Bowery Girl

by Kim Taylor

  “Ya will, huh?” Calhoun sauntered closer, his breath filled with liquor. He looked Annabelle up and down and stepped in close.

  “Get out of here, Calhoun,” Mollie said.

  But he didn’t listen, just grabbed Annabelle’s skirt and pushed it up around her waist.

  “Ya want me, don’t ya?” Annabelle whispered. “But I’m a good girl now. Like Mollie. So just a feel.”

  His hand went between her legs. Annabelle jerked and gritted her teeth.

  Mollie punched him in the back. “She said a feel.”

  “I’m giving her a feel.”

  “It’s enough.” She grasped at Annabelle’s arm, but Calhoun caught her wrist. “Leave her alone.”

  Annabelle turned toward Mollie, her eyes black with alley light, empty. “Go home, Mollie.”

  Calhoun pushed Mollie away. She stepped backwards. “Please, Annabelle . . .”

  “Go home.”

  “I’ll be waiting on the street.”

  Calhoun sauntered out. He looked around at the lights, then spat. He reached into the pocket of his loose jacket and tossed a three-cent coin toward Mollie. “Got herself a guardian angel. Lucky girl.”

  AFTERNOON

  THE NEXT AFTERNOON, MOLLIE set the bucket under the second-floor spigot and turned the handle all the way. Not that it made much difference in the amount of water coming out.

  Annabelle had been sick the night before—didn’t she know not to mix gin and beer?—and then sick all morning. Damn Friday morning—best day on Hester Street for a bit of pickpocketing—and here Mollie stood getting water to clean up the mess. She heard the minutes ticking away, as if a watch swung by her ear. All the good minutes, when the groceries were fresh and pockets and purses full. Annabelle had best be standing by the time I get back upstairs, she thought. She’d better be ready to go.

  Next to her, a mother scrubbed her son, who sat cross-legged in the sink. She wiped at him with a rag, and then squeezed the cloth over his head. Mollie’d never seen them before.

  “Just move here?” she asked the mother.

  “From the front building. Water pipe’s busted.”

  The little boy was pink and smiling, splashing his mother, who flicked the cloth at him and mopped her face with her apron.

  He slapped his hand in the basin water. Some of it landed on Mollie’s skirt. “Whatcha doing?”

  “Getting water.”

  “Why?”

  “Why not?”

  The little boy held on to the rolled sides of the metal sink and pulled himself up. His skin was covered in goose pimples.

  “You look like a plucked chicken,” Mollie said.

  He leaned toward her. “Yer ugly.”

  “Ian!” His mother swatted him with the rag. “Sorry.”

  “She’s ugly,” Ian said.

  “Well, you’re so ugly your real mam left you and this one’s a banshee. Might just drown you if you don’t look out,” Mollie said.

  “Not a banshee.”

  “How do ya know?” Mollie asked. “You ever asked her?”

  The boy stuck out his bottom lip. He looked up at his mother, the first signs of mistrust shadowing his eyes.

  “Well, go ahead, ask her.”

  His mother set her hands on her hips. “That’s enough,” she said to Mollie.

  “Ask her,” Mollie hissed.

  “You a banshee?” His eyes were round with fright.

  “No, now, we’re done.” She glared at Mollie, then lifted little simple Ian from the sink and wrapped her apron around him. He grasped her around the middle with his legs. Oh, but he didn’t take his eyes from his mother’s face. And then his lower lip trembled and twisted. Tears and a scream burst forth.

  “You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

  Mollie winked at the boy. “Yer a brave one, I’ll tell you that. Love yer ma well and she won’t bite.” Mollie popped a matchstick in her mouth, grabbed her own bucket, and took the stairs two at a time.

  But there Annabelle lay, curled tight on the bed. Her skin was ashen, her eyes ringed in black. Her red dress lay on the floor in a heap.

  “Ain’t ya up yet? We got work to do.”

  “Go yourself.”

  Mollie poured some water into a pot to boil. “I’m making you potatoes. And I’m gonna only be nice this once, ’cause you just got out of jail.”

  “I hate potatoes.”

  “It’s all we’ve got, so don’t complain.”

  Annabelle ran the tip of her tongue over her lips. “I’m thirsty.”

  “I’ll get you tea when the water boils. A beer’d make you feel better, but there ain’t one, so you’ll have to make do.”

  “This isn’t from the drink. I been sick like this for weeks. Matron at the infirmary said it was common. It don’t last long.”

  “We’ll have to give the dress a soak.” Mollie poured water into the teacup. “Here, plain water’ll be better for you.”

  Annabelle pushed herself up and reached for the cup. She leaned back against the wall and sighed, watching Mollie put the potatoes in the pot. “I’m going to that settlement house today.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to read.”

  “Reading ain’t gonna get us to Brooklyn. When we get there, you can take all the time you want to read.”

  Annabelle stuck out her chin. “I want to learn now. You don’t listen to me.”

  “I’ll teach ya. You don’t need some charity place for that.”

  “How?”

  “Look at the walls, Annabelle. I changed the papers on them right before you came home. There’s a great story going on—The Nick McFadden Adventure.”

  “Read it to me.”

  Mollie crossed to the papers and found the pink pages of the Police Gazette. “It’s good, see? Listen—”

  PART THREE:

  WHEREIN NICK MCFADDEN IS SHANGHAIED AGAINST HIS WILL!

  The bag dropped on little Nick’s head before he could even say a prayer. Trapped! Against his will and God knew where the kidnappers would take him. His friend Marlowe had warned him of such things, and he thought he had been careful. But now he felt his hands and legs tied, felt himself thrust into the back of a cart, to be taken away from all he knew and loved. Tears coursed his cheeks, and he wiped them against the muslin that blocked the real world from his sight.

  “The nuns at them charity houses you were always getting kicked out of taught you to read,” Annabelle said.

  “So?”

  “So how come I can’t go to some charity house and learn, too?”

  Mollie stirred the water, spinning the potatoes in a circle. “The sooner we get out on the street, the sooner we’ll make enough money for Brooklyn. We need the money, Annabelle. We need that more. Besides, I’m feeling lucky. I want to bet on that new dog at the Rat Pit.”

  Annabelle rubbed her eyes. “Jesus, I don’t even know if it’s day or eve in here. It’s as bad as the cell.”

  “It’s what we got, Annabelle. It wasn’t so easy keeping it. I got some debts.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Tommy’s been fronting me money the last coupla months.”

  “Fronting you or giving you?”

  “We don’t take charity, do we? Not even from friends.”

  “How much?”

  “Twenty dollars.”

  “Twenty dollars?”

  “I thought I’d pay him back, easy. Just had a bad run of pockets. You know how it is.”

  “Well, you’re not gonna pay it back. Once I tell Tommy about this baby, you know he’ll forgive the loan.”

  “I think he’ll just raise his cut of your wages.”

  “I know Tommy.”

  “Yeah, I guess you do.” The room grew damp with steam as the potatoes boiled, and it brought out the stench of the bucket where Annabelle had been sick.

  All Mollie needed was one deep pocket and very light hands. And the luck of the Irish—which had never been very good. But just a smal
l amount of luck—that was all she needed—and she’d pay Tommy back and she and Annabelle would walk right straight across that new Brooklyn Bridge. Look at trees instead of gray laundry. Find a house with a window. Sleep in a soft shaft of sunlight.

  But that took work, and it was time to begin.

  Annabelle stood. She took her blue dress from the wall and pulled it over her head. Mollie pulled the stays tight.

  Annabelle was silent. She took a long time applying her lip paint, twice veering off course and staining her chin. She rubbed her red shoes to a luster. “I want to quit this.”

  “Later. I promise. When we got enough money to move to Brooklyn.”

  NIGHTLIFE

  “THERE—SEE IT?” MOLLIE and Annabelle stood in the alcove of a building, in front of a door to a women’s hat shop. Mollie put her face to the glass, and let her eyes adjust. The gaslight from the street cast a sheen of silver throughout the room. Long mirrors reflected a settee and chairs curved to accommodate bustles, near a large oval carpet of white swans and blushing roses. Along the counter, the latest fashions adorned gilt hat stands. There was the oval midnight-blue bonnet with trails of lace. A mourning hat next—quite somber, quite simple, only the rich velvet giving away its price. Mollie peered farther. Where was it? Had it been bought? She looked for the hat with colors that could not easily be named, for its fabric changed from red to silver to gold depending on the mood of the sun. Where was the translucent lace that seemed like angel’s wings? With the small stuffed bird taking flight from the crown?

  There—nearly lost in the dark at the far end of the counter. “Right there—at the end. See it?”

  “Goddamn, that’s a slammer of a hat.”

  “Ain’t it?” Mollie sighed. It was a beautiful hat. Completely useless. Yet it calmed her to see it still there each time she came to this doorway. The first time, she had wanted to steal it. She sneaked into the alley, looking for any vulnerable entrance. The door to the yard was metal, with a great metal lock. Thick bars guarded the long windows, and thin as she was, she knew she could not squeeze between them. She returned to the front, stared at the lock there, kneeling to view the tumblers, but the light was never quite bright enough, and what she saw looked complicated.

  For weeks before Annabelle came home, in the hush hours between night and morning, when the only sounds were the scrabble of rats and the creaks of the mortar and brick, Mollie lay alone in bed and imagined herself wearing the hat. She was always strolling, never afraid, and the sky was always clear. The shade that dappled the sidewalk came from trees, not tenements. She took deep breaths of air, and it tasted like lemon candy. Men tipped their derbies as she passed; women shot envious glances. She was beautiful in the hat with the bird on its crown.

  But then the city awoke around her. The Italians clanged open their stove, the hallway doors screeched and slammed as people descended to their jobs in tanneries and silver-plating factories and millineries and groceries. She rose, lit a candle, prodded the coal in the stove if there was coal, ate an apple if there was an apple. She marked another line on the wall, counted the marks, and figured the days until Annabelle’s return. Combed and pinned her hair. Looked at herself in the bit of mirror.

  Mollie knew she would never steal the hat. A hat like that needed a cloak, not a simple coat. And then there was the need for a dress of equal caliber, and a corset, and gloves, and stockings of fine wool. And a room with a window, so she might admire the shifting colors of the hat as it played with the light. So many impossible things.

  She sighed and turned from the doorway. “Meet ya home later.”

  It was night now. It was the Bowery. It was time for Annabelle to flip her curls and catch the gaze of a stranger. It was time to play.

  Two weeks. Two weeks since Annabelle came home. Two weeks of lousy pockets for Mollie, and for Annabelle, very few johns.

  They had only sixty-eight cents left. Earlier in the day, twenty cents had gone for grilled sausages, pickled cabbage, and black bread at a café on the Bowery. For the last week, Annabelle had eaten two full meals a day. Annabelle seemed to always need two meals now.

  The streetlight hissed, and its glow turned the sidewalk a pale gray. Mollie raised her eyes to the sound of horses and carriages drawing across the cobblestones and stopping before a theater that blazed with light. Men in tall black hats and heavy coats stepped from the carriages, handing out ladies with dainty hands and fur-lined jackets. The couples picked their way carefully through the fast freezing slush as the temperature dropped.

  The crowd swelled, all the patrons waiting their turn to pass through the beaded glass doors. Mollie waited until the crowd was a swarm of satin and silk and wool, waited until everyone’s focus was on only the broad doors that would lead to heat and a night’s entertainment. She rubbed her hands, blew on them, flexing them, then stepped from the dark of her hiding place and moved between the carriages. The horses in their leathers hung their heads or munched from grain bags. The drivers lit cigarettes and wrapped their scarves tighter around their necks. They milled among one another, stamping their feet. Their breath hung in the air.

  She moved in, her soft soles giving nothing away. The gentlemen would have their wallets in their chest pockets; the ladies would hide their rings in the muffs that warmed their hands. The easiest thing to take would be cuff links, or easing a watch from its pocket and slipping the chain from a vest button. The ladies might have a pocket in their skirts—might be a few coins there, too. She sidled into the crowd. She did not look at faces, but waists and wrists and pockets. She heard nothing but the rush of blood in her chest.

  A little shove. A cuff link unclasped and in the pocket. Step away, run into a woman, apologize, slide a hand in her husband’s jacket; yes, there’s the leather. Slide the bills out under your coat, drop the wallet to the ground, let it be trampled by the crowd pushing impatiently forward now. A gold-and-black waistcoat, covering an ever-so-large stomach. Look at the watch chain beckon! Slide out the knife, only one slice to pop the button holding it. Down comes the watch into an open hand.

  Her heart beat faster. She was close to the doors now—one more, one more something . . . but what? There—just the faint hint of an opening to a lady’s pocket. Mollie let her go by, darting a hand in, coming up with a handkerchief and a miniature book. A Bible. She’d give them both to Annabelle as a present, for they were worthless to fence.

  Her breath was shallow. Her ears filled suddenly with the murmurs of the latecomers rushing up. The cologne and perfume changed the air to streaks of gold.

  She strode quickly away, back into the midst of the carriages. The drivers no longer lounged around, but had stepped inside their cabs for the wait. Only the horses bore witness to her passing.

  Turning right at the hat shop, Mollie thought of the girls who would be clocking in before the sun. Who would wear their fingers to the bone and be old before they’d turned twenty. Poor fools, she thought. At least she had the freedom to see the sun, to wake when she wanted. She pulled out the cuff link she’d just stolen, flipped it in the air, caught it between two fingers, and kissed it.

  The flagstones of the alley sloped inward to an open gutter, littered with ice, mud, and trash. The view of the sky above was knife-thin, for the buildings were solid brick, four stories each side.

  Mollie lifted her skirts and was careful where she stepped. A black rat crawled from the gutter, stared at her with its shiny eyes, then scurried across her path and under a muslin sack of garbage.

  She passed the first door with the shattered lantern, and came to a half door of weathered wood that showed in flecks and streaks that it had once been painted jade green. It had neither light above it nor knob upon it, and the brick wall that stopped the alley short kept the entrance in perpetual darkness. She knocked twice, then once. Waited three seconds. Gave four short raps. This was the abode of Black Jim, whose face was known by no one.

  A small square was cut in the wood. It was pushed open by a han
d with long fingers and threadbare cuffs. The odor of sour eggs and stale tobacco smoke followed. The hand turned, palm up; the nails were edged with crescents of black. She placed the cuff link in it. The fingers closed like a vise; the little opening was shut tight.

  Mollie waited. She looked up at the sliver of night sky and the stars that pulsed and flickered. She stuck out a shoe and was annoyed at the splatters of mud on the leather.

  The little door opened. Five cents.

  “Not enough,” she said.

  Black Jim’s hand held the coin between index finger and thumb and did not move.

  After pocketing the coin, she pulled the watch from her coat and gave it over. Waited again.

  Two dollars. The bills fluttered.

  “That’s silver. The chain alone’s worth—”

  The hand and money disappeared.

  The clear air brought cold. Mollie hopped from one foot to the other to bring up heat. She was certain this watch would bring at least twenty dollars, perhaps thirty, for it was beautiful and the tick was close to silent, the innards well designed. There would be money for Tommy, for food, for rent, for a bet at the Rat Pit.

  Five dollars were proffered.

  She grabbed the bills and stuffed them into the large pocket of her coat. “Tight-ass.”

  The door slammed shut.

  His groan echoed in her chest. His heartbeat thumped against her. The cast-iron bed frame squealed, then slowed, then stopped. Seamus’s leg remained heavily over hers, and the rough of his trousers scraped against her thigh.

  She sat up and pushed down her skirts, organizing the folds until the fabric was smooth.

  “Don’t get up,” he said. “Jesus, it’s heaven just like this.”

  She gazed down at him. Such soft kisses he gave! And nights at the Rat Pit, or walks along the waterfront to see the ever-growing bridge. Simple kindnesses. He never forced her to do anything—not at all like other men. For hadn’t she enough of that, of walking down the wrong alley, smiling at the wrong man, straying too long at a charity house Mass, compromising with a cop?