by Amy Stewart
Nothing she did felt, at the time, like the calculated maneuver it appeared to be now, in hindsight. An arrest has a way of clarifying things, of casting a prism of criminal intent over actions that, at the time, seemed reasonable and entirely justifiable. Why shouldn’t Minnie have left home, if she wanted to? She was sixteen and old enough to work or marry, so what was the crime in wanting to live on her own?
And was it her fault that the mills didn’t pay enough to put dinner on the table? Although she hadn’t wanted to go back to factory work, Tony had encouraged her and she’d agreed. He had a friend who earned twelve dollars a week at the jute mill, which was quite a bit more than she’d ever made in Catskill. But when she went to speak with the girls’ superintendent, she was offered only half that. She was bold enough to ask why and was told that the men had families to support. Someone must have been looking after Minnie, the girls’ superintendent suggested, and it was good of her to want to earn a little extra, but she wouldn’t want to take a salary away from a family man, would she?
Minnie tried to say that no one was looking after her, but it was too awful, and she couldn’t bring herself to utter another word. She took the job, and the wages that never quite paid her rent, because she couldn’t find anything better and she couldn’t go home.
What was Tony to her, once he’d helped her settle, however precariously, in her little room? He came around on a Thursday night now and then, expecting her to play the wife and cook him dinner, but he’d been eating his mother’s good Italian cooking and Minnie couldn’t put anything on the table that pleased him. He claimed not to be able to afford to take her to the moving pictures. When she offered to pay, one Saturday after she’d just collected her wages, he looked disgusted and said that he’d never let a girl spend money on him. It was a question of honor.
But where was his honor when it came to looking after her? He obviously felt that he’d done his duty. He never said a word about a future for the two of them, not that Minnie was too certain on the subject herself. And if he ever wondered what she did, on all the nights he wasn’t with her, he didn’t ask.
Then one night—early one morning, really—she heard his footsteps on the stairs just as a sheet music salesman from Pittsburgh was putting on his shoes. There was no place for him to hide, nothing for him to do but to stand and face what was coming to him.
No matter how indifferent Tony might have been toward Minnie, he couldn’t take the sight of another man in her room. He threw the salesman down and would’ve given him a good pounding, except that the man scuttled over to crouch in the corner, to Minnie’s everlasting embarrassment, and Tony just laughed at him. But then he turned and took in Minnie—half-dressed, caught in a lie—and he tore the place apart. He threw every picture off the wall, broke a chair, and smashed dishes—while Minnie screamed at him to stop.
All the shouting and banging on the walls rousted the neighbors, including their landlord, the baker downstairs, who had just come in to light the ovens. Minnie would’ve been evicted on the spot, except that Tony was flooded with remorse. When the landlord demanded to know what was going on, Tony pretended that the salesman was his brother, and that they were fighting over some feud in the family. The landlord relented and they were allowed to stay on one condition: that they furnish some proof they were married.
That left Tony and Minnie alone in their room, huffing and panting. Minnie spoke first.
“This is your fault.”
Tony laughed at that. “I didn’t invite a fellow upstairs for the night.”
“If I lose this place, where am I to go?”
“You should’ve asked him that.”
This was getting her nowhere. She would’ve been perfectly happy to never see Tony again, but where was she to go? She thought about the little bundle of jewelry she’d hidden away, and wondered how far that would get her. She’d been holding on to anything of value she owned against the day she’d have to save herself. Had that day come? Or was there something worse around the corner?
“Get a marriage license and show it to our landlord,” she said, “or I’ll pay a visit to your mother and tell her everything.”
She’d never met an Italian man who wasn’t terrified of his mother. He went off in a huff, but she knew he’d be back.
A FEW DAYS LATER, he walked right in without knocking.
“I thought you’d be out with one of your fellows,” Tony said.
“I don’t have any fellows,” Minnie said.
Tony stood across the room, with his back against the door. “Well, my sister moved back home, and she’s got a no-good husband and two babies. They want me out of the basement.”
“But you can’t stay here!”
“Of course I can. I just paid the rent.”
Minnie felt a little knot inside of her, but she stood very still. She ticked off the choices in her head: Go home. Stay here. Run away.
“I thought we couldn’t stay unless we were married,” Minnie said.
Tony reached into his pocket and pulled out an envelope. “It’s a marriage license, just like you said. I even signed your name.”
So this was how it would be. He had every right to stay. She was free to leave.
But somehow, neither of them did. One night turned into a week, and a week turned into two. They slipped into some semblance of a sham marriage, with Tony paying the rent and Minnie burning the potatoes at dinner every night.
It was nothing that Minnie wanted. She didn’t love him. She was starting to hate her life in Fort Lee as much as she’d hated Catskill. But she couldn’t seem to put more than a dollar or two together at a time, and where would she go, anyway? What could she do that was any different from this? Work in a different factory, in a different city? What was the point of it?
When she didn’t come up with an answer herself, one was forced upon her. Here it was: a metal cot in a dormitory, surrounded by a dozen girls who were just like her.
30
THROUGH THE CHURCH’s narrow windows, Edna could see the ladies from the Preparedness Committee lining up chairs and putting out leaflets. No one else had arrived and she didn’t like to be the first to walk in. Instead she went around behind the church and found herself in a dismal little cemetery, bereft of the comforting canopy of trees, without so much as a bench or a ledge where she might sit. Two of the graves were new; it gave her an uneasy feeling to see the dirt mounded up so lightly. She would have preferred a more solid barrier between the dead and the living: a carpet of grass, a thorny rose-bush.
Edna reached in her pocket for the leaflet she’d picked up at the train station. She’d been carrying it every day, until it was creased and creased again, but she hadn’t shown it to anyone. The idea of someone like Edna boarding a ship for France seemed so far-fetched that she couldn’t bring herself to say it aloud. She could only hold the notion in her imagination, like a dream she was in danger of forgetting, until tonight, when any girl in possession of that leaflet was invited to come and join the effort.
She took three turns around the cemetery, staying just out of sight until she heard voices and knew that a few others had arrived. It was early in the evening by that time, at the blue hour just before winter’s early sunset, when the lights dimmed and the lamps inside the church glowed yellow through the windows. She walked around to the entrance and was met by a woman at a card table taking down names. Edna gave hers and accepted another copy of the leaflet she already had.
As she looked around the room, she at once felt uneasy and out of place. If there was another factory girl present, Edna didn’t recognize her. This was a convivial crowd of well-to-do young women in fur-trimmed coats and good hats. Were these the women who went to war? None of them looked particularly suited to it.
Along one wall was a table filled with trays of cookies, sandwiches, and teapots, but Edna noticed that no one else took anything to eat and thought that perhaps it wasn’t done in their circles.
She was standing in the very
back of the room, uncertain as to whether she ought to stay or leave, when she felt a hand on her elbow. She turned to see a cheerful, round face, framed in blond curls. The woman wore a plain dress-suit of gray wool twill, but Edna had the idea that it had required some effort to find anything so somber in her closet.
“Are you Edna?” she said. “Oh, I know you are, because I ran over and looked at the list after you signed in. You have what my father calls a seriousness of purpose. You belong with us, I just know you do.”
Edna couldn’t help but feel cheered by that little speech. No one had ever come right out and told her that she belonged anywhere.
“I want to do my part” was all she could think to say.
“And you will! I’m Ruby. How rude of me. Come sit with us right in the front. I insist. You’re my guest now.” She put her arm through Edna’s, and they walked together like sisters to the very front row, where Ruby deposited her in a chair alongside several similarly polished young women. “Make friends!” she called, and ran to the refreshments table, returning almost instantly with two cups of tea and enough cookies to pass around. “No one ever eats at these things, and I don’t know why. It’s such a waste. If we’re not going to eat them, we should send them to France, shouldn’t we?”
That provoked a round of easy laughter among Ruby’s friends, and then it was time to bow their heads and hear a prayer for the fighting men in France. After that, a woman introduced only as Mrs. Roberts took the podium and gave a short speech. She spoke in a resonant voice accustomed to elocution.
“There are those who insist this isn’t our country’s fight. There are those who say that our duty is to our homeland, and that the best we can do is to fill a barrel with old coats and send it over. But every woman here knows better.”
She gave a definitive nod as she said it, and was rewarded with a chorus of applause. Edna looked around at all the young and beautifully turned-out women in the room and wondered again if she had a place among them.
“Then there are those who do their part by rolling bandages and sending cheques to the relief groups and knitting socks. That’s just fine, for those who want to do it. With such terrible shortages, every dollar makes a difference. The men freeze in the trenches and the hospitals run out of supplies. The needs are endless, and there are those who want to put themselves to the task of meeting those needs. That’s fine work, but every woman here wants to do more.”
Another cheer, louder this time, went around the room. Edna felt herself swept up in it.
“And we can do more, but we must train and organize and prepare ourselves. Everyone here must consider carefully what she has to offer. Paris is overfull of women who are eager to help but haven’t the training. So I ask you: Can you dress a wound? Can you run an automobile? Can you work at the telephone switches? Because this is what the English and the French are calling for. If you can knit, stay at home and do it from here. If you can go around and collect donations, then by all means do that. But if you have something to offer the soldiers”—here a little laughter went around the room—“other than your pretty little face and a kind word, but something of substance, then you are wanted in France, and we shall be sure that you go.”
Edna stood with everyone else to applaud, although she didn’t know, at that moment, what she might do to be of service to France. She couldn’t dress a wound or run an automobile.
A stack of cards went around, and they were asked to mark the skills they had to offer. Edna was relieved to find a dozen or more boxes she could check, from canning and cooking, to sewing, to factory work and the operation of small machinery. She was surprised to see that Ruby and her friends marked almost nothing.
“Why, we’ve never had a cook who would let us anywhere near the kitchen,” Ruby said, as she watched Edna fill in her card. “I don’t know how you managed to learn all of it.”
“It isn’t difficult,” Edna said, “if you just want a chop in a pan and some potatoes.”
“That’ll suit the soldiers just fine, I imagine,” Ruby said. “But you know, in spite of all her talk, Mrs. Roberts won’t stop any of us from going. She just wants us to take a few Red Cross classes first, and that’s no trouble. When would you like to sail?”
“Sail?” Edna hadn’t considered that she might just step on board a boat and go.
“Well, you have to pick a date. Oh, you haven’t turned your card over.” Ruby flipped the card around and showed her the reverse. On it were four dates over the next few months, along with the names of the ships and, next to that, two numbers:
$100/$50
Edna wasn’t sure at first what it meant, but the idea was starting to dawn on her. Now she understood the fur collars and the velvet hats.
“Is this—is this the cost?” she asked, a little tremulously.
“Why—yes, for the passage. It’s always something around a hundred dollars, but they change it all the time. And then fifty each month while you’re there, because of course the relief organizations raise funds to feed the refugees, not the volunteers. But you only have to put up one month in advance. They’ll just send us home if the rest of the money doesn’t arrive!”
That brought another laugh from her friends down the front row, who were all busy conferring with one another over dates. Edna tried to restrain her shock, but it must have shown.
“Oh,” said Ruby, reaching over to put a hand over hers. “We don’t all have fathers paying our way. I hope you didn’t think that. Some of them flatly refuse.”
“I wasn’t sure,” Edna mumbled.
“Not at all,” Ruby went on. “Some of us are raising the money ourselves. We hold little parties, and ask every guest to sign on for just one dollar for every month we’ll be away. Fifty of those, and you’re ready to go! Have your mother invite her friends. Ladies like that can always put a dollar toward a good cause.”
“My mother —”
“Yes, exactly!” Ruby said cheerfully. “Now, I want to sail in April, and I want you to be my bunk-mate. Won’t we have the best time? Can you be ready to go by then?”
Edna felt a little dizzy at the idea of it. A hundred dollars for the voyage, and fifty a month after that—it would cost seven hundred dollars for one year in France! She had no idea that she’d be expected to pay her own way. She didn’t earn anything close to seven hundred dollars in a year, and she spent most of her paycheck on room and board. The whole business was impossible.
Ruby was leaning over her expectantly. She had the prettiest blue eyes and a perfect little nose. When had anything not gone according to Ruby’s wishes?
“You will, won’t you, Edna? Say you’ll come with us in April. You’ll speak to your father and mother, and arrange it all?”
Seven hundred dollars. The war would be over before she saw seven hundred dollars. But hadn’t Ruby said that she only needed to raise the first month’s fee? Would they really send her home if the money didn’t arrive for the second month? A hundred and fifty dollars sounded almost manageable. She couldn’t imagine where she would get it, but wasn’t she obligated to try?
“Of course I will,” Edna heard herself say. At just that moment, she almost believed it.
31
CONSTANCE DIDN’T SAY a word about Minnie’s confession when she returned from the reformatory. Sheriff Heath hadn’t asked, and she didn’t see it as her obligation to repeat every word an inmate said to her. There seemed to be no way, under these changed circumstances, for Constance to help Minnie, but she didn’t want to make things worse for her, either. A girl who pretended to be married to one man while going around with two or three more was exactly the sort of girl who ended up in a reformatory. Constance felt certain that the punishment was too harsh, and unjustly penalized the girl for a crime that required a man’s willing participation as well. But what was she to do about it? For the moment, she could stay quiet about what she knew. That, at least, was within her power.
She’d spent too many nights at the jail lately a
nd desperately wanted a proper bath, but by the time she returned from the reformatory, it had been too late to go on home. So she spent another night in her cell and would have started for home in the morning, had not a guard come up the stairs to inform her that her sister was waiting for her outside.
“Which one?” Constance asked as she stuffed her feet into boots still wet and stiff from last night’s snow.
“The unpleasant one,” the guard said. All the guards loved Fleurette because she flattered and teased them. They’d hardly ever seen Norma, but she nonetheless had a singular reputation among them.
Norma insisted on waiting outside, so Constance threw on a coat and met her in the driveway. She was standing apart from the jail, looking up at it grimly. From underneath her mackinaw, an old gray sweater bunched up awkwardly around her neck. She hadn’t exactly dressed for a trip to town.
Norma was not a woman inclined to go out for the purpose of talking to anyone, her sister included, which was why she so rarely turned up at the jail. Once or twice she’d sent Constance a postcard, always with a cryptic message pasted across it. She used to send such messages via pigeon-mail, but both Constance and Fleurette refused to accept messages from Norma’s birds anymore. It displeased Norma to resort to postcards, but there was no other way.
She cut them from newspaper headlines, and Constance and Fleurette were meant to puzzle out their meanings. “Good Works Not Promises” would arrive if Constance had agreed to help with some chore and then stayed away for too many days in a row. “Lunch Refused” turned up one day when Fleurette insisted on making her version of Italian soup, which was nothing but boiled macaroni in chicken broth and smothered in grated cheese, along with, as Norma liked to say, enough garlic to defeat the Germans.
