Bowery Girl (10 page)

 

“Get out of the doorway, miss.”

 

The rain is sharp, but it does not clean.

 

There's people before you, Mollie. Don't bump into them. There are carts coming toward you.
The stevedore with the broad-brimmed hat says something; his mouth opens and closes like a fish. His eyes are kind. What's he saying? There's nothing to hear but the rain. What's he saying? He's asking her a question. He's set his cart down. He's waiting for an answer.

Mollie opens her mouth and screams. Mollie walks past him and keeps screaming. It's the only thing blocking the roar of the rain and there's too many drops to count now. One block, two blocks. There's the Elevated, leaving the station. She sees the lights inside and the dark figures of people pushing in. When it leaves, the ground shudders beneath her; the train itself is swallowed by water and all the people inside will drown.

 

Look how no one stops you, Mollie Flynn. You can scream your head off and no one does a thing about it.
But then the water parts like a curtain, and out comes a long blue coat and a badge. He wants you to stop screaming, Mollie. He'll take you to the station house if you don't shut up.

 

 

 

The mud sucked and pulled at Mollie's feet as she crossed the yard. The rain coursed down, each heavy drop reflecting the orange glow of the tenement windows. She stepped into the rookery's hallway, which smelled already of mold.

“Yer wet.” Little Ian played marbles on the floor. A yellow light slashed from the partially open door to his apartment. Behind it, Mollie saw his mother. She held a pot. “Mam says you can die if yer out in the rain when you shouldn't be.” Ian flicked a marble that passed near Mollie's shoe. “Maybe yer dead now.”

She tried to fit the key in the lock, but her hand shook too much. She knocked. The door flew open. Annabelle stood in front of her; Annabelle crushed her in her arms.

“Oh, Mollie.”

There was someone else, then, pushing past Annabelle. Seamus? Yes, Seamus. He pulled her against him, kissing the top of her head.

“Don't touch me.” She scratched at his face and hit him in the chest. He let her go.

She saw the boys, then. They all stood smashed together in the tiny room: Hugh and Mugs on the bed, Tommy standing by the table.

Annabelle slowly raised a hand to Mollie's cheek. “You're so cold.” She turned and yanked the blanket from the mattress, pulling it out from under Hugh and Mugs. “Get off the bed.”

Mollie felt the weight of wool, but did not find its heat.

It was very bright. The kerosene lamp they used on special occasions burned white. There was something else on the table, something she'd never seen there before: guns. She counted them, because she could not take the looks in the boys' eyes—the questioning and silence.
One, two, three, four. One, two, three—

“We looked for you at the police station, Mollie.” Seamus put out a hand to touch her, then thought better of it. “Mugs and Hugh went up to the Tombs for six-o'clock court. Me and Tommy checked the streets, we checked every alley we could think of, and we couldn't find you.” His voice broke. He dabbed his handkerchief against the scratch Mollie'd made on his cheek.

“We thought you'd been tapped,” Hugh said. “The police, they was everywhere last night.”

“Go get some whiskey from across the street.” Tommy peeled off bills from a roll and handed them to Mugs.

“Get out.” Mollie's voice was no more than a breath. “Get—” Mollie's eyes caught Seamus's. His lips were white. He had pulled the trigger that shot the bullet that killed a man. All because of her. There are consequences to everything. “—out.”

Tommy nodded. The boys each picked up a gun:
one, two, three, four.

 

 

Annabelle unbuttoned Mollie's shirt and peeled it from her shoulders. She laid it over the table to dry. She lifted Mollie's arms, pulled off her chemise. She dipped a rag in water warmed on the stove and ran it across Mollie's back, down her legs, and up the inside. She braided Mollie's hair. Over and over, Annabelle dipped the rag in the water and washed Mollie's skin clean. An arm, a foot, a cheek.

Annabelle did not talk because there was no need for it. She did not talk, and Mollie was grateful.

She gave Mollie her nightdress. She sat her on the edge of the bed and handed her a plate with two biscuits.

“I'm not hungry.”

“You need to eat.” Annabelle broke off a piece of the biscuit and held it to Mollie's lips. “Please.”

The bread caught in her throat, and she coughed, sending crumbs flying. Annabelle poured her a glass of gin. She took a swallow. She asked for another glass. She waited for the numbness.

“What happened?”

“Got a man killed. Seamus tell you that?”

“Oh, Moll.”

“I steal. I don't want no part of killing,” Mollie said. The room looked as if it were underwater: The stove floated, the table bobbed up and down, Annabelle's dresses swam like beautiful fish.

“I've never seen you cry,” Annabelle said.

“That what I'm doing?”

“Seamus had to do it. The man knew what you looked like. Didn't he?”

Mollie pushed the heels of her hands into her eye sockets until she saw only blue and silver stars.

Mollie stayed in the bed. The only time she left was to visit the outhouse. In the yard, the water rose from all the rain; bottles and cans and papers floated on the dirty skin of it. Some of the outhouses flooded, and their stench rose like a thick gas.

Seamus had come by. She had not answered the door. He had stood outside for hours, then finally given up. Sometimes it was so quiet, Mollie heard the Italians sewing buttonholes next door. Annabelle went out each day. Each night—very late—the lock would tumble, and the door would click and squeal against its hinges. Annabelle would drop coins on the table, then take off her wig and hang it on a hook. She pulled at the pins that held her hair, and let it tumble over her shoulders. She loosened her stays, letting out a great sigh.

She wandered from task to task: a bit of coal pushed around in the stove to get the last of its heat, candlewicks trimmed and lit and placed on the table, the dress removed and shaken out and hung up. She would wash herself then, scrubbing every bit of her body, shivering at the wet rag.

“Not many biting today,” she'd say. “And those who do ain't worth the coins.”

Or “Mugs sent along some meat. I think I'll make stew—that'll get you up again. We ain't had stew in ages. Course that's because we both hate it.”

Or “Maybe you can show me how to work a pen without getting ink all over my hand. Look like I got some disease. Would you help me, Moll?”

And then, one night, when her lip was split and swollen, she yanked Mollie from the bed. “Get up. I can't trick anymore. It hurts. All right?”

“Who gave you the lip?”

“We need money.”

“Who gave you the lip, Annabelle?”

“Tommy. Who else? I told him the baby was his. But you were right, weren't you? He don't give fuck-all—”

“I'm gonna kill that son of a bitch.”

“He promised me he'd settle for ten dollars.”

“Before or after he hit you?” Mollie asked.

“We need money.”

“But I did that sneak thief. He said he'd forgive the whole thing.”

Annabelle pointed to the tin box on the shelf over the bed. “There's six dollars and thirteen cents in there. That's all we got. I'm pregnant, Moll. I need you. And I need ya to not be dead.”

DELANCEY

M
OLLIE STARED AT THE door. She took a breath. Turned the kerosene switch until the flame went blue, then snuffed black. She stood in the dark, before the door, and crossed herself.

The small window at the end of the hall thumped against the rotten frame. It was the wind, playing with the glass. Shrieks of laughter and a boy's howl came from the yard below.

She approached the window, opening it enough to look down past the outhouse roofs. The cool air felt sharp against her skin, and she pulled her hands back, crossing her arms.

Three little boys had claimed the muddy stretch of land between the tenements and made it their kingdom. Two of the boys were at that age when legs and arms gained confidence, and each day they challenged their bodies to throw stones just a little farther, jump higher on the mountain of garbage that bulged and balanced at a threatening height. The third boy Mollie recognized as Ian, the little boy from the first floor. He trailed along behind the other two, and the stones he threw at the cans the boys had set atop the outhouses never made their mark. Still, he did not complain, even when the other two tripped him for no reason but their own amusement, or pulled his hair, or jumped from the outhouses to scare him.

The boys played ferociously on their mountain, throwing each other off, rolling down, and climbing back up. The tallest one reached the very pinnacle; he crouched down, opened the top trash bag, and rummaged around. He removed cans and bottles, stacking them on the brick window ledge of a second-story room.

“I own this mound,” he said, “and I'll knock the head off anyone who tries to take it.”

This was of course not a warning to his friends, but an invitation readily accepted. Ian stared at the ground, as if pondering a strategy. But the other boy leaped up, his red hair like flame. The king of the pinnacle would not be removed. The redhead received quite a wallop from a can. It didn't matter. Up he immediately climbed again, a full frontal assault. The king dug again in the bags. He threw whatever his hands found available, which meant chicken bones, a rotten cabbage, a piece of bread hard as rock.

While the boys fought, Mollie watched Ian pick his way slowly up the side of the garbage mountain. He did not look up at his quarry, nor did he make the mistake of looking down at the ground. He climbed up and up. What would happen at the top? The bigger boy would shove Ian off completely, and laugh in triumph. Might makes right.

It was the way of the Fourth Ward.

 

 

Down the stairs. A hand running along the wall from habit, from darkness, from the lack of a railing to keep one's balance. Pass the yard, pass the boys, pass the mothers churning laundry. Slip through the narrow alley. Claim the street.
Walk it like you've done before, Mollie.

But Lord, how the people passed so close, jarring her shoulder, darting in front of her, coming up from behind—she watched and walked. She needed a mark. One good mark. Someone who kept their money with them. Someone like Maud Riley, who had a vegetable stand and collected money all day.

Her chest was tight. What the hell was she thinking? Maud Riley knew her. Maud Riley'd tap her in a second and turn her over to the cops.

Noise tumbled around her, and she knew there was nothing for her to do but continue to walk and think. Watch out for Tommy or the boys.
Take a breath: It's only four dollars you need.
Rent would be tomorrow's problem.

Water dripped from windowsills and awnings, and pooled under the tables of vegetables at the grocer's. Horses churned up mud from beneath the cobblestones. The air was filled with dampness that steamed from the sidewalk, from wool coats, from the stone and brick buildings. She looked up at the telegraph wires crisscrossing the sky like a spider's web. Holding her in. Holding her to this life.

“Watch out!” Someone put a hand on her arm and moved her from the path of a huge pushcart filled with furniture.

“Don't touch me.” She jerked her arm away. “Don't ever touch me.”

The man who stopped her gestured to the cart. “You were going to walk right—”

“Then let me walk into it. It's got nothing to do with you if I do or don't.”

“Got a mouth on you, don't you?” He ambled away, shaking his head.

At the livery stable, two horses waited in their tracings and blinders, nodding off in the steamy sun. Their whole lives, good or bad or indifferent, were entirely up to the whim of their owner. Did they ever wish for something else?

She crossed Batavia, walking along Roosevelt. The tenements all blended together, stoop after stoop, brick facades covered in black dirt, some buildings with new fire escapes—or easy entries, as the boys had pointed out. In between the flat stones of the sidewalk, Mollie saw the bright green of newly sprung grass. In a matter of days, it would all be trampled and brown. Yet, there it was, every year, just the same, beautiful and so fragile it made Mollie want to cry.

 

 

She wandered up and down Delancey for hours. The clouds were lumpy, heavy with bad temper, and the air, swollen and still, was tinged with a strange emerald light. Soon it would rain.

It should have been easy, finding marks on this wide, busy street, what with all the people getting off the streetcars with empty hands, then returning with arms full of packages. It should have been easy when the fire-truck bell clanged and everyone shaded their eyes to watch the horses galloping by. And then there was the emporium with flour and salt and ready-made collars and bolts of fabric and not one eye on her. So many opportunities.

Yet, each time she stepped in closer to a fat wallet or a carelessly held purse, she could not complete the take. Where was the flattening of sound, the narrowing of focus? Mollie's head ached—filled with all the sounds of the streets, all the back-and-forth movement of the people. And how her hands shook! She barely escaped touching the fingers of a woman who had reached in her purse for a handkerchief.