“Can I help you?” Her eyes were wary.
This wasn’t the right woman. The one I was looking for was older, more experienced. “I’m looking for the mother of a boy named Sydney.”
The boy poked his head around the woman’s skirt and jabbed his finger at a wagon across the way. The woman slapped his hand and he disappeared behind her.
“What do you want with her?” The woman squinted, jiggling the baby up and down.
“Only a word.” I turned, picking my way across a muddy patch of grass to the wagon the boy had pointed at. A large woman, with olive skin and eyes as black as coal, stood on the top step as if she was waiting for me.
I started to speak, but she interrupted, “I know who you are,” and moved aside expecting me to enter that filthy place.
I hesitated. I’d seen a picture once of a woman getting her fortune told at a round table out in the grass. That would have been preferable, but the woman crossed her arms in a subtle challenge and I pressed my tongue to my teeth and mounted the wobbly steps, stooping under the low door frame into a dark hole of a room. The room—if it could be called that—was warm and smelled of wood smoke. There was a soft hissing sound that made me nervous.
“I’m Marcella Tuttle,” the woman said, and shut the door.
“Jeanne Tildon.”
“Sit.” It was an order, not an invitation.
I sat on a bench along the wall behind a small table. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust and I saw that the hissing was coming from the kettle on a miniature, potbelly stove. The room was surprisingly tidy. Silently, the woman maneuvered her wide hips around the narrow space, spooning tea leaves into a pot and pouring hot water over them, a rich smell rising, something spicy and unfamiliar. A colorful curtain hung toward the back, which I imagined hid a bed. It was hard to understand how anyone lived like this, much less my own daughter.
Marcella set the teapot on the table with a matching mug, beige porcelain with tiny red flowers. She didn’t pour the tea, as a hostess should, but sat on a footstool with her hands spread over her knees. I’d never seen hands that big on a woman.
“Don’t expect me to read your fortune in those leaves. You wouldn’t like what I would have to say,” she grinned, toying with me.
I didn’t reach for the pot. Tea was not what I wanted. I pressed my back against the wall, the curve of my spine into wood. “Can you summon the dead?”
Marcella laughed. It did sound ridiculous, now that I’d said it out loud.
“Is that why you’ve come? Magic and gypsy spells?” She leaned forward, her eyes hawklike and piercing. “I couldn’t summon the dead any more than you, and I wouldn’t want to. I’m a mother same as you are. Nothing else.”
I looked away, exhausted with disappointment. Around the curtained window, light escaped in skinny stripes. A warm cup of tea sounded good to me now, practical. I wondered if it was rude to pour myself a cup, or if she expected it. I had no idea what social codes these people lived by.
Marcella reached out and put her hand over mine. A sturdy hand meant to steady me, I think, but the force only threw me further off balance. What was I doing here? “Why did my daughter leave?” I blurted out, thinking this stranger might actually have an answer.
“Why did my daughter? They’re young and insolent. They thought they could do what they liked without consequence. They’re paying for it now.”
“Paying for it?”
“Guilt. Your little one’s gone missing and they’re to blame.”
“You know about Effie?”
“Course I do. Your daughter’s here, you know.”
“What?” I leapt to my feet. “How? Where? Where is she?”
Marcella stood up, patting the air with her hands. “Luella, your older daughter Luella’s here.”
I steadied myself on the table. The room was hot and cramped and I stumbled to the door, opening it just as my eldest daughter set her foot on the bottom rung.
The color drained from her face. “Mama?” she said, as if I was a questionable object instead of her mother.
I stood dumbfounded, utterly unprepared.
She moved back as I stepped forward and off the wagon. Her appearance was no different, other than her bright gypsy clothes and sun-lightened hair, and yet there was something I didn’t recognize in her face. I expected her to purse her lips and meet me with defiance, but she just stared at me with the look of someone who had been betrayed, as if the world was against her, and not the other way around. Then she dropped her head and sobbed.
Chimney smoke swirled around me as the wind cut through my coat and the wet grass soaked the leather toes of my shoes. All the conversations I’d held with Luella in my mind, all the things I’d planned to say, vanished. My desire to reach her, to hold her, was gone. The fury I felt that she was right here in her own backyard and had not come home was too much. There was no excuse she could offer that would make this bearable.
From behind, I heard Marcella say, “She’s only here because she didn’t know how to go home without her sister.”
It was all I could do not to grab Luella. “How do you know about Effie?” I heard the demanding tone I used when she was little.
She looked at me, both of us recognizing that I could no longer demand anything of her. “Freddy read about it in the paper and came after us. He said we were to blame, and that there was no excuse for it. They’re searching for her, Momma,” Luella said, her tearful, urgent words meaning to heal something. “Freddy and Sydney and Job. They haven’t moved on because of Effie. They said they’ll stay all winter until we find her.”
As if that will make a difference, I wanted to scream. They are the cause of this. You are the cause of this. I hated these people. Hated, even, my own daughter. Disgraceful. Selfish. Hate.
Luella’s sniveling slowed to a hiccup and she wiped her cheek with the back of her hand. “I never meant for Effie to come after me. I never imagined she would. I told her I’d write to her as soon as I could. I don’t know why she didn’t wait.”
And just like that, my hate slithered away. It was my fault. I had lied to Effie. I let her think her sister had abandoned her without a word.
A flock of geese flew overhead, calling out. I looked into the field that stretched in a wash of brown grass, dry and lifeless. “She didn’t wait because I never showed her your letter.”
Luella stood very still, staring at me. “What...why not?”
“I’m not sure anymore.” I was not sure of anything. I felt weak, light-headed. I longed to reach out to my daughter, but the young woman standing in front of me felt like a stranger. The girl who left was now a woman, beautiful, estranged, alien. Waves of panic washed over me. “Come home.”
Luella reached for my hand, her buff, weathered fingers curling over my sleek, bloodless glove. “I can’t. I can’t face Daddy. I can’t face Effie’s empty room. What would I do?” she implored, a gasp in her throat. “There’s nothing I can do.”
She was right. There was nothing she could do to bring Effie home, dead or alive. There was nothing any of us could do.
I looked at the rickety wagons with their wheels wedged into frozen ruts, at the hard field and the cold sky. “I don’t understand any of this.”
“I know.” I saw acceptance in my daughter’s empathetic face. There was so much about her I didn’t understand.
I turned away, helpless and exhausted. I needed to go home. I needed to lie down.
“Mama?” I heard the young girl in her pleading, but I kept walking. She knew where to find me. And it helped to know she was right here, even if I didn’t approve of this lifestyle. At least she was safe. The wagons were warm. There was food and hot tea. Maybe that’s all she ever wanted.
Twigs snapped underfoot and a bird kept up a shrill call overhead like a single note on a piano. Behind me the gypsy camp was hushed,
my visit having stunned children and dogs into silence. Luella did not come running after me as I’d dared to imagine, and I picked my way through the trees, down the steep hill and back across the field to the empty, silent hallway of my home.
Chapter Twenty
Mable
Mama and I moved into a room on Worth Street. It was in a five-story building, the floors connected by a winding staircase that twisted up the middle like a screw. Ours was a single room on the fifth floor with a shared bathroom where we had the luxury of a bathtub and running hot water. The room was unfurnished, with whitewashed walls and a window at the end that looked out onto the street. Mama and I slept on bedrolls with our petticoats balled up for pillows. It was temporary, Mama said, just until we could afford something better.
It was so hot that August I spent most of my time leaning out the window trying to get a breath of air as I watched the tops of hats and carriages and cars in constant, glittering motion. Everyone seemed to have somewhere urgent to go, and I wondered how long Mama expected me stay up here watching traffic. Her anger had subsided, but I knew keeping me cooped up and bored was her quiet way of punishing me.
Those first few weeks I spent watching the street for Renzo, daring to hope he’d come for me. I’d know him by his easy saunter, his unhurried way. I’d call down to him and he’d look up and grin, confident I’d be waiting for him. He’d come and take me in his arms, apologizing and saying we’d find a way to be together, no matter the odds.
He didn’t come. I tried to be angry, but all I felt was a longing as deep and gnawing as missing my papa had once been. I wished I’d kept something to remind me of Renzo, something with his smell, even that damned dirty sock. It was better than nothing. And nothing was precisely what Mama and I had been left with, by everyone.
I thought Aunt Marie would miss us enough to forgive me, but she didn’t come either. It was cruel, her punishing Mama for something I’d done, and I vowed to make it up to Mama.
One night, I sat on the floor eating sausages and watching Mama shake out her dress and hang it on the back of the door. She’d come from the bath and her long, wet hair spilled to the crook of her back, the lines of her compact figure visible through the thin cloth of her nightgown. I thought of her standing in her mud-splattered nightgown the day she lost her last baby. She was so much thinner now.
“I’m going to work for you,” I said. “I’m old enough for my working papers now, and you could use a rest.”
“Over my dead body will you work in that godforsaken place.” She put her hands on her hips, looking at me with determination, like she used to look at Papa. “I have a mind to find something better. In the meantime, I’ll keep up at the factory and you’ll busy yourself learning. It was boredom that got you into trouble in the first place. I didn’t know Marie was leaving you alone. As long as I make enough to pay for this room and to keep us fed, you’re to go to school.”
I gaped at her, my sausage halfway to my mouth. None of the Casciloi children went to school. “We can’t afford it.”
Mama squeezed the water out of the ends of her hair, sprinkling the drops onto the floor as if watering the seeds of my future. “It doesn’t cost any money. I’ve already looked into it. The school is five blocks from here and the first day is September third.” She sat heavily on her bedroll, pulling her nightgown down over her legs. “I’m dead tired. Hurry up with that food and put the light out.”
I protested. It would be humiliating. I was too old for school. I didn’t know any facts. Mama rolled onto her side with her back to me and said facts were what I would learn and it wasn’t up for discussion.
Three weeks later I found myself walking into a large brick schoolhouse on Chambers Street, the classroom packed with girls in neat skirts and white blouses, black bows flapping at the backs of their heads like the wings of shiny, dead birds. I felt ridiculous in Grazia’s blue dress. Even the poorest girls with cracked shoes and grimy nails wore skirts and blouses. Some of their skirts, and sleeves, were too short and their arms stuck out past their cuffs, but at least they weren’t in a foolish, old-fashioned dress.
I glared at the first girl who dared look at me, a plump, pink-cheeked thing bursting from her clothes. I had no interest in friends. The twins had taught me girls were mean and spiteful and you had to look out for yourself.
Our teacher, Miss Preston, a young, eager woman who seemed delighted to be crammed into the airless room instructing us, decided on the first day not to have anything to do with me. I could read well enough, but everyone else knew math symbols and places on maps and how to write in swirling letters that linked together. Miss Preston, with her wire-rimmed glasses and zealous smile, had no interest in a girl who didn’t know these things. After testing me, she told me I was to sit in the back of the class and do the best I could to keep up. I spent the next two months gazing out the window making muddled designs on the pages where I was supposed to be solving problems.
It was no matter. School wasn’t an option for long.
One night in mid-November, I stepped out of my dress and felt Mama’s hand grip my shoulder. Her face was aghast, as if I’d grown a double head, or horns. Not even dragging me from Marie’s had twisted her face like that. Her lips trembled and her hands shook from her sides as if she meant to wrap them around my throat. Even then, I didn’t know what was happening, which was stupid of me, but I never claimed to be bright. My body had changed so much over the last few years I thought it was normal to keep growing round in places.
Tense and quiet, Mama said, “You are not to return to school tomorrow,” and left the room saying she’d be back in an hour.
She was not back in an hour. I lay on my lumpy pillow listening to the wind rattle the panes and whistle through the cracks, lapping its cold tongue at my face. Our sweltering room in the summer had turned freezing with the approach of winter. It reminded me of the cold seeping in through the walls of my loft bed. At least in the cabin there was the crackling warmth of the hearth. Here, the paltry heat came up through pipes, steaming and hissing and growling like it was being dragged out of someone’s throat.
I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I knew Mama was leaning over me. My covers were tossed off and she was digging her fingers into my stomach, a fire on her breath.
“You’re hurting me,” I said, pushing her hand away.
Mama stumbled backward, dropping onto her bed with a thump. I hadn’t put the light out and it flickered and trembled from the wall sconce. “I’m no midwife, but I know what a body looks like when a life’s taken hold inside it.” Her cheeks were bright red, her words slightly slurred, which shocked me as much as what she’d just made clear.
I hugged my knees to my chest, a numbness crawling over me. My mother was drunk and I was pregnant.
Mama pitched sideways and fell onto her pillow. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and this one won’t last either,” she mumbled, her eyes dropping shut.
I watched her sleep, her chest rising and falling with each, slow breath. It never crossed my mind what Renzo and I were doing might have this outcome. I thought only grown women had babies. Now I saw how stupid I was. I hoped Mama was right and I would lose this baby.
Sliding over, I sat on the end of Mama’s bed and unlaced her boots, pulling the thin, worn soles from her feet. There was a hole in her stocking and I found something childlike and disturbing about her big toe sticking out of it. I peeled her stockings off, tugging them around her heels and holding her small, bare feet in my hands. She didn’t stir, her face slack, her mouth partially open. I was sorrier than ever for what I’d done. I never meant to cause her so much grief.
After a while, I drew her blanket over her and crawled back to my bed.
* * *
Before Mama left for work the next day, she put five cents into my pocket and told me I wasn’t to leave the room for any reason other than to fetch dinner.
/> I didn’t mind being alone. It was far better than a schoolhouse full of snickering girls and a teacher who couldn’t be bothered to teach the dumb ones. The apartment building was quiet during the day. I roamed the halls undisturbed and stayed in the bathtub as long as I wanted with no one banging on the door for me to hurry up.
After a few weeks, however, I grew fidgety and bored and began lingering in the warm kitchen on the first floor. Our house was run by a thin woman with scaly skin that flaked at her temples and shook out of her hair like dust. Her name was Mrs. Hatch and she occupied the entire first floor where there was a parlor crammed with overstuffed furniture, a dining room that gleamed mahogany, and a full kitchen where she served food for her tenants at a price Mama and I couldn’t afford.
She didn’t ask any questions, which Mama said was a good thing, and she didn’t seem to mind me sitting at the kitchen table watching her cook.
She made me think of Aunt Marie. I missed the simplicity of rolling dough out onto the floor or chopping vegetables. It was mind occupying, and I needed that. When I asked to help, Mrs. Hatch raised her eyebrows, her spoon pausing in mid-air. “You know how to cook?” she asked, suspicious, glancing at my stomach—an embarrassment I could no longer hide.
“Yes, ma’am, I do.”
Mrs. Hatch pinched her lips together, glancing at a pile of carrots, not bright orange like the ones I used to yank up from the crumbling earth with Papa, but dull, with winter fuzz over their skin. “Well, I suppose I could use the help,” she sighed heavily. “But you’re to keep out of the dining room, you hear?” She shook her spoon at me, broth spitting from the end of it. “It’s mostly men who eat down here and they won’t want to look at the likes of you. Reminds them of their own bad nature.” She plucked an onion from a bowl and dropped it in my hand. “Chop it nice and small.”
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