My Notorious Life (35 page)

—Cocoa is nearing his confinement, she announced one day. —He is going to have a baby girl.

—But, I said, —he is your brother.

—Yes. With RED hair.

—But it is only ladies who have a confinement, says I, very patient, and thinking of my own carrot-head brother. —A little boy cannot have a baby.

—When he grows up, he can.

—When Cocoa grows up he might become a father, true. But he will not have a confinement.

—Cocoa does. He is laboring all the night long.

Charlie laughed at this and we decided Belle was too skilled an eavesdropper to come along any more with me to the offices. —We should try to get her a brother, said my husband, a gleam in his eye. But still none was forthcoming, despite the steam of our attempts over the months.

—Perhaps we should adopt a child, I says one night to Charlie as we lay in the dark. —Aren’t there occasional candidates born right here in this house? Or sleeping on the corner in the Bend?

—Give it time, Annie, he says. —A man might prefer to carry on trying in the natural manner, if you take my meaning. There’s plenty of time.

But he agreed, sure, if some lady was lying-in and couldn’t keep her baby for the usual reasons of shame or poverty, he’d consider adopting. H*** why not?

—Well, they die, don’t they, the infants, without a wet nurse, I said, thinking of Baby Boy Johnny then. —So might be we should find an older orphan.

—Depends on the circumstances, right? Charlie said. —Keep our eyes peeled.

The both of us had our eyes peeled, indeed, wide open to the possibilities and the pitfalls too. On my bad jealous days I suspected my barren state was the reason for Charlie’s wanderings. Maybe he was a fox who would find a new mother for his kits, out so many nights, his half the bed cold and flat, a hollow there where the husband was supposed to lie. —A man needs his freedom, he explained. —I’m no different than any other husband.

To me that was no recommendation.

No different except for how he capitalized on his wife. Years ago he gave up his wish to be a newspaperman and now was devoted entirely to the business of Madame DeBeausacq, keeping the books and managing the mail orders, writing the ads. He went to Philadelphia and Boston. He
went to New Haven and Newark, Providence and Baltimore, drumming up business, gone for nights at a time. —It is only to
support
Madame, he said, —that I must regretfully leave Madame.

He was raised to roam the streets, he said, and liked them the way he liked his egg in the morning and his newspapers lined up perfect on the table and the anarchist pamphlets he read with a pair of spectacles perched on the end of his nose. He liked to pass Saturday afternoons in Matsell’s bookshop or The Freeman’s Club, and evenings at The Billy Goat or the Harp House. He was frequently at Chickering Hall or the Ethical Culture Society where he listened to the preaching of radicals and Jews and Fanny Wrightists and spiritualists, and went out afterwards with his friends to argue about such topics as the morality of war, the population question, and the rights of workers. Meanwhile, I festered over his absences and pestered him. He didn’t smell of perfume nor bring a strand of another’s hair home on his jacket. There was not a crumb of evidence against him. Yet my jealousy would not quiet.

*  *  *

One morning eight years into our matrimony he arrived under the covers just as the sun was leaking through the window curtains. The smell of tobacco and gin came off him. —Where have you been? I cried. —Where do you go?

As he lay his head upon my pillow I gave him a sharp elbow in the ribs and a piece of my tongue, which was a buggy whip of hurt feelings and fury.

—For the love of God why don’t you never trust anyone? he cried, holding his injured spleen. —Once an orphan always an orphan, is that your song Mrs. Jones? Well get over it. You’re a married lady in a brick house, aren’t you?

—I’m tired of you coming in smelling like a growler.

The salt of my tears changed his tune. —Axie my Annie, he crooned, —you know I’d never deceive you, pretty doxie. My silky sparrow. Earth’s own angel.

—Don’t give me that velvet no more.

—Christ woman. Here I am traveled this week all the way to Pittsburgh and back just to sell a wagon of medicines to a doctor there and advertise
the good name of Madame across the countryside, and you can’t even warm the cockles of my poor and lonely heart after a long tedious journey.

—It’s not those cockles you want warmed, sure it isn’t.

—D*** you! You’ll have to trust me, won’t you?

Never trust a man who says trust me.
It was hard advice to overcome, and I was hard-pressed to try.

—Come now, I’m freezing, Charlie whispered, thawing me out with his cold bony feet. —That’s my Annie. That’s my girl.

Such was his arts of persuasion and since I had no other choice, we was friends again by breakfast. But it was the same argument all over again six months later, to trust him or not. With Charlie I was always a woman on edge. It was as if, when he led me up on the roof of that train so long ago, we never got off it.

*  *  *

—Who are these friends of yours? I asked him one evening as he straightened his collar on his way out the door.

—Yes who are YOUR friends, Papa? cried Belle.

Instead of answering he repeated the question as a song for our princess who was four years of age and bouncing on the bed. —Oh who are these friends? he sang, —these fine friends of yours?

—Willi is my friend! Belle cried, —and Liebchen and Schnitzel and Cocoa.

Liebchen was her dolly and Schnitzel was the wooden horse in her nursery. She had German names for everything, thanks to Greta. My daughter knew more about
spätzle
than she did about the proud Muldoons of Carrickfergus or a good pot of coddle. And it was just as well, for a working knowledge of Irish would not be the key to any doors in society that I wished for her to open.

—I do not have a friend named Schnitzel, said Charlie, —but I do have a friend named Will who is not the same young larrikin Willi who is your playmate.

—And who might he be, this friend Will? I asked. —Why have I never had the pleasure of his acquaintance?

—Because he is Will Sacks who frequents The Mighty Unicorn saloon where a woman’s not welcome.

—Then bring him here, I said, —and the rest of your unicorns. Have your saloon where I can see it.

—A saloon! Why not? It’s all the rage with the upper crust, only they call it a salon. Or a soiree. Whatever French they can muster.

*  *  *

Well Charlie liked anything French, and so did I, such that the next Saturday night, I put on my burgundy-colored crepe de chine and a pearl necklace and entertained a salon of men in our parlor. PHILOSOPHERS, Charlie called them, including Will Sacks, and David Arguimbeau. Also Andrew Morrill, a lawyer, and Bill Owens, a tall gasp of a man, asthmatic and stooped.

—You will like these gentlemen, Mrs. Jones, Charlie told me. —They’ve an academic interest in female physiology.

At first I kept my mouth shut, pouring their claret, for I wasn’t yet accustomed to the niceties of salon society. But the one called Owens motioned me to sit beside him, so I made my way over through their pipe smoke. He stood and kissed my hand.

—
Enchanté,
madame, he said, like I was a genuine French lady. —Your husband says you’re in the business of selling female remedies, is that right? I applaud you for it.

—If only all men had as much sense to applaud as you.

Owens laughed. He was an old cod, with his bulging eyes and fins for ears, but he talked with an eloquence that made him half good-looking.

—This population question is exceedingly pressing, he said. —Don’t you agree?

—All I know about the population question, I replied, —is there wouldn’t be one if certain matters was left in female hands.

—Exactly! A full half of all the world’s problems is directly caused by our animal desires, am I right? He leaned toward me whispering. —I have long been fascinated to interview you, Mrs. Jones, about your medicines. What can you say about them? We are at pains to discover the proper methods of . . .
prevention
. Control by masculine restraint alone is flawed, don’t you agree? simply by the fact that the practitioner suffers no consequence if he fails at it.

—Only the female suffers the consequence.

—Sadly, yes. But the
baudruche
is in every way unreliable, and inconvenient.

—YOU may find it inconvenient, sir, I said, blushing, in a huff, —but your lady friend finds it a shield against her downfall.

—And what do you prescribe for your own patients?

—To become nuns.

He laughed and stared at me with admiring eyes. —You may be frank with me, Mrs. Jones.

—Well then, I said, very frank indeed, —what is required would be more common use of a pessary, like the sea sponge I sell for a dollar, or the rinse by syringe, or some other practice controlled by a lady. Then she does not have to trust a man. For how many men is trustworthy?

Owens seemed affronted. —The great majority of us are gentlemen! he said, as if I was asking him a question of a personal nature. —For example, your husband Mr. Jones. I’ve never known him to be profligate in his habits. On the contrary. He has often bragged to us of his wife and her successful midwifery practice. He appears devoted to you to the point of uxoriousness.

Whatever it was, uxorious, it appeared I should be glad to hear it. Indeed, Owens’ notion of a devoted husband was entirely foreign. Had Charlie truly bragged of me? With new eyes now, I noticed him watching from across the room, while his friend and I talked and sipped our wine all smiles and rosy laughter. Soon he came over to where we sat.

—Mr. Jones, your wife here is enlightening me about certain questions of feminine physiology, said Owens.

—Didn’t I tell you she would be knowledgeable? my husband said.

Well this was new, too, that he thought me knowledgeable, for he was always the know-it-all, calling me Student. And now here he was sitting down quite close beside me with a possessive hand on my chair while Owens interrogated me on the fine points of preventative powders. Charlie watched me as I spoke boldly of the benefits of tansy oil and Spanish fly, and the syringe, —Which can also serve to baste a roast, I said, quite tipsy now, as Owens roared.

—Like the missus says, it’s good to water the plants, Charlie told him, and the two of them had a laugh over the idea of a female syringe giving the ivy a good spritz.

That night was the first time me and Charlie had opened our parlor for a party, but very quick we developed a taste for the company and the talk. We woke the neighbors with our laughing, the chatter spilling out to the street after, the guests reluctant to leave.

—Owens is taken with you, said Charlie, as we blew out the lamp later.

—He’s taken with the sound of his own voice, I said. But a secret triumph bloomed in my heart for not only was my husband proud I was knowledgeable, I saw also that he was jealous, even of a fellow so old he resembled cheese left over from biblical times.

*  *  *

After that first soiree, I found myself often holding forth to a roomful of men and soon discovered that these acquaintances of my husband were famous in the bookshops and at The Mighty Unicorn for philosophizing on the Population Question and the like. The group consisted of Owens and his wife Ida. Mr. Sacks and his lady friend Millicent, Dr. Arguimbeau, Mr. DeLand, Judge Baker and his daughter Roberta, along with Andrew Morrill, the lawyer who would later come in useful to my cause.

These were our friends now. We frequented their parlors and they frequented ours. Charlie liked the talk and the argument, whereas I liked especially to dress up in finery, to see the insides of drawing rooms decorated with flocked wallpapers, lit by colored lampglass, rooms where I was not a servant nor a midwife but a guest drinking sherry. When they came to Liberty Street, I liked to parade our Anna-bee in her sausage curls and pantaloons. She would sing McGinty and the ladies would feed her sugar lumps like she was a trained pony, until the day came when Mrs. Owens suggested, —Perhaps McGinty is not a proper song for a young lady four years of age to be singing.

—Why not? I cried. —Her father taught it to her. It’s all he has of his ancestors.

And it was then she took me aside with the idea that I might wish to hire a governess, as it was all the rage in polite society to have one. And so it was that Ellen Nickerson the governess came to our household and the next time we had guests, our Annabelle came in to greet them with a pretty curtsy only.

—Say your good nights, Anna-bee, I says to her, and she kisses me so lavish, saying, —Oh You are My Pretty Mamma, till Ellen admonished her.

—Only a peck is proper, the Governess pronounced.

—Nonsense, says I. —Our girl will have her good night kiss. And I wrapped her in my lap and whispered in her ear that she was my own Anna-bee, the baby of the world.

Ellen extracted her off to the nursery, with a huff of disapproval, and just in time, too, for here came Owens approaching with the philosophers’ favorite subject in mind. —Mrs. Jones, tell us please which of your remedies serves best as emmenagogue?

—I can’t answer for any sort of gogs, I told him, which caused him to roar laughing so his whiskers trembled, —but I can say that tansy’s the best elixir I know for obstruction. The problem is it does harm the system worse than any rotgut if the dose is wrong. Some of these ladies drink it like lemonade.

—Tsk, said Owens.

—I’ve seen a few who bleed from the perforations and some have seizures.

—Why then do you sell such medicines?

—No one knows a better one. Besides, if the dose is proper it serves the purpose only, far as we can tell. But no lie, sir, we are in need of a better class of medicine.

Owens agreed while I wondered, What was his motive? Surely with such probing questions about de-obstruction these fellas was interested only in how they might have a rogue life with all the burden on the LADIES and none for themselves. Why else would they question me so closely about purgatives and procedures? So I was surprised that they soon showed a true concern for female virtue and welfare. Mrs. Owens herself had suffered greatly in four incidents of childbirth, and her husband divulged to me he feared another confinement would surely kill her. Mrs. Arguimbeau had had six children, only three living, and she likewise wished to limit her family size, if not just her waistline. It was from the talk among these friends that over time I learnt how they saw me: not just as a midwife, but a soldier in a BATTLE.