When We Were Strangers (18 page)

“Come on now,” Molly urged, “we’re not there yet, the Poles are a few blocks on.” We turned left and right as Molly muttered her directions until she stopped, triumphant, and pointed: “There! Look!”

A swarm of men were laying brick while little girls played with rag dolls, boys mixed mortar and women poured beer for the men. “See,” Molly announced with a flourish. “It cost me a deal of trouble, but I found out they’re building a church and they’ll need chairs, you see? I know where there’s a warehouse full of them and a man with a cart.” Molly located a translator and began a long debate between those who wanted to build their own pews and others who liked the ease of Molly’s proposal.

“Father Michal must decide,” the translator finally announced.

“Can you go get him, Irma?” Molly pleaded. “They say he’s with a new family a few blocks away, blessing their flat or something.”

“Let’s go together if it’s so close.”

“Please, Irma. If I stay, I’m sure I can make some loans. It’s safe; there’s no taverns around here, just houses.”

This much was true, and not to be called a nun again, I agreed to fetch the priest. It wasn’t far, the translator assured me, just a few blocks east, a narrow house, number seventeen, with blue curtains. Red curtains, one of the women must have insisted, for the translator shrugged. “Red or blue. The important thing is finding Father Michal.”

I set off through streets the translator had described, not the way I had come with Molly, but soon this new quarter defied the easy name of “blocks.” In tangled lanes and alleys no one spoke English or Italian or had heard of a Father Michal. There were wide houses with blue or red curtains and narrow ones with no curtains, just dark glinting windows. Some had no numbers. Certainly there was no seventeen. My green dress grew heavy and tight. Perhaps Father Michal had left that house and gone to another. Perhaps the matter of chairs was already settled. I would go back to Molly, I decided. If the priest was still needed, the translator could find him. I had been gone a long time and perhaps she was waiting for me.

Turning west to shorten my path, I followed a street that ended at a dank wooden shop whose crude hanging sign showed a cow head circled by sausages. Buckets outside brimmed with clotted blood and chunks of fat and gristle. Rangy dogs fought for scraps. Gagging from the stench, I hurried toward a doorstep where two women sat talking: “Church, Polish church?” I asked desperately, then tried Italian: “
Chiesa
?” A word circled back from Cleveland. “
Kirke
?” They seemed distrustful. What was a lady doing in this quarter, accosting them? Boys playing stickball stared frankly at my breasts. One made a crude gesture, another snorted. I looked frantically around. When had the sun dropped below treetops and dusty haze begun filling the streets?

“Miss, are you lost? May I help you?” asked a genteel voice so close behind me that I jumped. “Don’t worry. I’m a policeman.” He was tall, with thick sandy hair and wide mustache, broad-shouldered in a chesterfield coat, striped trousers and buffed oxford shoes, a gentleman. So why call himself a policeman? I stepped warily away.

“We have our days off too, you know. But for a lady in distress,” he touched his brown derby hat, “we of the brotherhood are always on duty.” He stepped closer, putting a large hand on my arm. “This is no place for a lady like yourself.” He shouted roughly at the boys and they scampered away. “Greenhorns,” he muttered. “Have to put them in their place. Now where are you headed, miss?”

I stepped back, for his breath smelled of beer, yet it must be true that policemen had days off. I was surely lost and only a nun or peasant would distrust
every
man. Besides, Molly would be waiting and anxious. I described the block where I left her with men working in shirtsleeves. “Yes, the Polish church. It’s not far,” he assured me, “but let’s go this way, away from the stench.” My guide never gave his name, but acted the gentleman, taking my arm at every curb. When he asked where I lived and I said in a boardinghouse, pale blue eyes scanned the fineness of my dress.

“A gift from the dressmaker I work for,” I admitted. Idiota, I realized, the instant the words left my mouth and his eyes met mine boldly. Idiota, I had laid myself bare.

“Ah, so, we’re a dressmaker’s assistant then? A working girl?” His hand tightened on my arm. With a husky ruffle in his voice he said, “Come, your church is right this way.” This was no policeman, I knew then. Flushed with the heat of panic, I looked around wildly for someone to call, to run to.

“Street’s pretty empty,” he said.

True, but far better to be lost, to pound on any door, run down any street, hide in alleys all night, if only to be far from him. “I’ll go on myself, sir, since it’s close,” I said, trying to speak evenly, eyes averted, as we did at home to snarling dogs. In the instant that a far-off whistle distracted him, I wrenched my arm free but he lunged and caught me.

“I wouldn’t, miss. Greenhorn thieves would rob you for that gown.” He grasped a fold of my skirt. “Fine clothes like this are worth a pretty penny.” He swerved me around a corner toward a row of charred, abandoned houses I surely hadn’t passed before.

“Let me go!” I shouted more loudly, jerking back until a streetlamp blocked me. He had both arms now and I was trapped. Wolf eyes glittered in the dusk.

“Whoa, not so fast. ’Cause here’s
my
church, girl, made for me expressly by the Great Chicago Fire.” He laughed roughly, nodding at a charred house with yawning door and broken windows. A rat scurried out and the great hands squeezed more tightly.

“Let me go!” I shouted again, kicking, yanking, calling, “Help!
Aiuto
!”

“You shut up, girl!” he hissed, hot breath in my ear. “Nobody hears you. Or if they do, they’ll want a turn themselves. After I’ve had mine.” A fleshy hand clapped over my mouth and I was dragged through the doorway. “You shouldn’t be dressing like your betters, girl. Not in this part of the city. Not with all these Jews around acting so holy. They’re rats like the rest of you greenies.”

He dragged me over broken glass that crunched under my scrabbling feet. I bit his hand. He slapped my face. “Italian bitch. Can tell by your voice. Coming to our country, stealing our jobs, breeding bastards.” With each word I was shoved harder against the charred, shaking wall. With a shriek I tore loose. He caught and slammed my body back against the wall, then ripped a ruffle from my dress. “Good for something,” he muttered, tying it in a gag. “There. A bridle for this filly bitch,” he panted. “Now whoa there, Missy, while I mount you. Just don’t make me use my whip.” He yanked a thick belt from its loops and sliced it through the air. The heavy buckle clanged on a charred beam. “Want it on your face, bitch?” he demanded. “Or here?” He pushed my breast. Panting harder now, he fumbled at his trousers, broad chest pinning me to the wall, the hard lump of his pocket watch drilling my ribs. I heaved for breath. When I tried to scream, the gag took my words. “Excited, hey, filly? Well, here comes your stallion, your big
American
stallion. Damn this skirt.” A rip like lightning tearing the sky. I kicked. I tore one hand free and hammered his face, once, twice, wild with frantic strength.

“I said hold still, girl!” A sudden flash of metal and a keen blade pressed my neck. Like my father’s sheep-butchering knife.
Oh Jesus
,
Mary
,
Mother of God.
“Lost, girl? I’ll show you lost. Here’s lost. Like it? Do you like it, girl?” Bloomers ripped. Legs knocked apart, throat seared from screaming, but no sound, only my roaring heart. And then an iron bolt thrust inside me, a sharp tearing and his grunting heaves. Blood ran down my legs.
Lord Jesus take me.
I slumped.

“Damn you bitch, stand up till I’m finished or I’ll cut the other cheek!” Again. Again, harder, deeper, his body pounding mine, grunting uh-uh until he stepped back so suddenly that I crumbled like cloth on the glass-strewn floor.

He stared down at me, lips curled. “Now
that’s
a good greenhorn. I’m counting to a hundred, girl. You make a single sound before that, you move
one
muscle and I’ll come back and cut your throat. You’ll die here with rats before anybody finds you. Understand?”

I nodded and he backed away, calmly cleaned himself with a handkerchief, buttoned his striped trousers, replaced the wide belt, noted the time on his pocket watch, righted his hat and then he was gone, glass crunching beneath his shoes. I pulled off the gag and counted slowly into the darkness:
Uno
,
due
,
tre
. . .
Zia
,
it’s better you died before this
.
Uno
,
due
,
tre . . .
Then came blackness and from this blackness, thoughts spinning against me like slow knives. So
this
was the end of my long path out of Opi? The Lord had brought me
here
, to this pit of glass and darkness, this humiliation and pain? Broken, used. My father touched me, only that. The thieves in Cleveland robbed my purse. And yet I had pressed on:
fool
,
fool
,
idiota
. So vain in my green dress, taunting men until one of them reared against me. My mother was wrong. To die with strangers is no great thing. My great-grandfather on a Russian field had died a hero, a slow sleep in the snow. “Death finds us where it will,” said Father Anselmo.

Yet I lived. Wasn’t this far worse, shame among strangers? How could I return to Molly and Madame or any decent life? Better what Irene did, to walk into dark water, her apron filled with rocks. Lord forgive me, I felt on the ground for a wedge of glass and raised it to my throat. I’d make my own dark lake for drowning, my own sleep in the snow, blood mixed with cinders. Who of my people would be lessened by my death? Zia was gone, Carlo lost or gone. My father had Assunta and a coming babe. Who here would mourn me? Molly, Madame and Simone, for a little while, perhaps. The Lord had no use for me, perhaps even despised me for my vanity.

Just a push, a little push against the neck, here where the vein pulsed. This time no Teresa would hold the wound closed. A little more blood, just a little more.

Uno.
I said a Paternoster for my soul.
Due.
Who would blame me if I pressed?
Tre
. I took a breath, then stopped, shaking, squeezing my eyes shut against that wide mocking face, curled lips, striped trousers puddled at his feet, the tiny eyes of rats, waiting.

Oh Lord, can’t you save me? My hand shook. After the rats, in time someone would find me, even here in the great, indifferent city. And then? When the woodcutter’s daughter hanged herself in Opi, Father Anselmo could not bury her in sacred soil. Violated and shamed, yet her soul would wander, eternally homeless. And what of Irene, rotting in a pit with strangers?

I do not know how long I sat thus, gripping the glass against my neck until from far in the darkness beyond the house came, first indistinct and then more strongly, a familiar whistled song, lilting and light, a mockery from my old life. The shard fell, clattering on wood.

“Jacob! Jacob!” A cry rang out so wild and howling, it could not be mine. Again, “Jacob!” and then an old man’s panting and heavy feet on wooden stairs, glass crackling.

“Irma? Is it you? What are you doing here?” Jacob knelt in the darkness. “What happened?” His fingers must have reached my torn skirt. “What have they done?” Rough hands held me close, a soft rag wiped my burning cheeks. “Praise the God of Israel for guiding my steps here. Shh, now shh.” He rocked me as I sobbed, murmuring, “May he who did this evil be devoured by wild beasts, dashed against rocks, drowned in dark waters. Oh my dear child. There now, there now.” With deft hands, he plucked glass from my skirt. “My sisters will care for you,” he went on soothingly, pulling cloth lengths from his bag to wrap me. “Can you walk a little? It’s not far, very close.” When we stepped into the faint gaslight, he saw my bloody skirt and quavered. “That beast! May God—never mind, Irma, come, come home to my sisters.” He led me through the streets, keeping to shadows until we reached a narrow brick tenement. “There now, my dear. You are safe with us.”

Chapter Nine
Infallible Cure, Number Two

The pale faces of Jacob’s sisters hovered over me,
two hazy moons in the smoky kerosene light. I still smelled burned wood. When Jacob paced behind us in stocking feet on the rag rug, I heard the crunch of broken glass. A mound of striped cloth in the corner heaved. Striped curtains fluttered like
his
striped trousers. I tried to twist away, but at every side hands pressed me down.

“Irma, be still,” said Jacob patiently. “My sisters help you.” Two women hovered like tall crows with flapping black shawls, chattering, cooing, stroking, unpinning my hair. An avalanche of weakness crushed me. Jacob pointed to a bed.

“No bed, no bed!” I gripped the chair. Heavy footsteps sounded on the stairway and a man’s voice growled beyond the wall. I shuddered.

“It’s just Mr. Rosenberg, our neighbor. The door’s locked, don’t worry.” The sisters wrapped a blanket around me and Jacob said, “Irma, I’ll get a policeman. Can you describe the man?” He crossed to the door, pants legs hinged like scissors cutting the room.

“No, no!” I shouted. Who could know a real policeman? A false one might fool Jacob, break in and do
that
again, even to his sisters. “Don’t go!”

“But the police can look for that man, that vile beast,” Jacob explained patiently. Yiddish flew over my head. I understood only “police” and the sisters’ voices trampling his down.

Jacob knelt by me. “I’m sorry, Irma, that was just my
mishigas
, my craziness. Sarah will make a special bath so you are clean again and purified.” The smaller sister hurried to the kitchen. A metal thud hit the floor: a wash basin. I would be unwrapped and wet in this shaking cold? Couldn’t they hear my bones rattle? Didn’t they know I wanted only dryness and heat now, and to never have my body touched?

“There now, go with Freyda.” The tall one pulled me up before I could protest and walked me in the tiny kitchen, stiff as the doll in Mrs. Gaveston’s parlor, left by a daughter who died young. Propped in a corner, trapped, I watched the two sisters fill the tub, adding herbs and pouring in vinegar and turpentine. A piercing tang filled the air.

“Why?” I demanded in English and Italian, but they only smiled and pulled a curtain to close off the little room.

“Gud,” said Freyda, pointing at the tub. They circled me, voices high, shawls fluttering, peeling clothes from my body until I was utterly plucked, then maneuvered to the tub and made to step inside. Look how they fold, these doll legs. My eyes burned.

“What are these?” I asked, scooping dried buds and twigs from the pale foam, but they said only “gud” and washed me with sponges, at least not with hands. Softening, I looked up and saw Freyda, tall and stern, fluttering rag wings, holding a glass rod with rubber bulb tip pointed between my legs. Not there—not there. “No!” I screamed. “Take the rod away.”

“Shh!” they soothed. “Shh! Shh!” Now from under the floor came thuds shaking the room and a man’s angry voice, then thuds again like a broomstick pounding. Sarah’s little hand clapped my mouth. Freyda spoke urgently to her brother.

“Irma!” Jacob called from behind a curtain dividing the rooms. “Stop your
tumul
, please, or the landlord comes. My sister say if you use the rod, perhaps no seed grows in you.”

Horror shot through me. I hadn’t thought of this,
his
seed rooting like a sapling feeding on a fallen tree, eating me out, a rotten stump? So, yes, wash out the seed, but not with a rod, I begged Jacob. “Tell them, please, not with a rod.”

The sisters’ voices rushed at Jacob. The toes of his worn boots shuffled below the curtain. His voice came softly as the pounding stopped. “Listen to me, Irma. My sisters know how it is for you. They know. Cossacks came to our village in Poland. You have heard how the Cossacks hate the Jews? They came with guns and long sabers and forced all the young girls and wives into the forest. Freyda and Sarah too. It was winter, with snow. You understand me?”

“Yes,” I whispered. Sarah sponged my back, making sheets of pungent warmth.

“They send the women back one by one, their clothes ripped and bloody. Some fell in snow. We ran across the field and carried them home. The old women washed them. Sarah, the youngest and most beautiful, the soldiers keep longest. When finally they rode away, we searched the woods and found her curled under leaves, without clothes. She was three days not speaking. Even now, she is afraid outside. Always afraid. But at least no seed grew in her or in Freyda. Only one girl made a Cossack baby, blond like them. Her father took it to the woods and left it there for wolves. So you see, Irma, my sisters know. Let them help you. And be quiet, please, or the landlord sends us away. Will you let them?”

I nodded. Freyda pried open my hand and worked the bulb inside. I closed my eyes so tightly that my whole face ached. Overhead their voices rippled like water on pebbles as I squeezed the bulb, thinking: water on pebbles, wash his seed away. “Gud, Irma. Gud,” said Freyda and then other words to Jacob. “They say more, Irma, deeper. And wash yourself well against the pox.” At last Freyda took the rod and let me stand. I was dried and wrapped in a robe, but the cold crept back as if it lived in my body now. Sarah emptied the tub. Freya stirred cabbage in a pot. Food? Eating? Bile filled my throat.

A table was set. “Eat,” said Jacob. “You must eat.” They set out bread and cabbage, but the cabbage smelled of wet ash to me. Better to be empty, far better. Freyda touched my arm and I lifted the fork, heavy as an iron fire tong. The moon faces beamed. Salty steam rose from the plates, a hand brushed mine again and I was crying, tears splashed on cabbage. Voices swept the table and then my plate was gone and another blanket wrapped around me. Good, no one sees my body, no part of it, none.

A muffled voice said, “We make you a bed, my dear.” In the other room the three bustled, shawls fluttering, rolling out a thin mattress, but I wanted only to curl in the rag nest.

“I’ll sleep here,” I pointed and before they could answer I had curled in the rags, face to the wall, wrapped against voices lapping at my back.

“So then good night, Irma,” said Jacob, and the sisters repeated, “Gut nytte, Irma.” Slowly voices dimmed to what must have been prayers. Then came rattles from the kitchen and the rustle of clothes. A coal stove banked. Tightly curled, I warmed at last. Jacob’s snoring soon rolled in from the kitchen. Near me the sisters murmured.

In the darkness, I saw myself in a green dress splashed with sun. Then green slumped in a charred house. Was that another Irma? Blessed Virgin, who was I now? I stared into darkness sharp with turpentine and cabbage, searching for Her mild eyes and veiled head. Instead I found
his
eyes, glinting. Grunts, uh-uh, belt buckle clanging, crunch of glass. Covering my face with hot hands, I smelled vinegar again. Think of warm water, sliding sponge and splashes.

But weren’t there other splashes years ago? In Opi we slept in shuttered darkness and in those black nights before my mother sickened, I sometimes woke to bed ropes creaking, my father’s groans, uh-uh, her stifled gasps and then a furtive splashing never explained. Was she trying to wash out seeds that couldn’t grow in hunger years? Even as I pressed my hands to my face, breathing vinegar, another memory came rushing back. Once the midwife appeared at our door when my mother’s belly was still flat. When I asked why she came, no one answered. Carlo and I, still small, were sent to gather wild asparagus from the far fields. We returned with stringy bouquets to find our mother pale in bed, Zia bent over her and my father staring at the fire.

Yes, now I remembered, always after the groaning at night came splashing. To wash away his seed? But not always enough, if the midwife came. Why did he torment my mother, knowing the cost? And why did she accede, even invite this risk if all it gave her was groaning? Why? My chest ached for breath, as if a great hand pressed my heart.

Moonlight caught a folded shawl, white as my altar cloth whose beauty provoked my father. Inside my blanket I swam in guilty sweat. Was it women’s skill that called down men’s assaults? Our vanity and pride? Somewhere in the city was another woman pressed against a wall, hot breath in her face, enduring thrusts brought on by a dress of mine?

No, no, remember the Cossacks who rode into the village. Evil, sheer evil. They crossed the plains to ravage peasant girls in rags. “May he who did this be devoured by wild beasts,” Jacob had said. I mouthed in the darkness: “Lord curse him, send the wild beasts upon him. Tear his flesh.” But what of
me
, a greenhorn who lured my own Cossack out of the gnarled Chicago streets?

Looking out the black mouth of the window, I shrank at the thought of daybreak. Had I been wrong, a coward, not to press harder on the glass against my neck? How could I leave this room when evil men lurked everywhere outside? A moment’s daydreams called out thieves in Cleveland. Sarah murmured in her sleep. Who could question why she shunned the streets, she who hid naked and bleeding under leaves in an earthen hollow? How to face Madame or Molly tomorrow, sit at Mrs. Gaveston’s table or go to my church on Polk Street? How to pray to Our Lord again?

I closed my eyes and in the darkness the pale face of the child Rosanna appeared. How had she endured, when death entered her house like a prowling beast, seizing one and then the next in her family until all were dead of malaria? Yet she endured. She learned to sew on scraps and went, seemingly gladly, to the fisherman’s house. But Rosanna was innocent, unspoiled, and I . . . Zia’s fog-soft voice fanned my ear. “
Sleep, Irma
,” she whispered.
“You’re Irma of Opi still. Irma of Opi, Irma, Irma.”
Wrung dry, I sank into tumbling sleep.

In the deep gray before dawn, the sisters moved like shadows, dressing and folding bedclothes. When I sat up, Jacob protested. “Stay and rest today. I’ll tell Madame that you’re sick.”

“No, don’t, she’ll ask why.” I must endure this day and last night must be my secret, damped like coals in the evening. Speaking of it would only fan new flames.

Jacob chewed his lip. “Well then, eat breakfast with us at least.”

Freyda rustled in a corner, producing a modest tan dress she quietly set at my side, and then drew Jacob into the kitchen. I put it on and joined them. Jacob was sorting rags while Sarah stitched beads on a blue velvet evening bag. In her scrap bag I spied bits of my work from Madame’s: a length of rose satin, scarlet silk from an opera gown, yellow organdy of a bride’s trousseau we had just completed, a widow’s black bombazine, and just below it, moss green wool.
My
green. I turned away.

“Look, Irma,” said Jacob. “Your fine dress is here and not so badly ripped. It can be fixed.” When he held it up, the torn skirt gaped at the waist like a leering mouth. Green engulfed the room.

“Please, you keep it.”

“But you were so beautiful, like a princess. It could be fixed and sold for a good price if you don’t want to wear it,” he persisted until Freyda tugged the fluttering edge of his sleeve, glancing at me. “Is it my mishigas again? I’m sorry, Irma, but you are too generous.”

“You helped me. Give it to your sisters or use the cloth for purses.”

He put the green away. “Thank you, Irma, but it is nothing what we did. We are all strangers in this city, here to help each other. Sarah, come eat with our guest.”

Sarah blinked at his English, but sat at the table. Freyda served strong coffee, dark bread, jam, boiled potatoes, hard-boiled eggs and balls of pickled fish. They would eat sparely at night for the wealth of this breakfast. I nibbled at an egg that tasted of wood and took a bit of potato. “Very good,” I told Jacob. “Tell them it’s delicious.”

Eat, Freyda must have said, rolling another fish ball on my plate. They ate solemnly, glancing at me until a street vendor’s cry brought Jacob scrambling to his feet. “That’s the ice man. We must go.” He hustled me out the door before I could thank the sisters.

Morning sun dazzled my eyes. “What will people think?” said Jacob in his gentle, jesting voice. “Me walking with a lovely Gentile.”

“Jacob, I’m not—”

“You are,” he insisted, “a lovely Gentile.”

What would people think?
They would think I was no virgin. Somehow they would see that I was spoiled. They would read it in my face and walk. The blade sharpener chanting, “Razors, blades, knives to grind,” knew, and the brewer rolling kegs of beer off his cart knew as well. I snapped my head away and saw a news boy smirking.

The sweet-potato lady by her charcoal brazier sang: “Yeddy go, sweet potatoes-O!” Was she thinking, seeing me: “One of
those
women?”

A bricklayer mixing mortar looked up, licking dusty lips.

A baker resting against a doorpost idly squeezed a bit of dough, soft as a woman’s flesh.

Even the old French silhouette cutter who used to nod at me when I passed bent over his work, scissors flashing.

Messenger boys in tattered shirts, clerks in round black hats all must be thinking: “
He
had her. Why not me?” In a knot of men by the bank, I saw striped trousers flash.

“Stop!” Jacob yanked my arm backward as a fire engine roared past, legs of the great white horses churning, spotted dogs racing beside them. Only then did I hear the brass bell clang. “Be careful, Irma!” Jacob mopped his creased brow. “Suppose you are hurt? What I tell my sisters? Even afraid, you must be careful.”