The Property of a Lady (18 page)

After arranging the pillow carefully under Sofia’s head, she fanned her desperately. “Sofia, Sofia,” she called, “you are all right now, everything’s all right.” But she knew she was lying, because Sofia Ivanoff looked very ill.

“It was just the heat,” Sofia said weakly when she recovered her senses a few minutes later. “It was nothing.”

But two weeks later it happened again, and this time she complained of the pain in her head. It was a pain that refused to go away no matter how much of the patent medicine in the deep-blue bottle Missie bought from the pharmacy and poured anxiously down her throat. She refused to see a doctor, saying she didn’t need it, but Missie knew it was because they couldn’t afford it. Then one morning Sofia could not get out of bed. Her left side was paralyzed.

Missie ran to Orchard Street to fetch the doctor, vowing she would earn the money to pay him somehow.

He was an old Jewish man, gray-bearded and kind. “I’m afraid the lady has suffered a series of small strokes,” he told Missie gravely, “and this has led to bleeding in the cranial cavity. It is the pressure that is causing the pain, and this can only be relieved by operating.” He glanced hesitantly at the young girl and the child standing side by side, their anxious eyes fixed on him as the life-giver, the bringer of hope. As he always did in these circumstances, he wished he had a different job. “I must be frank with you,” he said. “She is an old woman. The operation is as likely to kill her as the stroke. All I can do is give her something to relieve the pain.”

Missie gulped back the panic-taste of bile in her throat. “You can’t mean … not that she might …”

“We all must die sometime, my dear,” he said gently.
“Believe me, it is far worse when my patient is young.” He opened his worn black Gladstone bag. “I’m giving her an injection of morphine to ease the pain. I’ll call in to see her tomorrow morning. Meanwhile you must take care of yourself and your child.”

Missie glanced down at Azaylee, so blond, so pretty, and so helpless.
Her
child, the doctor had said. If Sofia died, then what everyone believed would come true.
Azaylee would be her child
.

Each morning she waited anxiously for the doctor to come, searching for him among the pushcarts and the crowds out on the street.

“She is no better,” she told him worriedly a few days later. “The pain is back again. She tries not to show it, but I see it in her eyes.”

“I will give her more pain-killers,” he said patiently. “They will allow her to rest peacefully.” He glanced sharply at Missie: she looked pale and worn out from lack of sleep and worry. “You should get some rest yourself, young lady. And make sure you eat properly.”

Missie did not laugh because it wasn’t funny. She hadn’t been to work for a week and they were down to their last few cents. O’Hara had been kind; he had sent a woman around with a bowl of food every lunchtime, but she could not accept his charity much longer. And she knew if she did not return to the saloon tonight he would have to find someone to replace her.

At five o’clock she fed Azaylee a plate of their usual meager stew and gave her a hunk of the day-old black Russian bread, bought at Gertel’s bakeshop on Hester Street, whose heady aromas almost drove her wild with longing. A whole fresh sesame bread spread thickly with sweet French butter was the peak of her desires, but she was forced to content herself with a small slab cut from a day-old sour rye loaf.

She washed Sofia, patting her fine-boned face with a
fresh linen towel laundered by her own hands and dried in the sun out on the fire escape along with everyone else’s laundry. There were days when she couldn’t see the tenement buildings for the washing, and there were no secrets as to the worn state of their neighbors’ undergarments. She lifted Sofia’s head, urging her to sip the warm broth, but the princess only managed a smile and a few whispered words of thanks before she slid back into unconsciousness.

Her hand still clutched Missie’s with a grip of steel and she thought with a shiver it was as if Sofia were clinging to life, that if she let go she might slip away into darkness and never find her way back.

After splashing cold water over her flushed face, she tidied her hair in the mirror and put on a clean cotton blouse. She was so thin her skirt hung from her hips rather than from her waist. She hauled it up and secured it with a wide leather belt.

She gave Azaylee a small blackboard and a few colored chalks bought for a couple of cents from a pushcart and said, “Here’s something to keep you amused, little one. Watch over your grandmother, and if she needs me, you know where to find me.” She hugged her, hating the idea of leaving her alone. “I’ll try not to be too late,” she promised.

Still Missie hesitated, her hand on the doorknob. Azaylee was sitting on a chair by the bed with the blackboard clutched in her hand, staring at her with huge, frightened brown eyes, but Missie knew she had no choice. If she did not work, they did not eat.

She called Viktor to sit by the door. “Stay,” she commanded. “On guard.”

He sat obediently, and she thanked God they had him or she would have been afraid to leave them alone.

“Love you,
matiushka
, little mother,” she heard Azaylee call as she lingered outside the door, still torn between two duties.

“I love you too,
dushka
, dear one,” she called back, running quickly down the stairs before she could change her mind.

The saloon seemed busier than usual that night and she was run off her feet, delivering full glasses and rushing around collecting the empties. But even the rough men who had pestered her asked after her grandmother and she thought that maybe, before the drink hit them, they weren’t so bad after all. O’Hara himself made her a sandwich of rare roast beef and stood over her while she ate it, and at the end of the long evening he slipped an extra five dollars into her hand.

“You’re a good girl, Missie O’Bryan,” he told her. “Even though with a name as Irish as the Blarney Stone you’re about as Irish as Zev Abramski.”

“Who is Zev Abramski?” she asked, pocketing the money gratefully.

“Don’t tell me you haven’t been to Abramski’s yet?” O’Hara exclaimed, with his big belly laugh. “You must be the only woman on the Lower East Side who hasn’t. Zev’s the Jewish pawnbroker on the corner of Orchard and Rivington. He’ll lend twenty cents on your husband’s Sunday shirt to get you through till Friday. He keeps most of the population around here alive—until Friday afternoon, that is. Then it’s pay-up time—or the old man has no shirt for the weekend. And now be off with you, and good luck, Missie.”

She would need it, she thought, hurrying back through the dimly lighted streets. Viktor recognized her step on the stair and wagged his long plumed tail in greeting. Azaylee was curled up on the bed fast asleep next to her grandmother. Breathing a sigh of relief, Missie poured milk into a pan, dropped in the cinnamon stick, and placed it on the little burner, remembering wistfully when Sofia used to make her bedtime drink.

She tiptoed to the bed, smiling as she saw Azaylee’s thin arm thrown lovingly across her grandmother. But the
smile on her face froze as she looked at Sofía. The old lady’s eyes were closed and her face peaceful, but her lips were blue and when Missie touched her, she felt cold.

“No,” she whispered, horrified, “no, it can’t be.” But it was true. Princess Sofia Ivanoff, encircled by the loving arms of her little granddaughter, was dead.

Rosa Perelman from downstairs sent her eldest daughter, nine-year-old Sonia, to Hester Street to fetch the doctor. After telling her other two daughters to look after Azaylee, she stayed with Missie until he came. The news flashed around the neighborhood and soon the room was filled with women bearing little gifts of food and drink and offering to help. As they laid out Sofia and dressed her in clean white linen, Missie wondered what she would have done without them. She placed Sofia’s carved ebony cross in her cold hands and suddenly realized how thin and frail she looked. Alive, Sofia had always seemed so strong, so
indomitable
.

The first time she had seen her, Sofia had been on her way to an official court reception; she was wearing a gown of gold lace with a long royal-blue train trimmed with ermine. Diamonds sparkled at her throat and ears, a coronet of diamonds and rubies crowned her rich black hair, and she had carried a beautiful ostrich-feather fan. Now this great princess was reduced to the simplicity of death where jewels played no part and clean white linen was all that was needed.

“We’ve done all we can, Missie,” Rosa Perelman said. “Now you’ll have to be sending for the mortician.”

Missie looked at her blankly. “Mortician?”

“The funeral parlor,” Rosa explained patiently, “to see about the coffin and the burial.”

Missie hadn’t thought as far as a coffin and a funeral.
She had no idea how much such things cost, but whatever it was, she didn’t have the money.

“If it’s money,” Rosa said, reading her thoughts, “then you’ll just have to contact the city welfare. She won’t be the first around here to go to her rest in a free pine coffin. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

Missie glanced despairingly at Father Feeny. Sofia had been afraid to attend St. George’s Orthodox Russian Church on East Seventh Street, and had taken to worshiping at St. Savior’s instead, and he knew and respected her. “She is right, my dear,” he said, placing a sympathetic hand on her shoulder. “But I give you my word the old lady will be buried with dignity. She will have her mass before they take her to Potter’s Field.”

“Potter’s Field?” Missie repeated, puzzled.

The women standing around the bed glanced apprehensively at each other; obviously the girl knew nothing about life—or death.

“The common graveyard, my dear,” Father Feeny explained. “But you must remember that in the eyes of God all men are equal. Sofia is in heaven, and it is only her mortal remains that will be taken to a pauper’s grave.”

Missie flung herself to her knees by the bed.
They were planning to bury the Dowager Princess Sofia Ivanoff in a pauper’s grave!
“No,” she screamed. “No, no! You don’t understand. She must have a proper burial,
and
High Mass.
I’ll find the money somewhere.”

Shaking their heads and whispering to each other, the women filed from the room, leaving her alone with the priest.

“You must not let these things trouble you, my child,” Father Feeny told her. “You are only a young girl, and you have a daughter to look after. Let the old lady go to her rest without any more worry. I myself will call the welfare for you, it will all be over quickly.”

“Never.”
Missie sobbed.
“Never, never, never….”

Father Feeny sighed as he knelt beside her to pray.
When he had finished, he rose to his feet and said, “I’ll come tomorrow morning and see to everything. Meanwhile, the church is always here to comfort you, my child, and remember that we believe in life everlasting. Tonight I shall say a prayer for Sofia’s immortal soul.”

Missie remained on her knees for a long time. Rosa Perelman had volunteered to look after Azaylee, and she was alone with Sofia. Her bitter tears gradually changed to a frown of worry as she wondered where she would get the money to bury her. There was only one answer.

The saloon was brightly lighted and busy. A crowd of men leaned up against the long polished bar while the whores queened it at the tables, sipping whiskey and laughing raucously, and a few poor women with shawls thrown over their pinafores sipped port and lemon in an attempt to blur the hard edges of their existence. Someone was playing popular tunes on the piano and a pall of blue cigarette smoke swirled and eddied beneath the flickering globes of the gas lamps like the fog off Ireland’s shores.

O’Hara was behind the bar, pouring whiskey and pulling pints as fast as he could while a harried-looking young woman collected empties and delivered the next rounds. Missie’s heart sank even lower. O’Hara hadn’t waited, he had already given her job to someone else.

Wrapping her shawl closer, she pushed her way through the crowd to the bar. “O’Hara,” she whispered, catching his eye, “I must talk to you.”

He nodded and after calling to the girl to take over behind the bar, he signaled Missie to go into the back room.

She paced the Turkey carpet in the narrow little parlor nervously. It was the first time she had been in his private rooms, and this was the world of a man she barely knew. The furniture was heavy and dark and had obviously been brought over from the old country. There were a few faded sepia photographs framed in gilt on the walls
and two massive chairs, stuffed iron-hard with horsehair and decorated with lacy antimacassars on either side of the cast-iron firegate. The mantelpiece was covered in red velvet trimmed with a bobble fringe and a galvanized tin bucket of coal sat on the hearth, alongside a tall vase containing the wooden spills with which O’Hara lighted his cigars. Missie guessed that everything must look just the way it had in his dead mother’s house in Ireland.

O’Hara thrust aside the heavy red velvet curtain dividing the parlor from the bar. After covering the tiny room in two huge strides, he took her hands in his massive paws. “Missie, I’m real sorry. What can I say to comfort you, me girl? Only that she was an old lady and she must have had a grand life. ’Tis you I’ll be worrying about now, left all alone with the little girl.” He hesitated, then coming to a decision, he took a deep breath and said, “I’ve been thinking, Missie. Why don’t you let me look after you and Azaylee? Sure and I’ve got enough to keep you in comfort and give you a decent home. And besides, what with Prohibition threatening, I’ve already got a few other irons in the fire. There’ll be a fortune to be made, Missie, and I intend some of it to be mine. What d’you say to that?”