The Midwife of Hope River by Patricia Harman Page A

Gray gruel for breakfast. Gray sheets.
    The girls in my dormitory were a mixed lot and, despite their poverty, were nearly as spunky as Minnie. Most were children of immigrants, Polish, Italian, Russian, Irish, new to the country and struggling with English. When their parents died of consumption, cholera, or an industrial accident and they had no family in this new land, there was nowhere else for them to go. Some were thieves, pickpockets, or child streetwalkers. Some were disabled, defective, and unwanted. A few still had one parent who visited.
    Those were the saddest. Their widowed mother or father, working twelve hours a day in a sweatshop or tannery, still couldn’t afford to keep them at home, like the redheaded sisters from Ireland, nine and seven, who cried when their mother came on Sunday and then cried again when she left.
    I’d been doted on, growing up in Deerfield, so I nearly drowned at first in that sea of despair, but I quickly learned to swim and those two years in the House of Mercy changed my life. Living with the poor, the lonely, and the discarded embroidered them into my heart.
    To survive I made myself useful and ingratiated myself with the nuns by singing the youngest girls to sleep and reading to the older ones. I sang hymns: “Rock of Ages,” “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?,” “Come to the Savior Now.” I sang popular tunes: “After the Ball Was Over,” “Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay” . . . anything I could think of.
    None of the girls had been to school. The sisters gave me a worn copy of The Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, and I read to them at bedtime and on rainy days: “Thumbelina,” “The Little Mermaid,” “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” Even the girls who didn’t understand English were soothed by my voice. “The Princess and the Pea” was their favorite.
    By day I was a laundress, like my mother had been, in the institution’s basement. We used newspapers to bundle the sheets, and one morning, at the bottom of page 10 in the Chicago Tribune, just under an advertisement for SEARS MODERN HOMES, ARRIVES BY TRAIN, WITH INSTRUCTIONS AND ALL MATERIALS, was an announcement of tryouts for the chorus line at the Majestic Theatre.
    I was well spoken, could sing, and wasn’t unpleasant to look at, so, determined to audition, I waited until dark, then slipped out the side door with my few belongings and the sisters’ worn copy of Hans Christian Andersen. It was the first thing I ever pinched but sadly not the last. Under the cover of darkness, I arrived at Mrs. Ayers’s boardinghouse, the last place I’d lived after my mother’s demise.
    â€œChild!” she exclaimed. “What’s happened?” She was wearing a rose silk dressing gown with her hair loose, flowing down her back like black rain. I’d never seen her that way before. Having a man had changed her.
    â€œI know I’m not your responsibility,” I began, “but I beg of you this one kind favor.” I’d read a line like that in the sisters’ storybook. “Lend me your best dress for three hours tomorrow.” She took me in with open arms, making sure I understood that it was only for the night, and put me to bed in my old room.
    In the morning, Mrs. Ayers, now Mrs. Swartz, pulled a cream ruffled tea dress with lace panels on the sleeves out of a round-topped wooden trunk. It was the dress she had married Mr. Swartz in. We took in the waist with basting thread and her new husband, a kind soul, hired a horse-drawn cab to take me to the Majestic at three.
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    When the driver left me off on Monroe, I pinched my cheeks to give them more color, stared up at the ornate Art Deco–inspired hotel, the tallest building in Chicago, and tried to pretend I was used to such places. I told the man with the tooth missing who stood out in front that I was there for the audition, then found myself a