The Light of Luna Park Read online

  The other teachers are rarely willing to share, so I jot a note on a sheet of paper and thrust it toward Judy. “Here. This tells her that it’s for a project Principal Gardner has asked us to complete for the new year.” I’m honest by nature, but these are special circumstances.

  Judy runs off, and I shoo the other kids into the classroom and then drag the boxes after them.

  I enlist their help laying the jackets in a patchwork quilt on the floor. I grin even through my fury. By the time Gardner sees these straitjackets again, they’ll be unusable.

  As the rain slows to a trickle, I survey the kids’ work. The canvases are streaked with red and yellow, green and blue, and mostly, where the colors have mixed, brown. They have tire tracks across them from Judy and Giovanna wheeling Carol and Robby across the canvas, and they’re fraying where James picked apart the edges. The metal buckles are cracked open from the weight of the wheelchairs, and I smile smugly. There’ll be no fastening the jackets now.

  Standing on the paint-splattered floor, my own clothing spotted with color, I am being cracked open, too. Half of me feels victorious, nearly giddy with joy as I look over the art my children have created.

  The other half of me wants to fall to the ground and bury myself under the jackets, because I know this has to be it.

  My kids will be better off with someone else. Someone trained for this. Someone level-headed and sensible.

  Someone other than me.

  I want more than anything to fight for these children, but I clearly don’t know how. Not when my attempt to help makes things worse, when in my rashness and my grief I try to force the principal to give the kids a basic level of supplies and instead get them sewn up in straitjackets like madmen.

  I close my eyes against the image. I’m sorry. But I give up.

  I take a deep breath. “I’m glad we had such a fun day,” I tell the kids, “because today was, sadly, my last day with you. After winter break, you are going to have a wonderful new teacher.” I force my voice to stay bright and cheery. “I know you’re going to love her!”

  I focus in on James’s quizzical expression and push away my tears.

  “I love you all”—I sign the basic phrase as I speak it—“and I will miss you so, so much.”

  Eleven pairs of eyes stare back in various stages of understanding. Mary Ellen is signing. Her wide, flat hands are clumsy, but her meaning is clear: “I love you.”

  * * *

  —

  Once I’ve given the children hugs that I hope will last us forever, I bang on Gardner’s office door and burst in without waiting for a response. Ignoring the receptionist, whose head is bowed as she hands the principal a file, I stand over them. “Straitjackets?” My voice is loud; it carries all the fury I’d pushed down for the sake of my students.

  “Oh, good.” Gardner waves the receptionist out and turns to me. “You’ve had a chance to look at the new supplies.”

  “New supplies?” I can barely control the pitch and volume of my voice. “New supplies?”

  “Now, Mrs. Wright. I know they might seem upsetting to you, but they’re highly recommended for children like yours. Rome State was kind enough to send us some extras at a discounted rate. They say several schools have found them particularly useful during class.”

  Rome State? The name is almost as jarring as the jackets themselves. Rome State is one of the institutions where my children could have ended up—might still end up. The place is rife with disease and abuse.

  “Rome State is anything but ‘kind,’ ” I say. “My kids will not be wearing those jackets.”

  “I assure you, Mrs. Wright. This is standard practice.”

  I hate the way his voice makes Jack’s and my last name sound dirty. “But—”

  “If you are unable to implement what is widely regarded as the best form of treatment for these children, Mrs. Wright, perhaps you are not fit for the job.”

  I have thick skin. I’ve gotten into more than my fair share of arguments over the years; I can take a raised voice or an insult. But the principal’s words strike home. Perhaps you are not fit for the job.

  The words hurt because I fear they are true. I try to help my kids, and I hurt them. I try to fight for them, and the world just fights back harder.

  “That’s exactly why I’m standing here in your office.” I channel my anger to keep from dissolving into tears. “Because, as I promised, I am quitting.”

  I spin on my heel and throw my last comment over my shoulder. “The straitjackets are in my classroom. Good luck getting your money back for them.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Althea Anderson, July 1926

  In the obstetrics supply room, I wrap a hot water bottle in cloth and nestle it against the infant’s skin. She blinks in response, and the sight of her wide eyes propels me surely as a shot. I grab a box I’d brought inside this morning, a lifetime ago, when it overflowed with pillowcases and sheets. It will have to do, though the baby takes up a mere fraction of the space. I create a nest of blankets around her, my hands shaking. Sweat soaks my nylon stockings until they are scratchy and irritating, and my pinched toes tingle in my standard-issue nursing shoes.

  Each breath this girl takes could be her last.

  Wincing, I roll the infant so that she resembles a Coney Island hot dog more than she does a Coney Island baby. Only when I make my excuses to the receptionist downstairs, body flushed full with lies, do I pull the cloth over the baby’s dumpling face. “I must go. Sick. I’m sorry.” I direct the message toward the receptionist, but my apology is for the infant. I’m sorry we must lie. And for Cybil: I’m sorry we didn’t.

  Plunging into the thick summer air with the baby, I flag a hansom cab and clamber up and inside. I sit stiff-backed and hold the baby close to my chest. Choking on the smell of the horse’s sweat, I dip my head and press my nose into the baby’s skin. It is clean, so clean. Unmarred by the heady scent of fear or bitter regret, free of perfume’s saccharine seduction or debauchery’s dirty detritus.

  My skin is anything but clean. I quiver with fear so intense it masquerades as love.

  I am kidnapping this girl.

  * * *

  —

  To Coney Island,” I cry, a protective arm draped around the place where the lid of the box bends open. “As fast as you can.”

  Though the Brooklyn Bridge is in sight of Bellevue, Coney Island is on the far side of Brooklyn. It may as well be California, Margaret and I swelter so long in the carriage. Transportation in the city is always a gamble. Today, we navigate an obstacle course of stubborn horses, smoky exhaust, and oblivious throngs of people. Traffic stops completely a block from Surf Avenue, and I stuff a wad of bills up through the trapdoor in the carriage. “Thank you,” I cry as I leap from the carriage, “thank you!”

  Margaret and I are off before the driver responds. My fingers twitch around the edges of the box, but I am too afraid to pull it open to check whether the girl is still breathing. I keep my eyes trained ahead as I push through throngs of people. Laughing and shouting, they are blissfully unaware that a life within their midst hangs in the balance.

  And then we are there, the white stone entryway magnificent in scope: luna park: the heart of coney island. Absurdly, as if taking again my anatomy exam, I murmur “heart” aloud and clutch at the organ in my own chest. Surely my nerves and mad dash through the city set it to racing, but I cannot feel its beat. The arrhythmic cacophony of the crowd mutes its pulse, and I pray this too is the reason I can no longer sense Margaret’s tiny heart beating or hear the strangled choke of her gasps. Please, God, let that be the only reason.

  My nurse’s uniform propels me to the front of the line, and I press a dime into the ticketer’s meaty hand. “Welcome”—he brandishes my ticket before me—“to the heart of Coney Island!” Patient listening is part of my job, but I don’t stay to hear what else
this man is trained to say. I grab the ticket and run.

  The Coney Island article, which I’ve memorized like a rosary in my guilt over Cybil, reports that the exhibit sits along the throbbing midway of the fair. But throbbing is the wrong word to describe this main thoroughfare. It can claim no semblance of pattern or regularity. Lights dance between every tower and roof and wall, and electricity zings through the air as if the park believes itself immune to fire. The current carries with it the sharp scent of salt—from where? The sea, the sweat that coats the bodies pressed around me, the pretzels and popcorn sold at every corner? I cannot concentrate long enough to tell. Children shriek as they fly by on a coaster of shivering planks. A woman wearing naught but a feathery fan appears briefly at a doorway and then disappears again, a flood of men in pursuit. A man so short his head would just hit the place where my corselet laces in the back pushes his way through the crowd amid points and cries of horrified joy.

  I pull the box with the baby closer to me. I hope she can breathe in this packed, airless crowd. I myself am struggling to as I’m swept along with the crush of bodies.

  I must hurry. But where is the Toboggan, the landmark referenced in the article? My breath clogs my throat like smoke; fear and the crowd’s sticky heat have paralyzed me. A better question: what is the Toboggan? It cannot be a sled, not in this suffocating summer. I scan the crowd. And, oh, there it is—the very roller coaster that so startled me moments before. A sign proclaims it the “world-class Toboggan”—a claim I highly doubt. I half expect the wheeled carts full of children to fly off.

  Still, I fight my way toward it, working my body into strange contortions to hold Margaret in her box above the fray.

  “Live babies!” I make out the barker’s call as we approach. “All the world loves a baby!” It doesn’t seem right, expecting a man on stilts to promise a miracle when a doctor cannot. But this is the place. Blinking lights advertise Couney’s famous incubators and their equally famous babies: live, ten cents a viewing.

  Two minutes ago, I feared being lost in the crowd; now, I prickle as if I am a spectacle for its enjoyment. I fight the urge to wipe the sweat winding its slow, meandering way between my breasts. Wearing a corselet for a twelve-hour shift is bad enough; now, in the heat and the crowd, I can hardly breathe. The lace cuffs of my knickers rub and itch, and I must use all my self-control not to hike up my skirt and scratch.

  “You’ll be okay, Margaret.” I whisper the comfort to a girl who may not be breathing. A girl who, even if she is, can surely not hear me above the crowd’s uneven roar. “We’re here.”

  Adopting the brisk, competent walk I have perfected at the hospital, I approach the barker. “Is the doctor in?”

  The man grins jovially down at me, his sweaty face an ice cream melting in the sun. “All day, every day! Just one shiny dime and you can see his babies!”

  I shake my head. “I have a baby,” I call up to the man. “One for him to take, that is.”

  The man’s exuberance fizzles into uncertainty, and his face loses its grotesque proportions. “I suppose you’d best go on in, then . . . or perhaps you ought to pay regardless . . .” He trails off, and I miss his final decision as I skirt behind him through the door of the exhibit.

  “Oh.” The word slips involuntarily from my lips. The contrast between the chaotic midway and the still, silent hospital is jarring. And indeed it is a hospital, regardless of its billing. Nurses bustle about clasping spoons and thermometers; babies rest in windowed boxes like tiny eggs in refrigerators.

  “I have a baby.” My voice is loud in the silence, and I bring a hand to my throat in shame.

  A nurse appears immediately at my side, pulling Margaret from the box and checking her pulse. My toes curl in my shoes as I wait for the verdict. I have seen death, yes, but I have never witnessed the death of someone with whom I have gone on a journey such as this. Nor the death of one for whom I may have sacrificed my job. Please, God, no.

  It is with relief that my toes unclench when the nurse turns her steady eyes up to me. “We may save her yet.”

  I breathe—slow in, slow out—to calm myself as the nurse carefully swaddles and feeds the infant. Her administration of the milk and brandy awes me; she tips one drop at a time into the baby’s nostril with a spoon folded at the end like a serviette. I avert my eyes from the spoon when I note that its bowl is the same size as Margaret’s whole forehead. Oblivious to my discomfort, the nurse tilts the milk down Margaret’s nose. I wait for a choke, a splutter, but it goes down smoothly. Once Margaret is fed, the nurse assigns the girl her own incubator: a metal box on stilts like the barker’s outside. Aside from the glass-paneled double doors that swing open as if to a mansion, the incubator resembles a modern icebox. Odd that a baby rests inside.

  Now that I am less frantic, I have time to really look about the place. Incubators identical to Margaret’s line the walls of the room. A wide, glistening pane of glass separates this area’s calm from a second room—one in which I imagine the fluttering quiet of this space transforms into something livelier. There, babies lie in bassinets and clutched to the chests of wet nurses. That second room is a nursery more than it is a hospital, and I step closer. The babies in that parallel universe are small, certainly. Smaller than some newborns I’ve seen. But they are a world away from the ones in here, who appear doll-like in their size and glassy sheen. If this man can turn Margaret into one of those children—smiling, laughing, crying, and fully alive—the rest of it is immaterial. It does not matter, the backdrop of clowns and dancers like ushers into hell. It does not matter that a man on stilts serves as receptionist or that a doctor makes himself rich with the clamor of his audience.

  Once Margaret has been settled in her fleece blanket, oxygen tubes adjusted, the doctor himself emerges. “Dr. Couney.” He shakes my hand with a smile, his grip inviting. The man is not what I expected him to be. He is understated, if ebullient, and there is nothing flashy in his appearance. “You’ve met Nurse Louise Recht.” He gestures to the stocky, competent nurse attending to Margaret, and I nod.

  “You are lucky”—he raises his eyebrows—“that we had an incubator open for the little one.”

  “I am lucky”—I shake my head with wonderment—“that we even made it here. Thank you. For all of this.”

  He bows his head. “The babies deserve a chance.”

  It is such a simple statement, but tears well in my eyes. Many doctors do not believe in such a chance. Too many doubt that weaklings with such little hope deserve the resources it takes to give them a try. Still others are convinced that they should not live even if they can, that they will do naught but generate a line of their own weak, inferior babies. Coney Island itself serves as the backdrop for fitter family competitions; ironic that no Luna Park incubator baby’s family could ever win one. Especially as Couney allows infants of any color into his ward, and certainly no immigrant or Black family would be deemed the American ideal.

  I shake my head at the injustice of it all. I’ve helped to deliver babies of all colors and creeds at Bellevue—one of the only hospitals in the city that allow such. Each little infant’s eyes tell the same story: that of humanity and love.

  I thank the doctor a final time as he turns to leave. Looking at the girl again and searching for color in her sunken cheeks, I nearly miss the doctor’s final words.

  “Nurse Anderson,” the doctor calls to me across the room. “She is going to live.”

  * * *

  —

  The efficient Coney Island nurses take care of everything, making it far too easy to get away with my deception. Hospitals barely keep track of babies—I read a story recently about one that accidentally sent two unrelated babies home with each other’s mothers—and the incubator ward is no different. The information they record is medical, not personal: weight, length, months to term. All I need to give as proof of identity is the girl’s name: Margaret Perk
ins. I write down her parents’ names, Michael and Hattie, but put down my own address at the Nurses’ Residence in the field that asks for theirs. Michael and Hattie can’t know about Margaret until I’m sure she’ll survive.

  My legs shudder as I write my address. I cannot tell if they are quaking in relief that I’ve not been questioned, or in fear as the reality of my actions becomes clear.

  Maye Couney, head nurse and wife of the doctor himself, chats companionably as she takes down the information. “It always surprises me how many parents don’t bring the babies themselves,” she muses. I search desperately for a plausible explanation, but Maye provides me one. “Suppose it’s out of sight, out of mind. They can pretend their little one is tucked away in a hospital room rather than the circus.”

  I smile weakly. “Surely, they could never call this place the circus once they’ve come by.”

  Maye shrugs her slight shoulders. “Some of them never do. They live too far away or are too ill after the birth. Others”—she smiles—“come daily. Visit their babies, nourish them with their own milk.”

  A spasm of guilt hits me. Margaret’s mother is one of those who will never come.

  But no. I have nothing to apologize for. I have saved the baby’s life.

  Only—what will I tell the parents?

  * * *

  —

  She passed.” I dip my head as I return to the Perkinses’ curtained bedside that evening.

  Hattie crosses herself, and Michael stumbles back. I suppose condemning your daughter to death does not prepare you for the reality of it. But my pity is reserved for the woman, suffering as I have for an inability to speak up.

  I slide forward with the wastebasket as Hattie retches. Little comes up; she has not eaten since her contractions began. But still her husband steps away as if she has coughed up blood. I keep from shooting him the look of disgust he deserves. His daughter has died, and all that matters to him is avoiding the splatter of vomit on his sewn leather shoes?