The Lonely Hearts Hotel(2)
With tears streaming out of two black eyes that she’d gotten from her father, the girl wrapped the baby up in a little blanket. She put on her black coat and boots. She was supposed to go straight to the church. Babies were abandoned on the church steps all the time. The baby’s fists opened and closed like a pensive sea anemone. But before the girl left, she got on her hands and knees and secretly begged her mother for fifty dollars. Her mother, with a mixture of disgust and compassion, handed her daughter the bills. The girl whispered “Thank you” and hurried out the door.
She passed the church and walked another mile and knocked on a door at the end of a lane. There was a woman who lived there who would take your baby off you for fifty dollars. For the fee, the woman promised, the baby would not be put in an orphanage.
A woman with gray hair the color of gunpowder and wearing a coat opened the door for Rose’s mother. In the kitchen, she said she would make sure that the girl was given to a rich family in Westmount. She would be dressed in beautiful white outfits with elaborate little collars, which would make her look like a flower. She would have a governess and an Irish wolfhound. She would be read to all the time from great fat books. For a small fee. For a small fee. For a small fee she could secure a home and good fortune for her daughter.
What a foolish imagination Rose’s mother had to have had to buy what this woman was selling. It was no good to have an imagination if you were a girl and living in Montreal at the beginning of the twentieth century. Intelligence was what she needed. But she never listened to anyone.
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A MAN, taking a shortcut home from the factory, found Rose wrapped in her blanket in the snow beneath a tree in Mount Royal Park. She was frozen and had two little round spots like blue roses on her cheeks. The man put his ear up to the girl’s face and felt that her cheeks were as cold as stones, but he heard a tiny, tiny exhale. He tucked her deep into the folds of his coat and ran with her to the hospital. At the hospital, they put her in a bucket of warm water. When her eyes flittered open, it was a miracle of sorts.
The police went to the park and found other babies in the snow, each having turned into a stone angel. The terrible merchant’s identity was uncovered and she was arrested. As she was being dragged into court, all the people threw snowballs with rocks embedded in them at her. The woman was sentenced to be hanged. Although everyone was indignant and outraged about the fate of Rose, nobody came forward to adopt her. All anyone could afford was indignation.
When the policemen brought the baby to the orphanage, they said, “Watch out for this one. Nothing good was ever meant to happen to her.” All the girls at the orphanage were named Marie, and so was this baby girl. But her nickname, which she would always be known by, was Rose, because the two bright spots on her cheeks had turned from blue to red, then took two more weeks to disappear.
3
A HISTORY OF INNOCENCE
The orphanage was on the northern boundary of the city. If you went to where the city ended and then walked two thousand paces, you would come upon the orphanage, although it isn’t there now. It was an enormous place. It was not the type of building that you would want to bother making a pen-and-ink sketch of because you would surely get incredibly bored drawing all those identical square windows. It would require no artistry on your part and, therefore, you might find your time more creatively spent illustrating a running horse.
Before the orphanage had been built, orphans were housed in the nuns’ motherhouse downtown. And that had been too much temptation for the orphans. They did not sufficiently understand their otherness. They believed that they too were a part of city life. They were meant to be servile. It was better here in isolation.
The building was teeming with abandoned and orphaned children. Although many actually had parents, they were taught to consider themselves, for all intents and purposes, orphans as well. There were two separate dormitories, one on either side of the building, one for boys and one for girls. There were identical beds in the dormitories. The children lay tucked up in their blankets like rows of dumplings on a plate. There was a small wooden trunk at the foot of each bed in which each orphan was to keep their personal effects. These trunks usually contained a nightgown or pajamas and a toothbrush and a comb. There was sometimes a special rock hidden inside too. There was a pillbox with a broken butterfly in one.
There was an extensive garden behind the orphanage that the children tended. There was a chicken coop where little round eggs appeared as if by magic every morning. Tiny fragile moons that were necessary for survival. The children reached into the nests ever so carefully to retrieve the eggs without breaking their shells. With the sleeves of their sweaters pulled over their hands, their arms were like the trunks of elephants swallowing up peanuts.
There were two cows that had to be milked every morning. The task of milking a cow always required two orphans. One to whisper sweet words of calm into its ear and the other to do the milking.
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THE CHILDREN were all quite pale. They never had enough to eat. Sometimes they would find themselves just fantasizing about eating. While they were sitting in class, sometimes they would look down and tell their bellies to hush—as though there were a dog underneath the table begging for scraps.
They never had enough clothes in the winter either and were cold for months. The tips of their fingers went numb when they shoveled the path to the chicken coop. They would hold their hands up to their faces and breathe against them to generate just a handful of heat. They would tap-dance about to keep their toes warm. They would never completely thaw out under the thin blankets at night. They would pull the blankets over their head and wrap their arms around their legs, trying to hug themselves, trying to make themselves into little warm bundles.