Sins led me to my truest love. Or something like that. I learned that English can be a tangle, the kind of puzzle Oma would talk about. In our homeland, they committed the greatest sin against my grandmother. There were no laws about insanity in that Germany—especially none to protect women accused of hysteria. Our village of Hunawihr wasn’t big, but it had its own asylum on the fringe of the foothills. Oma was sentenced there to rob her of the farm that Opa had left her in his will.

She was the tallest tree in my young life. Oma was older than 60 and still able to slaughter a hog and harness a team for plowing. She taught me to think for myself by instinct, trusting my gut. Oma was smart with money, easy with people. Opa gave her the timberland, acres of trees to keep growing, harvesting, and selling. But she was cut out of the land like a stone from a peach. When Opa died, men said he was verrückt, even though his will was a true document with all the right marks. Only a crazy man leaves a farm to a woman. She should be passed over, as was the custom, leaving lands to a son.

Then Oma faced an astounding tax bill after Opa’s death. She appeared before the burgermeister, showing up sweaty with her cropped blond hair, the grime smeared around her shirt cuffs and along her hem. She was a worker, a Freihalten, a person free to think and speak, like the family name said. No woman in her right mind would expect her husband’s will to give her a claim to property. A sham hearing rewarded the men in the surrounding farms, each with a claim ready for her land. Once she protested, it was the asylum for her. In Heilenstruk the doctor, if you could call him that, said removing all her teeth was a new treatment for hysteria. Once they extracted the pieces of her, something called “infections” took her away.

They wouldn’t do that to me in America. My instinct told me I’d fight like a she-wolf if they came at me. They’d never take me like that, not alive.

In the days after her death, I trudged behind Father along our rows of grapevines, feeling a dull ache in my knees from the uneven ground. Our little farm’s grapes and sparse timber would be as high as we’d rise. “Father, would you send me to an asylum if Opa gave me a farm?”

“Not me. But it might not come down to me deciding. I’d speak up for you, at least.”

“You didn’t speak for Oma.”

“I didn’t know, until we saw her in there. They stole her away.” “What bit of timber would be worth that kind of torture?”

He spread manure around our vine roots. “I can see why you’re in a hurry to be in America. Saying things like that out loud, where anybody can hear—that kind of speaking gets a woman punished.”

“Why didn’t Opa just will that land to you?”

He stood and caught his breath. “Opa knew that Oma was the reason they prospered. It was hers first.”

“Can you help me earn my place in a land where women do not suffer for speaking their minds?”

“Where women speak their minds as they please? I don’t know that place exists. But if it does, you’re bound to try to find it, I suppose. Eighteen, what an age. Who am I to save you from yourself?”

“I could stay with Uncle Gustav’s family.” He’d already made the crossing with his wife and son. Owned a bakery in Baltimore.

Father’s voice grew tight. “I’ll help you as much as I can. God never sent Oma any mercy. If you stay here, I might have someone else to visit in the asylum, sooner or later.”

Rising up like a loaf, or like timber, was the Freihalten way. I set my course to a fairer world.

• • • •

Instead of letting a man pluck me and crush me like a blossom as Harry had in Pittsburgh, in Cleveland I aimed to choose for myself. I had beauty enough to lure a rich man, even when it ended as it had in tears. Was this new country much different from my homeland? I felt a bit like Oma.

Cleveland was a city in which no one knew me. I needed only my daring to practice what I’d seen. I could work to become a wife with a loving hold over a family—and maybe even my own fortunes. There was a lot that a woman could do once she was allowed to run a household. I found lodging at first at Hiram House, catering to immigrant women. The house needed volunteers who could speak German, and they set aside private rooms for the right ones, those who could clean and teach English. I stayed out of the Hiram kitchen, though. That work would leave a scent on me that I couldn’t scrub out. There was nothing undue about smelling of good soap, and a tiny dab of the right perfume—a parting gift from Harry—could enhance my aura. I had plans.

In the fall, I talked my way onto the cotillion circuit. I dropped a name or two in conversations with women in salons, saying I was a cousin of Bertram Gliddon on his mother’s side, earning me an invitation that I parlayed into more. Soon I was meeting men and wearing a dance card on one wrist and a corsage on the other. I had much to learn, but I chased after new things that would endear me to a rich man. The taken ones seemed to struggle at their bonds to wives and sweethearts. I would giggle while I teased them about manly habits. They liked being known for their details, like their cigar sizes. I’d ask about the difference between a man’s robusto and a corona, or a panetella or a lonsdale. They savored the entendres, as the French say. It was easier than I expected, being forward in a permitted way.

A few parties along, on the nights I was not assigned to teach or clean, I met Brent. We bounced to the music of Schumann or one of the other Europeans in fancy at the dances. I’d wait for someone to praise the orches- tra and give me a clue about the composer. My gloves were white and a little worn, but my chitchat and my dresses usually kept the men from noticing. Nothing like a tight bodice to keep them focused. I noticed Brent and stood near him, close enough to let my perfume seep toward him. Once the song was underway, he carefully led me onto the floor after a glance to see who was watching. The hall was crowded and gave him good camouflage.

Brent led me to think there was a promise behind his touches, advances that I allowed him time after time. We would be married, and there would be our new family to join his own, so successful and famous. I thought it was love I was trading myself for, a simple step of submission toward a life together. Now a life stirred within me, though it was only fierce enough for me to feel. Brent would arrange to have my “condition,” as he put it, removed. It would be like the loss of a limb, but at the center of my soul.

I hurled myself onto the bed at the rooming house. I put the pillow across my mouth to muffle my sobs. I wasn’t going to let him win that much.

That busybody Bethanne was usually in the sitting room down the hall, whenever she was around. When her steps grew louder, I wrung myself dry. Then came a tap on the door.

“You okay in there, Annie?” Brent had called me that too, and the blood rose up in me at the sound of the word.

I gathered myself and opened the door. “Just okay.”

“Oh my goodness, look at you!” The smirk that she usually carried fell away. “That is the look of a woman who’s been wronged. I knew it.”

“It’s worse than that.” When I sized her up for a test to share the whole truth, she passed. “I’ve got his baby.”

“Let me all the way in. I have ideas that might help.”

I sat on my bed and she took the chair. A few tears rolled down my cheek while I shared my misfortunes. Love was a curse, I told her. I gave him a way to make me an honest mother of his child, and he refused.

She asked me questions about Brent’s fiancée to learn what he’d promised about our future. She opened a window and stood beside it, smoking and not caring who saw her, apparently.

I poured water into the basin and wet a towel, dabbing it over my face to cool the swelling from the tears. “I figured there were worse things that could happen to me. So I didn’t care whether I’d get into this trouble or not.”

“Sounds about right. Sounds foolish, too.”

“Easy enough for you to say. I was going to become Mrs. Brent Stilson. And what difference would a baby really make? It could be worse. I could be locked in an asylum like my Oma.”

“Your what?”

I drifted a little in that moment, making my way through the mem- ories. “My grandmother. That could be worse.”

“I’ve been like you, pregnant and without a husband.”

“Pregnant. Not a word that gets used in Brent’s circles.”

“Not that you’ve heard, at least. Annie, you have to get this baby taken care of—and soon, if you want to be safe.”

“You mean an abortion? Brent spoke of that, too. Never for me. But sometimes I think it would be best to lose this baby.”

“No fall down the stairs is going to be a sure bet. A doctor is your sure bet.”

“Doctor. More like butcher, from what I’ve heard.”

“You just ask your Mister Stilson. He’ll know someone to do it.

Discreet, he’ll say. You want him to say competent, or professional.” “How was it for you?”

“I came to after the ether and didn’t remember a thing. Not about the operation. Later, I remembered too much—what I dreamed for the little one.”

“I haven’t had time to dream yet.”

“Lucky you. You’ve met me and I’ve set you straight, but it’s yours to decide. Remember, the sooner the better. If the doctor knows what he’s about, you might be able to have kids later. With a man of honor.”

• • • •

I don’t know what I saw in that man in the first place, but Brent was fully exposed by the time my day came at the doctor’s clinic. When they asked about religion, I wrote “None.” It was better than any lie about being a Protestant, though they had rules about stopping babies, too.

The metal scent of ether wrapped around Brent’s murmurs. There was an echo from a man wearing a white medical gown.

“Is she here of her own accord?” the doctor asked at the door. A long pause rolled through that space. “She is not, is she?”

I raised my voice. “They never asked.” But then it was needed, for my future, so I chose. “It was mine to decide, though.”

That operation was wrapped in gauze in my memory, my tears dried by a handkerchief on my face, delivering the ether. I would have no scars— they promised me that. There was a long darkness that was deeper than sleep, and finally waking to pain gnawing in my deepest parts.

I’d been so new to my condition I wasn’t showing to anyone yet, so there was no transformation of my shape. The abortion left me with all the gifts of my figure, but it stripped away the heart of my charm.

I wouldn’t let Brent visit me once he took me home afterwards. When he left me to my fate, he might have had some regrets, but nothing compared to mine. I didn’t dream of becoming a mother. I dreamed of becoming a wife. Not because I treasured marriage—but a wife would have a chance of money of her own someday, even property. In short, I’d have a chance at what men had, what they denied my Oma.

I kept her memory away from my heart during that time in Cleveland. The doctor, the drugs, the pain of the days that followed. More severe was the pain of being betrayed by Brent’s promises and affections. The ache in my heart hurt more than anything else. I’d have to look over my shoulder for the rest of my days and remember the day when I let them take something small and precious from me. I could confess it, maybe, to some benevolent priest. If something like that existed. I still believed in forgiveness, like a puppy believes her mother will always have room at the teat.

• • • •

I left Cleveland with my heart in tatters, my hopes for heaven ragged. Brent used his family’s money to send me on my way in a rail car down the line west, away from the city. He wouldn’t give me the money I was due from my ordeal unless I left. But his money wasn’t enough to remove my need to work. He gave me a reference, some invented story about my work serving his family. The next city to the west was Toledo, but I’d had my fill of big towns with unkept promises. The Catholic newspaper of Cleveland included help-wanted notices from other parishes. The one in Michigan was far enough away to help me with my forgetting, and sharps like Brent were unlikely to prey in a place that small. The church in Raisinville was seeking a housekeeper. I could do penance there for my greatest sin. I was so defeated that I needed an easy victory.

Living and working in the St. Stephen’s rectory wouldn’t be as crazy as it seemed. The pay would be low—Catholics supported their church buildings better than they cared for the hired help. I believed the work would be a retreat for me, and lodging and meals would be included.

I wanted much more, but I was too wounded to try. Maybe living in close quarters with the fathers would help me heal. Working for priests would at least be safer than swimming in dark waters to land a husband. A good woman could drown in those big city currents.

• • • •

On the train to Raisinville and the rectory, I rehearsed my story. I’d had a medical treatment, like when the horse in our barnyard was gelded. It could be as simple as saying that, and it might not even come up. Since the stain on my spirit was fresh, I might scrub it out. Oma would tell me I should try.

Father Frank Doyle was Irish with the ginger beard and the brogue that I’d first heard on the Baltimore docks. I was the domestic help, and the younger Irish priest must have been expected to deal with a new housekeeper, the first ever at the rectory. The priests had nobody to care for them before I arrived. As bachelor men they were no more slovenly than any others, I suppose. I dug in and cleaned and swept and stocked the larder as well as I could on a meager budget. The rectory was as poor as I was, but at least it had a church collection basket to support us all.

One Saturday, a few weeks after I arrived, Frank—he insisted on me calling him by his first name—stopped in the doorway of the kitchen. I felt lovely whenever I was around Frank. It was my resting time of the day, after lunch and before dinner. I was poking my way through the local newspaper, writing down the words I did not understand. Over the past weeks, my lists were getting shorter. I had been told women could be clever, but no one ever said we could be smart. I wondered if Oma’s gift to me was being smart.

I must have worn an expression to make him pause. “You look like you have something weighty on your mind. What might it be?”

“Confessions are at the church, aren’t they?”

He threw back his head and laughed, then gentled up his sound and sat across from me. “Indeed they are. I only wanted to know if I could help you find some cheer.”

He didn’t carry the sound of offering a trade, like those men who’d wooed and then wronged me. His words showed real concern. Yes, priests could be like this. A shiver rode through me at the memory. “I have some things that happened to me.”

“Hurtful things, I’ll wager.”

“That’s a good bet.” I could play with English too.

“We all make mistakes, and sometimes we play our part when people harm us. Back in Ireland, we had a saying: The man who’s made no mistakes doesn’t know anybody.”

“But everybody knows somebody.”

“You see what I mean. That’s the glory of confessions. With us, people shuck off their burdens inside that little stall.”

“But some sins are unforgivable, right?”

There was only a moment before he clucked at me. “God forgives anything, if there’s true confession and you can repent. There’s penance to pay, but then you’re cleaned.”

Like an old broom closet, I thought. Souls were not that simple.

“I’ll close my eyes,” he said, “and you close yours. Then just tell me what’s so heavy that you won’t bear it anymore.”

The gauze and the ether and the sharp talk with Brent all rushed back to me. Was it murder I had a hand in? But murder had a commandment, so it must be a sin anyone could confess. “I had a child,” I said in a voice so small it surprised even me.

“You gave birth.”

“No, that’s just it. I didn’t give birth to that baby.”

I was glad to have my eyes closed when I heard him reply. “So the baby was miscarried.”

“That would have been easier than what happened to me.” I took stock of the moment and saw I might trust him with the truth. “I allowed it, was talked into it.”

“It’s a sin,” he said in a grave voice that promised something cleaner to come. “Do you regret it, wish you had not allowed this?”

I felt the hot wetness of my cheeks while I eked out an answer. “I do. I couldn’t choose. But I don’t know what I’d do if I could. The baby wasn’t wanted, not by the man, at least.”

Now he took my hands in his, but it was not with the grasp of the men who’d opened up my sorrows. I shuddered at the table with my tears, maybe as much for myself as for that child who never would be. I only had to share in the sin, not believe I caused it.

“Anna, I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, the Son, and Holy Ghost. God still loves his sinners, no matter what they’ve done.”

It felt true, and at that moment I felt a weight lifted from me. I was not evil or ruined. It was something that happened, and I was not strong enough to do otherwise in that room. “But what about my penance?”

A handful of long moments rolled by with the kitchen clock making the only sound in the room. “Hmmm. I think God will find a place for you to do your penance. You must have suffered enough already from your past.”

“No penance, then?”

“You’re just borrowing on your future,” he said. “I have a feeling about you, Anna Freihalten. You’ll save someone someday, and that’s the way you might find your own salvation again.”

It was a muddle to me, but I held my tongue.

“We have another saying in my country,” he said. “The man who believes in goodness to come is betting with the house, not against it.”

“All these sayings. Thank you, Father.”

“It’s Frank. Now, there are other sinners for me to comfort, over in the church.”

We opened our eyes and I saw the first man who understood what I loved. The promises of a better future settled back into my heart. He wanted nothing more than my happiness and peace.

So, that’s what it felt like. All I’d needed was a man devoted to God. The new priest coming to us might be an additional blessing.