Bottomland

by Michelle Hoover

  Later when I came back and Myrle didn’t, when I lost her for good, I would think about what it meant to leave and never return. At the window, maybe that was the last time she trusted me so much.

  II

  Our train pulled to a stop late morning. I had the address of Hurley’s Electric in pencil on a card, asked at the station office for a map. “A nickel for that,” the woman said without looking.

  We sat in the station and ate buns, a cup of coffee Myrle spat out. “This is where we’re going,” I showed her. “The factories, they’re all along the river and the tracks. There’s work there.” Myrle traced the lines on the map with her finger, mouthing the names of streets. Outside, the city through the windows was a gray lump of clouds. A sweep of strangers’ coats hurried through the doors, a woman carrying her dog in a cage. The man at the shop who’d sold us the buns was reading his paper, a group of boys in the corner filling their cheeks from a tin can. The trains whined to a stop, took up passengers, and headed off. My eyes ached.

  “You’ve got your bag now,” I told Myrle. “I can’t carry it for you.”

  She stopped her tracing.

  “Ready?”

  Myrle folded the map neat and put it in her bag.

  We walked for hours after that. The streets were cramped and thick with dirt, the motorcars fast as axes. No one paid us any mind. At every corner we stopped and looked down the spill of streets, as if looking could tell us something. When finally we reached the address on my card, those streets emptied out, but the warehouses hummed, the walls as long as blocks. There didn’t seem any numbers on those walls, not even a door for knocking. Only vents and docks, the windows starting two floors up. When we stopped at what looked an office, the door was locked. On the front, a square of old paint, where a sign for Hurley’s Electric might have been.

  “What is it?” Myrle asked.

  “Nothing.” I hid that card in my hand.

  Myrle shifted her bag.

  “It must be down a ways,” I said. “Come on.”

  We scuffed our feet. Hurley’s wasn’t at Clinton and Monroe, and that map of ours didn’t do us much better. I checked the same number on different streets. Checked ways those numbers might rearrange themselves into something different. By midafternoon, the lake was in front of us and we crouched on the stones. We couldn’t see the other side, not even a speck of land larger than a finger. The waves were slow. Far off, tugboats and ships moved by inches. If anything, the water looked like rutted dirt, as close to home as home ever was, and I wondered if Father was missing us.

  “Esther,” Myrle said. She sat with her bag tugging at her neck, her mouth to her knees.

  “We must have passed the street.”

  “We’re nowhere.”

  “It’s a whole city worth of places.”

  “It’s not Hurley’s.”

  “I must’ve got the address wrong, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t somewhere.”

  She closed her eyes, rubbing at the palm of her hand like it itched. I tapped at her foot. “Hungry?”

  She nodded. Before I could take up my bag again, she’d thrown hers over her shoulder and headed back the way we’d come.

  The bakery had four short tables and a mess of chairs. A bell rang on the door. We sat with our cups of tea, and out the window, a man stumbled down the street. “What now?” Myrle asked.

  I took out the magazine. It was more than crumpled. The woman with her invisible cup of tea, she didn’t seem so pretty. Myrle watched me with a dark look and eyed the customers, all of them men. Behind the counter, the baker reached into his oven, pulled out a pan. The men at the tables eyed my sister back. Foxes, I thought.

  “Do you know . . . ,” Myrle asked them, her voice cracking. “. . . Hurley’s Electric?”

  I shushed her.

  The man closest sat up in his chair. “Hurley’s?”

  “Hey now.” The baker came out, flour on his knuckles, his apron. “What you bothering them for, John?”

  John held up his hands.

  Myrle reached across the table for the magazine. She gave it to the baker, holding tight to the corner like he might not give it back.

  “Oh, that Hurley’s,” he said. “They’ve moved most of the business to New York. Nothing but an office on Jefferson now.”

  “Phsst,” I said.

  The baker gave me a wink. “That’s right. I can’t tell you how many of the boys felt the same. A bunch of them companies went to New York. In this neighborhood you’ll find textiles more like, garments. What’s that you’re looking for?”

  But I didn’t want to give an answer, not for them. Myrle had taken the magazine and rolled it as fine as she could. Bowing her head, she tucked the magazine into her bag.

  “Aren’t you girls a little young to be wandering?” John asked. “This side of town specially.”

  “Maybe not,” I said.

  “This one?” He pointed at my sister with his chin. “She can’t be more than what, thirteen?”

  “She’s none of your business.”

  “Listen,” the baker started. “You two don’t want to be around here in an hour. Those whistles go and it’s another place altogether. Some of those factory men, they don’t care how young you are.”

  Myrle sat up, her eyes filling.

  “You don’t got a place, do you?” John asked. I shrugged. He turned to the baker. “Who’s your aunt that runs the boardinghouse?”

  The baker wiped his hands. “This time a year, I’m sure she’s full up.”

  “Is she?”

  “You can try her. Place is on Wells, the North Side. You have to cross the river again. The door is in the alley. You know the North Side?”

  “They don’t know nothing,” John said.

  “Geez. What can I do about that?” The baker went behind his counter again and came back with a stack of cards smeared with butter and flour. He looked through them, spitting on his finger when they stuck. “Listen, the North Side is thataway.” He pointed out the window. “And Wells is almost straight up. But you got to take the alley behind Huron to find the door. The number’s on the card. And it’s Mrs. Keyes you want. She’s my aunt.”

  “Is that Mary Keyes, Ed?” John asked.

  The baker waved a hand at him. “They don’t need to know. Just Keyes. She’s got the boardinghouse. But I’d head there fast. She closes her door soon after those whistles go, sometimes even earlier if the girls are all in, and then you’ll never get her.”

  John reached into his pocket, took his wallet out. “Here now, I’ll pay for those cups you’ve got.”

  I left a quarter on the table instead.

  The alley was full of stink and weeds, dark with shadows. At last, a door as clean as a whitewashed fence showed against the brick. At our knock, a woman opened the door an inch. She was wide and pasty-faced, dressed for bed. “Yes?”

  “We’re here for a room.”

  “It’s awfully late.” She yawned. “What are you two doing out this time of night?”

  I pointed at her sign. rooms for let by the month. “We can pay.” I handed her the baker’s card.

  She wrinkled her nose as she dusted it off. “Ed, that old dog. Well, hurry yourselves in. Either that or I’ll catch my death.” She opened the door. A set of chairs crowded the hall, a rack with a dozen coats or more, bundled with scarves, and a line of shoes, all of them small and worn. Still, the socks in most had lace tops. Girls, I thought.

  The woman lit the lamp in the front room and sat with a sigh, her hips tight between the arms of the chair and her thighs fat as muttons. We sat on the sofa across from her, hands in our laps. The room had a mother in it, every inch. Plain and scrubbed. A needlepoint over the fire grate in blue and white stitching. Code of the Boardinghouse Keeper. In the corner, a stand of pipes banged for dear life. Myrle gripped my hand.<
br />
  “You must be farm girls,” the woman said. “Those pipes always scare them. But they’re just for heat. What good they do. The name’s Keyes. Keyes with an extra e—no jokes about it. The board is twenty a month, includes breakfast, dinner, and laundry every other week. More and you pay fifty cents a wash, but no proper girl I know needs more than that. We keep on time here for meals, no running in last minute. No leftovers either. We’re a proper board, rules and all. You’ll have to share a room of course, and the lavatory’s down the hall. Bathing is on Sundays, behind the kitchen. I’ll need your papers for starters.”

  “Papers?”

  “I assume you have work in one of the factories.”

  A girl came running down the stairs. She wore her hair combed short above her ears, a blue dress that showed her calves, and shoes like slippers. “Isabelle,” Mrs. Keyes snapped. “It’s almost curfew.” Isabelle let out a huff and was out the door. Keyes stretched her neck, looking after her. With a quick turn of her head, she remembered us.

  “Work?” she asked.

  Myrle opened her mouth. “We just started,” I hurried in.

  “Because I only let rooms for the workers. This isn’t a flophouse. It doesn’t do for just a night, not even a week. We expect long-term. There aren’t so many of us boarding houses left . . . .” Something caught in her throat. Her eyes teared and she slapped her chest. “Your papers?” she coughed.

  I opened my bag, rustled through the blouses and skirts.

  “What’s wrong with this one?” Mrs. Keyes asked. “Doesn’t she talk?”

  I elbowed Myrle, but she was near to a fit. “Just shy.”

  “And exhausted by the look of it, pale too. That girl needs iron if I ever saw one.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I went back to my ruffling.

  Mrs. Keyes yawned again. “If it’s so much fuss . . .” Her eyes were closing. She blinked and opened them. “I suppose since it was Ed who sent you, you can show me your papers in the morning. It’s much too late as it is. You’re lucky. A girl left this morning. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have opened the door. In bed with my tea, I would’ve been. And that would’ve been a lesson to you, wouldn’t it?”

  Mrs. Keyes put a finger to her lips, and we climbed the stairs, her bottom so wide I couldn’t see a thing. On the second floor she stopped at a door like all the others and held out her hand. I counted a night’s worth of rent, then a week’s when she clicked her tongue. “Wake up is five a.m.,” she whispered. “You’ll hear a knock. If you need more than that, you’ve got bigger problems than you think.”

  When she left, I opened the door. Even in the dark, the room looked no bigger than a stall. A single bed and a desk, a sink in the corner, and a closet large enough for five hangers and a pair of shoes, but just. The pipes banged out little heat, the floor like stones. Myrle lit the lamp and threw herself still dressed under the sheets. I counted it out: Ten nights we could afford. Never thought that pile of fives and tens could go so quick. But we wouldn’t tell Keyes we couldn’t pay the month. Across the room, a mirror showed me in my boots and coat. They were slick with dust, as if Keyes couldn’t guess what we did and didn’t have. I stripped to the skin. In that mirror, I had never seen so much of myself. The pipes kicked up a storm. Myrle quiet under the sheets. But I was naked as I wanted to be and open in the open air, spinning one way and the next to feel that air on my skin. The mirror had me straight as a board, nothing in front to fill out those dresses in magazines. I pinched my chest. Still every day could be different. Even mirrors knew that.

  “Esther . . .”

  I spun around, my arms to my chest. Myrle sat with her hands over her ears.

  “It’s only the pipes,” I said.

  “Sounds like someone’s under the floor trying to get in.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  She sank against her pillow, scratching at her hand again. “We could send a letter home, tell them about Mrs. Keyes.”

  “We can’t write letters.”

  “But won’t they worry?”

  “You want them to come get us? And Tom Elliot too, after his money.”

  Myrle went quiet. “I don’t think he’d come.”

  I pulled my nightgown over my head so she couldn’t see my face. “We don’t have paper for letters.” My nightgown fell. I could have been any girl I wanted, but there was Myrle watching my every step. “All right, all right,” I said, but I didn’t look at her. “We can get paper tomorrow.”

  Myrle turned to the wall. I searched through the desk drawers. No letters without paper. Under the top ledge, a thinner drawer, no deeper than a finger. It whined when I pulled it out, but Myrle didn’t give a twitch. Inside, a single sheet with a girlish scrawl: sister. The rest was a blank space, the word sister crossed right through. I folded the paper up tight and looked to hide it, but the room was bare as a cup. Not a rug, a crack. At last, I dropped it in my mouth. It was a sour piece of chew, but it couldn’t be used for letters, not anymore. At the back of the drawer, something rolled against the wood. I reached in. It was a small silver ring. The ring was lighter than a dime, a flat blue stone and a silver band, just sitting there wanting to be someone’s. I tried it on, but it wouldn’t budge over my knuckle. I tried it again. Crouching on the bed, I shook Myrle’s shoulder and called her name.

  “Look, isn’t it something?” I slipped the ring over her finger.

  “Whose is it?”

  “It’s no one’s.”

  She held the ring close to her face. Already her eyes were closing again.

  “It’s yours,” I said.

  She smiled a little. “Isn’t it time to go to sleep?”

  “Sure.” Though I was more than awake. Still I slipped under the sheets with her and turned out the light. It was only then I thought of that piece of paper in my stomach. Sister, it’d said, and nothing else. As if a girl knew I would read it, knew I was just beginning at that blank space at the top. A strange thing to keep a girl fed for the night.

  The wake-up knock rattled down the hall, one door after another. Five a.m., Keyes had said. The windows were black. Black when we’d gone to sleep and black in the morning. I lay against my pillow and wondered if it would ever turn light. A slip of curtains hung over the windows, hardly enough to stop drafts. Papers, Keyes would want, just like Myrle, but we didn’t have any papers. We didn’t have anything yet. Myrle slept curled to the wall, her nose whistling. Our clothes were wadded rags and smoky from the train, a fine stink. A snatch of dirt in the bottom of our bags had left smudges. I wondered where that dirt came from. The train or earlier, when we’d slept by the road under the bushes, listening for anyone who might come looking. But no one did. No one seemed to have tried.

  Voices rushed from below. Myrle sat up, rubbing her eyes. “What’s that?”

  “Come on. If we want breakfast, we’ve got to run.”

  Down the stairs, a dozen heads turned at the sound of our feet. The girls were a blur in blue uniforms, their hair pulled into ponytails with strings. On the table sat bowls of porridge and muffins, glasses of yellow juice with pulp on the rims. I stopped on the bottom step, Myrle at my back. At the far end, an older girl sat with her elbows on the table, the yellow tips of her fingers pressed together like a tent. She had red hair and curls, the rest of her bluish pale. She didn’t look up with the others, but when she did, she stretched out her arms, offering us the empty chairs at her side.

  The others went on eating. Some were skinny and big-eyed, some not. Some so dull-looking, I feared I’d be the same in under a month. But it was the redhead who Myrle watched. The redhead gave back such a grin, it could have spun milk.

  “There you are.” The kitchen door swung and in rushed Mrs. Keyes. “Most the girls come dressed. You won’t have time before the whistle if you don’t.” She gave us plates, silverware. “Go on, why don’t you? Serve yourselves. This isn’
t a restaurant.”

  Myrle kept her head down, her sleeves pulled tight to her wrists.

  “You have those papers I asked for?”

  I started to speak, but something crashed in the kitchen. Mrs. Keyes looked sharp. “Ellen!” she called and pounded back.

  The redhead ducked her chin. “You don’t have work, do you?”

  I kicked Myrle to keep her quiet. “We have a place.”

  “You don’t even have a uniform,” Red said. “Listen, you can’t let on or Keyes’ll have a fit. I know Kupp’s got a spot. That’s garments. You can work a sewer, right?” The girl looked at my hands. “Right. A spot for one, but I don’t know about your sister. She old enough?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  Mrs. Keyes rushed in again, the flowers of her blouse loud under her apron. “Those papers?”

  “I’ll bring them tonight,” I said.

  She huffed. “Very well, but that door closes at nine. Not a second after. And you best be in or you two will be sleeping on the steps.” Mrs. Keyes stopped herself. “What place did you say again?”

  “Kupp’s.”

  “Ah yes, Kuppenheimer’s. Like nearly every girl here. Garments.”

  Another glass broke in the kitchen, then what sounded a whole tray. “My sakes.” Mrs. Keyes ran off. My napkin flew from my lap as she went. The other girls pushed back their chairs. The kitchen door swung. On the other side, a girl in pigtails stood pale-faced with a mess at her feet. Mrs. Keyes loomed over her like a bear. “That’s the last I tell you, Ellen.”