We began walking home together, sharing stories we’d written. “I know your gambler,” Henryk said. “He wanted to bet me which potato would roll off a cart first.” We talked about how many people would read our letters “back there,” how they’d become like holy relics.
“But they aren’t our words,” I mused. “We’re just scribing.”
“What would you write if they were your words?” No one had ever asked me such a question. With a patient smile he snapped off a maple twig and studied it as we walked.
“Maybe I’d write about them, how their lives could be better.” I paused. “And you?”
“Well—” he began, but then we were both caught by a pigeon strutting past us with a slice of bread hung around its neck, calmly pecking at his dinner. “Dear Papa Pigeon,” Henryk began. “America is wonderful. You can even eat your jacket.”
“I have a bread house with a nice cheese floor,” I added. We laughed until a passing bearded man frowned at us.
“Ah, we should be serious,” Henryk said. “Tell me about Naples.” How to explain the sea and its smells, the villa, and life on the streets, so different from Cleveland? I tried. He nodded. “Poland was different too. Even the onions were different.”
“In Naples,” I said, boldly, “I never talked to a boy my age unless he was selling me something.”
He smiled. “Here is a very nice twig at a good price. Peeled by hand.” I took the twig but couldn’t think what to say. The evening air turned hot and close; even the twig felt warm. When I spied Donato coming home, I took a hurried leave of Henryk and bolted up the stairs.
Two weeks after our walk, Henryk had to stop working at Hiram House. “My father needs me at the store,” he explained. “I’ll be writing receipts, not letters.” Of course he had to help his family. But sometimes I imagined his voice in the Babel of scribing tables that winter.
One windless Sunday in early April, Yolanda agreed to take my place at Hiram House so Irena and I could go to Edgewater Park. “She does look pale,” Roseanne observed as Irena pulled on her hat, gloves, and scarf. “But what can you talk about all day with her?”
“Lots of things, Poland and Naples and what she’ll do when Casimir comes. I’m teaching her English.”
“I see.”
I kissed Mamma good-bye. She was sitting at the player piano, as she would be on our return.
The streetcar, the sights, and people out walking all delighted Irena, but she tired easily and leaned on my arm as we walked to the shore through a blaze of daffodils. Then we started our game. “You first,” she said, “tell me about the sitting room in your villa.” So I described again the light, the sea sounds, the oil paintings and marble busts, the glitter of crystal and silver. One day we’d take tea there, I promised. After Casimir and Anna came and we all were rich, we’d go by steamship to Naples and even climb Vesuvius.
“Your turn,” I said. We sat on a bench, where with halting English and little sketches in my notebook she told a folktale of an ancient dragon by the river. “It’s a happy story,” Irena insisted. “Not all dragons are bad.” We debated this point in pictures and words, laughing until a coughing fit overtook her. People walking past frowned and hurried on, pulling their jackets close.
“I’ll bring Casimir and Anna here to the park,” Irena said, panting. He had finished his apprenticeship and bought a fine set of butcher knives for America. Once they came, Anna’s secret recipe for sausage would make their fortune in Cleveland. “Everything will be good,” she gasped. “We’ll all dress up to see you graduate from high school.”
That would be wonderful, I said, so wonderful. When we got home late in the afternoon, Irena said she’d rest a little before dinner. I watched her slowly mount the stairs, gripping the banister.
“She looks more flushed,” Roseanne whispered. “And isn’t she coughing more? Was there wind by the lake? Maybe you shouldn’t have taken her.” I swear I hadn’t noticed the change. Irena was happy that day, freed from her prison of buttons. She’d said so over and over.
“You did well,” Donato told me later. “If she was happy, that’s the important thing. Don’t mind Roseanne. Come, look what I just bought.” He showed me traveling clothes he’d send to his wife and daughter in Italy. “They’re coming soon. I’m such a lucky man.” No, I thought, his wife and daughter, they’re the lucky ones.
Irena and I never took another walk. Each day after school when I hurried upstairs to her room she seemed weaker. Her fevers grew more frequent. Sweat beaded across her forehead, and small efforts made her pant. “I’m sorry,” said Roseanne, “but she’ll have to eat alone. I can’t let her infect the other boarders.”
I got a visiting nurse to come. “It’s pneumonia,” she told me in the parlor. “Lucia, I won’t lie to you. More than one in three die once the panting stage begins. Keep her warm. A pot of steaming water in her room might ease the breathing.” Scarcely breathing myself, I confessed our walk. Was she sick because of me?
“No, of course not,” the nurse said kindly. “Pneumonia comes creeping up. It’s been with her for weeks, perhaps months. Give her rest and calm and we’ll hope for the best.”
“How can she have rest and be calm if she has to work and pay rent?” I demanded of Miss Miller. “It’s impossible.”
“Is it really? Can’t anybody help your friend?”
Perhaps the situation wasn’t hopeless, I realized while walking home. If one in three died, then two in three did not. Irena might still make some buttons, and the others might be negotiated. Iszak, one of our boarders, knew a little Russian and spoke to her dealer. He seemed truly sorry for her illness but had already done Irena the favor of buying her embroidered jacket at “an excellent price.”
“She sold it?” I gasped. Anna’s wedding present, her great pride? So often, after the night’s last button, she’d unpack that jacket and run her fingers over its fine embroidery.
Iszak and the Russian conferred. “She has been behind in her quota for weeks,” Iszak explained. “And there are other women who want this work.”
“I see. Thank him please, Iszak. But tell him the buttons will be made.”
For two weeks, Irena delivered her quota. On warm, moist days she could still rouse herself to work. I raced through homework to help her at night and made buttons on the weekends instead of scribing. Yolanda sometimes helped, eager to leave her crowded flat. Henryk brought over a pot of his mother’s cabbage and chicken soup. “She says it’s magic,” he reported. “For sure it’s very good.” Irena thanked him gratefully.
“We all have to help her make buttons,” I announced in the parlor while Irena lay coughing upstairs.
“And just why do we all have to help her?” Roseanne demanded.
“Because she has nobody else, because—”
“Because Lucia will keep asking until we agree,” Donato finished.
“I’m not dipping all day and making buttons at night,” Mamma said, “but I’ll sing for you.” In the end, even Iszak helped, and Roseanne let me pop corn for a treat.
“Thank you,” Irena gasped when we met the week’s quota. “When Casimir comes we—make you—Polish feast.”
I felt her racing pulse. “Yes of course, but try to sleep now.”
Donato stopped me in the hallway; on that kind and somber face I read his thoughts. “Lucia, you made a party out of nothing and we helped for a week, but you know this can’t go on.” Yes, I knew.
On a windy Monday morning she was so much worse that I stayed home from school, dosing her with warm tea and honey. A tree branch tapped against the window glass. “Death Angel knocking,” she whispered. “Bury me in—dark blue dress.” She pointed weakly at a drawer. “Tell Casimir I waited.”
“Irena, don’t talk that way.”
Roseanne called me to the kitchen. “Lucia, I’ve done all I can for your friend, we all have. Now you know what you have to do.” I knew.
When Mamma came home, we bundled Irena in blankets an
d took her to Saint Vincent Charity Hospital. Her voice was a terrible rasp. “Lucia, candle—in hand—light my way.”
“Dear child,” said the nurse, “Our Lord’s holy light will lead you into glory when that time comes.” As she dressed Irena in a linen gown and tucked her into bed, I saw how deftly she took the pulse and felt her brow while brushing back the damp hair. “I am Sister Margaret,” she whispered. “You’re warm and safe with us.”
When I asked to stay the night, the sister refused. “You did quite right to bring her here, but now you must go home and rest to stay healthy yourself. You’re still in school?” I nodded. “Good. Then come tomorrow afternoon. And God bless your care of the sick.”
We took the last streetcar home. When Mamma had gone to bed, I rummaged in the kitchen for a thick candle and hid it in my pocket. Night passed slowly and the school hours crawled. “I said a rosary for her,” Yolanda said at recess, “but only one because then my little brother hid the beads. You look terrible, Lucia. Your eyes are red, and rain makes your hair too curly. Pinch your cheeks at least, so you aren’t so pale.”
After school I ran to the hospital. Sister Margaret had me hang up my wet jacket, take off my soggy shoes, and drink a cup of hot tea. Irena had passed a difficult night and was struggling for breath by morning. “The priest gave her last rites and she has morphine for pain. It won’t be long now, poor child. See her picking at the bedsheets?”
I sat by Irena’s bed, lit the candle, and wrapped her damp fingers around it. When her hand jerked, I managed to blow out the candle just as it fell clattering to the floor. Rummaging under the bed to retrieve it, I was overwhelmed by the closeness of death. Sister Margaret found me sobbing.
She helped me to my chair. “There now, if she wants a candle, she’ll have one, but let’s not start fires. What’s your name, child?”
“Lucia D’Angelo.”
“Precisely, your friend’s guardian angel. But, Lucia, if you are to be her angel, you must remember that the dying can still hear, almost to the end. Your tears will hold her back. The Call is coming very soon, and you must not keep her from Our Lord.”
“Sister, I’ve never . . .”
“Never sat at a deathbed?” I shook my head. “Wait here.” She hurried away and returned with a sturdy candlestick holder, relit the candle, and set it by the bed. “Our Lord will not suffer us to walk in darkness. He is even now preparing a place for Irena, beyond all trouble and pain. You can remember this for her sake?” I nodded. “Fix on the light, Lucia, and know that He is near.”
Breathe, breathe, I heard Mamma’s voice repeating. Somehow the hours passed. After work, Henryk came. Mamma came, Yolanda, Roseanne, and Donato. Irena died soon after the chapel bells tolled nine o’clock. Sister Margaret closed her eyes and let us kiss her. “But you all must leave now,” she said firmly. “We need the bed for another patient. We’ll wash her body and give her a good pine coffin. Our hospital priest says a funeral mass for the week’s dead on Sunday afternoon and she’ll be buried decently.”
“With a headstone?” I asked.
“The field is consecrated, but it’s a common grave.”
“We can buy her a plot and a headstone,” I began, but Mamma, Roseanne, and even Yolanda shook their heads.
“They’re expensive, fifty dollars or more,” Sister Margaret warned.
I swallowed. So there would be no headstone, no marker of Irena’s life. “Sister, she asked to be buried in her blue dress. Can we do that, at least?”
“If you hurry. We have many bodies to wash. If you’re not back in time, we’ll have to put her in a linen shift.” Donato ran with me to the streetcar, home and back to the hospital. By then the others had left. The sisters took Irena’s dress but wouldn’t let us see her.
“You’re exhausted, poor girl,” said Donato. “Let me take you to Lula’s Tavern for a hot cider. It’s nearby.” At first I hesitated, never having been inside a tavern, but he and Paolo, Roseanne said, were two men one could trust in the world, so I let myself be taken to Lula’s and settled in a corner booth of the smoky, wood-lined room.
I assumed that Donato would open his wallet and show me yet again the photographs of his wife and baby girl. Then I would tell him once more how beautiful they were and how happy I’d be to meet them. Instead he took my hand and said earnestly: “Lucia, she had a priest at the end and will have a funeral mass. She’ll be buried in consecrated ground. If her brother comes, perhaps he can buy the headstone. Or later on, if you finish high school and get a good job, perhaps you could buy one yourself.”
So much perhaps, so many ifs pressed on me. I slumped in the booth. “Donato, she had such a sad life in America. All the things we’d planned—”
A big-boned Negro woman of uncertain age eased her way to our table. “Looks like someone had herself a hard day.”
“She did, Miss Lula. We just came from the hospital where Lucia’s good friend died.”
When Lula leaned down, her gas-lit face glowed like amber. “What took your friend away, child?”
“Pneumonia,” I managed.
“Ah, just like my man Albert. Sweet Jesus rest his soul. It’s a hard way to go, but they’re both in a better place now.” I nodded wearily. “You need something warm in you,” Lula said, signaling to the waiter. “My melted beer cheese on toast won’t fix your heart, but it’s good for the rest of you.” When Donato reached for his wallet, she shook her head. “On the house. If it was anybody else with such a pretty little girl, I would have thought, Uh-uh, trouble coming. But, Donato, you’re different.” She smiled and nudged him. “You got a nice young brother back home for Lucia here, or an old one for me?” Donato reddened but shook his head. She laughed. “Never mind, but you take this child back to her mamma soon, hear? We get a rough crowd with the shift change. Now, Lucia—”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“You call me Lula, like everybody does, and you stop and see me anytime you want in the daytime. I’ve been around Cleveland a long time. I know some things. And I like Italian girls. I knew one years ago. That Irma saw some trouble, like you’re seeing now. But she’s doing good these days in California.” Lula touched a brooch with roses twined through a golden heart. “She sent me this when my Albert passed.” A wave of new customers drew Lula away, but the melted cheese and warm cider were comforting.
We sent a telegram to Casimir at an address I found in Irena’s room. Sunday was rainy and cool when Yolanda, Donato, and I went to the hospital chapel for Irena’s funeral. Henryk’s father needed him; Mamma and Roseanne were feeling poorly and hadn’t come.
Ten pine coffins had been neatly stacked in the sanctuary with their names painted on the lids. Four were full size; six held children. Families of the dead clustered together as a sleepy priest gave the mass. Then he hurried away through a side door. A sexton loaded the coffins on a cart. The common grave site would be announced “in due time,” he said, but we must leave now. The chapel was needed for a wedding.
“You did all you could,” Yolanda reminded me as we walked home. “She died with friends. And you’re not alone now; you have me. We don’t have to draw pictures to understand each other.” Of course a common language and memories of home were powerful bonds. Yet with pictures and buttons and stumbling English phrases, I’d given Irena secrets I’d never voiced in Italian. She knew my dreams for college and never laughed at them. When I spoke of Mamma’s fits and temper, she held my hands and let me fret. I didn’t know until that cold, wet walk home how much I owed and needed her. But Yolanda’s anxious face was searching mine. “No,” I agreed, “we don’t need pictures for talking.”
Of course I understood that Irena’s room couldn’t be left empty. Roseanne would store Irena’s things for a while in case Casimir came, but the room must be cleaned and rented out again. “We’ll take it,” Mamma announced.
“It’s fifty cents more a week,” I protested. “We can stay where we are until we’ve paid back the countess.”
; “Come outside, Lucia. We’ll talk about it.” Walking up and down our street, we had a furious argument, our worst yet in America. “Listen to me,” Mamma said loudly. “We deserve that room more than the countess deserves our fifty cents.”
“We promised to pay her back. And that room was my friend’s.”
“Now it can be ours. Don’t you care that after working all day to keep you in school, I have to sleep in a coffin?” Her voice rose. When neighbors came to their windows to watch us like a show, I gave up, exhausted and embarrassed by her fury.
After relating “our” decision, Mamma hugged and kissed me. “You’ll see, Lucia. We’ll be happy.” That evening she scrubbed the front room until it reeked of borax, ammonia, and lemon oil. I still saw and felt Irena in the shadows, but Mamma was right: the old room was a coffin, and the bright morning light in the new one was a blessing. Donato dragged home a battered desk from his shop. I boxed up a cache of Irena’s buttons, her rosary, Bible, and framed prints of Poland for Casimir and wrote to Countess Elisabetta, explaining that we would repay her but needed a little more time. She thanked us for our diligence and sent a spray of dried lavender to perfume our room.
“You see?” said Mamma. “That wasn’t hard.”
Casimir never answered our telegram. If he had made other plans, perhaps it was better that Irena never knew this. I went back to scribing and studied hard to make up for missed schoolwork. As we drew close to the end of the year, the school principal said I might skip a grade if I studied on my own that summer. Yes, I said, I’d gladly do that. If Mamma lost her job or quit, as she often threatened to do, if she was hurt or sick, I’d have to go to work. Skipping a grade would hurry my graduation.
“Why does a diploma matter so much?” Yolanda asked. “You don’t need it for a job.”
“For a good job I do. And I want to graduate.” I wanted it for myself; it was the first prize I’d wanted so steadily. I wanted it for Irena’s sake. I wanted to be able to care for Mamma if I had to work for both of us. And if I had a chance for college, I’d need a high school diploma.
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