Granny D’s American Century

8 | The Bohemians

The Bohemians Aweek later I received a letter from my sister Sybil. She told me what she could not have said on the party-line telephone, that Lulu had come to out-of-the-way Laconia to abort a pregnancy. The letter shook in my hand. I did not keep the letter over the years, as it was so shameful, but here it is as I remember it, and I would wager it is not ten words off. I read it a hundred times, after all, even as I walked down the sidewalk so intent with it and angry that I did not even look up to scowl at the whistlers in the soup lines: I caught her taking some terrible poisons and she confessed everything to me. A busboy at the restaurant, it seems, got her in the family way. Mother found out and is furious. I told Mother that nobody is perfect, and we owed the girl a Christian bed until she was well enough to travel. Mother has agreed to this, but through her teeth, I’ll say! What’s worse, and Mother does not know this, but Lulu confessed that she blamed her pregnancy on some nice boy at Harvard—his name is Danny—and she got some money from his father! Isn’t that awful? Someone should tell him. Do you know him? Anyway, she is good practice for me, so I will do my best. Lulu was not in class for a full week, but I knew from other girls at Franklin Square House that she was back in Boston. I finally overcame my anger and knocked on her door. Lulu had indeed taken care of her situation. She confessed the entire thing. At a soda fountain, on the night after she had told me she was having a nervous breakdown, Danny’s father, a seething, stone-quiet man wearing a Jewish yarmulke, had personally delivered the money to her so she would please disappear . By her private treachery, she had made his family her scapegoat. Civilizations and empires enlarge what we do personally. There was a horror of scapegoating yet to come in these awful times. 8 62 granny d’s american century Regarding her method of taking care of things: In those days, there were often newspaper and magazine advertisements, usually small ads in the back, promoting various female tonics to “restore” health that “should not be taken when pregnant,” or, the ad warned, spontaneous abortion would result. This, of course, was the whole point of those “remedies.” Whether or not they worked was another matter—no buyer could complain without exposing her true intent. Other methods were also common, including flushing with high-pressure water and, of course, the use of instruments. About one in four pregnancies in the 1920s resulted in abortion. About one in six abortions resulted in death: the same odds as Russian roulette with a six-shooter. I don’t know what Lulu did, but she did it in my home in Laconia, with my nurse sister in the next room, and she had done this thing with a damnable lie to a nice fellow and his family. She looked awful. She had just been visited by a doctor who gave her some sulfa drug and told her she would be all right. There were no such things as antibiotics yet, so it was always the flip of a coin whether you would overcome an infection or it would overcome you. I so deeply regretted having sent her to my wonderful home and my brilliant, warmly caring nurse sister, Sybil. Father had even met Lulu at the train. In thinking back, I realized that Lulu had led me to suggest the whole thing. I thought it was my idea that she should go to Laconia, but she had manipulated the conversation with little hints. Mother was terribly mad at me for having such friends, and it would cause her to reject me later when I most needed her. Mostly I was mad at myself. I wanted to get out of Franklin Square House and far from Lulu. I told her, by the way, that if she did not tell Danny the truth, I would. She agreed, and I knew later that she did. • • • It has often been the case in my life that when I was intent on doing the right thing, a door opened. I was working my costume job at Emerson when Clara Wagner came...