Forgetting Tabitha: An Orphan Train Rider

by Julie Dewey

Chapter 2 The Five Points

  City life was crowded, costly, and challenging and we didn’t have a Da to help us manage anymore. We moved from the country to the city when he died a year ago and settled into the first affordable place with a vacancy. We lived in one of a dozen identical, five story, red brick buildings on Cross Street in the notorious Five Points. Unfortunately, the vacant room was in a building with mostly German immigrants, not Irish, as we had hoped in order to reacquaint ourselves with kin.

  I could see Paradise Place outside my window and often sat for hours watching the spectacle below. Women wearing colorful bonnets waltzed through town carrying baskets in the crook of their arms full to the brim with ripe fruit, meats and cheeses, wine and bread. They hustled their children towards the Used Clothing Shop to sell their old clothes or purchase new ones. After shopping they lunched at the Chinks Oyster Shack or The Yard House Tavern for the mid-days meal. With full bellies they picked up articles of clothing taken in, let out or hemmed from the Tailor and finally ducked into the Barber Shop with its twirling red and blue striped pole out front for a quick snip or shoe shin for their boys.

  Other individuals, mostly men but not always, drowned their sorrows at the corner tavern next to the Brewery building where drinks could be purchased with ears and noses as long as they were won in a fight from an opposing gang. Mama told me the remains were placed in glass canisters lining the bar for all the patrons to admire and try to recognize.

  Immigrants and others in destitute circumstances made stops to the Money Lender Shop, always leaving with their heads down. Mama and Mrs. Canter agreed, taking a loan in this city was a last resort with high interest rates making it impossible to pay back the lender. The lack of reimbursements caused a great need for henchmen who sought those who didn’t pay, taking ears, noses, fingers, and toes as retribution. We didn’t want to lose any of those so we paid for everything with cash on the barrel.

  Brothels, missions, and theaters all lined Anthony Street providing various forms of entertainment at one establishment; food and redemption for those who lost themselves in the other. Occasionally my mama and Mrs. Canter would take in a show when all of us children were at school or otherwise entertained.

  “But why can’t we go, Mama?” I pleaded one day.

  “Because there are unsightly businesses along the way and you are far too young to have your eyes ruined.” I always wondered what she meant by that; years later I learned.

  Priests, Pastors, Ministers, Reverends, and Rabbis led their congregations to worship in Paradise Park while their various cathedrals, temples, and churches were under construction. Anyone seeking solace at the end of the week could find a place to bow their heads. Children donned their Sunday best that for the boys included button down shirts, trousers held up with suspenders, top coats, and occasionally caps. Gentlemen dressed similarly, but on Sunday they appeared more dapper adding low cut plaid vests displaying fine starched dress shirts, colorful cravats, and long knee length topcoats. On Sundays the men wore their best top hats, often reaching an impressive twelve inches in height. Little girls and young ladies wore a wide array of bonnets and dresses, some with hoops and lace shawls and others in coats and muffs when the weather warranted.

  New York was a city of clans; thousands of immigrants in different colors, shapes, and sizes came fresh off famine ships and streamed into our streets daily. Adding to our chaos the immigrants spoke different languages, looking as confused by us as we were by them. If luck was by their side, they were greeted at the harbor by distant family members who previously survived the crossing of the shifty waters and had settled into life in New York. Others who weren’t so lucky were left to their own devices, struggling to find work and shelter and make sense of this cauldron. Looking back now I recall that sometimes Sisters from the Mission met boats with warm bowls of soup and cups of tea; when money allowed they gave out clothing and held free checkups. The Sisters of Charity tried desperately to steer the depleted newcomers to a Godly life that held promise rather than a broken one on the streets.

  Wealthy do-gooders, fanning their jowls and flanked by constables, mingled among the poor in the Five Points taking the populace in as you would a P.T. Barnum grand traveling circus with wide eyes, disbelief, and curiosity. They covered their noses with handkerchiefs, aghast at our squalor and confined living spaces as well as the swampy smell we became accustomed to. Concern regarding our poorly draining Bestevaer swamp was evident in their eyes as they noted the demise of our ramshackle buildings and sliding tenement homes resulting from the poorly engineered landfill and waterway problem. The water problems not only caused our structures to sink and fall but sewage leaked into the streets, fostering disease and death. Our conditions were unsanitary at best and deplorably uninhabitable at worst. But for the poor who could not afford to live elsewhere, it was called home. However, having the Manhattanites in town served a purpose for pickpockets and thieves dressed as sweet children. Any angler worth his salt used the opportunity to their advantage when up towners were here. They were often rewarded with their best ‘get’ of watches, wrist-lets, medallions, coins or rings that were immediately melted down at the Pawn Shop before any claims could be made.

  Trolleys and carriages stopped at each corner in the Five Points between the fourth and sixth wards all day long delivering passengers to their destinations. The city bustled with life as people walked their schnauzers, wiener dogs, and retrievers, or stood singing and playing instruments such as organ grinders and fiddles for money on a corner. My favorite was the organ grinder with the poodle who danced while he played. Bums with missing limbs held up signs begging for food and charity. Some were too forlorn to beg and lie sleeping on the brick pavement, hoping for a few coins when they woke.

  “He-She’s,” that’s what my mama called them, stood at the street corners waiting for a certain clientele to approach them, never mind if it was daylight, they shared flasks of gin and danced eagerly in anticipation of the evening’s events. If we passed them, my mama shielded my eyes so I wouldn’t see their drunken ludicrous behavior that included much fondling.

  Ours was a crumbling civilization to say the least. Streets needed repair, rubbish stood putrid on every corner and storefront. In the Five Points jobs were scarce, medicine hard to come by, and the level of noise increased with all the construction continually going on. Construction was a necessary evil though because it was one place immigrants could find work. Unsafe conditions had many natives opt out after seeing one accident and death after another.

  The only time the streets were quiet was during the draft. Men of a certain age abandoned the tavern and gambling halls in favor of their reclusive homes or hideouts hoping not to be found and summoned. Coffins carrying dead soldiers lined the harbor docks daily causing a panic for young men who then went to extremes by mutilating themselves; cutting off their fingers or bashing their ear drums to fail the necessary physical. If they could afford to pay a large fee of three hundred dollars they could avoid the draft and disfigurement altogether, otherwise it was law. The draft riled the Native American Butchers as well as the Bowery Brothers, Roach Guards, and Dead Rabbits, who joined in with the Daybreak Boys, Forty Thieves, and Swamp Angels gangs all in opposition to the wealthy buying their own sons’ safety. Our cities gangs grew and violence became worse.

  Mama tried to shield me from the horror but I could hear gunshots at night and heard stories from the Canter boys about the murders occurring here nearly every day. All I had to do was look out my window at an opportune moment and I could see gangs fighting each other in daylight using make shift weapons such as axes, bats, bricks, knifes, and cleavers. In the mornings men lay dead at our doorway. It often took several days before the municipal came with shovels and scraped the stiff, reeking bodies into an open top carriage and carried them to a mass grave where they were covered with dirt, omitting the opportunity to say a proper goodbye and blessing over the deceased. Orphans or chiselers patrolled the streets for fresh
dead bodies that they collected and sold to hospitals for research. If there was a way to make money the resourceful people of the Five Points found it.

  Usually it was a drunkard or gambler that lay dead outside our door, but lately it was kids from our own block, getting involved in the gangs and fighting senselessly over territory, politics, or religion. The Dead Rabbits were the gang we were most afraid of. Gang members wore a red stripe on their pantaloons and carried a dead rabbit impaled on a spike with them into street fights. They fought the Roach Guards most of the time over territory and we lived at an intersection smack in the middle. We couldn’t afford to move just yet, but my mama decided if we rented two rooms in Mrs. Canter’s flat instead of our own apartment we could reside with her brood and save a few dollars each month. So we pared down our belongings in hopes of saving our pennies to get ahead, the promise of living further north spurring us on.

  Mrs. Canter had six rotten smelling boys that always slagged around and no husband neither. All her lads shared a bed with each other and were directly across the hall from my mama and me; we could hear their snoring and farting all night long. Worse, we had to share a toilet basin with them and they always left crude pee stripes or sticky crap smears on the seat. One time I woke in the middle of the night to use the john and sat right in something sticky and thick. Sure enough it was crap from one of the vile boys and I was never so repulsed. I told my mama this the next day and she nodded in acknowledgment and scrubbed at the stains she was laundering even harder than normal. We had to wash our laundry in our kitchen basins and hang our clothing out to dry where they would soak in the stench from the filth filling the streets.

  Several of Mrs. Canter’s lads were being recruited by the Gangs already. But it was Liam her five year old, the one that chewed on his toenails, that was caught for thievery and thrown into jail with a gang of ruffians. The thugs from the Dead Rabbits saved him from rape in the slammer and now he was indebted to them, bringing the threat and promise of gang life to our front door.

  Many men from the gang approached my mama, dazed by her vitality and beauty even with short hair. She was fiercely protective of me and had a quick temper the men liked and admired her for. She was young and had more teeth than most women her age because she brushed regularly and ate her greens. She managed to push off most of the advances because the gang members were deeply involved in politicking and gambling.

  Brian Kelley showed up at our door on numerous occasions after he had been into the drink, trying to tempt my mama towards a better life with him. Pulling at her slender hips with his grimy hands he tried kissing her right in front of me. He had dimples and a wide grin, but his eyes had lost their sparkle. He had seen death too many times and since he was a member of the Dead Rabbits Mama thought he had done his share of killing. When we found out he was murdered mama clutched her chest and sank to the ground. Until years later I didn’t understand mourning over someone she couldn’t possibly love like my Da.

  After Da died, we naively moved from our spread out farming days in the country to the constraints of city, thinking it would be easier to manage our life where work, food, and medical care were right at our fingertips. We also had foolish hopes to find more of our kind, Irish immigrants. Mama had to go door to door in town asking for work as a laundress. We worked all day and night scrubbing and ironing to get our work done. One day shortly after we got settled my mama looked up at me and said, “Da and I made a promise to each other, any child of ours would get a proper education. We are set up well enough now that I can handle this laundry.” Just like everything else, when she made up her mind about something, it was done. She marched me to the schoolhouse the very next day and asked that I be registered.

  One room in the schoolhouse was for elementary students like me and the other room was for the older children that already knew how to read and write and figure arithmetic. Most of the students were Irish immigrants like myself so we all had the same way of pronouncing our A’s. My teacher was called Miss Marianne and I adored her. She had patience for all the children in her classroom and was teaching me to read from my first primer.

  Mama walked me to school in the mornings and picked me up in the afternoon. The city was bustling with people and it made her apprehensive. She worried I would get lost or caught in a scuffle, or worse, kidnapped and sold into prostitution. After she picked me up we delivered the day’s laundry and stopped by the grocers for supper. Usually we bought day old bread because it was cheaper and only a tad stale, cheese and whatever greens they had. I helped prepare our meager supper when we got home and read from my primer while my mama knit in the evenings, regaling me with faraway stories of Galway and my Da. I grew to associate the sound of her needles click clacking together, knit, purl, knit, and purl, with peaceful evenings. Together we would fall asleep to the harmonies of the city outside and to the sound of the Canters tooting along.

  One dismal morning on our walk to school our routine was interrupted by the Sisters of Charity shuttling kids out from discarded boxes and in between doorways onto the sidewalks with offers of bread, sweet milk, and lollipops. Mama and I knew these children were orphans or had parents who had fallen on hard times, known as half orphans. I kept staring at the ratty clothing and bare feet on these poor souls, one of whom was a toddler.

  “Mama, how can we help them?” I wanted to know.

  “Uppy.” The wee toddler with the opaque eyes and green snotty nose held his arms up in the air for someone to pick him up.

  “I am afraid we can’t, we are making just enough for ourselves at the moment, but you can put your penny in the collection for the Sisters of Charity at church service. That would be very generous and the Sisters will see that they are taken care of.” Mama was very matter of fact.

  Orphans were all over the city, when I walked the short block to buy penny candy I saw a child looking in a garbage container and another chewing on moldy orange peels, another time I saw one sleeping on the sidewalk in mid-day. Wondering about these children occupied my mind day and night and made me feel guilty for my good fortune. I grew curious at how they survived the harshness of the city, what did they eat besides garbage and who told them what to do? It was already getting chilly in New York and it was only October, but surely the Sisters had rooms for them to rest at night. Was there not anyone else able to take pity on them?

  My hair was starting to grow back in and I was teased mercilessly at school for looking like a boy. I wished I could wear my handkerchief in school but they were frowned upon so I suffered the abuse and just focused my energy on my letters. One day however, Owen Kenville teased me so badly that I stomped on his foot and made him cry. “That’s what you get,” I yelled at him, feeling zero remorse. He never teased me again.

  Mama’s hair was growing in too but now she had some wiry grey strands around her ears and temples and it made her depressed. I thought she was the prettiest woman alive but the grey made her feel old. Her shoulders drooped a bit after a long day’s work and she lost a little of her steam.

  “I am feeling a little sluggish today,” my mama declared one morning. “I‘m sure it’s just a virus and nothing to be concerned with, but Tabitha since you did such a fine job with the laundry a few weeks ago would you mind helping again?” she asked.

  “Of course, Mama, I can help.” I said, determined as ever to do another good job, for she did look shagged.

  However, by nighttime she was howling in pain. The tooth next to the one that was pulled several weeks earlier was hot to the touch. Her gums looked funny and there was a pimply pustule on them. I gave her a few of the leftover cloves and told her to hold them on her gums to help numb the pain and then I ran for Mrs. Canter. She fetched the dentist who came at once with his black satchel of endless tools, including what looked like a wrench. Mama’s fever spiked and we had no money left in the drawer for a second pull. Besides, my mama didn’t want to lose any more teeth and suffer with ill-fitting dentures. We brushed every day with baking
soda on our cotton ramie cloths, and were careful to swish real well afterwards counting to ten before spitting. We even scrubbed our tongues.

  But the dentist insisted this tooth was infected and the white pustule was an abscess. It needed to be pulled immediately and we could owe him the two dollar fee. Everyone agreed to the plan and the doctor filled my mama up with Jim Beam once more for the pain. He pulled this tooth with far more ease than the last one and didn’t need the two strongmen to hold her down. She was lethargic and tired the entire next day; not only was her cheek swollen but now subtle streaks of red ran down her neck, reminding me of the branches on our old willow tree the way they spread out like vines. Throughout the night my mama’s fever climbed making her eyes appear glassy, her breathing became shallower, and she looked iridescent. I offered her tepid ginger ale and wiped her brow to keep her cool, pleading with her to eat or drink to regain her strength. She had no appetite and passed away sometime during the night. The doctor said the infection poisoned her bloodstream, possibly from the tooth that was pulled weeks earlier.

  I sat alone in my room with my mama dead beside me growing stiffer by the minute, her beautiful face swollen and bruised. It struck me as odd just then that we didn’t make time to pretty up the place. We had nothing on our walls, no framed pictures, samplers or artifacts. Time had double crossed us. Never would there be a moment belonging to my mama and me again.

  Mrs. Canter poked her head in to our bedroom, “Tabitha, allow me to prepare your mother for her burial.”

  “Okay,” I said, meekly.

  “What do you suppose we should dress her in?” Mrs. Canter looked into my mama’s wardrobe and pulled out her Sunday outfit.

  “She’d like that.” I said, and so Mrs. Canter dressed her in the emerald green ensemble she wore to worship, complete with thick cream stockings and matching shoes. She applied pink rouge to the cheeks on the corpse disguised as my mama, Mrs. Maura Salt, and covered her hair with the red handkerchief.