Adriana listened carefully and reacted cautiously. She said nothing. She showed no excitement. She also did not react with disgust or repudiation. After relaying the offer, the priest asked that she speak to her parents and only give her answer when she was sure.
That night, before falling asleep in the bedroom they shared, Carlotta asked her sister if she would accept Franciskus Zebrowskas’s marriage proposal. She did not get an answer.
The name sounded familiar, but Adriana had only faint memories of Franciskus’s time apprenticing with her father. She remembered him, but not his face. However, because she was devout, she believed what the priest had told her over dinner: “Adriana, my daughter, I know that you and your husband—if Franciskus is the one the Almighty has reserved for you—will be very happy. Happiness awaits you in America.”
Father Siaudizionis’s words about finding happiness in America deeply impressed Adriana. That same night, in bed, before going to sleep, she already knew what she wanted to do, even though she had not yet formally made her decision.
Her analysis was clinical and rational. Her basic premise was that she was already doomed to live an unhappy life. She had an inner conviction that her life in Gekodiche, doing what she was doing, being who she was, meant unhappiness was inevitable. So much so that she had already resigned herself to spending the rest of her days serving others: first her family, and then, after they were gone, God.
She had never wanted a husband. She had never even dreamed of living in America. Never had she conceived of a life different from the one she had, a life full of misery, which she had tried lessening by helping her father, by helping organize church festivals, by reading the books that fell into her hands, while she waited for time to pass.
Suddenly, the opportunity to exchange a damaged life for another one full of possibilities emerged as a concrete fact. The marriage to Zebrowskas represented a kind of unexpected reprieve, one which held out the promise of a life happier than the one to which she had thought she was condemned.
Even if everything were to go wrong in America, and even if she were to continue to be as unhappy as ever, there would be no harm done. Adriana had nothing to lose. Franciskus’s proposal gave her something that, deep down, she desired, but had always renounced as impractical.
On Sunday, after Mass, she waited for the priest to inform him of her decision to marry Franciskus Zebrowskas. When she retuned home she spoke to Carlota, who conveyed the news to their parents.
Franciskus Zebrowskas sent Adriana Simkevicius a second-class ticket on the SS Kursk, which would leave the port of Libau for New York on June 19, 1912. Pinkas Simkevicius closed his shop for three days so that he, his wife and his eldest daughter could travel to Vilnius to say goodbye to Adriana, who from there would travel alone, taking two bags of clothes and a chest containing her wedding trousseau, to her new life.
In Libau, on the eve of her voyage, she slept in a hostel for girls run by Catholic nuns. That night, around dinnertime, she met a seamstress from Vilnius, Helena Viriaudis, who was traveling to New York to work at her uncle’s garment factory.
Given the circumstances, Adriana Simkevicius and Helena Viriaudis needed to become friends. The following morning they boarded the SS Kursk. During the eighteen days they spent at sea, they shared the same bunk bed and imagined, together, but each in her own way, what their new lives in America would be like.
Helena was optimistic and spoke often of the money she would make working with her uncle. She would work hard, but she would earn much more than she would be able to make in Lithuania. Adriana, who never had a penchant for optimism, was afraid that she had traded in an unhappiness she knew for another one she did not, but by then, already on board the ship, there was little she could do about it.
She had no desire to marry. She would do so because it was expected of her. Her mother had given her the necessary instructions and she would fulfill her duties as a wife with her husband. She might even get pregnant, but it was not what she wanted. She would accept Franciskus’s marriage proposal as a hedge against the ambitious bet she was making.
On the day she reached land, Franciskus Zebrowskas was there waiting at the port with a bouquet of white flowers. It was summer. He wore a beige linen suit; she had on a thin light blue wool dress, too hot for that time of year, which she herself had sewn for the occasion.
It took her over four hours to be processed at Ellis Island. Franciskus signed the papers for her to be admitted into the United States. A justice of the peace married them right then and there. Helena Viriaudis served as a witness. Adriana Simkevicius changed her name for the first time.
It was the first of many changes America would bring.
Adriana Zebrowskas stepped ashore, her legs trembling from so many days at sea. When they arrived in Manhattan, they took a carriage straight to Penn Station where they boarded the train for Chicago.
Frank—as Franciskus was now known—was tall and fair-haired. He made a point of helping Adriana out of the carriage, and during the entire trip he showed concern for her comfort. Frank was attentive to her needs, and this captivated her. He was affectionate, but never to the point of taking liberties.
His small tailor shop occupied the ground floor of a building on Milwaukee Avenue. They would live above the shop, in a small apartment: a living room, a bedroom, a kitchen and a small sink. The shop on the ground floor had the same layout as the upper floor.
Adriana knew no one in Chicago. She conversed with the Russian grocer, a woman, and thought it strange that the German butcher called her “lady,” which she did not think appropriate. She was never rude, but she wanted to avoid any unnecessary familiarity. At night, she would study English at the Salvation Army school with Frank, and she would correspond with Helena Viriaudis, who wrote once every three weeks or so.
Her days were spent in solitude, working at the sewing machine, but that did not bother her. She helped her husband care for the shop. She would keep house, and on Sundays she would attend Mass.
Frank would cut the larger patterns and take care of all business outside the shop. There was still no appropriate place to receive customers. Frank visited them, took measurements, made deliveries and bought supplies and whatever else was needed.
Adriana, for her part, was responsible for the sewing, packaging and finishing. She had learned from her father to take pride in her work. She liked to think that any piece sewn by her hands could be appraised by anyone, no matter how demanding.
In Chicago, the fabrics were more beautiful and of greater variety than those in Lithuania, and she had plenty of work to keep her busy. Feelings of sadness continued to plague her, although the excess work numbed her somewhat. She put the sadness down to missing her parents and sister, and to her own depressive nature. She was resigned to her fate. Now she would devote herself to her husband. If their business prospered, who knows? They might even manage to bring her family from Gekodiche to the United States.
With Frank she led a balanced life. They shared the bedroom just like they had shared Simkevicius’s shop: imperceptibly. They slept in separate beds and were only together as husband and wife on two occasions. She thought that maybe that was why she never got pregnant.
However, it was in Chicago, childless and far away from her parents, that Adriana realized that she could find happiness in her new life. It was there, in front of the two sheets of mirrors that lined the walls of the shop where she spent her days, where for the first time she saw an image of happiness.
There, away from her family, surrounded by a language she barely understood, her life still seemed like one of exile. At that moment, happiness for her was nothing superlative. It was something as simple as the absence of pain.
Sometimes, she would try on the clothes she had sewn, to experience how they fit over her own body. She would look at herself in the mirror and would feel proud of the perfect finish she had achie
ved.
However, the day she put on Mr. Hafner’s black velvet jacket in order to check the shoulder stitching, she became aware of something much more important than the fit.
On the shop wall Adriana saw her reflection, her hair pulled back, wearing a man’s black jacket. And for the first time in her life, the pain that had been with her from birth suddenly stopped.
So by chance, like Isaac Newton and the apple, Adriana discovered that dressing like a man made her happy. She was only nineteen and had her whole life ahead of her. For the first time in her life, the awareness that she was still young cheered her.
Father Siaudizionis had been right after all. In America, she had found happiness. Her discovery, however, was personal and private. She could not share it. She would dress as a man when her husband was not home. For that first year in America, this was reward enough.
Adriana became a happy person. In the mornings, after her husband had gone out to deliver the orders, she would wash the dirty dishes from breakfast and sit at the sewing machine for another day’s work. She would look in the mirror and decide, then and there, which clothes would kill her pain that day. Sometimes, she would wear Frank’s shoes and spend the rest of the day looking at her feet in the mirror. At other times, she would wear a shirt and tie. In winter, she would wear a hat.
The news was delivered by two policemen who arrived at the shop at 4 P.M. on a Wednesday. At age 20, Adriana Zebrowskas had become a widow. Frank was dead, run over by a streetcar near Lake Michigan. His body had been mutilated and was hastily buried on Thursday.
Few people attended: two clients, two suppliers, the bookkeeper, Mr. Zydrunas, and three Lithuanians who greeted her but whom she could not identify. After the funeral, Mr. Zydrunas walked her to the trolley stop. On the way, he asked if she intended to sell the tailor shop. Adriana did not know how to answer. She thought she would have to do something with her life. Maybe she would return to Gekodiche. She did not have much of a choice.
Back at the apartment, Adriana lay down on her bed and slept until the next morning. She opened her eyes and saw a beam of light coming in through the window and hitting the wall.
In the morning silence, the light did not help illuminate her anxiety. Adriana still felt pain. She remained in bed until 9:30 A.M., crying, as she had in Gekodiche before falling asleep. She thought about her parents. She thought about going back to Lithuania. She still knew almost no one in Chicago. She had not yet managed to establish roots. Many other thoughts occurred to her; however, she was forced to get out of bed and resume her routines. She had orders to fill.
In a state of extreme pain, she worked in Frank’s clothes: shoes, hat, jacket and tie. She sewed without thinking. She delivered the clothes herself. The Russian grocer and the German butcher who called her “lady” knew she was now a widow. The clients knew too, and they received their orders with faces filled with pity and did not even bother checking whether the pieces required adjustments or not.
She had already written three letters to Helena Viriaudis—the last one announcing Frank’s death—with no response. However, just over a week after her husband’s death, on a Friday, she found an envelope in the mailbox. The letter was from New York, but it was not in Helena’s handwriting. Instead the name of Helena’s uncle, Adam Viriaudis, appeared with the return address. He wrote the following words:
Dear Mrs. Zebrowskas,
I have received your letters addressed to my niece Helena Viriaudis. I wish she were the one writing to you, but the Almighty has willed that our beloved Helena should leave us prematurely, a victim of typhus. To her dying days, my niece had only words of admiration for you and the quality of your work as a seamstress. I take this sad opportunity to add that good workers (seamstresses and tailors) whom you might recommend are always welcome in my shops. With the aid of Providence, my business has done well, and I always have room for people with talent and a willingness to work hard.
Sincerely,
Adam Viriaudis
The weekend following that muggy Friday afternoon was transformative. The news of Helena’s death unleashed in Adriana an emotional turmoil that Frank’s death alone had not been able to arouse. She had now lost her husband and her only friend. The two affectionate ties she had managed to establish in this new country had vanished, just like that. She was feeling more emotions than she was able to discern or process. Feeling so alone in a foreign country made her fatally vulnerable. She had to do something.
The following Saturday, in the morning, she gathered her strength, and she went to the bookkeeper’s office to discuss how much she could obtain for the tailor shop. She signed all of the documents he put before her and received an advance of $300 for the inventory and the machines.
She did not want to take the trolley home, and so she returned on foot. She looked at the passersby and wondered what ailments afflicted those men and women. What passions, what fears moved them through the streets of that strange country? For the love of whom did those people work?
She arrived at the shop weighed down by these questions. She ran up the stairs, as if she needed to use the bathroom. She opened the door and entered the apartment and cried. She cried for hours. She could not stop crying. She went to sleep crying. She woke up crying.
She tried to solve the problem with the only panacea she knew. She spent all day and all night in Frank’s pajamas. Sunday night, though, was particularly difficult. As if trying to heal herself with a massive dose of painkillers, Adriana dressed as a man from head to toe. She even put on Frank’s underwear. Nothing helped.
Frantic, standing in front of the mirror where she had seen happiness, she cut her hair with tailors’ shears. Concentrating intensely, she passed coal over her thick eyebrows and parted her hair to the side with the help of Frank’s hair grease, which was still on the bathroom shelf.
Adriana Zebrowskas observed the final days of her mourning dressed as a man. That was how she went out onto the streets. With male clothes, walking in the end-of-summer wind, a cold gust hitting her face. She thought of walking all the way to Lake Michigan, but instead wandered aimlessly all night, and when neighborhood prostitutes approached her, taking her for a man, offering their services, Adriana liked it. Strangely, she felt happy again.
That night, Adriana had been transformed. And now she needed a new life for this other person who had just been revealed to her, who had existed all along inside, protesting throughout her entire life, preventing her from being happy.
The sleepy clerk who stood before Adriana Zebrowskas at the County Clerk’s Office was accustomed to interacting with people of all different types. It was not unusual for newcomers seeking new documents to come wearing clothes typical of their countries of origin.
New arrivals kept coming to Chicago. In addition to the Lithuanians, there were the Italians, Jews, Greeks, Germans, Chinese, southern blacks—all types. That tall, thin man, with coal under his nails, had lost his documents. He was just one more immigrant who could not speak English. He needed a copy of his birth certificate. His name was Angelus Zebrowskas, male, born in Gekodiche, Lithuania, on March 19, 1897. That was all Adriana had to do: fill out a form and take a picture with the photographer on the corner.
That was when she discovered she could be happy forever—and she was.
With new documents that identified her as a man, one week later, she wrote two letters: one to Adam Viriaudis and the other to her father, Pinkas Simkevicius. The first one was a letter of introduction for her twin brother, Angelus, “a very skilled tailor, who received the same training I did at our father’s house in Lithuania,” who “sought employment at a respectable establishment and a better future in New York.”
The second letter, however, was written in a different handwriting and it was signed by a Russian greengrocer, “a friend of your daughter’s, the widow A. Zebrowskas,” who, she regretted to inform him, “had passed away two weeks
earlier in Chicago, a victim of typhus.”
The following week, Angelus Zebrowskas arrived in New York. He brought only one suitcase filled with Frank’s clothes—adjusted to fit Angelus—and the letter from his twin sister, Adriana, addressed to Viriaudis, recommending his skill as a tailor. Helena’s uncle recognized Adriana’s tiny handwriting and employed Angelus as a cutter.
It is not known how the news of Adriana’s death was received by the Simkevicius family in Gekodiche. Angelus never again had any news from them. It was as if he had lost them all in a massacre, in a genocide.
Angelus worked hard and prospered. He married Carmela, a Sicilian with two small children, who, like Adriana, had become a widow soon after coming to the United States. In a few years, Carmela and Angelus had a clothing factory and three clothing stores. Angelus became a benefactor of the Italian community, which he fit into so well that after his death a stretch of Mulberry Street, in the heart of Little Italy, was renamed Angelus’s Way.
Angelus Zebrowskas’s secret was only discovered after his death, while his body was being prepared for burial. The subject was, however, quelled immediately. Carmela told the priest that Angelus had suffered an accident in Lithuania and that their marriage had never been consummated. She asked the priest that the subject be laid to rest once and for all.
“Father, God could not have given me a more dedicated husband, or a better father to my children,” she said before burying the subject.
MY CONCLUSIONS AFTER
READING THE BOOK
Now the ties seemed clear to me between Adriana Simkevicius’s story and Sergio Y.’s impulse to leave Brazil for another country. For me, the explanation could be found, at least in part, in the unusual title of the biography found by Sergio on Ellis Island: In America: The Story of Our Father.
As I understand it—although I could be mistaken—if Adriana’s story corresponds to Sergio Y.’s, then Angelus’s should correspond to that of Sandra.
Sergio Y. Page 8
