(There are no spoilers in this book!)
Eugenia released a veritable stream of Spanish into the young mother’s astonished face. The only word I understood sent a chill up my spine despite the steadily climbing heat in the room. Polio.
Its meaning was not lost on the Mexican woman, however, and she unconsciously made the sign of the cross over her abundant breast while clinging tighter to her small son.
The boy was still frozen in shock, staring at the syringe my dear friend Eugenia had used on him. I supposed I’d feel the same, although I kept well clear of rusty nails and stale pockets of air, telling myself there was no reason to fear a hospital if one took proper care of oneself.
A reasonable position from an orphaned and destitute young woman making her way in the world.
Becoming a recently married and wealthy young woman hadn’t changed my position.
Syringes were not a part of my future if I had anything to say about it.
Twice my age and twice my girth, Mrs. Eugenia Schuster turned her aristocratic nose in my direction as the mother and son left the small examining room and said, “You could do this if you applied yourself, Mrs. Dunn.”
Besides her Hungarian mother tongue, she spoke English, Spanish, German, and Romani, a skill that left me tongue-tied in awed reverence. She’d married a doctor, and together, the Schusters had founded the Providence Hospital in the center of El Paso, Texas, donated untold dollars and time to the poor, and raised four children who had the run of the place.
Eugenia was not a nurse, but no one told her otherwise.
“You handled it admirably,” I said, keeping a firm hand on the chair next to me. “My skills are best used elsewhere.”
Not that I had many.
She nodded as voices drifted through the open door. “Education is the key. I’ve always said so. We can patch up broken people again and again, but education will keep them from breaking each other over the head in the first place.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” I said. “I had several promising students this year. Miss Carbuncle was more than prepared to pass her teaching exams. It’s gratifying to hear what she’s preparing for next year’s classes.”
I’d only taught in the local school for one year. But I missed it already.
Distracted by the next mother and child entering, Eugenia did not reply. She took the child from his mother’s reluctant arms and set him onto the small wooden table. I winced as the child cried out in fear.
The long line of suffering refugees never ended.
“Four thousand women and children,” Eugenia muttered as she examined the child. “No way to care for themselves, no menfolk, no English, and all they want to do is go home. I’ve often told Olga we must do something about the slums in Chihuahuita.”
She offered a few indecipherable words of comfort to her patient. “See here, Loveda,” she muttered. “Why must men go to war? The Battle of Juarez was last year, but the revolutionaries won’t stop. They have a coup every other day. Soon, we’ll have everyone from Chile to Argentina crossing the river.”
She tucked her dark hair more firmly beneath the cap on her head as a nurse entered with a tray of bandages.
“I can’t blame them,” I said. “You’ll have to build a bigger hospital, is all.”
Eugenia adjusted the starched apron she wore over her proper day dress. It seemed small protection from the daily onslaught of human need she faced so bravely. Bright summer sun lit the room through three tall windows and brought the small boy’s sunken cheeks into stark contrast with his extended belly.
As General Sherman once said, war was hell.
Although everyone had gathered in festive moods on the banks of the Rio Grande to watch the fighting on the Mexican side of the water, it had been no picnic. The undulating currents separated the restless country from our own United States of America, with only a bridge between us.
The bridge was not only unguarded, but took a great amount of regular cross traffic, including the Santa Fe Railroad that ran all the way into Mexico City. A streetcar for the locals and tourists also carried merrymakers into Juarez. Or had. Until last year when the country blew up from within.
We had only the casualties of war on our side of the river. And angry men.
Eugenia took a firm grip on the child and jerked her chin at the nurse. “Ah, but you will not continue to teach, now you’re married, Loveda. What will you donate your time to, if not the hospital?”
The nurse swabbed the laceration on the child’s foot, and his whimpers filled the room.
I wanted to whimper, too. The weight of her question settled over my shoulders and I averted my eyes as Eugenia’s nurse put three neat stitches into the writhing child’s foot.
The sound of laughter felt like a splash of cold water in my face.
Mary and Kate, inseparable friends, let themselves in and Olga followed sedately behind them. The crowded room grew warmer yet and Miss Mary Stanton’s laughter died a natural death as she took in the situation. Mrs. Kate Moore, younger than her companion by a mere six years, applied a brisk elbow to Mary’s side and drew her mouth into a pucker.
Cultured, educated, and firmly single for life, Mary had installed El Paso’s first library, taught grade school for years, had friends in every corner, laughed like a child, and swore like a sailor.
She’d enriched my vocabulary on several occasions.
While Mary was a confirmed spinster of nearly fifty years, the gregarious and cultured librarian had a bosom friend in Kate. Kate rode a bicycle into town, where she taught music lessons, flaunting both her ankles and her independent attitude. Her husband was in the railroad, often gone on business trips, and if Kate preferred the company of a woman as spicy as a jalapeño pepper, no one told her otherwise.
Mrs. Olga Kohlberg kept her air of sturdy elegance and refined wits about her as she gravitated to the only chair in the room and sat, arranging her skirts and ignoring everyone. This woman was the fourth pillar of El Paso society, a tobacco merchant’s Prussian widow who plowed through the waters of middle age with a deep rudder and flags high. She used her wealth to establish the civic infrastructure of El Paso, from the new Women’s Club to a new-fangled idea she called kinder-garten for children.
The Mexican child squirming on the table was worthy of Eugenia’s alms, but Olga would have planted seeds in his young mind the way the nurse had planted stitches in his foot. Kate would have taught him scales and Mary would have thrust a book into his thin hands.
These fearsome four fought nonstop for what sparse culture El Paso contained. The only way I could conceive of why they’d latched onto me a year ago, other than my being lost, alone, and discouraged at the time, was my refined Boston accent, family pedigree, and the ambition I had to make something of myself.
I’d been noticed the moment I stepped off the train and, within a week, been handed a teaching job and the friendship of women who could forge raw materials into soaring works of art.
And El Paso was easily as hot and dangerous as any blacksmith’s forge.
“This heat is worse every year, poor mites.” Eugenia said, as the woman lunged for her son. “And no matter how we help, babies die all the time from it. We get malaria, typhoid fever, spinal meningitis.” She turned to us. “Polio outbreaks. New Mexico is the answer. The mountains are cooler. Old Mexico just isn’t safe for babies.”
The nurse gave Eugenia a little bob and led the patients away.
“One of Brown’s Mormons?” Mary asked.
“All women and children.” Eugenia closed the door. “Juarez is full of revolutionaries and Federales now. They won’t like it, but north is the only way for them to go.”
“But will they?” Olga had finally turned her attention to the conversation. “Home is a powerful concept.”
“Maybe if men only had one wife, they wouldn’t be so quick to discard them.” Mary’s tone was pert.
“Hush now,” Kate said. “Loveda needs us.”
Their generosity warmed me like a rising sun.
“You asked for us, and we came,” Olga said. “I put off the Ladies Benevolent Association to be here. What is it, Mrs. Dunn?”
I glanced at Eugenia. She did not smile. “I wanted to meet here for privacy,” I began. “Something’s happened.”
Kate gasped. “You’re with child? So soon?” All eyes went to my tiny waist and my face flushed.
“Of course not,” I choked out. I would never have brought such scandal to the women who shepherded me. Stalling, I took my pocket watch out and carefully wound it with the little key that swung from the end of its short chain, then replaced it into my skirt pocket.
“You can’t be tired of marriage only three weeks in?” Mary gave me a wry smile. “My flowers haven’t even dried yet.”
“Mrs. Dunn!” Kate smiled encouragingly. “Your Billy is such a romantic. I know he brought you flowers every Sunday for months. Sometimes, couples get off to a rocky start, but I know a happy bride when I see one. You mustn’t be alarmed at every little marital quarrel.”
“Is it because your own mother is no more?” Mary grew pensive. “Sometimes, a girl needs her mother.”
I opened my mouth, but Olga said, “You look peaked, dear. You should be home getting settled, not flailing about in town.” She gave Eugenia a pointed look. “New brides have enough to manage and volunteer duties can wait.”
“That’s the ticket,” Kate said. “Life is fleeting. You have a husband who worships the ground you walk on and hopes of a dozen children. Do your duty like a good wife.”
Had I not been in such dire straits this morning, I would have been grateful for the permission. As it was, it added fuel to the fire burning in my heart.
“Ladies,” Eugenia finally said, “there is a dead woman in the basement morgue right now. She was a young woman who worked at Loveda’s ranch.”
The room grew still and, though voices passed by on the other side of the door, no one knocked.
“She’s more than that.” I swallowed, but my throat remained constricted. “She was my personal maid.”
Mary blinked and said, “Oh, dear.”
“You are looking for a new maid?” Olga did not understand.
“I fired her last week.” The room felt very close. “I found her in my bed.”
“Your bed?” Olga asked.
Mary’s eyes were full of pity. “And was your husband in the bed at the same time?”
Kate elbowed her. “Don’t be crass!”
“It’s an honest question,” Mary retorted.
“No. No, he was not, but that doesn’t mean…” I burst into tears.
Pandemonium ensued as the women tried to comfort me.
“Then you mustn’t jump to conclusions,” Kate said firmly. She handed me her handkerchief. “Hasn’t he been attentive to you?”
“No matter how dedicated they seem during courtship,” Mary said, “the facts remain that a man’s attentions wane almost immediately after matrimony.”
“Heavens, Mary,” Kate said, “the girl’s wedding dress is still at the tailors! Stop it!”
Mary bit her lip and let her gaze rest on the empty table.
“Conclusions or not,” Olga said, “most husbands lead separate lives from their women. My Ernst traveled weeks at a time on business, as I know yours does, Mrs. Moore.”
Kate sniffed. “William is faithful.”
“No one is implying otherwise,” Olga said firmly. “Mr. Dunn is a respectable member of the town, and we are discussing a maid.” She looked up at me. “Why was the woman in your bed? I would have dismissed her immediately myself.”
“She wouldn’t say.” Truth be told, I hadn’t asked. I’d screamed and pointed at the door and sent her flying from the room.
“And have you seen her since then?” Olga sailed a direct course.
“No.”
“And why is she dead now?”
“She didn’t say.” This from Eugenia. “Loveda found the maid—”
“Constanza,” I interrupted, wiping my eyes. “She has a name.”
Eugenia raised an eyebrow. “Constanza was discovered hung from an apple tree in their orchard this morning. Loveda came to me in a state, so I kept her here and sent for you.”
“Discovering a, a, suicide…” The word did not agree with Olga. “Is unpleasant, but you mustn’t let it upset you so.”
“I don’t know how we can help,” Kate said.
“I do.” Mary nodded. “The Jolly Girl Bachelors are meeting next Saturday. We’re to have a dance.”
“They won’t stay bachelors doing that,” Kate said.
“Not everyone wants to remain in the club for life,” Mary countered. “But those of us who do get to keep dancing. That’s the whole point.”
“Put your fears behind you, my dear,” Olga said. “You haven’t any reason to feel responsible for the maid’s death.”
“There’s something else,” Eugenia said. “I didn’t want to say anything until you were all here.”
I felt my knees go weak and held onto Olga’s chair back. What had she kept from me?
“The dead woman was with child. The coroner said so.”
As the entire point to having a lady’s maid was the maid being—well, a maiden—this was a blow.
Mary looked at the floor, and Kate put a hand over her mouth.
Olga grunted. “There you have it, then. The woman was holding a clandestine affair and hung herself once she could hide it no more. And using her mistress’s room is abominable behavior. It’s more than she deserves.”
“Poor wretch.” Eugenia gave Olga a gentle rebuke with the words. “None should despair and take life when forgiveness is possible.”
“Loveda.” Mary stepped forward to put a hand to my cheek and stop my vigorous denial. “I know you have doubts, but there’s nothing there. Why don’t you meet me tomorrow morning in the town square and we’ll chat it all over?”
Olga rose. “Good. I’m sure a decent night’s sleep and Mr. Dunn’s attention will restore all to harmony.”
Eugenia was already looking toward the door with impatience. Kate opened it.
Mary let them step away before leaning in and whispering, “You realize there’s nothing you can do about it, even if your worst doubts are true, right?”
I nodded, entirely mute.
“I have friends at the Hotel Sheldon,” Mary said. “I can make inquiries. If there’s anything we need to know about your darling Mr. Dunn, they’ll know. And then you can be at peace. Either way.”
“I need to know,” I said.
She nodded. “Yes. And then we’ll go for an ice cream. Ice cream makes everything better. Especially covered in chocolate.”
Ignoring the nervous niggle in my stomach, I let her lead me from the room.