faster than she intended.

“Come in,” Theresa said.

Rose entered the stale-smelling room and headed to the far side near a window looking out at the back, not directly at the mill. She raised the window a few inches to let some air in.

“You’ve got to open these windows, at least during shift changes, at least twice a day.” Rose said. “If the maids have to dust an additional time, that’s fine. That’s what they’re paid for, right?”

Theresa fell back on her pillows with dramatic flourish. “Oh thank you! Someone with some sense.” Rose opened the next set of windows, glancing at Theresa, trying to casually assess her degree of illness versus just what her parents seemed to want her to experience. Theresa hung off the side of the bed, peering under it, foraging for something.

Rose finished opening up the room and turned, hands on hips to watch Theresa full on. Theresa ratcheted her body up, sitting on her bed, a stack of medical and social work books on her lap. Rose’s heart nearly stopped at the sight of Theresa pouring over the academic texts like other twenty-year-olds studied Ladies Home Journal.

“I’ve been reading,” Theresa said, and stopped her voice catching on asthmatic constrictions of her bronchial tubes. “Nurse, would you look at this with me? I’ve been reading up on my own case and ever since that visit to the Lipinski’s. Well, I want to be a social worker. Or a doctor.”

Rose bit the inside of her mouth, trying to fend off the torrent of emotion sweeping through her. The last time she’d seen Theresa she was like a wet rag, intellectually uninterested, and now, look at her, fully engaged in the larger world. Rose’s world. She was surer than ever that Theresa would benefit if she knew who they both were.

It was like watching an alien view of herself from twenty years before. Rose bustled across the room, carried the chair with her nurse’s bag, from the hall into the room and set it by the door to distract herself from her emotions. She dug through her bag, collecting her instruments and thoughts, buying time. She wanted to behave professionally in this very personal situation.

Rose turned to Theresa, blood pressure cuff and stethoscope in hand. “You’re pale, grayish around the eyes, bluish. What’s that tell you?” Rose said as she headed toward Theresa’s bed. If Rose talked nursing, she would remain calm.

Theresa opened her mouth to talk, her face screwed up and she began to cry. Rose wanted to hold her sobbing daughter, but that wouldn’t be appropriate. What would she do in a normal nursing situation?

“No crying, Theresa. Look at yourself.” Rose grabbed a silver hand mirror from the dressing table and took it to the bed. “You are young and alive and aside from the asthma which I concede is problematic, you’re utterly healthy you’re just like—”

Rose stopped midsentence and took the mirror back to its place among other silver knick-knacks.

Theresa stared at Rose. “Like what?”

Like me. “Like an ox. You need to move more, that’s all. You’ll get sores on your ass if you lay there like that one more second.” Rose sat beside Theresa on the bed. “Look at you. So excited now that you’ve found an interest in your health. You are alive at the opportunity to help someone else.”

Theresa wiped her eyes, growing pinker as she became more animated. Rose moved her hand closer to Theresa’s wanting to hold it. To rock her like a baby and then push her out of the nest, to see her fly like Rose knew she could.

“I had to beg mother for hours. Just to let me check these books out of the library,” Theresa said. She played with her bedspread grazing Rose’s fingers with hers each time she smoothed and bunched the silky material.

Theresa drew and let out a deep breath. “Mother nearly lost her mind and said a lady like me doesn’t need to have a career, certainly not becoming a doctor or helping poor people. Then she said I paid for it by having another attack. I’m smart enough to be a doctor, you know. I just doubt myself once in a while.”

Rose took Theresa’s chin and turned her face toward her. “You have the guts, you just don’t know it, yet. I have an uncle who’s half dead and he only accepts help when he’s so tired he’s forgotten he doesn’t want help from anyone. You can do anything you want. Look at you, diving into medical books and social work journals second year med students avoid like the plague. You are doctor material if I ever saw it. Now get up.” Rose sprung off the bed and held her hands out to Theresa.

Theresa swung her feet over the side of the bed. Her white nightgown bunching around her knees. Her long legs were the palest Rose had ever seen. Her blue veins peeked through the skin.

Rose dragged her to her feet. “Ever been dancing?”

Theresa threw her head back and said, angrily. “No.”

“Good, you have spunk.” Rose led Theresa through intricate waltz steps, the girl as light as the fog on a normal day. “Here, just keep moving, I need to see how much your system can handle.”

“But you said I’m healthy.”

“Yes, yes, but that’s me looking at you lying there dead as a doornail. Anyone’s healthy under those circumstances. I need to see you imitating a living person not a dead one.”

Theresa laughed, her head back. “That’s really sort of rude.” Rose spun her around, enjoying the girl’s pluckiness, excited that there was no sign of pulmonary distress.

“I’ve seen your file. But there’s lots missing in it.” Rose wanted to ask her if she had ever been on a date, been kissed, visited New York City, had a Christmas when she got the very thing she wished for but didn’t think possible. But she settled on the mundane. “Where would you like to live? What do you want out of life?” Rose said.

Theresa scrunched up her face and slowed down. “I don’t know.” Theresa gripped Rose’s hands, her lotioned skin, like butter against Rose’s. She watched the girl for distress. Nothing.

Rose felt energy surging through her; she could see it in Theresa’s face, too

“I have something to tell you,” Rose said. “A miracle, in a way. It was years back. You won’t believe it, but—”