Page 77 - Fever 1793

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE September 28th, 1793
There is great distress in the city for want of cash. Friendship is nearly entirely banished from our city.
Small children can give off powerful smells. Particularly small children who don’t know how to wake at night and use the chamber pot.
When I woke on the quilt next to Nell, I smelled her, then realized she was soaking wet. I was merely damp. Eliza shook her head and chuckled. “Babies are the same, no matter what the color. You might as well wash the twins’ bedding. They have a similar problem.”
There wasn’t room in the small apartment to wash, so I scrubbed the quilt and blankets in the courtyard behind the cooperage. Robert, William, and Nell sat on a log and watched me, solemn as three old preachers. By the time the blankets were drying and I had washed the three smelly children, Eliza had gone out to care for the sick and Mother Smith had taken control.
Mother Smith tapped her way around the room with her cane, circling me like a hawk. She made me rewash the breakfast dishes with near boiling water and complained that I left too much dirt behind when I swept. She snorted when she saw my stitching. She cackled out loud when I tried to comb the knots out of Nell s hair.
Too bad my mother never met Mother Smith, I thought as I beat a rug for the third time in the courtyard. They would have gotten along famously, complaining about me and out-scrubbing each other.
She did know how to tell a story, I had to give her that. She sat in Eliza’s rocker with the children at her feet and told a tale of magic buckets and flying ships. The children were enchanted. I applied all my force to clean the burned bits from the bottom of the stew pot. Mother Smith hadn’t said a word when the stew burned because I forgot to stir it. She didn’t have to say a word; the way she lifted her chin as she turned away said everything. I was a complete failure.
When the story was over, the boys trundled off to bed without protest. Nell climbed in my lap and fell asleep sucking her thumb. I worked the knots out of her hair slowly and gently. My stomach rumbled underneath her. I had skipped supper. I figured my portion had been the one which stuck to the bottom of the pot.
Mother Smith pulled her shawl on and prepared to leave.
“Do you think Eliza is all right?” I asked. “Shouldn’t she have come home before dark?”
“The pain doesn’t go away at sundown,” Mother Smith said. “Eliza will stay where she’s needed.” Nell stirred and I patted her back.
“Don’t love her,” warned Mother Smith.
“Pardon me?”
“I said, don’t you fall in love with that baby girl. She’s not yours. You can’t keep her. You had any
sense, you’d take her right down to the orphan house tomorrow and hand her over. Don’t look back.” “That would be cruel,” I said. “She needs some time to get over the shock of, you know”—I mouthed
the words “her mother”—“then I’ll take her.”
Mother Smith shook her head. “You’re not doing her any favors. Fact is, you’re making it harder on
her. She stays with you, you feed her, wash her, sing to her, mother her, then give her away. How’s that
—Dr. Benjamin Rush Letter, 1793