by Pam Lewis
Minke was so hungry she felt she might almost faint. The moment Miss Anne retreated, she buttered two slices of bread and wolfed them down. She drank a large glass of cold milk. Everything was strange and new, like being in Elisabeth’s house, except her own parents had sent her there, which had made it all seem safe at the time. Oh, and look how well that turned out, she thought. The sisters kept coming into the kitchen for one reason or another. To fetch this or that, to see if she was finding what she needed. To check that she wasn’t stealing, no doubt, which made sense. She was as strange to them as they were to her. She had to be careful to keep this job. To do everything right. While she did her dishes, Elly began to fuss. She finished quickly, before Elly’s cries grew loud, and took the baby to her room to change and feed her.
“Shall we?” Mr. Wiley’s voice came from the kitchen. “Where did that girl go?” he asked the sisters. Miss Anne rapped lightly at her door. “Louis is ready for his fitting.” Minke rose immediately, slipping Elly back into her sling as she hastened back to the kitchen. Elly squirmed and fussed at this hasty treatment.
“Leave the baby with Anne,” Mr. Wiley said.
“I always keep her with me.” Minke panicked at the thought of leaving Elly.
“Come, come.” He made an impatient gesture that meant she should give Anne the baby.
“I can’t.”
Mr. Wiley frowned. “Can’t what?”
This would be her ruin. “I can’t leave her.”
“Nonsense,” Mr. Wiley said. “That’s nonsense. The child is perfectly safe.”
“It’s too far,” she said, realizing the absurdity of what she had said. They would think she was crazy.
Mr. Wiley gave Miss Amanda a look, and Minke knew she was in trouble.
“I lost a child in Comodoro. I’ve been afraid to let Elly out of my sight.”
Mr. Wiley frowned.
“His name was Jozef. In all Elly’s life, I’ve never been more than a few feet from her.”
“Well, that’s a terrible thing,” Mr. Wiley said. “But you can’t be with her forever.”
“Louis,” Miss Anne said. “Show some compassion!”
“I don’t understand the problem. My brother would like to be fitted,” Miss Amanda said.
Miss Anne said, “I’ll tell you what. I’ll hold Elly, and we’ll all go to the sewing room.”
Mr. Wiley frowned at them. He clearly was a man used to giving the orders in the household. “That won’t do. We’ve hired you for a particular job, and we expect you to perform it.” He wasn’t exactly angry. That was the disarming part. He was just stating the facts as he saw them. Either she did the job the way he wanted her to do it or she would have to leave. Without the job, she and Elly would have to return to the apartment with Sander and Fenna. Unthinkable. She took Elly from her sling, handed her to Miss Anne, and followed Mr. Wiley down the back stairs.
It took everything in her to keep the panic at bay, the terror that at that very moment Miss Anne was running out of the building with Elly in her arms, passing the baby to a stranger, and taking money. Stop it! she told herself. That was ridiculous! Yet she had trusted Pieps, and he had done the unthinkable. Once in the room, Mr. Wiley went behind a screen in the sewing room and emerged in a seersucker suit. It seemed to fit him well enough. What did he want from her? The length was good, the sleeves right.
“I’ve given up at J. Press. They never do it right.”
She pretended to study the suit while she talked herself down. Mr. Wiley was waiting, hands on hips.
“Can you take a few steps,” she said, stalling for time. For the life of her, she couldn’t see anything wrong with that stupid suit and only wanted to bolt for the stairs to see Elly.
He walked across the floor, spun on his heel, and walked back. That was it. When he moved, the suit seemed to move independently of his body. The jacket buckled, the pants bunched. No wonder he didn’t like it.
“Hold still,” she told him. She pinned darts up the front of the jacket and in the pants along the sides, “Walk,” she commanded. She studied the movement of the fabric, pinned a few more places. Now she saw that the crotch was too long. The jacket was too wide under the arms but fitted well around his waist. The point was to make him appear longer and leaner. It wasn’t such a difficult task. “There,” she said when she’d finished marking the suit with chalk and sticking pins in the fabric.
“I feel like a voodoo doll,” he said. “Do the gauchos have voodoo dolls?” He shook his head with a laugh. “No, of course not. What am I saying? Wrong part of the world altogether.”
“Mr. Wiley?”
“What is it?”
“May I ask what happens to the newspapers I saw in your study after you are finished with them?”
“Incinerated.”
“My friend Dr. Tredegar says the best way to improve my English is to read the newspapers.”
“A wise man,” he said. “I’ll arrange for you to see them.”
THAT WEEKEND, THE telephone in Mr. Wiley’s office rang frequently. The Misses Wiley were constantly answering the doorbell as people came to see their brother. This seemed normal for the household. Minke caught glimpses of well-dressed men in bowlers and fur-trimmed coats, even a woman, as they passed through the foyer and into Mr. Wiley’s apartment. He barely had the time to try on the seersucker suit, but he finally managed on Sunday afternoon. The alterations slimmed him to the fullest extent possible, and he was pleased. She was elated: Her first challenge was met, and well met at that.
On Monday morning, however, the mood changed. Before dawn, she heard people in the kitchen whom she identified as Mr. Wiley and a woman, but not one of the sisters. She assumed it was the voice of Mrs. Bowen.
She lay in bed wondering what to do. Should she go into the kitchen or wait until she was called? Elly stirred, awakened by the voices; she would need attention. Minke got out of bed in hopes of reaching Elly before she began to cry from hunger, but she was too late. Elly drew in a deep breath and wailed. The door to Minke’s apartment opened, and a woman stood there. She wore a long black dress with a white collar and white cuffs. “Where in ’ell did you come from?” She looked at Elly and crossed herself.
“That’s the new seamstress,” Mr. Wiley called from the kitchen. “Let her be.”
Mrs. Bowen narrowed her eyes at Minke, a warning of some sort, and then pulled the door closed. Minke hastily fed Elly, changed her diaper, rinsed out the dirty one, washed her face, put Elly back on the bed, then picked her up again, not knowing what to do. She longed to take the child with her, but with Mr. Wiley there, was it best to keep her out of sight? She decided to go alone to the kitchen.
Mr. Wiley sat at the kitchen table with a newspaper spread out, reading assiduously. Mrs. Bowen stood over him with the pot of coffee, glaring at Minke as though daring her to get between herself and Mr. Wiley. He seemed oblivious. He scanned the paper and then turned the page, lifting it at one edge between thumb and index finger delicately, as though it were the finest lace, and raising it high, then carefully settling the page flat and starting to read something in the upper left hand.
Minke didn’t know what to do with herself.
Mr. Wiley glanced up. “Well, give the girl some coffee, Bowen,” he said. “Don’t just stand there.”
Mrs. Bowen indicated the cabinet where the cups were kept, and Minke drew one from the shelf. Mrs. Bowen pointedly put the coffee over the pilot light on the stove and returned to stand behind Mr. Wiley while Minke poured her own. She sipped the fine coffee and watched. As Mr. Wiley finished a section of the paper, he laid it to the side, and Mrs. Bowen snatched it up for her stack on the counter.
“Might I?” Minke asked, reaching for the paper.
“Might ye what?” Mrs. Bowen said.
“Mr. Wiley?” Minke asked.
Mrs. Bowen gave her a cross look and put a finger to her mouth.
“Mr. Wiley,” Minke said again. She wasn’t about to be bullied by this w
oman. He looked around, a man startled into the present. “Might I take your papers when you’re finished?”
“Of course, of course. We settled all that yesterday. Bowen will tell you where they go when you finish with them.”
Minke felt an urge to stick out her tongue at Mrs. Bowen. Just then the kitchen door swung open, and a young man came into the kitchen. He reminded her of Pieps with his youthful grace and blondness. He colored when he saw Minke.
Mr. Wiley wiped his mouth with a napkin, put down his cup, and got to his feet. “Off we go, then,” he said, and was swiftly out the door.
“Seamstress, are you?” Mrs. Bowen said.
Minke nodded. Instinct told her the less she said to this woman, the better.
“His secretary, that was,” Mrs. Bowen said. “Name of Bill.”
“I see.”
“The boy follows him to work, taking notes the whole way. Comical to see, that Bill behind Mr. Wiley, scribbling like the devil all the way down Riverside Drive. People talk about it.”
“I’ll be going down to see to the sewing,” Minke said. “There’s a lot to be done.”
Mrs. Bowen grunted. She filled a bowl with oatmeal, lay it before Minke, and drew up a chair. “Who are you?” she asked.
“The seamstress,” Minke said. “I answered an ad in the newspaper.”
“You and ten others. I mean, who are you? Don’t banter around. I like to know who is working with me.”
Minke met the woman’s eyes. “I’m decent, clean, and hardworking, Mrs. Bowen. Just like you.”
“What are you going to do with that baby? Don’t think I’ll care for it.”
“I will not leave my baby with you,” Minke said.
“You’ll be just like the others.”
“I’ve done nothing to deserve your anger.”
Mrs. Bowen smiled. “What is he paying you?”
“I’m lucky to have the rooms.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“Seventy cents a week.”
Mrs. Bowen pouted.
“What do they pay you?”
“None of your little business, miss,” Mrs. Bowen said. “You’ll see that boy Bill get his walking papers soon. Mr. Wiley goes through secretaries faster than seamstresses.”
“What about housekeepers?”
Mrs. Bowen made to clear the remaining newspapers from the table. “The man works too much.”
“What of the sisters?”
Mrs. Bowen swept a dark curl from her forehead. “You want gossip, is that it? You people are all the same.”
“Not gossip,” Minke said. “I wondered if they work, too.”
“The Misses Wiley have their charities and so on. This is a decent household, so don’t go getting designs on that man.”
“You have no business saying such a thing.”
Mrs. Bowen made a face. “Well, Miss High-and-Mighty, you’ll serve at dinner tonight, and no two ways about it.”
“Oh?” Minke was surprised but not displeased. The job duties hadn’t included that.
“Didn’t know about that, did you?” Mrs. Bowen grinned. “You’ll do as I say.”
“I’ll be happy to serve. And I’ll take the rest of the newspapers with me now.” She winked at Mrs. Bowen to irritate her a little.
Mrs. Bowen reached into a bag and drew out a dark dress. “Mend this,” she said. “Under the arm is a rip.”
“I will not mend your clothes.”
“I would hate to have to complain about that child disrupting my kitchen,” Mrs. Bowen said.
Minke snatched the dress up. “It had better be clean.”
A heap of mending sat waiting in the sewing room. She set Elly down, threw back the curtains to let in the light, and decided to start at the top, a woolen coat with a triangular rip, the most difficult thing to mend because it had to be invisibly rewoven. She slid an extra-fine needle in and out of the cloth, her moment alone, and yes, after having said his name aloud, she was finally unafraid. “Zef,” she said in the small room, and the sound of it brought back to her his sweet laugh, his times playing peekaboo with Cassian at the obras.
“We’ll find him,” she said to the sleeping Elly. “I know it in my heart. I’m certain of it.” She paused to hold the cloth up to the better light. “But where do you suppose he is?” She’d given this so much thought, made herself mad with it sometimes. “If we assume for a minute that it really was a conspiracy between Pieps and Goyo, something I still cannot bring myself to believe, then Zef is being raised as a gaucho.” A smile spread over her face at the prospect of her little Zef on horseback or in an estancia before the fire, crowded in with other children and listening to a storyteller like El Moreno. “Gauchos take very good care of children. He’ll learn their ways.” A new thought stopped her. “Perhaps he won’t want to leave. If that’s the case, we’ll simply wait until he’s ready. That’s what we’ll do. Bide our time so he comes willingly. But if we find him right away, he’ll be only two years old, and the task won’t be so difficult.”
She sighed. It was all so much. “If he’s not with the gauchos, and I have always thought this more likely, he is with a family who paid a high price for him, and in that case, we’ll steal him back as he was stolen from us. It will take us a long time to find him. He could be in Santiago, Buenos Aires. He could be anywhere, but here’s our advantage, my little love: Zef is as blond as a Viking, a rarity. Oh, we’ll find him.”
Elly slept on.
Minke sat back and considered what was left to mend in the basket. She’d made good progress and decided she would take a look through the newspaper. The articles were difficult, so she concentrated on the photographs and the captions underneath. Mostly, they were people’s names, but often the caption described what was happening in the photograph, and it became a game to look carefully at the picture and use it to help understand the words. When she didn’t know a word, she wrote it down. She would ask Cassian when he came. She hoped he would come soon.
When the pile of mending was finally smaller and the finished items were on hangers on the rack in the corner, she quickly stitched up Mrs. Bowen’s dress, gathered up Elly, and went back up the stairs. The apartment was in an uproar. In addition to Mrs. Bowen, three robust women were in the steaming kitchen: one chopping vegetables at the table, another stirring a large pot of something that smelled delicious, and a third at the sink. Minke hurried through on the way to her rooms.
“Get back in here,” Mrs. Bowen commanded. “I’ll be needing you.”
Minke turned to face the woman and spoke before she could stop herself. “Don’t order me about. I won’t stand for it.” Mrs. Bowen seemed taken aback and was about to speak when Minke cut her off. “I’ll help you after I take care of my child,” she said, and shut the door behind her.
She changed Elly’s diaper, trembling at what she’d done. But she wanted to make her point by taking the time she needed, so she washed and hung the diaper to dry in the bathroom, nursed the baby, and tried to remain calm. She wondered if Mrs. Bowen had the power to fire her. She thought not, since it was the Wileys themselves who had hired her and never said a word about serving. She set Elly down on a blanket in the corner of the kitchen where she could keep an eye on her and where Elly might have something entertaining to watch.
Mrs. Bowen, red-faced, shouted out commands. Minke was to lay the table for ten; she’d better know place settings, by God. Forks on the left, butter knife across the top. In Comodoro, Meduño had made a point of his skill at table setting, so at least she’d seen it done correctly. Well enough that Mrs. Bowen found nothing to complain about when she came to check.
When the guests arrived, Minke took their coats and put them in one of the bedrooms in Mr. Wiley’s apartment, where she heaped them on a bed. Then she and two of the other women were sent from the kitchen to the dining room to serve the fish course and fill the water glasses. The talk around the table distracted her terribly, but she concentrated on her work as topics
changed in midair, leapfrogging from the war to a crime in New Jersey to outrageous gossip about people they apparently knew—adulteries, embezzlements. The air rang with laughter and raised voices, people happily talking over one another.
“Our new seamstress,” Mr. Wiley exclaimed, grasping her hand as she reached to clear a plate. “She comes to us from the Netherlands via Argentina. Comodoro Rivadavia.”
“Pull up a chair, young woman,” the man at the head of the table instructed her. “How long did you live there?”
Minke sat tentatively, not knowing if she should. “Almost two years.”
“See some growth, eh?”
“People came on every ship. Hundreds every year.”
“Tell me about the oil.”
She was surprised these people knew about a tiny place so far away. “It is a sea of oil under the town. It gushes from cliffs and runs in the streets.”
The man whistled. “How many wells?”
“Dozens.”
“Twenty-four? Thirty-six?”
“More. Maybe a hundred.”
“How is it transported?”
“Eh?”
“How do they ship it?”
“In barrels.”
“Is there a railroad?”
“Talk of one, I think.”
The kitchen door swung open, and Mrs. Bowen stopped in her tracks, seeing Minke at the table. “I must be getting back to my work,” Minke said.
In the kitchen Mrs. Bowen shook her head in disgust. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“They had questions about Comodoro.”
“You must never sit with them,” she said.
“They asked me to.”
“Even so.” Mrs. Bowen sniffed. “Especially when it’s Mr. Ochs.”
“Who?”
“The swarthy one and his dark wife. He owns The New York Times. A very important man.”
A FEW WEEKS later, Minke was in her sewing room when there came a knock at her door, and there stood Cassian. She threw her arms around his neck and hugged him hard. She’d never in her life been so happy to see anyone. Elly clapped her fat little hands, recognizing him even though he’d dyed his hair black again and had on a new velvet jacket in a lovely shade of rust.