Bowery Girl (18 page)

“He's never seen me without it.”

“He don't know who you are, then.
I
know who you are.” A tear burned down Mollie's face. She wiped it away. “I know ya want to read. I know you're gonna love that baby. I hated that baby, Annabelle. I can still hate that baby. But I know you love it. And I love you. You and me's family. And I went to that stupid settlement house ta make you happy and ya know what? I was happy, too. 'Cause I thought,
We're gonna go to Brooklyn and I'll get a job—a real job. And we'll have a place with a window and you and the baby can look out and see the sun
. You think Tommy's gonna give you that? Jesus, he took half your wages, Annabelle. What do ya think he's gonna do with—”

Annabelle stepped back. “Don't say that.”

“There's people better than him. Look at Charlie. Doesn't even know what a mark is. Don't ya want someone like that? Don't ya?”

“If you were a man, I'd marry you, Mollie Flynn. But you aren't. And Tommy is. And I love him.”

“You love him when you wear that wig and pretend to be someone you're not.”

“And what are you pretending to be in that dress?”

“I ain't pretending to be—”

“A do-gooder,” Annabelle said. “You look just like her.”

“You've gotta be kidding me.”

“Go back to the settlement house, Moll.”

“Not without you.”

“I ain't going back there. Telling me she's got some family for my baby. As if it ain't related to me at all. As if it's some book or something you lend out. Aw, hell.” Annabelle shook her head. She took in a breath, lifted her shoulders, and then reached into a skirt pocket. “Here. Put your hand out.”

Mollie complied. She felt a slip of paper placed there, then a round metal object. “What's this?”

“Look.”

It was a watch, a woman's watch to be worn like a necklace, simple and silver-plated, with two straight hands and a mother-of-pearl face. The ribbon was a deep teal, to go with the new dress.

Annabelle put the ribbon over Mollie's neck. “You'd think after all these years, you'd've kept one of those watches that passed through your hands.”

“It's beautiful.”

“I been looking at it in the pawnshop round the corner from the school forever, wondering, would she . . .”

But Mollie had stopped listening. She stared at the paper in her hand. A crude little flower was drawn in the bottom corner, and red rouge had been fingered into the petals. The black letters had been worried over, and in some places, the ink had pooled and soaked the page:

“It's my birthday? I forgot.”

“It's tomorrow ya daft—Go watch them finish that bridge tomorrow, then we'll have oysters and beer at home at four thirty.” Annabelle swung a red leather shoe. “Naw—make it four thirty-nine. Just so I can make sure you're using the watch.” Annabelle put a hand on Mollie's shoulder.

“This is the nicest thing—”

“Aw, don't go soft on me. I hear there's some timing things need to be done to figure out if the brat's really due.” Annabelle's stomach was heavy and low, filled with a new life she was soon to throw away. Like the boys who played King of the Mountain in the tenement yard. “I got to go back now. And you only got two blocks to walk from here to eat your hat and somehow get your ass back in.”

“Annabelle—”

Annabelle swallowed. She leaned in and brushed her lips against Mollie's cheek. “I think I did right by you after all.”

A BIRTHDAY

3:35 P.M.

The ticket office had already been constructed along the approach to the great bridge, with barricades to separate people into organized lines. Above the fluttering red awning, a sign of white letters against shiny black paint read: OPENING DAY MAY 24TH. 2:00 P.M. 1¢ TOLL.

There would, of course, be a similar ticket booth on the other side of the East River, with a similar sign. Twenty thousand people were expected to cross the bridge from New York to Brooklyn, and to tip their hats to the twenty thousand expected to cross from Brooklyn to New York.

Mollie looked beyond the booth to the gray stone of the New York tower. She followed the curved lines of the suspension cables from their huge casings to their highest point at the top of the tower and their downward swing across the river. There was nothing in the world that matched the height of this tower; even the round arches that formed the underpinnings of the roadway dwarfed the buildings around her. The Elevated railway, passing under one such arch, looked like a toy pushed by a bored child, minuscule and inconsequential.

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

 

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.

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

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.

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.

“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 bleeding. 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.