The Girl in the Torch

by Robert Sharenow

  Mrs. Lee massaged some soap into Sarah’s scalp and through her matted and tangled hair.

  “You look like Irish girl with all this red hair. Pretty color. You never see red hair on Chinese girl.”

  When she finally emerged from the tub, Sarah’s skin tingled and she felt cleaner than she had ever been. Mrs. Lee handed her a simple cotton robe.

  “Here, put this on until we wash clothes. I get tub for laundry.”

  Mrs. Lee stepped through a door at the back of the kitchen that Sarah assumed led to the backyard.

  Sarah was just pulling on the robe when she heard the front door of the building open and people move down the hallway toward the kitchen. She hastily tied the robe closed just as a middle-aged black couple entered, carrying armloads of groceries in paper sacks. The man was short with dark skin and a long droopy mustache. The woman was taller, and lighter skinned, with her hair tucked under a yellow-and-green striped scarf. As soon as the man beheld Sarah, he dropped his groceries, sending several onions, apples, and carrots rolling across the floor.

  “What the . . . ?”

  “My Lord in heaven,” the woman said. “There’s a half-naked girl in the kitchen! Smitty, get out of here!”

  The man quickly covered his eyes, turned, and fled back down the hall where he had come from.

  “Who are you?” the woman asked Sarah.

  It was the third time she had been asked that question over the past few hours, and she was still unsure how to respond.

  “I’m Sarah,” she said.

  “Well, what in the name of sweet Jesus are you doing here?”

  Mrs. Lee reentered, carrying a washboard and basin. “Oh, Miss Jean, you back already.”

  “Yes, we’re back,” she said, crossing her arms.

  “This is Sarah,” Mrs. Lee said. “She going to work here.”

  “She’s going to be working here, huh?” Miss Jean said, looking the girl up and down. “You have a problem with the way Smitty and I tend to our duties?”

  “She work in kitchen. You work in house. Different.”

  “You never mentioned the need for kitchen help before. You know my sister Mavis can cook and—”

  “I keep that in mind. Now go find Sarah some old clothes. Hers are filthy dirty. Can’t have naked girl in kitchen all day. And then show her to Maryk’s room.”

  “Maryk’s room?” Miss Jean said, raising an eyebrow.

  “He sleep in basement. One week only. Now go.”

  Little Indian on a Horse

  MISS JEAN WENT TO AN UPSTAIRS storage closet to retrieve a small bag of old clothes that had once belonged to one of Mrs. Lee’s daughters and then led Sarah to Maryk’s room on the second floor. Sarah had never been so close to a person with such dark skin, and she stole glances at her as they moved down the hallway. Miss Jean caught her staring and stopped short.

  “You got a problem?”

  “N-no,” Sarah stammered.

  “Then why are you staring at me like I’ve got three heads?”

  “I’m sorry. It is just . . . your skin is so dark.”

  “Oh, really,” Miss Jean said, putting her hands on her hips.

  “It’s very beautiful,” Sarah added.

  “I like to think so,” Miss Jean said.

  “Are you from Africa?”

  “Africa? Girl, my people are from Kansas City. And the last time I checked, it was in the United States of America.”

  “I did not mean to insult you,” Sarah said, trying to make her voice sound as apologetic as possible.

  “You’d better brush up on your geography.”

  Miss Jean continued down the hall until she came to the last apartment and knocked on the door. After a moment, they heard a cough, and Maryk called from inside.

  “Hold on a second,” he barked.

  After some heavy-limbed shuffling, the door swung open and there was Maryk, dressed in just his pants, suspenders, and an undershirt. Sarah had only ever seen him in his uniform. She could smell the whiskey on his breath as soon as the air from the open door pushed out into the hall.

  “I’ve got a delivery for you,” Miss Jean said, nudging Sarah toward the door.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Jean,” Sarah said, gesturing to the clothes in her hand.

  “They weren’t my clothes to give. But you’re welcome. And it’s Miss Jean, not Mrs. Me and Smitty have been married for twenty years, but I like the sound of ‘Miss Jean’ because it keeps me feeling young.”

  “Thank you, Miss Jean,” Sarah said.

  “Yeah, well, you’re welcome. I guess.”

  Miss Jean rolled her eyes and turned and walked back down the stairs to the first floor, muttering to herself. “Sweet Jesus . . . what is this house coming to?”

  Maryk and Sarah stood awkwardly for a moment.

  “This is yours?” Sarah asked.

  “Ah, yeah,” Maryk said, gesturing for her to enter. Sarah stepped inside. The room was small and dingy and faced the alley behind the building, so hardly any light came in through the lone window. The sparse furnishings included a bed, a pine dresser, a small wooden desk and chair, and a shelf filled with a few well-thumbed old books. A tiny sink was stuck to the wall next to the desk with a round mirror hanging above it.

  A half dozen empty bottles of Golden Clover Irish Whiskey along with one full one were lined up along the top of the dresser, next to a framed sepia-toned photograph.

  “Toilet’s down at the end of the hall. Don’t forget to put the lock on. Mrs. Lee don’t think too much about knocking. I’ve just got to gather a few things and then go take a sleep in the basement.”

  “You sleep now?”

  “When I’m on the night shift, I’ve got to do my sleeping during the day.”

  Maryk arranged his uniform on a hanger and packed some socks and shoes into a small bag. Sarah approached the dresser and examined the framed photograph, which showed a pretty, petite, dark-skinned woman with eyes like Maryk’s and long braided hair standing on the back of a white horse. The woman wore a feather in her hair and a short buckskin skirt and blouse decorated with long strips of fringe. A tall man with a head of thick blond hair stood beside the horse, holding the reins. Sarah picked up the picture to look at it more closely.

  “Put that down,” Maryk snapped.

  “I’m sorry.” She replaced the photograph with a shaky hand.

  “I didn’t say you could paw my things, did I?”

  “No . . . I just . . . the picture is nice.”

  “Yeah,” Maryk grumbled, reaching over to straighten the frame. “But you can’t just start touching anything you please. You understand?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry.”

  “Well, just mind yourself.”

  After a moment, Sarah nodded toward the photograph. “Who is in the picture?”

  Maryk looked down, almost shyly. “My parents.”

  “Your mother and father?”

  “Yes.”

  It surprised Sarah to think of Maryk even having parents, never mind parents who seemed to be performers of some kind.

  “They were in a play?”

  “No. They both worked for Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West show. You ever hear of Buffalo Bill where you’re from?”

  Sarah shook her head.

  “He’s got a big show that’s kind of like a circus, but it’s all stuff about the Wild West. Trick riders, sharpshooters, knife throwers, cowboys and Indians, that kind of thing. They always do a big parade with all sorts of western characters, and an Indian War battle reenactment as the grand finale.”

  “I don’t understand what this is.”

  “The Indians and the white man, they had lots of wars over here. And Buffalo Bill kind of does a make-believe version of the war. You understand what ‘make believe’ means? It’s when you pretend.”

  “A pretend war?”

  Sarah shuddered, thinking of the bloody bodies of the men from her village on the night of the attack. She couldn’t understand why anyone w
ould want to pretend to have a war.

  “It sounds strange when you say it like that. But it’s really just like a stage play, only with lots of horses and guns going off. So I guess they were sort of like actors.”

  Sarah tried to see traces of Maryk in the two people in the photo. They seemed so different from him. Yet as she looked closer, she could tell that he was a combination of both, with the almond eyes and serious expression of his mother and the broad body and thick hair of his father.

  “Your mother was an Indian?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So you are Indian too?”

  “Part Indian. My mother was from the Dakota tribe. Lots of Dakota worked for Cody in those days. My father was a horse wrangler from Sweden. So I’m probably the only half-Dakota, half-Swede you’re ever gonna meet.”

  “Is this why the man you work with called you a half-breed?”

  Maryk’s expression darkened and he leaned forward. Sarah pressed herself against the wall as his enormous shadow engulfed her.

  “Don’t ever use that word again, you hear?” His sour breath steamed into her face. “Only idiots like Johnson say things like that.”

  “I’m sorry,” she stammered.

  “It’s just about the lowest thing you could call somebody like me. So don’t use it. Ever.”

  “I won’t,” she said. Her eyes filled with tears.

  Maryk gruffly gathered up his belongings, stopping to pluck the full bottle of whiskey off the top of the dresser along with the photograph. He opened the door but then turned back.

  “And don’t touch any of my things!”

  He slammed the door closed.

  It took several minutes for Sarah’s heart to stop racing.

  She noticed a lock on the inside that she quickly, but quietly, turned shut. As soon as the door was bolted, Sarah felt her body relax, as if she’d been tensing every muscle the entire time she had been in the apartment building and could finally unclench.

  She changed into some of the clothes that Miss Jean had brought her and sat on the bed. Scanning the bookshelf, she read some of the strange titles: Don Quixote, Moby-Dick, The Last of the Mohicans, and Aesop’s Fables.

  On the top shelf sat a wooden box covered with a layer of dust, as if it hadn’t been touched in years.

  Sarah approached the shelf. Then she guiltily glanced around. She wanted to find out as much about Maryk as she could, because she still didn’t trust him. Maybe the box held a gun or some other kind of weapon. She needed to know what was inside.

  She stood on her tiptoes and reached up. But just as she grabbed the box, there was a loud rap on the door. Sarah dropped the box back on the shelf and spun around.

  “You come now,” Mrs. Lee’s voice called through the door. “Need you to sweep upstairs floors before make meal.”

  Sarah awkwardly tripped over her feet as she stepped away from the shelf.

  “Yes. I come,” she said.

  The Wok

  SARAH SPENT THE NEXT few hours dusting and sweeping the upstairs floors. As she finished, she heard a sizzle. Then came a warm, savory smell that made her mouth water.

  She followed her nose down the stairs to the first floor and entered the kitchen to find Mrs. Lee hurrying around, gathering ingredients for the evening meal. An oversized black steel pot shaped like a giant bowl sat on the stove top, flames licking the bottom. Another large pot filled with white rice simmered on the back burner. Piles of uncut carrots, onions, and broccoli were stacked on the counter beside a thick wooden chopping block. Mrs. Lee handed Sarah a cleaver and pointed to the vegetables.

  “You chop. I cook. You chop vegetables before?”

  Sarah nodded.

  “Be careful not to cut self. Bloody fingers not taste good. Bring over to wok when you finish.”

  Sarah took the cleaver and moved to the counter. She recalled her mother holding her hands in just the right way. And the memory gave Sarah confidence as she grasped a carrot and chopped in a steady rhythm, curling her fingers to stay clear of the blade. Chop, chop, chop, chop. One, two, three, four. Chop, chop, chop, chop. One, two, three, four. She efficiently made her way through the pile of carrots, forming the cut pieces into a neat pile. Mrs. Lee nodded in approval, scooping up the carrots and tossing them into the wok with a sizzling hiss.

  She gestured inside the sink, where there were two plucked chickens.

  “Now take meat off bone and cut into pieces.”

  Sarah’s eyes widened. She had never deboned a chicken before. When her family could afford one, her mother would cook it whole in a pot, so the meat would just naturally fall off and the skin and bones would become part of the broth.

  Sarah held one of the cool, clammy birds, unsure of where to make the first cut.

  “Something wrong?” Mrs. Lee said.

  “No,” Sarah said.

  She didn’t want to expose any weakness in her skills. So she took a deep breath and confidently started to cut away the meat, first chopping the chicken into quarters and then carefully separating the meat from the bone and cutting it into smaller cubes.

  Mrs. Lee grunted approval and then turned back to her own work.

  As Sarah fell into the familiar rhythm of cooking, she unconsciously started to hum one of her mother’s old work songs about cooking chicken. Some of the words sprang into her mind: “We never waste a thing, not a thigh, a breast, or wing.” The music emerged naturally from somewhere deep inside Sarah, the melody weaving into the rhythm of the work.

  Mrs. Lee turned when she heard the humming, until Sarah finally noticed her staring and abruptly stopped.

  “Don’t stop,” Mrs. Lee said. “I like music. Have Gramophone music box machine. Play Enrico Caruso. You know Caruso?”

  Sarah shook her head.

  Mrs. Lee sang a few off-key operatic bars. “Ridi, Pagliaccio, sul tuo amore infranto!”

  Sarah giggled.

  “Okay. I not good at singing,” Mrs. Lee said, nodding. “You wait here.”

  Mrs. Lee exited the room, then returned carrying a strange-looking wooden machine with a hand crank and a huge horn sticking out of the top. She struggled to settle the heavy piece of equipment onto the kitchen table. As Mrs. Lee vigorously turned the crank, Sarah thought the machine might be used for grinding meat. But a moment later, she jumped back as the sound of an orchestra boomed out of the horn.

  “You see,” Mrs. Lee said. “Caruso!”

  Sarah listened to the powerful sound of the man’s voice, and the aching emotion of the melody. It reminded her of the prayers the men in her village used to chant on Saturday mornings.

  Mrs. Lee returned to her work but swayed along to the melody. Sarah continued removing the chicken meat from the bone and watched Mrs. Lee’s strange little dance out of the corner of her eye. She felt her mouth curl up into a smile. She still wasn’t quite sure what to make of these unusual people, but she felt safe in the kitchen with Mrs. Lee preparing the evening meal while Caruso serenaded them.

  Sarah finished carving and dicing the chicken, and Mrs. Lee added it to the hottest part of the wok. The meat instantly blanched and then slowly browned and crisped along the edges. She mixed the entire contents together with a pile of bean sprouts, then emptied the dish into an enormous serving bowl, sprinkling a handful of sesame seeds on top.

  Mrs. Lee handed Sarah a brass bell from a low shelf.

  “Go to stairs and ring this,” she said. “Then watch out.”

  “Watch out?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Sarah stood at the bottom of the stairs and rang the bell. Instantly, doors opened up and down the hall and multiple sets of feet stomped down the stairs. Two dozen Chinese people of all ages quickly brushed past Sarah and moved to the dining table. There were two families with young children, nearly a dozen men of varying ages, and a group of four young women. They all sat themselves around the table.

  A stout Chinese woman in a green dress came down the stairs with her daughter, wh
o looked to be about Sarah’s age. The girl was small and thin, with long, beautiful, shiny black hair that she wore pulled back and tied with a blue ribbon.

  The woman regarded Sarah suspiciously. “Who are you?”

  “Sarah.”

  “You a new boarder?”

  Sarah wasn’t sure what the word boarder meant.

  “I work in the kitchen.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “With Mrs. Lee. I help clean and cook.”

  The woman’s face darkened. “I will not stand for this!” she said.

  Mrs. Fat

  “YOU SHOULD NOT BE HERE!” the woman continued. “This is an outrage.”

  “Mama, calm down,” the Chinese girl interjected.

  “No. I won’t calm down,” the woman said, her face turning even redder with agitation. “Mrs. Lee, I demand to see you right now! Mrs. Lee!”

  “What’s all this noise?” Mrs. Lee said, emerging from the kitchen while wiping her hands on her apron. “I run rooming house, not beer hall.”

  “Why did you hire this girl to work in the kitchen when you promised you’d give work to my Bao Yu if there was any?”

  The woman nodded to her daughter and then angrily crossed her arms. Both Sarah and the girl shifted uncomfortably.

  “Mrs. Fat, I never promise job to nobody,” Mrs. Lee said. “This is Maryk’s niece.”

  “Maryk has a niece?”

  “Yes. And she a good worker.”

  “My Bao Yu is a good worker too,” Mrs. Fat said.

  “Well, when you own building, you can hire who you want. I own building, I hire who I say. Now go, eat. Sarah, you come serve.”

  Mrs. Fat huffed, and she and her daughter moved into the other room.

  Sarah followed Mrs. Lee down the hall, feeling even more self-conscious than before. Between Miss Jean’s sister and Mrs. Fat’s daughter, there seemed to be a small army of people who wanted the job that Sarah had taken.

  Sarah was almost back to the kitchen when Maryk stepped into her path, coming up the basement stairs. They nearly collided, and navigated around each other awkwardly.