her father had been offering more than just sympathy to the female residents of the Hillside Home and his enemies exposed him as soon as they’d gotten wind of the scandal. The D&H directors dismissed Ivor from the railroad, and investors pulled their money from his interests, bankrupting the family in a matter of months. By the spring of ’89, her father had hanged himself from a rafter in the attic. Unable to cope with the loss of her husband and her sudden poverty, Bronwyn had a nervous breakdown herself and became an involuntary occupant of Hillside. Hattie and her sisters were sent to the Home for the Friendless. There, they could expect to spend their days with other abandoned and orphaned children until they reached adulthood. The baby had been given to the Athertons, a childless couple in the Green Ridge section of town. From what Hattie would learn long after, the woman was barren, and they welcomed Ivor as their own, changing his name to Peter, like his adoptive father. A few years later, after the death of her husband in a mine explosion, Mrs. Atherton and the baby moved to Baltimore to live with her sister. Neighbors lost track of them after that.
The Home for the Friendless, a monolith of stone walls and turrets, stood on the hill near Jefferson Avenue like a guard dog poised to strike. Mothers and fathers pointed the structure out to ill-behaved children as a warning. If you don’t straighten up, it’ll be the Home for you.
Those inside the walls knew differently. The place was better than some and no worse than others. “At least they feed you here,” one girl said to Hattie at breakfast. “And not a one of them will take a switch to you.” And it was true. The women who ran the institution offered serviceable beds, three meals a day, schooling, music lessons, and religious instruction. Yet it was not their own, and Hattie vowed to one day earn enough money to make a home for her sisters and mother.
Four years later, on her seventeenth birthday, Hattie found employment as a maid with the Watres family. She received room and board, and a small salary. By year’s end, with the money she’d saved, she secured three rooms over the bakery on West Market Street. Though it lacked the decorative moldings and vaulted ceilings of her youth, the place was very much a home.
First, she assumed custody of her sisters. Brother Kinter from the Providence Christian Church vouched for Hattie’s character, and the women in charge gladly handed Lizzie and Gracie over to make room for other unfortunates. Next, she took her mother out of the Hillside Home, initially on short visits, then overnight on weekends, and finally to stay for good. That first year as sole provider proved difficult. If it weren’t for the generosity of church members, particularly Michael Goodfellow, owner of a local boarding house, she knew they would not have survived. As it was, they lost Lizzie to influenza the following winter, a blow from which Hattie never truly recovered.
That spring when Michael proposed, he offered to give Hattie the world if she’d only marry him. As it turned out, she didn’t need the world, just a room for her mother and sister to share. Her mother Bronwyn could often be heard saying, “This is no place for a lady,” when she sat out on the boarding house’s modest front porch; but in spite of her insults, Michael always treated his mother-in-law with kindness and seemed overwrought when she succumbed to consumption that same year.
Now that was a man, Hattie thought. Unlike Owen, Michael stayed put until ’98, when the good Lord carried him home. Diphtheria, God rest his soul.
* * *
Hattie glanced across the porch at her sister, wondering how best to handle Owen’s absence. Her heart told her to move Grace and Violet into the boarding house right away so she could take care of them. It would certainly make her feel better to have them close by. But was that what was best for Grace? She was a woman, not a child, with a family of her own. And what about Owen? If he was ever going to find his way back home, Grace had to be there.
“I’ll have to sell the piano,” Grace finally said as she stood and wandered to the edge of the porch.
Hattie stiffened in her rocker. “Why on earth would you do something like that?”
When Owen had left her boarding house to marry, he and his friend Graham had carried the red-lacquered Tom Thumb piano ten blocks uphill to the new home. Though a third smaller than most uprights, and in spite of its wheels and handles, the instrument proved to be about as difficult to move as a mule in a coal mine. Owen had never told how he’d acquired the piano—Hattie’s best guess, a winning hand of cards; Grace thought barter a more likely explanation—which he presented to his wife as a wedding present.
“It’s what I can spare for now,” Grace explained, “and it’ll keep a roof over our heads for another few months.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” Hattie said, a little louder than she intended. “As much as I hate to take up for Owen right now, you and I both know that if he has breath in his body, he’ll provide for you and Violet.”
“And we both know what drink does to a man.” Grace took off her shawl and handed it to her sister. “I have my family to consider.”
“You can come here,” Hattie offered. “There’s plenty of room, and I’d like the company.”
“Company is the last thing you need. And besides, I don’t want to leave my home.” Grace paused for a moment and blinked back tears. “How will she know where to find me?”
“She’ll come with you, naturally.”
“Daisy . . . I mean Daisy.”
My sister’s worse off than I realized, Hattie thought, as she decided to take matters into her own hands.
CHAPTER SIX
THE NEXT DAY, Owen waited outside the colliery for Graham’s twelve-year-old son Tommy to finish with the mules. Four years had passed since Tommy had started in the mine, and in that time, he had moved up from breaker boy, where he sorted coal from slate bare-handed, to mule boy, where he worked the animals and took care of them in their underground stable. Owen paced in front of the mine’s entrance. He knew Tommy would be out soon, and there was an errand he wanted him to run.
Owen had just opened his growler, ready to take a swig of beer, when Hattie turned the corner and marched toward him. He dropped his head in shame.
“She intends to sell the piano.” Hattie didn’t see the need for a proper hello.
“Why on God’s earth would she do a thing like that?” Owen asked, still looking down.
“For the money, what else? I hear it’s two rents you’re paying now.”
“And what kind of man would I be if I didn’t do for my wife and daughter?”
“The kind of man who leaves his family at the first sign of trouble.” She nodded toward his hand. “The kind who carries a pint for his dinner.”
Tommy Davies walked up at that moment and tipped his cap, “Ma’am.” He turned toward Owen and asked, “What is it you need, sir?”
“Go straight home, and see that Grace gets this.” Owen handed the boy what little was left of his pay after he’d taken care of the rents and the tab at the company store.
“Yes sir.” Tommy nodded and hurried away.
“Be sure to tell her,” Owen yelled after him, “she’ll not have to sell the piano.”
Tommy
