Swimming in the Moon

by Pamela Schoenewaldt

  Pepe and Enrico marched in front, heads high, beating drums they’d fashioned from cans. The lilt of their step gave us heart. They wiggled into taverns with strikebreakers to bring back news we used to reroute our marches. Nobody begrudged them full votes in union business. Once, when Enrico came panting up with a message, his eyes glittering in triumph that he’d outrun “six big thugs.” I hugged him. “Hey, what’s that for?” he demanded. “It’s just a message.”

  “If I ever have a boy, Enrico, I’d want one just like you.”

  He grinned indulgently. “Well sure, Lucia. Maybe after the strike, you’ll get a nice Italian fella. Oh, I have to tell Isadore something.” He was off again. I smoothed my skirt, turning away from two garment workers standing nearby.

  “Hard times,” one of them commented. “But we’re all marching for ‘after the strike,’ aren’t we? Take a break, Lucia. There’s a respectable tavern around the corner. Come have a beer with us.” I went. We shared stories from the picket line and passed an easy summer hour, the kind I’d thought had gone away.

  The next day a lid of white clouds closed over the city. The air was a tepid sponge, thick and hard to walk through. We were marching in Public Square, having pleaded with those who’d left the union to come back for one more push. Loyal priests and rabbis helped: “Our Lord is a lord of justice and will help the righteous,” they told the faithful. Strikers came in droves, despite heat and hunger.

  Our spirits rose. We made a sport of dodging clods of horse manure thrown into the line until the ruffians ceased their game. Someone began old “Peg and Awl,” a cobbler’s lament for changing times. Our voices drowned the litany of insults: we were traitors, socialists, lazy, dirty parasites, Europe’s trash. Looking straight ahead to avoid the red-faced hecklers, I never saw trouble coming until Josephine tried to jerk me clear of a man charging head down like a bull at a matador. I wasn’t fast enough. He hit me full in the stomach. Doubled over, gasping, I heard Josephine call for witnesses.

  In the chaos, I didn’t see Mamma. Then I heard her roar, the power of her voice quelling all the others: “Get your filthy hands off my daughter. I’ll kill you!” That morning I’d pinned her hair into a pompadour. Now it hung wild around her shoulders. Lula was pounding down the sidewalk after her. But Mamma ignored us both, leaping at the thug, tearing his shirt, grabbing his arm, biting. I saw blood. I heard Josephine calling for strikers to curtain off the melee. She and Lula closed their arms around me as police pushed through the line and seized Mamma.

  “No!” I shouted. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying! She’s my mother, she’s not well, let her go!”

  But Mamma was a tempest of hair and teeth, her voice billowing over the crowd: “Bastard cops, bastards. Castrate them all!” Now the police had words of their own: hellcat, bitch, crazy wop. The Black Maria came, bells and sirens tearing the air.

  “Be quiet!” Josephine shouted in my ear. “If you get arrested too, who’ll help her?”

  Enrico stared. “Is that your mother, Lucia? Is she crazy?”

  “She’s—”

  Mamma was howling: “Lucia, help me!” as the police handcuffed and shoved her into the Black Maria. Josephine pulled me back. Confusion roared all around: hecklers, union songs from farther up the picket line, and Josephine still shouting that I must keep calm, keep calm.

  “That crazy bitch bit me,” the strikebreaker cried, showing his bloody arm. Then one sound pierced every other: the iron door thudding closed, trapping my mother in the stifling chamber that had so terrified me. I fainted into hot darkness.

  When I opened my eyes, Lula’s face hovered over mine. Josephine was there and Enrico behind her. A sticky wetness covered my face. “It’s beer,” said Lula. “I asked for water and your little friend here”—she indicated Enrico—“went to one of those no-goods standing around, snatched his mug, and doused you. You’re back, that’s the important thing.”

  “And not arrested,” Josephine added. Her voice came from far away.

  “Where is she?”

  “At the station by now; we’ll go bail her out. But first you’d better change into something that doesn’t smell like beer or they’ll arrest you too.”

  The case might be tricky, Josephine explained as she and Lula walked me home. “She did draw blood. And everybody heard what she said. But we have witnesses that she was protecting you. Don’t worry, Lucia.”

  “There was a crowd at the tavern, and she must have slipped out,” Lula explained, breathing hard. “Folks were talking about the picket route, so she knew where to find you. I’m so sorry, Lucia. She’d been quiet for days and never set foot inside the tavern. I didn’t expect her to bolt.”

  “Nobody knows what to expect,” I said miserably. “It’s not your fault.” No, it was mine. I’d left her for what I’d held to be the greater cause, my union “brothers and sisters.” What was she feeling now, trapped in a jail cell, abandoned by her daughter? What had the police said or done to her? How far was she spiraling down?

  At the station with Josephine, I waited in agony as a clerk slowly searched his ledger for a Teresa D’Angelo. “Nobody by that name,” he announced finally. “But we got an Italian female, age about thirty-five, medium height, dark green dress, gave her name as Teresa Esposito. Deranged and incoherent. Bit two officers here. Is that who you want?” I nodded. “Hey, Mac, where’d we send that crazy Eye-talian lady?” he called out.

  “To the crazy house,” someone answered. “Captain said no mad dogs at the station.”

  In the rolling peals of laughter, I nearly fainted again. Josephine rapped the counter sharply. “When you’re quite finished with your jokes, exactly where can we find Teresa D’Angelo or Teresa Esposito?”

  “Cleveland State Hospital,” the clerk said after a last guffaw. When his eyes settled on my face, the smile quickly faded. “She’s a relative, miss?”

  “My mother.”

  “Well, that’s where you’ll find her. You want some water? You look a little pale. Never mind the boys. Long, hot day, you know.”

  “We’ll be going,” Josephine said crisply. “Thank you so much for your help.”

  As we hurried to Cleveland State, my mind swirled with sickening memories of Dr. Galuppi’s experiments and the horrible photographs that Dr. Ricci had shown me. In a gray-green receiving room the pale clerk informed us that an Italian female, self-identified as Esposito, Teresa, would be under observation for a week on charges of criminal insanity. Visitors prohibited. Muffled howls wormed through the walls. When the clerk took up his pen again, discounting us, my fury rose like lava in Vesuvius.

  “This is my mother, sir. She was defending me from attack, as any mother would. She is being treated by Dr. Ricci. She’s not a deficient. She’s not germ plasma. She was a star in Mr. B. F. Keith’s Vaudeville Company. There’s no need to keep her here. I can take care of her perfectly well.”

  “But you didn’t ‘take care of her perfectly well,’ did you now, miss?” the clerk asked archly. “She bit a citizen and two peace officers. She’s a danger to herself and the general public. Therefore she must be observed. Then, if she can be released, we’ll determine if you are competent to keep her. You are employed?”

  I was about to explain the strike when Josephine interceded: “She is a bookkeeper.”

  “You have a responsible male here in Cleveland? Husband, father, brother, someone?”

  Outrage surged through me. Was I nobody without a man behind me? Josephine’s foot pressed mine and I nodded.

  “Good. Come back next week with a responsible male and you can discuss the matter with our doctor. We’ll need a declaration that she’ll be adequately confined at home, not roaming the streets, biting people.”

  “She is not a dog, sir! She wasn’t—” Josephine pressed again and I was silent.

  The clerk closed his ledger with a thud. “There’s nothing more to discuss. Bring this receipt.” I was given a slip of paper. Mamma was No. 4389F, received Augus
t 16, 1911. Like a dry goods shipment.

  I endured the next week in an agony of waiting and fear. For distraction, I walked the picket lines, going by habit, for loyalty, and to pass the time. But I couldn’t eat; food was sawdust in my mouth. Between marches and meetings, I circled the hospital, trying to pluck out my mother’s voice from screams and howls cascading down from the barred windows. Was she being beaten or shackled? Was she being used like the “poor thing,” pawed by an attendant? Were they spinning her? Was she locked day and night in a Taming Box?

  I called guards to the gate, asking for news. They didn’t know or wouldn’t tell me about Teresa Esposito. When Enrico brought me ice in a paper cup on the picket line, the pleasure of it made me gag. Even in the wildly improbable case that she was being exquisitely treated, respected, and spoken to in her own language, Mamma knew where she was. How could this not worsen her condition? Each day brought an agony of imagination and helpless guilt.

  Dr. Ricci was in New York meeting great doctors, his housekeeper said. But even if he were here, he couldn’t swear that Mamma posed no danger to others or that he was making progress in curing her. I thanked the housekeeper and left.

  Who would be my “responsible male”? Donato had taken his family to the country. Casimir apologized but couldn’t leave his shop and perhaps feared too close association with a madwoman. Charlie and Frank couldn’t leave their jobs, or wouldn’t. A union brother would gladly help, Josephine said, but I couldn’t bear to expose Mamma’s story to one more stranger. Anguish tore away my reserve. I walked past Henryk’s shop three times before I found him alone.

  He considered the issue as calmly as if I’d asked which potatoes were best for boiling. “I can’t be your father, obviously. Since we don’t look alike, I can’t be your brother. So I’ll be your husband. Samuel can run the shop while I’m gone.”

  “What will you tell your father?”

  “That I’ve gone out to the country for apples. It’s getting harder and harder to find good ones. Don’t worry, Lucia. Just think about your mother.”

  “And Miriam, what will she say?”

  “She’s in Pittsburgh again with her aunt.” He put a strange inflection on aunt, but in my distraction I assumed he was only distressed that she was so often away. I left without thanking him. Shouts from the street reminded me of inmates’ howls, and I wanted to be back in my own room, where Mamma’s presence still lingered.

  “You have to look important when you go,” Roseanne declared, and loaned me a deep purple shirtwaist, severe and respectable, and even her own wedding ring. Yolanda had given me a lovely plumed hat. The night before, Lula brought over a fresh peach pie because, she said, “A girl can face anything better with my peach pie inside her.”

  Henryk came to the boardinghouse in a dark suit, his thick hair combed neatly back. “What a fine-looking couple,” said Roseanne, but on the streetcar to the state hospital anyone would have thought we were headed to a funeral.

  We got a shimmer of respect in the reception office. A gangly clerk took my receipt and had a silent inmate bring two chairs. He ran a long finger down a column in his ledger and tapped an entry: “Esposito, Teresa, No. 4389F. Recovering from surgery.”

  Surgery! I hadn’t guessed this, not in all my grim imagining. “She was healthy when she came. What did you do to her?” I demanded.

  The clerk looked startled, excused himself, and after a lengthy wait was replaced by a tall, broad-shouldered woman with a forward-jutting jaw who introduced herself as Nurse James. She snapped the ledger closed and turned on us. Were we the inmates now? I folded my gloved hands and leaned forward. Her eyes flicked away, then back.

  “Mister and Missus—”

  “Weiss,” Henryk supplied. “Where is my mother-in-law?”

  “Mr. and Mrs. Weiss,” Nurse James began evenly, “the woman identified as Teresa Esposito has been surgically sterilized and is, as I said, recovering—”

  I bolted to my feet. “Sterilized!”

  “You’ll sit, please, Mrs. Weiss. There is no cause for alarm,” she continued with patronizing detachment. I have never hated a voice so much. “Sterilization is widely prescribed for the protection of society and the patients themselves, male and female. Normally, of course, we obtain the family’s consent, but unfortunately there was some confusion. Two women of the same name, Teresa Esposito, are inmates in this institution. Your mother, case number 4389F, was given the surgery in place of”—she flipped open the ledger—“number 4289, who had been scheduled for the procedure.”

  “You butchered my mother by mistake?” The shrill knife edge of my voice cut the air. Henryk gripped my hand in warning.

  “Mrs. Weiss,” said Nurse James archly, “we ‘butcher’ nobody. This is a standard procedure, done under hospital conditions by an experienced surgeon. While in this instance, it may have been technically premature, it would have been advised in anticipation of any extended stay by a woman of fertile age. You can appreciate the practical benefits. Mental deficients are often promiscuous, breeding more of their kind.”

  “My mother was not promiscuous. In twenty years she has not had a single—”

  “Then, you see, Mrs. Weiss, there is nothing lost if she cannot breed.”

  “We are not speaking of animals, Nurse James,” Henryk said sharply. “Human beings do not ‘breed.’ ”

  “We are speaking of a deranged woman who bit a peaceful citizen.”

  “Peaceful? He was a hired goon attacking her daughter!”

  “A citizen, Mr. Weiss,” the nurse repeated, “and two officers.” She leaned back. “As you know, there is rising concern regarding germ plasma entering this country from Europe and weakening good American stock.”

  “Germ plasma?” Henryk demanded. “That’s what you call immigrants? Germ plasma? When did your people come here?”

  “A rising number of recent immigrants become public charges, and many, as I say, actively breed more of their kind. Sterilization is advocated by some of our finest minds: captains of industry like Mr. Henry Ford and Mr. Rockefeller, senators, doctors, and scholars at Harvard and other great universities.”

  Fury lifted me off the chair again. “I don’t care about great universities. You butchered my mother! You know nothing about her, nothing! Not even her name.” Nurse James stood as well now. I followed her large eyes to a buzzer prominent on her desk. Doubtless it would call a guard. Could I end in shackles myself? I sat down. Was this how Mamma’s fits possessed her, the churning frenzy to silence a smug, cool voice, to make a jutting jaw tremble? In a whisper so low I felt it through my skin, Henryk warned: “Lucia, remember why we’re here.”

  I gripped my chair and lowered my voice. “Nurse James, you have my mother. May I see her now? I’ve come with my husband, who will sign the necessary papers.”

  “That is impossible. She’s recovering.”

  “She can recover at home.”

  “There are charges against her. She needs to be evaluated.”

  “I should give you more time and risk another butchery, by mistake?”

  Henryk sat forward, his voice low and hard. “There may be charges against this institution and against yourself, Nurse James, if it is widely known that records are so poorly kept that women are butchered at random; if the newspapers, for example, investigate this case, or if certain officials were informed.”

  “She was not butchered, sir.” But the nurse’s voice had weakened.

  Henryk pressed on: “Very well, she was mutilated against her will, against her family’s will. Do your patrons know this? Would they like to know this? And doesn’t your director constantly seek public funds, warning that the wards are dangerously overcrowded? We’ll take this patient off your hands. You should be grateful.”

  “She needs medical care.”

  “Of course, after her shameful treatment in this institution. Nurse James, release her now.”

  The woman opened and closed her mouth, took in Henryk’s good suit and
neatly brushed hair, my dress, hat, and gloves. She made a show of examining her ledger and finally said, “Wait here.”

  We waited an hour in that airless gray office. “Try to sit down, Lucia,” Henryk said. “Tell me about Naples.” He kept me talking until the nurse returned, pushing a woman in a rattling wheelchair. We gasped aloud. My mother’s face was bruised, her hair shorn. She was dressed in a shapeless gray gown, bent over, arms wrapped around her belly.

  I knelt by the chair. “Oh, Mamma.”

  “Bastard—wore a mask,” she said in a terrible voice, low and toneless.

  Glancing at Nurse James, Henryk touched my mother’s shoulder and began, “Mamma Teresa—”

  She jerked away, growling: “He cut me.”

  “Yes, Mamma. We’re so sorry.” I turned to Nurse James. “We’ll be going now.”

  Henryk took the handles of the wheelchair. “We’ll need this to get her home. Obviously she can’t walk. I’ll return it later.”

  Nurse James opened her mouth to protest, closed it, then blurted: “There are papers to sign, sir. You’ll have to assume responsibility for the inmate’s care.”

  “Where are they?” he said sharply. “Bring them to me.”

  Henryk quickly signed pages of tight script, arranged for a taxicab, and helped me get my mother home and into bed. How could I begin to thank him? “Henryk, I don’t—”

  He took my hand. “Lucia, it’s nothing. Anyone else would have done the same for you.”

  “But anyone didn’t, only you.”

  He shrugged. “Then they’re fools. I have to get some apples now. I’ll come back later.”

  I got Hilda the midwife to examine Mamma, for I wanted only women near her. The cut was clean, at least, and not infected. They had “only” severed the Fallopian tubes and not performed a hysterectomy. Still, she’d be bedridden for days as the incision healed. Hilda looked sadly into Mamma’s beaten face. “The other healing will take longer.”