The Gilded Hour
Page 20
“You don’t have a physician who visits regularly?”
Eyes the color of autumn oak leaves assessed her coolly. “Am I asking too much?”
Anna felt herself flush. “I would be happy to be of assistance.”
Another folder appeared and was pushed across the desk. “These are the records for the sisters who need to be seen. There are two novice nursing sisters waiting for you in the infirmary to assist. If there is something you need that you don’t find, send one of them to me and I will see what can be done. The convent infirmary is at the end of this hall, then to the left. It’s clearly marked.”
At the door Anna hesitated. “Is Sister Mary Augustin available this afternoon? I was hoping to speak to her.”
There was a long pause, as well as a new set of furrows between the sparse white eyebrows.
“Or do I ask too much?” Anna finished.
She had earned herself an amused smile. “I will send her to you before you leave.”
• • •
THE INFIRMARY WAS a large rectangular space, as clean as any treatment room at the New Amsterdam. Along one wall were supply cabinets, a table for the preparation of medicines, a tall glass-fronted case of instruments, sterilization equipment, and a deep sink. A pair of examination tables took up the middle of the room, each surrounded by a privacy curtain that could be pulled closed. She had a moment to wonder whether the children’s infirmary was as well equipped, and then she chided herself for assuming the worst.
Her first patient was a nun about thirty years old with a sprained wrist. After that she treated an eye infection, lanced a boil, wrote out a receipt for a liniment that would loosen stiff joints, and finally diagnosed what was almost certainly the start of tubercular kidney and would need to be closely monitored. She wrote her observations and advice on a sheet of paper left in each nun’s folder and hoped they would be read.
The sisters were all quiet and cooperative and utterly stoic; they asked no questions but answered the ones she put to them without hesitation. It was all very routine until a fifty-two-year-old Sister Francis Xavier introduced herself as the orphanage and convent procuratrix. At Anna’s blank expression she explained.
“Food,” she said. “Drink. I’m the one who makes sure there’s enough to feed all these little faces, like birdies in the nest they are, always peeping and opening their mouths wide enough to see right down their pink gullets. And the sisters, too.” She patted an ample belly. “I like my work.”
Sister Xavier had a mass in her breast the size of an apple. As Anna palpated it the sister asked, “Do you think I’d get a blue ribbon at the state fair? Hurts like the devil. Waxes and wanes like the moon.”
“How long has this been with you?”
The smooth brow creased as she thought. “Twenty years, maybe. Seems to me if it was the cancer it would have killed me long ago, but now it’s got so big it throbs like a rotten tooth. Can it be got rid of?”
“It can,” Anna said. “Or at least, I can do a needle aspiration today and then remove it for you surgically sometime soon. With any luck it won’t come back again after that. You’ll have to come to the hospital for the procedure.”
“Hospital!” Xavier huffed a laugh. “Not me. You can draw it out with a needle, didn’t you say? That will do.”
“I can drain it for you here, but that will only give you relief for a short time. Surgery is called for. I’ll talk to your mother superior about it. Unless you’d rather someone else operated.”
Sister Xavier scowled at the ceiling in a way that made Anna feel sympathy for the sisters who worked under her in the kitchens. She puffed out an irritated explosion of breath.
“If it must be done, better you than one of the doctors at St. Vincent’s. I don’t care to let a man take a knife to me.”
“Good,” Anna said. “For the moment, let’s see what we can do to give you some relief. It will take me a few minutes to get a sense of the mass, and then I have to sterilize my instruments and the operating field. The aspiration itself will take less than a minute.”
“Endless bother,” Xavier said. “Get on with it.”
But while Anna worked, Sister Francis Xavier couldn’t keep quiet. She talked and asked questions but never lost sight of what Anna was doing, stopping her now and then: what was in that bottle and could she smell it and if the hypodermic needle had been used on someone else before and how it was cleaned.
Where the others had been adamantly silent, she was determined to fill the room with words. It was an opportunity Anna could not ignore, this nun who was so willing to talk.
“I wanted to ask about some Italian children who came in from Hoboken this past Monday, orphaned in a smallpox epidemic. Two boys, two girls, Russo is the family name. Would you know anything about them?”
She got a partial shrug as a reply. “Monday is as good as a month around here, and the boys would be in the other building, if they’re still here at all.”
That gave Anna pause, but she focused on what seemed nearer to hand. “And the girls?”
Sister Xavier said, “There’s talk of sisters coming over from Italy to start an orphanage for their own, but in the meantime the Guinea girls are usually sent down to the old place.”
She used the word Guinea—a terrible insult, even Anna was aware of that much—as easily as she might have said house or child. It took Anna’s breath away for a moment, and then she steadied. “There will be a pinch now, but please hold still.” And then: “And here it is.”
Sister Francis Xavier let out a great sigh as Anna pulled back on the plunger and a cloudy yellow liquid filled the syringe.
“That’s better already.”
While Anna cleaned the puncture site and bandaged it, she considered how best to ask what she needed to know.
“You’re as bad as the novitiates,” Sister Xavier said, her tone grumpier by the minute. “Can’t spit out whatever it is you need to say.”
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘the old place’—where is that?”
Sister Xavier sat up with some trouble. “This is the new St. Patrick’s, the cathedral buildings. The old place got too crowded, you see, and so the bishop got after the mayor until he gifted this land for a bigger orphan asylum.”
“But the older asylum is still in use?”
“It is. The Italian girls are more likely to be sent there.”
“And why is that?”
The shoulder under the black habit lifted in a shrug. “They’re more at home down there on Mott Street, among their own kind.”
• • •
IT WAS SIX by the time Anna finished with the last examination. She found her own way back along the corridors, passing darkened offices and classrooms. Somewhere in another part of the building bells chimed, but otherwise the halls were far too quiet to house hundreds of little girls. Little girls who learned their letters and their prayers and how to polish wooden floors along with other, harder lessons.
At the next window she paused to look out and saw the reason for the quiet. Two lines of girls were walking, quick-step, along a well-traveled path to one of the cathedral’s side entrances. Apparently evening prayer services were in order. She wondered how many times a day this process repeated itself, and whether the girls minded. She thought probably not; they wore sturdy shoes and hooded capes, and their bellies were full. Some of them had probably put up with much worse for far less.
Anna was dry and warm now, but her stomach growled and she wanted tea and a sandwich and a place to sit quietly for a few moments before she went back out into the weather. There was no sign of the young sister who had taken her wraps to the cloakroom but Anna found them, neatly folded, on a chair in the empty hall.
It seemed that Sister Mary Augustin was not available, after all.
For a long moment Anna waited, standing beside a window to watch as a spring rain replaced the sleet. She would have to go hunt down a cab. The thought was still in her head when she felt a light touch on her elbow.
“Pardon me,” said Sister Mary Augustin. “I didn’t mean to startle you, but I’m so glad I caught you before you left.”
They sat on the visitors’ bench in the little lobby as the light rain gave way to watery sunshine, light falling in stripes to make a checkerboard on the cool gray stone floor.
“Mother Superior gave me permission to talk to you,” Sister Mary Augustin said. “But I don’t have long and there are things you should know”—she swallowed, visibly—“about the Russo children.”
“You sought me out to give me bad news, I take it.”
Many emotions moved over the younger woman’s face. Fear, regret, guilt all came and went, but finally she nodded and the story came out quite quickly. She told Anna about the drunken brawl on the docks and the rush back to the orphan asylum. Somehow, she said, the boys had gotten separated from the rest of the children.
“Separated?”
“They never arrived here.”
Eyes the color of autumn oak leaves assessed her coolly. “Am I asking too much?”
Anna felt herself flush. “I would be happy to be of assistance.”
Another folder appeared and was pushed across the desk. “These are the records for the sisters who need to be seen. There are two novice nursing sisters waiting for you in the infirmary to assist. If there is something you need that you don’t find, send one of them to me and I will see what can be done. The convent infirmary is at the end of this hall, then to the left. It’s clearly marked.”
At the door Anna hesitated. “Is Sister Mary Augustin available this afternoon? I was hoping to speak to her.”
There was a long pause, as well as a new set of furrows between the sparse white eyebrows.
“Or do I ask too much?” Anna finished.
She had earned herself an amused smile. “I will send her to you before you leave.”
• • •
THE INFIRMARY WAS a large rectangular space, as clean as any treatment room at the New Amsterdam. Along one wall were supply cabinets, a table for the preparation of medicines, a tall glass-fronted case of instruments, sterilization equipment, and a deep sink. A pair of examination tables took up the middle of the room, each surrounded by a privacy curtain that could be pulled closed. She had a moment to wonder whether the children’s infirmary was as well equipped, and then she chided herself for assuming the worst.
Her first patient was a nun about thirty years old with a sprained wrist. After that she treated an eye infection, lanced a boil, wrote out a receipt for a liniment that would loosen stiff joints, and finally diagnosed what was almost certainly the start of tubercular kidney and would need to be closely monitored. She wrote her observations and advice on a sheet of paper left in each nun’s folder and hoped they would be read.
The sisters were all quiet and cooperative and utterly stoic; they asked no questions but answered the ones she put to them without hesitation. It was all very routine until a fifty-two-year-old Sister Francis Xavier introduced herself as the orphanage and convent procuratrix. At Anna’s blank expression she explained.
“Food,” she said. “Drink. I’m the one who makes sure there’s enough to feed all these little faces, like birdies in the nest they are, always peeping and opening their mouths wide enough to see right down their pink gullets. And the sisters, too.” She patted an ample belly. “I like my work.”
Sister Xavier had a mass in her breast the size of an apple. As Anna palpated it the sister asked, “Do you think I’d get a blue ribbon at the state fair? Hurts like the devil. Waxes and wanes like the moon.”
“How long has this been with you?”
The smooth brow creased as she thought. “Twenty years, maybe. Seems to me if it was the cancer it would have killed me long ago, but now it’s got so big it throbs like a rotten tooth. Can it be got rid of?”
“It can,” Anna said. “Or at least, I can do a needle aspiration today and then remove it for you surgically sometime soon. With any luck it won’t come back again after that. You’ll have to come to the hospital for the procedure.”
“Hospital!” Xavier huffed a laugh. “Not me. You can draw it out with a needle, didn’t you say? That will do.”
“I can drain it for you here, but that will only give you relief for a short time. Surgery is called for. I’ll talk to your mother superior about it. Unless you’d rather someone else operated.”
Sister Xavier scowled at the ceiling in a way that made Anna feel sympathy for the sisters who worked under her in the kitchens. She puffed out an irritated explosion of breath.
“If it must be done, better you than one of the doctors at St. Vincent’s. I don’t care to let a man take a knife to me.”
“Good,” Anna said. “For the moment, let’s see what we can do to give you some relief. It will take me a few minutes to get a sense of the mass, and then I have to sterilize my instruments and the operating field. The aspiration itself will take less than a minute.”
“Endless bother,” Xavier said. “Get on with it.”
But while Anna worked, Sister Francis Xavier couldn’t keep quiet. She talked and asked questions but never lost sight of what Anna was doing, stopping her now and then: what was in that bottle and could she smell it and if the hypodermic needle had been used on someone else before and how it was cleaned.
Where the others had been adamantly silent, she was determined to fill the room with words. It was an opportunity Anna could not ignore, this nun who was so willing to talk.
“I wanted to ask about some Italian children who came in from Hoboken this past Monday, orphaned in a smallpox epidemic. Two boys, two girls, Russo is the family name. Would you know anything about them?”
She got a partial shrug as a reply. “Monday is as good as a month around here, and the boys would be in the other building, if they’re still here at all.”
That gave Anna pause, but she focused on what seemed nearer to hand. “And the girls?”
Sister Xavier said, “There’s talk of sisters coming over from Italy to start an orphanage for their own, but in the meantime the Guinea girls are usually sent down to the old place.”
She used the word Guinea—a terrible insult, even Anna was aware of that much—as easily as she might have said house or child. It took Anna’s breath away for a moment, and then she steadied. “There will be a pinch now, but please hold still.” And then: “And here it is.”
Sister Francis Xavier let out a great sigh as Anna pulled back on the plunger and a cloudy yellow liquid filled the syringe.
“That’s better already.”
While Anna cleaned the puncture site and bandaged it, she considered how best to ask what she needed to know.
“You’re as bad as the novitiates,” Sister Xavier said, her tone grumpier by the minute. “Can’t spit out whatever it is you need to say.”
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘the old place’—where is that?”
Sister Xavier sat up with some trouble. “This is the new St. Patrick’s, the cathedral buildings. The old place got too crowded, you see, and so the bishop got after the mayor until he gifted this land for a bigger orphan asylum.”
“But the older asylum is still in use?”
“It is. The Italian girls are more likely to be sent there.”
“And why is that?”
The shoulder under the black habit lifted in a shrug. “They’re more at home down there on Mott Street, among their own kind.”
• • •
IT WAS SIX by the time Anna finished with the last examination. She found her own way back along the corridors, passing darkened offices and classrooms. Somewhere in another part of the building bells chimed, but otherwise the halls were far too quiet to house hundreds of little girls. Little girls who learned their letters and their prayers and how to polish wooden floors along with other, harder lessons.
At the next window she paused to look out and saw the reason for the quiet. Two lines of girls were walking, quick-step, along a well-traveled path to one of the cathedral’s side entrances. Apparently evening prayer services were in order. She wondered how many times a day this process repeated itself, and whether the girls minded. She thought probably not; they wore sturdy shoes and hooded capes, and their bellies were full. Some of them had probably put up with much worse for far less.
Anna was dry and warm now, but her stomach growled and she wanted tea and a sandwich and a place to sit quietly for a few moments before she went back out into the weather. There was no sign of the young sister who had taken her wraps to the cloakroom but Anna found them, neatly folded, on a chair in the empty hall.
It seemed that Sister Mary Augustin was not available, after all.
For a long moment Anna waited, standing beside a window to watch as a spring rain replaced the sleet. She would have to go hunt down a cab. The thought was still in her head when she felt a light touch on her elbow.
“Pardon me,” said Sister Mary Augustin. “I didn’t mean to startle you, but I’m so glad I caught you before you left.”
They sat on the visitors’ bench in the little lobby as the light rain gave way to watery sunshine, light falling in stripes to make a checkerboard on the cool gray stone floor.
“Mother Superior gave me permission to talk to you,” Sister Mary Augustin said. “But I don’t have long and there are things you should know”—she swallowed, visibly—“about the Russo children.”
“You sought me out to give me bad news, I take it.”
Many emotions moved over the younger woman’s face. Fear, regret, guilt all came and went, but finally she nodded and the story came out quite quickly. She told Anna about the drunken brawl on the docks and the rush back to the orphan asylum. Somehow, she said, the boys had gotten separated from the rest of the children.
“Separated?”
“They never arrived here.”
