When We Were Strangers (14 page)

I kissed her quickly, hoisted my bags and ran down the workhouse steps with the basket bumping my side, not looking back. A thick, cool mist revived me. I had twenty dollars in the chamois bag between my breasts, my crane scissors, a rock from the house in Opi, Gustavo’s carved bone, his drawings and address. When I was settled in Chicago, I would write him and he would write me back, not to General Delivery but to a boardinghouse. I would turn twenty-one that month, April 1882. Soon I could send Zia more money from Chicago and a drawing of the first fine lady’s dress I had made. I would write to Lula and the collar girls and try again to reach Teresa in New York and Attilio’s sister Lucia. In Chicago I might even go to dances. The maple leaves were still unfurling and I was leaving this city.

A block from the workhouse, my dreams bloomed more grandly. I would visit Opi and give a fine gift to the church: silver candlesticks or even a new baptismal font. I would bring Zia to Chicago. We would go strolling in parks carrying parasols. A doctor would fix her eyes. We would eat roast chicken, white bread and sweet cakes and have our own apartment.

I never saw the two men slip behind me. Before I could cry out, a fleshy hand stinking of cigar clamped my mouth and I was yanked into an alley. “There’s two of us, see?” a voice hissed in my ear. “And we can do what we want to you, but if you keep your mouth shut we’ll be gentlemen.” They covered my eyes with a rag tied hard behind my head. When Bèla’s comb caught in the knot, they tore it out. I heard thin wood breaking at my feet.

“Turn her around,” said the other voice. I was spun to the wall, forehead pressed into wet brick. They took my bag and felt under my coat for a money bag. “Make one sound and you’ll be sorry, girl. Some of you greenhorns keep money in tight places.” I bit my tongue, drawing blood as a hot hand groped under my skirt and up between my legs. Another dove between my breasts, pulling out my chamois purse. “Here it is, the titty bag. Some greenies never learn.”

“Hold still, girl. We just want money, not your skinny ass.”

In a slit below the blindfold, I glimpsed brown boots. Blood filled my mouth. I’m disappearing in the streets, I thought.
Like that
. The Missus was right. Marta was right. I should have stayed a collar girl.

“Twenty dollars. Shit. Why bother? Got any more?”

“No,” I whispered. They released me. Legs trembling, I leaned against the wall.

“What’s in the basket?” one demanded.

“Lunch,” said the other. “Let’s see. Corn bread, boiled egg. Well, well, here’s old Uncle Abe Lincoln. What a jackass!” Glass shattered beside me. “Where you from?” one demanded. I said nothing. A hand on my shoulder jerked me forward and back so hard that my head slammed brick. “I asked a civil question, girl. Where you from?”

“Italy,” I whispered.

“Eye-talia.” A blunt finger jabbed my scar. “Look at that. A little Eye-talian fighter. We like that, don’t we, Bill?” Rage ripped through me and like Gabriele’s dog I snapped, whipping my head to the side where my teeth found a wide finger.

“Bitch!” cried both voices. “Now you’ll get it.” My blouse was torn open.

I screamed for help but their voices smothered mine: “Shut up, bitch!”

Suddenly new voices rang in the alley, and the clatter of hobnailed shoes running on stone. “You there. Let her go!” I was spun back. Falling, I saw the brown boots racing down the alley. When two men knelt beside me and pulled off the blindfold I saw crisp uniforms and glittering buttons. “We’re police. You’re safe now, miss. They’re gone. Can you stand up?” Clean hands lifted me. “What happened?”

“I was robbed,” I gasped. “They took my bag and money.”

“Well, you looked like a traveler, miss. Thieves go for them, you know, folks carrying everything they’ve got. And it’s not the best neighborhood.”

“Look alive,” Lula had said. Don’t go dreaming how life could be better.

The big policeman’s pale wide eyes studied my scar. “That’s a nasty one. Recent too.”

“I got it on the ship.” The policemen folded their arms comfortably across wide chests like men at a dance. “Can’t you catch them?” I asked. “It was two men with brown shoes, one called Bill. They went—” I pointed down the empty alley, seeing only then how it branched into a warren of niches, stairways and dark gaps between buildings. The police barely followed my finger.

“They’re gone,” said the taller one. “And you were blindfolded, right? If we got two men, could you swear it was them?” No, I admitted. “And besides, if they knew you fingered them, they’d come looking, and you wouldn’t be hard to find, miss.” His chin jutted at my scar.

“But I’m leaving Cleveland, so they couldn’t—” I began. The leaving money was gone. And my pay from the Missus. My new dress and second pair of shoes, rosary and Lincoln picture. Embroidery samples for work, my mother’s apron. The crane scissors and stone from Opi, stitched picture of Opi, Teresa’s address, Gustavo’s whalebone, his address and any hope of reaching him. All my treasures.

What was left? One dress with a muddy, torn skirt and—Holy Mother—my blouse torn, showing a white swell of breast. I grabbed at the edges, hot with shame. The shorter officer plucked my trampled shawl from the mud, shook it out and gave it to me, dripping black water. I pressed the clammy cold around me.

“Never mind, miss, we see everything in this work. And you’re lucky, you know,” the broad-shouldered one said severely, as if to a whimpering child. “It could have been worse,
would
have been worse if it wasn’t for us.”

“Yes, thank you, sirs.”

They nodded. “We do our job. But you can’t go far now, looking like that. You got a home? We’ll take you if it’s close.”

I stared at the wet brick. The short policeman cleared his throat. Like a prisoner caught, I pointed to the workhouse. “Let’s go then,” the tall one said.

Flanked, I retraced the path I’d taken so proudly. Black boots rang out
idiota
,
idiota
, for a stupid mountain girl, not looking alive—careless and arrogant. Without my bag I was as weightless as a beggar. What dressmaker would hire me now?

The policemen spoke over my head, fast and low in another language, laughing. “Watch, miss,” they said at a wide puddle. For an instant, gratitude overtook shame.
Watch
,
miss
, as if I were a gentlewoman unaccustomed to puddles. But the very cartwheels squealed
idiota.
Factory girls in laughing pairs swept past us. “
She’s not so proud now
,” their laughing said. Even the pale disk of sun gloated at my broken dream. My feet dragged.

“Miss, we don’t have all day.”

I pushed on like a sheep trudging back to the fold. Where else could I go? Even if somehow I reached Chicago, suppose it was only a larger Cleveland with more thieves? Go back to Opi? How, with an empty purse? And to do what? Care for my father’s babe? Work for Assunta? If I looked for a new post in Cleveland, I’d be turned away at any factory, mill or even any respectable house seeking a scullery maid. Only the streets would take me. Like Filomena’s father, my friends would shred their handkerchiefs. With every step, the Missus loomed larger: the jutting chin, charcoal smears around her pale eyes, gray wire of curls and long bent fingers pawing at collars, scratching for flaws.

A block from the workhouse I saw a woman leaving it, counting coins. “What’s the matter, miss?” the short police officer demanded. “Why’d you stop?”

“Nothing,” I murmured. The woman strode away. It was Maria the agent who must have sold another greenhorn collar girl. The policeman’s heavy knocks pounded in my ear. Make me air, I prayed. Lord, blow me away from this house.

“Hum, didn’t get far, did you, girl?” said Lula. She stood in the doorway, hands on hips as if the police had brought her a filthy stray cat.

“What happened?” she asked them, as if I were a stranger.

“She was robbed. Almost got worse. Right, miss?”

Lula’s black eyes swung over my torn blouse, mud-splashed dress, dripping shawl and empty hands. “Irma, didn’t I say to look alive? You got devil’s breath?” She flicked her fingers, chasing my bad luck away from her.

“So this is home?” the big policeman asked. I nodded slowly. “Then good day, miss.” He touched the rim of his helmet with a thick finger that slid down his cheek. “Watch your step. Some of them bad ’uns come back like dogs, once they got the taste. They’ll figure you live around here.” With that both men turned and strolled away, boots clicking on the cobblestones.

Lula folded her arms and blocked the doorstep. In the terrible walk home, I had not once imagined this. “Lula, I was
robbed
. Two thieves took my leaving money. They took everything. They almost—”

“I see what they done. Question is, what now?” She lowered her voice. “The Missus just got herself another girl. And she’s all fired angry you asked for a letter in front of the others.”

“Lula, if you loan me money for a ticket and another dress, I could go to Chicago and when I get work—”

“If
you get work. Suppose you don’t? Or you do and then forget Lula? I want to leave here too, you know,” she whispered.

The Missus appeared, smiling. “So, we didn’t like Chicago, did we, Irma? No fine ladies?”

Even Lula stiffened. “She was robbed, Missus. Wasn’t her fault.”

“Come crawling back wanting my work again, I bet.”

“Just for a while, Missus,” I pleaded, mortified at how much like a beggar I sounded. “They took everything.”

“But, Irma, I want girls who’ll
stay
, who
like
this work, don’t you see? Girls I can trust. And I just got a nice little grateful Serb. So don’t you be wasting Lula’s time. She wastes enough on her own. You go on to your fine ladies. Or out there.” She waved to the street.

Tears burned my eyes. “Please, Missus.”

“She
is
a good worker, Missus,” said Lula finally.

A smile curled over the ragged teeth. “But the Serb has Irma’s bed, remember? So
if
I take her, she’d have to sleep with you, Lula, and then where would your dusky gentleman caller sleep? You thought I didn’t know about him? Didn’t enter your wooly head? But that’s a good idea. You can share your bed with our dressmaker.”

Lula’s face darkened with fury that my devil’s breath had blown on her. The Missus smiled again. “Well, Irma? You may stay and work and help Lula with
her
work, since I have plenty of girls now. Maybe if you’re lucky, you can make a few collars.” She looked at my torn skirt and mud-black dripping shawl. “Lula can get you something from the back room.” She meant the pile of dead girls’ dresses. “What? Not fine enough?”

I made myself face her glinting eyes. “Missus, it’s not charity I’m asking for, only a few weeks’ work.”

“We’ll see,” she said, turning away.

“White bitch witch,” said Lula when she closed the door of her narrow bedroom and waved me to a chipped water basin. “How’d she know about Albert?” Lula demanded. “You told her?”

“I don’t know anything, Lula. I swear. You never said anything about him.”

“Hum, that’s true. She has her own witch ways. Doesn’t need any devil’s breath Eye-talians.”

“Who is Albert?”

“My man.
Was
my man,” said Lula bitterly. “He’s a porter on the railroad and visits me sometimes at night. Except
now
I got company.”

“I’m sorry, Lula. I’ll leave as fast as I can.”

“You do that, girl, and don’t waste time dreaming. That’s what got you in this fix. And watch out.
Now
you’ll see the real Missus.”

I did. I worked frantically, rising early, hauling coal and water for Lula, helping her wash the breakfast dishes and then hurrying to the bench. Exhausted as I was, I forced out tiny stitches and smooth arched curves of perfect collars. The Missus faulted each one, loudly praising the new Serb’s work, once giving her three of my collars to “fix,” three that ended in her basket. When I protested, Marta hissed, “Quiet, you make it worse for everybody.” I bit my lips and sewed, every stitch a stab.

The Missus cut up my sewing time with deliveries. “I favor the
faithful
girls,” she said. “And besides, you do look like a servant these days.”

“She’s right,” Lula said that night. “Buy yourself a decent dress if you don’t want Irene’s old ones.”

“I can’t spend my leaving money,” I protested.

“Don’t your people have an aid society?”

“You mean charity? My family never—”

“And how would they know what you do, way over there? If you’re poor, you do what poor folks do. Go get yourself a dress.”

“Thieves took my clothes,” I told a blunt-faced woman at the Italian Aid Society as she silently handed me two cotton dresses and three sets of underclothes.

“Everyone has troubles,” she said. “Look out the next time. It’s not like home.”

“I’m saving to go to Chicago,” I persisted.

“Everyone’s saving for something. Next?” A family from Calabria stepped to the table. Their bags had been stolen on the train from New York: their clothes, his woodworking tools and medicine for the child. I gave them twenty cents, all that I had with me.