The Americans

by John Jakes

  Her brown eyes flashing, she swung to the older man. Will had released him, but he was too thunderstruck to move.

  “I recognize you also, Rocco Amato. Your wife hangs her laundry in the court behind Baxter Street.”

  The man blushed and grabbed his companion’s arm, pleading with him in Italian. The younger man fingered his bloody head. Then he fixed Will with a vengeful stare, raised his right hand, and bit the tip of his thumb. He spilled out a stream of furious Italian. “Ti rivedrò, bastardo! Ci puoi contare!”

  Still shouting, he let the older man pull him around the corner out of sight. Will shivered. “What the devil was he saying?” Unsmiling, the woman looked at him. “It’s better you don’t know.”

  ii

  A moment later, she began to croon, “Now, now, baby. Hush, little one.” She began rocking her child to soothe it.

  Soon the baby stopped crying and gurgled. Then the gurgling stopped too. The child was falling asleep again. The woman turned her attention to Will, who had dusted himself off and was picking up his valise.

  His benefactor was a powerfully built woman, heavy, and quite short. Her eyes were on a level with his upper arm. She had the blackest hair he’d ever seen, wound into a big bun. There was some gray in it, although she couldn’t have been more than thirty-five.

  He studied her more closely. Wrinkles, weight, and a downy black mustache increased the impression of age. But they did nothing to diminish an impression of strength tempered by a good disposition.

  “If you’re ready, young man, I’ll conduct you wherever it is you’re going.”

  “Thanks very much,” Will said. “I’m grateful for the help you gave me with those two. But I’m a little embarrassed too.”

  “Why?” she shot back. “You’d better not say it’s because I’m a woman. You needed help and you wouldn’t have gotten any from those gutless loafers.” She gave a withering look to the small crowd of spectators just breaking up. “I don’t recognize any of them. That means they don’t live in this neighborhood. You mustn’t judge Mulberry Street by their behavior—or by that of men like ’Sep and Rocco either. ’Sep—the young one with the knife—he’s totally worthless. But Rocco Amato is just weak. He’s a workingman. He supports a wife, a father, a mother-in-law, and four wee ones. When a man earns only seven dollars a month trimming the scows and must spend five to rent one filthy room with no air except that which comes up the shaft and no water except the foul stuff from the community sink—well, it’s easy for a man like that to grow bitter and disregard his conscience. That doesn’t excuse what Rocco did. But perhaps it explains it, eh?”

  The woman’s brusque pronouncements made Will smile. He began to relax a little. “Yes, it does.” He draped his coat over his arm. “I’m looking for Bayard Court.”

  “You are? Fancy that! Grimaldi’s there right this minute.”

  “Who’s Grimaldi?”

  “The father of this little beauty—” As they began walking, she patted the infant’s head. Will could see the anterior fontanel beneath a fuzz of dark hair—a newborn, then. “Little Miranda. Plus eight more. I don’t doubt he’ll want to plant another one the moment I permit him close to me again. Grimaldi’s a regular bull. I’m not complaining, you understand. Many of my friends are envious. But sometimes I do crave a night’s rest. Ah well—that’s life, hah?”

  Again he smiled. “You’re Mrs. Grimaldi, then—”

  Her plump cheeks grew pink and her mustache quivered. “Who else would I be? Do I look like some slut who’d bear nine children out of wedlock? Is that what you think?”

  “No, no, I didn’t mean to imply that.”

  “Good.”

  “I apologize.”

  “I accept.” She studied his obviously expensive summer suit. “What are you doing in the Bend, Signor—?”

  “Kent. Will Kent.”

  “I’m happy to know your name, but that isn’t the information I requested.”

  He chuckled. “I’m looking for a friend. A doctor who practices at number four and a half Bayard Court.”

  “Imagine! That’s exactly where Grimaldi is—number four and a half.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  Again the thunderous brow. “Of course it’s a fact. Why else would I say it? Do I strike you as a frivolous woman who makes idle jokes? Is that what you mean to say?”

  He quickly raised his free hand. “No. Absolutely not.”

  “Good. I don’t want to think I made a mistake about you.”

  “Is your husband seeing one of the doctors?”

  “Yes. He’s having a cough looked after.”

  “What a coincidence. Our meeting, I mean.”

  “Coincidence? It’s proof of God’s guiding hand in human affairs. Tell me, Signor Kent. Do you know the doctors?”

  “I know one of them. He’s a good friend of mine.”

  “They are both good men. One is newer to the neighborhood than the other, but they are both Christians. They know that those of us who live here have little or no money, but they also know we have a need, so they never demand that we pay. And they never force us to sign anything, as the bankers do. Good men,” she repeated with a nod that said she’d brook no other opinion. “Which doctor is your friend? The old one or the round one?”

  “The round—? Yes, that one.”

  “Come on, then. Let’s move a little faster. You wouldn’t have found Bayard Court by yourself. Mind your step and hold your nose and we’ll be there before you know it.”

  iii

  Mrs. Grimaldi was right. He couldn’t have located Bayard Court alone. When she turned into a narrow passage between two tenements, he was sure he would have missed the passage completely.

  They walked in semidarkness, between windowless walls. Over her shoulder she said, “I’ve lived in the Bend five years and I still don’t know all the alleys and courtyards. Of course the property owners and rental agents keep adding onto the buildings and putting up new ones to further confuse matters—be careful! Don’t fall over the garbage.”

  There was more than garbage littering the lightless passage. Will’s shoes stank of offal. Mrs. Grimaldi marched right through it with her skirt hiked up in both hands. The stench didn’t bother little Miranda, who was still sleeping in the sling.

  Just short of the spot where the passage opened into a gloomy courtyard, Mrs. Grimaldi stopped, gazed down, and said softly, “Madonna Santissima. Look at that. Another one left to die.”

  Will moved up beside her. On the ground he saw the feebly moving hands of a dirt-crusted baby no more than four or five weeks old. The child was swaddled in greasy rags. A fat fly walked on its face.

  Will couldn’t hide his astonishment. “You mean people just—discard their children?”

  The question saddened her. “You honestly don’t know what it’s like to live in a district like this, do you?”

  He thought of Maison du Soleil, of the comfortable house in Boston that he’d never see again. He said softly, “No. I don’t.”

  “When people cannot feed the extra mouth God has seen fit to give them, they grow desperate. Several children are abandoned in this section every week. Some are found dead of exposure but some have been suffocated before being abandoned. I suppose their misguided parents believe that to be an act of mercy.”

  She bent with a grace surprising in a person so heavy. With great care she picked up the filthy bundle. The small, squashed face looked lifeless. The tiny hands made only the feeblest of waving motions.

  “This one’s almost gone. I’ll see whether I can give the poor thing a fighting chance. Grimaldi won’t like me bringing it home, but he’ll have to humor me if he wants his marital privileges. Come along, Signor Kent. We’re only a few steps from the splendors of Bayard Court.”

  The court was bounded on the Bayard Street side by the two buildings which the passage separated, and on the other three sides by the backs of five-story tenements. Each building had at least one fire escape. The
fire escapes were crowded with washtubs, broken chairs, sofas with ripped cushions, and other pieces of useless furniture.

  Shabbily dressed men and women relaxed on the old furniture. The people filled every bit of usable space on the fire escapes—the verandas of the poor, Will thought with dismay. Mrs. Grimaldi greeted some of the residents with a wave and a few words in Italian, all the while carrying Miranda on her breast and cradling the abandoned baby in her left arm. The mud of the courtyard was strewn with bales of rags, as well as more garbage and dung, human and animal. The stink was overpowering.

  Directly overhead, a maze of pulley lines crisscrossed the open space. The lines were strung from every floor. Each was laden with laundry, some of it no better than rags. Thick smoke twisted between the hanging clothes. The source was a cooking brazier on a third floor fire escape.

  The combination of the tall buildings, the smoke, and the hanging laundry kept the courtyard dark. In fact, the only scrap of summer sky visible to Will was so beclouded by smoke, it looked stormy. He could hardly believe the sun was shining up there.

  Mrs. Grimaldi noticed him gazing upward; she clucked her tongue. “That, I believe, is what the priests call cielo. Heaven. It’s no wonder that even in a good Catholic neighborhood, the churches are half empty—”

  Suddenly she grew more animated. “Grimaldi! Here I am!”

  She marched toward the dark door of the tenement directly opposite the passageway by which they’d entered. Will took a final look at the faces on the fire escapes, vaguely ashamed of where he’d come from, and very much ashamed of what he wanted from life. What did the residents of the Bend want? He suspected the answer was a simple and fundamental one. They wanted to survive—not easy to do down here where there was so much dirt and poverty and violence.

  “Grimaldi, get a move on!” the stout woman called to a man with curly gray hair and a pie of a face. His leather vest couldn’t hide his huge paunch. He’d just come out of the tenement clutching a small bottle of reddish-brown liquid.

  Behind, in the hall, a woman was saying, “—a spoonful of that elixir whenever the cough bothers you, Signor Grimaldi. And don’t forget to come back next Saturday and let the doctor see whether you’ve improved.”

  Curious, Will thought. That voice sounds familiar.

  “Thank you, thank you very much, signorina,” Grimaldi said.

  His wife thumped his ear with her index finger. “Don’t flirt with the nurse. Turn around and see what I have for you. A little surprise.”

  But Will was the one who was most surprised when the nurse emerged into the dim light. He recognized her red-gold hair, and full mouth. As for the rest, it was new: a product of her passage into young womanhood.

  Gone were the skinny limbs and the sharp angles of adolescence. Instead, he saw a hint of a rounded hip under her plain skirt and breasts beneath a vertically striped shirtwaist and white surgeon’s apron.

  “Miss Hastings? Is that you?”

  “Certainly, Mr. Kent. We’ve been expecting you since noon,” Jo Hastings said.

  CHAPTER III

  “ONE NOTCH ABOVE HELL”

  i

  WILL WAS ASTONISHED AT the difference three years made. When Drew’s younger sister had visited Boston, she’d been a child; now she was a young woman, and a handsome one. That was true despite the freckles still visible on her cheeks, and the nose that remained a fraction too large.

  Mrs. Grimaldi called a goodbye as she left the court. Her husband followed a pace behind.

  Will waved, then said to Jo, “What in the world are you doing here?”

  She used the hem of her apron to wipe her hands. With a nod toward the fire escapes, she said, “This was my birthday present to myself.”

  “What? The slums?”

  His skepticism kindled wrath in her blue-green eyes. “A chance to help Drew for a few weeks! A chance to learn nursing by being a nurse. I had no money for a Nightingale school.”

  “Yes, I remember. I didn’t mean to make fun of you. I apologize.”

  She smiled. “You’re forgiven. This is what I’ve wanted to do all my life. Last winter I took a second job in addition to the one at the family store. Every week I put forty cents of that extra money into a jar. When I had enough, I gave it to my father so he could pay a boy to take my place at the store this summer.” Defiance glinted in those eyes he found oddly fascinating all at once. “But to be perfectly truthful, Mr. Kent, I’m not sure I can ever go back to Hartford or that store.”

  “Please— ” He extended his hand. “I’d like you to call me Will.”

  With a grave expression she shook his hand. Her palm was cool and firm. He imagined her fingers would be surpassingly gentle with a patient.

  “Very well. It’s Will from now on. And you must call me Jo. When I was a little girl, I hoped we’d be on a first-name basis someday.”

  The directness of her gaze made him nervous. Was he crazy, or was her expression more than merely cordial? Surely her adolescent crush was a thing of the past—

  She surprised him by asking, “Do you know the meaning of the name Jo?” He. shook his head. “It’s a Scots word. Very old.” Teasing him with her eyes, she added, “Look it up sometime.”

  “I surely will. Meantime, may I ask you a question?”

  “Of course. What is it?”

  “Do you think an environment like this is good for someone like you?”

  Her eyes blazed. “What do you mean—someone like me?”

  He dodged an empty tomato can that came whizzing down from a rooftop. Several boys were leaning over a crumbling cornice. One dropped a second can. It hit a mongrel defecating in the middle of the courtyard. Yelping, the dog ran off.

  Will couldn’t decide whether he liked or disliked Jo’s forthright, challenging manner—a little of both, probably. He tried to explain himself tactfully. “The Bend isn’t exactly a resort—”

  “Drew mentioned your familiarity with resorts,” she said with a tart smile. That told him she knew about the Pennels, and undoubtedly about Laura, too. “Are you trying to say I shouldn’t be here because I’m a girl?”

  “Well—” His hesitation was an admission.

  “That’s utter nonsense. The idea that women are too delicate for some kinds of work is a fiction perpetuated by men. The same kind of men who claim that all female diseases have one cause—women deviating from their ordained function. If a girl tries to educate herself instead of letting her womb function, she’ll get sick!”

  “Jo, that’s widely accepted medical theory.”

  “I’m not surprised, considering the sex of most doctors. Men are determined to keep women in their place.”

  As he started to object, she gave him a radiant smile. “Oh, those aren’t my words. I heard them used by a suffragist who lectured in Hartford. I spent twenty-five cents of my savings for a gallery seat and I’m glad I did. She was a fine, inspiring speaker. Her name was Julia Kent.”

  He turned red. “Oh, good God.”

  Jo’s smile was sweet. “I beg your pardon? What did you say?”

  He knew he was beaten. “Nothing,” he muttered. “Not a thing.”

  ii

  Inside the tenement, a pump handle began to squeak rhythmically. Contentious voices were raised in the lightless hall. Jo went on. “If Miss Nightingale could go to the Crimea by herself, and Dorothea Dix could venture into madhouses, I can certainly help my own brother here. You have no idea how desperately these people need us.”

  “I’m beginning to,” he told her with an eye on the filthy courtyard.

  “How long do you plan to stay? Drew hasn’t said.”

  He wanted to tell her that the Bend so depressed him, he’d have left immediately if his conscience would have allowed it. Instead, he said, “I’ll be here about a week.”

  “Oh, no longer than that?”

  The faint tone of disapproval irked him. Before he could say anything else, there was an interruption.

  He recognize
d Drew’s voice. The familiar round face appeared in the tenement door. “Will! You’re finally here!”

  Will hurried toward the doorway, both to greet his friend and to escape the curiously unsettling gaze of Drew’s sister. Why the devil did he have to justify his opinions and his behavior to an adolescent girl? The question nagged at him as he clapped Drew in a bear hug and exclaimed without thinking, “It’s wonderful to see you, Deacon.’

  iii

  Drew laughed. “Deacon, eh?”

  Will’s face reddened again. He started to offer an apology. Drew held up a hand. “Don’t look so stricken. I’ve heard that name before, though I assume most of my classmates thought otherwise. I just never heard it from you. I guess it fits. You’ve met our nurse, I see—”

  “I have indeed.”

  Drew bobbed his head at the gray and greasy-looking bricks of the tenement. “What do you think of our little medical missionary station?”

  “Want me to be honest? It’s appalling.”

  “I agree.”

  “I never imagined that you’d practice in a tenement,” Will said as he walked back to pick up his valise.

  “Neither did I. Dr. Clem says Bayard Court is just one notch above hell, and sometimes I think that’s stretching it. But we’ve found it’s the best place for us. Come on, I want you to meet my partner.”

  He led Will into a dark, dismal hallway. A few old floor tiles remained, but most had been torn up, leaving a spongy subfloor that reeked of urine. Huge holes had been punched in walls whose paint had long ago been overlaid with dirt and deposits of airborne grease. The steady squeak-squee of the pump handle came from an old sink at the rear of the hall. Despite hard pumping, only a trickle issued from the spout. Half a dozen women and youngsters were lined up waiting their turn with cans and bottles.

  “That’s the building’s source of water,” Drew told him.