“Look here. This pregnancy has gone too far,” she said crisply. “I cannot abort it. If I did, the girl might not survive. And anyway, think of all the fuss of disposing of an infant’s body.”
“Easy,” the man said from the depths of his dark corner. “Just get it out.”
Lucy tried again. “The Franciscan Sisters have an orphanage upstate. I know them, so they’d take the baby from me, no questions asked,” she said. “No crimes committed, no problem. A much simpler solution,” she added meaningfully. “That’s the deal, if you want my help. Otherwise, I tell you, the mother could die and you’ll have two corpses on your hands. Three, if you count me,” she said, raising her chin with a defiance she didn’t really feel.
In fact, her heart was pounding, and she held her breath now, waiting. She’d taken a gamble, surmising that if he didn’t particularly want to kill this girl, then all Lucy needed to do was to convincingly remove the stigma and burden of a child born to an unwed mother.
The man’s eyes glittered in the dark as he sized her up. “Where is this place? The nuns will take it, no questions asked?” he repeated as if making her swear it.
“Absolutely,” she said stoutly, and explained where the orphanage was.
“No names, no information about where this baby came from. If you ever talk about this to anyone, anytime, anywhere, we will kill you,” he said in a dead, colorless tone.
“Understood,” Lucy said. “Now please give us some privacy so I can get to work to help this poor girl, yeh?” When he didn’t move right away, she said, “Well, I hope you’re not squeamish. It’s going to be quite a bit messy.”
The man rose and went out. She heard him confer with the other tough, who’d waited outside the door. Then their footsteps retreated down the stairs.
“Cowards,” Lucy muttered. The girl on the bed had been writhing in pain, but Lucy could see that it was only terror holding the baby back, and already things were improving on their own, now that the man had left. The girl was biting hard on a rolled-up handkerchief.
“Don’t you worry.” Lucy touched the girl’s shoulder, yet she could not resist saying, “What kind of man is that, who’d kill a wee babe so easily? Married man?”
She instantly regretted asking, for the girl seemed to think that she herself might die, and she made a sort of confession, blurting it out in a guilty whisper: the father was not married but he was an important man, a loan shark who shook down the unions. She never said his name, just bit her lip as the pain seized her again, and she rolled her eyes sideways so she could gaze at Lucy directly when she spoke next, in a desperate but conspiratorial tone.
“I knew you could be trusted. You won’t kill my baby, will you?”
Lucy fixed her gaze on the washstand to quell her own emotions. She often deliberately worked the night shift, just so that she wouldn’t have to be out and about in the daytime—seeing young mothers pushing babies in strollers in the park—and so that when she went home, she’d be too exhausted to think of that windswept graveyard that haunted her undefended hours.
But the girl on the bed was anxiously waiting for an answer.
“No,” Lucy repeated briskly as she washed her hands. “This baby will not die.”
3
Amie
Troy, New York, 1934
Amie Marie was worried. It was now a whole year since she’d been married, and she still wasn’t pregnant. Her husband, Brunon, did not wish to discuss it, and her neighbors in this part of town in upstate New York were mostly German and Irish workers who spoke in languages that a French girl like Amie couldn’t understand. She was eighteen years old, and her entire life’s experience was largely confined to this tavern that she and Brunon owned.
The tavern had once belonged to Amie’s uncle. He and Papa had originally worked in a brewery in France, but the uncle came here first, then convinced Papa that there was more money to be made in America, selling beer and food in his tavern that served the local workingmen. So Amie and her father had left their hometown of Bourg-en-Bresse when she was only four years old, just after her mother died.
At first, her father and uncle had done very well in this city on the Hudson River, which was filled with beautiful, ornate nineteenth-century buildings that coal and steel moguls had built. The old part of town, where the tavern was, looked enchanted, especially on snowy winter evenings. Amie loved the library with its magnificent Tiffany glass windows, the decorative façades of the great mansions of illustrious men who’d built the city, the Gothic arches of St. Paul’s Church, and the belle époque streetlamps in front of the old offices of the newspaper whose editors had been the first to print the poem that began “’Twas the night before Christmas . . .” Even her father’s tavern was part of the elegant, stately architecture.
But by now it was an old city of fading glory and wisps of ghost stories about Indians and early settlers; and even the dark Victorian mansions seemed haunted with the lost spirits of its now-vanished entrepreneurs.
Amie Marie had managed to learn English with her uncle’s help, but apart from that, she hadn’t done well in school here in America; one day they would call what she had “dyslexia,” but in those earlier years they just said she was stupid. It didn’t help that she was nearsighted; this, too, was not discovered until a visiting doctor administered eye tests for children at the school. But by then it had already been decided that Amie should leave school early, because of her poor grades.
Her uncle and father were kind to her but taciturn; they’d put her to work helping them in the tavern. When her uncle died unexpectedly from heart failure, Amie’s father came to rely on her more and more.
The pale blond girl with the eyeglasses was at first scarcely noticed at the tavern, scurrying like a mouse to help her father. “You’ll get married someday, Amie,” he’d said unconvincingly, “and then everything will be all right.”
But for years, things were never all right for Amie, even when a young man named Brunon came looking for a job. He was a big fellow, sturdy and dependable, but he was what their neighbors called “a mutt,” part Polish, part German, part Irish. He’d told Papa all this, and explained that he’d lost his entire family back in Pennsylvania to the Spanish flu pandemic years ago. Only Brunon had survived.
“I am the strong one,” he assured her father. Papa was glad to have someone to do the heavy work. But soon, poor Papa died of meningitis, when Amie was seventeen.
Brunon had been a stalwart presence from the moment he’d arrived, a silent but diligent worker, who helped her through her grief by taking over the tavern and making sure that they could pay the bills on time, so that she could go on waiting on tables at lunch and at night, as if nothing had changed, as if Papa were somehow still there, tending bar and keeping the other men away from her. To make ends meet, Brunon worked an early shift at a factory, then came home to help her at the bar at night. When he proposed, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to say yes.
Neither of them had any money to spend on a honeymoon. Amie had worn a white dress; Brunon had put on his one good suit and tie. A few of the men from the factory dutifully brought their wives and babies to the wedding at the church. Their infants wailed during the entire ceremony. Then everyone ate the reception food at the tavern, and Amie cut the wedding cake. Finally the guests staggered home, and Brunon and Amie went upstairs to the small apartment above the tavern where she’d always lived with Papa.
She had indulged in buying new sheets for the bed, a nightgown for herself, and a bathrobe for Brunon. They’d climbed into bed, and then Brunon climbed on top of her, hitched up her nightgown, and did something that shocked her so profoundly that she could not make a sound. The sheer violence of it, the noise of his animal grunting culminating in one desperate, isolated shout, was a nightmare to her. It seemed to take longer than she’d thought possible. When it was over and he roughly withdrew, she felt as if she’d fallen down the rocky side of a cliff at horrific speed, emerging the next
day feeling broken, battered and bleeding.
The blood on the new sheets particularly upset her, and the next morning, when Brunon dressed for work, she hurriedly scrubbed the sheets, sobbing a little to herself. Brunon stayed downstairs, sulking at having to make his own breakfast. Just before going off to work he came upstairs to indignantly inform her that a wife should not only make her husband’s breakfast but also pack him a lunch in his bucket.
When he saw her tear-stained face, he blushed and then said roughly, “Don’t be a child, Amie. It’s what grown-ups do. The blood only proves you’re a good girl.”
She could hardly walk. It hurt so much to go to the bathroom that she tried all day not to. She wanted a baby; she desperately wanted someone to love who would adore her back. But night after night, as she bit her lip and prayed to God to help her understand this ghastly, bestial act, she wished that she could die now and never have to go through it again. Each night was as much a disaster as their wedding night.
When she finally ventured out into the world because she had to shop for things, she could not escape a feeling of shame. A few people made lighthearted jokes about the fact that she was now a married lady, but something in her look of agonized embarrassment made them back off.
Even if her father had lived to give his daughter away to the boy who worked for him, Amie wouldn’t have dreamed of asking Papa about the facts of life. She’d never managed to make friends with the other females from working families here; the married ladies stuck together in their ethnic cliques, gathered on doorsteps or front porches. They didn’t like the blond girl who’d suddenly blossomed with “a figure” that all their men liked to talk about.
She watched every woman in the neighborhood and wondered how they could bear it. Sometimes she overheard them as they hung their laundry in their backyards, making cryptic comments to each other about a wife’s “duty”; and at night the men in the tavern made bawdy jokes to one another. Everyone acted as if it were all great fun. It didn’t surprise her, really, that she didn’t feel the same way about it; she had been bad at so many things at school that others did quite easily. Yet she could not imagine how the holy church could sanctify this act.
As time went on, the days were fine and peaceable. The nights were not.
“For God’s sake, Amie,” her husband said if he caught her crying in the bathroom, “it hurts because you don’t relax. You have to relax to enjoy it.”
So it was her fault, her failing, as she’d expected. Once again she was deficient. She found herself entertaining strange fantasies: when she picked up a knife she thought of plunging it into her bosom; when she passed a lake she wondered how long it would take to drown; when she crossed the railroad tracks she felt an urge to throw herself in the path of a train. But suicide was a mortal sin, and if this marital act was what God allowed on earth, then existence had to be so much worse in Hell.
By now, the teasing that Brunon got about having a wife who wasn’t pregnant annoyed him. He was not a man who’d easily strike a woman, and he always behaved in public, but when they were alone he ridiculed everything she said and did. At first he did it somewhat affectionately, but soon his comments lost even that little tinge of exasperated warmth.
“You’re too stupid, Amie,” he would say if a glass fell from her trembling hands, or if something burned on the stove, or if she paid a bill twice because she didn’t understand the way he kept the books at the tavern. “Where is your head these days?” he’d demand. He was always sneering about her brain, her mind, her head.
She didn’t know how to talk back; she’d been raised to be quiet. Brunon came home weary from the factory, yet he worked all night at the tavern, sleeping only a few hours after closing. But he often had just enough energy for that brief, brutal act in bed.
And then, one day, Brunon came home with a wide grin on his face.
“We’re going to New York,” he announced as he sat down to eat his dinner.
She said automatically, “But we already live in New York.”
“Oh, Amie!” he snorted. “You’re so dumb! I mean the city of Manhattan.”
She blushed with shame. “Why should we go away?” she asked, confused. “We work here, in Papa’s tavern.”
Brunon took a long gulp of beer. “I sold it,” he said triumphantly. “I got a good price for it, too. But better than that, I met a man who wants us to go into partnership with him in the city. We’ll be much richer there than we could ever be in this rotten town, and I won’t have to work at the factory anymore. I can run things with you during the day, so you won’t have to work so hard, either. You see?”
Amie did not know what to think or say. She had a moment’s pang at losing the tavern without even being asked if she minded; her father had polished his mahogany bar so lovingly that it felt as if his spirit were still in it. If she left here, she would not know who she was anymore, and who she might become. But she harbored the hope that if Brunon were happier with his work, he would be happier with her.
A week later, they packed their bags and got on the train to New York City. Amie said a silent prayer to God for enlightenment. Please don’t let me be stupid my entire life. Help me to understand what’s happening to me. I understand nothing, except that I want to die.
Getting aboard the train felt like the end of the world to Amie. But not long afterwards, she discovered that, in a neighborhood called Greenwich Village, her prayers were finally going to be answered.
4
Petrina
Coney Island and Greenwich Village, New York, 1931
One bright spring morning, Petrina Maria was in her dormitory room at Barnard College, studying for her last exam before her graduation with the class of 1931. Then, unexpectedly, she was summoned for a phone call.
“They said it was urgent,” the girl at the telephone desk reported.
Filled with trepidation, Petrina picked up the receiver. It was Stella, the cook back home in Greenwich Village, whom Petrina had bribed to alert her if the youngest member of her family, little five-year-old Mario, got into trouble.
“He’s run away with some of the bigger boys,” the cook whispered. “I went to the schoolyard to pick him up, and a girl there said she saw him go off with them.”
“Any idea where?” Petrina asked worriedly.
Stella replied, “She said they were talking about the Cyclone roller coaster.”
Petrina groaned. “Where are Johnny and Frankie?” she demanded.
“I don’t know where your brothers are, Miss. And your parents aren’t home, either.”
“I’ll find Mario,” Petrina said quickly. “Just keep it quiet for now.”
“If he’s not home by suppertime, I’ll have to tell your parents!” the cook warned.
But no one would ever call the police; this family always settled its own problems.
Petrina hung up the telephone, silently cursing herself for making such a rash promise to go off and rescue Mario. Leave Barnard College for Coney Island? Going to Brooklyn from here would be a long and tedious jaunt. She wasn’t worried about her exam; she knew that she would pass this one. Art history was her favorite subject, her major. She’d already aced her minor, Italian literature. Having skipped a grade in high school, Petrina had entered college a year early, and she was an honors student. School had always been easy for her; it was life that was so hard.
She didn’t want Mario to be punished; her parents could be severe. Petrina calculated the fastest way to get to Brooklyn. She’d have to take a succession of subways, which she hated. Something about being underground made her feel trapped, buried alive. But then she pictured Mario wandering around with a gang of delinquent schoolboys and she shuddered. One of her brothers—Johnny, a boy with a pure heart—had, years ago, stumbled into trouble on the playground and ended up in reform school, which had nearly killed him. She could not let that happen to Mario. He was only five years old. She closed her books and went off.
* * *
&nbs
p; When Petrina arrived at Coney Island, she headed straight for the Cyclone roller coaster. You couldn’t miss it, looming above the other rides, roaring like thunder. It was made of wood, and its elegant curves had a certain beauty, if you liked that sort of thing. She felt a bit guilty; Mario had peppered her with eager questions about it when she was home for Easter, only a scant ten days ago. She’d put him off with vague promises.
“You’re too young for that,” Petrina had said. “Wait until you get a bit older.”
The truth was, she found amusement parks slightly silly. They were always noisy and filled with riffraff. She couldn’t see the point of eating a lot of terrible stuff—cotton candy, Cracker Jacks, oversize waffles, sweet sticky soda—and then climbing aboard a wooden contraption that boasted an eighty-five-foot drop to deliberately terrify you. Life already had enough dangerous ups and downs. Mario was so little, he’d probably fall right out of it. Did they let children that young onto such a wild ride?
She could hear the screams of glee even before she arrived at the ticket booth, beneath the tremendous shudder and rumble of the carriages as they swooped on their perilous track. Her throat tightened as she stood there, worriedly scanning the faces of people on line waiting for their turn, and the others who were already on the ride which swooshed by her in a blur. She watched closely when the ride ended and the passengers staggered off, but still, no Mario.
She paced back and forth. Where else would a little boy go? The distractions were endless. She walked on, past the Wonder Wheel, the Steeplechase, and the carousel, with more than one over-excited kid in the crowd banging into her at every turn. Then she doubled back to the Cyclone, becoming truly worried now.
“Hello, Petrina,” came a matter-of-fact voice. She whirled around. There was Mario, sitting on a bench all by himself, in his school uniform of white shirt, grey trousers, and navy blazer. He looked pale, his big dark eyes round as saucers, his beautiful soft mahogany-brown hair the same color as hers but slightly mussed. There was a smear of chocolate on his face.
The Godmothers Page 3