“Louisa.” Tom stopped and turned to me. He looked troubled. “I’ve been meaning to ask a favor of you.” He paused.
“Yes, Tom. Of course.” The favor was something to do with Grace, I felt certain. Or him and Grace. Or the three of us together—Grace, Tom, Louisa—the permutations spinning through me. I felt more trusting of Tom than I did of a stranger like Franklin Fiske; I could allow myself to relax around him, if only a bit. After all, because of Margaret and Grace, Tom was like part of my family.
“I’ve heard from Maria Love that she plans to disband the breakfast carts. You remember, the ones Margaret organized outside schools in the immigrant neighborhoods.”
I felt irrationally disappointed that he’d shifted away from personal matters. Were there tears in my eyes? Did I reach for my handkerchief to cover them? Although the trees were no less beautiful, the parkways no less wide, they were rendered abruptly normal, whereas a moment before they’d been extraordinary.
“Well—it’s a bit difficult for me to talk to Miss Love.” He flashed a shrugging smile. The redoubtable Miss Love had placed herself in charge of much of the community’s philanthropy.
“Yes, I understand.”
“I’d like to keep the carts going. There’s no question of money: We paid for the whole thing from the start. Do you think you could talk to Miss Love about it? When you’re not busy, I mean. Try to bring her around? If it’s no trouble to you. For Margaret’s sake.”
I felt as if there were a transparent screen between us.
“Yes, Tom. Of course.” What else could I say?
“Thank you. I appreciate it.”
“Yes.”
He touched my shoulder in gratitude, and we continued our walk toward his daughter.
CHAPTER VII
This was what happened when you accepted a million dollars from someone: You felt compelled to do favors for him. Or so I brooded the following week, having been forced to leave school on a Wednesday morning to meet Maria Love at the place and time most convenient for her. With festering annoyance I walked eastward on Swan Street toward Michigan Street. Once this part of the city had been refined and elegant. Beaux-Arts town houses with mansard roofs bespoke a glorious past. But over the years rail lines and factories had divided the neighborhood, and now the town houses too were divided—and redivided and divided again, to pack in more and more immigrants.
I wasn’t late, but already Miss Love waited for me on the steps of the Fitch Crèche, her headquarters. She stood impatiently glaring from left to right, examining the neighborhood for unfortunates who might need her assistance. If I were an unfortunate, I would flee at the sight of her. She was a tall woman, almost six feet, and ramrod straight. Her tight corset made her top half seem as if it were about to burst out of its lustrous silk and lace. She was sixty-one years old, and each passing year made her stronger and more confident. She gave new meaning to the word regal, and even attended costume balls dressed as Queen Elizabeth (no acting required).
Spotting me, Miss Love offered a clipped wave, turning her hand from the wrist. On her jacket lapel was a corsage of green roses, undoubtedly a gift from Macaulay trustee George Urban, Jr., who obviously knew how to curry favor. The three long feathers in her hat swayed precariously in the breeze. She carried an oversized leather handbag, filled with God only knew what implements of assistance. I braced myself: Louisa, you must try to remember all the good she’s done.
And she had. Miss Love had devoted her life to doing good. She’d been inspired as a girl, when she’d heard the story of a toddler who’d burned to death because the child’s mother, in a misguided attempt at protection, had left the youngster tied to the kitchen table when she went out to work. To stop such tragedies, Miss Love established the Crèche to care for the children of poor working women, day and night if necessary. And she’d accomplished much more: She’d helped to establish settlement houses and employment bureaus and schools where immigrant women could learn English and train to be cooks or seamstresses. Worried about consumption, cholera, and diphtheria, Miss Love arranged for the children at the Crèche to receive free medical care, and their mothers got the same. Every ethnic group was included in her efforts, even Negroes, who were so often left out. On a visit to the South when she was young, Maria had seen a slave auction, and the experience had marked her forever. If she’d been born a man, she could have been anything she chose—governor, U.S. senator, even president. But as a woman, political life was closed to her, so her immense ambitions, energies, and wealth were focused on good deeds.
“Louisa Barrett, at last!” she announced, stepping forward, gripping my arm, and abruptly leading me at a quick pace down Michigan Street. “I’m conducting a visitation.”
The exaggerated precision of her elocution was such that children who weren’t terrified of her were reduced to (private) gales of laughter. She was well known for performing in amateur theatricals and had even gone on tour to such far-flung cities as Cleveland and Toledo with a group organized by Dr. Cornell, our local impresario. Rumor had it that she was devastating as Cordelia.
“A deserving family has been brought to my attention.” She might have been Christ himself, and alas the unfortunates being visited had best regard her as such if they knew what was good for them. Miss Love towered over me, partly because of the feathers in her hat but also because of her thick high heels, not the type of practical shoes one would have imagined her in and which I myself had worn hoping to please her. Well did I know the necessity of ingratiating myself with Miss Maria Love. A few whispers from her to Dexter Rumsey could destroy my position. And I wanted my girls to be able to do volunteer work at the Crèche. It was an eminently suitable place for them: The impoverished children’s families were thoroughly examined to make certain they were neither profligate nor inebriate, so my students’ parents need not worry that their daughters might be exposed to immorality as well as poverty.
Miss Love treated people well or badly in proportion to how closely they followed her advice and how grateful they were for the privilege of doing so. She had always treated Margaret badly, because Margaret had never followed her advice and never shown her the least bit of gratitude. Alas, being on Maria Love’s bad side had repercussions, because she was the power behind the Charity Organization Society, a group which had organized the churches of the city to dispense charity in their specific neighborhoods, without regard to denomination. Ansley Wilcox (my board member and Dexter Rumsey’s twice-over son-in-law) was her figurehead and collaborator, the two of them building an empire governed by their own unchristian views of what constituted Christian charity.
The breakfast carts exemplified this. Studies done by philanthropic groups showed that children did better in school if they had a good breakfast. These studies also showed that children from poor families often had no breakfast awaiting them at home in the morning, except maybe some weak coffee or tea. Margaret had the idea of the carts, which would bring fresh bread, milk, and fruit to public elementary schools in “affected neighborhoods.” Any child, whether he or she had had breakfast or not, whether his or her parents were married or not, inebriate or not—any child could grab something to eat and continue on his way to school.
Maria Love and Ansley Wilcox abhorred this plan. There was no control in this plan. Anyone—anyone at all—could take free charity under this plan. This plan would be responsible for the sinking into degradation of hundreds of formerly self-respecting poor children—because they would be getting something for nothing! All of them, the good and the bad together! Better that these children come to Maria Love, be properly evaluated as to whether their parents were profligate and/or inebriate, and then, if they passed muster and did some work that Miss Love found for them—delivering messages or sewing on buttons or making paper flowers, depending on their age and sex—then their parents might be given a penny a day with which to buy the children a proper breakfast.
As luck would have it, Margaret was very rich, and of cour
se the rich can do exactly as they please. So Margaret set up her breakfast carts, Miss Maria Love be damned. But with Margaret gone, the carts were now under the Love/Wilcox jurisdiction.
“Hold tight to your possessions,” she cautioned as we turned onto Seneca and walked toward South Cedar. The streets teemed with raucous life: saloons, whores, peddlers, horse carts, dirty children running amok or blocking the street with baseball games. Poles, Jews, Italians, Irish, Russians—pressed together in a jumble of languages. We pushed our way around fruit vendors and dry-goods peddlers. Women wearing shawls and kerchiefs shopped beside others in shirtwaists and hats, the Old World mixing with the New. Clothes hung from windows to dry. Garbage cluttered the curbs, rotting vegetable peelings mixed with dog-chewed bones. Flies swarmed around the carcasses hung outside a butcher shop. The nearby factories filled the air with acrid soot, and there was another smell too, one which I couldn’t exactly identify, something like burning yeast.
“This neighborhood takes on more and more the look of the Godless Orient,” Miss Love said, not bothering to lower her voice. Probably she assumed that no one around us spoke English. “How well I remember the slums of Constantinople.” Miss Love never let you forget that she had “gypsied” (as she called it) around the world more than once. “Well, we do what we can.”
“You have done more than anyone, Miss Love, to help the lives of the deserving.” Margaret or Francesca would have heard the irony, but Maria Love was immune to irony.
She stopped, turning to me, staring down at me as people jostled around us. “Thank you, Louisa, thank you. I take that to heart, coming from you. I have the deepest respect for you.”
“Thank you, Miss Love.” She always called me Louisa, I always called her Miss Love. We resumed walking. “I am grateful for your respect.” And oddly, I was. This was her power: She had a charm that could sweep people into her net, trapping them before they understood they had been snared.
“You have earned my respect, Louisa—never forget it.”
This seemed like my moment.
“Miss Love, I’ve come to see you—”
“That question, Louisa, we will address later,” she declared, squeezing my arm to get me across the street as if I were in danger of being trampled by a horse cart. Mercifully she let go of me on the opposite side. I caught the look of a teenage boy, who studied her with incredulity. I couldn’t help but smile, and I covered my mouth with my handkerchief to hide it.
“Louisa,” she whispered, leaning down, suddenly sensitive to those around us. “I know this is a filthy neighborhood and the people smell worse than the streets, but we must try to pretend we are accustomed to it. Whatever we do, we must not cover our faces with our handkerchiefs!”
“Yes, Miss Love,” I whispered in return, quickly putting my handkerchief away and biting my lip to stop the urge to laugh.
We arrived at our destination, a derelict-looking town house. She stopped abruptly, and I bumped into her.
“Sorry, Miss Love.”
“Not all at, my dear.” The bumping necessitated an adjustment of her hat. She was like an awkward giantess who thought herself a swan. By now several street urchins had gathered to follow us and stare at her. She ignored them, although I would have thought them her natural constituency.
Standing at the bottom of the town house steps and staring up at the blackened door, she took a deep breath, girding herself for the battle ahead. “Well, Louisa, onward with courage!”
The front hall smelled of kerosene, onions, and the garbage piled just inside the door. She led us to the rear of the house, to the back stairs, faintly lit by the soot-encrusted skylight above. At the second floor, the smell from the communal water closet pierced the air, choking me. On the third floor, Miss Love rapped once at what looked like a recently installed door and opened it without waiting for a response. “Never wait for them to answer the door, Louisa,” she whispered. “Gives them too much time to hide things.”
The room we entered was lit by a small kerosene lamp on a table in the corner. A woman sat in a chair beside the table, darning a child’s shirt while an infant slept on her lap. Three other children of about eighteen months to four years ran to the woman when we entered. They appeared basically clean—hair combed, faces wiped—but the eighteen-month-old toddler seemed bowlegged, a sign of rickets. Their eyes were red and rheumy. The children pushed against their mother’s chair.
The room had no windows, so it must have been carved out of a larger room when the building was divided—thus explaining the new door. There was an unmade bed on one side, a sink and stove on the other side near the table, and laundry hanging from a line tacked along the wall. The floor no longer looked like wood; had we been on the plains of Missouri, I would have identified it as hard-packed mud. Miss Love stared at the children for a long moment before addressing their mother.
“Signora Gambuto.” Miss Love spoke Italian, which I understood, although Maria Love’s Italian wasn’t the sensuous, musical language one usually thinks of; it was more like stiffly formal English translated literally into Italian. “I am pleased to make your acquaintance.”
The woman nodded wearily, as if she were well-accustomed to tall Protestant women wearing large feathered hats visiting her at odd hours of the day and night.
“I have been told by a reliable source that your lawful husband brought you to this great nation of ours only to desert you and your legitimately conceived children. Is this true?”
Again the woman nodded.
“I am further told that never does the scourge of alcohol pass your lips.”
The woman looked as if she didn’t understand.
“You never take money that should be spent on food for your children to indulge yourself in spirits.”
The woman shook her head firmly no.
“Brava!” Miss Love was extremely pleased. “I can help you.”
She opened her huge handbag, the repository of all assistance for people in distress, willing or not.
“I have noticed more than once that respectable women of Italian origin are greatly skilled at laundering. Therefore I have secured a job for you as a laundress at this address.” She gave the woman a piece of paper. “Bathe before you go and dress as if for church. While you are at work you shall bring your children to the Fitch Crèche, at the second address on this paper, where they shall be cleaned, fed, and examined by reputable physicians. They shall be cured of any illnesses, and they shall participate in organized play. In addition, at the Fitch Crèche you shall take English lessons after work as well as lessons in sewing—for I have further noticed that with proper training, women of Italian origin make excellent seamstresses. Thus I shall give you the opportunity to improve your lot in life. I see you are sewing now—excellent! Upon the completion of your daily lessons, the children will be discharged into your care. Agreed?”
The woman opened her mouth to speak, but Miss Love gave her no opportunity.
“Fine. Toward the end of the summer, I shall arrange for you and your children to enjoy a brief sojourn at one of the delightful farms to the south of our city. There you shall help with the fruit harvest. Your children especially will enjoy this honest labor in the Lord’s own sunshine, among the company of many of their upstanding compatriots, I assure you. This sojourn will also help you and your children to avoid the scourge of tuberculosis. Excellent.” Pausing, Miss Love beamed. “I am certain you will find yourself profoundly satisfied with this turn of events and give thanks to God at your church. Should your priest give you any difficulty about accepting Protestant charity, ask yourself what he has done for you lately.”
The woman’s eyes rounded in horror.
Miss Love laughed. “No, no, I was only joking. I am well-acquainted with all the religious practitioners of this city. We work together now—united for the common good. And when your priest opens a Crèche you may certainly go there with my blessing.”
Miss Love glanced at the laundry hung along the wall.
“I’m glad to see you keep up with the washing.” Then to me in English: “No matter what people say about them, Louisa, I have always found that Italian women keep up with the laundry.” Then to Signora Gambuto in Italian: “Now then, we shall provide you immediate assistance by washing the dishes and sweeping the floor, so you may take a moment’s rest from your labors.” Back to English: “Come, Louisa, to work! And stay sharp,” she added, sotto voce, “in case there are any bottles hidden away.”
We washed the dishes, made the bed, and swept the floor without finding a single bottle, me feigning the great enthusiasm that Miss Love seemed actually to feel, while the woman and her children watched us as if we were out of our minds. I had to admit that Miss Love was nothing if not practical. I’d heard many a tale of well-meaning charity women who would visit a family like this, give theoretical instruction on how to bathe the children, for example, and then neglect to leave behind the bar of soap with which to do it: Such women simply didn’t realize that some people can’t afford to buy soap. Miss Love, I knew, would never make such a mistake.
“It is example, Louisa, example,” Miss Love explained as we worked, “that these people crave more than anything. Simply by showing them the proper way to make a bed”—which for Miss Love meant very tightly despite the lack of a top sheet and the loose weave of the single blanket—“we have uplifted them.”
She did a final inspection and decided we were finished.
“Well, then, signora, I am very busy and must leave you now. However, you are obviously a woman of refinement who wishes to improve herself. Therefore I will give you my card. If you need help, you may show the card and ask for me personally at the Crèche.”
She handed over the card, which the woman accepted cautiously, holding it by the corner with two fingers and slowly reading aloud, groping with the sounds of English: “Miss—Maria—Love.”
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