A House of Tailors (7 page)

fifteen

I saw the health department wagon in front of our place, the two men with their dark beards knocking on someone's door, just as Johann had said. I hurried past them, but one called after me. “Say hello to the little girl who waves at herself.”

He meant Maria, I realized, but I was too afraid to answer. I took the stairs as quickly as I could, happy to see the apartment door. The Uncle was waiting in the hallway, walking back and forth.

“Dina,” he said, sounding excited. “You're to come with me now, to Mrs. Koch.”

My eyes opened wide. I never wanted to see Mrs. Koch or her beautiful house again. I felt my face flush every time I thought of that morning with her breakfast and the hats. But the Uncle was hurrying me out the door. I went past the kitchen first, seeing a plate of cakes on the table, and took one to nibble on as we went down the stairs.

“Does she ever stop eating?” the Uncle muttered to himself, taking enormous steps. “Mrs. Koch is waiting. Waiting for you.”

Downstairs he stopped at the door, looking at me, shaking his head. “The cake.”

I brushed the crumbs off my mouth and straightened my old hat.

“Your collar, not the cleanest.”

I stopped there in the street, next to the building, and quickly unbuttoned the collar, turning it inside out. “What else?” I asked.

“I think that's all.”

“What does she want, anyway?” I asked.

“Mrs. Koch does not tell me, and I do not ask,” he said. “I take care of her horses, her barn, her garden. And that's enough.”

Ten minutes later we were there, going up those steps, my hand on the railing, my pulse ticking somewhere in my throat. We stopped in Aunt Ida's kitchen while she went upstairs to knock on the parlor door to tell Mrs. Koch I was there.

The Uncle was already out the back door on his way to the garden when he turned. “Say yes, say no, and otherwise, don't talk,” he said.

“You're making me nervous,” I said.

“You don't know what it is to be nervous,” he told me, but he was smiling just a little.

I tried to smile, too. “You're right.”

“For once,” he said, closing the door in back of him.

I didn't really have time to be nervous. Aunt Ida came bustling back, tugging at my skirt, straightening my hat, my sleeves. “You look fine. Go into the parlor.”

“Where . . .”

She rolled her eyes. “I'll take you, or you'll end up in a closet somewhere.”

Upstairs, Aunt Ida reached out to knock, and then she was gone.

Mrs. Koch was waiting for me. I caught my breath. Dangling from her fingers was my hat. My pink hat with the droopy brim.

I looked from the hat to her face. I hadn't remembered what she looked like. It had only been a second or two from the time she screamed to the time Aunt Ida had rushed me out of there.

Mrs. Koch had a friendly face, with large dark eyes, and she wore a white lace morning cap over her faded red hair. Old-fashioned, those caps; only people like Grandmother wore them now.

She pointed to a chair and I slid into it. “Talk,” she said, leaning forward. “Tell me about yourself.”

And so I did. I told her the terrible thing I had done, I told her about Breisach and Katharina, and sewing, and a machine for straw hats. I told her about my river as it rushed along its cement banks, and König, my cat, and Franz and Friedrich. Mrs. Koch nodded all the while.

I stopped suddenly and closed my mouth.

“What's the matter?” she asked.

I swallowed. “I think I wasn't speaking English.”

“No matter, I came from Heidelburg a long time ago.” She waggled her hand. “You are speaking both, half German, half English.”

“The Uncle said I don't speak well.”

She laughed, leaning even closer. “I can just imagine. He's a little irritable.”

Irritable. I ran my tongue over the word. I didn't know what it meant, but I liked the sound of it.

“Tell me about this,” Mrs. Koch said, patting the hat in her lap.

“The hat?”

I was off again, speaking one sentence in my own language, supplying the few words I knew in English here and there. I told her about the hat I had given to Katharina and the pattern from Elise. I leaned forward to explain how I had snipped away the bottom drawer of the dresser, and as I told her, she reached up to take off her morning cap and put my hat on her head.

I stared at her, and then—how did I have the nerve—I moved forward to tilt the hat just a bit, fluffing the lace, and shook my head at her.

“What's the matter?” she asked.

“Wrong color,” I told her slowly. “And the brim . . .”

She went to the mirror. “You're right about the color, but the brim is what makes this hat unusual.” She twirled around. “How would you like to make me a hat just like this one?”

sixteen

Every day the leaves became more golden, the sky the color of fall: sharp blue, and cloudless. I found the materials for Mrs. Koch's hat in a store called A. T. Stewart, and used Elise's pattern, except that I formed the base with buckram, which was stiff but not so rigid that I couldn't bend the edges to frame her face.

I had to laugh when Mrs. Koch told me no one else would have a hat like it. Of course not, since the bent edges were a mistake.

It was such a happy week, working on that hat, finishing it, trying it on Barbara and then on myself.

I tried not to think about the smallpox disease that so many people in our neighborhood had. On one of my trips to the park, Johann told me some people were being vaccinated against it.

A strange word,
vaccination
. I nearly fainted when I heard it meant to puncture the skin with a needle filled with the cowpox disease. How terrible, even though I heard that the Prussian soldiers had all been vaccinated during the war.

One morning I awoke uneasily, thinking about the day ahead. The Uncle was leaving, driving Mrs. Koch in her carriage to a lake somewhere in New York. Even though it was out of season, she wanted to take the waters for her constitution. They would be gone at least a week.

Taking the waters
I understood. In Baden, people took the waters all the time for their health. I wished Barbara and Maria could do that, too.

Maria had been sick for a few days, now her face flushed with fever, and the night before, Barbara's face had been red, too, her eyes heavy as she bent over the little girl, checking her arms, her legs, her stomach for signs of the pox. But “Nothing,” she told me with relief. “Not one mark.”

I dressed and went into the kitchen, planning my day: Run up a few pairs of trousers to make the Uncle happy before I began a second hat for a friend of Mrs. Koch. Sweep the apartment, which gathered grime from outside every moment. Go downstairs for water and wash Maria's diapers. It was going to be a busy day.

The Uncle was still in the kitchen, his hand on Barbara's hair, looking worried. The Uncle, worried! We could hear Maria screaming in her crib. She sounded very much like the Uncle. I had to smile. Maria was much more appealing than he was.

“I'll bring her a bottle,” Barbara said.

“She is like you, Dina, that baby,” the Uncle said.

And as I stared at him in shock, he sighed. “I must leave now.”

He said goodbye to them in the bedroom as I took a scoop of the meltwater to give Barbara's plant a drink. I looked carefully for the buds that Barbara promised were coming, but all I saw was a sturdy green stem with a few pale leaves.

The Uncle came back to the kitchen and hesitated. “If something should happen . . . ,” he began, “I will not be here.”

I caught his eyes. “I will,” I said.

He stood there, chewing the edge of his lip, and then nodded. “All right. I know you will do well facing trouble.”

For a moment I couldn't move. I couldn't speak. It was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to me.

I listened to his footsteps going down the stairs and went to the bedroom door. Maria was asleep already. Barbara sat on the edge of the bed resting her head on the iron bars of the baby's crib, her eyes drooping, almost asleep herself.

I tiptoed in, touching her hair the way the Uncle had, moving her feet up onto the bed and covering her with the blanket. She nodded at me, whispering thanks, and I went back out to tackle the apartment.

The window over the air shaft in the kitchen was the worst. Nailed shut, it was always covered with an oily soot. I wondered what would happen if I removed the nails. Thinking about it, I went downstairs and lugged up the water, enough for a pailful of diapers and nightshirts.

I put the water on to boil and then I worked with one of the Uncle's tools to pry the nails out of the window. At last it slid open, letting in a whoosh of air, papers, and soot.

A terrible idea! But after a few minutes the dust settled and air came into the apartment, and as I bent over, scrubbing at the glass with a cloth, light!

I worked all that morning, stopping to look in the bedroom every once in a while. And later, I told myself, I would take a quick walk to the park, just once around and back.

I did that, and saw Johann at his table, bent over a piece of fabric, intent on what he was doing. I wished I had the courage to knock on the window or to walk by a second time, but I saw his father standing there looking out, and I scurried past, going home to Barbara.

On the way I saw the health department cart, the horses raising one hoof and then another as they waited for the men to carry out still another person on a stretcher. A person with smallpox, a person destined to die in the hospital.

I forgot about Johann then and raised my skirt to my ankles to run home. I never stopped until, breathless, I reached the top floor and our apartment.

I leaned against the door for a moment to catch my breath, then went into the bedroom. Both of them slept on, and as I tiptoed to the crib, I saw the first small mark on Maria's cheek.

That night, I stirred weak soup filled with vegetables and spooned it slowly into Barbara's dry mouth. I held a bottle for Maria to suck. She had several more pockmarks, and they were beginning to ooze. I washed her face gently with a soft rag, and then Barbara's, and at last threw myself on the sofa, still dressed, to doze.

seventeen

I was dreaming again. This time I could see my river imprisoned in its cement banks, gray and bleak. Great chunks of ice smashed into the stone bridge, jostling each other, squeaking and screaming, almost as if they were alive.

I knew I was dreaming and was angry that I wasn't imagining a summer river, with barges drifting along in the sunshine and sailors waving their ribboned hats at me.

I awoke to Maria crying in her crib again. Why didn't I hear the sound of Barbara's footsteps or her soft voice soothing her?

I lay there trying to clear my mind; it was as filled with cobwebs as the wooden steps in the cathedral tower. My eyes wanted to close, but I knew there was something I had to remember.

Just on the edge of my mind.

Slipping away like a chunk of ice in the center of the river.

I felt my head nod and realized: I lay on the couch, no covers, still dressed. I ran my fingers over the buttons, the top one open, my belt loosened. And then I was on my feet in an instant, stumbling over my shoes on the rug, running down the hall into Barbara's bedroom.

I glanced at Barbara in her bed, tossing and turning. Her hair almost covered her face, her head moved from side to side, her hands plucked at the blanket. She was muttering something under her breath.

But Maria first, Maria screaming in the crib, her red face a mass of raised pustules, her eyes and mouth swollen, her tiny fingers scratching at her cheeks and then her arms. I glanced at the red ribbons on the bars of the crib. How right the Uncle had been. They were useless.

I lifted Maria, wrapping the blanket around her, and sank down on the floor, rocking her back and forth. “Oh, poor baby, poor baby,” I crooned.

I couldn't believe I had slept, couldn't believe I had closed my eyes.

“Dina,” Maria was saying through her tears. “Dee-na.” The first time she had said my name. Her first word, I was sure of it. I was filled with love for her.

“Bottle,” Barbara was saying.

“I know,” I said. “Don't worry, I'm here.”

“Give her . . . ,” Barbara said again.

“Yes.” I nodded, but I wasn't thinking of Barbara's words but of Johann's:
Most people who go to the hospital die
.

I glanced at the small window over the bed. Light shone through; it was daytime.

Never mind wanting to sleep. My legs felt weak as I thought of the wagon that would roll down the street in just a short while, the medical emblem on the side, the two health workers going from house to house, checking to see if anyone had the disease.

Smallpox
. A word that seemed like nothing, but such a terrible sickness. If only I could pick up Barbara and Maria and take them somewhere, hide them.

There was no way to do that.

This morning, they'd take Barbara and Maria, and we'd never see either of them again.

How could I ever tell the Uncle?

Never mind the Uncle. I loved Barbara, with her sweet face and soft ways. I loved Maria, with her tantrums, and her block throwing, and her smile.

I put Maria back into the crib and went into the kitchen for the bottle. The tube down the center was coated with old milk. I worked at it, running some of the water that was left through it over and over, and in back of me I heard the water dripping into the pan under the icebox. If I didn't empty it soon, it would flood the kitchen floor.

All the time I was thinking about what I could do about the health department men.

I could show them a spotless apartment. Show them a spotless Maria, a spotless Barbara. For a moment I told myself it was too much, and what difference would it make? The men would take them both anyway.

Beg them,
came a voice in my mind. The Uncle's voice:
Say please
. I practiced it in my head, and then aloud as I gave Maria the bottle.

“Pliz,”
I said as I ripped up soft clean cloths and wrapped them around Maria's hands so she couldn't scar her face with scratching.

“Pliz,”
I said as I washed her face and changed her diaper cloths, tucked knitted booties over her feet, and buttoned a clean white gown around her.

Pliz:
a begging word.

And in back of me, Barbara called out, sensing that I was there even in her fever: “Hide the baby, Dina. Hide the baby.”

I went into the kitchen and scrubbed the floor, put the milk back into the icebox, swept the hall, and changed my dress.

Pliz
.