Georges sat next to me on the sofa, concerned. “What are you thinking, Jeanne?”
Ever since Georges started visiting Luella, I’d let my thoughts stray to forgiveness and reconciliation, but her continual refusal to come home demoralized me. “You would go with her then?” I also couldn’t bear the idea of losing my brother, which meant going back to being alone in the house with Emory.
“I would. She’ll need someone. You’re welcome too, of course, if you want to come.”
I shook my head. “I can’t.”
Georges nodded in understanding. Every week, I still went to the hospitals and morgues. He knew I wouldn’t rest until I’d properly buried my youngest. I stood up with a compelling urge to go lie in Effie’s bed, something I did from time to time. It still held her smell, and the feeling of her small face on the pillow. Leaning over, I kissed Georges’s cheek. “You’re the dearest. I can’t express my gratitude for all you’ve done. Luella would never have listened to us. I believe England is the best option for her, and she couldn’t be in better hands. I will be sorry to lose you. You must, at least, let me see the two of you off. Tell her this, will you?”
“Of course.”
Three weeks later, I sat at a table in Café Martin’s with my eldest daughter. It had been six months since she’d left us, but her unfamiliar composure held a maturity that made it seem a decade. At least she’d abandoned her gypsy clothes and wore the traveling suit I’d gotten her. It was much too big, as she’d shrunk to half her normal size. But when I looked at her, I could almost believe she belonged to me again; and yet, I hardly knew what to say. I had only conversed with her as a child, and now we sat as two grown women.
We did not touch or hug in greeting, but sat formally across from each other as if we’d never dined in the same room together. I ordered liver, she ordered chicken. Neither of us ate much, and we spoke little. I asked her if she was looking forward to London. She said, not particularly.
By the time the waiter cleared our plates and set down dessert menus, I felt the urgency of our last moments together. Her boat left in three hours. I had begged Georges to convince Luella to spend her final week at home, her last night at least, but she told him she couldn’t. Not without Effie. This lunch was all I would have of her for a long time, and we were wasting it.
“This won’t do,” I said abruptly. Luella looked up over the top of her menu. “We must find a way to move forward with each other. For Effie’s sake, if not our own. Do you remember when the two of you used to fight and she’d make you go out of the room and come back in and start over?”
Luella smiled. “I forgot that. It used to frustrate the dickens out of me that she never let me stay mad.”
“I don’t think she would want us mad at each other now.”
“I’m not mad.” Luella set down her menu. There was pride in her thin straight shoulders. “I was mad when I left. Mostly at Daddy, a little bit at you.”
“What had I done?”
“You put up with him.” She said this with such certitude, as if everything had become clear in her time away. Grief had matured her, but not in all things.
“I loved him, Luella. You put up with people you love.”
Luella looked startled. I clasped my hands on the table and leaned forward. “What? Did you think your father and I were always at odds? He loved me too, you know. He just grew out of it more quickly than I.”
“Did you know what he was doing, and with whom?” she said hotly, a spark of the cheeky Luella returning. She had not changed entirely.
“Yes, my dear, long before you did.”
“How could you stand it?”
How indeed, I thought, glancing at the neighboring tables, woman and men dining easily together. Her youthful idealism was touching. It was easy from her perspective. It was 1914, the world was an entirely different place than it had been in 1897 when I first met Emory. Luella’s generation couldn’t possibly understand. They were running off to college, dropping their waistlines and raising their hemlines, demanding the vote, independence. I could see now that my daughter’s determination, her willingness to shake off what she didn’t agree with, even if it was her own family, was admirable. I’d left my mother out of fear, not confidence, leaping from one suffocating relationship into the next. Luella was leaping on her own.
Without thinking, I suddenly pulled off my glove and reached across the table, opening my palm. I don’t know why I offered her my scarred hand. Maybe because they used to comfort Effie, something I hadn’t understood until Georges spoke about exposing our flaws, how it makes the younger generation less vulnerable to their own.
Luella stared at my hand without taking it. There were tears in her eyes, and her shoulders had fallen. “You used to let Effie hold your bare hand. I always wondered why.” She looked up. “Why didn’t you ever let me? There was one time I tried to take off your glove and you yanked your hand away. Why did you do that?”
“I don’t know, Luella. I don’t remember that. I am giving it to you now.”
“It’s not the same,” she mumbled, but slipped her hand into mine anyway.
I folded my fingers over hers. “You must not blame yourself for Effie,” I said, realizing this was at the core of the suffering that brewed beneath her cool eyes. It would resurface when she least expected, and I wasn’t going to let her go without her understanding I wasn’t condemning her.
She shook her head, the tears dripping down her cheeks. “It’s entirely my fault. If I hadn’t left, she would never have gone looking for me. Even if you had shown her that letter. I never told her where I was going, and I didn’t write again soon enough. I’ve gone over and over what I could have done differently. I could have prevented what happened.” She pulled her hand out of mine, sobbing into her palms.
I let her cry for a few minutes before saying, softly, “Effie was always dying, Luella. We never talked about it. None of us wanted to believe it, especially not your father, but every doctor told us the same thing. That Effie lived as long as she did was a miracle.”
Luella yanked her head up. “She’s not dead! I know she’s not dead. I just don’t understand where she’s gone to. She got on the wrong train and ended up in a strange city, maybe she went all the way to California? You never searched outside of New York and Boston, but she could be anywhere.”
“She would have made a telephone call.”
“Maybe she ran out of money?”
“She’s a smart girl. She would have found a way to reach us.”
“What if she got picked up by police who thought she was homeless or something and got put in one of those homes for girls?”
“What homes?”
“Like the House of Mercy, or the Inwood House.”
“Those are for girls on the street. They’re like prison. They’re court ordered.”
“Daddy threatened to put me in there once.”
“He wasn’t serious.”
“Well, a girl from school got put in there.”
“She did?”
“Yes, by her father.”
“For what infraction?”
“For getting a telegram from a boy.”
“That seems extreme.”
“Job and Sydney already checked the homes near us. The sisters told them there was no one named Effie Tildon. But you could check in other cities.”
“Oh, Luella. Don’t you think your father and I have? I’ve telephoned every hospital and institution I could think of. Not in California, mind you, but there’s no way she’d get that far.”
Luella sank into her chair. “Tray says she’s not dead.”
“Who is Tray?”
“A boy at the gypsy camp. He knew Effie. They understood each other.”
“She never mentioned him.”
“I think there’s a lot she never told us.”
>
The waiter approached and I quickly put my glove back on, managing a polite smile. “No dessert, thank you. We’ll just take the bill.” I took my watch from my jacket pocket. “We should be going. Georges will be waiting for us and you don’t want to miss your boat.”
On the dock, my daughter let me hug her as I openly wept, the icy wind off the water freezing the tears on my cheeks. Georges stood quietly beside us with his leather bag clutched in one hand. Behind him, the boat ramp filled with travelers.
“Go on,” I said, but Luella wouldn’t let go. She held my arms so hard they hurt.
“I don’t think I should go,” she said with sudden panic. “Tray says I should wait. He’s certain Effie will come home. I’m only leaving because I don’t believe him anymore.”
“There’s nothing more you can do, my dear. I’ll send word the moment there’s news of her. I promise. I’ll recheck the homes you mentioned. I already check the hospitals daily.” I gave a small laugh. “The operators know my voice before I even give my name. You should hear how they sigh, and they’re always reluctant to put me through. It’s no matter. I’m not giving up on her.”
Luella’s voice was shaky, her eyes red and swollen from crying. “The truth is I feel guilty going. I don’t deserve it.”
“Nonsense. You must move on with your life.”
“It’s not fair.”
“It’s not. Nothing is. Come...you two will miss your boat.”
Georges kissed my cheek. “You’re to come for a visit as soon as you see fit.”
“By then I hope you’ve fattened up my daughter on English scones and clotted cream.”
“We’ll do our best.”
Luella wrapped her arms around me once more. “I’m sorry.”
“Stop that now. What’s done is done.” I pushed her away and turned her toward the boat.
As the ship pulled away, I watched Luella leaning over the rail on the top deck waving furiously, her large hat tilting in the wind, her coat flapping open. She was a beautiful woman. I imagined her marrying an Englishman, and one day standing on some European coast watching her daughter depart, the women in our family stuck in a loop of attempted escape. Over time Luella would discover, as I had, as her daughter would, that we can’t outrun ourselves.
I thought of my mother sinking to her knees on the pier at my departure for America so many years ago, and how annoyed I’d been with her dramatic display. Now, it was all I could do to stay on my feet, weeping and waving even when I could no longer see my daughter or Georges leaning over the rail as the boat puffed and steamed out to sea.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Mable
I didn’t get up for a week after Mama’s death. Mrs. Hatch brought me food, standing in the doorway with the awkwardness of one who isn’t used to helping people out of tragic situations. She said she was sorry about my mother, and that I could stay until the baby was born, but then I’d have to find new lodging. “I’ve heard there’s homes for girls like you.” She smiled at her own resourcefulness. “I’ll find out the name of one if you like.”
“Thank you,” I said, not caring one way or another. I was already hollow and dead inside. It didn’t matter where the shell of me landed.
One day Mrs. Hatch knocked on the door and said a Marie Casciloi was downstairs asking for me. “Claims she’s your aunt. Thought you said you had no family?” Her words were clipped, suspicious.
I traced my eyes around a water stain on the wall. “She’s lying. I don’t know her.”
“If this is some kind of game, I don’t like it.” I could hear Mrs. Hatch scratching her scalp and I imagined it flaking all over my floor. “If you’ve got family there’s no reason for me to be bringing you food. She the mother of the boy who fathered this baby?”
“No. I don’t know her. I swear it.”
“Well,” she sighed, deliberating. “If I was you, I’d take this aunt whether she’s real or not. Seems like she’s here to help.”
I didn’t answer. Mrs. Hatch waited a minute, sighed with frustration and shut the door. I heard her light footsteps descending the stairs.
The idea of my weeping aunt in Mrs. Hatch’s kitchen, her smell of onion and yeast and her soft bosom, made me feel a faraway longing, like a dream that is utterly ungraspable. Under no circumstance would I go to my aunt. It would have humiliated Mama if her sister so much as knew I was pregnant, and I was certain the last thing she would have wanted was for me to burden her family with a bastard child.
I had not done right by Mama in life, and I would be damned if I wasn’t going to do everything I could by her in death.
That night, there was a note on my food tray, next to a plate of turnip, squash and ham. “I didn’t read it,” Mrs. Hatch said, setting the tray on the floor and turning on the light. “You best eat all of that,” she said before leaving.
I rolled onto my side, poking a turnip with my dirty fingernail. I hadn’t taken a bath in two weeks. All I wanted was sleep, which I had no problem falling into and the darnedest time getting out of. Opening my eyes felt like dragging myself up out of mud.
I ate the turnip, slick with butter, my fingers leaving greasy fingerprints along the edge of the note. The writing was small and hard to read. It took me three tries to make out that Aunt Marie had lost the twins and was sorry for what happened between us.
When they didn’t come home I went to find them, she wrote. By the time I arrived at the factory, the police were laying the victims out on the sidewalk, tagging them and putting them in wagons. I recognized Grazia by my grandmother’s ring she wore. Her hair was matted around what was left of her face. All I could think of was how upset she’d be at the state of her hair. How ridiculous is that? You’d be amazed that I didn’t cry. The shock froze everything inside me. When the policeman lifted her into a coffin, I grabbed at the poor man’s arm and I told him he had to find my daughter’s twin sister and keep them together, no matter what. “They’ve never been apart,” I begged. That kind man took my hand and led me down the row of bodies until we found her. There was nothing left of Alberta’s face either, her poor legs broken in a way that laying her straight didn’t hide. I only knew her by the stockings I’d knitted for her at Christmas.
I stayed to make sure Alberta’s coffin was put in beside her sister’s. I couldn’t stomach looking for your Mama just then, but first thing the next morning I went to Charities Pier. Someone had removed your mother’s shoes and they were nowhere to be found. I went home and fetched a pair of my own for her.
The burial is tomorrow. I think the good Lord would want us to go together. After this, the sin of the flesh doesn’t seem to matter so much. Please, Signe dear, call on us tomorrow. We’re leaving for the funeral procession at 10 am. God keep you safe.
Marie Casciloi.
The sin of the flesh mattered to Mama. It mattered so much she’d looked right past my growing stomach as if it didn’t exist. I was sure it would matter again to Marie if she saw me in this condition. I tore the note into tiny pieces and let them drift through my fingers. I was sorry about the twins, but in the same numb, distant way I felt about everything. The reality of each day felt slightly out of my reach, like I was viewing it from far away.
The next morning, I got out of bed, dressed and fixed my hair. My legs were stiff and going down the stairs made them ache. Mrs. Hatch wasn’t in the kitchen and the house was quiet. I pulled on my coat and stepped outside into the wet and cold. My coat no longer fit and a light rain settled over the top of my protruding middle. I’d forgotten a hat, and by the time I reached Washington Square my hair was limp and wet.
A solid mass of black coats and hats and umbrellas stretched as far as I could see. A horse-drawn hearse made its way down the street, the white horses grand as anything, with black netting draped over their powerful hides and tassels hanging from their ears. The hearse was covered in flower
s, white and purple and pink. I didn’t know if this funeral was for all the victims, or someone important, but I chose to believe it was Mama in that hearse.
Behind the hearse came a procession of mourners. I stepped in next to a woman with a wide, purple sash slung over one shoulder. She held a banner that said: LADIES WAIST AND DRESSMAKERS UNION WE MOURN OUR LOSS. The woman smiled at me, her face strong and handsome. I ducked my head and kept my eyes on the slick, wet pavement underfoot. Rain trickled down my neck and under the collar of my coat, reminding me of another funeral back at our cabin. I didn’t know where we were walking and I didn’t care. I only hoped Aunt Marie wouldn’t see me.
I marched for hours, holding my weighted stomach up with one hand, my soaked shoes making a squishing noise, my wet skirt sticking between my legs. My hips hurt and my legs tingled as if they were going numb. I tried to pull strength from the woman next to me. She strode with her shoulders thrust back and her head high. There was a challenge in her eye, as if she’d been prepared and waiting for this day. I thought of the twins who had marched for women’s rights, for unions. They’d been fighting a whole city of men, the same ones who locked them up and burnt them to death. Now, here was this woman, this stranger, taking up the fight for them. I moved closer to her, hoping her strength might infect me, that I, too, might feel passionate about something.
But by the time we reached the Brooklyn Bridge, all I felt was exhaustion. There was a sharp pain in my middle and the people penning me in on all sides made me anxious. I pushed my way through the crowd to Chambers Street where the sidewalk opened up and allowed me a path home. I barely made it to my room, collapsing on the bed with the weight of an elephant, the burning between my legs, and squeezing of my abdomen, a whole new kind of hell.
Mrs. Hatch heard me screaming and fetched a midwife, a sturdy, buxom woman who latched her hands over mine and squeezed so hard she practically pushed that baby out for me, talking the whole time, her voice velvety and soothing as candlelight.
Only, that baby decided to stick halfway and a doctor had to be called in. I was in such a state, I hardly noticed the man’s head disappearing under the sheet over my knees. I can’t be sure, but there was such an agonizing twisting and wrenching inside me I think that doctor stuck his hands right up and yanked the baby out himself. When it ended, I couldn’t see straight.
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