holds, we’ll continue to lend our financial support.”
“That’s comforting,” Mother Mary Joseph said.
“Enough of the doom and gloom. Have you had a chance to try the new machine?” Jack asked, referring to the incubator he and Mamie had donated a month earlier. “My friend Couney swears by them.” Dr. Martin A. Couney, the world’s foremost expert on incubators, had delivered the machine in person. “He traveled all over the country setting up what he called incubator hospitals. State fairs, Coney Island, you name it.”
“We haven’t had to yet,” the Reverend Mother said.
“That’s too bad,” Jack replied, then corrected himself: “It’s good you haven’t needed it. I’m just anxious to see how it works.” He stopped tipping the chair and walked over to the doorway. “I have to wonder if a machine like that would have made any difference when our Nellie was born. Guess we’ll never know,” he murmured.
Mother Mary Joseph stood up, signaling an end to the formal portion of the meeting. “How is Mamie?” she asked.
“About the same.”
“She’s in our prayers,” Thelma offered, collecting her newspaper and adjusting her hat.
Jack nodded his thanks. “Yes, indeed,” he said. Still not finished with the topic of the incubator, he added, “Couney says you’re lucky to have such a modern piece of equipment in your hospital.”
“We’re very blessed,” Mother Mary Joseph said, keeping whatever reservations she still harbored on the matter to herself.
Reasons Why a Misstep in a Girl
Has More Serious Consequences
than a Misstep in a Boy
If a girl makes a misstep . . . she has for the rest of her life a Damocles’s sword hanging over her head, and she is in constant terror lest her sin be found out . . . even if the girl escaped pregnancy, the mere finding out that she had an illicit experience deprives her of social standing, or makes her a social outcast and entirely destroys or greatly minimizes her chances of ever marrying and establishing a home of her own. She must remain a lonely wanderer to the end of her days.
—Woman: Her Sex and Love Life,
William J. Robinson, MD, 1929
Caught on the horns of a dilemma. That’s how Myrtle Evans put it after Evan told her about that perfumed letter from Violet to Stanley. If it were our daughter, we’d want to know, but Grace is another story. The most innocent remark can set her off. Only last month, she huffed out of church after someone suggested Grace might want to keep a closer eye on Lily. Such a pretty girl. Beauty like that can lead to trouble. Better sure than sorry.
In the end, Myrtle decided she was obliged to tell Grace, but not until after March 1. No sense ruining St. David’s Day for her and Owen. This year’s banquet is being held at the new Masonic Temple on North Washington Avenue. What a thrill. We’re eager to see if it’s as magnificent inside as out. A real jewel in Scranton’s crown, designed by a fellow named Raymond Hood, according to the paper. It promises to be a wonderful time, though we could do without the dancing later in the evening. That sort of cavorting might seem innocent to some, but as the saying goes, A great sin can enter through a small door.
Or a perfumed letter. That’s why Grace needs to put a stop to Violet’s antics before she gets carried away and disgraces the whole family by marrying a Catholic. And a communist, if Evan has his story straight.
We can’t imagine a worse fate for one of our own, and goodness knows we’ve tried.
Chapter six
ONE WEEK AFTER ARRIVING at the Good Shepherd Infant Asylum, Lily felt her baby kick for the first time. It was Saturday, the first of March, the morning of her sixteenth birthday. Although it was too dark to see, Lily knew all of the girls would still be asleep at that hour. Even the most troubled ones succumbed to exhaustion by early dawn. The baby kicked again, and Lily couldn’t decide how to feel about this startling sensation. Until that moment, she’d managed to convince herself that everyone around her must be mistaken. Perhaps her recently blossomed belly would turn out to be too much fried chicken and applesauce cake like Alice Harris next door, or better yet, stomach cancer like Mrs. Manley down the street. Lily often imagined herself lying on her deathbed with an inoperable tumor while her mother and sister begged for forgiveness. She’d absolve them with her dying breath, and they’d collapse in tears over her cold body.
But now, as the baby kicked, Lily could no longer deny its existence. She had a life growing inside her. And all because she wanted to prove to George Sherman that she was no longer a child.
* * *
George Sherman Jr., the most handsome fellow in Scranton, lived in a sprawling house in the neighborhood of Green Ridge, where the moneyed people laid their heads at night. His father, George Sr., owned several company houses and the Sherman Colliery, an anthracite mine a few streets over in the Providence section of Scranton. It had some of the richest veins of coal in Pennsylvania. Even with the recent decrease in demand, Sherman’s mine continued to operate at full capacity. Almost everyone in Providence had family at the Sherman, including Lily. Her father worked there as a miner and had for the better part of thirty years, and even though the family struggled to survive on such low wages, they were still better off than so many others who’d lost their livelihoods outright in the months after the stock market crashed.
George Jr., who attended the Providence Christian Church with his parents and siblings, never took particular notice of Lily until Easter of ’29. Prior to that day, if he paid her any mind at all, it was due to her incessant fidgeting in the pew ahead of him. George had four years on Lily, and by that fateful Easter Sunday, almost a full year of college behind him. Later that summer, while trying to steal a kiss, he would tell her that on Easter Sunday, when the entire congregation stood for the invocation, she turned to borrow a hymnal, and he saw her as if for the first time. She’d suddenly transformed into a woman, with ringlets of thick dark hair, lovely curves, and those sapphire eyes.
When George showed up a few days later at the Morgan house on Spring Street, Lily had to pull her mother’s hand off the curtains. “You’re embarrassing me.”
“He has his own automobile.” Her mother stayed planted at the window.
“No daughter of mine is going out in a car with a boy.” A fit of coughing rolled through Owen with the intensity of a freight train. “I don’t care what his last name is.” To catch his breath, he leaned against the Tom Thumb piano in the front parlor—the only parlor in their four-room company house.
“Making him pay for the sins of his father, is that it?” Her mother crossed the room and dragged the piano stool out.
“The man may own my house,” Owen said, dropping onto the seat, “but he doesn’t own me.”
Lily looked pleadingly at her parents as George walked up the front steps.
Her father pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his mouth. “Let the boy in,” he said with a wave of the blood-speckled hanky.
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