In school we ran in place each hour to keep our feet from freezing. Rich women knit scratchy gray mufflers that signaled us as charity cases. “If they really wanted to help poor folks, they’d send around free coal,” Roseanne muttered. Exactly as she had predicted, clothes froze on the lines outside as fast as we could hang them, creaking in the wind like metal sheets. How could it be that once on Christmas day in Naples, wearing only shawls over linen gowns, we sat on our flat rock without freezing, drinking wine and eating marzipan? Last summer we slept soaked in sweat. It seemed that heat had left the world forever.
Hard cold brought Mamma new troubles at Stingler’s. First came the day she was late to work because a horse pulling a load of beer kegs slipped on ice and fell across the streetcar tracks, overturning his wagon. A keg split open, slicking the ice with beer. In the tumult of men slopping after rolling kegs and frantic, rearing horses, her streetcar couldn’t pass. She ran to work but was late and fined a half day’s pay. Still she had to dip all morning or lose her job completely.
“Promptness is paramount,” Mamma mimicked that evening at dinner, thrusting out her chest and peering down her nose at us. “They say every cockroach is beautiful to its own mother. Ha! I bet even Milly hated Little Stingler.”
“It’s not fair they didn’t pay and still made you work,” I protested at dinner. Mamma flared at me. “Fair! You think that little bastard cares about fair? Of course I worked without pay. Don’t you have to stay in school? Don’t we have to pay our rent? Pass the potatoes!” In bed that night, she turned against the wall, her shoulders heaving, her muttering like distant, roiling water.
Guilt washed over me. She had raced down icy streets only to be fined. She sat for hours hunched over steaming vats. She had no Vesuvius for comfort, no warm bay for swimming, no fella or friends that I knew of, only an old player piano for pleasure. I had school, books, the company of friends, and my diploma dreams. How could I ease her life? Even if I went to work, I’d never make enough to support us. Girls were paid less than women, who earned less than men or even boys for the same work. As she drifted to sleep, I wrapped my arms around her against the piercing cold.
Wrapping her. Yes! I could buy her a warm coat like the ones in Higbee’s window for seven dollars. Watching the first flakes of yet another snowfall, I pawed through schemes to earn seven dollars. Not scribing: that money went to Roseanne for the rising cost of coal. As the night sky gleamed with snow, it came to me that I could polish silver for pay.
Last week, I’d overheard Miss Miller complaining to a wealthy Hiram House patron that the family’s silver was a disgrace; their butler was quite incompetent. Paolo had taken pains to train me for this task. I knew just how much fine English polishing cream to apply, how long to let it sit, and how to buff with soft cloths until my face pooled in every spoon. I could clean neglected silver, uncovering intricate designs in what had seemed merely gray knobs of tarnish.
The next day I drew Miss Miller aside to make my offer: I’d polish two cabinets of silver until they shone like moons for seven dollars, streetcar fare, and lunch on the two days I estimated this work would require.
“Three and a half dollars a day!” whistled Yolanda. “My father makes less than that. Does she feel sorry for you?”
“I don’t care. I just want a coat.”
The next Saturday I went to the Millers’ back door and was bustled in by Agnes the cook, a sharp-angled woman whose odd accent, she explained proudly, came from Boston. She brought me to the butler’s pantry, where a long table was heaped with platters, tureens, vases, pitchers, candlesticks, and silverware. Jars of English cream had been set out, neatly folded flannel cloths, and a plate with two thick slices of buttered bread. “No point working hungry,” she said. “I’m in the kitchen if you need anything.”
I set to polishing. With blessed warmth, a steady kitchen chatter of servants, and an abundant lunch of veal stew with cabbage, it was deep into the afternoon before I stopped to shake out the cramps of work. “You’ve been slaving like a Trojan, my girl,” Agnes called from the kitchen. “Come get some hot cocoa and oatcakes.”
She was an eager gossip and I was a fresh ear. “If Mr. Miller had known his daughter would come back all fired up to teach immigrants,” Agnes began, “he’d never have sent her to Vassar College. But she’ll marry soon and have a great house of her own. Richard Livingston’s family made a fortune in limestone. He’s sweet on her, and Miss Edith’s a lovely girl. As you could be, Lucia, if you got yourself fixed up.”
I thanked her, took another oatcake, and exclaimed over it to hide my astonishment. Miss Miller had told us often and earnestly that teaching immigrants was her life’s calling. Now it seemed we were only a private charity before a splendid marriage, a harmless diversion, like tennis, golf, or watercolors.
The butcher’s boy dragged in crates of meat, stamping his feet and sniffing cocoa in the warm kitchen air. “It’s the blasted Arctic out there,” he announced. “A dozen dead dogs and cats I saw today, frozen stiff as boards, a sight to sober up a tinker. Thank you, missus, very kind,” he finished, as Agnes handed him a steaming mug. He gulped it and left, hunched into the cold.
Anxious now to finish work and be home, I was buffing the last platter as Miss Miller swept into the pantry. Her lush red velvet gown dipped low in front, pinched at the waist, and flounced behind. Her hair was a mass of ringlets and loops. “There you are, Lucia,” she said in a high, breathy voice I’d never heard before. “Richard will be so cross that I’m late, but I just had to see those silver moons you told me about.” Hanging lights did make moons on the platters, while vases, tureens, and pitchers reflected the gleaming red of her gown, black sheen of hair, and long loops of pearls against a creamy chest. At Hiram House, Miss Miller was always modestly, even severely dressed in high starched collars and dark woolen skirts. Was that penance for her other, gilded life?
“Mother will be delighted,” she said, counting out my first day’s pay and streetcar fare from a beaded purse. “Someone who served a countess is cleaning our silver. Be careful in the cold now, Lucia. Hurry home and we’ll expect you in the morning.” With instructions to Agnes for Sunday’s tea in the conservatory, she was gone, trailing a heavy scent of roses. Her voice turned high and tinkling as she called out to Richard.
Out of the habit of constant work, my arms were stiff as stone as I put on my coat, gray muffler, and the woolen socks I used as mittens. In the long wait for a streetcar, cold winds flew down Euclid Avenue, drilling me like icy spikes. All the warmer inner seats were taken; I was pressed against ice-caked windows. Stamping my feet, clenching my fists inside the too-thin socks, I endured the ride, consoled by the weight of $3.50 in a cloth bag around my neck.
I reached the boardinghouse just before Mamma returned from her Saturday shift. Roseanne sat me by the kitchen stove. “Don’t move until you thaw,” she said, “and don’t rub or your skin comes off. You’d think rich folks would send you back in one of their fancy automobiles. Ask if they will tomorrow.” I didn’t ask, and in Sunday’s bustle of service for Miss Miller’s tea, there was no break for cocoa and oatcakes. Still, in the frigid ride home, I had something better: the rest of my seven dollars.
Yolanda came with me to Higbee’s so I wouldn’t choose “something awful.” She had been moody and anxious since Christmas. Charlie was still hovering, kind and attentive, still calling her his “dear Italian sweet,” but, with various vague excuses, had never taken her home.
“Why can’t I meet his parents? What’s wrong with me?” she demanded as we went through the racks at Higbee’s. When I suggested that Charlie’s mother might prefer an American “sweet,” Yolanda announced that she didn’t want to talk about Charlie anymore. She pulled me toward a black coat with a short gray cape attached. “They call this a ‘capelet,’ new this season,” she explained. “Very dashing, don’t you think? That’s what Americans say: dashing. But it’s seven and a half dollars.”
A clerk bor
e down on us. “Are you girls just looking or are you here to buy?”
I set my heavy purse of quarters on the counter with a thud. “To buy,” I said, “here or in some other store.”
“I was only asking, miss, since I heard you talking Eye-talian.”
“I’ll buy in American if you have that style in a dashing color.”
He stepped back. “We do, yes, miss, over here.” We chose burgundy with a deep blue capelet, not the winter’s endless black and gray. With fifty cents more from my scribing, I paid and had him wrap my prize. It made a satisfyingly bulky bundle as Yolanda and I walked the long way home.
“Remember, don’t talk about Charlie,” she warned. But I saw how hungrily she stared at an American couple stepping out of a motorcar and an Italian couple laughing as they scrambled over ink-black humps of frozen slush.
“Thank you for helping with the coat,” I said to distract her. “My mother will love it. She’ll have the finest coat at Stingler’s.”
Yolanda’s eyes swung back to mine. “She might need another job soon.”
“What?” My stomach clenched.
“Stingler’s could be making peanut clusters instead of chocolates and caramels. The swirls don’t come right if the dipping room’s too cold, and Little Stingler’s too cheap to heat it. Anyway, peanut clusters cost less.”
I hugged my bundle closer. “How do you know all this?”
We were crossing an icy patch. Yolanda walked cautiously as she spoke. “My friend Marta heard Little Stingler talking to the foreman about letting some of the dippers go. She could be wrong. Her English isn’t good. But if she’s right, your mother’s in trouble. First: anybody can make peanut clusters. Second: he likes dippers with small children. Even better if they have small children and no husband. Those women have to work.”
“So does Mamma.”
Yolanda veered around a shoeshine boy. “So you really don’t know?”
I grabbed her sleeve. “Know what?”
She dropped her voice, nearly hissing. “The other dippers make Little Stingler want to keep them. They do, let’s say, private things for him. Your mother won’t. He’s kept her on so far just because she’s so fast at dipping. But with clusters everything’s different.”
“Private things?” I repeated dully. “You mean the girls have to—” A heavy weight filled my stomach, as if I’d swallowed lead.
“Yes. They do different things, depending on what he can get. Of course, on Old Stingler’s good days, Little Cock has to behave himself.”
I stopped, nearly vomiting onto the black snow, sucking at the frigid air until I could walk again. I imagined Little Stingler lurking by the washroom, ordering girls to his office, keeping them late, making them come early, even pulling them from the dipping line as friends pretended not to see. I saw greedy hands pushed under skirts or resting paternally on shoulders and then slipping down. I saw red-faced girls returning to their posts, frantically smoothing skirts while others looked away, each one thinking: Will it be me tomorrow? I saw Mamma twisting free, dodging, snapping, snarling, making him turn to easier prey, but stirring up resentment at her “insolence.” Perhaps each girl’s shame reminded Mamma of what she’d endured on the seaweed. Meanwhile I’d curled around my books, suspecting nothing. Being so ignorant of Miss Miller’s gilded life paled to nothing; I didn’t know my own mother’s life.
“Does Marta do those things?”
“She has to,” Yolanda said quietly. “The family needs her pay. Charlie promised that I’ll never work for Stingler’s.”
“I see.” No wonder Mamma sang and talked to herself. No wonder she came home bad-tempered and exhausted. We’d reached Yolanda’s flat.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have told you. I talked about it with Charlie. We weren’t sure.”
“No, you did right. And don’t worry. You’ll meet Charlie’s parents and they’ll love you.” We kissed at parting as we always did, but quickly, brushing icy cheeks before she flew upstairs to her crowded flat.
How could I study, waiting for Mamma’s return? And what recompense was a wool coat with a silly capelet? Still, I laid out the coat on our bed and straightened our room until I heard her in the entryway speaking to Roseanne. When she came in, her face stiff and shoulders stooped, I pointed at the coat.
“For me?” She walked slowly to the bed and stroked the thick, soft wool. “You polished silver for this?” I nodded. “It’s perfect, Lucia. Thank you. I never had anything so beautiful.”
When she bit her lip, turning away, I couldn’t hold on to my secret: “Yolanda told me what Little Stingler makes girls do.”
She sat down, wrapping the burgundy sleeves around her waist. “Why talk about that bastard? It would just make me want to hurt him, like I hurt Count Filippo. Or worse, because he hurt so many girls. Then where would we go? But it doesn’t matter now.” She pushed the coat away. “He said he had to get rid of some girls and he was already paying me too much. Then today . . .”
“What about today?” I heard my own heart pounding.
She stood up so suddenly the bed thumped. “Nothing. I don’t want to talk about it. I’m fired but at least I got paid for the week. Old Stingler made him do that much.” Her eyes were wild and frightening. “I’ll never make the same money anywhere else. My English isn’t good like yours, and I can’t trim pretty hats.” She looked at the coat. “We’ll sell it.” She paced the room, walking into my desk so hard that my chair fell over.
“No. I’ll leave school and work.” Anything, anything to calm her.
She shook her head. “You have to finish and get that diploma.” The dinner bell rang. We said nothing to the others, but afterward Mamma sent me upstairs while she spoke to Roseanne. I stared at my book until she returned and announced: “The kitchen girl was fired for stealing coffee. I’ll clean here for two weeks. If you help on weekends, we can almost pay our room and board. Roseanne will forgive us the difference ‘for Paolo’s sake.’ ” Mamma smiled slightly. Then her face stiffened. “I’ll look for work at the garment factories. Cold doesn’t matter there.”
“Mamma—”
“I need to walk.”
“Let me come with you.”
“No!” She yanked on the new coat and was gone. I sat with my book by the drafty window until past midnight, when I saw her coming home. That was the beginning of her night walks and my long vigils.
“So, I’m a servant again,” she said in the morning, pulling her Naples work smock from our trunk, binding her hair tightly, and covering it with a scarf. I ached to see her do these things.
“When I finish high school,” I promised in what became my steady litany, “I’ll get a good job and you won’t have to work. We’ll have a piano—”
“The rugs need beating,” she said. “At least here nobody touches me.”
That afternoon I was late coming home after scribing for a new wave of immigrants. When I opened our front door, cleaning smells poured out: ammonia, linseed and lemon oil, borax and bleach. The parlor shone. The wooden banister gleamed like honey in sunshine. Even the brass coat hooks were polished. Roseanne showed me the dining room. The oak table was a sleek golden pond; windows sparkled. She ran her finger along the wainscoting and looked around in wonder, even dismay.
“What’s wrong? Everything’s clean. Isn’t that what you wanted?” I demanded.
“She’s so fast. It’s not normal.”
“She had to be fast at the villa. It was big and had to be clean all the time. Aren’t you grateful? Look at this room. Look at the glass on this china cabinet, like you could reach in and touch the plates.”
“That’s true,” Roseanne admitted, “but it’s like she’s angry at the floors, at the glass and furniture, as if she’s possessed somehow. Was it like this in Naples?”
“There’s nothing wrong with her,” I said as crisply as I could. Wouldn’t anyone enduring work and then the loss of work at Stingler’s be angry? And wouldn’t it be natural to hurl that an
ger against furniture and glass?
I tried talking to Mamma after dinner, but she merely snapped: “I’m tired of cleaning. I’m going out.” When she finally came to bed, the bleach on her skin stung my eyes. On the third day she attacked the cellar, hauling out years of broken furniture, moldy books and clothing. I described to Yolanda this frenzy of work and refusal to talk about Stingler’s.
“It’s not normal,” Yolanda agreed. “And she’ll run out of things to clean.”
The next week, we found relief. Mamma got work at Printz-Biederman, and Roseanne hired a somber Irish girl named Elsie with good references. Mamma would be making ten dollars a week. The bosses didn’t ask for “favors”; all they wanted was finished coats and dresses. But she’d have to rent her sewing machine from the company and buy thread and needles. It would take years to own the machine. “It’s harder work than dipping, for a dollar less,” she said, walking wearily to the piano. I’d help, I promised. I’d start right away.
Agnes arranged weekend work for me at the Millers’. Dressed in a crisp black uniform, I became a waitress for parties, teas, and dinners. I had another job as well: when ladies gathered in the conservatory, they wanted tales of Countess Elisabetta, the count, and “all their noble friends.” At first I resisted. My people weren’t storybook figures. As much as I hated the count, his pains were real. But Mrs. Miller expected these tales and, Agnes hinted, might reward them with tips.
“Will those silly ladies ever meet the countess?” Roseanne demanded.
“No.”
“Well then?”
I read my answer in her smile. Of course! Invent. On streetcar rides to work, I concocted tales of fabulous parties and midnight dances with moonlight frosting the bay, picnics on Vesuvius and balls at the palace of King Victor Emmanuel. Maestro Arturo Toscanini played piano for my countess; he adored her. I described precious gifts from an adoring count: cameos the size of my palm, ivory combs and coral vases, enormous bouquets of delicate porcelain flowers, marble busts of her as the Greek goddess Diana. The ladies were entranced. Before banquets I was to suggest points of “refined service” to the butler, which he attended politely when his mistress was nearby and then blithely ignored. For this I was paid well, fed, and given food left over from parties.
Swimming in the Moon Page 9