“I work too,” I reminded her. “And I can help you, if you want.”
Giovanna’s shoulders sagged. “I’m sorry, Lucia. We just have to be careful.” With some trouble, I had Roseanne, Donato’s wife, and two of her friends buy needles and thread and sell them at cost to the factory girls.
“Strange,” Mr. Kinney mused. “Italians buy my needles and thread, but no yard goods. Why is that, Miss D’Angelo?”
“You know how they are, sir. Yard goods cost more, so they deal in Italian stores, where they can bargain.”
He was pleased, though, for the shipment sold quickly. He began asking my advice on other goods and pricing and soon raised my salary to twelve dollars a week. With the few dollars I still got from Mamma and scribing money, I could even save a little. I felt useful and clever, helping my friends and furthering my own ends.
Then Giovanna was fined for using outside materials. Someone had seen needles in her purse. When she protested that Printz-Biederman was profiting from workers, she was fined for speaking socialism. Coming in late one morning after nursing her mother’s raging fever all night, she was fined again.
“It’s not your fault, Lucia,” Roseanne insisted. But the first two fines were my fault: my thread, my words, my clumsy maneuvering without considering what consequences others would shoulder. In that summer and fall of 1908, I brooded on my mother’s brittle moods that I couldn’t ease and workplace injustices I couldn’t heal. I longed to go to college and learn to be of greater good—or at least less harm.
I went to see Miss Miller, now Mrs. Richard Livingston. Married and settled in her husband’s grand home, she might have money of her own, or at least some claim on his. She met me in the marble entryway. In a pearl-gray morning dress, tightly pleated and overworked with embroidery, she took little bird steps, anxiously looking around. Where was the assured, driving presence that staged a lively talent show at Hiram House?
“This house is a present from my father-in-law. Limestone money,” she announced, indicating the marble, gilt, brocade, carved woods, and crystal, all even finer than her family’s magnificent furnishings. “Everything comes from him,” she whispered, “and I am to be grateful. He lives with us. He watches us. He was never like this before, Richard says, never. Now he’s convinced he’ll die in the poorhouse, that I’ll ruin him with ten-cent tips to the butcher boy or a birthday present to the scullery maid. Look around, Lucia. Is that possible?”
“No, I don’t think so, Mrs. Livingston,” I said obediently, already fearing my mission was hopeless.
“Let’s talk in the sitting room. His servants are cleaning upstairs.”
We sat on a delicate French divan. “It never hurts to ask,” Miriam had said. I had come to ask. I had to ask. I poured out my longing for college and joy in reading, the pleasures of school and skipping grades, my first sight of an American college. “I know not many Italian girls go, but I could do it, Mrs. Livingston. I’m sure I could.”
She sighed. “I’d love to help, Lucia. You were made for college. But he”—she jerked her head toward the grand stairway with such force that the puffed pompadour shook—“put us on a ‘charity budget.’ We gave to the new park in Shaker Heights. I’m afraid to ask him for another cause.” She leaned toward me. “Richard won’t have his own money until the old man dies. I’m so sorry.” She did seem sorrowful, deflated as a child. When she offered streetcar fare from a tiny dangling purse, I refused. “I’ll tell Richard you stopped by. He heard you’re working for Mr. Kinney. It’s a fine post for you. Congratulations. I’ll be sure to tell Agnes.” She leaned forward. “At least the old man let me bring her with me.” There was little more to say. I thanked her and left. Walking between rows of mansions set in velvet lawns, my shoes beat out “No college. No college. No college.” Father Stephen was right. All I could do now was to make the best of my work.
At least that fall was splendid, with bright blazes of leaves and balmy days deep into October. I pried my face into smiles when customers said how fortunate we were with the weather. “Yes, we certainly are, ma’am.”
Not everyone was fortunate that season. Giovanna was fired from Printz-Biederman. Now the best she could find was a place in a dusty, wood-framed workshop behind Kinney’s where Mr. Lentz contracted with wholesalers for piecework: cutting patterns, sewing bodice fronts and backs, and making sleeves. Giovanna earned less for this rough work and had to lease her machine from Mr. Lentz. Her mother was bedridden now; her ten-year-old brother got five dollars a week as a messenger boy. I offered to make up her difference in salary.
“That’s charity, Lucia. I can’t take it.” Only Yolanda could help, for she was family; she sent a dollar a week. I was ashamed for my part in her troubles and seethed with anger at Printz-Biederman’s rules and greedy fines.
Just after New Year’s in 1909, Mario wrote: “I’m sorry, Lucia. We may be a family, but we can’t be nursemaids. Your mother needed more attention than we could give. Mr. Keith had to let her go.” I never knew why. Months later, a passing statement, “They didn’t like my hands,” made me think she had repeated the “unacceptable gestures.”
There had been some kindness, I’m sure arranged by Mario. She might have been turned out on the street in a small midwestern town. Instead, she was kept on until St. Louis and traded to Mr. Marcus Loew’s People’s Vaudeville Company in return for a juggler. Exactly as Mario had warned, Mamma’s beautiful voice would introduce one-reel motion pictures of chase scenes, cowboys and Indians, and newsreels of Chinese mandarins, Indian rajas on decorated elephants, and the pomp of Russian czars. To lure vaudeville lovers, Mr. Loew provided a few singers and comics, perhaps a mimic for his shows, easy acts to pack and move.
If she got good reports from Loew’s, Mario wrote, Mr. Keith might take my mother back. But with new acts auditioning in each city, why reclaim a problem? Questions flew at me. How would she fare with the castoffs of vaudeville houses? How long would Mr. Loew even keep live acts? Moving pictures didn’t need to be housed, dressed, and fed. They didn’t jockey for better billings or higher wages. If she failed with Loew’s, what then? Mamma hadn’t confessed her situation, so how could I comfort her? I didn’t even know where she was. Frantic letters to Mr. Loew went unanswered. A theater manager in Cleveland said “New York” arranged performers’ itineraries; he had no idea how to find the Naples Nightingale. All I could do was wait for her next postcard. “Bad things come in threes,” Roseanne was fond of saying, as when three boarders in sequence stole from her and slipped away at night.
In Mr. Lentz’s shop, where Giovanna worked, girls sat surrounded by stacks of unfinished garment pieces. The air was thick with snips and fluff of thread and fabric. Even foremen couldn’t smoke; the risk was too great. There were so many fires and causes for fires in those days: a hobnail shoe striking an iron plate, a cracked electrical wire, or wadded oily rag set in a sunny window.
In a March mid-afternoon as I was finishing an inventory, someone screamed into the store: “Fire in Lentz’s, right behind you!”
I raced toward the workshop, shouting at the girls who got out first. “Giovanna Fidelli, have you seen her?” Dazed, they shook their heads. Perhaps they couldn’t hear me amid shrieks and sirens, fire bells and shouts of policemen pouring into the alley, pressing back the gathering crowd. Smoke billowed from the doors and windows as dark shapes of girls appeared, staggering, some trailing streams of flames.
“There’s another!” People shouted and pointed. Firemen turned their hoses on the blazing dresses.
“Blankets!” someone cried. Mr. Kinney was already coming, his arms full of blankets and heavy coats. Firemen snatched them to wrap the burning girls.
A girl I knew from scribing raced by. “Adele, where’s Giovanna?”
“Machine,” she gasped before a policeman pulled her away.
Of course, the sewing machines. Everyone knew what happened after garment shop fires: girls who survived lost all they’d invested and had to begin a
gain. A dark shape appeared against the tumbling smoke: a girl hugging her machine. Two firemen doused her with water. A third pulled the machine from her arms. But the girl wasn’t Giovanna.
Starting toward the building, I was yanked back. “You can’t help,” someone shouted. I barely recognized Giovanna when she finally came reeling out, her sooty face darker than Lula’s. The steel in her arms would be blazing hot. I saw the seared, scorched skin, smelled the stink of flesh. When someone brought a soggy coat, she howled as it touched her. Two men carried her to Kinney’s back lot, where the wounded lay on blankets. Other blankets covered the dead. Three more girls were found charred inside the building, cradling their machines.
The fire chief ordered his men back just before a surge of flame brought down the roof and the four walls fell in like a collapsing house of cards. Now the crowd ringed a new spectacle: a black-suited, dazed man, Mr. Lentz.
“My daughter died for your damn machine!” a mother screamed. Boys spit on his suit. The first girl who had escaped, her dress merely singed and arms blistered, moved through the parting crowd toward Mr. Lentz. She opened her mouth. Nothing. When someone brought her a cup of water, she drained it. “I paid seven dollars into my machine,” she croaked in an old man’s voice, horrible to hear. “Tell me.” She gestured for another cup and drained it. “Tell me I’ll get that back.”
Filled with all I had seen—the blackened girls, the dead beneath blankets, and Giovanna’s scorched arms—I pushed to the front of the crowd. “Tell her!” I shouted, startled by the force of my own voice. “Tell her!”
Voices behind me repeated: “Tell her! Tell her! Tell her!” When Mr. Lentz tried to back away, boys blocked his path. A smoke-darkened fireman silently joined the ring.
We were sweating freely now with the crackling, hissing fire behind us. Mr. Lentz wiped his face with a white handkerchief and faced the girl. “Rachel, you and the others will have full credit for what you have paid into the machines when I rebuild my shop. I’ll have to trust your word on how much you’ve paid. My account books are in there.” He pointed to the ruin. “But you’ll have jobs when I rebuild.”
“Give your hand on it, sir,” I said, and he did. Someone passed around a Panama hat for funeral expenses. When it came to Mr. Lentz, silence fell over the crowd. He took out his wallet, hesitated, and put it in. The hat sagged. Fifty dollars, I heard later. A murmur of content swept around the circle as I pushed my way toward Giovanna.
If Mr. Lentz had rebuilt his shop, he might have kept his promise. But he didn’t rebuild. Two weeks after the fire, declaring bankruptcy, he joined the wholesale firm of Joseph & Feiss. He did write letters of recommendation for the survivors and paid them two, three, or four weeks’ wages, depending on the severity of their injuries. Giovanna received four weeks’.
Chapter 11
PARADISE LOST
Finally Mamma wrote again, not penny postcards but notes on the backs of used tickets from the People’s Vaudeville Company, mailed in Memphis. She never explained her change of company, only commenting that she would be “south,” safe from “him.”
Where could I find a lever long enough to pry Arturo Toscanini from her head? Her imagined enemies grew on every side. A ticket from Little Rock spoke of Lydia and her dogs. “They follow me too.” She stayed in the theater between performances to watch the moving pictures. “Safer than the street.” She didn’t play cards. “Everyone cheats.” I’d waited so long to hear from her. Now this little stack of tickets made me sick with dread. Far away, was her mind unraveling?
“Lucia,” Father Stephen said severely. “She is using His gift, her marvelous voice, to earn her bread. She renounced the vice of gambling. You must trust His protecting hand.” He seemed so sure.
Walking home from church, I counted Mamma’s other “protectors”: the comfort of song, a smaller company, and moving pictures to safely entertain her. Mr. Loew’s audiences were surely less exacting, his rules less austere. Her “unacceptable gestures” might be acceptable, even welcome in his theaters. Without a schedule of her tour, I couldn’t arrange a visit, but she sent a few dollars home every week. That constancy was reassuring: she wasn’t fired at least. Yet when nobody wrote to warn me or complain of her behavior, I shared a new worry with Roseanne: perhaps she had no friends to fret over her. Had she even given Mr. Loew my address?
“Stop it!” Roseanne snapped. “You’re making yourself sick. Teresa’s working and sending money. And look at you with a high school diploma and a fine job in a downtown shop. What could be better?”
College would be better, but perhaps Roseanne was right: work in the shop brought some quiet satisfaction and paid my room and board. Mr. Kinney had begun teaching me the rudiments of double entry bookkeeping, “invented by your Italian ancestors five hundred years ago.” The craft demanded perfect concentration, he warned, for a single transposed or misplaced number could bring havoc. He began cautiously entrusting me with more complex tasks. In quiet hours bent over the broad pages of ledgers, I didn’t fret about Mamma, absorbed by the clatter of adding machine keys, the handle’s ratchet, and that first giddy moment when the day’s transactions fell neatly into balance. “To the penny, Miss D’Angelo, to the penny!” Mr. Kinney crowed. Delighted, he gave me the pick of a new shipment of ruffled blouses. “If my Olivia and I had a son,” he said wistfully, “I couldn’t have asked for a better hand on my books.”
Yet despite Mr. Kinney’s praise, bookkeeping wasn’t enough. I yearned for college as much as Yolanda ever yearned for a fella and release from her family’s flat. I devised a plan, ironed my best shirtwaist, and puffed my hair in a pompadour.
Mr. George Bellamy, the director of Hiram House, was known to have wealthy friends. He dined with Rockefellers, bankers, and mill owners. He knew me and knew my work as a scribe. Perhaps he could help. I went to his office and found him seated behind a gleaming walnut desk. Gold studs glittered in his cuffs. The lapels of a finely tailored jacket were cut in the season’s fashion, and his shirt was of English weave, stiff-collared and perfectly starched. Surely friends of such a man could provide a scholarship. I scarcely cared to which college; they all blended together. A young girl dreaming of marrying a prince would be happy with any prince.
He listened, folded his hands, and fixed me with an avuncular gaze. “You graduated from high school, Lucia. Most immigrant girls do not. Your parents surely sacrificed for your education.”
Was he taunting me? He must know that Mamma had no husband. “My father was killed in Naples, sir. He was a cathedral painter who fell from a scaffold and died.”
“Ah, I’m sorry to hear that.”
“He wanted me to be educated. It was his last wish. And for this I’m applying to you.” I stood very still, hoping he wouldn’t notice the flush of heat from passing on my mother’s lies again.
Mr. Bellamy turned a heavy ring. “Don’t you want to get married, Lucia? If you go to college, your chances will diminish.” Because most Italian boys don’t go to college, he must have meant, and American men wouldn’t consider me.
“I hope to marry someday, sir, but I want to go to college now. If someone provides the means, I’ll make my patron proud.” Mr. Bellamy drummed his blotter. I remembered to breathe.
He sighed. “I will try, young lady. I make no promises, but I will inquire.”
I thanked him and left quickly. Once clear of the Hiram House grounds, I raced to the boardinghouse and threw myself into the arms of an astonished Roseanne. “There now,” she said, patting my back. “Here’s our Lucia again.”
Restlessly waiting for Mr. Bellamy’s response, I persuaded Giovanna to visit Yolanda with me that Sunday. Her singed hair had been cut short and her throat was still raw from smoke, but her spirits lifted on the short train ride south. Joy filled Yolanda’s tiny house and flavored the amiable disorder of baby Maria Margaret’s toys and clothes mixed with piles of feathers and flowers, entire stuffed tiny birds, hat forms and lace. Finished hats perched
rakishly on chairs. “Isn’t she clever?” Charlie demanded. “She sells to all the owners’ wives.”
“Look at her!” demanded Yolanda as she lifted up the gurgling baby. “She’s so adorable!” Charlie had designed a new pulley system and was bound for greatness, Yolanda insisted. I had stumbled into a storybook.
Charlie’s friend Frank came for dinner, a slender, cheerful man, clearly brought to court Giovanna. He leaned close to catch her whispered story. Her dark eyes glittered; curly cropped hair framed the perfect oval of her face. “No woman who doesn’t want to should have to work outside the home,” Frank announced. She beamed.
“We could have invited someone for you,” Yolanda whispered when Frank and Giovanna had gone out walking. “But—”
“I don’t want to be married yet, and you didn’t have space for another chair.”
Yolanda laughed. Nothing troubled or offended her now. I was happy to see her happiness, to play with the cheerful baby and admire the new hats, but I felt out of place in the little house and eager to go back to my life.
A month after I’d visited Mr. Bellamy an envelope arrived from his office. “Open it,” said Roseanne, but I took it to my room instead and held it, turned it over and over, warmed it, finally opened it and drew out a single monogrammed sheet. An anonymous donor had offered funds to send a “worthy young woman” to college and I had been selected for this honor. Mr. Bellamy recommended his alma mater, Hiram College, just south of Cleveland, for which Hiram House was named and where I might receive an excellent education in the wholesome country air. President Bates had arranged my lodging beginning in midsummer so that I might have private readings before the next semester. My patron was most anxious that I do well but did not wish to be identified.
Swimming in the Moon Page 16
