Bowery Girl

by Kim Taylor

  “You hung my clothes.” Annabelle ran her fingers over the fabrics of her dresses. Even in the dim light, the blues and pinks and reds danced. “I’ll have to let these out a bit. No corset, I guess.”

  “I even repapered the walls. Got a grand serial going on I’ll read ya later.”

  Annabelle lifted her wig from a hook, pulled it on, and flipped at the fake curls to make them bob. Then she bent to the piece of mirror on a shelf in the corner, and adjusted the wig’s placement.

  “Aw, now I recognize you,” Mollie said.

  “Do you?” Annabelle pinched her cheeks. “Where’s my rouge?”

  “In the box under the bed. I’ll get it.”

  Annabelle twisted the lid open and dabbed the red on her cheeks and lips. “Want some?” She held out the jar.

  “Nah.”

  “Natural beauty you got, Mollie.” She opened a small box that held blue powder and a tiny brush, and then ran the color over her lids. “Better, huh?” Annabelle reached to her three dresses. “Now, which color for Tommy? He likes the red, I think.”

  “Ya look better in blue.”

  Annabelle pulled the red from the hook and shook it out. She held it to her waist, sighed, and sat heavily on the edge of the bed they shared. “God, open a window. Oh, I forget, we don’t have one.” She turned the dress inside out. “I can take some fabric from round the bustle, here, and drape it in front. Make my own style. Give me your knife, Mollie.”

  As Annabelle tore at the seams of her dress, Mollie pulled the chair from the wall and sat, crossing her legs. She stuck a matchstick in her mouth and leaned back, so the front chair legs lifted from the floor. This was right; this was like it always was, Annabelle making pretty things and Mollie sitting and watching. The light from the candle spread in a golden circle.

  Annabelle glanced up from her work. “Tell me about your world.”

  “My world?”

  “Your world without me.”

  “Oh, that. I became a Protestant. Go to church every day. Bought a horse and carriage to tour the park.” Mollie shook her head in mock sadness. “Being rich is so boring, really.”

  “The day I see you in any church, Mollie Flynn, is the day I’ll dance naked at Lefty’s and give all the money thrown at me to charity. Ow. Haven’t done any sewing in a while.” Annabelle shook her thumb, then sucked the blood from the tip. “How’s Seamus?”

  “Same as ever. Wanting more than ever. What the hell. I ain’t marrying him.” She stood, and moved two chipped cups from the shelf to the barrel. Using her skirt as a towel, she picked up the pot and poured the tea. “I mean what the hell, ya know? What does he think?”

  Someone pounded against the wall. Mollie grabbed for the mirror so it wouldn’t fall. Then she kicked at the wall.

  “Shut up, ya filthy”—she kicked the wall again—“stinkin’ Wops!”

  More pounding. Annabelle’s dresses fluttered with each hit.

  Mollie whirled to Annabelle. “Was I yelling? I don’t think I was yelling.” She made a fist and thumped twice, tearing the newspaper that lined the walls. “I wasn’t yelling, ya sons of bitches!”

  Annabelle laughed. She set the needle she worked with on the barrel’s top, and wiped her eyes. “Aw, ya daft bitch. I’m so glad to be home.”

  A BATH

  THEY WERE ASKED TO write their names in the ledger at the East Side Baths. The large, wafer-thin pages were filled with the names and dates of all the visitors who had entered; upon the approval and signature of the head matron, five cents were to be deposited in a coffee tin.

  The building had once been a mansion, and its back gardens had stretched to the banks of the East River. The elegance could still be seen in the welcoming curves of the banister railing, the colored glass above the door where Jesus’ lamb lay in green meadows, in the high ceilings carved with angels and bouquets of flowers. Where had the family fled who had once lived here, in the time of Madison and Adams? To Washington Square, perhaps, or farther away—the Forties off Fifth Avenue. They fled the immigrant masses: the Irish and Germans who came through the gates of Castle Garden and invaded the East Side. The fathers and sons of the old families had continued to conduct their business here, although they were careful to place large signs in the windows of their shops and factories stating NO DOGS OR IRISH ALLOWED.

  But that was before. Now, the Irish were, if not respectable, at least established in their rough-and-tumble strong-hold. And as the good American families had done to them, so the Irish did to the newcomers who now flowed through Castle Garden.

  The head matron scowled at Mollie. She crossed her ample arms and narrowed her eyes. Her jowls were gray as the dirt in the corners of the entryway. She waited for Mollie’s name.

  Mollie dipped the pen in the ink bottle.

  The light from the stained-glass meadow above her suffused the room with a green phosphorescent tint. Mollie held the pen aloft; the black ink slid in one large drop to the very tip, where it ballooned and then dropped to the paper below.

  “Now look what you’ve done! I won’t be able to read three names now, you stupid girl. I’m meant to transfer the names from this ledger to Miss DuPre’s ledger, and you have ruined it.”

  “What are you keeping the names for?” Annabelle asked.

  “I ought to take your five cents just for defiling my ledger. And you’ve held up the line—look.” The matron pointed to the doorway.

  She was right: Young girls, women holding babies close to their bosoms, cheap shawls, no shawls, thin shoes, thin hair, children with bowed legs certainly caused by rickets, stood in a long line behind Mollie.

  “Now sign your name.”

  Mollie’s hand dropped to the empty line, 152. In her very best handwriting, she signed, Dolley Madison.

  The head matron plucked the pen from her hand and pointed it at Annabelle. “Come, come, come.”

  “She can’t write,” Mollie said. “I’ll sign for her.” She took back the pen and filled line 153: Martha Washington.

  The head matron turned the heavy ledger to face her. She attacked the page with her pen, marking her initials boldly. She cocked her head at the ping of Mollie’s coins in the coffee tin. “Take a towel from the basket to the right of the door, then up the stairs. Take any tub that’s empty, and if there isn’t an empty one, share with another girl. The faucet’s on the wall—the under matron will add one kettle of hot water—scrub, then wipe, then redress. Ten minutes.”

  Mollie and Annabelle barely heard her. They darted for the stairs, grabbing a towel.

  “Since when’s there a sign-in?” Annabelle asked.

  “Since some rich bitch bought this building and the one next door. Got classrooms and everything over there. Wait till you see her. Harps on and on about us improving our lives. Can’t take a bath in peace anymore.”

  Mollie smelled the clean sting of soap before she entered the long room. Girls giggled. Water sloshed against iron tubs and dribbled from faucets.

  “Where’s all the tubs?” Mollie counted only ten, where there had been twenty. Plugged pipes extended from one wall; the only evidence of the missing tubs were dark rectangular water stains.

  “You’ll have to ask Miss DuPre that.” The under matron who answered made a disapproving sound from between the gap in her teeth. “Five went to the basement and one up the stairs to you-know-who’s new rooms. Knows what to do with the tubs, she does, but not what to do with us. Isn’t that right, Peggy?”

  Another under matron swayed by, her hands gripping a pot of steaming water. Her gray hair, sizzled and steamed all the day, stuck out in tiny erratic curlicues. “Serving the poor and never a care for the ones of us who make an honest living.”

  “Made an honest living.”

  “Some’s luckier than us. Head matron downstairs is to remain head matron of the what’s it called? Settlement house.” Peggy slopped the hot water into an empty tub. She let the bucket clatter to the floor, then twisted open the faucet. Water gushed, br
own with minerals and rust, into the tub. “Not much else you can expect of one of them, is it? Not an ounce of kindness and not a bit of respect for the pope.” She crossed herself and rolled her eyes. The faucet squealed against its metal as she shut the tap. “Well, get in, girls, you only got the few minutes.”

  Mollie glanced at Annabelle. “Looks like we’re sharing.”

  Gray scum floated on the water; Mollie hoped it was only from the last girl’s soap. She put her hand in the water, and then pulled away sharply. Oh, how cold it was! How would she ever sit in the bath itself?

  There were two pegs on the wall on either side of the tub: for clothes and for towels. Combs hung from ropes (so as not to be “mistakenly” taken). Large blocks of soap sat on shelves. Across the room, kettles bubbled atop heavy cast-iron stoves.

  The under matrons sat near the stoves, each woman dressed in the cheap rags of the tenement, each serious about her job, which was to keep order.

  But how to keep down the squeals of glee and the screams as the girls first touched the cool water? Or the laughter from the mothers, happy to have left their baby or toddler in another room, to have even these few precious moments free from family responsibility? No matter how loudly the under matrons barked and shushed, it proved impossible to quiet all the temperaments in the room. The under matrons kept strict time over their tubs, if not the noise level; they knew to the second who should get out to let another “poor girl” in.

  Annabelle and Mollie undressed, hanging up their skirts and shirts and underthings.

  “Damn, that water looks cold as a witch’s tit,” Annabelle said.

  Holding her breath, Mollie flung herself into the tub. “Ain’t so bad.”

  Annabelle removed her wig, careful to hang it so it would not fall onto the wet floor. She hugged her arms to her chest and dipped a toe in the water.

  Mollie blinked once, then again. “Jesus Christ, Annabelle. You’re pregnant.”

  “Looks like it.” She climbed in, facing Mollie. She held her breath and submerged her face. Bubbles wisped across the water. Then she sat up abruptly, sloshing water over the edge. “I tried to get rid of it, got some herbs, but they only sent me to the infirmary for a coupla days.”

  “Shit.”

  “That’s all you can say?”

  “What the hell else can I say?” Mollie grabbed the edge of her towel, wet it, and rubbed it into the large soap block.

  Oh, how the grime turned the water black! She yanked her fingers through her hair to untangle it, then took up the comb, pulling hard enough to yank half the sopping hair off her head. But eventually it went through smoothly, and finally the water was dirtier than her skin.

  She could barely look at Annabelle, at that firm, round belly. Of all the things that could happen in the world, this was the worst. She thought of all the men Annabelle’d let in and out. How Annabelle pulled away from those who refused to use the French letters she provided. How Annabelle got pregnant anyway. Annabelle was trapped now—not with a man—but with something growing in her. Too bad the herbs in Blackwell’s didn’t work. “What are you gonna do?”

  “Don’t have one damn idea. Get Tommy to marry me, I suppose. Go honest, least when it shows too much. I don’t know.”

  “How the hell we gonna take care of it?”

  “We?”

  “We always said we wouldn’t be stupid like that, Annabelle. You told me that. Now what? You’re gonna marry Tommy? He ain’t gonna marry you. He just wants his cut of the money you make.”

  “Stop.”

  “What about me? I kept the place for us. What about Brooklyn? What about our plan, that we was gonna start over?”

  Annabelle rested against the back of the tub and closed her eyes. “I can’t do this now.”

  “Get rid of it.”

  “No.”

  “Fine.” Mollie stepped from the bath. She shrugged on her undergarment, and was about to put on the dress—but now that she was clean, she saw more clearly the muck that lay a good six inches up from the hem of her skirt. She held the dress over the tub, and began to rub it clean in the water.

  “Washtubs for clothes are downstairs in the basement.” The under matron glared at them from her seat. Her voluminous skirts and broad waist showed decades of fatty corned beef and very little cabbage. “Two cents extra.”

  “We don’t have two cents. And we’ve got at least a minute left.”

  “First time here?”

  Mollie shot a look at Annabelle. “Sure.”

  The under matron glanced at her colleagues to make sure they were occupied elsewhere. “Just this once, then.”

  The dirt did not come completely out of her skirt. Still, it was better than it had been. Mollie braided her hair and rolled it into a bun. She put on her coat.

  Annabelle dried herself, then dressed. She looked flashy and bold, the material of her skirt too thin to be of much use but to pull up in an alley.

  “Exit right at the bottom of the stairs,” the under matron said. “God bless.”

  “And God damn,” Mollie added.

  At the new and rapidly expanding Cherry Street Settlement House, one was not allowed to exit the door through which one came. No, Mollie and Annabelle, who had come only for baths, were forced to trot by shining new classrooms, wherein sat women learning English (“How Do You Do?”) and politics (“What Makes a Republican?”) and proper raising of children (“Never Let the Child Rule”). The board near the exit was filled with many pieces of paper, offering lectures and classes on everything from the question of “the women’s vote” to typewriting.

  “Anything of interest?” There was a rustle of silk behind them. The woman who spoke was not much taller than Mollie. Her eyes were light blue and sharp behind her glasses.

  The Do-Gooder. Miss DuPre. The rich bitch who had apparently just fired all the under matrons upstairs. One of those odd ones, with money and a college education, hell-bent on changing “the Poor.”

  “I’d be interested in knowing where we’re gonna take baths,” Mollie said, “now that you’ve removed them all.”

  “Just making room. As you can see from the board, we’re adding classes. Sewing, reading, mathematics, typewriting, morals, housekeeping.”

  “I know cleanliness is next to godliness, but typewriting?”

  “You teach reading?” Annabelle asked.

  “And we have a board for jobs.”

  “We’ve got jobs, thank you,” Mollie said. “I’m a thief and she’s a whore. We could teach classes if you like.”

  The Do-Gooder frowned. “I thought you were an opium runner.”

  “A what?”

  “Isn’t that what you said last week?”

  “I did?” Mollie shrugged. “Change in career.”

  “Are you a good thief?”

  “Not too bad, if I do say so myself.”

  The woman looked as if she might laugh, but then her gaze flicked over Annabelle’s stomach. She pulled a flyer from the board and offered it to Annabelle.

  Mollie grabbed the paper. Annabelle grabbed the other end. “If you give it to me, I’ll read it to you.”

  “If you come here,” the woman said to Annabelle, “you can read it yourself.”

  On the way home, Annabelle stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “I want to learn to read.”

  “Since when?”

  “I want a better life. If I learn to read, maybe, just maybe—”

  “So I’ll teach ya. You want to be preached at all day by some do-gooder? Reading? Christ, Annabelle, what’s happened to you?”

  “I ain’t going to jail again.” She squeezed the bridge of her nose; her cheeks flushed pink.

  “Aw, you gonna cry? You don’t gotta go to jail again. Look, it’s all right. We’re gonna go meet the boys and have fun and everything’s gonna be the way it was, all right?”

  “But it’s not the way it—”

  “I know already. I know.”

  LEFTY MALONE’S DANCEHALL


  IN THE BOWERY AND along Mulberry Street and Mott and Delancey and Chatham Square and Paradise Alley, in the empty lots and busy corners and dark walkways, there were many boys who claimed to be king. They swaggered in princely packs, in fours or fives or eights. They had grand names for themselves: Rum Runners, the Growlers, Black Hats, Guts and Glory. Each gang staked a territory and waited for their rivals to set foot in it. Should another group, whether by accident or design, happen by, bricks and bats and cans appeared from nowhere. And when the munitions were depleted, hard fists took their place. They fought until blood flowed and would have fought to the death, but usually a policeman or someone’s father turned up.

  Then a boy—usually the one with the bloodiest head—would get another beating from his father or a good smack of the policeman’s wood baton. He would be sent home, cursing every step of the way.

  The rival gangs would separate with only a can or two thrown as they went their different ways. General loafing would be the next activity, or perhaps a bit of gambling and a pail of beer passed among the swaggering princes.

  The most revered boys were those whose pictures graced the Police Gazette. And of those, Tommy McCormack, lead fellow of the Growlers, took the prize. His photo had been seen three times in the newspapers; he cut the pictures out and kept them in his wallet for good luck. He had a beautiful face, did Tommy McCormack. Angelic, even, with his soft lips and clear blue eyes. Those eyes had gotten him released from court nearly every time.

  Tommy McCormack, Hugh O’Dowd, and Seamus Feeney sat at a small round table right up front near the dancing women onstage. They wore hard, shiny black bowlers. Their stiff collars, pinned in the back by a single pearl stud, flapped loose like birds’ wings. This was the mark of a Growler.

  At Lefty Malone’s, the stage wasn’t much to speak of, but then again, the whole place wasn’t much to speak of. Ribbons of red, white, and blue draped the walls; the fuzzy dust dated them from the Civil War, if not before. The walls themselves were black from cigarette smoke. The floors were warped and sticky, the chairs broken, the tables full of white rings. Tuesdays and Thursdays were ladies’ nights, which meant old prostitutes came to dance with the patrons. Five cents a dance. The bill went higher for a feel (or more) in one of the small rooms down the hall.