Bowery Girl

by Kim Taylor

  Mollie read from a penny pamphlet she bought at a pushcart already hard up against the entrance to the promenade.

  HEIGHT OF TOWERS: 276½ FEET

  HEIGHT OF TOWER ARCHES: 117 FEET

  HEIGHT OF ROADBED ABOVE THE RIVER: 135 FEET

  NUMBER OF CABLES HOLDING THE BRIDGE: FOUR

  LENGTH OF CABLE WIRE HOLDING THE BRIDGE:

  3,600 MILES

  Barricades had already been set up on Roosevelt; by the end of the week, Cherry and Water streets would be thus blocked off. Temporary tents of all colors lined the sidewalks—each offering postcards and souvenir rings and bowls and cups, some offering hot corn or smoked fish. Mollie wandered the forming festival. Tickets would officially go on sale at eleven thirty P.M. the night before opening day. But there were sure to be sharpers around, with half-official tickets. With twenty thousand expected to pass this side, well, no one would have the time to thoroughly check the tickets for accuracy. And with twenty thousand people and umbrellas and picnic baskets, who would notice two more passing? Who would deny Annabelle and Mollie their chance to see the world from the height of heaven?

  She picked up and examined a postcard showing the Royal Baking Company. Obviously the artist was under contract with the company, for the yellow building—at only six stories!—had been painted bigger than the river itself and appeared a story taller than the bridge.

  She caught a movement, then, from the corner of her eye. Just to the right of her, a young girl stood. Hair slightly dull, clothes indifferent and forgettable, no expression on her face, fingers that flicked through pages of a book about the making of the bridge, eyes that did not stop on pictures or words.

  Mollie fanned herself with the postcard, then decided to buy it for Annabelle. She thought she would give it to her, writing on it: Please cross the bridge with me. 2:00 p.m. May 24. Annabelle would be pleased that Mollie had used her watch. She reached into her pocket for a coin, and did not startle to feel other fingers there.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” she said.

  The girl looked up at her; she was no more than ten. Her brown eyes ricocheted side to side, looking for some exit or excuse as to why her fingers were in Mollie’s pocket. She had not been in the game long.

  “Listen,” Mollie said, “it’s my birthday and I don’t feel like having my pockets picked. So bugger off to the other side of the street.”

  The girl swallowed. There was soot on her cheek, and Mollie knew she had probably slept on some grating hard by a building warmed by the sun.

  “Can you read?” Mollie asked.

  “Bible.”

  “Ya know where Cherry Street is?”

  “What, ya think I’m stupid?”

  “There’s a building there got new columns and clean windows. If ya want something better, walk up the stairs. And don’t mind the matron, she’s only bitten a couple of people. And here’s a few pennies. Now get out of here.”

  4:31 P.M.

  Mollie circled the yard once more. She wiped her shoes against the back of her legs and shook out her dress. The watch ticked against her chest. Above her, a confusion of laundry snapped in the breeze, strung from front building to the rookery, all mixed up. Mollie wondered if people ever fought over pieces, tugging back and forth on those that were newest and least gray.

  4:32 P.M.

  “So, I’ll be early.” She stepped into the hallway and started up the steps. The higher she climbed, the more the narrow stairs smelled. The warm days brought out the reek of eggs and cabbage and sweat. She slipped on the fourth-floor landing and grabbed at the wall to keep from falling. There was an overturned pail in the corner. The whole of the space smelled sourly sweet. Beer. And brine, thick, heavy, and viscous. The smell of oysters. She lifted her skirts, for the stairs to her floor were wet, too. The stench of the beer and the brine grew, as if the walls of the building had been soaked in a beer vat, then rinsed in the East River.

  Her foot landed on something hard and sharp, and in the dim light, she saw the craggy sharp shell of an oyster.

  There, at the top of the stairs, a scattering of oysters, a shallow sea of brine. Another pail, on its side against the wall.

  Something’s wrong, Mollie.

  Her own door, open, the kerosene light, brought out only for special occasions, now bright.

  It’s all right, Mollie, she’s just surprising you. You’ll turn the corner, and there’ll be a big bowl of oysters. And Annabelle will clap and say, “You never remember your birthday, because you’re a daft one. See how you need me, Mollie Flynn?”

  Mollie stood at the threshold to her room. The walls were festooned in garlands of color: red, pink, robin’s-egg blue. Annabelle had cut her old street dresses into strips and tacked them to the walls in bunting and flowers.

  And there was Annabelle herself; she sat on the edge of the bed, a hand gripping the mattress on either side. The front of her dress was wet and dark.

  “Look at that,” Mollie said with a laugh. “It’ll take a century to get that oyster smell out.”

  “I tripped on the stairs.” Annabelle blinked—very slowly—like a fancy doll when you sit it upright. She shifted her foot; it was not clear, salty brine that pooled on the floor, but the deep crimson of blood.

  “Oh, my God.” Mollie backed away. “Somebody help me,” she whispered. “Oh, God, please, somebody help me.” She slipped on an oyster—they were like marbles; she could not gain a foothold anywhere. “Help me!” She scrambled for the door next to theirs, and pounded. “Please help me.”

  The door creaked open, just enough so a child’s brown eye looked out at her. She pushed against the wood, saw them all there—saw the scissors and needles frozen in air. “Help me!” Then fabric moved and scissors dropped, and the Italian woman moved to Mollie, shushing her children and waving a hand at the men to stay back.

  They were around the corner, then, and the woman crossed to Annabelle. She placed an arm around her and laid her in the bed. She pushed the stained skirts high up Annabelle’s waist, then cut her stockings out of the way.

  Annabelle’s breath was shallow and quick, and with each breath came a spurt of blood from between her legs.

  “Tovaglioli.” A gesture toward the rag in the bucket.

  But it wasn’t enough, soaked through within seconds.

  “Più. Ho bisogno di più.”

  The woman pointed a finger at the wall. Mollie yanked the fabric down and pushed it to her. Watched her wad it up—red, pink, robin’s-egg blue—and press it between Annabelle’s thighs. Watched the blood bloom and blossom, turning everything the same shiny scarlet.

  “What’s happening to me?” Annabelle took in a heaving breath. “Mollie—”

  The Italian woman murmured something to Annabelle, who only stared, opening and closing her mouth, trying to catch a breath.

  “Chiama un medico.”

  “What?” Mollie couldn’t move. She felt she was underwater, under the briny sea and this woman was a great big fish floating by.

  The woman grabbed Mollie’s elbow and shook hard. “Medico, medico. Doctor!”

  Batavia Street. Smoke brick building and a sagging door. Sign in the window. Dr. Aloysius Smith, the S in “Smith” barely readable, gold stencil faded spider’s-web thin. Mollie shoved open the heavy door. Inside, twenty or more children and mothers. A man with a long mustache holding his cap around his hand.

  Toward the back of the room, a tall woman scratched at a pad and called out names. Her face was rigid, her cheeks pocked from some childhood illness. She looked at nothing but her pad of paper.

  Mollie stepped over knickered legs and a game of marbles. “I need you to come.”

  “Name?”

  “Not me, it’s my friend. She fell on the stairs, she needs a doctor.”

  “So does everyone in this room.”

  “But I got money. I got lots of money, please, he has to come.”

  “Bring her down here.”

  “She’s blee
ding. She fell on the stairs. She’s pregnant.”

  “Dr. Smith’s out at the wharves. Get some of the women from your building to help. I’d come but I’m the only one here. I’m sorry.”

  Out the door, then. Where else, where else? She spun in a circle: silver plating, greengrocers, pawnshop. Who could help her?

  FREE LECTURE. White sign edged with a fancy black border. Mollie jumped the steps and careened through the door.

  “No running—it’s on the rules list.” Mrs. Reardon folded her arms and tutted.

  “Where is she?”

  “Miss DuPre?”

  Mollie slammed her fist into the wood of the high counter. “Goddammit, tell me where she is!”

  They ran down the street together. Mollie hiked her dress to her knees for speed. She wanted her old dress, with all that space to move her legs.

  “When did you find her?”

  “Around four thirty. She fell on the stairs. She was carrying two pails, there’s no railing.”

  “What time is it now?”

  Mollie grabbed the watch at her chest. “Five o’clock. Five oh-one.”

  And then Emmeline DuPre lifted her skirts, too, and didn’t apologize to anyone as she shoved her way past.

  People in the hallway, watching. Water boiling on the stove, white steam. A lump on the mattress, between Annabelle’s feet, black and still, rolled in fabric and quickly moved to the floor. Annabelle’s shoes darker red. Skin like ash mixed with snow.

  Her breath was hard and rough. One, two, three. Nothing. Palms clenching. Legs splayed. A clutch of breath then.

  The Italian woman’s forearms were stained; there was a swipe of red on her cheek. She looked up at Emmeline. “Medico?”

  “No.” Emmeline touched Mollie’s shoulder. “Hold her hand. There’s nothing else to do.”

  “No! Give me more rags. Look, she’s still bleeding. Please, Annabelle, ya gotta stop, now, this ain’t funny.” Mollie scratched at the newspaper on the walls. She ripped at the pieces, and then crushed them together. She crouched on the bed, holding the papers to Annabelle with her knee, leaning over her and pushing at her shoulders. “It’s gonna be all right. Annabelle, listen, it’s gonna be all right. Don’t I always look out for ya? Don’t I always?”

  “I’m scared, Mollie.”

  Mollie rubbed Annabelle’s cheeks, but they did not pinken. “Oh, Annabelle, it’s all right, see? Just breathe right. Take another breath.” She squeezed her hands. So limp. Mollie entwined their fingers. “I got tickets to see the bridge, Annabelle. And soon, we’ll have a real room, with a window. You can sit and look at the sky and dream of who ya want to marry. I got it all planned.” She leaned forward, her cheek against Annabelle’s; she felt the bones through her skin. “God, she’s not breathing. Please . . .”

  Annabelle pressed against her, and took a gulp of air. “One oh-six Monroe Street. Tell Elizabeth Brooks her daughter Sarah has died.”

  “You ain’t dying.”

  “Hold my hand, Mollie.”

  “I’m holding your hands, can’t you feel?”

  “I was bad. She always said I was bad. You’ll be good, won’t you, Mollie?”

  Annabelle’s fingers gripped Mollie’s. Her limbs went rigid, then her body convulsed. It was terrible how she stared, her eyes so black. “The baby?”

  Black lump now on the floor. “She’s all right, Annabelle. She needs ya.”

  Annabelle’s mouth opened wide, then clamped down. She moaned, then shuddered once, then let go of Mollie’s hands.

  “Annabelle, oh, please, wake up.” Mollie slapped her cheek; she pulled and pushed at her shoulders.

  The only sound was the rolling boil of the water on the stove.

  Mollie lay down, her head in the crook of Annabelle’s arm, her palm holding the little watch against Annabelle’s chest. She listened to the tick, steady as a heartbeat.

  5:09 P.M.

  She placed her fingers on the soft, cold skin of Annabelle’s lids and drew them shut.

  The boys who hauled the mattress to the yard and now scrubbed the floor with stiff brushes were named Giuseppe and Paolo.

  The woman was Sofia, and the red stain on her cheek was permanent, a birthmark. She showed Mollie how to loop the stitch in the muslin, then held the fabric closed as Mollie turned the thread. Before completing the seam, Mollie laid the needle on the table. She placed a penny on each of Annabelle’s eyes, to ward off evil spirits and bring her good luck and fortune.

  She slept behind the stove in Sofia’s front room and shivered all night. There was an old woman on a cot, the grandmother, who either snored or watched her.

  In the morning, the men came. Heavy feet on the stairs. A whistled tune that reminded Mollie vaguely of one of the dancehall songs.

  Emmeline DuPre kept an arm around Mollie’s waist.

  Count the nails as they hammer the coffin tight. The pine is new and soft.

  “Step back,” the one with the black whiskers said. “Give us some room, the stairs is tricky. Don’t want to end up in Potter’s Field yourself.” His laugh cut Mollie in two.

  THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE

  MORNING. A BARE WIRE bed frame, a worn blonde wig hanging from a post, empty walls. A chair moved aside to let the cheap coffin pass. On the hook behind the door, a long black coat with a breast pocket full of coins.

  Mollie put the coat on, buttoning it from knee to neck. She had not changed her dress; there was nothing to change into, anyway. She did not lock the door as she left.

  She strode down New Bowery, looking neither left nor right. She did not apologize to those whose shoulders she bumped, and it made no difference to her if they cursed her or shook their fists.

  Her hair, coming loose from its pins, was much like the blinders of a horse. She did not push it away from her face. She kept her hands shoved deep in the pockets of her black coat.

  It was a fine day, not a day for coats at all. But she felt as if her skin was inside out, raw and vulnerable.

  All she could do was keep walking, keep her mind blank, not remember that the room at Oak Street would be empty tonight or that she had two tickets to cross the bridge.

  There were meaner streets in the Fourth Ward than Oak Street, with smaller rooms and darker stairs. There were rooms with fewer things in them than hers: wash basin, stove, a mattress of straw upon the floor. A rocking chair black with grease and age.

  106 Monroe Street. Tight by Corlears Hook and the snaking bend of the Elevated.

  Elizabeth Brooks sat in the chair, her body squeezing and spilling between the slats. Her hair was filthy, matted down, and tied with a piece of string. Mollie saw nothing of Annabelle in her. At first, she thought she’d found the wrong person. “Are you Elizabeth Brooks?”

  “If you’re looking to collect on a bill, I don’t have anything for you.”

  Mollie stood in the middle of the room. So this was the woman who had thrown her child to the streets. Who once called herself a mother. Who in all the years Mollie and Annabelle roamed and wandered, had hardly been mentioned.

  “Your daughter Sarah is dead.”

  The woman pushed her tongue against her lips, as if expelling something bitter and unexpected. “I don’t have a daughter named Sarah.”

  “There’ll be a wake. At Lefty Malone’s tonight. If you once cared for her—”

  “I don’t have a daughter.”

  Mollie turned to leave. She had delivered the message.

  She found Hermione Montreal dozing in her doorway, her cards closed between her hands. Mollie rolled the two dollars she’d made by pawning her shoes, replacing them with others that clicked and banged against the cobblestones. She placed the bills under the old lady’s bent finger.

  Hermione snorted, and glared at Mollie from her blind eye. Her fingers crushed the bills and shoved them between two buttons of her dress. Her lips stretched across her gums. “Indulge an old woman?” She spread the cards on a dirty blanket before her. “Three cards: past, present
, and future.”

  “Nah.” Mollie cleared her throat. “Not in the mood.”

  “You used to come to me with a friend. I gave you whiskey and cookies. Good girls you were.” She scraped her nails through her white hair. “Now there’s a bridge where my home was. Well, the Wheel of Fortune always turns . . . and the only thing to do is jump on. Crush you otherwise, it will. But you know that.” She coughed. “Have an extra penny for a pint?”

  So the wheel turned, in the same circle that razed old women’s homes, sent kids to sleep under rags, provided baskets at churches for women to leave their babies, gave wages that barely paid rent but provided enough for drink, built tenements without water in each hall or rails on the stairs or toilets in the yard. It was the wheel Mollie’d thought she’d been running from. It was the wheel she’d really been a passenger on.

  The dusty curtain was drawn across the stage, and the tables and chairs were mostly empty. Nipsy snapped out dance tunes on the rackety piano, as if this were nothing more than an extension of the nightly show. The gaslights along the walls were set low, in some sort of respect. The boys sat at their normal table, right up near the now-hidden stage. Hugh ran his thumb over the top of a deck of cards. Mugs stared into space. Seamus drank: one beer after another, in huge angry gulps.

  And Tommy sat with a leg crossed, in a black suit still showing creases from being taken from a box. He did not drink; he did not move. A stone statue, but for a tic at the corner of his left eye.

  Mollie sat alone. She had ordered two stale beers. The only drink she could afford. Lefty had closed the dancehall, had a sign painted saying CLOSED FOR DEATH, but he still charged for drinks. She knew the drink was mixed with other things—camphor, benzene, and God knew what—and the first sip burned. She took another sip, looked around the tired room, with its smoke-black ceilings and tattered flags and dried vomit on the floor. The fuck-all life of the Fourth Ward. The dead horse rotting on the corner. The boys still at their table, waiting for this to be over. Not a sign of Miss Emmeline DuPre or Charlie White or any of the girls from the settlement house who knew Annabelle Lee when she was happy.