The Girls with No Names

by Serena Burdick

  The skin crinkled and peeled away in my palm. I went to the counter, slicing it down the middle and exposing its crisp, white innards. A sudden sadness came over me as I remembered standing in the cabin kitchen, Papa’s fiddle playing in the background and Mama humming beside me. I was grateful for the onion stinging my eyes.

  I felt Mrs. Hatch watching me as she stirred her soup. “Nice and thin now, like I told you.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I glanced at her and she shook her head. “It’s a man puts a woman in your situation, and yet women are the only ones left paying for the sin. Not a fair world, but it shakes out as it does.”

  After that, Mrs. Hatch always had something set aside for me to chop or roll or pound. She never mentioned pay, or rent reduction, which I’d hoped for to help Mama out, but at least I had something to do. Mrs. Hatch was nothing like Aunt Marie. She spoke sparingly, and when she did it was to bemoan the entire human race, me being no exception. I didn’t mind. Standing over the hot stove was a comfort, the smells brought memories of other kitchens, Aunt Marie’s, and Mama’s in a time already so long ago.

  I took to walking to meet Mama when she got off work at the Asch Building. When my cooking duties were done, I’d hang up my apron, pull on my coat and step into the chilled air, letting the two-mile walk ease the restlessness in my swollen, tingling legs. I felt nothing for the growing thing inside me, except the inconvenience of its weight, and I didn’t mind the cold. Moving kept me warm enough. Mama worked on the ninth floor and was always one of the last people out of the building. I’d stand on the sidewalk stomping my feet, watching the workers pour out, and string off every which way, until Mama’s small shape emerged, her hair towering over her worn face.

  Once, I spotted the twins huddled with a group of girls waiting for the trolley. It was snowing lightly and puffs of moisture twirled from their laughing mouths. When Alberta looked up, I ducked behind a large man smoking a cigar and talking loudly to the woman on his arm. I dreaded any thought of the twins reporting my sprouting belly back to Aunt Marie. I’d humiliated Mama in front of her sister enough.

  Every so often on our way home, Mama would stop at a popcorn wagon and buy a steaming bag for us to share. We’d sit on a bench eating and watching people go by. Mama would let herself relax then. Her tired shoulders would sag and her body would sink into mine. It was the only time I saw her loosen her grip on life, and this ease opened up a pocket of happiness inside me. With the popcorn bag warm in my hands and the salty kernels melting on my tongue, I allowed myself to think things might not turn out so bad for us after all.

  “What should we do with our Sunday afternoons when the weather warms?” Mama asked one day, her voice light. It was still too cold to do anything but sit in our apartment reading the bible. There had been no churchgoing since we’d left Marie’s, which I didn’t rightly mind.

  “We could go to Coney Island,” I suggested. “The girls in school said there was a water carnival with high divers and log-rollers.”

  “I’ve heard it’s best in June. Before it gets too hot.”

  “We’ll walk on the beach and eat ice cream.”

  She smiled. “I’d like that.”

  We popped corn kernels into our mouths and talked about seeing the Barnum & Bailey Greatest Show on Earth, picnicking in Central Park, walking up Fifth Avenue and admiring the window displays. Maybe, if there was enough money, we’d dine in a real restaurant, Mama said.

  We sat there planning our summer until the bag was empty and all I could do was dot my fingers into the salt at the bottom.

  None of our plans involved a baby. Not once, since that first night, had Mama or I mentioned it. We made no preparations. It wasn’t like Mama to make plans that would never happen, and I walked home thinking of our summer with that pocket of happiness expanding inside me.

  By March, I was enormous. Mrs. Hatch continued to let me in the kitchen, but her frown deepened and I wasn’t much help. I grew dizzy and began nicking my fingers with the knife and sucking off the blood so she wouldn’t notice.

  Most days now, I was too tired to meet Mama after work. But on March 25th, 1911, I had a hankering for popcorn, and to sit next to Mama and forget about what was coming. Thinking back, maybe it was Renzo’s mama’s curse, or the devil grinning at me, or God simply making me pay for my sins that had me walking up Green Street on a day when I could have easily stayed home. My feet ached and my stomach was heavier than a sack of flour, and yet I decided I wanted a bag of popcorn more than I wanted to lie down.

  It was dreary out. Dark clouds suffocated the tops of the buildings. Every now and then I’d see a roof peeking out as if it was trying to catch its breath. I passed a waffle cart, the smell of sweet dough making my mouth water. I was thinking I’d try and convince Mama to buy me a waffle instead of popcorn when the loudest bell I ever heard rang so close I jumped, halting in my tracks, as a horse-drawn fire engine charged past me. The horses were brown, sleek as machines, their hooves launching them forward like well-oiled springs. They pulled a wagon where men in shiny hats clung around a silver dome, a storm of smoke billowing from the top of it. It was then I noticed a stream of dirty water collecting in the gutter even though it wasn’t raining. I heard shouting, and there was a sudden hubbub of commotion. Men broke into a run, women started screaming.

  A crowd formed, drawing me forward—curiosity and horror a powerful current. I found myself outside a gathering of police, their backs a wall of tense muscle. Swift, agile men leapt from the fire truck that had roared past me. They unwound a hose that hissed and spat a tube of water into the air, joining two other fire engines, the cylinders of water merging like a solid, white wing of salvation.

  At first, my thick skull didn’t register that it was the Asch Building engulfed in flames. I watched in fascination until I realized exactly what I was looking at and my gut twisted into a knot. Mama’s in that building, I thought, and then, surely not. They would have gotten the workers out. Frantic, I looked around for her, but there were too many large bodies in front of me. I backed away under a striped awning, hoping from farther away I might be able to spot Mama in the crowd. A man stood next to me in a white apron, a hand clasped to his mouth. Everything was gray and dark and wet but for those flames. A spray of mist from the fire hose settled on my cheeks. I felt light-headed and nauseous, the heat from the flames licking the air like hot tongues. I could see the flames, feeding on the wind like a fat insatiable beast, and from an upper window a figure of a girl suddenly appeared. There was no pause, not even the briefest breath before she took flight. Her skirt and hair flew out, but her wings failed her, and she plummeted to the ground at a shocking speed. The sound of her body hitting the pavement vibrated through me. I doubled over. A woman screamed and I heard a collective gasp from the crowd.

  After that, the scene became lurid, distorted, as if I was looking through glass, or a sheet of ice cut at an odd angle as woman after woman hit the ground. They leapt without hesitation, those wingless birds falling from the sky. One woman paused long enough that the flames trailed her to the ground, her burning hair a streak in the air.

  I vomited all over my shoes. My throat burned as if the flames had found a way inside me. The man in the apron put a hand to my back. “Don’t watch,” he said, but I shrugged him off, wiping my mouth on the edge of my skirt, my eyes fixed on the fire. Any one of those birds could be my mother.

  People screamed and wept and women dove until the windows were blackened, charred holes and the disturbing thuds finally stopped. Steam hissed in the air like a serpent, the street continued to waver under me as I stumbled through the line of scattered policeman attempting to create some sort of order. As I approached the bodies, I looked into their faces, into their open, paralyzed eyes. These were nothing like the translucent, peaceful faces of my stillborn siblings. These were bodies startled into death, their rust-colored blood draining into the s
treet.

  A gentle hand pulled me from my knees where I’d fallen, staring into the face of a woman I’d never known. “Sorry, ma’am, but you can’t be here. We’re clearing the whole area.”

  I sank into his grasp, the policeman steadying me on my feet. “I’m trying to find my mother,” I said, toneless, limp, emptied of feeling.

  “We’re taking the bodies to Charities Pier. Doors will open as soon as we get them laid out. Now get yourself home to your husband. This is no place for a woman in your condition.”

  “What if she’s alive?” I asked.

  “Then she’ll make her own way home, I reckon.”

  There was a hush in the streets as the sky slipped from gray to black, the city lights blinking on cautiously, hoping to hide their eyes. The stairwell in my building was empty and I was grateful not to meet anyone as I climbed to our room and shut the door. I looked at the scant space with the sense that I had no idea how I’d gotten so far from the cabin and Papa and where I belonged. The only objects in the room, besides our beds and clothes, were a bible and a photograph Mama kept in a frame by her bed. We’d taken it the summer we came to New York. I’d never had my picture taken before. The photographer told us to stand perfectly still in front of a calico backdrop while he disappeared under a black cloth with one hand raised in the air. There was a pop and a flash and the man reappeared, flushed and smiling. I’d never liked the photograph, mostly because Mama and I looked dreadful serious, but Mama spent a whole week’s salary on it so I lied and told her I thought it was grand.

  I lay on Mama’s bed and pressed the picture to my chest, staring at her Sunday dress hanging on the back of the door knowing that at any moment she was going to walk through it. There was a sour taste in my mouth, the sickness of the day a flavor on my tongue. I wanted a glass of water to wash it away but I didn’t dare get up. I wasn’t sure my legs would hold me.

  The sound of those bodies hitting the ground rang in my ears as I fell into an exhausted sleep. I dreamt of Mama. She was young, kneeling on the floor of our cabin with an open-mouthed smile, her eyebrows arched in her smooth, high forehead, her arms outstretched, her dark eyes shining. Come, she said. The baby chicks have hatched. I’ll carry you out. The ground is frozen and we can’t have you slipping on the ice. I felt the softness of her chest as she lifted me in her arms. We stepped out into a pale dawn and I heard the sound of peeping chicks.

  I woke with a start, shivering, my chest damp with sweat. I sat up. It was still dark and the bedroll next to me was empty. The photograph had slipped to the floor and I left it there, hauling myself out of bed and outside, making my way up East 26th Street. I’d never been out this late and was surprised at the pulse of the city. Windows blazed with light and people moved in and out of buildings and along the sidewalk as if it were the middle of the day. There was no need to ask where the morgue was. When I approached the dock on the East River, I found a line of people strung out along the sidewalk as if waiting for tickets to a theater. I slipped in behind a man in a tall hat and a thick coat. He beat his gloves against his palm, leaning over to the man in front of him to ask, “How much longer?”

  The man lifted a pocket watch. “Five minutes,” he said.

  The doors opened the instant a distant church bell chimed midnight. I was impressed the police could be so prompt, given how devastating the fire had been. The man in front of me moved through the doors and I kept pace, trying to empty my mind of all thought as we walked slowly up one row of coffins, and down another. The muted shuffling of feet mingled with the lapping of water on the pier. Lights swung from the rafters, giving off a sulfuric glow that barely lit the dead faces. Policeman moved along with the mourners, lifting lanterns when requested, while cries rang out as one victim after another was identified. I was struck by how different these guttural, accepting cries were compared to the panicked screams earlier that day.

  I didn’t expect to find Mama. None of it seemed real, the eeriness of the hour, all these strangers weeping. At the end of each row I came to, I felt more and more sure I had it all wrong and Mama was at home, frightened silly I was out so late.

  And then I saw her. I didn’t need the police lantern to recognize her. She lay in a coffin with her eyes closed and her head propped up as if she slept on a high pillow. Someone had taken the time to place her hands, one over the other on her chest. Her right cheek was dented and her eye sunken, but her hands were unscathed and her thick hair had stayed coiled on her head. The coffins were placed so close together I couldn’t reach her hands and this made me panic. I sank to my knees at her feet, blocking the line behind me. No one told me to get up. The line stilled and people bowed their head in respect as I reached for Mama’s feet, frantically unlacing her boots, sorry everyone could see the hole in her sock. I peeled them off, holding her cold, bare feet in my hands. I closed my eyes and lifted my face to the heavens. The lone cry of a gull came from outside. I wanted rain on my face and my papa’s hand on my shoulder. This was his part. He was supposed to come and cover the body for me.

  There was no hand. No rain, just the crushing smell of death. I scrambled to my feet. A roomful of dimly lit strangers surrounded me. None of them were Papa. The stench in my nostrils, the flickering lights and the yellow skin of the dead made the sweat jump out on my forehead. I shoved my way to the door, fleeing the rank-smelling building, leaving Mama’s shoes to be trampled to dust by all those mourners. I didn’t stay to identify my mother by name for a proper burial. I hadn’t even said a prayer over her body.

  By the time I arrived back in my room, I was shaking violently. I fell on my knees with my head to the floor, my belly hard as a watermelon beneath me. I was the one who should be lying on that pier, not Mama. If only she’d let me work for her like I’d wanted, I thought, considering how best to throw myself out the window. I wanted it to end. And not just today, every bit of my life leading up to today.

  I rolled onto my side. The window above my head was black and spotted with rain. I thought of looking up into the dark night sky from the woods behind our cabin, and how the endless space and stars hadn’t filled me with any kind of wonder or beauty, but a terrible fear. There was too much of it. Too much unexplainable emptiness. It was the loneliest thing I’d ever seen and I’d rushed inside, petrified I’d been abandoned with nothing but that black sky. Mama and Papa had laughed at me, but I was right all along.

  The dark, inexplicable emptiness filled my body. I couldn’t have jumped out that window if I’d wanted. The blackness had a weight to it that pinned me to the floor.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Effie

  It was cold when I woke up, and I ached all over. I lay with my cheek pressed to the floor, the cement cool against my spent rage. I’d screamed. I’d bitten and scratched. Now I was paying for it, but I didn’t care. I’d do it again.

  I sat up and gingerly touched my nearly shaved head. My palm throbbed where a splinter of wood had pierced it, my glorious wound of rebellion. The space around me was dark and dank and smelled like mold. Fear pricked the soles of my feet, but I refused to face the ghost of the dead girl and I shoved her away.

  I had no sense of how much time had passed since I’d fallen with the dogs. I remembered being dragged, having my head tipped over a sink, the porcelain edge pressed against my windpipe like a cold hand around my neck. I remembered the sound of snipping scissors, wrenching my head around and biting the hand that held them with all the fury of both being betrayed, and failing to escape. The sisters meant to break me, but an anger I’d never felt before coiled in the pit of my stomach.

  I peed in the corner, dried myself with the edge of my skirt, ignored the tray of water, stale bread and molasses. The smell of mildew and urine was nauseating. As time went by hunger became a familiar ache. I’d close my eyes and summon a taste from memory: lemon tarts from Velma, a stick of peppermint at Christmas, duck in all its salty, tender glory on the day
Luella disappeared and Mama took me to Café Martin’s. Hunger carved out an odd reality where my family became more elusive and surreal than the memory of a salty piece of meat.

  I tried to conjure the touch of my father’s fingers on my wrist, the pits in my mother’s scarred hands, and the sound of Luella’s dancing feet, but all I felt was the cold, damp floor and the only sound to be heard was a distant, steady drip of water.

  Over and over I saw the shapes of Mable and Edna disappearing down the hill, hating how naive I’d been. I believed they’d chosen me, over all the other girls, because they liked me. Because I had “spunk,” like Mable said. To be liked. It was such a shortsighted, commonplace desire. Luella would have seen right through them, not caring if they liked her or not. “Watch out, Effie, they’re up to no good,” she would have said, tossing her head with a hand on her hip.

  Luella, where are you?

  After a while, time became blurred and boundless, with no seconds or minutes or hours to define it. The boredom was torture. I counted steps from one wall to the next, squaring up my room. I recited scripture, but became furious with God and switched to Shakespeare. I thought of the gypsy children performing Romeo and Juliet in the rain, of Tray and Marcella and the foretelling of my future. I thought of all the mistakes I’d made. I wanted to blame my father for them, for betraying our family and sparking our rebellion, but down here, trapped in the bowels of the House of Mercy, I’d forgive him anything, if only he would come for me.

  Eventually, my breath became ragged and short and I was aware that there was something wrong with my legs. When I pushed my fingers into them, they felt tight and squishy like the frog’s bellies Luella and I used to poke down by the stream. Sleep came in spurts, and I’d wake gasping for air, the pressure in my chest propelling me to my feet until I was too weak to get off the floor.