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Authors: Patricia Reilly Giff

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BOOK: A House of Tailors
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seven

From the time I reached Brooklyn I longed for warm weather. I thought it would be like Breisach—sunny, with a cool breeze from the river. But when the heat came, long before it would have at home, I was shocked. My arms were prisoners in their sleeves; my back almost sizzled on the roof of the house.

By that time, the tin roof was my bedroom!

I could no longer sleep in the closet that had been fitted out for me. That first night the Uncle had opened a door off the hall and said, “Your room.” I looked in at a pantry meant to store bags of flour, and tea, and sugar. “I have taken everything out for you. Barbara and I have cleaned.” He waited for my reaction as if it were a chamber for Elizabeth of Austria. “Room for your trunk at the side of the bed,” he said, as if he had thought of everything.

I swallowed. Barbara had tried, I knew that. A crocheted spread covered the tiny bed, and a starched white towel with embroidery along the edges lay at the foot.

The spread was exactly like the one on Mama's bed. They must have shared the pattern. I ran my hand over it, wondering if I would disgrace myself by crying. “It's lovely,” I managed. “Really lovely.”

“You can close the door, Dina,” Barbara had said. “You will have privacy that way.” Still, she looked worried. A thin line appeared between her eyebrows, and she smoothed down her apron as, behind her, Maria pulled on the strings until she untied the bow.

“Thank you, dear Barbara.” I made myself smile, and I could see the relief in her eyes.

The Uncle clapped his hands together. “How you worry for nothing,” he told her.

But later, when I closed the door and sat on the edge of the bed, I felt as if I might suffocate without light and air and a window to see down into the street.

I ate so much at that first dinner, too much: a huge piece of brisket, a high pile of noodles I quickly devoured, pickles, and salad! What a festive dinner, with bread pudding Aunt Ida had made for dessert. Aunt Ida, who had been here since I was a baby, the first of the family to come to America. She had fallen in love with a man who was determined to see the world.

After a while I folded back the spread and opened the trunk with its pink lining, which Mama had sewed in quickly that last afternoon. I began my first weekly letter home.

I wrote about Barbara, who kept a whole cinnamon stick in her pocket. I wrote about the funny things Maria did, how she refused to have her shoes buckled and her curly hair combed, how she pushed food off her wooden high chair and watched the crumbs fall around our feet. Maria the tyrant, Barbara called her. I wrote about everything I could think of except what was really on my mind: home.

When I was ready for bed, I said my prayers. I didn't know how they should go. I said,
Thank you for the safe ending to my journey,
but then,
Dear God, if I could only go home again
.

And I closed my eyes.

There was a trick to falling asleep: relaxing my muscles, letting my hands go limp and my thoughts come easily.

Hadn't I used that trick every night of my life without even realizing it?

But this night it didn't work. I turned one way and then another. I told myself to stop thinking. I clenched and unclenched my hands.

At last I crept out of my tiny room and up to the roof. That first night it was too cold to sleep there, so I walked back and forth, my arms crossed across my chest, in an agony of homesickness, until I was weary enough to go downstairs and sleep.

After that it became a habit to go to the roof to think about my new family: Barbara, her hair falling into her face as she leaned over the stove; Maria, who made me laugh with her terrible temper; the Uncle . . . What did I think about the Uncle? Silent most of the time, smiling only when he looked at Barbara or Maria, spending every spare moment at the sewing machine.

And then in no time the heat reached Brooklyn. Every night I tiptoed up to that tin roof with my pillow, ducking under the limp wash that hung on lines crisscrossing almost every inch of space.

One night, always a special night at home in Breisach, I stood in a corner of the roof, holding on to the ledge, and looked down at the houses, the streets where heat shimmered up at me. I'd been too embarrassed to mention it was my birthday, so not one person here knew about it. There was no one to whip up a birthday cake, to tuck a small present under my pillow.

I watched people who sat on their steps or on the curbs, trying to escape the heat. Dray horses clopped up and down the streets. Insects buzzed.

What would Katharina think of this place?

I sank down on the roof, cushioning my head in my arms as stinging insects rose in a cloud above my head. They were worse than the heat tonight, crawling under my collar and through my hair. When I moved, they darted up angrily and swooped down again to pierce the soft skin around my eyes, and the lobes of my ears, and under my chin.

I raised my hand to my face to slap at one of those devils and saw the smears of blood they left on my fingers and the edge of my sleeve. I didn't even know what they were called, but their high whining sound kept me from drifting off.

I
had
to sleep. A pale rim of pink was already reflected in the windowpanes of the houses across the way.

In the apartment downstairs, Maria began to cry. I didn't blame her. She was covered with prickly heat and welts from those insects. Through the open window came Barbara's voice, singing an old lullaby. The cries became softer, Barbara's voice trailed off, and then there was silence.

How often had Mama sung that song?

Don't think about it,
I told myself.
Don't think about Mama's face.
But that was all I could think of, night after night, Mama with her smooth hair tucked into a loop at her neck, her pale skin with faint lines around her eyes, those eyes always sad since Papa had died. Mama shaking her head.
Oh, Dina. What have you done this time? If only . . .

And now for the rest of my life I would be here, with no way back to Mama and Katharina, to my brothers.

My eyes were so swollen from the insects and from crying I could hardly shut them. But at last they closed. I fell asleep with my thoughts chasing themselves. How would I get home? How could I get the money? I'd have to find a way.

I knew it would take years, but by then the war would be over and the soldiers long gone. I would save every cent, store it in a roll of stockings the way Mama did. When I had enough, I'd travel back to Breisach.

I woke to a red ball of sun far to the east. The day was going to be even warmer than the night before.

eight

Everything changed that morning.

It began at breakfast. I helped Barbara lay out the cheese, the rolls, the thick cups, and poured the coffee and milk into pitchers.

How different it was from our breakfasts at home, with Franz and Friedrich spilling things and laughing, and Katharina good-naturedly wiping up after them.

Here everyone was quiet, with just the sounds of knives and spoons clinking and Maria banging her wooden blocks on her high chair.

It might have been because the Uncle looked exhausted, almost too tired to eat. He worked hard, I had to admit that. First he spent a long day working for Mrs. Koch. And then after a late dinner he sat at the sewing machine running off five or six skirts, or pairs of trousers, or shirtwaists for Mr. Eis, who sold them in a shop in Manhattan.

But that morning, the Uncle cleared his throat. “It's time for you to work, Dina.”

Barbara shook her head. “She's helping wonderfully, Lucas. Didn't she make that roast last night, and she's cleaning. . . .”

“Yes.” I agreed with him instantly. “I need money. I could go out and . . .” I tried to think of what I could do.

But that wasn't what he had in mind. “Right here,” he said, waving his arm toward the sewing machine. “It is a busy time for tailoring.”

I brought the cup of coffee to my mouth. It almost scalded my lips.

Late summer at home. Waking up in the dark to hem heavy skirts, to turn over cuffs, to shape collars. Not stopping for meals, but gulping down vegetable soup that Mama stirred and then poured, running back and forth from the kitchen. Every hour the cathedral bells tolled, reminding us that coats, suits, and dresses had to be ready for the clients at a moment's notice.

I swallowed that first burning sip of coffee before I looked up at the Uncle, thinking carefully of what to say. “I want to do something instead of sewing.” My words were even, as if I weren't challenging him, but I could feel the pulse at my throat, the slight trembling of my fingers against the cup.

The Uncle raised his eyebrows. “And what, may I ask, can you do?”

I put the cup down before I could spill it. I couldn't look at him.

He stabbed a piece of cheese from the platter with his fork and stopped to chew. “Katharina would have gone into service.”

I leaned forward. “Service?”

“We would have found a place for her at Mrs. Koch's house with Ida. She would have become a maid there, doing some cleaning, and maybe a little cooking.”

“I can—” I began.

“You can't,” he said. “You're too young.”

“Only four years younger,” I said, as if it were four months. “Besides, I'm not going to sew.”

Barbara stood up quietly and took Maria out of the high chair. In a moment both of them had disappeared down the hall and into the bedroom.

“You are fourteen,” the Uncle said. “You need food and a place to stay.” He leaned forward. “Do you think I can afford to have even one person in this house who doesn't work?”

Sounds came through the open window: a horse clopping, someone calling. It must have been almost a hundred degrees in that room. I could feel perspiration on my forehead, my back. But at the same time I was chilled.

“If you will send me back to Breisach,” I said, “I will return the money someday.”

“If you want to go back, write to your mother. I have no money to spare.”

I bit my lip, telling myself that not one tear would drop from my eyes. I put on my
I don't care
face, which used to drive Katharina wild.

“You can sew well. I know that. Your mother is so proud of you. The best of all of us, she says.” His face was red. “Today you will clean the sewing machine,” he said. “There's oil in the closet.” He waved his hand vaguely toward the kitchen counter. “And now I must go to work.
Work
.” He almost shouted the word.

He stood up fast. The plates on the table rattled; his cup wobbled, spilling hot coffee across the table.

I sat there, my hands shaking under the table as he jammed his hat on his head and stamped down the stairs . . .
boom boom boom
. I could hear every step of each flight.

And then that terrible bang as he slammed the door on his way out. It must have startled everyone in the building.

There was no help for it. I had just exchanged one sewing machine for another. And this one was much older than the one in our sewing room. I had to say, though, that the Uncle kept it carefully; still, he did so much sewing at night with so little time to clean, it was covered with lint.

I bent over it just as I used to at home, using a small brush to dust out the fluff, and then squirted oil on a cloth to go over the works. When I was finished, it fairly shone. The belts that turned the wheel were black and slippery; the metal reflected my face.

But this wasn't even a sewing room. Nails were beaten into the hall wall to hold the large spools of thread. Folds of cloth were stacked on the floor so that I had to take huge steps around or over them.

Barbara tried to explain. “Poor Lucas,” she said. “All he wants is his own shop, a place to put things, a place to spread himself out, a place where he can do what he loves.”

“Sewing?” I said. “He loves sewing?”

She nodded. “Yes.” And as she said it, her face turned the color of the river after a storm. She rushed past me to be sick in a basin in the bedroom.

A baby,
I thought. She was going to have a second baby. I would be sure to tell Mama and Katharina in my next letter home.

Maria was out of her high chair now, holding a roll with butter and jam, smearing it on the floor and laughing.

I had to laugh, too, running my fingers over her arms and under her neck. “Mouse fingers,” I said. But all the time I was thinking about the Uncle.

I had just lost my first battle with him. It wouldn't be the last one I'd lose.

nine

Barbara and I bumped the baby carriage down the stairs to the outside steps. “How hard you've worked all morning.” She smiled at me. “We deserve time for a walk.”

She had worked hard, too, lugging water from the outside hall to the kitchen, washing Maria's diaper cloths and the Uncle's work shirts, then going to the roof to hang them.

But now that she was having a baby, I told myself that from today on I'd be the one to carry up that heavy wet wash.

I took a breath. How hot it was! Too hot to do anything but sink down on the stoop. Everyone else had the same idea. All along the street women sat outside fanning themselves and their babies with paper. And as I looked up, I could see more of them leaning out the windows on pillows, calling back and forth to each other. Children darted between wagons whose drivers called, “Iceman, fresh ice. Get your ice,” and “Rags. We buy and sell. Any length,” and “Knife sharpener here.”

The smell of dirt from the horses and rotten fruit was everywhere.

I had brought dresses with me from Breisach, all wool, and the one I wore today was heavy and clung to my legs. My stockings were wool, too. But I had found a packet of pale pink cotton under the stacks of cloth in the hall, and uncle or no uncle, with Barbara's blessing I had begun a dress for myself. I had seen a great spool of cotton thread as well, and would knit a pair of stockings as soon as I had time.

I felt my chin go up as we crossed the street. One thing I knew: I was going back to Breisach. And to do that I had to get money for the passage.

Barbara was talking, telling me that she had money.

I jumped, startled. “Will you give it to me?” I asked. “My mother has very little money. But I promise you I'll send it back as soon as I can earn it at home.”

She put her hand on my arm. “Enough money for a cup of ice cream, Dina,” she said. “In this heat . . .”

I did cry then. As I walked along, with my face turned so Barbara wouldn't see, tears dripped from my cheeks onto the wool dress with its heavy buttons, a river of tears.

I hated the Uncle; I hated Brooklyn with its sun beating down on my head and on its streets so that everything smelled. And now we were in a shopping area where the butchers' doors were open and the smell of great sides of beef wafted out to us. Sheep carcasses hung on hooks, and pig heads were jammed one after another into the windows. Some of them had sprigs of green in their open dead mouths.

It made me want to gag.

“It's hard to leave home. I remember how I felt when I first came here.” We walked in silence then. Barbara put her hand on my arm. “Aunt Ida is homesick, too, but for a place she's never seen. She longs for the prairie, for a small house with her husband. She's working, saving, so she can join him.”

I told myself I could do that, too. Work and save. Someday I'd go home to Breisach.

Sitting on an iron bench in a park, Barbara and I shared a paper cup filled with shavings of ice drizzled with lemon syrup. I had never tasted anything so good. It filled my mouth with its tartness and slid down my throat, leaving a trail of icy coldness. Even Maria was smiling as Barbara held the cup out to her to suck.

A breeze lifted the leaves of the trees, the park was green, and I felt as if I could breathe again. As I sat there, I made my plans. I wouldn't argue with the Uncle; it would get me nowhere. I'd sew for him at night, doing the finishing work on the skirts and shirtwaists as he ran up the long seams on the machine: a bit of braid here and there, buttons sewed on in a moment, as Mama would say, “with a red-hot needle and a burning thread.”

But during the day he had to let me go into service. I was big for my age, a good worker. No one would know how old I was. And that money, at least that money, would be mine.

I tried to count in my head. Who knew what that would be in American money? I shut my eyes, frowning. A fortune, that much I knew.

“What is it?” Barbara asked.

I felt my eyes well up again, but I brushed at them angrily. No more crying. If it took years, then years it would be.

A thin line of perspiration trailed down the side of Barbara's forehead; moisture dotted her upper lip. “Let me take the baby,” I said. “Just rest here a few minutes, and I'll walk with her.”

I pushed the carriage around the park, looking up at the heavy green branches. Suddenly I was startled by the snuffling of a horse. I jumped, and the two men on the seat of the wagon in the street next to me laughed. They were big men with long dark beards and were a little frightening.

I started to turn away, but before I did, Maria waved to them, a backward wave that she was just learning. It looked almost as if she were waving to herself. “Hey, little girl,” one of them said, waving back, and smiling at her. “You look like my daughter.”

I took another turn around the park and went back to Barbara. “Did you see those men?” she asked. “The ones in the wagon?”

“Maria waved,” I said.

“They're from the health department,” she said. “Searching out cases of smallpox.”

Smallpox. A shiver went through me even in that heat. I remembered stories from home: in the French army across the Rhine River, the disease went from one soldier to another. Men raged with fever, their faces ruined with pockmarks; many of them died.

Barbara put her hand on my arm. “Don't be afraid,” she said, looking fearful herself. “We'll put red ribbons in the apartment. That's supposed to bring luck against it.”

We stood up and began to walk again, past a group of houses with shops on the ground floors: a gift shop with cards and flowers wilting in the heat, an empty store with the windows dark and black, a man in black sewing at a table below a sign in the window reading
MENSWEAR
.

I pointed it out to Barbara. “That's what we need,” I said. “A proper shop with shelves to hold the fabric and thread. Drawers to hold the patterns.” I took a breath. “At home—” And then I found I couldn't finish.

But Barbara didn't notice. “You sound like Lucas,” she said. “That's what he wants. All he wants.”

I pressed my lips together. I wouldn't talk about our sewing room at home with the windows that overlooked the river.

Barbara pointed. “That's the Schaeffer family's shop. They tailor men's clothes. Suits and trousers.”

Through the window I could see more than one machine, a woman finishing hems, a man bent over running up a seam, and a boy about my age sewing buttons. He brought the fabric with the button attached up to his mouth and clipped the thread with his teeth.

I opened my own mouth in a little O. A tailor should know better. I could hear Mama's voice.
A bad habit, bad for the teeth, bad for the thread. Use the scissors, Dina
.

The boy saw me watching him.

Quickly I turned away, but before I did, I saw him wink at me.

My face flushed. What would Papa have said to that?

I went back to the apartment thinking about the boy's face—a plain face, but friendly. How nice it would be to have a friend, even if it was just a boy who didn't know how to sew buttons onto a shirt! And when I opened the door I was happier, because there in the hall, waiting for me, was an envelope addressed to me in Katharina's neat handwriting. It must have taken weeks to get to me. Still, I ran my hand over it, knowing that Katharina and Mama had touched it.

2 May 1871

Dear Dina,

I have so many things to tell you. I wore your hat to Sunday services. Frau Ottlinger has offered once more to buy it, but I will never sell it to her. “It is Dina's hat,” I told her, “just in my safekeeping.”

I enclose a new hat pattern. Elise managed to send this with someone who dropped it at our door. She thinks you are still here, and sends love. A beautiful pattern, isn't it? I studied it carefully. It's worn down over the face like one of Mama's dinner crepes. Lace puffs up in back and a single rose is tucked in the center. Too bad it's straw, that's so hard to work with, but I just heard of a new machine that will sew straw. Can you imagine?

The war is over. We heard that the fortress at Belfort held out for one hundred eight days . . . even after Paris signed the peace agreement. Isn't that amazing? Both armies were so impressed that they left Belfort where it belonged on the French side instead of annexing it as they did Alsace and Lorraine.

All these months later, I am tortured by the thought that we might have hidden you somewhere closer. But I was surprised to see that soldier lounging in the square, and felt a deep stab of fear.

I'm sure we have done the right thing.

Friedrich and Franz are growing every day. Both are learning how to sew. And Frau Ottlinger misses you. She says you both love lemon cookies. Mama doesn't make them anymore. She says it makes her miss you more.

Krist and I talk about you, and together we wonder what you are doing. Krist remembers you as a brave girl, as brave as the French soldiers who fought against our soldiers at Belfort. I remember you that way, too.

Love,
Katharina

Dear Child,

I must tell you I never even realized how much sewing you did for us. I don't mean the seaming and the pressing and the turning of collars. I mean the odd things, if I may say odd: the seed pearls on a cuff that you'd decide to do on a whim, the extra bands of lace sewn into a sleeve.

Ah, Dina, I send you hugs.

Love,
Mama

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