As she made her way up, Sarah passed several young women and another young man on the stairs. They all carried papers or folders and seemed bent on a mission of some importance. They did not greet her or even meet her eye, Sarah noticed. Such behavior was typical in the city, but somehow she’d expected the people here to be friendlier.
She found the office easily, but the words painted on the door stopped her: “Rahab’s Daughters.” Sarah had learned the story of Rahab the Harlot in Sunday school, although she hadn’t known exactly what a harlot was back then. Rahab had hidden the Israelite spies whom Joshua had sent to Jericho. In exchange for protecting them from her own people, she asked them to spare her and her family when they took the city. Rahab had done well for herself afterward, Sarah recalled, although she couldn’t remember the details.
She supposed the name was appropriate, considering the work Mrs. Van Orner did, but Sarah couldn’t help thinking that “Daughters of Hope” was a bit more inspiring. She opened the door. A young woman looked up from her typewriter.
Like the fellow in the lobby and the people on the stairs, she was young, probably in her early twenties. Sarah could tell that she could be a beauty if she took some pains with her hair and her clothing, but apparently, she cared nothing for that. She wore her dark hair scraped back into a severe and unflattering bun, and her suit was ill-fitting and a sickly shade of olive green that turned her skin sallow. “May I help you?”
“Yes, I need to see Mrs. Van Orner.”
“Mrs. Van Orner isn’t in today, but I will be happy to give her a message.”
“I’m afraid this is a rather urgent matter.”
The girl smiled slightly, or at least her lips curved upward. Nothing else of her expression changed though. “It’s always an urgent matter.”
“A young woman’s life is at stake,” Sarah tried.
“Then perhaps you will tell me what you need so I can give that information to Mrs. Van Orner.”
Sarah could see that she had no choice. “All right.”
“Please, sit down,” Miss Yingling said, indicating the wooden chair placed beside her desk.
Sarah did so.
The girl had taken a piece of paper and a pencil out of her desk, and she looked up expectantly. “What is your name?”
Sarah told her. The girl then asked for her address.
“Is all this really necessary?” Sarah asked impatiently.
Miss Yingling looked up, her eyes calm, completely unaffected by Sarah’s urgency.
“I’m afraid it’s very necessary. All of the charities in this building cooperate with each other very closely. We keep careful records of everyone we help and share that information with each other, so that people can’t just go from one charity to another every time they get into difficulty. That would encourage them to be dependent and weak instead of forcing them to take responsibility for their own lives.”
This seemed so unfair, Sarah hardly knew where to begin asking questions. “You mean people can’t get assistance from more than one of the charities in this building?”
“With some rare exceptions, yes. As I said, our resources are limited, and we can’t waste them on people who are too lazy to improve themselves. Not everyone agrees with these rules, of course,” she added, “but we must abide by them nevertheless. So yes, I do need this information. What is your address?”
Still stinging with outrage, Sarah provided it.
Miss Yingling took down the information in neat handwriting. Then she looked up again. “This girl you want us to help, what is her relation to you?”
“She’s no relation to me at all. I’m a midwife, and two days ago, a young man came to take me to a birth at what I thought was a boardinghouse. I eventually realized I was in a house of ill repute. The young woman whose baby I delivered begged me to help her get away.”
“Did you try?” Miss Yingling asked with interest.
“No, she warned me not to. She said . . . Well, she said it wasn’t safe. She asked me to find Mrs. Van Orner and ask her for help.”
Miss Yingling was intrigued. “How did she know about Mrs. Van Orner?”
“She said all the . . . the girls who worked there knew about her.”
Miss Yingling nodded. “That’s good. Word of our work is spreading.”
“Can you help her?”
“Do you know where the house is?”
“Yes, it’s on Sisters’ Row.”
Her blue eyes widened. “Oh, my.”
“Is something wrong?”
“Oh, no, it’s just . . . The police protect these places, you know, and Sisters’ Row . . .”
“I’ve been told it serves very wealthy clients.”
“And that’s another problem.”
“In what way?”
Miss Yingling seemed surprised by the question. “I . . . Oh, I mean . . . Well, because the place earns a tremendous amount of money, and they can bribe just about anyone they want.”
Sarah didn’t believe her. “Are you afraid of offending someone wealthy?”
“No, no, not at all. Mrs. Van Orner isn’t afraid of anything,” the girl insisted. “We’ll just need to be more careful than usual.”
“We also have to rescue the baby,” Sarah said.
“Baby?”
“The baby I delivered,” Sarah reminded her. “Mrs. Walker, the woman who runs the place, is going to take him away from his mother in a few days, and the mother is very concerned that she won’t be able to find him again.”
Miss Yingling frowned. “That’s very odd. They don’t usually allow the girls to have babies.”
“What do you mean?”
Miss Yingling shrugged. “Interestingly enough, very few of these women conceive at all, but when they do, they see an abortionist.”
Sarah remembered a remark Mrs. Walker had made about Amy lying to her. Had she managed to keep her pregnancy a secret until it was too late to end it? But none of that really mattered now. “Can you help this girl and her baby or not?”
“I’ll have to discuss the case with Mrs. Van Orner, of course—”
“I’m going to see the girl today. It may be my last chance to visit with her, and I’d like to tell her some good news.”
“I can’t promise anything without Mrs. Van Orner’s approval.”
Sarah seldom used her family’s power to her own advantage, but this time she saw it was necessary. “Perhaps Mrs. Van Orner knows my mother, Mrs. Felix Decker.”
Miss Yingling’s eyes widened again. “Mrs. Decker is your mother?” Like the fellow downstairs, she looked Sarah over and found nothing to impress her. “But you’re a . . .”
“A midwife. Yes, I earn my own living. Do you know if my parents are donors to your cause? They’re very generous, and I could certainly put in a good word with them about the work you do.”
Miss Yingling carefully wrote, “Mrs. Felix Decker,” on the paper beneath her notes about Amy’s case. When she looked up again, she seemed much more eager to help. “Did you say this girl had a baby two days ago?”
“Early yesterday morning.”
“How soon will it be safe to move her?”
Sarah knew that most doctors wouldn’t even allow a woman out of bed for two weeks after she delivered, but she also knew few women could afford such a lengthy time of idleness. Most of her clients were up doing housework after a week, some even sooner. “I’d like to say a week, but if you need to get her sooner . . . I’d say the day after tomorrow at the earliest, and she’ll need a safe place to go where she can finish recovering.”
“We have a house in the city where the women can stay until they find honest work.”
“This is a wonderful thing you’re doing,” Sarah said, feeling absurdly grateful even though Miss Yingling hadn’t even agreed to anything yet.
“Yes, it is,” the younger woman said, but for some reason, she didn’t look as if she believed it. “Now tell me everything you know about this girl and the house where she lives.”