Bowery Girl (2 page)

“Was it horrible?” Mollie asked.

“Why, no, oysters and beer and twenty servants to dress you.”

“How grand.”

“No. Not really.” Annabelle slung her arm through Mollie's and pulled her down the street. “Look at that sky. What a goddamn blue sky. On Blackwell's it was once around the yard, even if you wanted more.”

Blackwell's Island sat opposite Sixty-First Street, out in the East River—a small island ringed with pretty green trees. Trees meant to hide all the darkness that sat at its center. A person went to Blackwell's for one of three reasons: for penance, for insanity, or for death. It was home to the thief, the beggar, the consumptive, the lunatic, the very old and very poor, the incorrigible, the wanton, the depraved, the unlucky. Superintendents, wardens, and turnkeys watched their wretched guests with cruel eyes. Should a new mother throw a fit over the rotten state of the proffered food, her baby was torn from her and sent to another family in the Far West. Should an old woman find herself a widow without any recourse to pay her rent, off she was shipped to the Island, to work at braiding straw until her fingers bled. If a man wandered the wrong street, a “kind” policeman might dislike his look and charge him with vagrancy, and then it was through the court at the Tombs and on to Blackwell's to be made a “better man.” A third or fourth time at the work-house—well, then, the penitentiary was deemed your next abode. And life became three square meals of bread and water, striped clothing, and your own cell locked tight at night.

“What'd you do while I was gone?” Annabelle asked.

“Seamus took me to see Annie Hindle do her male impersonation over at Tony Pastor's club. She sure is a handsome man, what she's a woman and all.”

“I hear her husband's really a girl.”

“Do ya?”

“Picked some full pockets?”

“It's been cold. Did a few sneak thieves for the boys, though, into some liquor warehouses.”

“Let me see your fingers.” Annabelle took Mollie's hand and turned it back and forth. “Ooh, nice and soft. Keeping up with the butter?”

“When I can afford it.”

“Good girl. Can't be a pickpocket without nice hands.” She kissed Mollie's palm, then let go. “Thought maybe Tommy might have come.”

“He's meeting us tonight at Lefty's.”

Annabelle's lips went tight, and then she laughed sharp as a knife. “Shoulda known it'd be you and not him.”

“I kept the place for us,” Mollie said. She did not say that she'd borrowed the rent money from Tommy, for the winter had been bitter and the racket was frozen as the sky. She did not say her hands weren't as fast as they'd been before, and that sometimes the cold burned them stiff.

“You always take care of me, don't you?”

“I owe you.”

Annabelle touched Mollie's cheek. “You don't owe me nothing. Except for your ever-loving life.”

Mollie looked closer at her friend. Annabelle had always been thin, for she knew the best johns on the streets were those looking for some bit of a virgin to conquer. But now, there was a weight to her cheeks and a heaviness to her walk.

“I want to get cleaned up,” Annabelle said. “I want a bath. You didn't sell my clothes, did you?”

“Course not. I kept them hanging on the wall, so's the rats wouldn't eat them.”

“Good, then. A change of clothes, then a bath.” Annabelle frowned. And although she kept pace with Mollie, her attention seemed to be both inward and then outward, struggling with a disappointment that Mollie had seen many times before. “He got a new girl?”

“Annabelle . . .”

“Course he does, doesn't he?”

 

 

The tenement at 32 Oak Street was squeezed between two others, and the alley entrance was blocked by boxes of empty liquor bottles. Mollie and Annabelle stayed close together as they made their way through the narrow corridor. They kept their eyes to the ground, for one wrong step would land shoes in offal or garbage. The air held the familiar scent of home—cabbage, potatoes, and rot. Wet laundry hung overhead, untouched by any breeze. They crossed the yard that separated the front tenement from the back rookery, holding their breath against the stench of the outhouses. Mollie pulled hard at the rookery's swollen front door—one time, two times, three— until the door scraped against the landing and swung free.

A single gaslight, bare of globe or cage, brightened the first three steps; beyond was darkness.

“Remember the way?” Mollie asked.

“How could I forget?”

They lifted their skirts and ascended.

Annabelle stopped at the trough on the second floor and splashed her face with water that dripped from a spigot on the wall. The squawk of a violin came from one of the flats. A pot clattered behind another door. “Give me a second to rest.” She leaned against the wall, and even in the murky light, Mollie saw how hard it was for Annabelle to catch her breath.

“Jesus, you think we'd know not to get a place on the fifth floor. At least they could put in railings, so when my legs give out I can pull myself up.”

“Ah, you're just not used to it now,” Mollie said. “Give yourself a day and you'll be running up here with your eyes closed.”

“Eyes open or closed, it's still dark, ain't it?” She took Mollie's hand.

“Got some Italians next door now. Sew buttons. Two kids and God knows how many adults. They stink, that's all I know. Put garlic in everything and don't never take baths. Seamus says they're gonna ruin this neighborhood.”

Annabelle blew out a breath. “Think we might find a place on the first floor when leases come up in May?”

“My, how upper-class that'll make us.” Mollie pulled out the key she wore around her neck and let them in. She crossed the room to the barrel that served as their table and lit the candle, then pulled a shard of coal from a bucket and pushed it in the cast-iron stove. She lifted a jar from the shelf near the coal stove, scooped a bit of tea into a pot, then picked up a pail of water, pouring enough for two cups.

“You hung my clothes.” Annabelle ran her fingers over the fabrics of her dresses. Even in the dim light, the blues and pinks and reds danced. “I'll have to let these out a bit. No corset, I guess.”

“I even repapered the walls. Got a grand serial going on I'll read ya later.”

Annabelle lifted her wig from a hook, pulled it on, and flipped at the fake curls to make them bob. Then she bent to the piece of mirror on a shelf in the corner, and adjusted the wig's placement.

“Aw,
now
I recognize you,” Mollie said.

“Do you?” Annabelle pinched her cheeks. “Where's my rouge?”

“In the box under the bed. I'll get it.”

Annabelle twisted the lid open and dabbed the red on her cheeks and lips. “Want some?” She held out the jar.

“Nah.”

“Natural beauty you got, Mollie.” She opened a small box that held blue powder and a tiny brush, and then ran the color over her lids. “Better, huh?” Annabelle reached to her three dresses. “Now, which color for Tommy? He likes the red, I think.”

“Ya look better in blue.”

Annabelle pulled the red from the hook and shook it out. She held it to her waist, sighed, and sat heavily on the edge of the bed they shared. “God, open a window. Oh, I forget, we don't have one.” She turned the dress inside out. “I can take some fabric from round the bustle, here, and drape it in front. Make my own style. Give me your knife, Mollie.”

As Annabelle tore at the seams of her dress, Mollie pulled the chair from the wall and sat, crossing her legs. She stuck a matchstick in her mouth and leaned back, so the front chair legs lifted from the floor. This was right; this was like it always was, Annabelle making pretty things and Mollie sitting and watching. The light from the candle spread in a golden circle.

Annabelle glanced up from her work. “Tell me about your world.”

“My world?”

“Your world without me.”

“Oh, that. I became a Protestant. Go to church every day. Bought a horse and carriage to tour the park.” Mollie shook her head in mock sadness. “Being rich is so boring, really.”

“The day I see you in any church, Mollie Flynn, is the day I'll dance naked at Lefty's and give all the money thrown at me to charity. Ow. Haven't done any sewing in a while.” Annabelle shook her thumb, then sucked the blood from the tip. “How's Seamus?”

“Same as ever. Wanting more than ever. What the hell. I ain't marrying him.” She stood, and moved two chipped cups from the shelf to the barrel. Using her skirt as a towel, she picked up the pot and poured the tea. “I mean what the hell, ya know? What does he think?”

Someone pounded against the wall. Mollie grabbed for the mirror so it wouldn't fall. Then she kicked at the wall.

“Shut up, ya filthy”—she kicked the wall again—“stinkin' Wops!”

More pounding. Annabelle's dresses fluttered with each hit.

Mollie whirled to Annabelle. “Was I yelling? I don't think I was yelling.” She made a fist and thumped twice, tearing the newspaper that lined the walls. “I wasn't yelling, ya sons of bitches!”

Annabelle laughed. She set the needle she worked with on the barrel's top, and wiped her eyes. “Aw, ya daft bitch. I'm so glad to be home.”

A BATH

THEY WERE ASKED TO write their names in the ledger at the East Side Baths. The large, wafer-thin pages were filled with the names and dates of all the visitors who had entered; upon the approval and signature of the head matron, five cents were to be deposited in a coffee tin.

The building had once been a mansion, and its back gardens had stretched to the banks of the East River. The elegance could still be seen in the welcoming curves of the banister railing, the colored glass above the door where Jesus' lamb lay in green meadows, in the high ceilings carved with angels and bouquets of flowers. Where had the family fled who had once lived here, in the time of Madison and Adams? To Washington Square, perhaps, or farther away—the Forties off Fifth Avenue. They fled the immigrant masses: the Irish and Germans who came through the gates of Castle Garden and invaded the East Side. The fathers and sons of the old families had continued to conduct their business here, although they were careful to place large signs in the windows of their shops and factories stating NO DOGS OR IRISH ALLOWED.

But that was before. Now, the Irish were, if not respectable, at least established in their rough-and-tumble strong-hold. And as the good American families had done to them, so the Irish did to the newcomers who now flowed through Castle Garden.

The head matron scowled at Mollie. She crossed her ample arms and narrowed her eyes. Her jowls were gray as the dirt in the corners of the entryway. She waited for Mollie's name.

Mollie dipped the pen in the ink bottle.

The light from the stained-glass meadow above her suffused the room with a green phosphorescent tint. Mollie held the pen aloft; the black ink slid in one large drop to the very tip, where it ballooned and then dropped to the paper below.

“Now look what you've done! I won't be able to read three names now, you stupid girl. I'm meant to transfer the names from this ledger to Miss DuPre's ledger, and you have ruined it.”

“What are you keeping the names for?” Annabelle asked.

“I ought to take your five cents just for defiling my ledger. And you've held up the line—look.” The matron pointed to the doorway.

She was right: Young girls, women holding babies close to their bosoms, cheap shawls, no shawls, thin shoes, thin hair, children with bowed legs certainly caused by rickets, stood in a long line behind Mollie.

“Now sign your name.”

Mollie's hand dropped to the empty line, 152. In her very best handwriting, she signed,
Dolley Madison
.

The head matron plucked the pen from her hand and pointed it at Annabelle. “Come, come, come.”

“She can't write,” Mollie said. “I'll sign for her.” She took back the pen and filled line 153:
Martha Washington
.

The head matron turned the heavy ledger to face her. She attacked the page with her pen, marking her initials boldly. She cocked her head at the ping of Mollie's coins in the coffee tin. “Take a towel from the basket to the right of the door, then up the stairs. Take any tub that's empty, and if there isn't an empty one, share with another girl. The faucet's on the wall—the under matron will add one kettle of hot water—scrub, then wipe, then redress. Ten minutes.”

Mollie and Annabelle barely heard her. They darted for the stairs, grabbing a towel.

“Since when's there a sign-in?” Annabelle asked.

“Since some rich bitch bought this building and the one next door. Got classrooms and everything over there. Wait till you see her. Harps on and on about us improving our lives. Can't take a bath in peace anymore.”

Mollie smelled the clean sting of soap before she entered the long room. Girls giggled. Water sloshed against iron tubs and dribbled from faucets.

“Where's all the tubs?” Mollie counted only ten, where there had been twenty. Plugged pipes extended from one wall; the only evidence of the missing tubs were dark rectangular water stains.

“You'll have to ask Miss DuPre that.” The under matron who answered made a disapproving sound from between the gap in her teeth. “Five went to the basement and one up the stairs to you-know-who's new rooms. Knows what to do with the tubs, she does, but not what to do with us. Isn't that right, Peggy?”