Lilli de Jong

by Janet Benton

  I took a spot along the wall and sat upon my valise. The man to my right coughed in his sleep; the cough and the large scrofula on his neck showed he was consumptive. A skinny, buck-toothed, hot-faced woman called for water; someone brought it. Charlotte drank and slept. Despite my fear, I managed to doze—but I woke soon to fingers groping and scratching at my neck, then pulling on the string of my purse.

  I slapped away the wily hand in terror. The body slithered into the darkness beneath a set of stairs, and I didn’t dare pursue it. Then Charlotte began to kick. When I peered into the shawl, she flashed her tongue-revealing smile! My heart opened like an oyster, baring its tender part.

  I fed and changed her and dozed again. But the cries of the thirsty woman woke me. Again she begged for water. A fountain bubbled close by, so I filled the chipped cup from Margaret and brought it to the woman. There was an ashen dryness to her skin. When she took the cup, the heat of fever touched my hand.

  Fearing whatever disease she carried, which Charlotte would be especially vulnerable to, I had a nightmare-ridden sleep. At dawn I opened my eyes to the legs of a railroad policeman whose foot was nudging me awake.

  “Move on out,” he said. “The decent folk are coming.”

  Already passengers were entering with trunks and crates, and clustering at ticket counters. The sick woman appeared deep in slumber when the policeman reached her spot. But his efforts to wake her brought no response. While I changed Charlotte and applied lanolin to her sore, the woman’s small, death-heavy body was loaded onto a baggage cart and pushed toward the carriage area. No doubt she’d be dumped in a hole in a pauper’s field.

  I pulled my body to the street, with Charlotte and the valise. I was afraid to pass another night at the station, so at gathering points I asked vagrants to tell me of inexpensive lodging houses. The ones who answered knew of places for men only; others were too impaired by drink or infirmity to help. I asked after a room at several decent-appearing taverns and was informed by gruff barkeeps that a woman on her own, even a widow with a baby as I’d claimed to be, would likely draw unsavory interest and danger there.

  I kept marching and reached a peaceful block of brick row-houses on Clinton Street. Before one house, a carved wooden sign read THE WHISPERING PINES, WOMEN’S LODGING. My hope refreshed, I climbed a narrow stoop and rang the bell.

  A crisp-mannered maid welcomed me into the foyer, which was clean and airy. Then the middle-aged proprietress arrived, puffing as she descended the carpeted stairs, struggling for breath against her tight-laced corset. I identified myself as a widow, and she asked to see my baby. Pulling back the shawl, I kissed my baby’s forehead, aiming but failing to bring on her liveliness.

  The startled proprietress inquired as to my husband’s name, the date and place of his death, whether I could produce a death certificate, how I planned to pay the lodging cost, whether I had steady work, why my family hadn’t taken us in—and I stumbled in my answers. She pursed her lips and sniffed, as if detecting my lies by scent—or, more likely, confirming my lack of a place to bathe. Then she dismissed me.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “We’re unable to shelter those without work and upstanding reputations.”

  I was foolish to have dreamed of any other response at such a clean, pleasant location.

  I returned to Broad Street Station, where I sit now, shielded from public view by a baggage cart, scribbling fast while Charlotte rests.

  To my eyes, Charlotte and I are still cleaner than the other vagrants. But a string of sobering facts is evident. The longer one is homeless, the dirtier one becomes. The dirtier one becomes, the less charity one attracts. The less charity one attracts, the more likely one is never to rise from the street.

  Yet how can I stop us from becoming unsalvageable, when I can only move in circles: changing Charlotte’s diaper and blanket, discarding the used ones because I have nowhere to clean them, buying old bedsheets and rags from a cart and ripping them into squares for diapers and blankets with the aid of my penknife, finding an alley in which to relieve myself, nursing Charlotte, finding water to drink, changing Charlotte and applying lanolin, finding water in which to wash her bottom and my hands, nursing her, buying rags, tearing them into diapers and blankets, buying something of poor quality to eat. These tasks alone could keep me occupied today, tomorrow, and for weeks to come, without our making any progress.

  How can I even think of making progress? Each time I nurse, I float into a state of depletion such that I can hardly form a thought, much less a plan. In fact, without a pencil in hand, I can’t think at all.

  What keeps me from complete despair is Charlotte. Her diarrhea is less frequent; her appetite increases; her look grows keener. Each improvement is a drop of water for the parched seedling that is my heart.

  Sixth Month 9

  To be the gainer of charity, one loses more than I knew.

  This morning I set out to learn how to survive on the street. I sat in one place and then another, watching, with Charlotte quiet against me. And one thing that shocked me was the many children who spend their days begging and roaming. They are tough and persistent, following quick-moving targets with a repeated “Change for food?” or “Black your boots, sir?” (These ones have boot-blacking kits banging against their short legs.) Many persons drop coins into their hands. Some even sit upon the proffered stool for a boot blacking, despite an unclean rag and poor-quality polish.

  These children sweep steps, unbidden, and demand a coin when someone leaves or enters. They sell oranges, newspapers, or pencils. Only the rare ones wear shoes: old boots with flapping soles, or slippers ill suited for the streets. Some wrap their feet in newspaper or rags. It affects me most to see their faces—anxious, cunning, and preternaturally alert, except when they withdraw from the press of traffic to count their coins; then the softness of their youth overtakes them.

  Despite their chant of “Change for food?” I haven’t seen them buying victuals. Rather, they pick up packets of cart food that others drop after taking their fill. In my great hunger, I’ve begun following their lead.

  The first time I reached to the ground, I was ashamed. But in the paper packet lay two warm chestnuts, whose buttery richness spread over my tongue. I reached eagerly for the next packet; in it sat a bit of salted pretzel, slightly damp—I tried not to think from what.

  I might still find a room to let, if I had the money. To get it, I’d need to beg. So I looked for a place and chose a stately market house on Sixteenth Street. Perhaps a dozen others sat on squares of cloth before it, some holding paper signs attesting to the events that had rendered them homeless. When I’d walked through Germantown with Mother, we’d sometimes encountered such persons displaying their troubles; she’d complain of the city’s lax rules against vagrancy and begging, which excepted from arrest anyone who was blind, deaf, dumb, maimed, or crippled, along with women and minor children. Because of this leniency, she said, a stroll in the streets could be heartrending, and such persons were not motivated to seek a better solution to their poverty. Mother preferred to help through institutions or with direct assistance to people in their homes—for people who had homes.

  But what of those who didn’t?

  I drew closer to the outer wall of the market building, grief and defiance mingling in my heart. As I reached to open my valise, Charlotte startled in the sling of my shawl, then sank back. I tore a page from this notebook and wrote, “Please help a widow and her infant.” Then I claimed a spot among our new tribe, nodding in greeting to the others and drawing stares. I anchored the sign on the ground with the chipped cup from Margaret, which thus became our begging cup. And behind it I sat, my valise beneath me, becoming one more still point of neediness on a street thick with vehicles, any one of which might have careened onto the sidewalk and crushed us.

  My whole being was aflutter at the strangeness, yet Charlotte barely stirred against me.

  Children in rags sat nearby. One boy wore a tattered shirt and trouser
s; his bare calves were covered in burns. A girl with one foot bent sideways carried the remains of braids in her hair, perhaps put there by some caring hand. She sat upon a crate, holding to her flat chest a boy too young to walk.

  My mother and her charitable friends had spoken of some parents maiming their children in order to live off the pity they inspired. Could these children have been harmed by intent, to loosen purses?

  A sob escaped my throat. How could Helen de Jong’s own daughter and granddaughter have become figures in this tableau of tragedy? If Mother could have passed by and observed our abjectness, and if she’d known the source of our predicament, I wondered if she might have laid it all upon my sinful appetite and withheld her coin.

  To the right of my spot lay a man on a wool blanket, his crutches beside him, drinking from a metal flask. He was missing a foot; his scrawled sign revealed he’d lost it in the war. He stank of liquor and unwashed flesh. It seemed he hadn’t noticed me until his arm shot out in my direction, proffering the flask. I declined, shuddering to think of placing my mouth over that dark hole and sucking down its enfeebling poison.

  “Think yer too good for rotgut?” snarled the man. He adjusted the wad of chewing tobacco in his cheek and spit its juice into the street, fixing his half-closed eyes upon me.

  In fact, I did think I was too good for it. I stared downward until he released me from his gaze. Yet who am I to say that the bottle wouldn’t make a fine companion, after a prolonged time of despair and neglect? My father chose it, in far less dire conditions.

  All through this, well-dressed servants were stepping past with empty baskets. They walked into the market doors, then emerged laden with foodstuffs and small coins. Beggars nearest to the doors did the best at collecting, but some market goers were not moved by pity until they reached my cup. They tossed in pennies that clanked and settled. I didn’t like to meet their glances, ashamed at how low I’d fallen, but I quietly called my thanks. When a plump-armed maid held out a fresh bun to me, however, I could see the deftly embroidered flowers upon her dress, and I was drawn to look up. Her pink face showed a mix of distaste and pity.

  No doubt I’d looked at many vagrants in that way. The chewed bits of bun scraped and dragged as they fell to my stomach.

  Then a street boy ran by, yelling “Coppers!” Beggars rose or were helped to rise. An old woman croaked to me, “Shove off!” So I thrust the cup and sign into my pocket and stepped away with Charlotte and my valise, flowing like water into the passing crowd. I followed the old woman; on coming close, I tapped her shoulder. She turned with a hard look.

  “Why did we need to leave?” I asked. “Aren’t most of us excepted from the vagrancy laws?”

  “Excepted?” She opened her mouth to gape, revealing several holes where teeth had been. “You hain’t been carted in yet? Every one of us that has two legs, even the blind, gets charged with vagrancy and three months’ labor if we’re hauled before the magistrate.”

  “But that isn’t the law!” I said. “My mother told me it isn’t!”

  “I don’t care what law they write. This is what they do.” She spit. “Yer mother put you up ta begging?”

  “Oh, no.” I blushed.

  “Well, best get back to Mother and tell her this: the laws and magistrates don’t hardly meet no more.” She gave a vicious laugh that ended with a fit of coughing.

  The law may be more fair in Germantown, or else we hadn’t bothered noticing how the beggars’ numbers rose and fell.

  I gained thirteen cents for my humiliation. Hardly the way to get money for a room. But I will buy myself an apple.

  Sixth Month 11

  Today was better, though it began strangely.

  With Charlotte in my lap, I sat among others in a corner of the train station, seeking to escape the throngs of travelers, when our group was accosted by a tall preacher with a stoop. He was clad in a faded suit that had half-moon stains beneath the armpits. Without any form of greeting, he raised his bent neck and began to shout lines I recognized from the Book of Job: “God has torn me in his wrath, and hated me….He broke me in two; he seized me by the neck and dashed me to pieces; he set me up as his target.” The preacher’s face, shiny with perspiration, beseeched his unwilling audience of paupers. “Have you known the wrath of God?”

  The curious and hostile eyes of young and old, sane and insane stared at him. Did he truly intend to set us up as miniature Jobs? Some vagrants nodded their heads grudgingly.

  The man wiped perspiration from his face and neck. “Job claimed he did nothing to deserve his punishment,” he shouted. “But he railed against God! He failed to accept his suffering as proof that he had sinned!” His visage sharpened; his nasal voice grew more penetrating. “For the innocent do not suffer! God only torments the wicked!”

  Around me, angry sighs were passed. Perhaps others felt, as I did, that this man had done a simpleton’s work on an unsolveable dilemma. Why do some suffer and some not? If only we could find reason in the distribution of agony and ease. Not to mention that it was not God, but God’s son Satan who’d sent Job’s torments down. He’d made a wager with God—a wager that he could turn God’s devoted servant Job against him.

  Job’s story hardly makes the case that suffering is sent down with an intended moral purpose.

  “Ah, shut yer mouth,” said a woman with yellow-white hair to the preacher. She spit on the ground and pressed her mouth tight. Two ragged young men rose from the floor, faced off with the man, then walked away, their muscled arms swinging at their sides. I trembled with the wish to challenge the simpleton—but this would have brought unwanted attention, not to mention that I’d never done such a thing publicly in my life. I rose, too, and left the station.

  For the afternoon, the world seemed pleasing. Perhaps from gladness at escaping that harangue and at remembering how everyone is vulnerable to hardship, a tenderness welled up in me toward all the living. I found a stillness within our transitory state, relishing the passing folk intent on business or recreation, and loving the familiar clip-clop of horses, freshly curried and brushed, as they pulled grocery wagons house to house, stopping to deliver milk or ice or bread. The odors of meals escaped through windows, and hunger cut into me. When a bakery wagon stopped, I lingered to stare, and a small boy seated between burlap sacks held up a hefty loaf.

  “Fifteen cents,” he called. I gave him a dime and a nickel and tucked the bread into the shawl, at Charlotte’s feet; she gazed down with curiosity. In a square crossed by footpaths and newly planted with trees, I sat and nursed her surreptitiously beneath my shawl, then ate piece after piece of bread.

  The day was steaming hot. A trio of baby robins hopped about, flapping stubby wings; their parents flitted near, nervous and attentive. I watched a nurse on a bench read a newspaper and watched her young charges kick a ball. The date on her paper was Sixth Month, Day 11. Charlotte would be three months old in eighteen days! She lay against me, observing those who crossed the park or sat there—the men in suits; the women in form-fitting polonaises, with bustles enlarging their backsides; the servants in uniform, intent on errands. And how improved she was already! She smiled at a woman’s jaunty parasol raised toward the sun and gurgled toward a pushcart vendor offering lemonade and peanuts. Her enthusiastic sounds caught the attention of a passing matron, who smiled into my baby’s eager face, and this recognition cheered me, beaming as it did across a vast divide of circumstances. When I returned us to the train station this evening, there was a hint of the relief one feels at arriving home.

  The station does offer more safety than any other place I know—apart from when a man ran through to warn that the police were making an obligatory sweep, and everyone evacuated for a short while. Usually the policemen look the other way, he said, since they depend on several among us who stay alert to goings-on and even report crimes.

  Sixth Month 12

  After another night of worried sleep, I took us from the train station this morning. I passed hours b
egging before the same market. I found packets to eat from the ground and drank heavily at a watering place for horses. Then I trod the sidewalks with a heavy gait, Charlotte in my shawl sling.

  In time, exhausted and seeking quiet, I followed a path between buildings and settled beside a brick building that appeared abandoned. Its windows were heavily shaded, and no sounds or odors came from within. On the side stoop I sat, with the valise beside me, and took the chance to admire the returning pink of Charlotte’s cheeks.

  A large man turned down the path and ambled toward us. My body bristled when his bleary eyes lit on me.

  “A harlot with a baby, eh?” He sneered, showing broken teeth.

  “No,” I replied, “an innocent mother who seeks only peace with thee.”

  “Then why’re ya sittin’ on the steps of a brothel?”

  Was he correct? The brick building showed no sign of that purpose. He stared at Charlotte, who was staring back. I raised my hand to cover her eyes, inadvertently drawing his attention to the gold locket at my throat.

  “Nice necklace,” he said. “That from your best john?”

  In a wink he stood before me. He brought his meaty fingers to my neck and ripped the chain away. Breathing through his thick, half-opened lips, he located the locket’s clasp and flipped it open. My mother’s slip of hair in its black ribbon fell to the path. When he stepped away, his boot ground it into the slimy bricks.

  Pain burned in my chest as if he’d plunged in a knife. He raised the locket to his nearsighted eyes. “This oughta fetch enough at the pawn shop to get me soaked,” he said, chortling through his phlegm.