When I arrived home from seeing Reverend Sam, I found the mail scattered on the floor beneath the slot in the front door. In the scattering of envelopes, I spotted the one I’d been waiting for: a response from the North Carolina State Board of Nurse Examiners. I tore it open and grinned to myself. Your application to sit for the North Carolina state board examination for graduate nurses has been accepted. The letter suggested some hotels near the exam site for the three days in March when I would need to be in Winston-Salem, and my heart began to skitter with excitement. I’d be five months along by then. Would it be all right for me to take a train at five months? I thought so. I knew my pregnancy wouldn’t be the biggest obstacle to my taking the exam, but I was going to take that exam, by hook or crook.
That evening, Ruth, Lucy, and I sat at the dining room table to decorate the shoebox-sized boxes Henry had brought us from the factory. He’d also brought a much larger box, this one sealed and seemingly heavy, which he’d carried upstairs to Lucy’s room.
“Just some things for Lucy,” he’d said when I expressed curiosity about the box, and Lucy had given me a look that told me whatever was inside it was none of my business.
The next hour or so had to be the most congenial I’d spent with my new in-laws since my arrival and I wondered how much of it was due to the sense of calm I’d carried with me since seeing Reverend Sam that afternoon, as well as my happiness over the upcoming nursing exam. Ruth, Lucy, and I complimented one another’s designs as we glued the lace and beads to the cardboard boxes and we chatted endlessly about what we’d cook to put inside.
“We should all make fried chicken,” Ruth suggested, “and deviled eggs. That would make it easy on us rather than coming up with three different dishes.”
“Everyone’s going to be making fried chicken, Mama,” Lucy complained. “I’m terrible at it, anyway. I think we should each do our own individual specialty.” She patted a ribbon into place on the lid of her box. “I can make meat loaf, though I guess I’d have to really stretch the meat because of rationing. And I can make my famous red velvet cake for dessert.”
“Well, darling daughter,” Ruth said, “where will you find the sugar and food coloring for your famous red velvet cake?”
Lucy shook her head in annoyance. “Rationing gets in the way of everything!” she said.
My specialty had always been chicken parmesan, but I thought I’d best stay away from Italian food for this event … and every other event as well. “I can make stuffed ham,” I said. I knew we could get a ham from one of the local farmers.
“Stuffed ham?” Lucy scoffed. “How on earth do you stuff a ham?”
“Everyone in Baltimore makes stuffed ham,” I said. “They don’t make it here?”
“Never heard of such a thing.” Ruth cut a length of lace to fit the sides of her box. “How is it done?”
“Well,” I said mysteriously, “first I need an old pillowcase. Do we have one?”
They laughed. “You’re pulling our legs,” Lucy said.
“Not at all. You cut the bone from a ham and make deep slits through the meat, then stuff the slits with greens and tie the whole thing up tight in a pillowcase. You boil it for about half an hour in water that’s been seasoned with loads of spices, and then chill it. It has to be served cold or it won’t look pretty.”
“All the food has to be cold,” Lucy said. “Or it will be anyway, by the time the bidding is over on the boxes.”
“When you cut the slices, each one has streaks of stuffing in it,” I added.
“Oh, that must be delicious,” Ruth said when I’d finished reciting the recipe. She actually sounded sincere, but I was beginning to learn that Ruth could sound like she adored you at the same time she was slipping a knife between your ribs. “And yes, certainly we can find you an old pillowcase or perhaps a sheet you can cut up. That should do the job.”
We worked for a few minutes in silence, until Ruth said, out of the blue, “So, tell me, Tess, dear”—her fingers sifted through the small pile of beads on the table in front of her—“exactly how far along are you?”
My hands froze on my box. I was taken aback, though I probably shouldn’t have been. I wasn’t wearing my girdle this evening. I’d taken it off when I got home from Reverend Sam’s and I simply couldn’t bear to put it on again before coming downstairs. I knew I was showing without it. I didn’t think it was noticeable unless someone was truly examining my figure, but I guessed Ruth was doing exactly that. She knew I hadn’t gotten pregnant on our wedding night. I’d told Reverend Sam about the baby, of course, but here in Ruth Kraft’s kitchen, saying out loud that I was four months pregnant seemed so … obscene, somehow. I stared down at my fingers, white and stiff against the blue ribbons and lace on the box. The silence in the room felt electric and I had to break it.
“Four months,” I admitted. “I’m due in late July.”
“Well,” she said, avoiding my eyes as steadfastly as I was avoiding hers, “I suppose we’ll have to do some creative fudging when the baby’s born then. We’ll say it came quite early. And we’ll keep visitors at bay for a while. We don’t want anyone to think the worst, do we?”
“People aren’t idiots, Mother,” Lucy said.
“Well, Lucille,” Ruth said to her daughter, “let’s not help them jump to the wrong conclusion, all right?”
“They already know. Everyone’s talking about it.”
“And who is everyone?” Ruth’s voice was tight.
“Violet and her friends, to begin with.”
“Well, yes. But who can blame her? She adores him.”
I bristled as they talked about me as if I weren’t there.
“Oh,” Ruth said suddenly. “Late July? I just realized you and Henry may be in the new house by then.” She furrowed her brow. “I’ll come over in the beginning to turn any visitors away,” she said, “and we’ll have to instruct the nanny to do the same. I’ll begin asking around for nanny referrals. You don’t want to wait too long to pin someone down.”
“I’d really rather not have a nanny,” I said. I couldn’t wait to take care of my own child. I wanted so badly to hold my baby in my arms.
“You’ll feel differently once that baby is actually here,” Ruth said. She tipped her head to the side in an attempt to look at my stomach, hidden behind the table. “We need to find some clothing that masks … you know. Your condition,” she said. “I’ll get one of those Lane Bryant catalogs for you to shop from. And it’s time we set up an appointment for you with Dr. Poole.”
“An obstetrician?” I asked.
“He’s our longtime family doctor and he delivers the babies of everyone in Hickory,” she said. “All the white babies, anyway. And he knows when to keep his lips sealed. As soon as you start to show a bit more,” she added, “you mustn’t leave the house.”
I didn’t respond. I knew women of Ruth’s generation hid themselves away during their pregnancy, but this was 1944 and I hoped to have at least another couple of months of freedom. The thought of being trapped in this house was overwhelming. Plus, I wanted to be able to visit Reverend Sam whenever I chose.
“Maybe church this Sunday should be your last outing,” Ruth said.
That would be one bonus of not leaving the house, I thought. The fewer church services I needed to attend, the better. “Maybe,” I said, hoping that answer would be enough to satisfy her for now.
We fell quiet again, and I wondered if all three of us were thinking about how we would get through the next few months. I wished it was already July. I wanted to meet this little person nestled inside me. The one person in Hickory I knew I would love. The one person in Hickory who was going to love me back.
* * *
In bed that night, I asked Henry if we could plant a tree for my mother at our new house. At first he laughed. “There are more than forty trees on that land already,” he said.
“This one would be special,” I said. “It would have meaning for me.”
He looked at me across the empty space between our beds then, the humor leaving his face. “Sure, Tess,” he said. “You can do whatever you want with the house and the land. It will be yours. All right?”
I thanked him, thinking as I always did how many girls would love that invitation. If only a big house and beautiful land was what I wanted.