A Pledge of Silence (3 page)

“At least I’ll be getting out of this town,” she said.

“Nursing’s not so bad.”

“No, I guess not. I’ve been patching up sick farm animals most of my life. Can it be so different?”

“Geez, I hope so. I’ve seen your work.”

Balling up the lipstick-stained napkin, she threw it at him. “Don’t show up on my doorstep in need of stitching up then, fella.” A prickle started in the back of her neck and shivered down her spine. Suddenly cold and uneasy, she folded her arms over her chest.

“Look, Margie. You’ll love it in Ann Arbor. Think big university, think football games, think about all those beer parties.”

“Yeah.” She slumped back, still wondering about the shiver. “Think living in a women’s dorm, think starched white uniforms, think clunky black shoes.”

“You’ll be cute in your white uniform.”

“I’ll itch underneath all that starch.”

He glanced at the clock on the diner wall. “It’s almost 11. Your dad’s watching the time.”

“This year Daddy, next year some old biddy of a dorm mother. You guys have an easier time of it. Sometimes, I wish I’d been born male.”

“Love you any way you come, baby, with or without a dick.”

Margie gasped, though not altogether surprised. People at nearby tables whipped their heads around. A bull of a man stood and stepped toward them, his hands clenched into fists and his face skewed into an angry scowl.

Abe threw money onto the table and grabbed Margie’s hand. They skittered around tables and chairs to escape the diner’s irate patrons. Jumping into the safety of the car and locking the doors, they guffawed at their boldness and careened onto the open road.

Chapter 3

Ann Arbor, Michigan, September 1936 – May 1939

Conflicting emotions surged through Margie all summer, making her alternately keyed-up and weepy. She sassed her mother, acted sullen with her dad, and found Frank’s antics intolerable.

“Marry me, Margie.,” Abe pleaded. “I love you. I’ll get a job. We can get by.” She agreed. They could get by. But here she was, at her dad’s insistence, standing in the parking lot of Grand Arbor Hospital School of Nursing saying goodbye. She leaned against Abe, not wanting him to leave.

“Be good,” Mama said with a teary smile.

“You got enough pocket money?” her father asked.

She nodded, tears clouding her vision.

Frank looked as if he might cry too. “Heard this one Margie? Nurse, nurse, I feel like a vampire. Necks please.” He grinned. “Get it? Necks please?”

Marge grinned and slapped at the fedora he had taken to wearing. He had been telling nurse jokes all summer long and didn’t ever seem to run out.

“Did you hear this one? Nurse, nurse—”

“That’s enough, Frank,” Dad said. “Get in the car.”

Margie thought herself prepared for this parting, but she had misjudged how hard it would be. She blew kisses until the car and Abe’s waves disappeared around the corner. Her tears turned to sobs. Looking for a place to be alone, she walked to a nearby park, where a young woman pushed a child on a swing.

“Higher, Mommy, higher,” he shouted.

Sitting on the merry-go-round, she struggled to compose herself while surveying her new surroundings. The ten-story hospital took up most of a city block on the northern edge of the University of Michigan campus. Behind her loomed the school of nursing and residence hall, twin boxlike, dark brick buildings with narrow windows. Everything looked foreign and unfriendly. Her tears continued to flow.

The little boy left the swing and ran to her. He had a smudge of dirt on his cheek and a scratch on his chin. He said, “You got a boo-boo?”

Margie sniffed. “No. No boo-boo.”

“Then why you crying?”

“I’m not going to anymore.” She dried her tears on her sleeve. “You like to swing?”

“Yes!” the child shouted. “Watch me, I can zoom.” He ran in a circle, flapping his arms.

She took a drink from a fountain and splashed cold water on her face to wash off the salty tears. Waving goodbye to the engaging tyke, she walked back to the dorm, passing Miss Anita, the clerk in the lobby. Margie’s room was up two flights and left down the hall.

Through the slightly open door, she heard music and laughter. Through the crack, she saw a man and a woman dancing cheek-to-cheek, their bodies pressed together, his hand low on her back. Margie said, “Knock, knock,” and stepped inside.

The woman turned, revealing a flawless complexion and cornflower blue eyes. Dark red nail polish matched what was left of her lipstick. She smiled, smoothed her blond hair, and held out her hand. “Hello, I’m Evelyn Ross. This here’s Garth.”

Margie shook Evelyn’s outstretched hand and mumbled her name, but couldn’t take her eyes off the man. He was old. His face was a roadmap of wrinkles, his hair gray-flecked, and his teeth yellowed from cigarettes.

Evelyn wiped a smear of lipstick off her friend’s craggy face and poked him in the chest with a manicured fingernail. “If you’re playing poker tonight, you better scram. Thanks for the lift. Tell my little brother he’s a marked man.”

“I wouldn’t want to walk in little brother’s shoes,” Garth chuckled.

Evelyn glanced at Margie, explaining, “My brother promised to drive me here today, but he stood me up.” She turned the radio down. Rummaging in her purse, she took out a mother-of-pearl lighter and a pack of cigarettes. She offered one to Margie.

She had never been offered a cigarette before. Smoking was sinful according to her minister back home. He preached about the evils of cigarettes and alcohol, steps down the slippery slope. “Uh, no thanks.”

Evelyn addressed Garth, “Want me to walk you out?”

“I can find my way down the stairs.”

She said, “Well, watch out for Anita Man.”

He threw his head back and laughed merrily, and Evelyn chuckled while lighting her cigarette.

Margie felt left out of a private joke.

Opening the door, Evelyn nudged Garth through it. “Get a wiggle on, guy. Go see if you can cheer up the killjoy in the lobby.”

He left with a wink and a wave.

Evelyn sat at her desk, her foot jiggling in time to the music. She tapped her cigarette on the rim of a silver ashtray, and smoke spiraled upward.

Margie perched on the edge of her bed, pretending to be listening to the tune playing on the radio. She didn’t know what to say. When the song ended, she mumbled, “Um … was that your … um, boyfriend?”

Evelyn exhaled smoke through her nose and looked at Margie as if she had two heads. “No. He’s just a friend of my father’s.”

“Oh!”

A smile twitched on Evelyn’s lips. “Employee rather. He drove me over here on short notice. Least I could do was say thank you.” She stubbed out her cigarette. “Would you mind helping me with this luggage?”

They hefted heavy suitcases onto Evelyn’s bed. Awed by a roommate who seemed older and very sophisticated, Margie shyly offered, “You want help unpacking? My mother did mine.”

Shaking wrinkles out of skirts, blouses, and jackets, they put them on hangers. Evelyn placed purses on the top shelf, and Margie put matching shoes on the closet floor. She had never seen so many beautiful clothes. She said, “Your mother and you must have shopped all summer.”

“My mother died when I was 13. Dad traveled a lot. My brother and I were pretty much on our own except for the housekeepers. I could tell you stories about that string of creepos.”

Caught off guard, for a moment Margie was tongue-tied. Thoughts of her mother’s warm embrace came to her mind, and she couldn’t imagine being without it. “I’m sorry,” she stammered.

“My mother was a nurse-midwife,” Evelyn said proudly. “She taught women in the slums of Detroit about diet, hygiene, and birth control. Men gave her grief about
that
. She caught influenza from a 14-year-old patient who was pregnant by her brother.”

Margie’s ears burned.

Evelyn snatched two plain garments from the bottom of the suitcase. “And last but not least”—she held them at arm’s length—“a
lovely
pink shirtwaist dress. And this
exquisite
white cotton apron. Notice the two-inch waistband, the four-inch hem, and the patch-pocket detail.” She wrinkled her nose at the probationary uniform. “Can you believe these things? Pink?”

Life as a student nurse kept Margie busy from the clamoring six o’clock wake-up bell to ten-thirty lights-out. Soon enough, she slipped into a routine. Rules and dress codes dictated her conduct, while random room inspections stripped her of privacy. She attended classes in anatomy, chemistry, bacteriology and nursing arts before working six hours each day on the wards, where nursing instructors monitored her progress. She joined a knitting club and learned to play bridge, but spent most of her time studying.

Those who memorized easily came out ahead, initially. There were bones, muscles, nerves, and organs; they all had parts, and the parts had parts. Everything had a name, a function, an action, and a reaction to be learned. Nurses spoke their own shorthand language—prn, npo, qid, stat—in which the girls had to become fluent. Procedures piled one on top of another needed to be expertly mastered. Beds were never made tightly enough, floors never swept clean enough, meal trays never collected quickly enough, and charting never quite detailed enough. Margie found it a tiring world, long days without rest and instructors yammering in her ears.

Evelyn, on the other hand, thrived in the environment. Her uncle, a rear admiral in the medical corps, advised her to become a nurse. If she got the education, he would ensure her a job. Naval hospitals in exotic places all over the world needed nurses, he said. After training, the work wasn’t hard and the life promised travel, adventure, and, more than likely, a doctor husband.

Margie just persevered, bent on not disappointing her parents. She abhorred the uniforms and disliked the structure, rules, and always being tired. Shy on the wards, she never knew what to say to the patient lying in the bed, and the despotic instructors terrified her. She wrote Abe long, maudlin letters complaining about the endless days.

He wrote back about his own trials, living at home in a town he felt he’d outgrown. His dad kept pressuring him to give up his job at the airfield to concentrate on his studies, and the battle over his major course of study was on-going. Abe wanted a car and the freedom it would allow, but he didn’t have enough money to buy one and the prospects of getting one seemed remote.

She kept his letters in a growing stack in her drawer to reread on nights when she was alone and listening to love songs on the radio. How she missed their playful banter and their think-alike closeness.
Mrs. Abe Carson, Marjorie Olivia Carson,
she dreamed.

Margie scuffed to her room, unpinned the teacup-shaped nurses’ cap perched on her head, and tossed it on the chair. Rummaging in her desk drawer, she found a red pen, Xed out February 28 on the calendar, and flipped the page. She sighed at the realization—only six months done, 28 long ones to go.

Stripping off her uniform, she threw it on the floor, too exhausted to remove the button studs and collar and shove the cardboard-like garment down the laundry chute. She tumbled into bed and sank into a restful sleep.

Evelyn bounded in. “Hey roomie! Wake up, kid.”

Margie reluctantly opened one eye. “What?”

Evelyn danced a little jig. “I’ve got us dates. Two pre-meds I met in the lobby while I was discharging a patient.”

“Are you crazy? We’ll be expelled.” Margie pulled the pillow over her head.

Evelyn yanked it away and plopped down on the bed. “Only if we’re caught, and that won’t happen. Come on! It’ll be fun!”

Margie sat up, exasperated with this roommate who was always on the edge of trouble. “I can’t go out with anyone. I’m going steady with Abe—
remember
?”

“Margie! It’s just a hamburger. I didn’t see you at dinner. You have to be hungry. Get your glad rags on.” Evelyn rummaged in her closet, throwing expensive clothes on the floor.

Margie had skipped supper, and it
was
just a hamburger. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt.

By the time the girls arrived, the pre-meds had snagged a booth at the diner. One scooted in next to Margie and lit a cigarette. Drinking Cokes, they chatted about classes and dorm life. They could get into a frat party, the boys said. Were the girls interested?

Evelyn said, “Of course we’re interested, aren’t we, Margie?”

The fraternity house was jammed, a sea of bodies drinking, singing, kissing, and dancing close. Smoke from cigars and cigarettes floated to the ceiling, and the walls vibrated with sounds of shouting, laughter, and Duke Ellington booming from the Victrola. Awestruck, Margie got swept along.

Her date walked over with two beers. Margie took the bottle and pondered what to do. Drinking was considered sinful; her parents wouldn’t approve. Shrugging, she took a sip and found it bitter; she couldn’t help her lips from screwing into a pucker. Her date laughed and nudged forward a bowl of pretzels.

Nibbling on pretzels seemed to make the beer taste better. A warm, fuzzy feeling came over her, and she liked it. When she emptied the first bottle, her date gave her another. Snuggling into his neck, she downed the second drink as they slow-danced in the crowded living room. He provided a third, which she drank as they cuddled on a couch. Her vision was swimming, and she felt a little dizzy.

She heard, “Hey, lover girl. We gotta split.” It was Evelyn. “Get your coat on. We’ve got the car started.”

Carrying her coat and stumbling, she followed Evelyn to a car waiting at the curb. Evelyn slid in beside a man whose hair was gray at the temples.

Margie looked around. “Where’re our dates?”

“Who cares? Get in.” Evelyn said to the old man, “A pedal to the metal, guy.”

“Sure enough, babe.” He put his hand on her knee, and she slapped it away.