Clutching the letter in my hand, I suddenly felt the bubbly flutter of life in my belly. It made me gasp, the sound echoing in the still air of the church, and the woman kneeling in prayer turned around to look in my direction. I smiled, lowering my head but too awed by what I’d felt to be sincerely embarrassed. I pressed both my hands protectively over my belly.
“I’ll take care of you, little one,” I whispered. “I’m giving you a father. That’s the important thing. You and I … No matter what happens, we’re going to be all right.”
38
March 9, 1944
Dear Gina,
You were right to tell me about Vincent. It hurts beyond belief to know he’s with someone else, but I’m happy for him. I only hope she treats him better than I did. I want the best for him. I’m also delighted that he’s working at a hospital for children. Pediatrics has always been his passion and he is so good with the little ones.
I still have no idea how I’m going to finagle this trip to Winston-Salem, and the exam is less than a week away. I’m apprehensive about mentioning it to Henry again. I think I will simply have to disappear for a few days. He disappears all the time, working at the factory all night long, so now it’s my turn! Wish me luck.
Love,
Tess
39
I left very early the first morning of the exam. I dressed as quietly as I could and tiptoed out of the house after leaving a hastily scribbled note for Henry on the night table. I’d barely slept and only hoped I would be able to stay awake for the examination.
Dear Henry,
Imagine working for years on a beautiful design for a dining room suite, and it’s finally perfected and ready to be taken to market. Before you can do that, the furniture must be inspected for craftsmanship, but you can’t get an appointment with the inspector. All your hard work stands in the balance. No one can see this beautiful thing you’ve created because you can’t accomplish this one final step.
All right, maybe this is an awkward analogy but it’s the best I can do at this early hour. I have to take that exam, Henry. I’ve worked hard to get to this point and I am determined to take this final step and be able to call myself a registered nurse. I know that means nothing to you, but it means everything to me.
I’m taking the train to Winston-Salem and I have reservations at a hotel. I will try to call you at the factory when I arrive. I’ll be perfectly safe and will return on Thursday.
Fondly,
Tess
Outside, the wind nearly knocked me off my feet and I was glad to find the cab already waiting for me in front of the house. The driver let me off at the train station and I joined a few men on the platform. They all appeared to be wearing business suits beneath their long black wool coats and I felt out of place—I was certainly the only person on the platform with knitting in her suitcase. I ignored their curious gazes as I shivered in my own coat, my handbag and the exam handbook cradled in my arms.
The train was late and that only made me more nervous. What if I didn’t make it to the exam site on time? Would they still let me in?
“Tess!”
I turned to see Henry rushing toward me from the parking lot. Oh no. I had the feeling my fellow passengers were going to witness a scene. I stood my ground as though my shoes were encased in concrete.
Henry reached me and wrapped his good hand around my arm. He leaned close to my ear. “Why didn’t you tell me you were doing this?” he asked, his voice low enough that only I could hear him.
“You would have tried to stop me,” I said, attempting to wrench my arm from his grip without being too obvious about it. “Please, Henry. Let me go. I have to do this.”
He shook his head. “You’re not getting on a train,” he said. “I won’t allow it. Not in your condition.” He bent over and picked up my suitcase, but I didn’t budge. “I’ll drive you,” he said. “Come on.”
I thought I must have misunderstood him. “You’ll drive me? Where?”
“It’s in Winston-Salem, right?”
“You’ll…” I could hear the train whistle as it approached the station and wondered if I should snatch my suitcase away from him and run to board the train.
“I’ll take you, Tess,” he said earnestly. “I have the gas. We can cancel your hotel reservation and stay someplace very nice, all right? You’ll take your exam, and you damn well better pass it after all this nonsense.” He smiled at me, that smile I so rarely saw.
I didn’t know whether to trust him, his change of heart was so unexpected. My scribbled note must have had more of an impact than I imagined. I watched the businessmen board the train without me, and Henry reached for my gloved hand.
“Come on,” he said again. “What time do you need to be in Winston-Salem?”
“The exam starts at ten,” I said, falling into step next to him.
“Then we’d better hustle, hadn’t we?”
We walked quickly to his car and I fully expected him to drive out of the parking lot and head directly for home, but he turned in the opposite direction from Oakwood, and when he pulled onto Route 64, I put my hand to my mouth, stunned.
“You’re really taking me to Winston-Salem?” I asked.
He kept his eyes on the road and it was a moment before he spoke again. “I want you to be happy, Tess,” he said, his hands tight on the wheel. “I know you had other plans for your life. I know living … in this situation … has been challenging for you.” He gave a little shrug. “I also know that I’m not the best husband in the world. I work all the time. I have enormous responsibility, running the business, and it leaves little time for you. So if this will make you happy, I’ll help you. But”—he glanced at me—“it doesn’t change the fact that I don’t want you to work, as a nurse or anything else. You can have the satisfaction of your degree or license or whatever you—”
“License.” I grinned. I felt ridiculously happy.
“You can have the satisfaction of having earned your license, but what I ask of you is that you devote yourself to our child. Our family. Not a job.”
I nodded. I was so touched that he was taking me to Winston-Salem that I would agree to anything, at least for now. I smiled to myself. I had a good, kind, and forgiving husband.
I moved closer to him, leaned over and planted a kiss on his cheek. “Thank you so much for this,” I said, and I opened my handbook to study.
* * *
The exam was hard, but I’d anticipated that. What I hadn’t anticipated was the discomfort of sitting in one place hour after hour while pregnant. I prayed for the bathroom breaks.
Henry spent most of the daytime hours on the phone handling factory business long distance. At night, our relationship was the same as it always was, with each of us in our separate beds, reading. I’d wondered if, in a hotel room without his mother and sister nearby, he might be a bit more amorous, but no. I had to accept the fact that, at least while I was pregnant, Henry was not interested in a physical relationship with me. Not that I was particularly longing for one with him.
By the end of the three days, I was both exhausted and euphoric, certain that I’d passed. Even Henry seemed to catch my mood and he took me to his favorite Winston-Salem restaurant to celebrate before we headed for home in the dark.
“We are going to lie to my mother and sister,” he said, when we were about halfway to Hickory.
“About the last three days?”
“Yes. I told Mama this was a business trip and you decided to come with me at the last minute.”
“That’s fine,” I said. I liked that we shared a secret from Ruth. “What did I do all day while you worked?”
“Shopped?” he suggested. “Isn’t that what girls do?”
“I was never one of those girls, Henry,” I said. “And I never will be.”
He looked over at me and although there was little light in the car, I saw him smile. He reached across the seat to lightly touch my cheek.
“How did I ever get tangled u
p with the likes of you?” he asked.
40
I woke up in the darkness a week and a half after our return from Winston-Salem, a tight fist of pain in my belly. I’d been dreaming that a stomach bug had taken hold of me when one of the spasms finally jerked me awake. Gasping, I sat up and turned on my night table lamp. My alarm clock read 5:20 and the pain was passing. Maybe it really had been a dream. But even though the fist was gone, a vague discomfort lingered. Please, God, I thought to myself. Let this be a stomach virus and not the baby.
I got out of bed and tried to put on my robe and slippers calmly, as though there were nothing at all wrong. Once in the bathroom, though, I saw the blood and began to tremble. This can’t be happening, I thought. Please, no.
I was crying softly by the time I returned to the bedroom and shook Henry by the shoulder.
“Hm?” he said. Early morning sunlight now sifted through the sheer curtains at the windows, illuminating his face as he looked up at me from the bed. “What is it?”
“I’m spotting,” I said, although that was a gentle term for what I was experiencing.
“Spotting?” He raised himself to his elbows. “What are you talking about?”
“Bleeding. Something’s wrong.” I heard the shiver in my voice. “I shouldn’t be bleeding,” I said. “I’m only five months along. And I have some pain too.”
He was instantly on his feet, his arm around me. “Sit down,” he said, and I lowered myself to the edge of his bed. “I’ll call Dr. Poole.”
He threw his robe over his pajamas and left the room. I heard his quick footsteps on the stairs as he headed down to the kitchen and the phone, and I closed my eyes and whispered please please please. I’d seen Dr. Poole for the first time only the week before. He was a kindly man of indeterminate age who was clearly accustomed to keeping Hickory’s secrets, and he’d assured me that my baby and I were fine and healthy. He’d told me to order a special maternity girdle, but I’d seen no reason to bother with it, and now I wondered if that had been a mistake. Had my baby needed more support? I knew deep down that was crazy, but I felt crazy at that moment. Crazy and terrified.
I began to get dressed, moving very slowly as though I could keep my baby inside me if I was careful. I had put on my slip, dress, and mules by the time Henry returned to the room, ashen faced and grim.
“He’ll meet us at the hospital,” he said.
I didn’t seem able to move from where I stood at the end of my bed. “What did he say?” I asked. “It’s bad, isn’t it.”
He took my arm and guided me gently toward the door. “Let’s pray for a miracle,” he said.
41
The fetoscope jutted from Dr. Poole’s forehead when he walked into my room at the hospital.
“Wasn’t due to see you for another few weeks, was I,” he said pleasantly, giving me a small smile as he leaned over to press the scope to my bare belly. He moved the scope from place to place, listening, and I supposed he was counting my baby’s heartbeat. The tight fist of pain was back, making me cringe. It had started up again as Henry drove me to the hospital, a stony silence between us, and although the pain let up from time to time, it always returned. As soon as we reached the hospital, I’d been placed on a gurney, hooked up to a saline drip, and wheeled away from Henry down a long hallway. My head had been on a pillow and I could see Henry’s face grow smaller and paler until the gurney turned a corner and he disappeared altogether from my view.
Now Dr. Poole listened to my baby’s heartbeat for a few more seconds, then he straightened up, a grimace on his face as though the act of standing straight hurt his back. He covered my belly with the sheet, then left without another word to me. A moment later, two nurses came into the room. I gave them a worried smile and wondered briefly if the younger girl was a student nurse, as I had been. I was an RN now myself, having learned only two days ago that I passed my exam. Suddenly, that seemed very unimportant.
“We need to get you ready to deliver,” the older, gray-haired nurse said as she hung another bottle of liquid from the pole above my bed.
“Deliver?” I thought they had me mixed up with some other patient. “It’s too soon!”
“Sugar,” she said, as she set up a basin of water along with a white towel and a razor on the table near my bed, “your baby has no heartbeat and you’re having contractions.”
I clamped my legs together beneath the sheet. “No heartbeat?” I asked. “Dr. Poole couldn’t hear it?”
“I’m afraid there’s no heartbeat to hear, sugar,” she said.
I looked at the younger nurse, hoping she could give me a different answer, but she avoided my eyes altogether.
“I don’t understand,” I said. I would refuse to understand.
“This happens sometimes,” the gray-haired nurse said. “But there’s no reason you won’t be able to have more babies.”
“I don’t want more babies,” I said. “I want this one.” My voice rose and I covered my belly protectively. “I need this one!”
“Something’s gone wrong with this one,” she said. “It happened to me when I was nearly as far along as you, but now I have four healthy children, so you—”
“No! You don’t understand.” I started to sit up, but she held my shoulders. Pressed me back against the pillow. “I want this baby,” I pleaded. It wasn’t just my child she was talking about taking from me. It was my companion. My ally. The only living soul I had in Hickory. “Where’s Henry?” Everyone knew and liked Henry. They would listen to him.
Another man—another doctor?—wheeled something I couldn’t see into the room. He nodded to the nurses, but ignored me even when he reached the side of my bed and began adjusting the equipment he’d brought with him.
“Your husband’s in the fathers’ waiting room,” the older nurse said as she checked the bottles on the pole above my bed. “He’s not allowed in here, of course, but Dr. Poole will tell him what’s happening.”
Her voice suddenly sounded as though it were a million miles away and when I opened my mouth again to speak, I forgot what I was about to say. Something—a mask?—came toward my face, and I turned my head away, resisting it. Fighting it. But against my will, my eyelids fell shut and I gave up the battle.
* * *
I awakened alone, cramping and sore, still tied to the IV. I knew all at once my baby was no longer inside me, and the loneliness I felt was overwhelming. I wanted to be home in Little Italy in my little row house. I wanted my mother. My Vincent.
A nurse I hadn’t seen before, brown haired and wearing pale pink-framed glasses, padded into the room on her soft-soled shoes.
“There you are.” She smiled. “It’s all over now, honey,” she said, as she rearranged my covers. “Dr. Poole will keep you here a few days while you heal and—”
“I want to see my baby,” I said.
She reached for my wrist, checking her watch as she took my pulse. “You lost your baby, Mrs. Kraft,” she said, her gaze never leaving her watch. “I’m so sorry.”
“I know,” I said. “But I want to see it.”
“Oh no, dear, you don’t.” She let go of my wrist and poured a glass of water from the pitcher on my bedside table.
“Was it a boy or a girl?” I asked.
She hesitated. “A boy,” she said.
My Andy. “I want to see him,” I said firmly.
She stood next to the bed, shaking a pill into her hand from a small glass bottle. “He wasn’t full term, you know, and—”
“I want to see him!” I shouted. I felt as though a different woman inhabited my body. One who shouted. One who demanded what was hers.
“It doesn’t matter now,” she said. “He’s an angel in heaven. That’s how you have to think of him. He’s with Jesus now.”
“Please.” I started to cry. “Please let me see him.”
“We don’t do that,” she said. “If he’d been full term and you really, truly wanted to see him, you could have, but not with a twenty-o
ne-week-old fetus.” She tried to hand me the pill, but I didn’t take it from her. “Now you really must swallow this, honey,” she said. “It will make you feel better.”
“Where is my husband?” Maybe Henry could persuade them. Everyone listened to Henry Kraft. But what would I say to him? What would happen to us now that there was no baby to bind us together?
“He’s gone to his job for a while,” she said, “but he said he’d be back soon. And he’s the one who arranged for you to have this room, away from the maternity ward. He doesn’t want you to be with other mothers who…” Her voice trailed off. “He’s a very thoughtful man, isn’t he,” she added.
I felt grateful to Henry for realizing it would be intolerable for me to be in a ward where I would hear crying babies and joyful women.
“I’m going to leave this pill right here,” the nurse said, setting the pill and glass of water within my reach on the nightstand. Then she squeezed my shoulder. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Kraft,” she said. “You’ll have more babies.”
I wanted to slap her. Why did people keep saying that to me? Didn’t they know how precious this baby was? How irreplaceable?
“I wanted this baby,” I whispered, more to myself than to her, and I doubted she heard me.
“You get some rest now, dear,” she said, and she left me alone with my grief.
* * *
Henry arrived later that afternoon carrying a vase overflowing with flowers. Silently, he set them on the nightstand next to my bed. I thought he was avoiding looking at me.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. My throat felt dry and tight.
He sat down in the only chair in the room and let out a sigh. “Dr. Poole said it’s nothing you did. That it’s hard to explain why things like this happen. They just do.”
I heard no blame in his voice. “I wanted to see him,” I said. “They wouldn’t let me.”