Bowery Girl (11 page)

Googs Mallory had told her once: “Five seconds of thinking is three seconds too long.” And here Mollie had stood like a moron from Bellevue, letting the minutes go by.

“Goddammit,” she said out loud. She stuck a match in her mouth and trudged back to the corner where she began. She leaned against a green iron railing. The sign above advertised THE FINEST CHAIRS IN NEW YORK. THIRD FLOOR. The windows behind her contained photographs of scowling couples, and a few stills of some actress in tights and a very short skirt that barely came to her knees.

On the corner, shaded by the awning of a café entrance—a café, for God's sake!—a policeman stood watch, his arms crossed. His mustache was well oiled. The badge on his chest gleamed. He looked at Mollie and she looked at him.

“All right already, I'm leaving.” She pushed away from the railing and sashayed by him.

 

 

She bought a hot wine from a pushcart. She dropped the change. She used both hands to keep the cup steady.
Jesus Christ,
she thought.
What the hell am I gonna do now?

Mollie thought she might ride the streetcar, back and forth; whoever sat by her would have bad luck that day. She would have liked to rest her feet, anyway. She crossed the middle of the street, and clambered up the stairs. She stood near the door—just in case she'd need to get out fast. A plump woman in plain black squeezed next to her. The condensed moisture of everyone's breath fogged the windows. The vehicle jolted forward. Mollie fell into the woman. This was quite a good thing, for her leg bumped something that felt very much like a bag of coins and bills.

The woman held a large knit bag on her lap, and the joints of her hands were white from holding it so tight. Another stop, another clatter and lunge. Mollie put her hand on the bench to right herself and left it there. Let the weight of it against the smooth wood seat still, for one second, the shaking. Let her fingers move slowly, feeling the fabric for the opening. Feeling for the thicker seam. There.

She felt sorry for this woman. This woman thought herself so smart, pretending to guard money in her big knit bag, thinking no one would look elsewhere. Or perhaps she had something in the bag she didn't want to lose. Mollie thought it might be food and she might be going home to a large family of boys who would eat it all and leave her only the scraps and gristle. The woman blinked a lot, as if the diffused light that somehow made its way through the windows was too bright. She smelled of coffee and years of boiled meat and something flowery meant to hide the first two smells. Mollie hesitated. She removed her hand and instead smoothed and repinned her bun. At the next stop, the woman got off, and it was then the sound slipped to nothing but the pump of Mollie's heart.

It should have been easy; it would have been, had the damn woman not turned on a side street, had the crowd not thinned to nothing, had the woman not spun directly around to smack Mollie in the head with her bag.

Mollie could have run away. Mollie could have called the cops.

But she shoved the woman into an alley, then to the ground, and held her sharp knife to the woman's throat. She took the money from her pocket.

She pushed the tip of the blade into soft skin—just a bit—and the woman started to cry.

“Are you scared?” Mollie whispered.

A barge whistle blew. The river was close.

Jesus. There was a knife in her hand, held to a woman's throat, and the woman was crying.

 

 

She stepped back, dropped the knife, and ran.

CHERRY STREET SETTLEMENT HOUSE

ONE BUILDING STOOD OUT from the others. The brick was blustery red, the long windows of its three stories shimmering and bright. The awning was striped in green and white. The steps had been replaced; the columns of the portico had been stripped of plaster, and the original marble showed its veins. It looked very much like the new kid in the yard who was sure to be beaten up. Mollie felt a momentary sense of displacement. Where was she now? It should have been Cherry Street directly ahead; that building should be the baths. There should be a broken streetlamp fast by the entrance, not a new glass globe and freshly painted pole.

She squinted—yes, just faintly the word BATH could be made out on the brick. The only other sign was quite small, as if the building did not really wish to advertise itself. It was a rectangle of brass, just to the right of a door that no longer had wood planks across its bottom: CHERRY STREET SETTLEMENT HOUSE.

 

A group of women and men, all with the rough hands and sallow cheeks that identified them immediately as belonging to the Fourth Ward, loitered near the door or stepped inside.

Mollie glanced at Annabelle. She barely recognized her. She did not wear her blonde wig, nor any paint. She held a slim book in her hands, and her face was open and bright. Mollie suddenly remembered the moldy curled pages of Dickens. What was the first line she'd so carelessly read that day so long ago?
Whether I shall be the hero of my own life
. . . and something else.

It was all so far away from Mollie, though only twenty steps or so to cross the street and climb the stairs.

Annabelle took her hand. “Come on, ya daft bitch. No one bites.”

 

 

Nothing at all about the vestibule—where they had once come to sign in and bathe—looked the same, except for the stained glass of Jesus and the lambs. In place of the matron at the desk, and the pail where girls dropped their coins, stood a tall counter. Behind it, a large woman with pince-nez, a white shirt, and starched collar and tie, watched as both women and men signed in.

“Never seen a woman in a tie before,” Mollie whispered to Annabelle.

“It's the matron from the baths, Moll. She's still a dragon.”

Behind the counter, a large sign read:

 

NO SWEARING

NO RUNNING

NO GAMBLING

NO DRINKING

NO KNIVES OR GUNS

 

 

The matron set a different ledger before Mollie. “Name, address, and time checked in. You'll wait here for an interview.”

“An interview? Why?”

“The rules are the rules.”

The gaslights hummed; they were not needed, for the room was painted so white that Mollie wanted to shade her eyes. She dipped the pen in the ink bottle, but then her hand twitched, and the ink splattered across the paper.

“I got a problem with my hands,” Mollie muttered. She felt Annabelle rub her back.

The matron cleared her throat and raised her eyebrows. She waited for Mollie's name.

Yes,
Mollie thought.
I can do this. I signed my name many times before
. She placed the pen against the paper.

“Your real name,” the matron said. “Your real address.”

“All right already.”

The head matron plucked the pen from her hand. She read Mollie's name, then slid the pad aside and pushed the other in place. She handed the pen to Annabelle. “Come, come, come.”

“She can't write,” Mollie said. “I'll sign for her.”

“No, Mollie. I can do it myself.”

And there Annabelle stood, biting her lip, signing her very own name.

“Well, I'll be damned,” Mollie said.

The matron raised a thick finger to the List of Rules. “No swearing.”

“Did I swear?” Mollie said innocently as they moved away from the counter.

Annabelle kissed her cheek. “I'm late. And I can't run.”

“'Cause of the rules.”

“'Cause I'm suddenly big as a house.” Her eyes flicked behind her. A man in a drab suit signed his name, then stuck his fingers back in his vest and turned to look at them. He had a long nose and chin, and his hair was oiled tight to his head and colorless as his clothes. His jacket sagged where his shoulders should have filled it out, and his pants hung as if they were made for someone else. But it was as if he thought himself as finely dressed as a Broadway gent, for he rocked back on his heels, smiled at Mollie, then sauntered down the hall.

The matron clucked, and pointed to a long bench. “You'll wait there for Miss DuPre.”

Mollie sank down, and almost slid off the polished wood.

She grasped the edge with her fingers, as much to keep her balance as to keep them still.

The stairs that once led to the baths were filled with rolling and tumbling children. Their mothers waved to them from the main floor, and there were thrown kisses, and sullen glares from kids not wanting to go up. The matron looked at the round clock above Mollie's head, then clapped and shushed the children up the stairs.

Shrieks and laughter came from the old bath floor. The hallway beyond the counter echoed with “good morning”s. Then a bell sounded, and quiet came. So much quiet that Mollie heard only the tick of the clock and the scratch of the matron's pen.

Outside, carts and carriages rolled by. A woman dragged a wheeled cart filled with fabric. A prostitute and her john exited the alley directly across the street and went their separate ways.

A sharp click of heels echoed from the hallway. Emmeline DuPre held the edge of a door in each hand, and shut them to the classrooms beyond. She approached the matron. “Did Terence come?”

“No, miss. Looked for him especially.”

“Hmm.”

Miss DuPre wore an ivory dress. She pushed her thin wire-rim glasses up her nose and read through the names of those who had signed in. “Not bad. And new students?”

And new?
Mollie rolled her eyes.
There ain't no one but me sitting like a fool on this bench,
she wanted to say. Instead, she whistled a bit of a tune from the dancehall, until Miss DuPre looked at her over the top of her glasses.

“Add ‘No Whistling' to the list,” she said to the matron. “Come,” she said to Mollie. She picked up her skirts and ascended the stairs. She did not turn and make sure Mollie followed; she knew Mollie followed.

They passed the second floor and the thumps and bumps of the children. The third floor appeared to be a sort of dormitory. It was all so white.

“I'll furnish those rooms this summer. Perhaps you and Miss Lee would—”

“We got our own place, thank you.”

The stairs now narrowed sharply and grew steeper. At the top were two doors. Three locks separated the right door from whatever lay behind it. Miss DuPre turned the knob on the left door.

Tall oak cabinets lined three walls of the small, plain room. The fourth wall was mostly window, with lace curtains softening the light. A great desk with carved feet took up most of the space. Two horsehair chairs angled in front of it. The top of the desk was covered in stacks of paper, each stack held down by a book. A pipe hung from the ceiling, with two closed gas jets attached to each end. There were no paintings on the wall, no pictures on the cabinets. Only the paint that still smelled of lead and turpentine.

Emmeline DuPre perched on the corner of her desk and gestured to a seat. “Please.”

Mollie sat. The fabric, when her hands found it, was thick. It was not a chair, once settled in, that one could easily run from.

Miss DuPre moved behind the desk and sat. The springs in the chair creaked. “Can you read?”

“Yes.”

“Were the rules understandable?”

“Yes.”

“How old are you?”

“Sixteen. I think.”

“I'm thirty-seven. I know. So. Classes begin at eight and let out at four. There is an hour break for lunch. Two hours a day, each student must work at a job around the facility.”

“A job?”

“A job. Painting, cleaning, watching the children on the playground. Cleaning the blackboards. This is not a charity.”

“Annabelle's been working?”

“Miss Lee watches the children from ten to twelve. Why are you laughing?”

Mollie bit her lip. “I'm not laughing.”

“She's learning how to care for them.”

“I hope she ain't teaching them anything.”

“You, Miss Flynn, have no faith in your friend. And she knows it.”

“What are you talking about? I got great faith in Annabelle. Don't tell me how I am with Annabelle.”

The Do-Gooder's face remained clear and blank. “Why are you here?”

“I want you to fix my hands. Look at 'em.”

Emmeline DuPre leaned back in her chair and tapped a finger against her lips. “A pickpocket with bad hands. Hmm.”

“I ain't going through this again. I wasn't gonna steal your purse.”

“What do you want from your life?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you want to pickpocket again? Do you want to be the best thief in New York City?”

Mollie saw the watchman lying in the street, saw herself holding a sharp knife to a woman's throat. “I just need my hands to be still. That's all I'm asking.”

“What then?”

“You wouldn't understand.”

Miss DuPre held Mollie's gaze. “Try me.”

“You just wouldn't, all right? You got no idea—”

“Don't underestimate me, Miss Flynn.”

“Don't underestimate
me
.”

“Which means?”

“I can be good. Whatever you think.”

“So we'll see.” Miss DuPre opened a desk drawer. “This is the contract everyone must sign. Basically, you agree to the rules, you agree to the work, you agree to learn a trade.” She handed the paper to Mollie.