by Jody Hedlund
Uncle had insisted that Mutti take the Olson children to the Orphan Asylum on Cumberland Street. But Mutti had assured Uncle that they wouldn’t be a burden to him, that she’d provide for all the children’s needs.
Elise didn’t want to think about how she would take care of everyone after Mutti was gone. With just her and Marianne’s income, they would be hard-pressed to pay Uncle’s rent, much less buy food.
Sophie leaned down and kissed Mutti’s cheek. Before she could pull back, a large tear dripped off her chin onto Mutti.
“Oh, mein Engel.” Mutti always called Sophie her angel. “You are such a good, sweet child. I will rest easier if I know you will be a brave girl. Tell me you’ll be brave.”
“I will, Mutti.”
Mutti lifted a hand and brushed one of Sophie’s fine strands of hair away from her face. “I will miss seeing you grow up.”
Sophie choked back a sob. “I will miss you too, Mutti.”
Mutti’s hand fell to the bed as though she’d used up the last of her strength to touch Sophie. “Elise, hand me the candleholder.”
Elise hurried to retrieve the brass item from the box. She opened her mother’s hand and laid it there gently.
“This candleholder is for you, Sophie.” Mutti’s voice was strained, as though every word cost her an enormous effort. “I want you to remember not to lose your way in the darkness. No matter how lost you might feel at times, always keep His light burning inside you.”
Sophie clutched the heavy angel, which was kneeling and holding up a lampstand. The empty basin was polished and shiny compared to the angel that had become tarnished over time from disuse.
“All three of you,” Mutti whispered. “Let me look at you one last time.” Mutti’s lips were cracked and dry. Elise reached for the tin pot and dipper, ladled out a small amount of water, and tipped it against Mutti’s mouth.
“Nein, Elise. No more. I’m done.”
“Please. One little sip.”
Mutti shook her head. “I have no need for it. My only need now is to memorize each of your beautiful faces.” Her hungry eyes took in Sophie’s face first, then moved to Marianne’s. And finally when Mutti devoured hers, Elise had to blink rapidly to capture tears that wanted to escape.
“I know you will find a way to take care of everyone,” Mutti whispered through a tremulous smile.
Elise nodded. “Of course I will. I promise.” She didn’t know how she’d keep her promise to Mutti. And she certainly wouldn’t admit that she was terrified that she’d fail. For now, the most important thing was making Mutti as comfortable and happy as possible.
She wasn’t sure if Mutti believed her, because she closed her eyes and her face took on the serene expression that it always had whenever she prayed, an expression that announced Mutti’s peace and pleasure in prayer.
Elise had never understood how her mother could remain so full of joy and peace in spite of all the difficult circumstances Count Eberhardt had set into motion for their family. She didn’t understand why Mutti wasn’t angry. Surely they had every right to be upset at the count. Surely there was nothing wrong with being incensed at the rich in this new country, who lived in opulence while she and her sisters slaved long hours day after day simply to survive.
Kein Konig da. No king there. That was what so many of her fellow countrymen said about America, this place of freedom and opportunity. But even if there wasn’t a king here in America, there were those who lived like kings, those who took advantage of the masses of poor immigrants in order to line their own pockets.
Mutti’s eyes opened, and this time they were hazy, as if she were already halfway to heaven and looking back down on them through the clouds. “I’m so proud of each of you.”
A deep sob broke from Marianne, which echoed the cry of Elise’s heart.
“God will take care of you.” Mutti’s lashes dropped. “Good-bye, my sweet girls. I love you.”
“I love you too.” Elise grabbed Mutti’s hand, as if by doing so she could keep her from leaving them. But this time Mutti’s eyes refused to open, and her chest refused to rise again. She was gone.
Chapter 3
Guy Bedell opened the front door of the tenement and held it wide. The towering five-story brick structure was identical to all the other buildings crammed together on Avenue A. They were packed so tightly that sunbeams could hardly break through to bathe the narrow street in much-needed light. Instead the crowded buildings trapped the stench and shadows, which helped to spawn the filth, wretchedness, and mischief plaguing the avenue. He’d also heard that the tenements were so poorly built they couldn’t stand alone and therefore, like drunken men, needed the support of each other to keep from toppling over.
He waved Miss Pendleton ahead of him. “Are you certain you want to do this?”
“I’m not certain at all, Reverend,” she responded in that no-nonsense way she had. Like last week, she was wearing all black. And like last week, he couldn’t keep from noticing the way the dark color highlighted her pale skin and grayish-blue eyes. She was petite and put together in every detail from her severe coif to her immaculate garments. Though she wasn’t remarkable in her appearance, there was something in her delicate porcelain face that he liked. Perhaps her determination? Or compassion? Or honesty?
Truthfully, he hadn’t noticed her at all before last Sunday, but now he was chagrined to admit he’d thought about her all week. He’d told himself that his thoughts had only to do with the way God had spoken through her to answer his prayer. He’d been battling such doubts recently regarding his ministry among the immigrants, and when she’d spoken to him after the service, it was almost as if she’d been delivering a message directly from God. He loved when God worked that way.
Regardless, his mind had wandered too many times from the answered prayer to the bearer of the answer. He hadn’t met a woman in years who had arrested him quite the way Miss Pendleton had. And he was quite taken aback by his strange reaction. After Bettina had passed away ten years ago, he’d had little desire to think about courting other women. At first he’d been too filled with grief and had focused all his energy on raising Thomas. When Thomas had left home to pursue his studies at Union Theological Seminary, Guy had taken the challenge given by the New York Methodist Episcopal Conference. He’d accepted their position as an itinerant pastor to start a mission and chapel among the lions’ den.
He’d left his comfortable pastoral position and embraced God’s calling to raise the outcast and homeless, to be among those who had no friend or helper, and do something for them of what Christ had done for him. He’d focused all his time and attention on reaching the lost. Nothing and no one had shaken that attention.
Until last week.
Miss Pendleton passed ahead of him into the entryway, and he pulled the door shut behind them. She stopped abruptly and pressed a lacy handkerchief to her mouth and nose. In the tight quarters he almost bumped into her. His six-foot-three frame formed a solid wall that could easily surround and protect her.
He wasn’t worried about anyone attempting to harm them in Kleindeutschland, Little Germany. Usually his sheer size kept any pickpockets or drunken brawlers away. But he wasn’t afraid to pull out his knife or revolver when he had to on occasion.
Miss Pendleton heaved, and the distinct sound of gagging came from behind her handkerchief.
“Miss Pendleton, are you ill?” Perhaps he shouldn’t have invited a woman of her frail sensibilities to visit after all. Most of the others who came with him, like the team visiting the building across the street, were comprised of middling class parishioners. Those with wealth were usually content to do their part by giving donations, not their time.
“I’ll be fine in a moment,” she said in a muffled voice that was followed by more gagging. “Perhaps you have advice on how to adjust to the foul odor?”
“Foul odor?” He breathed in a deep whiff and noticed the scent of cooked cabbage.
“Very foul.” Her eyes w
ere focused on the unlit stairwell ahead.
He examined the steps. The corners were crowded with refuse and stained with urine. He supposed he’d grown immune to the sights and stench over the years. “I’m sorry, Miss Pendleton.” He touched her elbow to usher her back out. “I should have warned you.” He hastily prodded the door open, but she shook her head.
“I don’t wish to leave, Reverend.” She squared off with the stairwell and lifted her shoulders as though preparing to enter battle. “If these people must live in this squalor day after day, then surely I can withstand it for a few hours.” She removed the lacy square from her nose and crumpled it in her gloved hand.
Guy wanted to smile at her pluck. But at the gravity of her expression, he held his emotion in check. It wasn’t that he was amused at her. Not really. He couldn’t describe how he felt, except that he appreciated her attitude.
He nodded toward the second door on the right. “One of the tenants has a sweatshop in there.”
“Sweatshop?” Her dark eyebrows shot up.
“It’s a garment workshop for ready-made clothing.”
“Here?” She stared at the closed door.
All traces of his mirth fled at the thought of the numerous sweatshops that existed all throughout the tenements of the Lower East Side. “A sweater, or contractor, picks up precut, unsown garments from clothing manufacturers. Then he supervises the sewing of the garments in his apartment. He hires basters, pressers, finishers, zipper installers, and buttonhole makers.”
“They work in their homes and not with the manufacturer?”
“That’s right. The manufacturer only hires more specialized tailors, who have skills at cutting the garments. I’ve heard that Brooks Brothers has less than one hundred ‘insiders’ who do the cutting and trimming of the material, but that there are thousands of ‘outsiders’ who do all the sewing.”
“I had no idea such a system existed.”
Guy couldn’t fault her for her ignorance. As a member of the Ladies Home Missionary Society, she came from a wealthy and prominent New York family. Almost all the ladies shared a similar background. Such women wouldn’t even consider buying ready-made clothing. They had tailors who came directly to their homes. He’d heard that some of the more fashionable ladies employed French seamstresses to handcraft the latest European styles.
“Most sweaters allow me to come in and visit for a few minutes with the workers,” he said, “so long as they don’t slacken in their sewing. I’ve found it’s actually the perfect time to talk with them. I have a captive audience, so to speak.”
She glanced at the door, and hesitation flitted across her features. “And what should I do, Reverend? What should I say?”
“Give them a tract and tell them the Good News of the gospel.”
“I’d much prefer to give them a loaf of bread.” On the walk over from the chapel, she’d asked him if he’d ever considered providing food to the people when they came for services. He’d explained his philosophy that he didn’t want to grant people handouts. He believed giving them something for nothing lowered their dignity and fostered dependency.
While Miss Pendleton had listened to his principles, she’d also offered him well-thought-out objections, just as she had last week—objections that had left him strangely moved.
“Follow my lead, Miss Pendleton,” he said, fighting back the uncomfortable nudge inside that had been growing until at times it felt more like a violent shove. “We shall deliver homilies about the evils of alcohol and the blessing of God’s love, and the need to preserve young girls from experiences that might inflame their young passions.” He started down the dark hallway toward the first sweatshop. “And we will pray that God, in His time and in His providence, will water and nourish all the seeds we plant.”
By the time Christine had reached the third floor of the tenement building, her middle churned with nausea. She was no longer merely gagging from the overwhelming stench. No, she was sick to her stomach at all she’d witnessed. The conditions of the building and the apartments were beyond deplorable.
The two sweatshops they’d visited had each been so crowded that she and the reverend had hardly been able to maneuver through the people and stacks of cloth waiting to be sewn, along with the finished garments that were ready to be returned to the manufacturer.
In one of the shops she’d counted at least eight men and women working in what appeared to be the apartment’s main room. She guessed the living quarters to be no more than ten-by-ten feet. Her dressing room was bigger than their living space, not to mention that her boudoir and bedroom were each twice the size.
Each apartment was identical with the parlor facing the street and a windowless interior room the size of one of her smallest utility closets. Not only were the apartments tiny and crowded, but they were coated with dust, loose threads, and dye from the cloth.
Reverend Bedell paused. “Are you sure you’d like to visit one more? We can leave now.”
She brushed her hand over her skirt. The motion was useless to divest the skirt of the dirt it was accumulating. Every stitch would be embedded with the foulness of the place. But every chamber in her heart was also embedded with an acute ache for the people who must live this way.
As much as she wanted to run away and bury her face in her hands and cry, instead she straightened her shoulders. “I think we have time to visit one more, don’t you agree?”
What else did she have to do? Especially now that she no longer had Mother to take care of. Although the physicians had never been able to properly diagnose what was wrong, Mother had taken to her bed not long after Christine’s coming out at eighteen. And Mother had spent the next twelve years incapacitated, in her bed, never once leaving her chambers.
Mother’s confinement had been a prison sentence for Christine, although at first she hadn’t realized it. In the beginning, she’d wanted to do her duty as an only child to her widowed mother. But as time went on, she felt more and more isolated and cut off from the world. Whenever she made mention of visiting friends, going to the opera, or even attending a ladies’ group meeting, Mother would have a setback.
Christine had tried to be sensitive to her mother’s pain and illness. And she’d wanted to follow the Beatitude that said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” But there had been times when she grew resentful of the constant demands that were made without a single ounce of kindness or gratitude.
Now all her childhood friends were strangers, long since married with families of their own. She was the odd one wherever she went, the socially inept spinster. She was woefully out of touch with fashion and the unspoken rules of New York City’s elite society of which she’d never been very good at. Many of the ladies shunned her anyway as a result of her father’s ruthless business practices in his last years of life.
Mother had slowly wasted away, her muscles atrophying and her bones growing brittle from so little movement. Her bedsores had festered until the pain and the ugliness of them had seeped into her soul.
“Miss Pendleton, you’ve already braved more than most women of your status would.” Reverend Bedell paused before a door. In the dark hallway he knew just where to go. And he could obviously sense her discomfort. Or perhaps he’d noticed her nervous habit of fiddling with things. How could he miss the fact that her fingers kept returning to the cameo pinned to her high collar?
She quickly clasped her hands together in front of her to keep herself from fidgeting. “I’m ready, Reverend.”
He smiled then, and it seemed to bring a glow to the hallway. “I admire your courage.”
She wasn’t sure if it was his smile or his kind words that infused her, but whatever it was warmed her heart.
The reverend had been a gentleman the entire time they’d been together. He’d seemed genuinely concerned about her well-being for which she was grateful. She rebuked herself not to read more into his kindness than he intended. He was simply treating her the same way he would any lady from
the Society.
Even so, she found herself liking him much more than she ought.
His knock was answered by a diminutive man whom the reverend addressed as Mr. Hermann Jung. The man had a large nose that reminded her of a bulb onion. The tiny red veins crisscrossing it were the sign of too much imbibing, as was the nervous twitch in his eyes, the indication of a thundering headache that wouldn’t leave him in peace until he imbibed again. She was well-accustomed to the signs, the sourness of his breath, the jaundice of his skin, the sharpness of his voice. She’d seen all that and more in her father before he’d drunk himself to death.
The sweatshop was nearly identical to the other two they’d already visited. Even though the window stood open, the room was stale, without a hint of a breeze. She didn’t know how the women could hold the needles without them slipping from their fingers, which were surely slick from perspiration.
But as it was, each head was bent over what appeared to be dark vests. Two were sewing buttons up the front, another finishing the buttonholes, and still more were adding meticulously neat finishing stitches to the edges. Their fingers were blue from the dye but moved in and out of the material rapidly.
The women cast glances in her direction, clearly curious, but none made an effort to speak to her. Christine hadn’t expected them to. From her month of volunteering at the chapel, she’d learned if anyone would do the reaching out, it must be her.
She spoke a few words to the closest woman, who only smiled and nodded, a sign the woman didn’t speak English well enough to converse. Christine’s education had begun in the first sweatshop after she’d spent five minutes in a one-sided conversation, only to have the woman finally reply but in German.
Christine stepped over outstretched legs and stacks of precut cloth and made her way toward one of the younger women. She’d also learned that most of the women under twenty spoke English fairly well. The assimilation into the new land with a new language and customs was apparently easier for them.
