Bowery Girl (7 page)

“And what if the watchman catches me?”

“You got a knife, don't you?”

“It ain't for that.”

“He won't see you. I been watching him. Drinks until he sleeps. And your fingers are the lightest around.”

“I don't know.”

Tommy shoved his hand under her coat, into the pocket. “What's this?”

Mollie winced. The money from Black Jim and a couple other takes.

His fingers caught up the bills. He licked his index finger and counted. “Seven dollars. I'll take it as interest.”

“That's rent money.”

He tilted his head. “You're getting slow, aren't you? I took you for a talent at one time. Now I'm not so sure.”

“I know you don't care one way or the other about me. But don't take away the rent money. I'll pay you back, I swear to God.”

He hesitated, then folded the money in half and placed it back in her coat. “Guess it's twenty-seven you owe me now. I want it next week. Unless you decide to play with me. It's just a matter of opening a door. Thought you'd like the challenge.” He lifted his derby to her and started for the street. “Oh, and tell Annabelle I miss her. I can trust you to tell her that, can't I?”

He swaggered away, whistling some tune as he went.

HOW MOLLIE FLYNN CAME TO BE

THE HAD BEEN TOLD many stories, some simple, some filled with wonder. Her favorite story began with a beautiful woman and a million stars.

The beautiful woman was her mother; her name was Calliope. She had light hair that shined in the moonlight. Her eyes were light, too, and if anyone took the time, they'd see all her thoughts and secrets. Calliope tried to keep many secrets. But her eyes gave her away, and Mollie often damned her, for her own eyes were just the same.

Calliope's big secret was Mollie. Calliope was a lady, still under her father's fine roof. She was promised to an older man with graying whiskers and ten thousand dollars in the bank. They had never so much as held hands.

Calliope would sit in the parlor on a horsehair-and-velvet couch, listening to the tick of a rosewood clock, reading some bit of poetry. Her left hand held the book to the light. Her right hand was spread across herself, her palm feeling the tiny beat of Mollie's heart.

As Mollie grew bigger and bolder inside her (for Mollie was quite a courageous child—that's what the Sister had told her), Calliope paid her maid ten dollars to sew her dresses with lace and roses and many flounces meant to hide her secret.

On Saturdays she was handed into a shiny brougham that took her around Central Park. She threw bread to the birds.

When it was time for Mollie to appear in the world, Calliope walked from Washington Square to the Lower East Side. The heels on her soft leather boots tore off somewhere, and soon Calliope stumbled. There were men looking her over, staring with loneliness from under the brims of their slouch caps. Others were half drunk with whiskey, half drunk with greed, who saw her silk dress and wondered if there was money clinking in a pocket or two. But then she'd walk under an oil lamp, and those men would see the blood staining the fine fabric and they'd turn away.

She could barely breathe. The sweat that matted her hair did not come from the heavy July heat, but from Mollie, now writhing and twisting, trying to tear her mother in two.

She finally reached the river. The tight streets and tilting wood buildings ended. In front of her, ships swayed in their moorings. She breathed to the creak of wood hulls and prayed to the tall masts, which looked much like the crosses in the church, what with their sails furled and only their vulnerable skeletons showing.

And then Mollie came—too soon, before Calliope was ready. She had meant to drown them both in the river. Instead, her child slid from her body to the street and down the slope to the water, in an oily mess of blood that would not stop flowing.

Calliope grabbed the cord, that lifeline between mother and child, and tore at it with her teeth. She watched Mollie slide away.

Mollie fell into the water with a tiny splash. There were a million stars that night, wondrous stars, God's light welcoming her to the world. Mollie knows her mother would have caught her up and held her tight, had she the strength. She knows her mother would have saved her, had she not died in the act of letting go. She does not remember the nun who found her and scooped her from the rushes. Fat, fat baby floating like a fallen star near the river's edge.

 

 

This was the story Sister Mary Clara told her. Mary Clara was dismissed from the charity for telling such gruesome lies to little girls. At Mary Clara's charity, Mollie went by the name of Sarah.

The story Mollie Flynn liked the least was probably the truth. She had been left in the basket outside the Foundling Asylum, lucky enough not to freeze during the night. She was given the name of Margaret.

 

 

She had been called Alice and Caroline and even Pennsylvania. Charity to charity, outgrowing one, transferred to another after stealing bread, kicked out from a third for “seducing” the priest at Mass. She'd learned the skills of pickpocketing from Googs Mallory, whose bed was next to hers in the New York School for Delinquent Children. Googs was the only one who believed Mollie's story. She was also familiar with Father Timothy's roving hands.

They escaped together, and Mollie became the “stall,” shifting a mark's attention away from his wallet long enough for Googs to take it. Then one morning, Googs disappeared with money that by all rights should have been shared.

 

 

Not much she could do after that but learn the trade better. At first, she supplemented her earnings of pennies by begging, then singing on a street corner and gasping as if she were to die of consumption any minute. She knew all the saloons with the deepest and freshest trash bins. She kept to herself—how Father Timothy had set her against trusting anyone!—and crawled into the mound of rags in the Ragpickers' Lot for sleep. She woke and wandered and became the best pickpocket she could.

Each morning, she emerged to find a cup of beer and some scrap of food—a half-eaten muffin, a rip of ham, an apple. As she ate, she watched a girl across the lot who wore a blonde wig and lifted her skirts in daylight. She knew this girl was the one who brought food.

Mollie once asked Annabelle why she chose to rescue her. “Hell,” Annabelle said, “I used to sleep in that very same spot when my da and mam threw me over for the new baby. I just didn't want no one else to take it, that's all. Never know when I'll need it again. Just want the space free, is all.”

And she saw in Annabelle Lee the kindest person she'd ever known.

A FORTUNE

“IT'S JUST A MATTER OF opening a door, Annabelle. He's gonna take it as payment for the debt. Jesus, that sets us up right. Then what we take is our own again. If we're lucky, we'll have enough to move by summer.”

Annabelle stared through the window of a secondhand shop at a tortoiseshell comb and a pair of gloves that showed only the slightest wear on the fingers. “I got a bad feeling, is all.”

“I go through a window. I lift a set of keys. I unlock a door. I walk out.”

“Don't you ever wonder what it'd be like to be honest?”

“I'm honest. And we're honestly broke. And it's Sunday and I don't want to think about it.” Mollie continued down the street. She massaged her temples. She wanted to squeeze out the thoughts, the ones that came unbidden, the ones that kept her from Mass, that kept her from sleep.

She was a thief because it paid better than a real job. It
was
a job, and she was of a practical nature. She knew what it took to survive—how much to steal to make rent, to buy food, to have a few odd coins for enjoyment. She had analyzed the streets of the Fourth Ward, the movement of the people, and determined the best times of day to maximize her take. She had been cautious and never greedy. And she loved the challenge—yes, she admitted it—loved the way her fingers tingled and sounds flattened out and the only things she saw were pockets and purses. But the faces of the people came to her at night, and she felt guilt then, like hot ashes.

Annabelle came up beside her. She kept her hands crossed over her stomach. The baby was obvious now.

“You're gonna have to tell Tommy, instead of avoiding him and the dancehall,” Mollie said.

“He's avoiding me, too.”

“Yeah, well.”

“I'm not gonna be able to work much longer.”

“I know.” Mollie felt a thick pain begin in her head.

“I'm gonna need to do something else.”

“Then be my stall. You know how to do that.”

“I mean after that, Moll. When we're in Brooklyn. I want a job. I'm sick of men touching me. And I can't do it—not with a baby.”

“A job. That's funny.”

“What does that mean?”

“You been walking the streets all your life. You tell me what else you can do.”

Annabelle stopped in her tracks. “Fuck you, Mollie Flynn.”

Mollie knew she shouldn't have said it, but she also knew it was true. Or had been, until the goddamn baby. Until the money on the table had started to dwindle to dimes and quarters. “I'm sorry.”

Annabelle walked away from Mollie, then turned on the heel of her red shoe and said, “I can change. And one day I'm gonna be able to walk straight into Mass and not have one goddamn sin to confess.”

“I said I was sorry.”

“Do the job for Tommy. I don't care.”

Mollie watched the bounce of curls as Annabelle stomped away.

 

 

“Buy a flower or your future?”

Mollie started. She turned to the rumpled figure in the doorway.

A woman sat cross-legged, a spread of cards in the rags of her skirt. The crown of her head was mottled brown and pink, showing through tufts of white hair. She raised her gaze to Mollie; her eyes were milky and blind. The red paint on her lips crept into the crevices age had dug around her mouth. A basket of spring's first wildflowers, obviously pulled from an empty lot, edged with the brown of frost and sighing over the sides, rested nearby.

“Well, hell. Hermione Montreal,” Mollie said. How often she and Annabelle had sat in Hermione's burgundy-festooned apartment, sneezing at the dust, and giggling from the whiskeys she'd proffered them.

“Ah, my fame precedes me. Flower or future?”

“What happened to you?”

“The ides of progress. My building was ripped down on the approach to the bridge. Flower or your future?”

“I don't got money for either.”

“The day is sweet. Indulge me.” She held out her gnarled hand. “I do not bite.”

When Mollie set her hand in Hermione's, she felt the tick of the old woman's pulse against her own. She saw the burgundy curtains flung to the street, the great wrecking ball smashing through the tenement, the set of tiny whiskey glasses shattered on the floor. Then there was again only her hand in the old woman's.

“Pick a card.”

Mollie ran her fingers over the edges of the cards, felt the oil from so many hands. Then she pulled one from the arc.

“What is it?” Hermione asked.

“A wheel,” Mollie said.

“The Wheel of Fortune. All of life contained within its circle: sadness and joy, cruelty and kindness, the future and the past. It stops for no one and nothing, for it is life itself. It may roll backwards to that you no longer wish to see, or forward to that you are terrified to know. It is your choice which way the wheel rolls. Pick another. Just one more.”

Mollie crouched in front of Hermione.

“What is it?”

“Swords.”

“How many?”

“Five.”

“Ah, memory and fear. Five fears: betrayal, abandonment, ruin, joy, love. You hide behind walls to escape the fear that what hurt you once will hurt you again. But which is the fear that hurts you most?” Hermione coughed, deep and racking, and took a graying handkerchief from her waistband. Once the spasm subsided, she dabbed the edge of her lips.

“I ain't scared of nothing.”

Hermione waved a hand in front of her eyes. “You don't have a coin or two to give an old lady?”

“I got nothing. I told you.”

“Go now, and leave me to the sweet day. I'll trust you to bring me something, when you're of a mind to remember the entertainments of a mad old woman.”

HESTER STREET

F
RIDAY. ANYTHING YOU WANTED for any price you could pay. Potatoes, apples, and tin cups were piled nearly as high as the sky. Chickens and geese hung fat in windows. The aroma of fresh baked bread was thick. Fish of every sort, eyes blank pink-and-black, gazed at passersby. Planks of wood were set atop ash barrels, and overturned crates served as makeshift shops. At one stall alone, a person could buy cigars, hard lemon candy, sour milk edging from the top of metal pails, and a pair of (only) twice-mended socks.

Above the crowd that bought and sold, women leaned from windows and called to friends on the street. The sun had returned to the Lower East Side, and though the snow had melted and puddled between the cobblestones, no one minded it, because the light held such promise. The thought of spring made people slightly giddy: They laughed and bargained and strolled and daydreamed.

Though Mollie wanted to sit in the sun that angled across the cement, she chose instead the darker shadows. A safe place from which to watch.

Mollie knew she'd hurt Annabelle. She decided—since Annabelle continued to harp about reading—to pinch a book for her. Something simple, with small words and big letters.