When We Were Strangers

by Pamela Schoenewaldt

  “Fair skies to the west and calm seas. At worst, we’ll have fog in the harbor,” the matrons reported. Suddenly even New York seemed so present and real, a city with a foggy harbor that opened to land vast enough to swallow us like pebbles. My hands shook as I counted my few remaining coins and mended a rip in my skirt. I took out the stone from our house and tried to smell in it the must of our walls, smoky bite of our fires, damp wool of our clothes, the rosemary and lavender hung over our beds and tang of new cheese.

  My face still hurt, more at night, a sharp tug beneath the skin. Even if Carlo had a friend in America, why would that friend want a woman both plain and scarred?

  “We’ll see Papà soon,” Gabriella chanted happily. “I’ll wear my new red dress. He’ll pick me up and carry me on his shoulders. What about you, Irma? How will you fix your hair for America? What will you wear?”

  “Don’t bother her, child,” Teresa said.

  Gordana and Milenka silently slid off their beds. While the others prepared their bags, brushed shoes, and pulled out once again their worn maps and letters, the two somehow found fresh water to wash my hair, then brushed and combed it shining.

  “Now we make knots,” Gordana announced. With deft fingers, they began braiding. They finished, conferred, undid their work and began again. “We have better idea, wait,” they said, gently moving my hands away. One by one, women came to watch. Gordana touched my skirt. “Look down here.”

  Silence fell over the group. When I tried to look up, Milenka tugged so sharply on a hank of hair that my scalp burned. Simona was standing before me holding a russet velvet ribbon. “I don’t need this,” she said, letting it curl in my lap. “I’m sorry about—your face.”

  “Is pretty color,” Gordana said gruffly.

  Simona nodded. “Well, I have to pack now.” When she backed away, Gordana drew the ribbon from my hand.

  “Look, Mamma,” piped Gabriella. “They made her hair like a rose.”

  “Irma, it’s beautiful,” Teresa whispered.

  They showed me the rose with mirrors, wound with Simona’s ribbon. Milenka’s long fingers wiped away my tears. “I know we pull tight,” she said, “but at night when you sleep, it stay good.”

  “Doesn’t she look like a fine lady?” Gabriella demanded. Teresa straightened my dress and nodded.

  “No, Irma!” said Milenka and Gordana when I tried to thank them. “Is nothing what we do for you.”

  After dinner, matrons called all the steerage passengers into one chamber, where we stood shoulder to shoulder in the damp, thick air. A steward climbed on a table flanked by translators. As each language took its turn, we learned what would happen at New York. If we satisfied the port doctors, government clerks would help us buy train tickets to other cities. We could bathe in hot fresh water with soap and towels to dry ourselves. Many cheered, for days of salt water had crusted our skin. We would be fed by ladies of charity, given our baggage, and those leaving the city would be directed to train stations. So the city would be rid of us by nightfall, like gypsies or stray dogs.

  “The city’s full,” the steward warned. “If you stay, you’d live worse than here.” He waved his hands at the dank sea of us. “Wages are low and many have no work. Those of you from the country are better off west.” As for seeing the port of New York, he warned, the Servia’s deck was far too small for all of us. Only a few could go up in the morning. He wished us well and curtly took his leave with translators bustling after him.

  “He’s lying,” said Teresa. “How can a city be full?” Everyone agreed, but I was silently grateful to be headed west. I would go first to the church in Cleveland, the one on the main piazza, I had decided. If there was another church, I’d go there too. The priests would know, as Father Anselmo knew, everyone in their parish. And if the priests didn’t know, I would go to the marketplace on a feast day. Surely Carlo would be there.

  Teresa, Gabriella, Milenka, Gordana and I spent our last night in line below the grate to be sure to have space on deck. We shared the last of my cheese and slept on our heaped bags. No one troubled the Serbian girls. To protect my braids, I sat braced against a post, dreaming of Ohio’s mountains and towns bustling with people who spoke with tongues pressed against their teeth. When Gabriella shivered, Gordana and Milenka covered her with their skirts.

  Sailors unlocked the grate before dawn and we clambered on deck in a gray fog so dense that we could barely see the ship’s own railings. The Servia seemed to float on clouds, her mast scraping a low ceiling that hid flocks of noisy gulls. Muffled horns and bells called out from all sides. The engines lurched and died. We stopped, waited, bobbing on mist until, slowly, a faint white sun hoisted itself and wind skittered across the deck.

  “Look!” cried Gabriella as the fog lifted. “Tall buildings like teeth.” She was right. Jagged teeth bit the sky. So this was New York, a great wolf’s open mouth.

  “Irma,” said a low, familiar voice beside me. It was Gustavo, leaning on a crude crutch. “I’m glad I found you,” he whispered. “Here, it’s not as fine as your sewing, but I hope you remember me.” He tugged from his pocket a disk of polished whalebone the size of a palm. Scratched roughly into the bone was a half moon hung over waves. Out of the waves leaped three dolphins. Below them was scratched “Gustavo of Genoa.”

  “I’ll remember you even without this,” I said. “How is your leg?”

  “Better already. Sailors bounce, you know.”

  When he looked at me curiously I turned my cut cheek away. “Your hair,” he said. “It’s very beautiful.”

  “My Serbian friends did it.”

  “I heard what happened.” He looked at my cheek. “It’s not as bad as they said.” All around us, women from steerage politely turned away, pretending not to listen. “You were brave to defend them.”

  Heat swirled over me. “You’ll stay on the Servia?” I managed.

  “Of course. When my leg’s healed, I’m on the rigging again, but Irma, may I write to you?”

  “How?”

  “I’ll send it to General Delivery in Cleveland. We go to Liverpool next. I’ll write from there.”

  “Yes, I’d like that.”

  “Gustavo!” came a shout. He touched my hand gently and then limped into the crowd. Teresa braced my shoulder and Gordana wound her arm around my waist as we steamed into port.

  “He seems like a good man,” Teresa whispered. “You’ll find another like him.” But I had not “found” Gustavo. I had only briefly known him when my face was whole. I slipped the whalebone into my bag with my stone from Opi.

  They herded us into barges, fifty together, splattered by the choppy, cold water. When we stepped on land, it seemed to rock as well, to heave and dip. We fell against each other as American boys in woven caps laughed and pointed. Clerks appeared at the door of a brick palace to divide us into lines, tugging apart those bound west and those staying in New York. So I lost all my friends: Teresa and Gabriella, Gordana and Milenka. When I craned my neck to see them one last time, a clerk impatiently thumped his desk.

  “Italiana?” he demanded. I nodded, still searching the crowd. “May I have your attention, signorina?”

  “Yes sir,” I managed.

  “What is your business in America?” I told him of Carlo and Federico. “Proof?” he demanded. I handed him the schoolteacher’s letter and my documents from Naples and Opi. “Profession? Skill, what can you do?”

  “Needlework,” I stammered. “Fine needlework.” When I showed him my muslin with “Irma” in five scripts, he nodded and scratched words on a long ruled page.

  “How much money do you have?” Did he want a bribe? I had barely enough for my train ticket. “I mean, will you be a public charge? Can you get to Cleveland?” When I nodded and held out my lire, he did not touch them, only wrote something, pinned a card on my shawl and sent me to a doctor who had me cough and breathe, show I had no rash, lift a weight over my head and do sums in my head. He spoke in English to a clerk b
eside him, pinned another card on my shawl and pointed me to the baths.

  There I was instructed where to undress and given a number to retrieve my clothes. We were hurried through the lines with neither cruelty nor kindness, only brisk exactness, as my father moved sheep. But they made me take out my wonderful braids to check for lice. The baths were foggy with steam, a small blessing for the shame of being naked among strange women and plain again, with dull brown hair streaming down. I thought I saw Teresa and squirmed between wet bodies, calling her name, but the pockmarked face that turned to me was not hers.

  “I’m sorry, signora,” I stammered, covering myself with the cloth they gave us. The woman backed away and I finished quickly, my eyes streaming tears. Outside the baths, I heard, long tables of American ladies would offer clothes to women whose country dress might offend their new country or waiting husband. I stood straighter then, dried my eyes, smoothed my skirt and arranged my shawl neatly. My hair was back in its customary winding, some coiled on top and the rest hanging down. The ladies let me pass, so at least I entered America in my own clothes.

  In a vast, echoing dining room, we were served a kind of minestrone, dark bread and a mug of watered beer. At my table there was not one person from the Servia. Had so many ships arrived that our little world was already scattered? “Good food,” said an Italian. “And free. So far, America’s one fine country.”

  In another line a tall blond clerk read my ticket and pointed to a courtyard where from the milling mass a shrill voice cried out, “Irma!” It was Gabriella, who had clambered up a lamppost and was waving wildly. “We saw Papà! He has a beautiful doll for me and flowers for Mamma.” Below her was Teresa’s gleaming face. “God bless you, Irma!” she called.

  “I’ll write!” I shouted as a blond guard plucked the child from her perch and handed her to Teresa before the crowd surged them both away and dragged me past a knot of peddlers hawking their cities. “Boston! Philadelphia, Chicago!”

  “Mill work in Hartford,” said a woman who plucked at my sleeve. “Sleep and eat where you work, don’t pay rent.”

  “Iowa, rich black earth. Plant your grain, turn around and reap,” another called out.

  “Treni per Cleveland?” I asked an officer.

  “Trains for Cleveland,” he corrected sharply, and then told me in Italian to find Track 34. “Get on the wrong train and they’ll throw you off at the first stop.” He spoke in the flat, weary way of one who repeats the same words all day. “Get your provisions here. There’s none on the train and it’s a long ride.”

  “How long, sir?”

  “Long.”

  I bought bread and cheese for more than they cost in Naples. “That’s America, good pay, high prices,” the peddler said, but still it was exciting to see this light, spongy foreign bread and have change in American coins. At the Cleveland track an agent helped me into the last carriage, where a trio of broad-shouldered Polish men amiably squeezed together and made room for me. My gold was gone, but Zia, look at me, safe in America with American food in my bag and American coins in my purse. Our train shuddered, lurched and rolled out of the station.

  Chapter Five

  Cut, Sew, Work

  We wove through a maze of tracks branching as wildly as Rosanna’s first embroidery, then plunged through a tunnel and out into blazing sun. As passengers shut their windows against the racketing wheels and dusty wind, the cabin grew hot, stinking of sweat and garlic, sausage, cheese and pickles. Babies wailed and children spilled into aisles, playing loudly while the Poles beside me spoke quietly, a lulling stream of sound. Exhausted, I hugged my bag, pressing Gustavo’s whalebone into my chest.

  I must have slept, for when I woke we were flying through a green blur, passing houses so quickly that their edges feathered like torn silk. Whole towns seemed to be made of wood, even a squat white church. Was there no stone in this land? “Ohio?” I asked.

  A Pole laughed. “Nu Jersay,” he explained, pointing. In tiny stations we stopped while express trains raced by. Around noon I ate some of my bread but its airy loft did not fill the stomach as Assunta’s loaves always did. To beat down hunger, I turned back to the dusty window and studied America. Father Anselmo had told us of a great civil war here that killed half a million men. Yet how could that be if every station bustled? Gentlemen in fine suits lifted glistening black hats to each other, while around them swarmed shopkeepers, farmers, day laborers, some few cripples and drunks. Women moved easily among the men, most in simple cotton prints, but every station boasted ladies in fine layered gowns under flounced parasols. Girls trailed their mothers or played in knots outside houses. Black men worked at the train stations in crisp uniforms or by the roads in tattered shirts. Two boys raced beside the train tracks, arms swirling like cartwheels. Once we slowed to a rattling crawl, keeping easy pace with two black women stepping nimbly along a footpath with wash baskets large as lambs perched on their heads. It seemed they were singing, but when I leaned toward the window to hear them, the Poles stared at my scar. I sat back quickly. The one they called Josep spoke sharply and the men turned away.

  As the train lurched ahead, Josep began a long tale in a rolling voice that put me in mind of the old ones in Opi who told the best stories and thus earned the best seats by winter fires. The Poles leaned forward to listen, eyes flaring when Josep’s voice deepened and passing him a bottle each time he paused. Once he paused so long that the men grew restless. When he snapped out a line in an old man’s voice, they sat perplexed an instant and then burst into wild guffaws, repeating the phrase and roaring again. One even slapped my knee as if I understood. Suddenly I was laughing too and they laughed that I laughed. Josep handed me the bottle. Zia would be horrified, but I took a sip and later shared my cheese and tried their salami. The train rattled on and the men dozed off, although from time to time one would murmur Josep’s line, chuckle, tap his knee and rock back to sleep.

  We passed a rosary of towns clutching the tracks, low hills cloaked in forests and barns with painted disks like gypsy charms. Cattle grazed in herds as large as a nobleman might own, but there were no villas, only tidy wooden houses.

  At one station the porter had us understand that we must wait at least an hour to fix the engine. When I looked longingly at this land the porter called Pennsylvania, Josep made finger signs for walking and pointed from my bag to his eye. With my last coins, crane scissors, pewter buttons, cloth and rock from Opi safe beneath my apron, perhaps I might trust my bag to Josep and take some steps outside.

  A wooden sidewalk met the rails—how astonishing to walk on wood. Peddlers swarmed the station selling meat pies, salted twists of bread and beer from tin mugs on long chains tied to barrels. A woman sold curved yellow fruit she called bananas and let me smell their sweetness. When I bought one for a penny, a skipping boy mimed eating it whole and howled with laughter when I bit into the rubbery bitter skin. The peddler grabbed my banana and peeled it, pointing from the white flesh to my mouth. “Greenhorn,” she called me and snapped out words that made the boy cower.

  I hurried along the tracks until the laughter faded and then I tasted my first banana. Oh! What creamy flesh, sweet and melting soft as custard. I ate slowly, savoring, as a little masked and humpbacked striped cat with a fat tail waddled across my path. Nobody had warned me that in America even the animals are different.

  A cherry tree’s laden branches arched nearby, the crimson fruit far sweeter than our own. If only I could fill our bread bowl and tell Zia, “Take all you want, bury your hands in cherries!” When I reached for more, an ugly little flat-muzzled dog leaped from the bushes, snarling at me. A sandy-haired boy appeared beside him, snapped an order and the dog sat, his eyes pinned to me as the boy held up a cotton sack and three fingers.

  At home no one would dare charge for wild fruit, but gathering cherries in my apron would stain it for Cleveland. I showed two fingers and the boy shot up the tree. He scrambled from branch to branch, both hands picking, and then landed lightly
on the ground, the filled bag in his teeth. After I thanked and paid him, he tugged a tiny arrowhead from a pocket, batting his mouth and crying, “Woo, woo, Injan!” until a sudden blaring whistle made me grab my bag and run, briars tearing at my skirt. I had barely reached the wooden walkway as the last passengers boarded and the train lurched forward. “No!” I cried. “Wait!”

  At that moment Josep leaned from a doorway rushing toward me, shouted and reached out a wide hand. I caught it and leaped, still gripping the cherry bag. My feet found purchase and I was safe on the landing, wind flapping my torn skirt. Josep held my arm until I caught my breath and then politely stepped away. “Grazie,” I said. “Grazie, grazie.” He smiled and patted my shoulder.

  Wedged back in my seat, I offered him cherries. He waved his square hand around our little circle. We emptied the bag quickly, licking our fingers and tossing pits out the window. After the last cherry, the Poles drifted to sleep as we rattled on, stopped for express trains and rolled again through green Pennsylvania. Careful not to expose my legs, I mended my skirt to be respectable in Cleveland.

  When the Poles woke, they pushed bags together for a rough table and began a card game. A thin-faced man in a fur hat first watched intently from another bench and then eased into the game. He bet eagerly, ignoring a woman who tugged at his sleeve, batting at her hand until Josep looked sharply at him. I remembered Emilio, who married my mother’s cousin and gambled her dowry away. Fur Hat dug into his jacket and fished out a fine meerschaum pipe, which he bet and lost. One night Emilio would have gambled his whole flock if Carlo had not dragged him from the tavern, shouting, “Idiota, only dice are dumber than sheep.”

  “Pittsburgh!” shouted the porter but outside I saw only a wool-thick, acrid fog that Alfredo of Pescasseroli never mentioned in his letter. Here and there, passengers herded their children together and dragged trunks and bags down the aisle. Fur Hat and his wife hurried after them.