A Proper Pursuit (18 page)

It sounded like one of the questions Ruth Schultz and I used to ponder:
“If your one true love took your hands in his, and you had to
choose between having dry, scrub-maid hands or skin the color of beets,
which would you choose?”
I tried to decide which fate Madame Beauchamps would tell me to choose, but she would be horrified that I’d found myself in this predicament in the first place. I would have to keep my gloves on tomorrow evening, which was not a socially acceptable thing to do when dining, but I saw no other way out of my dilemma.

We finally finished peeling the last beet. It seemed as though I had been in this kitchen for days. Louis removed his wire-rimmed spectacles again and polished them on his shirttail, which never seemed to stay tucked into his trousers. Once again, in spite of his vigorous efforts, the glasses looked just as smudged when he wrapped them around his ears again as when he’d started.

“It’s almost lunchtime,” he said. “We’ll start serving the noon meal soon.”

Indeed, the aroma of bread and soup had begun to fill the kitchen while we’d worked. My stomach rumbled with hunger. But when I recalled the nauseating smells that awaited me outside, I questioned the wisdom of eating anything at all. Hadn’t I suffered enough humiliation for one day without losing my lunch in the street on the way home?

I helped carry stacks of bowls and spoons to the serving table while Louis and his friends lifted the soup pot from the stove.

“This is the part I love,” he said. “Serving the needy, seeing their faces, offering that ‘cup of cold water’ in Christ’s name. It makes all the hard work worthwhile, doesn’t it?”

I glanced at my ruined hands and knew I couldn’t answer his question truthfully. My stained nails looked as though I had murdered someone with my bare hands.

“I admire you, Mr. Decker. I don’t believe I’ve ever met anyone quite like you.”

“Please, Miss Hayes. God deserves all the glory, not me. I’m just His servant.”

“You’re a very good one, then.”

As it turned out, my help wasn’t required. When the doors opened and scores of hungry people came inside for a bowl of soup and a piece of bread, there were plenty of servers for the job. I watched my Grandmother and Louis and the others feeding the hungry and offering kind words of encouragement, and I doubted that I could ever dedicate my life to this work the way they were doing. What was wrong with me that given the choice I would rather be served than serve?

When the crowds left, we sat around the table in the kitchen where I had worked all morning and ate a bowl of soup for lunch. It was surprisingly delicious. I would have to write a letter to Ruth Schultz and tell her that my most adventurous meal might now be elephant soup. But when we’d all eaten our fill, I eyed the towering stacks of dirty soup bowls with dismay.

“We can help wash up another day,” my grandmother said, resting her hand on my shoulder. “We have another job to do now. Let’s go fetch our hats.”

“Are we leaving?”

Grandmother nodded. I recalled my earlier experiences with onions and beets and didn’t know whether to be happy that I’d escaped dishwashing or if an even worse fate awaited me.

“Where are we going?”

“A woman I know named Irina is ill. I’ve offered to bring some soup to her and her family. Louis is going to come with us. Here, you can carry this.”

She handed me a loaf of bread wrapped in a kitchen towel. Louis already had the lunch bucket of soup in one hand, and he offered my grandmother his other arm. I drew a deep breath, inhaling the delicious aromas for the last time, then braced myself to walk outside.

The stench of the neighborhood had worsened in the afternoon sun. I usually reserved my prayers for bedtimes and Sunday church services, but I began to pray silently that this task wouldn’t take too long or be very far away. Otherwise, my lunch was going to make a quick encore appearance.

I noticed the children as we walked. So many of them were ragged and barefooted, and so many of them were working rather than playing. Older girls aged eight or nine rocked babies and chased toddlers. Young boys, still in knee britches, hauled stacks of firewood on homemade carts.

“Where do they find wood in the city?” I asked Louis.

“They scavenge for it behind warehouses or along railroad tracks. Then they have to sell it all. They don’t make much money, but every spare penny helps their families. A lot of our Sunday school boys work downtown all day selling newspapers or shining shoes.”

Grandmother linked arms with me. “This is what hurts me, Violet— seeing all these children who have to work so hard when they should be in school getting a good education. Thank the Lord that you had a safe, happy childhood—these children certainly don’t have one.”

I thought I finally understood why my grandmother had moved to Chicago after my grandfather died instead of staying in Lockport and taking care of Father and me.

“Older children who should be in school are forced to find work in factories,” she continued. “And much of the work that’s given to women and children is either piecework or done in sweatshops.”

“What’s a sweatshop?”

“Any place besides a regular factory where work is done,” Louis explained. “It’s usually in a basement or a garage or a vacant tenement. Employers cram in a bunch of workers and treat them like slaves. Of course those places have very unsafe working conditions, and the workers have to put in long hours for very little pay.”

“See that little boy?” Grandmother nodded toward a lad who couldn’t have been more than eight years old staggering beneath an enormous bundle of fabric. “He’s delivering piecework, probably to his mother and sisters. Those look like men’s trousers. The family will finish all of the hand sewing at home, often after working all day at some other job. They’ll get paid by the piece. Can you imagine little girls only seven or eight years old, sewing men’s trousers day and night for seven cents a dozen?”

“That’s all? Why so little?”

“Because there are hundreds of other destitute immigrants who are willing to work for those wages if they don’t.”

We turned down a crowded alleyway, and I had to pinch my nose closed again to block out the smell. I hadn’t wanted to reveal my squeamishness in front of Louis Decker, but the entire lane reeked like an overflowing outhouse. I’d never seen so many flies in my life.

“Here, this is clean,” Louis said, handing me his handkerchief. “The heavy rain we had the other night made all of the outhouses overflow. Is it any wonder that these neighborhoods have cholera and typhoid epidemics?”

“We’re trying to educate people about the need for cleanliness,” Grandmother added, “but there are just so
many
people. And, of course, language is a problem. That’s why Miss Addams has added English lessons… . Well, here we are. This is where Irina and her family live.”

The door to the tenement stood open, and I braced myself as we went inside, dreading how this dilapidated building might smell. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dark, narrow foyer after the bright afternoon sunshine. I heard water running and identified the first odor as mildew.

A young boy stood at the base of the steps, filling an enamel basin with water from a sputtering faucet. He had spread a collection of cans, pots, and bowls on the floor, and he was slowly filling them, one by one.

“That’s the only running water in the building,” Grandmother said. “All of the people in these apartments have to share the same faucet—and they have to haul the water upstairs, of course.”

“The tenants are probably thankful to have any water at all,” Louis said. “Careful! Watch your step, Violet… .”

He took my arm to guide me across the slippery floorboards and around the boy’s scattered containers. As I followed my grandmother up the rickety wooden stairs to the third floor, the odors changed from damp and moldy to the fragrant aroma of cooking food. I began to breathe more freely. I identified onions and boiled potatoes, but also the mysterious, spicy aromas of foreign foods. The air in the stairwell smelled delicious.

We climbed to the third floor and my grandmother knocked on one of the apartment doors. It opened a crack and a tousled boy with a dirt-smudged face peered out.

“It’s me, Yuri—Mrs. Hayes,” my grandmother told him. “I’ve brought your mother some soup.”

“Yes, yes, let her come in, Yuri,” Irina called from inside. He opened the door for us.

Irina was the thinnest woman I had ever met and also the palest. She sat propped up on one of the beds, her right leg immobilized by a bandage and wooden splint. She might have been a pretty woman, but the accident that had broken her leg had marred her face with purplish bruises. One eye was blackened and swollen shut, and her lips looked puffy and split. I wondered how she had been injured but knew enough about proper manners not to ask. She was top-stitching a man’s suit coat; a pile of unfinished coats lay heaped on the bed beside her.

I counted three small children in the dismal room along with Yuri, and a fifth one asleep in a cradle that seemed much too short for her. I tried not to gape at the bare wooden floors, the lumpy beds, the chipped plates on the tilting table, knowing that it was just as rude to stare at the furnishings here as it had been in the mansions I’d visited.

“Irina, this is my granddaughter, Violet Rose. We brought you some soup.”

“Thank you, thank you,” she said, pronouncing it
tank you
. She set aside her sewing as one of the smaller children climbed onto the bed beside her. “How can I ever tank you? You would like to stay and visit? Yuri can make tea.”

“No, we can’t stay. Maybe next time, Irina.”

“We’re praying for you down at the church,” Louis added. “I hope you’ll soon be well again.” He took the bread from me and set it on the table.

“Yes. Tank you.”

“We miss you down at the kitchen,” Grandmother said. “No one makes
borscht
as good as you do.”

“Tank you.” I saw Irina wipe away a tear as Grandmother closed the apartment door behind us.

“What happened to her?” I asked when we reached the stairwell. “How did she break her leg?”

“Her husband did that to her,” Grandmother said.

I couldn’t utter another word until we reached the foyer. The young boy was still standing at the water faucet, slowly filling a blackened teakettle.

“But—why would he do such a terrible thing?”

“He becomes violent whenever he has too much to drink. Irina would rather take the abuse herself than let him harm one of the children. I didn’t want to stay and visit today for fear he would come home.”

“Why in the world doesn’t she leave him?”

“She has no way to support her children or pay the rent.”

“Everyone at church is praying for her,” Louis said. “And for her husband.”

“Yes, Irina is such a dear woman.”

Louis walked with us to our streetcar stop on a main thoroughfare. Finally, I dared to breathe deeply again. The smell of horse manure, factory fumes, and the ever-present stockyards seemed tame after visiting the slums.

“It was wonderful to see you again, Violet,” Louis said as he waited with us for our car. “I enjoyed working with you.”

“Yes. I hope we meet again.”

“Well, now that you mention it …” He paused, removing his spectacles to polish them. “I don’t want you to feel pressured, Violet. I mean, your participation should be absolutely voluntary … but if you are able to play the piano for us next Thursday, we really could use your help.” He wrapped the wires around his ears and gazed at me with his dark, intense eyes.

“All right. I’ll come.” I needed to shrug off more of the guilt that was blanketing me. Playing the piano sounded much easier than cutting up vegetables. And it wasn’t likely to ruin my hands either.

“Wonderful,” he said. “We’ll meet in front of the school at one o’clock. I’ll see you then.” Our streetcar arrived, and Grandmother and I climbed aboard, waving good-bye. She sank onto the seat with a sigh.

“So. What did you think of the settlement house?”

“I never realized what a hard life those immigrant women have.”

“My sister Matt has her way of helping women, and I have mine.

But our work overlaps in places too. We’re both working to change the laws so that women can earn higher wages and work shorter hours. We’d both like to improve working conditions so factories are cleaner and safer. And we’re both trying to get new child labor laws passed—and enforced—so that children can get out of the factories and sweatshops and into schools.”

“Their living conditions are terrible.”

“Yes. And you can see why so many of the ramshackle wooden tenements like the one we visited today burned up like matchsticks in the Great Fire. Afterward, the poor people who’d lived in them had no place to go. They didn’t have much to begin with, and then they lost it all. Many, many of the people who died in the fire were poor.”

“Did my mother live in a tenement before the fire?”

Once again, my grandmother hesitated—as she always did when I asked a question about my mother.

“I honestly don’t know where she lived, Violet Rose. I only know that wherever it was, her home burned to the ground. She lost everything— clothing, personal items, heirlooms—everything.”

“Did she—”

“That’s really all I can say about her, Violet.”

I huffed in frustration. “Why won’t you ever talk about her?”

Grandmother took my hand in both of hers and squeezed it gently. She had beautiful hands—strong and work worn and scented with flour and yeast. A week ago I would have described them as chapped and reddened from too much work. Today they looked beautiful to me.

“I can’t talk about your mother because I promised your father that I wouldn’t.” She quickly changed the subject. “Since most immigrants work very hard for very little pay, it’s an even greater tragedy when some of them waste it all on alcohol. That’s why my work with the Temperance Union is so important. It goes hand-in-hand with the work we did today. I’ll take you with me to the Union another day.”

“I still don’t understand why women like Irina don’t leave their husbands if they beat them and spend all their money in saloons.”