“I’m sorry,” Madame Hélène had told her. “There is no time.”
“Surely, you could manage. Just white satin with a little lace down the front. The girl could do it.” She pointed at me. Madame shook her head. “But I pay well and always on time.” This was true. Mrs. Richards wasn’t like some, who regularly “forgot” to get money from their husbands. “Fifteen dollars,” Mrs. Richards offered. “That’s extravagant.” It was extravagant for a yard of cloth and bits of lace. “So I must go to another dressmaker for this?” the lady taunted.
“Yes, you must,” Madame agreed.
The ivory brow furrowed. “You’ll lose business with this stubbornness.”
“Perhaps.”
Now I understood Madame, but who could explain to Mrs. Richards so many tiny bodies buried in their baptismal gowns? Could she hear the thuds of frozen earth? Hélène had eight brothers and sisters, Simone once told me, all dead before she left. Three in one spring. Watching Madame work, I thought of the old widows in Opi, whose black shawls seemed to grow into their flesh and were buried with the women to warm them in their graves. Madame wore her sorrow thus.
Madame Hélène turned to Simone and said, “Enough of these sad things. Get the rag bag. Jacob is coming today.”
Jacob the rag collector was a lame, whistling peddler who made the rounds of dress shops with a bulging pack on his back and bright rags stitched to his jacket in a fluttering rainbow. When roving boys snatched away a tatter, Jacob took his loss mildly. “Simone, perhaps you have a bit of something for my arm here?” he would ask. “It seems the ravens plucked me.” On Hélène’s orders, Simone often slipped longer lengths of cloth into the bag, which Jacob sold to a man he called the Ragmaster. “You are righteous women,” he often said. “May the God of Israel bless you.” On rainy days when we had no customers, he sometimes sorted his scraps in a corner of our shop. “Blue for the Greeks, red for the Poles, green for the Slovaks,” he’d chant. “I know my chickens.” He brought us little gifts: flowers twisted from bright bits of paper, prune pastries his sisters made or odd pebbles he found in his travels. When he appeared with a bag of mother-of-pearl buttons he’d gleaned in trade, Madame paid him well, even adding two velvet ribbons for his sisters.
Hélène was as generous with me as she was with Jacob. She paid nine, then ten dollars a week. With the money I sent home, Father Anselmo took Zia Carmela to a doctor who had studied in Naples. Her fever passed, he wrote, but still she coughed and spent days huddled in a chair by the bakery oven, sometimes speaking of me as if I were still in Opi.
“Sending money home is not a plan,” scolded Molly one evening as I embroidered and she laboriously worked her accounts. “You should be saving for a shop. Women need property. That’s how we survive.” Her calendar, beloved as a Bible, was dark with numbers marked in pencil, erased, added, circled and boxed. She made her first loans in September.
* * *
The telegram from Opi came in early December. I felt it through the boardinghouse door as I stamped snow from my boots. I heard it in the yowl of an alley cat and the brush of Molly’s broom that ceased as I entered the foyer. The envelope glimmered in the dim hall light on a side table that Mrs. Gaveston had covered with my embroidered linen runner, loathsome now with too-bright roses and a fat bluebird. Molly leaned her broom against the wall. “Maybe it’s good news from your father,” she offered. “Aren’t they expecting a baby?”
“We don’t send telegrams for babies,” I said, my voice flat as paper.
“Irma, if you want—”
“I’ll read it.” The gold-brown paper seemed too frail to bear dark news. Perhaps my money had changed them. “Western Union,” I read slowly, then the date, my address and the message: “My dear Irma, Zia Carmela died peacefully last week, speaking of you. We used your money for the funeral. I will leave Opi soon to serve a church in Calabria. God keep you. Father Anselmo.”
“Sit down,” said a far voice. “I’ll make tea.” Soon a hot cup was wedged in my hands. “Not to be cruel, but wasn’t she coughing for months? Old folks don’t live long once that starts. Not in Ireland at least.” Tea pooled in my mouth and I made myself swallow. “Irma!” A strong hand shook my shoulder. “You’re scaring me, girl.”
Every day since leaving Opi I had pictured Zia in her chair, coughing perhaps, but always there, waiting for me. I imagined Father Anselmo hurrying through the sanctuary to greet me, sandals clicking on the stone floor. Now the long cord linking my soul to home was fraying over the rough Atlantic. When the parlor clock tolled, I found a damp cloth wound through my fingers.
“There’s cabbage and boiled beef,” said an anxious voice behind me. “Come eat at least.”
But I climbed the narrow stairs to my room and lay in bed weeping for Zia, the spare hardness of her life and her loneliness and long sickness. I wept for myself, seeing her empty chair if I ever returned. “If you leave Opi you will die with strangers,” my mother had warned a thousand times, but she might have added: “And those you love and leave behind will be dead to you. Someone else will close their eyes.”
I lay very still in the dark room, imagining women helping Assunta wash Zia’s body and put on her one good dress. With my money there would have been choirboys and wax candles, perhaps a good coffin. A fall breeze ruffled the curtains, curling through the narrow room. What of my soul if I died in America? Madame Hélène was not a believer and Molly would not waste money on the dead. I decided to buy funeral insurance from the Sicilian agent on Polk Street.
In the weeks after my Zia died, a dank cold settled over the city. Coal dust hung in the air, close as a cloak when I trudged to the shop and back again. Only work distracted me from billowing doubts. Why had I come to America? That I might live? For whose sake? Not for my people, all dead, disappeared or making new families without me. Not to earn passage home, I was slowly concluding, for who would truly welcome me there? In my father’s house a new babe would more than fill the space that once was mine. In Opi I rarely questioned my life. One does not ask “why” in a hunger year, only: “What will I eat tomorrow?” My ancestors who climbed our mountain never asked why. But alone in Chicago, a steady “why?” oppressed me.
“You could marry, you know, and have your own family,” Molly insisted. “Wouldn’t your aunt have said so? You’re thinking too much. Come dancing with me.”
I couldn’t. Cut, sew, work—the words filled my dark valley like iron bells, tolling me to sleep, rousing me in the morning and sounding beneath the clatter of carts as I hurried to the shop. Even pigeons on snowy roofs cooed cut, sew, work.
Sewing machines only made rich women greedy for more finery: pleats, ruffles, flounces, dips, gathers and close fittings even in their day dresses. Much of this was handwork. New patterns came from Europe, New York and Boston. Our customers wanted them all, and before their neighbors. Madame Hélène made curt condolences when I told her Zia died, but she had seen too many die, and this was a sick old woman. My long mourning perplexed her.
Even Simone was puzzled. “Is it better now, the sadness?” she asked often.
“Yes,” I always said, “better.” But she and Madame exchanged glances.
“Come, Irma, try this on,” Madame said late in February. “Mrs. Straub wants to surprise her daughter, who is exactly your size.” I was handed a fine moss-green merino wool walking dress enriched with velvet ribbons. While Simone buttoned me in back, I stood stunned behind our dressing screen. Such lush softness had never touched my skin.
“Come, we mark the hem,” Madame called briskly.
When I walked, the dress caressed my legs with a whispering sigh. “When did you cut and piece it?” I asked.
“Sunday,” said Madame briefly, her mouth full of pins. “Up.” I mounted our hemming block.
“Look at the color,” Simone ventured. “Like the beautiful soft green of your eyes.” No one had ever exclaimed over my eyes. “And see how it shows off the little waist?” Tucks and velvet ba
nds ran down the bodice, accentuating the tightening line. My own gray work smocks hung straight, masking my breasts. “And see, the new cuirass look,” Simone continued. “How it suits you.” Perhaps it did, the long waist dipping to points front and back, then easing out to the hips with a deep swan curve. Rich young women sought this line; it was far too binding for working girls.
“Oh, Irma,” Simone said, “You look like a gentlewoman.” How would it be to walk down the street in such a dress, to see myself mirrored in windows, to hear that rustle and feel the muslin underskirt against my skin?
Madame finished the hem and ran her fingers over my chest and breasts, across my back, around the waist, feeling where the bodice might be loose and making tiny marks with tailor’s chalk. At any other hand I would have cringed, but her careful touch was all for the dress and how perfect it must be for Mrs. Straub’s daughter.
Jacob’s familiar whistle sounded at the door. When Simone opened it, he stepped back, for a fine propriety ruled him, and he never intruded on fittings. “Don’t worry, it’s only Irma,” Simone said, pulling him in by the tatters of his sleeve.
Jacob entered cautiously, studying me intently. “Irma? Such a princess! Oh, Madame Hélène,” he said mournfully, “she’ll never marry me now.” For it had been his habit to gravely propose to Simone or to me on each visit, offering bouquets of daisies or bright feathers he found in his walks. “Alas, I’m an old man,” he would conclude with a sigh, “an old, hungry man.” Then Madame, in fond exasperation, would have Simone bring him thick ends of bread and cheese, an apple and slices of pickle. I hadn’t worked at the shop long before noting that Simone bought extra food for Jacob. Pulling a stool close to the stove where we heated our pressing irons, he would nibble his bread and speak of the Russian Jews and Poles flooding his neighborhood, their trials and sometimes joys.
“Do they need loans? Furniture?” Molly asked when I brought home these stories. “Ask.” But I never did.
That day of the green dress Jacob simply sat, regarding me as Madame Hélène turned her white hand and I turned with it as she studied the fit. “Irma,” said Jacob, carefully, wrapping the cheese and pickle in a clean rag, “you must not hide behind that scar. I have seen how you turn your face when any speak to you, even Simone and the good Madame. But you must not do this. That scar may be God’s special sign. And see how beautiful you are in this fine dress?”
“She was unlucky,” scoffed Madame. “Who needs a god who makes scars?” She marked the hem with pins where we would add the tiny lead weights that held down ladies’ gowns against immodest Chicago winds. When I slipped behind our screen to shed the dress, it seemed I was shedding my own skin. The hem must be finished today, Madame ordered crisply, and the bodice shaped with the tiny tucks at the chalk marks. Jacob left in a flutter of rags, and silence settled over the shop.
Finishing the dress left barely time for lunch and none for the bread Simone brought in mid-afternoon. Yet the wool moved so easily under my fingers, folding, curving, stretching and shaping itself to my needs. This once I was sorry for my speed, for soon the fine green would be boxed and delivered. I felt poor and shabby in my drab gray smock. Even old Jacob had seen me with new eyes.
The clock struck seven. I looked up and saw Madame Hélène and Simone standing together, smiling. How odd, I thought: Madame smiling. She took the long dress box from Simone and handed it to me. “The address?” I asked, for she always wrote it in chalk that I brushed off before delivery.
“Is yours, Irma,” said Madame.
I touched the box, incredulous. “For me, this beautiful dress?”
“Yes, so you feel beautiful and not so sad,” said Madame briskly. I scrambled to my feet, stammering thanks, but she raised a finger to stop me. “You are a good worker. My ladies like you. Now go home with your dress, Irma, go. I do not like the little scenes. Merci is enough. Enjoy your dress. Be pretty.”
“Yours?” breathed Molly when I opened the box at the boardinghouse. “You could sell that dress for forty dollars, then loan out those forty and earn, let’s see,” she scribbled furiously, then looked up, curious, as if she had never seen my face before. “You know, that green does suit you. It makes your eyes sparkle.” She threw down her stub of pencil. “Irma, you deserve something pretty. Listen, wear it on Sunday. I have to go meet some Poles. I’ll wear my good blue and we’ll have a promenade.”
Intoxicated by the green dress, I agreed. It was strangely warm that Sunday despite the season, with a soft breeze that scurried around my skirt, as if spring were peeking through the winter. We went west toward the new neighborhoods, my green swaying against Molly’s peacock blue. We had both washed our hair on Saturday night, brushed and bound it with pretty combs. I relished the delicious ripple of the lamb-soft green, its soft press on my chest, warm wrap of the waist and billowing waves of the skirt as I walked.
We came to a street lined with taverns. “The curse of whiskey,” Molly muttered. “Instead of drinking themselves to death, they could be buying houses.”
“With your loans?” I suggested.
Molly laughed and wove her arm through mine. “Come on, Irma, there’s no harm in a bit of show.” Men leaning against tavern doorways turned their heads like cats watching birds. Their eyes raked my body, tightening the bodice and burning my skin. Molly laughed, white teeth showing. Is this what other women felt, that every street was a stage, every watching eye hotly eager and all of this a happy game? Walking was never like this in Opi. Because I was plain and not beautiful like the baker’s daughters? Because my clothes were shabby? Now in this marvelous dress I was equal to the baker’s daughters, at least for men lounging by taverns. Yet when their whistles nipped my ears, the dress felt thin as voile and I crowded Molly on the sidewalk.
“Really, Irma, sometimes you’re such a nun,” she whispered, shaking herself free. “It’s fun, no, to play with men a little? Keep your chin up. They won’t do a thing if you walk fast. It’s like playing with kittens. You dangle a bit in their faces and then snatch it away. Come on, it’s a beautiful day and they’re just admiring the scenery. Relax.”
I tried. My dress was modest enough and decently covered, I reminded myself. Madame had been mindful of this. So as we walked on with Molly still laughing at me, I did relax. The dress helped, with its swish and softness, the glint of sunlight on ruffles, the gentle tightness at my waist and our sculpted shadows moving over brick. If Zia could see how eyes followed me, Irma Vitale of Opi, yes, she would be happy. I held my head up proudly despite my scar, my too-high nose and common brown hair.
Molly’s pace quickened. She grasped my hand. “Never mind the men. Look at all these houses, new families coming every day, Jews in these blocks, and Poles further on. A few years ago all this was fields. Look over there, three boardinghouses in a row. Gaveston should buy one.” Now we were walking past families whose men watched us cautiously, mindful of their wives. Girls held out their hands to feel our dresses brushing by. “Little grubbers!” Molly groused cheerfully, waving aside girls with dirty hands, but this was a game too, as we twisted and swerved to keep our skirts free of the giggling gauntlet. “You there!” Molly ordered a girl whose face was smeared with jam, “Scat!” I gave one child a penny. What a country, to be in this dress on this beautiful day with a friend on the streets in Chicago and money in my purse to scatter.
“Come on now,” Molly urged, “we’re not there yet, the Poles are a few blocks on.” We turned left and right as Molly muttered her directions until she stopped, triumphant, and pointed: “There! Look!”
A swarm of men were laying brick while little girls played with rag dolls, boys mixed mortar and women poured beer for the men. “See,” Molly announced with a flourish. “It cost me a deal of trouble, but I found out they’re building a church and they’ll need chairs, you see? I know where there’s a warehouse full of them and a man with a cart.” Molly located a translator and began a long debate between those who wanted to build their own pews a
nd others who liked the ease of Molly’s proposal.
“Father Michal must decide,” the translator finally announced.
“Can you go get him, Irma?” Molly pleaded. “They say he’s with a new family a few blocks away, blessing their flat or something.”
“Let’s go together if it’s so close.”
“Please, Irma. If I stay, I’m sure I can make some loans. It’s safe; there’s no taverns around here, just houses.”
This much was true, and not to be called a nun again, I agreed to fetch the priest. It wasn’t far, the translator assured me, just a few blocks east, a narrow house, number seventeen, with blue curtains. Red curtains, one of the women must have insisted, for the translator shrugged. “Red or blue. The important thing is finding Father Michal.”
I set off through streets the translator had described, not the way I had come with Molly, but soon this new quarter defied the easy name of “blocks.” In tangled lanes and alleys no one spoke English or Italian or had heard of a Father Michal. There were wide houses with blue or red curtains and narrow ones with no curtains, just dark glinting windows. Some had no numbers. Certainly there was no seventeen. My green dress grew heavy and tight. Perhaps Father Michal had left that house and gone to another. Perhaps the matter of chairs was already settled. I would go back to Molly, I decided. If the priest was still needed, the translator could find him. I had been gone a long time and perhaps she was waiting for me.
Turning west to shorten my path, I followed a street that ended at a dank wooden shop whose crude hanging sign showed a cow head circled by sausages. Buckets outside brimmed with clotted blood and chunks of fat and gristle. Rangy dogs fought for scraps. Gagging from the stench, I hurried toward a doorstep where two women sat talking: “Church, Polish church?” I asked desperately, then tried Italian: “Chiesa?” A word circled back from Cleveland. “Kirke?” They seemed distrustful. What was a lady doing in this quarter, accosting them? Boys playing stickball stared frankly at my breasts. One made a crude gesture, another snorted. I looked frantically around. When had the sun dropped below treetops and dusty haze begun filling the streets?
When We Were Strangers Page 16