My Notorious Life (36 page)

—I tell you, Mrs. Jones, said Owens one evening, —when it comes to human reproduction, you midwives are warriors on the front lines. We
must fight to take society from a night of blind prejudice and brutal force into an age of rational liberty and cultivated refinement.

—I am in favor of any kind of refinement, I said, —but against all forms of battle.

I did not like the picture of myself as warrior. I was a small woman, no more than ninety pounds, with small hands, which were not weapons, only instruments of relief.

Then one night, over a game of whist, the philosophers made a proposition offhand that was to have a great impact on our fortunes, and drafted me unwitting into the very battle I declined. It happened as a result of my entertaining the assembled men with a tale from my workaday practice.

—Today I saw the new young bride Mrs. M., I says, while they listened. —The poor chicken came to me with a pain and swelling. From eating oysters, she thought. All’s she knew of where babies came from was about the cabbage patch. Till her wedding night she thought it was the fairies who brought a baby. Imagine her horror when her husband showed her the truth? And so, when I told Mrs. M. what she was expecting, and how the package would be delivered? she had never heard it. Imagine.

—Such ignorance! these fellows laughed and muttered under their mustaches, and in the corner Charlie whispered something into the ear of that horsefly Millicent, who came with Arguimbeau but buzzed about all the men till you wanted to swat her. —Haaa ha, they snickered, —oysters and fairies, indeed.

—It’s not funny, I says. —The point is Mrs. M. was a girl in the dark. It was my task to tell her it was not OYSTERS. She was going to have a little dumpling quite soon, and she had no idea about it. I’ve even seen fine newlywed ladies off Fifth Avenue just as ignorant, crying in my office over certain shocking events in their boudoir, when all they are referring to is You Know What. Don’t their mothers warn them?

—Exactly the problem, said Mr. Arguimbeau, wagging his head.

—If only all prospective brides could hear you, said Sacks.

—Send them over, I said, as if it was a tea party I had in mind.

—Mrs. Jones should run a little school, said Owens, —to educate the ladies.

A school! the philosophers cried. I should run a classroom, they said.
I should instruct the ignorant female populace on the functions of their own physiology. I should discuss hygiene and demonstrate the workings of certain apparatuses, the cunicle and the thingum, ho ho, the baubles and the undercarriage. They laughed with wicked chuckles as they said the words and left our parlor that night congratulating themselves on their enlightened attitudes. I admit I enjoyed their jokes and attention but it was Charlie who took what they said and wrung money from it, for that was a talent he had.

When they were gone he lay back on the sofa. —Madame DeBeausacq’s School of Wifely Arts, he said, running his fingers in the air like it was printed there in type. —Twenty ladies at five dollars per class, each.

—Ladies will not like to discuss such things.

—You’ll educate them on matters of physiology. A classroom.

—Never. They will not like to be seen attending such a place. Maybe it would be better if I told you what they need to know and you just wrote it all down in lessons.

In the mists of tobacco that hung over the room I saw my husband smile as a Grand Idea stole over his phiz. —Woman, he said, coming near to nuzzle my neck, —you’re a clever bit of business. I will write little pamphlets and sell them for a dollar! Enlightenment and profit all in one go.

*  *  *

So now Charlie launched himself on his career as a pamphleteer. Practical Advice for a Wife and Mother by Madame DeBeausacq, priced at $2 a copy, was soon in the hands of every female who walked through my doors. Charlie wrote:

It is but too well known that the families of the married often increase beyond what the happiness of those who give them birth would dictate. Is it desirable, then, is it moral? for parents to increase their families, when a simple, healthy, and certain remedy—well known to all citizens of France—is within our control? Estimating the vast benefit resulting to thousands, the celebrated female physician from France, Mme. DeBeausacq, has opened an office where married females can obtain the
desired information. Hours of attendance from Ten o’clock in the morning till Nine in the evening.

By advertising we sold ten thousand copies of Practical Advice in six months, mostly through the mail. In new quarters that we added to the rear of our office on Liberty Street we now had a small factory and dispensary for medicines and built yet another room above for mothers spending their confinement. Our business on all fronts was brisk, such that we employed a nurse, and a pharmacy aide. I held little classes in the waiting room now and then. I talked to the ladies about nipple inversions and false labor, about belly braces and the importance to new mothers of opening the bowels. Charlie wrote a guide for newlyweds, and another with instructions on the use of the items sold in our advertisements. Money had long since overflowed our glass jar and into several accounts. —One with my name on it, I insisted to Charlie. And he did not object, for it seemed now, where money was concerned at least, we did not quarrel but only agreed: that we liked it.

Our address was now popular as a tree of nesting birds, its branches full of peahens and parrots. But it must be said that while these ladies’ plumage ran from plain to fancy, their distress and ignorance, their fear and their questions, were all the same no matter their station in society. How could they start a baby? or prevent one? or stop one growing before it was quick? or birth one into the world without danger? They came to me in a variety of states, uninformed and afraid, weeping and bleeding. Their shapes was distorted, feet swollen, the face bloated, waist gone. A black line divided them down the middle of their bellies. They walked lumbering, hands pressed to the smalls of their backs. This one had short breath and that one had red hands. This one’s heels was cracked and raw. Another one had piles.

Can you help me? they asked when they walked in, and Thank you, they said, when they walked out, lighter. Tell no one, the half of them said. Never tell. And I never did. Never said a word or listed their names in public or held them up for shame. That was not ME who did that. While I had them I held their hands. I fed their infants rosewater in a dropper. I was merciful and fast. They would tell you I was quick about it.
There love it’s almost over, there you go, you’re a brave girl
. They all was brave. Every one. Patient as beasts. They cried and groaned and sweated and bled. There was
a great lot of blood. Still, I say without no false modesty that to my knowledge, not one woman ever yet died at these hands, for they had got very skilled, sorry to say.

*  *  *

The law didn’t come up, not at all. Was it a crime to talk to my ladies? Was it a crime to give them information and medicines? Was it a crime to protect them from the dangers of childbirth? Was it a crime to unblock their suppressions, to restore their catamenial rhythms, to protect them from ruin and the false promises and lusts of men?

Not in my book.

But the leathery books of the judicial whiskers who made the rules told a different story. In their pages it was a crime to interfere at all with the machinery of a female
enceinte,
and the law said anyone who did so was subject to a fine of one hundred dollars and a year in jail. If the child was quick, well—that was not my line of work to fix a quickened lady. And, also, it was Manslaughter, and four years in jail.

In those days, I did not worry. Them officials lived in a world of smoke and pronouncements, rooms full of throat clearings and whiskey breath, whereas we, my customers and me, lived just in our own flesh, the blood and bones. We were factories of blood and bones, in fact. These authorities knew nothing of us and what went on in our private country. They could not be bothered. How were they to guess which woman was interfered with by me and who wasn’t or why? Blood was blood and women was bleeding regular all the time. Who was to know the difference? Who would come forward? Who would tell? No one. There was no need. There was nothing but shame in telling. It was for ourselves, in danger, that we decided. And for our children. It was not the business of men, despite the kindly philosophers’ parlor pontifications on the subject. These matters was now, and always was, for a female to determine. We knew how to keep our secrets. Our lives and honor depended on it.

Still, evil would find me. It came in through the door like mud on shoes. You’d never have suspected who brought it. A girl called Susan Applegate, her name a springtime orchard, her face a blossom. There wasn’t no way to see what worms were lurking in the fruits of my helping her.

F
or someone who would ensure my notoriety and drag me to the clutches of My Enemy, she was unremarkable, just a bland girl with cornsilk hair and eyebrows that made hardly a shadow above her watery blue eyes. Her lashes was near to colorless.

—Your name? Greta asked her.

—Susan Applegate, she replied, and Greta later said it should be Apple-blossom, so pink and white was her appearance.

While the young lady waited, Greta gave her to read several of our new circulars including one called Practical Advice for Newlyweds, by Monsieur Docteur Gerard Desomieux, also known as Charles G. Jones, my husband. He was especially proud of the philosophy he put forward—French Common Sense, he called it, and he used this philosophy—and this pamphlet—to sell his wares for gentlemen.

It is well known that the French always have intervals of three, four, or more years between the birth of children, and this is because no Frenchman would abstain from the use of Desomieux’s Preventive to Conception. The same result is attained by a complete withdrawal on the part of the male previous to emission. But this mode is attended with insurmountable
difficulties. In the first place, few men can control themselves in this respect. Thus, Desomieux’s Preventatives are the best relief. Complete instructions as to their use included in every box. $1 a dozen, by mail, Dr. Gerard Desomieux, 148 Liberty St., New York. Boston Office, 7 Charles Street.

Susan Applegate read these words with what Greta later told me was a great fretting of the hands, and she flung the paper away from her in such disgust that Greta feared we had lost a patient. (And I wish we had.) But at last the young Miss Applegate came in the office, and by the high swell of her stomach I judged her to be eight months along and carrying a boy. She’d’ve been pretty above the neck if not for the way she shifted her cheeks left and right the better to gnaw at them. Poor young Susan was eaten away by trouble.

Her trouble’s name was Adolphus Edwards, she said, a man she’d known since her girlhood, the son of neighbors. Her father was the personal physician to his family, whereas she, Susan, had lately become the personal plaything of young Adolphus. He had promised to marry her, but now his promises lay ruptured as poor Susan’s virtue, not to mention her heart, for Adolphus was indeed engaged, only not to her, and he was on his way to the Antilles where he meant to make a fortune in sugar. Susan was left behind, her problem growing more evident by the day.

—Can’t I have an . . . operation? she asked. Spots of embarrassment stood out on her fair skin like stains. —A renovation such as you advertise?

—Your child is quick, I said, softly. —You yourself know that.

—But I’ve only now had the chance to find you and—

—Miss Applegate, said I, sorry as could be, —you are quite evidently about eight months gone. You’ve no choice now but to see it through.

—I cannot! she cried, collapsed at the news. —Please, won’t you help me?

—Had you come earlier, I might have been better able.

—I meant to come right away—but my father confronted me and kept me in. He said he knew what was wrong with me because I was sick in the mornings and complained of dizziness.

—Is he a doctor?

—My father is Dr. Samuel Applegate, president of the Columbia University School of Medicine.

—Is he now? I said, only curious, and failed to see a WARNING right there.

—I asked him to help me, said fair Susan, —but he said that I was ruined, and beat me, while my mother begged him for mercy. Still he locked me away and said my only choice is to marry his revolting old friend Doc Benjamin, who will say the child is his. Oh horrible Doc Benjamin!

Poor Susan. She recounted how Doc Benjamin was an ancient geezer with great gravy eyes who lived in a house that smelled of cats. He bored her. His hands had brown spots. He talked of nothing but his remedies and theories. She would rather marry a goat.

—I told Mother if she would not help me then I’d do the fix myself, Susan said. —So I beat myself with a dustpan. I drank vinegar! I threw myself down the stairs.

—Poor lamb, I said, wincing, and did not tell her I heard of a woman once with a broken neck from that same trick and seen another who put lye in herself and one who drank peroxide with horrible results.