When We Were Strangers

by Pamela Schoenewaldt

  “Dormitory A to the left,” a matron shouted. Gabriella tugged me into a steamy hall of stacked berths, the spaces between them clogged with bags and travelers. Teresa must have tipped the matron, for we had places together. The berths were in pairs, bolted on the long edge and butting another pair at the head. Gabriella would sleep between us, Teresa explained, so she wouldn’t fall out at night. Above us was another set of four berths, reached by a rough ladder, making eight in our block.

  Exhausted, I unrolled my mattress and sat down to study my new home. The long, rough-paneled dormitory had no windows. Swinging oil lamps sent bars of pale yellow light across the room. There was a center aisle between two rows of berths, forty-eight in each row. There were ninety-six berths, then, but far more than a hundred souls, for I saw three, even four small children huddled on one mattress. It was as if the whole of Opi lived in one smoky room. Since hooks on the walls would not hold all our bags, they would be piled on the floor or our berths. The center aisle was barely four paces wide.

  “Look, flying tables,” said Gabriella suddenly. “How can we eat up there, Irma?” I followed her tiny finger to rude tables and benches lashed to the ceiling.

  “We lower them for meals, see the ropes?” said a matron. This oddity delighted the child, but glancing at Teresa, I read her thought: apart from meals there would be no place to sit but on our beds. Small lidded boxes bolted to the floor held chamber pots in full view. Even if we emptied them quickly, the room would soon be reeking.

  “Washrooms and toilets up the ladder, then left to the forward deckhouse,” the matrons said, but how far that was I had no idea. I tried not to think of this or of the woman great with child settling nearby. In Opi she would be home and tended by my mother and aunts, not a spectacle for strangers.

  Two women threw their bags on the berth above us and scrambled after them, chatting brightly. “Serbs,” Teresa whispered. “Our church hired masons who spoke like that.” The two began giggling. What was so funny here? I pulled out my pattern book to study. If I could sew in Attilio’s cart, I could work at sea and have my own world like those Serbian girls.

  Our dormitory was filled and yet still more travelers streamed by. This must be a thoroughfare to another dormitory deeper in the ship. As the line slowly thinned, lamplight raked the walls. A boom and shudder made us leap. Then came a grinding churn and steady pounding, louder than giant anvils.

  “Boiler engines,” a matron called out. “We’re raising anchor.”

  “I’m going up,” I told Teresa, frantic to see the last of the hills and the road to Opi.

  “You can’t,” she warned.

  But I had already edged past a late-arriving family, their three children clinging to posts while the parents pleaded and pulled them toward the dormitory. Someone tugged at my skirt. “Take me up too, Irma,” Gabriella begged. So I let her worm ahead as we followed a faint stream of daylight and fresh salt air.

  “Captain says no steerage topside,” a steward warned a brace of drunks pawing at a ladder. He jostled them down a corridor, offering a good price on new wine. We hid behind a post and scrambled up the ladder.

  Finally we were on deck, with wind and space around us, free of the terrible smells. Four young women pressed against a rail facing land. As they waved, pointed and compared hotels, I gathered they were maids to first-class passengers. Hoping to pass as a maid myself, I stood near them, or tried to stand, for the deck rocked like boards that children set on rocks for play. I gripped the railing and made Gabriella do the same. Fishing boats scurried from our path.

  “Look,” cried Gabriella, pointing out our tiny lodging house and stubs of offices behind the port. Once-huge palaces shrank steadily, squeezing broad streets to threads. I saw the fishing quarter where we had left Rosanna and roads winding through hills where Attilio might be traveling. Tolling church bells dimmed. As the great city flattened into gray-green hills, the bay cupped behind us and even Vesuvius shrank.

  “Zia!” my heart called. “Don’t forget me!”

  “Arrivederci Naples!” a maid cried gaily. So she would be returning someday. The bay would open wide to her, the city pull out from the hills and church bells peal, welcoming her home.

  “You’re from steerage?” a rough voice demanded. It was the bald sailor. Up close, he looked older, his ruddy skin wrinkled as old linen. “You’re to stay below unless the captain lets you up.” The maids edged away and Gabriella gripped my hand.

  “I wanted to see the last of the land,” I said.

  “So do all of you. You think eight hundred poor folks can be on deck and leave us space to work? Get going or they dock my pay.”

  “So we can’t come up before America?” Gabriella asked mournfully.

  “Maybe, a few at a time when the captain’s willing and in good weather,” he said. “Depends. If you fight down there, he don’t let anyone up. And watch, it’s not always single men who make the most trouble. Sometimes it’s the ladies. That your little girl?” he asked suddenly.

  “No, she’s traveling with her mother.”

  “My father’s in America,” Gabriella said brightly. “Waiting for us.”

  “Huh.” The sailor sniffed. “Wind picking up. Go on now, captain’s coming.”

  As we climbed below, steerage smells and sounds rolled over us: onions and wet clothes, men playing cards and children running between beds with mothers calling after them. Through the walls came a steady rumble. “What’s that?” Gabriella demanded.

  “The engine that takes us to America.”

  “How?”

  “Maybe with blades that turn like oars,” I said vaguely.

  “What makes the blades go around?”

  “Coal heats water to make steam,” said one of the card players, “in an oven as big as a church. Don’t go near the engine room. It’s hot as hell and cooks you up.” The child’s eyes widened. I pulled her along.

  “Never mind him,” I said, but in the next days we heard of boiler men burned by steam and leaping sparks; mechanics losing fingers, hands or whole limbs; sailors broken from falls off the rigging and mast or scoured out to sea on waves. “Just be glad you’re not a sailor,” a matron muttered.

  For our first meal at sea, Teresa wedged us next to the Serbian girls. Their names were Gordana and Milenka, they explained in scraps of Italian. “We are sisters. Our father send us to America when we don’t marry bad men he choose for us.”

  “They don’t look like sisters,” muttered Simona, a gap-toothed woman from Puglia who plowed her way into conversations and soon knew every name in our dormitory.

  “One father. Two mothers. Hers die,” Gordana said, pointing to Milenka.

  “So you’re half sisters,” Teresa said briskly.

  “How did you know they were bad men?” Gabriella demanded, pulling Milenka’s sleeve.

  “Leave her alone,” said Teresa. “Eat.”

  The matrons ladled out a stew of onions, potatoes and bits of tough meat, careful to spread the bits evenly. The bread was good, chewy with a thick crust like Assunta’s. “We have three days’ worth,” the matrons said when we asked for more. “After that, it’s hardtack.”

  “Irma, let’s try to watch the sea tomorrow,” Gabriella whispered. But we could not go up the next day or the next. There was “a problem” on deck, the matrons explained shortly. All across the Mediterranean we stayed below. Our world was the dormitory, the steamy crowd of the washrooms, rank toilet room where we might wait an hour for a seat and tiny openings around the stairwells where crowds squeezed into shafts of fresh air. We saw nothing of the world outside but patches of gray waves through portal windows. I passed hours on my berth embroidering roses, buds tight and half open, full-blown roses and a drift of falling petals. Bent over my needle, I fixed on its soft pluck, pluck inside the steady drum of voices, children playing, babes crying and the ceaseless pounding of pistons.

  Days passed without changing, lit by our oil lamps. Many finished their provisions an
d became prey to stewards who peddled cheese, dried beef, fruit, eggs, beer and wine at terrible prices. “So live on cabbage soup,” they taunted those who balked. I bought nothing and ate little, for the ship’s rocking churned my stomach.

  Chapter Four

  Storm in Steerage

  A day beyond Gibraltar, shrill winds rose over the engine’s fiercer pounding. “Bad storm coming,” a matron warned. “Tie up your bags.” The ship bucked fiercely at dinner. We clung to our trenchers and spoons until stewards suddenly ordered the tables and benches hoisted and “secured.” Could they fall in a storm? Gordana and Milenka deftly lashed their bags and ours to posts, then moved from berth to berth helping the others. Even Simona stepped aside to let Milenka work.

  “Everybody on their beds,” the stewards ordered. “Now!” The ship dipped wildly, hurling small children off their feet. Dazed men staggered back from card games in the stairwells, groping from post to post as swinging lanterns scraped streaks of light across their faces.

  Shrieks laced the howling wind, first of children and soon of women and men. Some cried the ship was witched. Many prayed. I saw men cover their heads with shawls and chant, rocking steadily. Their rocking, the rocking ship and everywhere the clicking rosaries like ravenous mice made me dizzy. I closed my eyes as matrons careened down the aisles, ordering mothers to tie small children to the posts. Private chamber pots tumbled across the room. A flying bucket caught a woman full in the face. She fainted and her husband cried for a doctor.

  “He can’t come,” a steward shouted. I had lived through mountain storms, but in a stone house rooted in the earth with my own people near me.

  “Stay on your berths!” the matrons shouted. The ship pitched, yanking a babe from his mother’s arms and hurling him against a post, screaming.

  Gordana and Milenka climbed down to us, announcing, “Take storm together.” We passed the night with our arms linked around Gabriella, who whimpered herself to sleep. I say “night,” but faint ship’s bells under the screeching wind and creaking timbers were all that signaled day or night. “Holy Mother of God,” I repeated gripping my rosary, too light-headed to work the beads. “Be with us now.” Sickness filled me top to toe. Teresa held a bowl for my vomit until a sudden lurch tore it from her hands, soaking us all.

  With each wave crashing full against the ship, I thought, this one breaks her, now sea water swallows us like the avalanche that took a village near Opi, sweeping out trees, houses, men and sheep. A bag weakly tied broke free and slid across the floor, spilling clothes, cups, a clock and Bible that skidded back and forth.

  The air throbbed with retching, first here and there and then in waves across the dormitory. I gripped our galloping bed. Words rattled in my head like marbles in a cup: Lord, I’m dying. Then: Lord, let me die. Let. Die. For an instant the ship held steady, the wind dropped, then raged again after the mocking calm. I’m dead, I thought wildly, dead among strangers like my great-grandfather in Russia. This is hell. No flames, only storm without end. We were the damned, battered for our sins. Sailors’ feet pounded overhead. Whistle blasts. It is finished. We sink, the ocean takes us. Now at least, the peace of death, but still we toss on mountain waves. I closed my eyes and somehow slept, tangled and gasping for air under a vast black cloak.

  I dreamed a pale green light spread like oil over rocking waves. The Servia was broken away and I alone was left, clinging to my bed at sea. Carlo floated past, astride a piston. Laughing, he reached for me, his arm a smoky glass showing angry waves below. A mast spun by, shattering the arm to shimmers. My bed melted into waves and I floated free. A faceless shadow man appeared on a battered raft. “Here’s my sail,” he said, hoisting Carlo’s limp and gauzy body. “Come, Irma, there’s room for you.”

  Someone shook me and I saw Gordana’s hovering face, felt a cup at my lips, woke and slept again. A night, a day, another night and day. Twice I ate rough dryness, hardtack perhaps. Someone wet my brow. I tasted warm tea and struggled to sit. Gordana and Milenka must have returned to their berths. From whispering and laughter, paper slaps and creaking wood above us I gathered they were playing the fast, complex card game that they swore only Serbs could learn. Near me Gabriella slept, arms and legs splayed out like a rag doll. Teresa worked around us, rolling soiled linens together and feeling through bags for clean clothes.

  A new sound came slowly through what ship’s bells told us was night—a low moaning, and then a woman’s sharp grunting cries, closer and closer together. Teresa whispered. “It’s Angela. She’s in labor, poor creature.” Voices barked for clean water and linens, needle and thread. My sewing box was not a span away, but I could not bend to reach it. Perhaps the Lord will take both mother and babe, I thought, drifting back to sleep. Minutes later, Teresa shook me awake to a shrill cry that filled the room now, triumphant and imperious: “I’m here! Attend me!”

  “A healthy girl!” women shouted. Some beat their cups together. Men cheered weakly and children shouted, some excited, some confused.

  “Where did she come from?” a little boy demanded. “Did the storm bring her?”

  “Lord be praised!” Teresa whispered. The Serbs sang a birthing song and Teresa helped me stand. From all over the rolling room, we made our way to Angela’s bed, grasping posts to keep from falling as the babe’s sharp wails rose over the wind.

  “I’ll call her Marina,” the mother said as she nursed the swaddled, red-faced babe, “because she out-cried the storm.” Someone laughed, then others, until we were all holding our still aching bellies, laughing and crying in pain.

  All day the storm slowly weakened. In the evening the captain himself paid his respects to Marina. He held a linen handkerchief to his nose, but removed it long enough to give Angela an amulet for the child and congratulate her on the birth. Then he clapped the handkerchief to his mouth again and made for the door, stopping to speak in angry whispers to a matron as he pointed at the room. Had we grown used to smells that made a visitor gag?

  “Signor Captain, may we go on deck when the storm’s over?” Gabriella called out, but he turned his squared shoulders away and did not answer.

  “Those who can walk,” said the matrons briskly, “help clean this pigsty.” I could do little more than slowly straighten our bedclothes, but Teresa and the Serbian girls joined a score of others washing floors with salt water, sorting tangled possessions and scattering dried lavender and rosemary from a Greek woman’s stores to freshen the air. As my strength crept back, I helped Gordana straighten our beds.

  It was then that I learned a thief had moved in the storm. In the darkness and tossing, someone had passed among the sick and those lying in stupor, plucking a little from each. The last of my Opi gold coins were gone from the chamois pouch around my neck, leaving only the lire squirreled inside my bag.

  “You felt nothing, no? So it must have been a gypsy. Only they are so light in hand,” said Milenka grimly.

  “Or an Albanian,” Teresa insisted. “They’re the sly ones.”

  “Greek for sure. Everyone knows how they smell out silver and gold,” Simona announced. She had lost her mother’s silver icon. Up and down the rows of berths, curses and cries of fury signaled others discovering their losses. The thief or thieves were surely wailing as well, as if their own treasures too had been stolen. We should all open our bags for inspection, Simona insisted, but the matrons hushed her: no thief would be fool enough to keep the stolen goods in the dormitory. “It could have been one of them,” hissed Simona, pointing at the matrons. “They weren’t sick.”

  “You have lire enough for the train, at least,” Teresa consoled me.

  “In Cleveland you make more,” said Gordana.

  Yes, I could make money, but no more of the Opi gold I had meant to hoard as my family’s women had done for one to come whose need would be greater than mine.

  “We live the storm,” Milenka said loudly. “That is the good thing. We clean now.” So we did, working in grim silence and resting in turns, ou
r limbs weak from disuse. The babe Marina slept calmly, born in tempest and easy to calm. We had lost three days in the storm, a matron grumbled. Do not think of this, I told myself, and not of the gold either. Be like Marina, each day new.

  At dinner we picked at our food, our bellies wary and most of us daring only hardtack and tea. The ship eased to a steady rocking. As the evening drew on and many felt stronger, talk turned to America, how jobs fell in your hand there like ripe plums from a tree. “Good land,” someone swore. “Work it and it’s free.”

  “And herds of wild horses, catch one and he’s yours,” a woman bubbled. Others spoke of painted canyons, forests vaster than Tuscany, black loam deep as a man is high, streets lined with factories, each with hundreds of workers, a brown river wider than a city, a former shepherd who owned a vast ranch now and paid his sisters’ dowries in Sicily. The stories were like winter tales in Opi of talking bears, two-headed sheep, crafty second sons, doomed or triumphant lovers and miracles seen “long ago, in a certain dukedom.” Swept up in the talk, I spoke of my own plans.

  “You’ll find sewing work everywhere,” one man assured me. Others said no, machines made all the clothes in America.

  “If you don’t find work in Cleveland,” suggested a woman with rippling red hair, “take the bride train to California. Fifty men for every woman; you just pick.”

  “What, like a horse market?” Teresa scoffed.

  “Better than factory work,” said others.

  “Why Cleveland?” a Sicilian woman demanded. “What if your brother’s not there?”

  Teresa studied my face. “She’s right. You could stay in New York with us.”

  “Yes, with my father,” Gabriella added eagerly. I rubbed the grease-slick table.

  “What do you know about Cleveland anyway?” the Sicilian persisted.