“Is Henryk your fella?” Roseanne had asked. No, no, I’d protested, just a school friend and bound to another woman besides. Still, I couldn’t deny even to myself that I’d missed his easy presence, patient way of listening, and gift for bringing pleasure to the simple act of buying fruit.
Colors mounded everywhere in the shop: squash and pumpkins, beans of many kinds, strings of peppers, golden braids of onion, heaps of bright red cabbage, and everywhere bushels of apples. The shop was nearly empty, just Henryk and a young helper. “Lucia, I haven’t seen you in weeks,” said Henryk, setting down his clipboard.
“No. I’ve been busy.”
“Yes, of course.” If he’d heard of Mamma’s scene in Youngstown, he gave no sign. He said some words in Polish to the boy and ushered me into a tiny office, meticulously organized and astonishingly clean. “My little kingdom,” he explained. “No onion peels or old cabbage leaves. Let’s see how Samuel does by himself. He just arrived last week from Poland.”
“He’s a relative?”
“Sort of a cousin, very clever. He’s already learned some English. He’s taking lessons at Hiram House.”
“That’s good.”
“He wants to be a doctor.”
“Wonderful.” How long would we talk about Samuel? I stepped back in the cramped space. Where else to look but at the wide dark eyes? I smoothed a pleat in my skirt and studied an ink spot.
Henryk rolled a pen between his palms, put it down, and picked it up again. “How’s your mother?”
“Fine. She’s knitting scarves.”
“It’s good that she’s busy.”
I agreed. Then, as if a gate had been cracked open, we talked a little more easily. I told him about my work and correspondence course. The shop was expanding, he said. Casimir and Anna were having a baby. Neighbors on both sides had just come from Bohemia. We agreed that many, quite a lot of Bohemians were coming to Cleveland. Then we both fell silent, absorbed by the swept floor.
Henryk looked up. “I’ll be marrying Miriam next year. The dowry’s set. I wanted to tell you before you heard it somewhere else. If you hadn’t come by, I would have stopped by your house.”
The words were gongs: Marrying. Miriam. What did I expect? I was a Gentile, a Catholic, Italian, with a mother known to be insane. Miriam was a rabbi’s beautiful niece; her father had property. A “splendid catch,” as Americans said. Henryk and I were friends. Wasn’t that enough for me?
“Congratulations.” Other kind and customary responses tangled in my head but I couldn’t say them.
Henryk rolled the pen in his hands. I watched sunlight flick off the steel nib. “I’m the only son, like I told you,” he was saying. “I need to, you know, continue the line. And she’s a good girl. Very capable. My father says she’s the perfect wife for me.”
“I’m sure you’ll be happy.” Americans constantly shook hands. Should I do this now? I held out mine, stiff as a marionette.
Henryk did the same, forgetting his pen, and the steel nib nicked my palm. At the tiny stab, I jerked my hand back, and we watched a rivulet of blood snake across the skin. “It’s nothing,” I stammered.
“No, look, you’re bleeding.” He pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it to my palm. “Oh, Lucia, I’m so sorry.” The office was shrinking, the air dense with our breath.
“I have to go. Roseanne’s watching Mamma.”
“But your hand—”
“It’s nothing.” The handkerchief fluttered down. He didn’t pick it up. I turned to go.
“Wait, your apples.” He hurried away and returned with my basket heaped with apples and a pineapple besides. “It’s from Hawaii, very sweet.” Holding the heavy basket between us, our hands touched. His was warm, despite the cool of the day. I feel that warmth now and smell the pineapple’s heady sweetness and the lighter spice of apples. We might have stood forever, studying my basket, if a clatter of pumpkins that Samuel stacked too high hadn’t startled us back to life. I darted from the office, forgetting to pay.
I ran all the way to Lula’s despite the heavy basket. Panting, I gasped out the news. “Well,” she said finally. “You knew it was coming, didn’t you? Her family has money and you’re no rabbi’s niece.”
“No.”
“And if those things weren’t true, would you even want to get married right now?”
“What?”
“You heard me, girl. Would you?” She went back to polishing. I stared at my apples. It was true that being with him could sometimes make my whole chest ache. But even if Mamma could be miraculously cured today, would I truly want to live Yolanda’s life in Cleveland, circling around a man’s coming and going?
“I guess you don’t have a mother telling you things, so I will. You know that some women just got to have a fella or they’re miserable?”
Like Yolanda. “Yes.”
“Well, there’s others that don’t ever want a man. And then others have times when what they need is to be alone. Maybe this is your alone time.”
“But I love him, and he’s marrying Miriam.” Yes, there, I’d finally said it out loud.
“So you love him and you can’t have him. You want your mamma to be well so you can go live your life, but you can’t have that either.” Her dark face was frank and full of kindness. She patted my cheek. “Honey, you’ve got an old soul and you got to be alone with it awhile.”
“But . . .”
“Yes?”
A wall of buts rose up around me: but I wanted college now; I wanted Henryk but his family surely didn’t want me; I wanted the comfort of unity and love, an old man bringing me a rose, leaving work to be with me. But did I want all the tasks of domesticity that had been mine since I could first carry a dustcloth? Did I want my world so shrunken?
The tavern seemed silent despite the crowd behind me. I ran my wounded hand over the dry pricks of pineapple. “I better go home.”
“I guess you better. Here. I can’t help your heart, but it’s sure good for the rest of you.” She slipped me one of her rounds of dark bread with beer cheese. I was about to go when she reached for my arm and gently pulled me close, whispering: “I know it’s hard, honey. Sometimes it seems like just about everybody else has got somebody.” I nodded. “But like I said, maybe it’s just not your time for loving. Maybe it’s some other time for you.”
I nodded, hoisted the heavy basket, and made my way home.
All I could do was work, it seemed. Learn bookkeeping, do my job, and care for Mamma. Scribe. Write to the countess and my professors and read from the list they gave me.
When I finished the course in November, Mr. Sutherland raised my salary to sixteen dollars a week, only six dollars less than the male clerks earned. Living carefully, I could save a little money. “When your mother has recovered her health,” Dr. Peckham wrote, “we look forward to your return.” Tuition, room and board would cost two hundred dollars a year, but I could work for board with a family in town. Or my secret patron might help me again.
Look forward to your return. I looked forward constantly, picturing my mother healed and myself free. There were good days and bad days. On good days we walked around the block, although sometimes she’d insist that Maestro Toscanini was lurking behind a tree. “Look, he’s coming!” she’d bark, pointing wildly. I’d smile and hurry her on. Mothers pulled their children close.
Of course they were afraid. Everything strange frightened parents then, for diphtheria was stalking the immigrant quarters. A child who was simply feverish in the morning would be gasping for breath by nightfall. When a gray membrane coated the throat, death was near and inevitable. A ghastly blue cast crept over little bodies. Necks swelled horribly, hot to the touch, boiling with poisons. A young couple lost all three of their children in a weekend and collapsed at the triple funeral, senseless with grief.
The health department blamed invisible germs and toxins, against which cleanliness was the best defense. “Against the invisible?” many shot b
ack. Children were dying, clean and dirty children in equal numbers. One Sunday after mass, Gloria, a slender girl from Calabria who had left school early to marry, turned on me. “You don’t know what it’s like to lose a child, Lucia. You have no idea.” Her voice rose. “No idea! Your life is so easy.”
“Our little boy just died,” her husband apologized. “He seemed better, and then in an hour he was gone.”
“Gloria, I’m so sorry,” I began, but she spun away from me.
“Give me back my Robertino!” she shrieked, pounding the statue of Our Lady. Father Stephen came flying down the steps, his black robe like great wings as he and her husband closed around her.
Everyone had theories about the disease: Bohemians brought it on boats. No, the crowded flats of Jews or Italians bred the germs. No, scoffed others: it came from the city’s bad water. The food was infected. Frigid winds from Canada weakened children and so they fell to the scourge. A new “antitoxin” would cure diphtheria, doctors promised, but false or diluted mixtures were peddled everywhere. When even the purest preparations sometimes failed, many lost faith. Some feared an American plot to kill all immigrant children. Didn’t they call us “germ plasma”?
Because I seemed immune, I helped translate for one of the American nurses on her Sunday rounds. “You must act at the first signs of infection: sore throat, coughing, or fever,” we told Rita, who had just come from Sicily.
“But all children cough in winter,” she protested. “Do they all have diphtheria? Will all of them die?”
“What does the antitoxin cost?” the father asked anxiously.
Doses were free to the poor, the nurse explained. “Lucia, make them understand. They must get the antitoxin. If a child is badly stricken, there’s nothing we can do. Nothing.”
“God sent the strangling angel; He’s cursing us for leaving Sicily,” Rita cried, clutching her tightly swaddled infant.
“No, Father Stephen says—”
“Father Stephen is Irish! What does he know about Our Lord? And the wind will kill my baby if I take her outside.” When I said we’d bring her a dose, she hugged me, sobbing, “I’m so afraid of this cold. There was nothing like it back home.”
“Lucia,” Nurse Lynch warned. “I can’t bring everyone the antitoxin. They have to come to Hiram House.”
“But Rita talks to other Sicilians. If we help her child, she may convince them for us.”
“Perhaps.” So we went on, cajoling, urging, sometimes bribing parents with bread given by wealthy donors.
“Look at you,” Roseanne marveled as I came home from my rounds. “The whole city’s coughing and you’re healthy as a horse.” I swerved between gratitude and guilt. Gratitude for my health, since who would care for Mamma and help Nurse Lynch if I sickened? Guilt that I had so neatly escaped the plague.
In church Father Stephen organized a collection for the stricken families. I got beer cheese from Lula and pounds of Anna’s sausage to distribute. I couldn’t bring myself to ask for Henryk’s help, to enter that tiny office again, but I didn’t have to. Mr. Bellamy found crates of potatoes, onions, cabbages, and beets on the steps of Hiram House.
Hollow-eyed mothers received the vegetables silently, too spent for civility. Sometimes we knew by the wailing behind doors that we’d come too late and could only note the address and flat number for health department men who gathered the dead.
After weeks of this work, I was worn out by death and sickness. Early on a cool, damp Sunday morning, I roused my mother for a walk to the port, where we could watch the familiar bustle of ships and fishing boats. But death was there too: a barge had just come from Canada loaded with little pine coffins. Even the gulls fell silent, and a line of burly longshoremen crossed themselves. Mamma watched curiously, as if she’d never seen this gesture before. She looked at me leaning against a wooden pillar and tugged at my arm to keep walking.
I wanted to shake her. “Those are children’s coffins, Mamma. Don’t you see how many there are? That many children are dying!” Once again I described my home visits with nurses and the terrible scenes I’d witnessed in this epidemic, the torrent of loss. But she seemed unable to grasp pain outside her own, as one might watch ants scrambling in the dust and feel no connection with their troubles. She pointed to a fisherman unloading his catch. With a sigh I turned away from the coffin barge.
“Is this part of her sickness?” I asked Dr. Ricci.
“Lucia, didn’t you say she had very little empathy for the countess, even knowing the count’s abuse?”
Yes, those were my words. “But when she sang, people cried. She must have—”
“Watched people. Observed other singers,” Dr. Ricci supplied. “I believe that she loves you, Lucia. But parts of her heart are blocked; it’s a symptom of her sickness. Those scarves she knits, does she make them for the children?” No, I admitted grudgingly. She knit to knit. If everything she ever knit ended up in Lake Erie, she wouldn’t be distressed. He took my hand. “As for the coffins, Lucia, you are doing all you can for this city. We must endure the waiting.”
So we waited. The coroner’s wagons rolled by all through January. By February, the number of new cases began falling. We went days without seeing a wagon. One by one, children came outside, blinking against the sunlight. Schools slowly refilled, and street markets bustled again.
When new orders dropped slightly at Printz-Biederman, workers who had taken days off to care for their children were fired. Mr. Sutherland had me hand out final pay envelopes. “If we couldn’t count on you in January, you’re the first to go in February,” he told them. Speechless, I followed him to our office, not responding to his usual banter on the weather, President Taft’s latest blunders, or the week’s tally of shirtwaists.
Eventually he noticed my silence. “I was only relaying Mr. Printz’s orders, Miss D’Angelo.”
“I assumed that, sir. But they were good workers.”
“Then they’ll find other posts.”
Most became contract workers, making collars or cuffs at home, setting sleeves or constructing the tedious tight pleats so fashionable that year. Their miserable pay drove down factory salaries and pitted workers against each other.
“Why do they do that? They all have landlords and grocer bills,” I lamented to Lula. “Why don’t they fight the bosses instead?”
Lula was mixing biscuits. “You figure it out, child, and poor black folks and poor white folks will get together against rich folks.” Her wooden paddle slapped the side of her bowl. “Long, long time from now,” she added grimly.
That evening I screwed up my courage for a great risk. I brought Mamma to the union hall and set her in a corner far back from the crowd where she could knit undisturbed. I managed to stay for an hour before she grew agitated, rattling her needles and rocking rhythmically in the chair. It was a rainy night, and we took a streetcar home. She sat quietly at least, staring at the floor. A man in front of me read the Plain Dealer. A headline caught my eye: Arturo Toscanini was conducting in New York City. Suppose he took his company on tour? My mind raced. So often oblivious to English speech, Mamma would surely seize on the word Toscanini in any conversation. Suppose he came to Cleveland and by a terrible string of coincidences she saw him? Suppose she pounced on him with no countess to save her and nowhere to flee?
I must have leaned too close. The newspaper snapped closed. “Why don’t you buy your own,” the man said sharply, “instead of reading over people’s shoulders?”
Mamma’s head jerked up, attentive to any insult. I hurried us off the streetcar, bought a paper from a newsboy, and read the article as Mamma clattered in the kitchen. The maestro wouldn’t be touring, I learned with relief. But now at night his hawk eyes softened to Henryk’s, and both men watched me as I tossed in bed. Go away, you two, let me work at least.
With the passing of the epidemic, rage seethed in the union hall. My professors might have argued with fine logic that diphtheria did not cause this rage but only preceded i
t. Still, I noted that those who had lost children were inflamed more quickly against the owners. A litany of complaints filled the hall: poor lighting, cold and drafty workrooms in winter, heat and stench in summer, inadequate lavatories, the rising cost of needles, thread, and sewing machine rent, random fines, and wildly unequal pay for the same work.
Luisa, who worked in a small company making men’s shirts, complained of forced overtime. Of three children, only her youngest was left alive. “When can I see my Salvatore?” she demanded. The nursery at Hiram House teemed with babies and tiny children watched for hours by a few harried attendants.
Young boys roamed the streets causing mischief. When I caught two overturning our ash can, Roseanne and I hauled them into our kitchen and extracted their names: Enrico and Pepe. They didn’t go to school because it was boring. They turned over ash cans because they had nothing better to do.
“You could join a boys’ club at Hiram House,” I suggested.
“That’s for greenhorns.”
“If public school is boring,” Roseanne said, “what about reform school?” They looked at each other in alarm and fell silent.
“Meet me at the union hall tomorrow night,” I announced.
“Why should we?”
“Two reasons. First, if you don’t, I’ll tell your mothers what you did.” They swallowed hard. “And second, because there is something better to do.”
“What?”
“You’ll find out.”
They came to the meeting. I had sent a message to Josephine, who first terrified them with the fate of two boys she knew well who went from overturning ash cans to worse crimes, broke their mothers’ hearts, and ended their miserable days in prison. She leaned down so far that her black hat shaded them. The soft, driving voice popped out beads of sweat across their brows. When she stood up suddenly, their mouths dropped open. “However, I could use two boys to paste up meeting notices and hand out leaflets at the factories. They’d have to be brave, smart, quick boys who aren’t scared of bosses. Are you those boys?” They were, so excited they didn’t ask for pay.
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