Lilli de Jong

by Janet Benton

  I still didn’t understand her intentions.

  “You can rest and nurse the baby in my wagon out back.” She had to yell above the haggling, which rose louder as she gestured to the door. “Would you like to rest there?”

  I examined her a moment, from her laced brown boots to the thick braids pinned in a crown about her head and then her genial face, which spoke of a person unaffected by the straining or pretensions of a liar. Her chestnut eyes compelled me.

  “Come. There’s nothing to fear.” She waved me toward her.

  I followed through a shaded lot to her wagon. It was a fishy-smelling affair with a sagging horse at its helm. The safest place I’d seen in days. I thanked her and climbed to the bench.

  She leaned her forearms on the wagon’s side. “My husband died twenty years ago last spring. Like you, I had a baby to care for, and I lost our house.”

  “I see,” I replied, glad to have an explanation for her kindness. How sad, that kindness should require an explanation in order to be trusted.

  “I close my stall at three. That’s when I’ll load the wagon. Until then, you can rest here.”

  She departed. I changed Charlotte and took stock of her condition. The sore on her bottom had closed, and her cough was nearly gone. Nevertheless, I vacillated between worry and hope. Worry: Could malnutrition and neglect have stunted her for good? Hope: She flashed me a gummy smile, which my heart swelled to see, and turned up her eyes for a period of staring. Her soul ran like a river behind her eyes. I sensed two rivers joining in our gaze.

  Then she attached her mouth firmly to my nipple, and my happiness soared. For even in her weakened state, her body conveyed the force of a thousand sprouting seeds.

  In time her lips parted and released me, and her weight grew heavier. I took that blessed chance to join her. Amid the sounds of mules and horses neighing softly, drinking from buckets at their feet, and shaking to find relief from the rub of harnesses, I fell into a fathomless sleep.

  Some hours later, I opened my eyes with difficulty to Mrs. Bernstein’s gentle nudging. My mind pulled free of sleep’s grasping arms as she spoke.

  “Would you be willing to stay the night on my back porch?” Over the edge of the wagon, she patted my knee. “You’re welcome to it.”

  I accepted gladly. So Mrs. Bernstein loaded her wagon with the remaining fish and ice, then drove us south and east. The Hebrew lettering on the shops informed me that the area had many Jewish residents. I felt a thrill at the strangeness, as though I’d stepped into a nook of some far-off city.

  She tied the horse to a post, then led us to the side door of a row-house and into a single room on the first story, at the back. As she passed inside, she kissed a totem that bore Hebrew lettering. She insisted that I sit in her one chair at a small table, which I did, with Charlotte at my chest. The room was clean, with whitewashed walls and a scratched pine floor. A narrow bed sat against a wall.

  Somehow Mrs. Bernstein knew that I’d want most of all to wash myself and Charlotte. I helped her carry a large wooden washtub to the porch, which overlooked a shallow yard protected by a high stone wall. She poured hot water from the stove into the washtub, added cold water, gave me a bar of soap and towel, and drew a curtain across the porch.

  Charlotte went in first. And oh, the glad sounds she made as I slid her naked form into the water! She even chuckled as I held her with one arm and scrubbed her. I kissed her belly, and she thrashed her legs, raising up water that spotted my clothes. She grabbed a lock of my hair and pulled, making me yelp. Then I dried her and left her naked, for the novelty of it.

  How does a baby know to look its mother in the eyes? Charlotte looked eagerly, as if drinking in what she found. On a length of flannel she wriggled and cooed, gazing at me with an utter faith I don’t deserve.

  Our hostess had by then unloaded some fish for our supper and left to deliver the remainder to a relief society and to take the wagon and horse to a stable. Upon returning, so I could bathe, she brought a freshly diapered Charlotte into her room and amused her.

  The pleasures of clean water cannot be overstated. I fairly melted as it flowed along my skin, taking off layers of dirt and sweat, and bringing on a state of newness and optimism. And my feet—oh! They shed layers of blistered skin and dirt, till only tenderness remained. When the water had cooled, I dried off and donned my Mother Hubbard dress, cherishing its looseness. Then I washed all my other clothes, as well as Charlotte’s blanket, diaper, and gown. I cut a half-dozen more diapers, enough to last the night at least. I hung our wet things on the clothesline in the yard and lay my valise open in the slanting sun.

  Mrs. Bernstein cooked up a heaping plate of fish. She said I must call her Vera. I ate with passion, continuing till I was overstuffed. As we cleaned, I asked how she had gotten her start at fishmongering.

  “My husband was a fisherman, and after his death, his friends began supplying me,” she said. “For eighteen years I sold fish from a cart. By two years ago, I’d saved enough to pay the annual rent on a market stall.” Her son is now twenty-one and works as a fisherman, she said; he rents a room nearby with his wife and their baby. “I hope to find a little house for us before long,” she said. “And what are your good prospects?”

  “Good prospects?” I was taken off guard.

  “The ones you mentioned at my stall.”

  I faltered a moment before admitting that I had no good ones, or truly, none at all.

  “Why hasn’t your husband’s family helped you?” she asked.

  Her gold-red braids shone in the light from the gas lamp behind her, and her manner was so endowed with sympathy that I couldn’t lie. I told her he hadn’t been my husband and apologized for my dishonesty. I recounted the rudiments of my story, concluding with the Pittsburgh solicitor’s findings in the letter I’d fetched from Pine Street hours earlier. I told her that Johan had married in Pittsburgh before coming to Philadelphia, taken a lark with me, and constructed a ruse to get himself home. What had become of Peter, I had no guess.

  “You’ve got to go to Pittsburgh and show Johan your baby,” she told me. “Maybe he was married all along. But maybe he found himself a woman there and told lies to the solicitor at his door. You have to find out for yourself. Maybe he’ll change his mind when he sees you both.”

  This was similar to what Frau V. had told me—advice I had avoided heeding. But finally I was freed of useless pride. Vera convinced me to call on Johan at the address the solicitor had sent and to demand restitution and support.

  She even gave me twenty-five cents to help with my train fare.

  As I write, Charlotte and I are resting on Vera’s back porch. Darkness surrounds us, save for a candle’s flickering beam. I’ve taken my locket from my purse and am rubbing its smooth gold surface.

  Mother, can thee see us now? See the kindness, so like thine, that flows from human hearts?

  I don’t know where we’ll sleep in Pittsburgh. I don’t know how long we’ll stay. But the only way to get us off the street is Johan.

  Sixth Month 19

  Excited birds woke me in the gray. Through the window shone a lantern from Vera’s room. I dressed us in damp and wrinkled clothes; then Vera came out with a burlap bag and opened the porch curtain, as was apparently her daily habit. A hundred birds swooped in by air, and squirrels and chipmunks drew close. As she poured seeds and grains onto the ground, this winged and furred menagerie hopped and pranced, releasing a cacophony of cries. When she withdrew to the porch, they set upon her offerings, pecking and nibbling and competing.

  “I’ll have to leave soon to get fish at the dock,” she said. But she invited me first to sit on her chair and eat a full bowl of porridge with milk and molasses. She served me coffee, too. Then she washed the cup, spoon, and bowl and served herself.

  While Vera ate, I packed our things. Beside me Charlotte kicked her legs and worked to clasp her little hands above, then pulled to pry them apart. She even rocked over to one side, crowing with
exultation. Amid all this mad achievement, I counted my begged-for coins and what was left of the money I’d been spared from paying at Blockley. Adding in the quarter dollar from Vera, with its image of Lady Liberty, I counted seven dollars and thirty-two cents—more than I’d expected, and probably enough to get us to Pittsburgh and lodge us there a night or two, if I found a place that would admit us.

  Vera came out then. “I need to fetch the horse and wagon and buy my fish,” she said. “I wish I could offer you another night, but the walls have eyes.” When her landlord learned of my presence, she explained, he might request more rent. “I know you’ll have good luck in Pittsburgh,” she told me.

  I gave profuse thanks for her shelter, food, counsel, and coin. We walked to the cobblestone street, bowed, and parted ways.

  I decided as I headed toward Broad Street Station that if Johan won’t give aid when faced directly by his impoverished lover and baby, then I won’t hesitate to visit the Pittsburgh solicitor and initiate a suit. With the money I win, I’ll consign a sewing machine and rent a room in Pittsburgh. Perhaps I’ll even hire the solicitor to locate Peter. It isn’t possible that Peter is with Johan anymore, since Johan’s deceit would have been all too clear.

  After consulting tomorrow’s train schedule, I bought a ticket for the first leg of our journey. Charlotte, being in arms, will ride for free. To build strength, I bought a small serving of pepper pot from a cart and savored its tripe and meat and vegetables. At a fruit cart I traded a precious coin for a pint of overripe raspberries from the damaged-fruit pile, which quelled my remaining hunger and my thirst.

  All that’s left is to spend one more night on the station floor. The carved horse from Margaret is tucked into my pocket. Charlotte rests in my lap, growing ever stronger. A thrill runs through me to think of facing Johan with his crimes.

  Sixth Month 20

  Perhaps by now thee expects the unexpected.

  I woke again to the policeman’s boot, but on this morning I had the right to take the wide marble staircase to the second-story lobby. I showed my ticket and was admitted. A uniformed man at the door to the ladies’ waiting room allowed us into the nearly empty, elegant space; we passed through and entered the ladies’ toilet. I drank from a faucet, then washed all that I could reach and dried myself with a towel handed to me by a soft-spoken young attendant. Next I washed Charlotte’s hands and face; she gurgled happily; the attendant smiled. Apparently our use of the place was not so unorthodox, and I figured that our baths and clothes-washing and one full night’s rest at Vera’s had rendered us less objectionable.

  My clean face in the mirror looked swollen from the heat, however, and pasty with exhaustion. With my tortoise-shell comb I sorted out my hair and combed Charlotte’s red-gold curls, which now rise an inch above her scalp. As I was admiring her, three women wearing lace gloves, feathered hats, and dresses with protruding bustles walked in. They stared with disgust—revealing the incompleteness of our transformation. The attendant told us gently to move along; I gave her a penny with my thanks.

  Soon a loud voice announced our train’s arrival. We were pulled in an excited horde to a train shed as the long black creature approached. In a deep baritone the conductor called out, “All abooooard!”

  The train was filling quickly. I settled next to a man who’d nodded to sleep over his newspaper, tucking the valise beneath my feet. Charlotte sucked her fingers in my shawl and pressed her bare toes into me. I placed my lips on her forehead and felt the thrumming thrust of life inside. It seemed as if a fresh wind blew through my mind, clearing it of heavy clouds and making the air brighter, the contours of every object more delineated.

  The conductor punched my ticket. I watched out the window as others filed onto our train. A train arrived on the opposite track, coming from the direction I was headed. Its doors opened. Then into the line descending its steps came someone startlingly familiar: my brother, looking sturdy and healthy, wearing a broad-brimmed hat and a drab, straight-cut suit.

  Whatever grabs and squeezes one’s heart did so to mine. Act! it screamed. I reached my free arm across the sleeping man and tried unsuccessfully to open the train window so I could call out. Peter was walking quickly toward the station building. I stood, pulled Charlotte close, stepped into the aisle with my valise, and ran to the nearest door. A porter stood in my way.

  “Madam! This train is about to leave!”

  “I must go out,” I said, sliding past him down the steps. I jumped to the dirt and yelled after the retreating form: “Peter! Peter!”

  How well I knew that gait, that plain gray coat Mother had sewed, that broad-brimmed hat and brown hair with its glints of yellow. My heart opened in anticipation of his embrace.

  Peter had not yet turned around; he was forty feet or so ahead. I ran as hard as I could, weaving between the other people, squeezing Charlotte to my chest, the valise banging my leg. Charlotte began to protest.

  “Peter de Jong!” I cried. “Thee in the gray coat! Stop!”

  The man turned. “Is thee speaking to me?”

  The face was narrower; the lips were too thin; the eyebrows arched above unfriendly eyes. The man was several inches shorter than Peter and some pounds heavier. In fact, he looked very little like my brother, save for his Friend’s attire. My elation evaporated. I’d been overcome by a longing to know and be known, to see and be seen by just one face I’d cherished.

  “I’m terribly sorry,” I said. I turned away as he, with irritation, did the same.

  I had to get back onto the train, but that very train was creaking into motion. Casting off my valise to free an arm, I ran along the track as the monster gathered speed, banging on its retreating side, a moan rising from my throat.

  “Stop! Please stop!” I yelled, until a railroad worker clapped his hands on my shoulders and pulled me away.

  “That’s dangerous, ma’am,” he scolded sharply. “Can’t touch a moving train. Folks fall under that way.”

  I stumbled to find the valise where I’d abandoned it and sat upon its dirty side. Charlotte, no doubt afraid, was twisting in my shawl. I clutched her to me as she rooted at my bodice. She whined quietly. Oh, how I detested myself and pitied her.

  “Can’t stop here, ma’am,” the same worker admonished me. “Yer an obstruction.”

  I stood and returned to the grand second-story lobby, then down the stairs and out to the street, where I sit now against a station wall, my eyes stabbed by the early sun that shoots like an arrow between the buildings, as dry inside as a pile of sun-bleached bones.

  NOTEBOOK TEN

  Sixth Month 29

  Charlotte was holding my hand to her chest as she nursed. Now she sleeps in my arms, and I’ve withdrawn my hand to write—slowly, so as not to rouse her. Her hands are still arched over the space that my hand occupied. As if my hand remains there. As if my pulse continues to beat against hers.

  I pray that my love will continue to fill that space when I’m no longer near. I pray that whatever emptiness she feels will always be countered by my unseen love.

  I’ve lit a candle by a window of our room and taken up a pencil. For I must tell how it is that four walls now contain us.

  The night after I left the train—nine nights ago—I took a spot on the floor of Broad Street Station beneath a huge fan, near a shed where passengers debark, because the night was sweltering. Mosquitoes swarmed us; I slapped them on my flesh and clothes, leaving bloodstains behind. Charlotte’s body was protected in a blanket, but her cheeks were dotted with bites. I held her hands in one of mine to stop her scratching.

  We slept. In my dream, the time was dusk. I stood amid stunted spruce on the edge of a mountain. In awe I looked over an undulating spread of peaks and valleys; an emerald carpet of treetops covered every curve. This was a wilderness such as I’d never seen, where bears and mountain lions roamed, and people accustomed to shelter had better find their way out by nightfall.

  But I had no idea which way would lead me out. I
walked in one direction, another, and a third, finding no openings in the dense forest as the sky drained of daylight.

  Then a voice yelled my name from an adjacent peak. It was the voice of my brother—he who has a virtual compass in his head! I tried to engage my faculties to reply, but my mouth wouldn’t move. Against the downward drag of sleep, all I could force out was a moan. Yet he heard me and took a single step that crossed the intervening valley. He grabbed my shoulders, fingers digging in.

  As if it lay beneath a pile of moss or dried leaves, my consciousness was dulled. But the pain those fingers caused in my sore muscles was real.

  “Wake up!” said another voice, and then, “It’s her, I’m sure of it.”

  Larger hands gripped and shook me. The heat of human breath came to my ear. My mind fought upward until I could open my eyes. Crouched over me were the two young men who’d left me behind.

  “Can thee stand?” Peter’s overgrown hair fell into his face as he bent close. “Is thee all right?” Then, to Johan: “It’s a lucky thing thee noticed her.”

  I could neither stand nor answer. This was an outcome I’d long given up on praying for.

  “What’s thee doing here?” asked Johan sharply. I recoiled at his tone.

  “Quiet!” someone shouted. A chorus of muttered complaints followed. The noises roused Charlotte, who stirred under my shawl, hands kneading my abdomen.

  I stayed motionless to stall her awakening and gleaned what I could from the men’s appearances. The weary leaning of their shoulders could be explained by the many trains they’d ridden from Pittsburgh, the transfers line to line. But the absence of any luggage, save one small satchel each; the grime on their gray suits and hats; their unkempt beards and strong odors—these spoke of a deprivation reaching well past one day’s travel. Dust darkened Johan head to foot. The pencil tucked above his ear and the papers in his vest pocket told me his scribbling habit was ongoing. His brown eyes looked out guardedly above a scraggly beard that didn’t suit him. Peter’s face, though still inquisitive, held a hint of hardness. He had a beard, too, untrimmed and grimy. As I wondered what had become of these young men’s scheme for success, Johan drew his hands together on his knees.