I combed the remains of her beautiful hair and fed her broth that Roseanne brought upstairs. After she’d turned from me to face the wall and shuddered into fitful sleep, I stood at our window, breathing the thick night air. How long could I keep our secret from my oldest friend? This silence had to end.
I got a glass of water from the kitchen, took out an ink bottle and sheets of onionskin paper, filled my pen, and moved the chair to catch a thread of breeze. Then I undressed to a cotton chemise, straightened my desk, and when I could think up no more excuses, began: “Dear Contessa Elisabetta.” I stopped. Tell her. Write it down. “My mother is very sick. You remember what we called her ‘fits.’ They became worse in the last years. Now she is afflicted by—” The pen froze. I made myself write: “hysteria and paranoia. The doctor fears she may not recover. It’s true that she was happy at first in vaudeville, but nearly a year ago she had a nervous collapse and was sent home in handcuffs. It is for this reason that I left college. She believes that Maestro Arturo Toscanini follows her everywhere. She barely speaks and cannot control her behavior.”
I walked around the room, stood at the window, and finally sat again. I described my struggle to keep Mamma safe and how I had failed at this task. “They took her to a hospital, a horrible place such as Dr. Galuppi would relish. There she was sterilized. If you saw your Teresa now, you would not know her. Pray for us. These are difficult times in America.”
After these few pages my fingers cramped around the pen; my arm throbbed, and the paper was damp with sweat. Weeks might pass before an answer, but writing the countess had been like the slow release of a volcano, letting pent-up lava run harmlessly down the sides.
I slept more easily that night and stayed home for the rest of the week. Mamma stared at the ceiling and walls. Her eyes skittered across my face. When she spoke, it was a toneless drone against “the bastards,” as if memories of all those who had hurt her were spreading like a stain, absorbing the man who had pushed her into the seaweed, Toscanini, Little Stingler, the surgeon who cut her, and now random men she spied from our window.
I ceased trying to reason with her and cared only for the wounded body. The red gash across her belly was pointing us both to a new land.
Chapter 18
DUSK BY ERIE
September dulled the press of heat, but still ice prices rose in the parched city. Underground storehouses in Michigan and New York were exhausted by the summer’s heat, and, after the long trek from Canada, blocks arrived half melted. “It’s not our fault! Ice costs, straw costs, barges cost, and we’re not running a charity,” icemen insisted when customers cursed them. Stones were hurled at wagons. Looking for culprits, icemen saw only grim-faced children or women standing by the road, empty-handed.
Like widening circles from pebbles thrown in water, troubles spread across the immigrant quarters. Nursing mothers exhausted by heat and hunger lost their milk. “What do I give my baby now?” they demanded at union meetings.
I appealed to Mr. Bellamy. “For this cause,” he vowed, “I’ll move heaven and earth.” He did, wheedling funds from patrons to buy dairy milk and enough of the costly ice to keep it fresh.
“Look at that,” said Josephine. “You have power.”
“Not really, if I can’t help my own mother.”
When Dr. Ricci finally returned from New York and received my message, he hurried to the boardinghouse, but Mamma wouldn’t turn from the wall or speak.
In the parlor, with the door closed, I described her treatment to the doctor. His kind face darkened. “There is no excuse, none!” he said fiercely. “Even if she were promiscuous, even then, to have robbed her of the chance for motherhood without consent or knowledge, by mistake, because one Italian woman is the same as the next to them, it’s beastly. But these places are beastly. The filth and crowding and hellish noise, the mass of insane, demented, aged, and imbeciles, drunks and criminals crowded together strips the best doctor of his humanity. He forgets his calling. Feeling that he’s among beasts, he becomes a beast himself. A beast with a scalpel. And your mother was subject to this.”
I sighed. “What can be done?”
“For other men and women, we can try to stop this curse of sterilization. I’ll write the director and the governor and protest her treatment. For Teresa, I’ll go to the police, describe her, and give them my card. If she’s arrested again, we’ll be warned. Send for me when she’s willing to talk. For now all we can do is let time bring its healing.”
Everyone was sorry. Roseanne berated herself for having forced me to find day lodging. “But since now she’s . . .”
“Catatonic.”
“Yes, that, I can watch her, poor creature, when you’re on your strike.”
My strike? I seemed to watch the world through glass. Even union songs and chants couldn’t lift my heart now when my mother’s very presence seemed insubstantial, as if she might at any minute cease to be or melt away. I made her eat, bathed her, put yarn and needles in her hands, closed mine around hers, and had her “knit,” cursing my clumsiness, for she was visibly pained when we dropped a stitch. At night she pointed wildly at the bedroom window. What did she see: Maestro Toscanini, the doctor who cut her, or only the beckoning darkness?
With whom could I speak in those days? Not Henryk in my dismal state, grateful as I was for his help in rescuing her. Not Yolanda or Giovanna. Nestled in their domesticity, how could they understand us? Josephine and Isadore were consumed by “the final push.” Lula was racked by guilt that she had let my mother escape. How could I increase her pain? I’d expected an answer from Countess Elisabetta by now, but nothing came from Naples. Perhaps she was traveling. Or perhaps, like so many Americans, she feared the contagion of madness, even by post and across the ocean.
I was becoming as reclusive as Mamma when Roseanne ordered me downstairs to speak with a visitor in the parlor. It was Enrico. Strike rations had thinned his body and sharpened the lines of his face, but I couldn’t help smiling at the soldier stiffness of his shoulders and his air of solemn importance.
“The first message,” he announced, “is that Josephine says you must come back to the pickets. The path is not easy, but together we will win. The cause of the ILGWU is greater than any of us, and to be a part of this greatness makes us strong.” He let out a long breath after his feat of memory.
“Thank you, Enrico. You know, if you can learn all that, you can easily learn your times tables at school.”
“Maybe.” He relaxed a little. “I might go back after the strike. Here’s the second message. It’s from Lula: you need to get your skinny self down to the tavern ’cause she’s got some news.” He grinned. “So now me and Pepe are going fishing at the lake.”
“You mean ‘Pepe and I.’ ”
“Yeah, us two.” But he didn’t go right then. The smooth brow furrowed and he stepped closer. “Lucia, you really don’t look so good. Maybe you should come to the union hall like Josephine says. To get your mind off—” He glanced at the stairs.
“Other things?” I prompted.
“Right, other things. Well, Pepe’s waiting.” And he was gone in a whirl of churning legs.
So I went to the tavern with a bucket from Roseanne to fill with beer. Lula drew me aside. “Listen. You know how your friend Henryk’s Miriam is always going to Pittsburgh to see her aunt?”
“Yes. The aunt is sick and Miriam’s the only one she wants around her.”
“Hum. I don’t know about ‘sick.’ What I do know is this aunt has a young cousin, a bachelor, and this young bachelor cousin owns a bank.” Lula folded her arms. “Did you hear me, girl?”
“Yes,” I said dully, “the aunt’s cousin owns a bank.”
“Well, don’t you think Miriam wants a bank? One of my regulars says he’s the reason she goes to Pittsburgh. He gave her a diamond as big as your eye. And whatever her family owes Henryk’s family for whatever they did in the Old Country, this banker can pay off easy. My regular says Henryk’s father
’s so angry, it’s like the girl was cheating on him.”
Another time, this news would have mattered. Lula sighed. “I know, you can’t forgive me for what happened at that place.”
“It’s not that.” No, I couldn’t be angry with Lula. Soon or later, my mother might have found her way to a madhouse, as surely as water is drawn to whirlpools. “I just can’t think about fellas now. Like you said, maybe this isn’t my time.”
“I know, honey. Fact is, I just wanted to see your pretty face and get you out of that house.”
“Thank you, Lula. And I am getting out. I’m going to the union hall tonight.” I filled the bucket, brought it home, and made myself go to the hall. Still, I avoided Henryk’s shop. Angry as his father was with Miriam, wouldn’t he be more enraged by a girl who entangled his son with a lunatic?
A restive speaker at the union hall claimed to be a member, although I’d never seen him on the picket lines. He called himself Mel and accused the union sisters of acting too ladylike. “It’s like you’re wearing fancy dresses instead of making them. If you want victory, you gotta fight for it. Fight back! Fight back! Fight back!” Soon the hall was shouting too: “Fight back! Fight back! Fight back!”
Isadore began rousing union songs that finally overwhelmed the pounding chant. “We will fight, brothers and sisters,” he promised, “for justice, not for anarchy. We are workers, not rabble.”
But Mel’s chant had charged the room. People were tired, hot, and hungry, weary of waiting for victory. I knew he was wrong, that fighting would only win us jail cells, yet it was something to do, some shift in our apparent stalemate. “Where’d he come from?” Josephine demanded as we gathered in a smaller group after the meeting. When Enrico offered to follow Mel, I quickly said I’d go along.
“Good idea,” said Josephine. “Don’t let him see you, but if he does, just say you’re taking your little brother home.”
We trailed Mel to an office building where the Cleveland Manufacturers’ Association met. Hidden in a shaded doorway, we watched him speak to a man in a homburg hat, take an envelope that he slipped into his pocket, and then hurry away.
A small, warm hand slipped into mine. “Lucia, sometimes I’m scared.”
“Me too, Enrico.”
“What if the strike doesn’t work?”
“We can’t think that way,” I whispered back. “Come on, it’s late and your mother will be worried.”
Like sparks on dry leaves, fights were breaking out everywhere that week: in taverns and soup kitchen lines, on stairways of apartment buildings where some supported the strike and others did not. When I saw Mrs. Reilly on the street, she first shared the latest adorable saying of little Maria Margaret before lowering her voice in warning: “Lucia, everyone says the strike isn’t working. People just have to go back to work.”
In the end, it was ice that changed so much, or rather a lack of ice. Icemen went on strike, infuriating Josephine and Isadore, who feared the city would turn against all workers now. In fact, newspapers throbbed with warnings of general strikes, anarchy, and Cleveland held hostage to socialist demands.
I was working at the union hall when Pepe came pounding in. “Mob at the icehouse. Enrico’s there,” he gasped.
Josephine ran with me. The icehouse wasn’t far, but my chest burned as we drew nearer. A boiling crowd spread out from the warehouse steps, swearing there was ice inside not being released. “You’re holding it to push up the price,” a woman shouted.
“That’s not true,” the guard was saying. “I don’t have any, but there’s five tons coming tomorrow.”
“What’ll it cost then?”
Josephine stopped, took a breath, and shouted: “Brothers and sisters, let’s talk to the bosses, not the workers!” The magic of her voice could calm any crowd, I told myself. People would listen. They’d calm down and go away. But afterward, few remembered that she was even there.
“We want ice now!” a man shouted.
I heard Enrico’s high, clear voice: “He said they’ll have a shipment tomorrow.” Was he alone inside an angry mob? I pressed my way into a hot thicket of bodies.
“Look out!” someone said. Talk stopped as a brick sailed overhead, flying as if winged, smashing a high window to leave a black hole, a gaping O. Cheers exploded. Did they think cool air would pour out, chilling the city? Rhythmic clapping joined a menacing chant: “We want ice! Ice now! Ice now! Ice now!” I thought I saw Mel; certainly I heard his driving voice: “Ice now! Ice now! Ice now!”
Josephine cried: “Come back, Lucia. Pepe’s getting the police.” But the station was blocks away. Could they come in time? Wearied by endless calls to settle fights, would they even try? Burrowing frantically through the crowd, I finally glimpsed Enrico’s rough curls. He was standing on the icehouse steps. For an instant, pride lifted me over fear. “The man said we’d have ice tomorrow,” he was calmly reminding the women in front of the crowd. “Let’s go home. The guard can’t help. We’ll talk to the bosses tomorrow.” A woman in a red shawl stopped chanting and looked at him, considering. He could do it! A child could truly calm this crowd!
He saw me and smiled. I’ll remember forever those bright eyes and that hand raised in greeting. He pointed to the woman who was saying to her friend: “He’s right, Sarah. It’s not the guard’s fault. Let’s go.”
“Come with us, Enrico,” I said. “Josephine needs you.” I saw his worn shoe lift, about to step down, then pause and move backward, up a step. Now he was at eye level with the adults.
His voice rose. “Listen, everybody, let’s just—”
A man cried out: “Get outta there, kid!”
“Enrico, come down,” I hissed. “It’s dangerous.”
Behind me, a chant was swelling: “Ice now. Ice now. Ice now.” Mel! Where was he? Turning to look, I saw the brick instead. How could I see it so clearly, turning so slowly?
“Enrico!” And then louder, shrieking, tearing my throat: “Get down!” But his eye must have been caught by the woman’s red shawl disappearing into the crowd.
The brick met his bright, upturned face. A horrible jerk back of the neck like a breaking doll. The slender body spun down, headfirst on stone steps, bouncing. Racing forward, I caught the last jerked flail as Enrico tumbled limp into my arms, one side of his face a bloody mass. The other side was perfect, the eye glazed, slightly astonished. I reached for his hand. Perhaps it closed around mine. Perhaps I only imagined this from gripping his so tightly.
“She can still hear,” Sister Margaret had said when Irena was passing. “Enrico,” I whispered in his perfect ear, “don’t worry, we’ll save you. You’ll go fishing with Pepe. You’ll go to school.” In the midst of horror so great, what’s left to trust but miracles?
The crowd was deadly calm around us. A man pulled off his shirt and wadded it under the bleeding head. “Get a doctor!” I shouted. “Go!”
“Sure, a doctor’s coming, or a nurse,” the man said slowly, as one might speak to a child or crazy person. He removed his cap. He was a big man with an Irish voice that rolled over me: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters.” Why is he doing this? But I recited the psalm with him, slipping into Italian. Some joined us in English, others in their languages. Dark blood flowed over my hands; the glazed eye rolled back. “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.”
Now a woman was kneeling beside me. “I’m a nurse,” she whispered. Clean hands moved over Enrico’s slender body, touching his chest and neck, closing the eye.
The man reached out long arms. “I’ll take him home.”
The woman with the red shawl wrapped Enrico. “So the mother won’t see his face right off.” She helped me stand. Now we were all moving, a slow river flowing toward Enrico’s house. The woman’s voice never stopped, gentle and insistent, leading me on: “You’re Lucia, aren’t you? I saw you at the union meetings. Step down here. Brava.
This way, we’re turning. Shall we rest a minute?”
“Take the shawl away. He can’t breathe.”
“Later, dear. We’ll do it later.”
Someone must have run ahead. Angela and her husband met us in the street. Neighbors had cleared the kitchen table to lay out the little body. A priest was called. A woman brought Pepe and then led him away, holding him tightly against her side. The thin shoulders heaved. People moved silently, as if in a picture show. Sitting in a corner of the crowded kitchen, I watched them come shuffling forward to gently touch Enrico and say a word to his family. So many knew him. He had brought them messages; they’d sent him on errands and watched him put up union signs and beat his drum at marches.
“For ice, can you imagine? He died for ice,” I heard over and over.
Then Isadore and Josephine were beside me, one at each arm. “Lucia, we’re taking you home.”
“No.”
“Yes. It’s time.”
At the boardinghouse they maneuvered me to the parlor, where I folded like paper into the divan. The news must have flown through the air like bricks. Roseanne brought a wet cloth for my head. When Isadore and Josephine left, images of the child came at me like cards: Enrico flushed with pleasure when he outran “six thugs,” the guilty face when I first caught him turning over ash cans. Enrico in our kitchen when I persuaded him to help the strike. Persuaded? Hadn’t I threatened him? Enrico drumming, marching, skittering along picket lines with messages, pasting signs on walls, handing out notices, standing tall in our parlor to give his last message. His warm hand in mine as we followed Mel. Enrico at the icehouse, smiling at me. The brick. Enrico falling, bloody. A red shawl over the astonished young face.
Then I was crying. The sound brought Mamma downstairs, running her hands along the walls as she eased into the parlor, touching me curiously, as if recalling what tears might mean. “With a brick,” I sobbed. “That beautiful, beautiful child. Why couldn’t I leave him turning over ash cans?”
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