Terrible Virtue (14 page)

I
STOOD IN THE
cool October dawn waiting. Ethel and little Fania, who had the fair-haired ethereal look of a nymph and the steel-nerved daring of a cat burglar, had gone home to snatch an hour or two of sleep, but I was too wound up to rest. The three of us had worked all night plastering the flyers on buildings and streetlamps and storefronts. Now they fluttered in the morning breeze.

MOTHERS!

CAN YOU AFFORD TO HAVE A LARGE FAMILY?

DO YOU WANT ANY MORE CHILDREN?

IF NOT, WHY DO YOU HAVE THEM?

DO NOT KILL, DO NOT TAKE LIFE, BUT PREVENT

SAFE, HARMLESS INFORMATION CAN BE OBTAINED OF TRAINED NURSES AT

46 AMBOY STREET

NEAR PITKIN AVE.—BROOKLYN

TELL YOUR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS. ALL MOTHERS WELCOME
.

A REGISTRATION FEE OF 10 CENTS ENTITLES ANY MOTHER TO THIS

INFORMATION
.

MADRI!

POTETE PERMETTERVI IL LUSSO D'AVERE ALTRI BAMBINI?

NE VOLETE ANCORA?

SE NON NE VOLETE PIÙ, PERCHÉ CONTINUATE A METTERLI AL MONDO?

NON UCCIDETE MA PREVENITE!

INFORMAZIONI SICURE ED INNOCUE SARANNO FORNITE DA INFERMIERE AUTORIZZATE A

46 AMBOY STREET NEAR PITKIN AVE. BROOKLYN

A COMINCIARE DAL 12 OTTOBRE. AVVERTITE LE VOSTRE AMICHE E VICINE
.

TUTTE LE MADRI SONO BEN ACCETTE. LA TASSA D'ISCRIZIONE DI 10 CENTS DA DIRITTO A QUALUNQUE MADRE DI RICEVERE CONSIGLI ED INFORMAZIONI GRATIS
.

In Holland I had seen how well their clinics worked. Now, a year after I'd returned, I was ready to open one in America.

The sun inched above the tenements, splitting the street into light and shadow like a harlequin mask. I lingered on the shadowy side, waiting.

Across the street a man came down the steps of a tenement, a newspaper bulky with his lunch under his arm. His eyes were still half closed against the day ahead. He started down
the street, glanced at a lamppost, and plodded on. Suddenly he stopped, turned back, and stood studying the poster for a moment. He shook his head and moved on.

A woman came down another stoop, dragging a carriage with one hand, holding a baby in her other arm, her body already a curve of exhaustion. She made her way along the street. The sign stopped her. She looked around to see if anyone was watching, then moved closer. As she stood reading, other men and women began coming out of paint-peeling doors and down cracked stoops. Several of the men glanced at the signs, but most kept going. The women stopped. Some read in silence. Others were noisier.

It's a joke.

Hochme
.

It's trap.

Pulapka
.

It's a miracle.

Miracolo
.

I made my way down Amboy Street to Pitkin Avenue, past shabby storefronts and crumbling tenements. My own rented space on the corner was no better, but the crisp white curtains Fania had sewn hung in the plate-glass window, and Mr. Rabinowitz, the landlord, was sweeping the sidewalk in front of it. I was still grateful to him. In a city where property owners didn't hesitate to rent space for noisy bars, stinking cigar factories, and inhuman sweatshops, Mr. Rabinowitz was the only one who was willing to lease space to a nurse intending to collude against nature with a bunch of impoverished mothers. And at my trial the prosecution would accuse me of opening the clinic in Brownsville in order to wipe out the Jewish people. I could have told them that my children were half Jewish, but I didn't.

I had tried to find a doctor to run the clinic. Most of them knew less about contraception than I did, but the presence of a doctor, no matter how uninformed, would make the clinic more respectable, if still illegal. But the doctors I'd approached had been as squeamish as the landlords. And no self-respecting male doctor would work in a clinic started by a female. I'd finally found a woman doctor, but after Gouverneur Hospital hounded her off the staff for prescribing a pessary for a woman with severe tuberculosis, she'd got cold feet. So Ethel and I would run the clinic, and Fania Mindell and Elizabeth Stuyvesant would assist us. Two Irish nurses from the bottom of the hill, a Jewish girl from the Chicago slums who spoke three languages, and a social worker with a gold-plated Old New York name would man, or in this case woman, the first birth control clinic in the country. That's America for you, J.J. said.

I put my key in the lock, pushed open the door, and stepped inside. Even empty of people, the waiting area was crowded. A desk, filing cabinets, and chairs and benches cluttered the small space. Behind cheerful chintz curtains, also sewn by Fania, two private alcoves led to a tiny storeroom stacked with boxes of Mizpah pessaries. Ethel and I would not examine the women, though in The Hague under the tutelage of Dr. Rutgers I'd learned both to examine patients and to fit pessaries. But we were nurses, not doctors, and I was calculating the risk. Breaking the law to change it was one thing; antagonizing the medical profession, or rather antagonizing the medical profession even more than I already had, was another. That was why we would limit ourselves to explaining how pessaries worked and, if a woman didn't have the money to buy one at a pharmacy, slipping a box from the back room into a baby carriage or the tomatoes for the pasta sauce or the greens for the chicken soup.

I looked at my watch. It was a little after seven. I didn't have a chance to glance at it again until nine o'clock. By then the waiting room was full and a line snaked down the block. Women stood patiently, rocking baby carriages, quieting restive children who darted among them, casting uneasy glances at passersby. Surely this could not be kosher, they murmured to one another.

In the waiting room, Fania was taking down information on index cards and collecting ten-cent registration fees in English, Yiddish, Polish, and a few words of Italian supplemented with gestures. Elizabeth moved among the waiting women, comforting children, reassuring mothers, keeping track of who was next. Behind the curtains, Ethel and I explained and demonstrated with pictures and models. Occasionally, we called in Fania to translate, and Elizabeth filled in behind the desk. We were each doing our job, like Mr. Ford's new assembly line, and the product we were manufacturing was hope.

I took an index card from Fania, called the name on it, and held aside the curtain to the alcove. A woman left a small boy in the care of a slightly larger girl, who could not have been older than four. As she entered the alcove, she ducked her head with a birdlike motion, then glanced up at me briefly. Fear roosted in her eyes.

I asked if she spoke English. She nodded. I wouldn't need Fania. I gestured her to one of the two chairs, took the other, and began to explain about the Mizpah pessary.

“It was designed for prolapsed uteruses.”

Her face was blank as a peeled potato.

Taking the open book from the table, I showed her a diagram of a Mizpah pessary supporting a prolapsed uterus. She stared at it and shook her head. I wasn't sure whether the gesture indicated distaste or lack of understanding.

“It also works to prevent babies,” I went on slowly, enunciating every word. I picked up the model and a pessary and demonstrated how to insert it. “If you use it every time with your husband, it will keep you . . . safe. You won't get pregnant.”

She looked from the model to me, her eyes wide with wonder. “No more babies?”

“Not if you use it every time. It has to be every time. No matter how tired you are. No matter how much of a hurry he's in.”

Her pursed mouth unzipped into a smile as wide as the open spaces that were only rumors in the teeming neighborhood where she lived.

It went on that way all day, and the next, and the one after that. Word of the clinic spread through the infested tenements of Brownsville and beyond like an epidemic. Occasionally a well-heeled woman, or perhaps two finding courage in numbers, showed up. In those days, social workers spoke of the deserving poor. I said we would treat even the undeserving rich.

Ethel was against the idea. “Let them go to their private doctors.”

“Let them eat cake,” I answered. “Better yet, let them have three or four or six more children. By then, they'll be the deserving poor, and we can treat them.”

But the real question was when we would be raided. We all knew it was only a matter of time. That was the point. Only by getting myself arrested could I make my case in court.

THE WOMAN WORE
a startled expression, as if she didn't know how she'd ended up in a ramshackle clinic in a shabby corner of Brooklyn. Ethel took one look at her coat, which clearly had not come off a pushcart, and her fashionable hat stuck with a long red feather, and whispered to me, “Finally, the police.”

“She's too frightened,” I whispered back.

“Wouldn't you be if you were a police decoy in enemy territory?”

I ushered the woman into the alcove, directed her to a seat, and took the other chair. We sat knee to knee in the cramped windowless space. She had taken off her gloves and wore, next to her wedding band, a small diamond engagement ring on her soft well-cared-for hands. She was not a policewoman. I was sure of it.

I looked down at the index card Fania had handed me. Mrs. Horace McAllister was twenty-three years old and had no children. Surely a policewoman would pretend to have at least five or six.

I asked the basic questions about her health, then moved on to her marriage. We always spoke of marriage, as if sex could not take place outside of it.

“What should I do if someone comes in who isn't married?” Fania had asked when we'd opened.

“Send for a minister,” I'd answered, because I hadn't made up my mind what to do. It would be unconscionable to turn away unmarried women. It would be asking for trouble, more trouble, to treat them. I had talked it over with J.J. I wanted a test case that would persuade people, not alienate them.

Mrs. McAllister kept her eyes on her lap as she squeezed out the answers to my questions. Finally I took out the Mizpah pessary. Her eyes widened in alarm. This was no policewoman.

“That's not why I'm here.”

“You didn't come for contraceptive information?”

She shook her head.

“You know what contraception is, don't you?”

“A sin against nature.”

“Who told you that?”

“I read it. Mother gave me a book. It's by a physician. Dr. Henry Guernsey. He says preventions to conception are one of the greatest crimes of the present age.”

“I'm familiar with Dr. Guernsey's book, and if he knew anything about women's health, and children's, he wouldn't make such a reckless statement.”

“But isn't it a sin not to let nature take its course?”

“Is it a sin to treat an infection? Or remove an appendix that's about to burst?” I looked down at her long fingers twisted tight as a knot in her lap. “Or trim your nails? All of those are preventions to nature taking its course.”

She raised her eyes. “I never thought of it that way.”

“Now you can.”

“But I want babies.”

“Are you having trouble conceiving?” I thought of all the self-proclaimed nice girls I'd known in my life. “You have had sexual relations with your husband, haven't you?”

She dropped her eyes again and nodded.

“Did your mother or a doctor or anyone give you any instruction about the sexual side of marriage?”

“Mother said I was never to dress or undress in front of my husband. If there was no dressing room or closet, I was to turn out the light.”

“That's Victorian prudery, not sexual information.”

“No, she said it was a well-known fact. It would be too . . . stimulating.”

“For your husband?”

“Of course.”

“What about for you?”

She let out a small soft moan of despair that I couldn't make sense of.

“Did she tell you anything else?”

“She gave me Dr. Guernsey's book.”

“Which does not have a single word about the sexual act. Only a lot of pieties about Christian love, and men having to tame their sexual drive, while women have no drive at all, unless they're fallen women. What I don't understand is if we don't like sex, why are we always trying to ruin men by luring them into it?”

A tear slid down her face and made a dark spot on her navy serge skirt.

“Does the act of love trouble you?”

“Not the actual act,” she mumbled to her lap.

“Is there some other aspect of lovemaking that bothers you?”

She barely nodded.

I thought of Havelock. “Nothing that gives two people pleasure is wrong.”

She didn't answer.

“Does your husband give you pleasure?”