Church of Marvels: A Novel

by Leslie Parry

  As the weeks passed, an older, portlier gentleman from the Shingle and Plank started frequenting her stand for lemon drops and cologne. He’d been a sailmaker in the British navy and now worked as a clerk for a tea company. He was red-faced and squinty-eyed and had a big, bushy beard, but he was kind and gentle and treated her well. His accent made everything he said sound thoughtful and intelligent, even if pitched at a polite half whisper. If he seemed reserved or quiet, it was only because he was content and didn’t require anything, and then Alphie wasn’t exactly sure what her role was, how she should behave, what he wanted or needed from her. But he was comforting, and after a while she let herself enjoy his company, although he rarely touched her—he brushed her cheek, maybe, or her hand, but he seemed shy, which was unusual for the sort of man who spent his nights scouring the waterfront for dice games.

  One afternoon they went to see a vaudeville show on the Bowery. As they emerged onto the street afterward, she glimpsed something through the swarm of people: the flash of a familiar coat, the shimmer of a black armband. The sailmaker steered her by the elbow against the crowd, offering his opinions of the show, asking her where she’d like to eat, but she didn’t hear anything he said. She kept looking back over her shoulder through the crush of revelers, wondering if she’d imagined it.

  The next morning Anthony showed up at the boardinghouse, hysterical and drunk. How could you? he shouted, pounding on her door. She lay in bed, silent under the sheets, wondering if she should just wait for him to disappear. But the neighbors began to yell at him, and he yelled back, so she pulled on her dressing gown and tiptoed to the door and let him in. His shirttails were loose and his overcoat gone. He’d been crying so hard his eyes were almost swollen shut. She bolted the door and turned to him, relieved and thrilled and frightened.

  That fat man? he seethed. I saw you with him. I saw you holding hands—I know what you’re doing.

  Her heart was pounding, but she kept calm. She rolled herself a cigarette and tightened the sash at her waist. Please, she said. I’m not your concubine. You can’t just come and go as you please.

  He fell down in the chair with the broken bamboo seat. He stared glumly at the floor, snorting back tears. Do you love him? he whispered.

  The wounded, boyish break in his voice sent something fluttering inside her. But she just stood there, smoking and staring at him without expression. I’m a real person, Anthony.

  He shook his head. Mother wants me to marry. And this woman—she’s perfectly nice, but I can’t. He grabbed Alphie’s wrist and pulled her toward him and brought her roughly down in his lap. The edge crept back in his voice, firm and venomous. You’re mine.

  What could she do then? She’d never felt like she belonged to anybody anywhere. She couldn’t go back home, not ever, not to the people who created her and then reviled what they’d created, who punished her for being the person they had once claimed to love. And why would the Signora force on Anthony a woman he didn’t care for, when she, Alphie, loved him so desperately? She knew the risks, but they didn’t matter. This was a chance to live a life she’d dreamed of: a real, loved woman, a wife better to Anthony than anyone could ever be.

  Why would she let anyone take that away?

  Perhaps she thought, for a moment, that the Signora would be like a mother to her, too. Anthony worked so tirelessly—he cared for others in their grief; he looked after the house and supported himself and his mother both. But what Alphie knew—and what the Signora did not—was that his secret life at night would be his undoing. She wanted, more than anything, to give him a safe place. A sense of warmth and predictability—not just the unending days of dead bodies, the hollow debauchery of the night. All Anthony longed for, she saw, was what other men recoiled from, worried it would turn them into eunuchs, ghosts, or dullards—domesticity. He wanted so much to be normal. So when she first climbed the steps of his mother’s house, when the door opened and she was led into the sitting room, she was convinced, somehow, that the Signora would approve.

  But the Signora, all talcum and licorice, only stared at her with eyes as blunt and lusterless as nailheads, her freckled breasts heaving, her coiffure pinned up with an ostrich plume. She had been a great beauty in her youth, Anthony had said, and Alphie saw she still had the powder-soft skin and calculating mouth of a young girl. She wasn’t yet forty years old.

  The Signora began to address Alphie in Italian, but Alphie couldn’t understand it. She looked to Anthony to translate, but he only turned his eyes shamefully, pleadingly to his mother and said, Mamma, per favore . . .

  The Signora studied Alphie a moment longer, then murmured, Nessuno.

  That was one word—from her years on the street, from the Italian johns who’d exposed their cocks to her in raging shame and hunger, who’d beaten her up in the little back room when she spit out their come, who’d wept openly and with disgust when she got off her knees and held out her hand for the money—that was a word she did know.

  Nobody.

  BUT HE MARRIED HER. He defied his mother and made Alphie his wife. They moved into the old servants’ quarters above the carriage house. The doorways were narrow and untrue, and the switchback stairs always squeaked underfoot. Still, there was something she loved about the place—navigating its corners and nooks like the galleys of her own little ship. They had privacy there, a little aerie away from everyone else, even though the yard was flanked by tenements, and the stench from the privies crept in through the windows. Years ago, as a fifteen-year-old chambermaid, the Signora had lived there with her first husband, Anthony’s father, the horse-groom. When he died, she married their employer—the gouty undertaker—and moved into the main house. She refused to make her way across the yard anymore, to visit the carriage house or climb the stairs. She’d fallen down those stairs once before, Alphie had learned. Her first husband pushed her while she was nursing Anthony. Her arm hadn’t hung right since.

  Alphie didn’t know much about Anthony’s blood father, other than that he’d been kicked in the head by a horse and was never quite right again. He believed that people were hunting him (shadowy figures from the old country who had followed him faceless across the sea), that they were unscrewing his skull in the middle of the night and looking at the secrets in his brain. Some nights he’d even attacked the young Signora, bitten her all over her body. Alphie had seen the marks on occasion—the purple circles on her arms, the cleft in her ear.

  Sometimes, when they all sat together in the parlor of the main house after supper, drinking coffee and eating cake, Alphie would see Signora’s face go slack. Her eyes would fix upon a spot on the wall, and she’d hold her cup suspended, trembling in front of her, as Anthony played the accordion. Alphie wondered what it must have been like, to be sold off to a drunkard as a fifteen-year-old girl because your own father couldn’t pay his debts, to bear a sickly child at sixteen, and then, at seventeen, to watch your husband die in front of you. She had seen him thrown from a horse and trampled in the street.

  All Anthony remembered about the incident was that his mother had asked that the horse be spared—she put out her hand as they lifted the gun.

  Once, in a fit of warmth brought on by a glass of anise liquor, Alphie told the Signora that it was nice to have a mother again, that she hadn’t seen hers in such a long time. She wanted to add, My father got rid of me when I was a child, too—I know what it is to be hurt—but look what we’ve made of ourselves. The Signora had smiled, even reached across the table to pat Alphie’s hand. Cara! she murmured. Then, over breakfast a few days later—Anthony’s birthday—Alphie presented him with a black armband that she’d knitted herself. I worked on it nearly every morning, before you woke! Anthony loved it: he pulled it on over his sleeve and kissed her—fully, on the mouth, right there at the table in front of his mother. The Signora refused to look at her for the rest of the day, and later that night, when Alphie knocked on the kitchen door to return the knitting needles she borrowed, she began to wonder if s
he’d misspoken, if her Italian wasn’t coming along as well as she thought. The Signora was busy preparing the birthday supper, quartering a bulb of garlic, coaxing the jellied marrow from a calf bone. A pot of stew simmered on the range. When Alphie handed her the needles, the Signora only sniffed, Every morning! Why, I thought you did your best work at night.

  Alphie had retreated, numb, to the carriage house. She sat by the window and looked down at the yard next door, at the children playing with the wash—making costumes out of blankets, swaddling a cat in underwear. She thought inexplicably of Sam Vetz, wherever he was—older now, riddled with carbuncles, maybe a foreman at the factory and diddling cotton threaders in the cloakroom, opening and closing his clamshell watch as the trains sang by, rutting some wife: silent and anemic, with the complexion of a broken egg. When her father found them by the feed bins, Sam had said it was Alphie’s doing—she had attacked him; he hadn’t wanted it, and her father—her own father—believed him. Sam Vetz, somewhere upriver and fat as a carp, skulking down the lines of a factory, past the young girls bent over their work, pausing now and again to trace the ridge of a reddened nape, or to feed roughage to the silkworms. Did he wonder what had become of her? Did he ever feel sorry for what he’d done? Some nights she dreamed about finding him. Hunting him down, tying him up, making him watch while she pleasured herself, ferocious. This is what you wanted. This is what you’ve made me. This is the woman I’ve become.

  THE INMATES OF THE ASYLUM were turned out, weary, into the kitchen garden to pick radishes and beans. There used to be an old military building on the island, but all that remained of it now were a dozen weathered stones strewn throughout the grass. The women turned in circles in the sun, petting the stones as if they were children who needed to be soothed. Alphie recognized DeValle in the bean rows, digging through the dirt almost tearfully, and the woman with the mutilated tattoo squatting beside her.

  The nurses sat farther away, against the wall of the stable. Jallow sorted through baskets of grubby lettuce heads and potatoes, squinting behind her spectacles; Bradigan snipped up radish greens with a pair of scissors. They passed a cigarette back and forth, gossiping, and even though Alphie couldn’t hear what they were saying, she saw that their bullish personas had dropped for a moment, that they were almost relieved to be rid of the burden of their work and revert to their ordinary selves. She saw, when they thought no one was watching, how they laughed with each other, how Bradigan listened to Jallow with focused eyes and pursed lips, how she nodded with compassion as Jallow knuckled a bead of snot from her nose and gestured in the light.

  Alphie moved slowly down the rows, a basket on her hip. Through her slippers she felt the slick, dewy grass, the easy give of mud. The wind picked up, and she heard the mournful bray of a boat horn somewhere in the distance, then the slap of water as it chugged to rest. The asylum wall glared in the white heat of noon, the stones worn smooth by the ardor of passing hands. She didn’t know how much longer she could wait—every time she crouched and stood, every time she reached out her hand to touch something squarely in front of her, the world seemed to quiver and spin. She felt faint. The smells came sharper now: mildew, smoke, wet bandages. Her vision blurred as she dug her nails into the dirt, as the shadow of the octagon shimmered across the grass.

  She wondered if anyone had ever escaped. Even if she managed to scale the walls, or slip through the gates and steal away to the bank, she’d have to swim across the river, with its rough current and charging ships. The shore of Manhattan wasn’t far (a quarter-mile at the very most, she guessed), but patrol boats still circled the island (keeping watch over the asylum and prison, the poorhouse and hospitals). She’d seen them during the promenade, just west of the lighthouse. Even if she succeeded in evading those, even if she jumped into the river and swam swiftly, unseen, she would still be weak from whatever they put in the water and food, still muddled from the pain in her head.

  The coal scows passed on the river, sending black clouds drifting in the air. Dust settled in her hair, in the baskets. The asylum ferry brought sundries in the morning, and women in the dead of night. Anthony had to come for her, rescue her; there was no other way out. She tried hard to remember the last words they’d spoken to each other—if only she had that much to live by!—but all she remembered was him kissing her on the forehead as she slept. He was gone that night, wasn’t he? That’s right—he was getting on a train. The four o’clock to Poughkeepsie. He was taking his mother on holiday, she remembered. She had studied the timetables over and over again, late at night in the carriage house.

  A young nurse came by with a water pail and dipper. Alphie took a sip without protest, then spit the water into the weeds when the nurse had passed. She was thirsty, but she had to stay vigilant. She was sure they kept the women here drugged and stupid so they weren’t able to run or plot or threaten each other, so they were too weak to fight back. She just had to wait a little longer, she told herself. Anthony would find her.

  She made her way through the rows, waving away gnats, squatting down to twist vegetables from the dirt. The sun sat heavy on her shoulders. Her knees began to ache; the skin around her tattoo stretched and burned. As she shook the grit from a snarl of onion bulbs, she heard DeValle, nearby, start to whimper.

  Alphie looked over. She saw DeValle drop her basket and slump down into the radish-bed, twitching and kicking, biting anxiously at the weeds. Her eyes rolled back in her head; her mouth began to foam.

  The nurses looked up from their scrubbed potatoes. Another woman began to point and cry. Bradigan bolted up, letting the radishes tumble from her lap. She lifted a bridle from a peg on the shed, then marched through the rows with Jallow waddling at her heels. They stood over the young girl, smiling and sucking their teeth.

  “What’s wrong?” Bradigan jeered. “Feeling frisky, pony?”

  She threw the bridle over DeValle’s face, fitting the bit in her mouth and yanking it back between her teeth. They forced her down, their knees at the small of her back. Jallow straddled her, bucking and swinging an invisible lasso. Alphie stared at the girl, the foam rolling back in her ears and hair, the mud trickling down her neck. Some of the other women started whimpering too, wringing their hands.

  “Faster, ugly!” Jallow heeled her in the side. “Giddyup!”

  Alphie saw a trickle of blood at DeValle’s mouth, her tongue lolling and clicking against the bit, spit snailing down her chin and onto the ground. She felt a rage she hadn’t known since she was a child—something she’d tried to hold back, something not herself.

  She dropped her basket and lunged at them. She shoved Jallow off DeValle and threw her hard against the ground. “Get away from her, you cunt!” she screamed.

  To her own ears, her voice sounded strained and hoarse. For a moment Jallow just looked at her, stricken, her glasses swinging from her ear.

  Alphie coughed and wiped her mouth with the back of her wrist. Jallow tried to scuttle away, but only slipped and fell backward, twisting her ankle in the mud. Then Bradigan hit Alphie in the small of her back, brought her to her knees. Suddenly another girl—a girl with a mane of ratty blond hair, the same green-eyed girl who’d spit out her tea at breakfast—jumped between them, pushing Bradigan away. And then, whistles across the yard—other nurses were on them, wrenching their elbows back, kicking at their knees.

  “She’s hysterical,” one said, grappling Alphie. “She’s having a spell!”

  “They’re hurting her!” Alphie cried. “She’s a young girl, for God’s sake!”

  While another nurse helped Jallow to her feet, Bradigan yanked Alphie back by the hair and pressed the scissors to her throat. “You’re so strong, you’re so tough. Is that it?”

  Alphie didn’t know what to say: her head began to spin. The nurses dragged her and the blond woman back through the yard and into the kitchen, past the range and the chopping block and the cankers of soap on the ledge of the sink. She saw one of the scullery girls drop her rag and scurry t
o the ice room with a pick as big as a tent stake. Bradigan and Jallow wrenched them through a doorway, down a dark hall to a chamber that smelled like piss, then, working in tandem like a swift machine, they bound each woman’s hands with rope. Alphie trembled as the knots were cinched tight around her wrists, as the nurses grunted pink-faced over her hands, as the scullery girl came in and shook a bucket of ice into a tub filled with gray, scabby-looking water. Too stricken to speak, she stared at the tiles on the floor, at the black mildew stains on the wall. The blond girl thrashed and clawed as the nurses dragged her toward the tub, as they forced her to her knees and yanked her back by the hair.

  She made a sound then, but not a word, just a rolling, toneless cry.

  They pushed her face-first into the water. She writhed, her feet kicking and slipping along the tiles. Still they held her under, their sleeves drenched to their elbows. Alphie heard a terrible noise coming from under the water—a scream. The girl’s breath rose to the surface in frenzied bubbles. Then the nurses whipped her back, her lash of hair flinging water across the room—a great silver arc that landed with a slap on the floor, splattering Alphie where she huddled, sick, trying to wriggle her hands from the cuffs. Three, four, five more times they pushed her under, all the while chanting, “Mother’s Milk! Mother’s Milk!”

  The girl wailed and went limp. Then, as they turned her over and dropped her to the floor, as she coughed up water and cried, they reached out their wet hands to Alphie.

  Alphie howled as they grabbed her by a chunk of hair and dragged her over to the tub. Should I just let it happen? she wondered. Should I just give myself up? They wrenched her back by her collar, choking her, and slammed her face into the water. The ice burned against her skin. She screamed and gagged, twisting around, her knees slipping and bruising against the tiles. They pulled her out and then plunged her in again, grunting: “Mother’s Milk! Mother’s Milk!”