A block from the workhouse I saw a woman leaving it, counting coins. “What’s the matter, miss?” the short police officer demanded. “Why’d you stop?”
“Nothing,” I murmured. The woman strode away. It was Maria the agent who must have sold another greenhorn collar girl. The policeman’s heavy knocks pounded in my ear. Make me air, I prayed. Lord, blow me away from this house.
“Hum, didn’t get far, did you, girl?” said Lula. She stood in the doorway, hands on hips as if the police had brought her a filthy stray cat.
“What happened?” she asked them, as if I were a stranger.
“She was robbed. Almost got worse. Right, miss?”
Lula’s black eyes swung over my torn blouse, mud-splashed dress, dripping shawl and empty hands. “Irma, didn’t I say to look alive? You got devil’s breath?” She flicked her fingers, chasing my bad luck away from her.
“So this is home?” the big policeman asked. I nodded slowly. “Then good day, miss.” He touched the rim of his helmet with a thick finger that slid down his cheek. “Watch your step. Some of them bad ’uns come back like dogs, once they got the taste. They’ll figure you live around here.” With that both men turned and strolled away, boots clicking on the cobblestones.
Lula folded her arms and blocked the doorstep. In the terrible walk home, I had not once imagined this. “Lula, I was robbed. Two thieves took my leaving money. They took everything. They almost—”
“I see what they done. Question is, what now?” She lowered her voice. “The Missus just got herself another girl. And she’s all fired angry you asked for a letter in front of the others.”
“Lula, if you loan me money for a ticket and another dress, I could go to Chicago and when I get work—”
“If you get work. Suppose you don’t? Or you do and then forget Lula? I want to leave here too, you know,” she whispered.
The Missus appeared, smiling. “So, we didn’t like Chicago, did we, Irma? No fine ladies?”
Even Lula stiffened. “She was robbed, Missus. Wasn’t her fault.”
“Come crawling back wanting my work again, I bet.”
“Just for a while, Missus,” I pleaded, mortified at how much like a beggar I sounded. “They took everything.”
“But, Irma, I want girls who’ll stay, who like this work, don’t you see? Girls I can trust. And I just got a nice little grateful Serb. So don’t you be wasting Lula’s time. She wastes enough on her own. You go on to your fine ladies. Or out there.” She waved to the street.
Tears burned my eyes. “Please, Missus.”
“She is a good worker, Missus,” said Lula finally.
A smile curled over the ragged teeth. “But the Serb has Irma’s bed, remember? So if I take her, she’d have to sleep with you, Lula, and then where would your dusky gentleman caller sleep? You thought I didn’t know about him? Didn’t enter your wooly head? But that’s a good idea. You can share your bed with our dressmaker.”
Lula’s face darkened with fury that my devil’s breath had blown on her. The Missus smiled again. “Well, Irma? You may stay and work and help Lula with her work, since I have plenty of girls now. Maybe if you’re lucky, you can make a few collars.” She looked at my torn skirt and mud-black dripping shawl. “Lula can get you something from the back room.” She meant the pile of dead girls’ dresses. “What? Not fine enough?”
I made myself face her glinting eyes. “Missus, it’s not charity I’m asking for, only a few weeks’ work.”
“We’ll see,” she said, turning away.
“White bitch witch,” said Lula when she closed the door of her narrow bedroom and waved me to a chipped water basin. “How’d she know about Albert?” Lula demanded. “You told her?”
“I don’t know anything, Lula. I swear. You never said anything about him.”
“Hum, that’s true. She has her own witch ways. Doesn’t need any devil’s breath Eye-talians.”
“Who is Albert?”
“My man. Was my man,” said Lula bitterly. “He’s a porter on the railroad and visits me sometimes at night. Except now I got company.”
“I’m sorry, Lula. I’ll leave as fast as I can.”
“You do that, girl, and don’t waste time dreaming. That’s what got you in this fix. And watch out. Now you’ll see the real Missus.”
I did. I worked frantically, rising early, hauling coal and water for Lula, helping her wash the breakfast dishes and then hurrying to the bench. Exhausted as I was, I forced out tiny stitches and smooth arched curves of perfect collars. The Missus faulted each one, loudly praising the new Serb’s work, once giving her three of my collars to “fix,” three that ended in her basket. When I protested, Marta hissed, “Quiet, you make it worse for everybody.” I bit my lips and sewed, every stitch a stab.
The Missus cut up my sewing time with deliveries. “I favor the faithful girls,” she said. “And besides, you do look like a servant these days.”
“She’s right,” Lula said that night. “Buy yourself a decent dress if you don’t want Irene’s old ones.”
“I can’t spend my leaving money,” I protested.
“Don’t your people have an aid society?”
“You mean charity? My family never—”
“And how would they know what you do, way over there? If you’re poor, you do what poor folks do. Go get yourself a dress.”
“Thieves took my clothes,” I told a blunt-faced woman at the Italian Aid Society as she silently handed me two cotton dresses and three sets of underclothes.
“Everyone has troubles,” she said. “Look out the next time. It’s not like home.”
“I’m saving to go to Chicago,” I persisted.
“Everyone’s saving for something. Next?” A family from Calabria stepped to the table. Their bags had been stolen on the train from New York: their clothes, his woodworking tools and medicine for the child. I gave them twenty cents, all that I had with me.
When Albert came that night, I sat in the dining room for hours while muffled, happy groans seeped through the door cracks. I copied lines from Godey’s Lady’s Book on scraps of paper until past midnight, when Lula shook my shoulder. “So now you’re writing like your fine ladies? Come to bed. Albert’s gone.”
“Can you write?” I asked as I undressed in the dark.
Lula snorted. “When I was young like you we had the War. And before that,” she added bitterly, “the plantation.”
“There wasn’t a priest to teach you?”
Lula’s rolling laughter filled the narrow room. “I got to tell Albert about you. A priest on the plantation for us? No, girl, just an overseer, and he didn’t keep no slave school. Go to sleep. Sun’s coming soon.”
Sleepless and stiff the next day, I worked poorly. “Is this how a ladies’ dressmaker sews?” the Missus demanded. “Aren’t you ashamed?”
I made only three dollars that week, and barely more the next week. Day and night, resentment smoldered. The Missus robbed me constantly, refusing good collars, stealing work hours or simply taking my collars, as brazen as if I were blind. Bèla, Marta and the other girls wove a net around themselves, offended that I once scorned a place that they endured and frightened that leaving had brought down such disaster. I was sfortuna, bad luck, and they kept their distance. I ate little and moved like a shadow. In Lula’s narrow bed, I squeezed against the damp, rough wall.
“Too bad you’re not Albert,” she muttered, and I wished I was anyone but myself. Chicago glimmered like the Promised Land, always further west. Weeks of misery passed.
One Tuesday the Missus left in haste before dawn, giving orders that I was to clean the gas lamps before breakfast, a dirty, tedious job. Lula hummed and sang in the kitchen, for Albert had come that night. In the hallway outside the apartment of the Missus, I brushed past her door and was astonished when it moved. Impossible—she was always so careful, even locking away our needles at night. I eased the door open, slipped into her parlor and closed the door behind me.
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br /> There were Persian carpets and silk lampshades, a fine desk with a dozen small drawers, four stuffed chairs and dark velvet curtains puddled at the floor, more wealth in this one room than in all of Opi. But it was the four boxes on the floor that drew me: collars packed for sale. I recognized my own embroidered work on top, dozens of collars, those few she paid me for, those she called faulty and those she had given away for “fixing.” Below was other girls’ work, but a buyer would see mine and think the rest were equal.
Rage ripped through me for my stolen collars and her mocking cruelty, pitting poor girls against each other, for our watered soup and icy rooms, for lodging me with Lula to punish us both, for the hours I worked without pay. Rage for girls cheated of their last week’s pay and buyers cheated with indifferent goods. Rage for the thieves, laughing and laying their hands on my body. Rage at Cleveland, where I was alone and miserable.
Lord forgive me, Father Anselmo and Zia forgive me, I began to rob the Missus. First I took only English needles from a sewing basket, for she had so many. Then a set of fine muslin handkerchiefs and hanks of silk embroidery thread, all shoved into my apron. Anger burned hotter, wanting more. Did Gabriele of Opi burn this way the first time he beat a dog? But I had been wronged, my feverish mind insisted. In the desk drawers I found paper, pens and stamps: useless. One drawer would not open until my questing fingers found a tiny knob behind the letter slats. Deep inside the desk a click sounded, sharp as a snapped twig. The locked drawer sprang open, revealing stacks of dollars tied with string and a bag heavy with coins, money squeezed from us. Or perhaps (how thievery makes us think like thieves) some darker business made wealth for the Missus and she masked it by selling collars. Never mind how she got this money; it would get me to Chicago.
I took the five dollars stolen from my pay in each of four weeks, then ten more for her cruelty. I took no coins, lest she note a change in the weight of the bag. From her sewing basket, I plucked a little pair of scissors and golden thimble light as air, working quickly to outrun my conscience. As wind spins dry leaves in running circles, a chant whipped through my head: she robbed me, thieves robbed me, I was wronged.
Needles, thread, thimble, four handkerchiefs, little scissors and paper money weighed my apron pocket like bricks. Like a starving man who eats until he sickens, I circled the room for more, fingering porcelain teacups and heavy silver plates, china dogs as high as my knee, a porcelain shepherd boy playing a flute, velvet cushions and crystal vases. What would I do with such things? Even a pawnshop might question a poor girl with a china dog and smelling a trailing policeman. It was Chicago I wanted, not prison. Lula would wonder why I was so long at cleaning lamps and the Missus might return.
I examined the room for anything ruffled or out of place. No, she would suspect nothing until she counted her money. Take more, just one, two small things more, whispered a fevered voice. What would it matter since I was already a thief? From a bronze bowl in a corner hutch I plucked a dusty rosary of amber and coral. Since thieves had taken mine, surely I deserved this. Then for no reason but the fever of taking, I took a carved jade cat no bigger than my thumb. Opi faces gaped at me: Zia, Father Anselmo, even my father who for all his gruffness and easy anger had never robbed any man. “Who are you?” they demanded. “Where is Irma?”
“The Missus robbed me,” I reminded them and faltered. I’d do penance, I’d give to the poor in Chicago. When I had money, I’d return what I took. I crept to the door, listening like a practiced thief. From the kitchen came a steady rain of thwacks: Lula making beaten biscuits, her small celebration when the Missus was gone. She would hear nothing from this room. I patted my apron to flatten its bulge and crept toward the dormitory stairs for my coat and few clothes.
“Irma!” Lula called out. I jumped, sweating cold, and slipped into the kitchen, standing where a laundry basin could shield my apron. Huffing, Lula stirred the thick batter, counting strokes, “nineteen, twenty,” as her brown arm circled the wide wooden bowl. “Eighty more. You took your sweet time out there.”
“The lamps were dirty.”
“Well anyway, we need more ice. The Missus didn’t leave me no money so have old McGowen put it on credit. Tell him I want it this morning or I’ll lose my butter and milk.” Was the Lord blessing my sin? “Did you hear me, Irma? If you do it now you’ll be back for breakfast.”
I swallowed. “The Missus?”
“Gone for the day. Thank you Jesus.”
So it could be hours before she knew she’d been robbed. “I need my coat.”
“So go get it. What you waiting for?”
To thank her for sharing a bed, even unwillingly. To wish her well with Albert and to remember her wide, dark face. To say I was not evil and not a thief, only wanting what was mine. “I’ll get my coat.”
“You said that. A big block, hear? None of them little lumps.”
In the dormitory some girls were rousing, dressing, and splashing their faces with water. The Swedes stood in a tight circle, weaving intricate braids in each others’ hair. Bèla, Marta and Sara still slept. If I whispered my leaving they would ask how, with what money. In some way they might betray me to Lula, who, to keep her own job, might run after me. So I said nothing as I stuffed the charity clothes into a bag hidden under my coat and slipped out the front door, listening for Lula’s thwacks and huffing counts: “eighty-one, eighty-two, eighty-three.” I would write to her from Chicago. Don’t think of Chicago, I told myself. Just think of leaving without getting robbed.
No, no, not just yet. I would stop at McGowen’s, for the Missus or even Lula would surely check there and perhaps then conclude that some disaster had befallen me between the iceman and the workhouse. So I ordered ice, trying to show no hurry or impatience as Mr. McGowen carefully scratched a figure in his credit book, slowly wrote out a delivery order, considered my thoughts on the weather and finally let me go. By good fortune a swirl of foundry workers was passing the door. I slipped among them so Mr. McGowen wouldn’t notice that I was headed away from the workhouse.
This time I was careful and looked alive, hurrying past alleys and avoiding pairs of men. Because people sitting on a streetcar might have time to note my scar, I walked to the train station, staying in crowds. I bought food for the train from peddlers: a roll and sausage, two apples and a cone of salted peas, trying to seem easy, calm and relaxed.
At the desk for the Buffalo, Cleveland and Chicago Railway Company, I asked for a one-way third-class ticket to Chicago. “Hard money or paper?” the clerk asked. Was this a test?
“Paper,” I managed.
“Let’s see.” When I pushed my bills across the polished counter he examined them carefully, holding each to a candle and glancing from the bill to my face. Could he feel stolen money? Was he waiting for a blurted confession? Then he would call the police, perhaps the very two who would remember where I came from and drag me back to the Missus, not a victim this time, but a thief.
“Sorry, miss, there’s lots of counterfeit bills around. But these are fine. Don’t worry, nobody cheated you.” I forced a smile, tight as a gather in heavy cloth. “Here’s your ticket. The eight oh six for Chicago leaves from Platform Three, right over there.” He jabbed a stubby finger to the right. “Better hurry, you can just make it.”
I flew across the station, stunned by this good fortune. “Just running to get a train,” I could tell any officer. Not running away. If the porter thought it odd to go so far with only an old cloth bag, he said nothing. In the hot car, passengers beat the air with penny fans and sloughed off coats, but I kept mine on to hide my heaving chest, searching the platform for policemen in case the Missus had laid a trap for me.
The doors groaned shut. Then came a long hiss of steam and the train lurched forward. As ruffling winds stirred the air, passengers sighed and put down fans. I drew the stolen rosary from my apron pocket, my fingers so slick with sweat that I lost count of the prayers, stopped and started again. “Thief,” said the clattering wheels a
s we left the city, “thief, thief, thief.” Fog lay over broad plowed fields and my reflection in the window gave back not Irma but the pale face of a stranger.
“Lady,” said a young boy tugging on my skirt, “you dropped your pretty beads.”
Chapter Seven
Madame Hélène
I stuffed the rosary beads in my bag while the boy regarded me, green eyes blazing under straw-stiff hair. Did he think I was soft-handed, like drunken men in taverns, reeling and spilling their beer? Would he believe it wasn’t truly me who was the thief? That was Irma the collar girl. I was Irma Vitale who made an altar cloth and rubbed Zia’s feet in the morning, the Irma that people called plain, but a good girl, always a good girl.
“Those were Catholic beads,” he announced. The woman beside him pressed a clean gloved hand against his shoulder. “My mother doesn’t talk much, even in Swedish. She thinks I’m bothering you. We’re Lutheran.” I nodded. The woman pulled a leather-bound book from her bag and set it on his lap. “I’m supposed to read this,” he explained, holding out the book like a thick slice of cake. “But it’s good. You know Gulliver’s Travels?”
I shook my head. The boy’s thin lips opened in a perfect pink O, then rippled on. “It’s about a man named Gulliver who visits four lands. In the first one, everyone’s tiny, like this.” When he stretched apart his thumb and forefinger, the gloved hand opened his book. “Anyway,” he whispered, “it’s an almighty—” The mother gave a warning glance. “I mean a bully good story.” I nodded. The woman carefully opened her own volume to a place marked with a single strand of thread and both began reading. The boy’s eyes skimmed the close-set lines but he never touched the page. Father Anselmo used his finger to turn newspapers or proclamations from Rome. For the Bible he had a wooden pointer whose tip was a tiny ivory hand. But this American child read with eyes alone. Once I found work in Chicago, I vowed, I would learn to read like this. Then I remembered that I was a thief.
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