Bowery Girl

by Kim Taylor

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I had no friends, because I couldn’t trust them to be there the next day. I had a father; he used to come round and ask me for money for the church’s poor box. He used it to drink. I hated everyone and everything. I hated the men who ran the factories, I hated the workers who couldn’t speak for themselves, I hated that my choices in life consisted of being a wife or a whore. I hated it all, and the one way I knew to get back at the world was to steal from the world.”

  Mollie could barely breathe. She was pinned to this spot, as Emmeline DuPre spoke Mollie’s own thoughts.

  “And one day, I was too cocky. I’d watched a big boss from a silver-plating factory amble down the steps from his office, and I thought him so stupid and full of himself, so fat with duck and wine, he wouldn’t even see me. My hand was in his coat pocket; I could feel the warmth of the wallet. And then he caught me.”

  “What’d he do with you?”

  “I was twelve years old. Too old for an orphanage and too young for jail. That was his thinking, at least.”

  “So?”

  “He took me home. I became his ward.”

  “You telling me some rich boss took you in? That only happens in books. It ain’t a very good story. It ain’t believable.”

  “But it’s true.”

  “Guess you felt sorry for the rest of us. Guess that’s why you came back.”

  “Yes.”

  Mollie reached in her pocket and found a matchstick. “Since the rules are being broken.” She stuck it between her teeth. “So you ain’t really any different from the nuns and other do-gooders after all. Filling people’s heads with stupid ideas that they might—just might—get their ass out of a crap heap and join the swells up on Washington Square. They’ll join them all right. They’ll live in their attics and warm their tea and clean their slop buckets. Or work for them—what did you say a typewriter makes? Three dollars a week? Annabelle and me made more than that in a night sometimes. I bet you made a bit on the gaming table yourself. I saw you envying the shells. Bad odds, those shells. And if you were from down here, you’d know that.”

  “You can think whatever you like.”

  “I’ll tell you what I think. I don’t think you came down here until the day you tore down the bathhouse. Made up that story about being a thief, thinking you can get in with all of us. That we’re dumb enough not to see through the crap. What do you get out of it all?”

  “I get a better world.”

  Mollie glared at this woman, who was given everything, who came down here to give out scraps. This woman with her beautiful dresses, and rules, and power. “What did you say to Annabelle?”

  Emmeline sighed heavily. She neatened her light hair, repinning it, missing a few wisps. After straightening her collar, she sat in the chair behind the desk, the shards of remaining window glass like an angry halo. “I told her I knew of a family that would take the child. In Buffalo.”

  “You what?”

  “I’ve talked to them—”

  “You already talked to them?”

  “They have money. They have things—”

  “You talked to them? She loves that baby. Jesus, she loves that baby more than anything in the world. Why do ya think she came here? For her own amusement? You think she can’t be a good mother?”

  “I think she has no idea how hard it’s going to be. I don’t think you know how hard it’s going to be.”

  “As if you know. I don’t see none of your kids running around.”

  “I’ve seen what happens.”

  “She trusted you to help her.”

  “I am,” Emmeline said.

  “By taking away the one thing she loves? By saying she ain’t as good as some rich family in Buffalo?”

  “I am giving the baby—and Annabelle—a chance. My God, there’s no father. Neither of you have any idea—”

  “She trusted you.”

  “She still can.”

  “No—you’re just like the rest of them. Playing God. Deciding who’s worth it and who’s not. Annabelle Lee saved my life when I didn’t want to save it myself. She fed me, bathed me, and gave me a name, and I will never, ever forget that. And anyone that hurts her hurts me, you get it? No rich family in Buffalo will ever give that baby half the love Annabelle’s got to give.”

  “Don’t throw everything away because of her.”

  “Go to hell, Miss Emmeline DuPre. And I hope that gets me dismissed, ’cause I ain’t never coming back, either. Wish I’d been the one to throw that book, ’cause I swear to God it would have hit.”

  “My name was Caroline O’Leary. I came from the same streets you did. I never forgot them. Because these streets can be better if one person does one thing to change them. Think of what would happen then. Think of the difference.”

  “It ain’t gonna happen.”

  “One thing. That’s all.”

  “Like taking Annabelle’s baby.”

  “No. Like showing you there’s more to this world than stealing. Don’t you see that? I am trying to help.”

  “I don’t want your help. I don’t need your help. And Annabelle don’t need the kind of help you want to give, so like I said before, go to hell.”

  May 1883 THE RAT PIT

  JIM CROWLEY’S RAT PIT looked as good as its name. It was a squat and squalid yellow building, smashed between two tenements like a rotten tooth. The windows were hidden behind padlocked black shutters. The doorway was rimmed with yellow globes that spilled jaundiced light across the faces of all who entered.

  The boys and men came in droves; the Rat Pit on a Sunday was the best game in town. They sat, leaned, and yelled from circles of benches that seemed to hang above the pit itself. Two small gates faced each other from across the dirt playing field. At a signal, the gates were lifted open and the bout began. Six rats against one very vicious little terrier. A bet could be made for the rats to overtake the terrier, or vice versa.

  Mollie sat squeezed between Seamus and Mugs on the highest rung of benches. Hugh sat directly in front of them; Tommy lounged to Mugs’s left. He didn’t watch much of the game. His attention was directed to Annabelle; his eyes claimed her as his, his arm encircled and kept her. Annabelle was the plaything of a king.

  It had been easy to go back to their old ways. Mollie laughed at herself for even calling them that, for had she ever left those ways thoroughly behind her? No—only in the hours between seven thirty and five o’clock. She did not miss the daily settlement-house pattern, the rotten monotony of it—no—for it could never compare to the brittle crack of this life, to the lights around the Rat Pit entrance and the dusty green curtains of Lefty Malone’s.

  And Lord, how nice it was to stay up all hours, to drink too much beer, to sleep in forever. To not follow rules!

  Wasn’t it nice? Wasn’t it?

  There was still the tugging doubt, the one she squeezed into a little black ball and shoved below the drink or the music or the game. The small doubt, which tiptoed across the floor of their room in the small, quiet hours of morning, kept Mollie awake. She knew when it would appear, for it came fast on the heels of a dream that constantly repeated itself. A dream of a huge spinning wheel that bore down on her no matter how fast she ran.

  It was not a regular wheel: Between the spokes, she saw Jip from the Ragpickers’ Lot dancing a jig, his left arm flinging about of its own accord. There was Seamus bringing her a bouquet of tight red curls, Tommy slicing the hand of a sailor, Charlie swimming in a sea of stars. Annabelle was little again, as she was when she’d first found Mollie—she sat in Emmeline DuPre’s lap, listening to a bedtime story and playing with a curl of her own wig. Mollie called to her and called to her, warning her that the wheel would roll and Miss DuPre was about to throw her out. But as the wheel turned, no one fell. The faces blurred into white noise, and it was then that Mollie knew it was headed toward her.

  She often wondered what the dream meant, but she did not wonder about the doub
t that followed. Its voice had started in the harsh murmurs of the Do-Gooder and ended in her own. It asked her to look—really look—at the newspaper glued to the walls of a windowless room, at the faces of those whose money and cuff links she stole, at Annabelle who complained of thick ankles but did not give a thought to how she would feed the baby once it came.

  Mollie Flynn was of a practical nature. She knew the patterns of the Fourth Ward, and when the doubt grew large, she knew the only way to ignore it was to plan her next day. What street to travel, what game to play. A small swoon in the middle of a lunch crowd? A quick grab and run from the grocer’s? Doubt stopped her hands; planning kept them still. And goddamn the Do-Gooder, who thought her stupid. Stuck on a wheel like rats.

  Seamus pulled at the sleeve of her dress, disrupting her thoughts. “Where’d you get this dress?”

  “What’s it matter to you?”

  “Jeez, Moll, I just wanted to say ya look like a queen in it.” Seamus frowned. He crossed his arms and stared hard at the ring.

  Mugs leaned to her from the other side. “I bet on the next set of rats. Looked particularly mean and hungry to me.”

  Hugh turned around. “It’ll be the terrier this time. Shifty’s gonna do them all in.”

  “Ah, you don’t know nothing,” Mugs said.

  Hugh shook his head. “It’ll be your waste of money, my friend.”

  Mugs patted Mollie’s shoulder. “Glad to see you again, Mollie. We was worried, what with you and Annabelle not being around.”

  “Least ya came to your senses,” Hugh said. “When Tommy heard that do-gooder was gonna take the baby, well, we had ta convince him not to burn the whole charity down. Course, Dolores ain’t taking it so well, now that Annabelle’s back. She ain’t been dancing at her best.”

  “Shut up, Hugh.” Seamus smacked the back of his head.

  “Tommy was seeing Dolores?” Mollie asked. “The redhead who lost her top that one night?”

  “Well, he’s a man and all. Can’t expect him to—”

  “And who were you seeing?”

  “No one, Moll. I love you. Jesus, I fixed a guy for you.”

  The bell clanged.

  “All right, all right, here we go.” Mugs leaned his bulk forward as the gates were lifted. “There he is, Mollie. Rum Kelly’s new dog. Shifty. Ain’t he a beaut?”

  The terrier did not look much good to win, as he missed an ear and eye and various patches of fur. Rum Kelly leaned over the railing of the pit. He chewed a cigar and cheered his dog with foul and loathsome words.

  The rats, who had run right over one another when the gate lifted, moved into a row. Their eyes fairly glittered with hatred. One rat ran across the ring, and bit the terrier’s head. The others swarmed Shifty, and the dog was lost under their undulating bodies. Shifty got hold of one rat’s tail and flung the creature to the side. But the others bit and lunged, and Shifty fell under them, his shrieks joining those of the spectators. Then he was silent as death, too still to be anything but. Mugs bounced up and down in his seat.

  Then, one leg at a time, Shifty gained his footing and shook the rats off. He seemed, this one-eyed terrier, to have suddenly grown three mouths, as one after another, he dispatched his enemies. Oh, how the crowd roared, and Rum Kelly roared louder than them all. He stood up and bowed, all the while saying, “That’s my Shifty and ain’t a rat in New York gonna best him.”

  Mugs crumpled his tickets and shook his head. Hugh laughed in glee.

  There was a lull as the gatekeepers entered the ring to clear up the carnage. Next would be a dog fight, and the odds were even.

  The gatekeepers raked the dead rats under the stands. One of the rats twitched, and his black eye watched the boot descend to his skull and crush it flat. It was nothing to the gatekeeper. Nothing in his face changed as he twisted the boot into the dirt. He’d go home after the fights were done and kiss his wife and hold his children and put those boots up on the stove grate.

  Mollie stood up and shoved her way past Mugs’s knees. She stepped on Tommy’s foot and turned her head so she wouldn’t see Annabelle or the bounce of blonde curls in her wig. She’d grown used to the Annabelle at the settlement house, who kept her dark hair simple. Mollie pushed through the people who lined the stairs. Bits of losing tickets fluttered from the floor. She shoved open the door, and gulped for air.

  Then there was a warm hand on her back, moving in slow circles. “They didn’t need to kill that rat. He had a few good fights left in him.”

  “What’d we do, Annabelle?”

  “I never asked you to leave.”

  “Look at my hands. They’re shaking again. I look at people and see them, not even a place in my head for figuring out the game. I get it all planned the night before, but ya know what I do? Walk down and watch them finish the bridge. Look at the water and think—there’s Brooklyn, there’s where we’re going. But you’re gonna marry Tommy and what the fuck-all is gonna happen then? Is he what ya want, Annabelle? I mean, look at you—you ain’t worn that wig since ya walked the streets.”

  “He’s never seen me without it.”

  “He don’t know who you are, then. I know who you are.” A tear burned down Mollie’s face. She wiped it away. “I know ya want to read. I know you’re gonna love that baby. I hated that baby, Annabelle. I can still hate that baby. But I know you love it. And I love you. You and me’s family. And I went to that stupid settlement house ta make you happy and ya know what? I was happy, too. ’Cause I thought, We’re gonna go to Brooklyn and I’ll get a job—a real job. And we’ll have a place with a window and you and the baby can look out and see the sun. You think Tommy’s gonna give you that? Jesus, he took half your wages, Annabelle. What do ya think he’s gonna do with—”

  Annabelle stepped back. “Don’t say that.”

  “There’s people better than him. Look at Charlie. Doesn’t even know what a mark is. Don’t ya want someone like that? Don’t ya?”

  “If you were a man, I’d marry you, Mollie Flynn. But you aren’t. And Tommy is. And I love him.”

  “You love him when you wear that wig and pretend to be someone you’re not.”

  “And what are you pretending to be in that dress?”

  “I ain’t pretending to be—”

  “A do-gooder,” Annabelle said. “You look just like her.”

  “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

  “Go back to the settlement house, Moll.”

  “Not without you.”

  “I ain’t going back there. Telling me she’s got some family for my baby. As if it ain’t related to me at all. As if it’s some book or something you lend out. Aw, hell.” Annabelle shook her head. She took in a breath, lifted her shoulders, and then reached into a skirt pocket. “Here. Put your hand out.”

  Mollie complied. She felt a slip of paper placed there, then a round metal object. “What’s this?”

  “Look.”

  It was a watch, a woman’s watch to be worn like a necklace, simple and silver-plated, with two straight hands and a mother-of-pearl face. The ribbon was a deep teal, to go with the new dress.

  Annabelle put the ribbon over Mollie’s neck. “You’d think after all these years, you’d’ve kept one of those watches that passed through your hands.”

  “It’s beautiful.”

  “I been looking at it in the pawnshop round the corner from the school forever, wondering, would she . . .”

  But Mollie had stopped listening. She stared at the paper in her hand. A crude little flower was drawn in the bottom corner, and red rouge had been fingered into the petals. The black letters had been worried over, and in some places, the ink had pooled and soaked the page:

  Hapy Berthday—from me.

  “It’s my birthday? I forgot.”

  “It’s tomorrow ya daft—Go watch them finish that bridge tomorrow, then we’ll have oysters and beer at home at four thirty.” Annabelle swung a red leather shoe. “Naw—make it four thirty-nine. Just so I can make sure y
ou’re using the watch.” Annabelle put a hand on Mollie’s shoulder.

  “This is the nicest thing—”

  “Aw, don’t go soft on me. I hear there’s some timing things need to be done to figure out if the brat’s really due.” Annabelle’s stomach was heavy and low, filled with a new life she was soon to throw away. Like the boys who played King of the Mountain in the tenement yard. “I got to go back now. And you only got two blocks to walk from here to eat your hat and somehow get your ass back in.”

  “Annabelle—”

  Annabelle swallowed. She leaned in and brushed her lips against Mollie’s cheek. “I think I did right by you after all.”

  A BIRTHDAY

  3:35 P.M.

  The ticket office had already been constructed along the approach to the great bridge, with barricades to separate people into organized lines. Above the fluttering red awning, a sign of white letters against shiny black paint read: OPENING DAY MAY 24TH. 2:00 P.M. 1¢ TOLL.

  There would, of course, be a similar ticket booth on the other side of the East River, with a similar sign. Twenty thousand people were expected to cross the bridge from New York to Brooklyn, and to tip their hats to the twenty thousand expected to cross from Brooklyn to New York.

  Mollie looked beyond the booth to the gray stone of the New York tower. She followed the curved lines of the suspension cables from their huge casings to their highest point at the top of the tower and their downward swing across the river. There was nothing in the world that matched the height of this tower; even the round arches that formed the underpinnings of the roadway dwarfed the buildings around her. The Elevated railway, passing under one such arch, looked like a toy pushed by a bored child, minuscule and inconsequential.