Speak Through the Wind (16 page)

Imogene reached, teetering on her toes, for a bowl on the shelf above the stove and laid a square of cheesecloth over the top. Half humming, half whistling a little tune, she spooned steaming heaps of stems onto the cheesecloth and pressed a bit with the spoon to strain away the water. When the last had been lifted from the pot, she grabbed the four corners of the cheesecloth, formed it into a tiny bundle, and squeezed it over the bowl until not one drop more could be coaxed.

Going to tiptoe again on the apple crate, Imogene reached to the row of hooks on the wall behind the single-board counter and took down a bright blue mug. Into it she poured the greenish contents of the bowl, careful not to slosh a single drop. All of this Kassandra watched without comment, knowing she would soon be sipping the mysterious broth. But when Imogene reached one last time for the large sealed jar on the shelf, Kassandra couldn’t help but cry out

“Oh, no, Imogene. Please! No more of that, I beg you.”

Undaunted, the miniscule woman wrenched the tightly sealed lid off the glass jar containing a beef shank bone submerged in apple cider vinegar. She dipped a spoon into the liquid not once, but twice, stirring the bone-infused vinegar into the dandelion broth.

“You want this baby have strong bones? Yes?” Imogene didn’t bother to turn around to receive an answer from Kassandra. “Then you drink.”

She tapped the spoon twice on the rim of the cup, hopped off the apple crate, and brought the cup over to sit in front of the now frowning Kassandra.

“Drink,” she commanded.

Kassandra lifted the mug to her lips and wrinkled her nose at the bitter smell. “Do I have to?”

Imogene walked over to the window, opened it and, after leaning over the edge to see that nobody lurked on the sidewalk below, prepared to dump the water from the pot down into the street.

“Well, I am going to let it cool a bit so I can drink it down,” Kassandra said.

Imogene put the pot back on the stove, braced her hands on the windowsill, and lifted her body up to lean further out the window. “What you say?” she yelled down into the street.

Kassandra heard a woman’s thin voice through her open window.

“Tell her I be on my way” Imogene pulled herself back inside, shut the window, and turned toward Kassandra, rubbing her tiny hands in what seemed like gleeful anticipation. “Drink up, and get your coat.”

“Why?”

“There’s a baby to be born.”

The two women made quite a sight striding through the doors of the Mott Street Tavern. Imogene, swathed in a rough homespun cloak wound three times around her body, and Kassandra—obediently following a few steps behind—towering over her, wearing Ben’s heavy black wool coat. They weren’t two steps out of the tavern when Sean, who had been waiting outside the building with a bag of hot chestnuts, fell in step behind them. The little parade traveled halfway down the block before Imogene turned around, pointed a gloved hand with a little brown finger popped out of the top up to his face, and told him to leave them be.

“But Mr. Connor says I’m to—”

“She safe with me,” Imogene said with such authority that Sean tipped his cap to her and Kassandra before turning away.

Imogene resumed the pace that made Kassandra trot just to keep up. The winter air, laced with pungent smoke and ash, blew its bitter grit across Kassandra’s face, and she lifted her muffler—nearly six feet of the softest wool she had ever felt—up to her nose to combat both the wind and the odor.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked.

But there was no answer from the scurrying bundle in front of her.

Before long the two women were in what was, for Kassandra, unfamiliar territory. Although she had spent many hours and afternoons patrolling arm in arm with Ben, Kassandra had never strayed more than three square blocks in any direction from Mott Street Tavern. Now, as she tramped behind Imogene, heading west on Bayard Street and turning south on Mulberry, it seemed as if she were watching the world itself decline. The relative affluence of her own little neighborhood stood in stark contrast to what she saw now. The streets were narrower and darker and flanked by dilapidated brick buildings—some five or six stories high—largely unbroken by windows. What windows were there showed no sign of life or light. Piles of women and children huddled in doorways, stacked together against the cold, the occasional naked foot or face peeping through assorted shambled covers.

Every other door sported a shingle above it advertising the saloon within. Ram’s Head Tavern. Georgetown Grocery. The Dark Corner. Raucous laughter and music spilled through their doors onto the streets that were clamped nearly silent under the weight of winter. Kassandra and Imogene seemed to be the only mobile people in the vicinity with the exception of a few other women, their coats left open to expose nearly bare breasts, who strolled back and forth halfheartedly between the tavern doors.

Kassandra sprinted the few steps that separated her from Imogene, grabbed a handful of the woman’s shawl, and forced her to turn around.

“I am going home,” Kassandra said, stooping as much as her pregnant body would allow and whispering through the muffler she clutched against her mouth and nose.

“No,” Imogene said simply.

“Watch me.”

“I do watch you. You follow.”

Imogene turned around and continued walking and, as if compelled by some predetermined force, Kassandra followed.

Just about half a block later, Imogene veered sharply to the left towards a dark, worn, three-story wooden structure that seemed impossibly suited to provide shelter. What windows it had were broken or cracked, and the gaps between the boards were so wide that tufts of material used to fill them poked out from the other side.

“Here,” Imogene said, climbing the three short steps in the front and taking a hold of the door.

So this was darkness. Windowless. Airless. Immediately upon the closing of the door behind them, Kassandra felt as if her eyes may as well have been torn from her face for all the good they were in here. Soon after, the unbelievably acrid stench of human waste and unwashed flesh seeped through the layers of heavy wool bound over her mouth, and her ears were haunted by the sounds of soft moaning drifting through the darkness. She kept one arm outstretched, keeping her balance, running gloved fingers lightly along a wall that seemed slightly softer than a wall should be.

“Should we get a lamp?” Kassandra whispered into the blackness around her.

“There be a light for us,” Imogene replied, her odd rasping voice eerily suited to the surroundings.

Soon enough Kassandra felt the floor beneath her become a set of stairs. She stepped onto each one carefully, one hand still guiding herself along the wall, the other holding tight to what she hoped was Imogene’s skirt in front of her. She tried to count the steps, but the unfamiliarity of her surroundings was disorienting, and she soon lost count. At some point, though, the floor was once again level. She felt the turning of a corner and noticed a thin line of light several feet in the distance.

“Come, child,” Imogene said, and Kassandra felt the tiny hand grasp her own.

When Imogene arrived at the door under which the light was streaming, she grasped the latch and swung it open. Kassandra followed her into the room, and the sight that met her took away what little breath she had left.

The flat was impossibly small—less than half the home that she and Ben shared—and completely bare save for a single chair acting as a table for the single kerosene lamp. Bundled as she was, the only witness to the bone-chilling cold of the room was her nose, exposed now as the woolen fabric was dislodged by her gaping mouth. She sensed rather than saw four sets of eyes staring at her from the dim shadows. Children, maybe, huddled in one corner, with one tiny arm pointing to the only other piece of furniture in the room. A sagging cast-iron bed stood in the corner, and the pile of fabric and rags on top of it was groaning loudly.

“Mrs. Fisher?” Imogene said, beginning to unravel her outermost shawl. “I here now, Mrs. Fisher.”

The woman’s reply was incomprehensible, a string of slackened syllables tossed out from her thrashing head.

Kassandra looked from Mrs. Fisher to the children to the lamp and back. “Why have you brought me here?”

“Time you see what new life is,” Imogene said, reaching up to tug at Kassandra’s wool muffler. “Take this off. Fold it up nice. Come see.”

Kassandra had long ago accepted that she was taller than most other women she knew, but in this tiny space, seven months pregnant, she felt massive. Every move she made threatened to topple the lamp, and she slowly, gingerly, took off her coat, holding it aloft as she scanned the bare walls for a hook. Finding none, she laid it on the floor in front of the pile of children, one of whom snaked out a little hand and slowly inched it over to cover the bare legs of a smaller sibling. Something clutched in Kassandra’s throat—a distant memory of being that small and that cold, creeping through the days and nights searching for warmth and comfort. The memory of it made her want to turn and run, but Imogene’s commanding voice from the shadows stopped any serious thought she had of leaving.

“Come here. Hold the lamp.”

Kassandra reached for the lamp’s handle and lifted it off the chair, swinging it in the direction Imogene indicated, holding it high above the woman’s gray head.

“Look. See.”

Like most of the poorer women Kassandra had seen, Mrs. Fisher seemed to be wearing every garment she owned, piles of skirts and underskirts strewn around the legs Imogene worked to lift and open to make a way for the coming baby.

“Ach.” Imogene looked over her shoulder toward the pile in the corner and summoned one child. “Lamp,” she said, and Kassandra handed the light over to the small, genderless creature.

It soon became evident that Kassandra’s role was to lift the listless Mrs. Fisher off her bed and hold her as Imogene worked to remove some of the woman’s clothing. Mrs. Fisher seemed unaware of the importance of the occasion as her head fell back against Kassandra’s shoulder, nearly sending the both of them staggering to the floor. She continued her incoherent moaning and muttering, her open mouth now inches from Kassandra’s face; the odor was nearly as debilitating as her weight.

“I think she is drunk,” Kassandra whispered, not wanting to speak ill of a mother in front of her children.

“Of course she drunk,” Imogene said.

Along the opposite wall, the shadow of the child holding the lamp nodded in agreement.

Once Mrs. Fisher was stripped down to a practical, if stained, nightgown, she was redeposited on her bed. The child, ever shining the light, followed Imogene’s most minute movement as she burrowed through her bag for a tiny glass vial. Once found, she dislodged its cork and waved it under the drunk woman’s nose, saying, “Mrs. Fisher! Mrs. Fisher! Wake up now! It time!”

Mrs. Fisher regained a violent consciousness, lifting her body from the bed and swinging clenched fists at the closest target. But Imogene jumped back with a bit of a laugh and said, “Better now.”

Mrs. Fisher, once again aware of her pain, abandoned her attack and emitted the most ear-wrenching scream Kassandra had ever heard; she echoed it with her own.

“Hush that!” Imogene said, whirling on her. “This not your time. Give me your hand.”

Kassandra made her way to where Imogene was busy ministering to the now nearly frantic Mrs. Fisher, the lamp-wielding child moving silently out of her way. Imogene grabbed Kassandra’s hand, bringing it to the relative warmth between Mrs. Fisher’s splayed legs.

“You feel that?” Imogene said, her breath creating tiny puffs of steam. “The baby’s head. Already here. That be a new life to join us today.”

Kassandra felt the tiny life within her leap at the words, and she whisked her hand away from Mrs. Fisher to clutch at her own burgeoning stomach.

“I need a drink,” the writhing woman on the bed said. “One of you,” she turned toward the children still huddled in the corner, “go fetch Mama a drink.”

Her voice was considerably weaker now, dwindling with each syllable as she repeated her request over and over. For the first time, Kassandra got a good look at her face. She looked far too old to be having a child. Her hair, lank and damp with the effort of labor, hung in loose strands, framing a face battered with scabbed-over blemishes and nearly concave in its toothlessness.

“Patty?” she said, capturing the full attention of the child with the lamp. “Go get Mama a drink?”

The child took one step toward the door, but a sharp look from Imogene and the bare foot jerked back to the floor. Soon enough, then, Mrs. Fisher was seized with another pain, and all need for the drink was momentarily forgotten.

“Patty, is it?” Imogene asked, her voice almost warm with affection. “Turn down the light so we don’t waste the oil.”

Young Patty turned the wick down until there was only the dimmest, dimmest light in the room.

“Can you see, Imogene?” Kassandra asked, still feeling the need to whisper.

“No. I touch.”

“What can I do?”

“Whatever I say.”

For a while Imogene said nothing, only hummed the strange little song Kassandra had heard so many times before.

Suddenly overwhelmed with fatigue, Kassandra sank to the floor, settling herself within striking distance of the sometimes flailing Mrs. Fisher. Little by little she scooted farther away from the bed and closer to the bundle of children. She snaked one hand off toward the right, where she knew she had draped her coat on the floor, and attempted to bring it up to cover herself. Her efforts, though, were met with resistance, a little force on the other end just as determined to keep the coat to itself.

“Now, push.”

Imogene’s voice brushed through the darkness, followed by the most startling scream yet to come from Mrs. Fisher. The moment that scream pierced the darkness, the little bundle that was Kassandra’s coat leapt into Kassandra’s lap, accompanied by two or three small creatures with bony arms and legs who piled, shivering, onto Kassandra.

“More light, Patty,” Imogene said, and light flooded the room.