Bowery Girl (3 page)

Another under matron swayed by, her hands gripping a pot of steaming water. Her gray hair, sizzled and steamed all the day, stuck out in tiny erratic curlicues. “Serving the poor and never a care for the ones of us who make an honest living.”

“
Made
an honest living.”

“Some's luckier than us. Head matron downstairs is to remain head matron of the what's it called? S
ettlement house
.” Peggy slopped the hot water into an empty tub. She let the bucket clatter to the floor, then twisted open the faucet. Water gushed, brown with minerals and rust, into the tub. “Not much else you can expect of one of
them
, is it? Not an ounce of kindness and not a bit of respect for the pope.” She crossed herself and rolled her eyes. The faucet squealed against its metal as she shut the tap. “Well, get in, girls, you only got the few minutes.”

Mollie glanced at Annabelle. “Looks like we're sharing.”

Gray scum floated on the water; Mollie hoped it was only from the last girl's soap. She put her hand in the water, and then pulled away sharply. Oh, how cold it was! How would she ever sit in the bath itself?

There were two pegs on the wall on either side of the tub: for clothes and for towels. Combs hung from ropes (so as not to be “mistakenly” taken). Large blocks of soap sat on shelves. Across the room, kettles bubbled atop heavy cast-iron stoves.

The under matrons sat near the stoves, each woman dressed in the cheap rags of the tenement, each serious about her job, which was to keep order.

But how to keep down the squeals of glee and the screams as the girls first touched the cool water? Or the laughter from the mothers, happy to have left their baby or toddler in another room, to have even these few precious moments free from family responsibility? No matter how loudly the under matrons barked and shushed, it proved impossible to quiet all the temperaments in the room. The under matrons kept strict time over their tubs, if not the noise level; they knew to the second who should get out to let another “poor girl” in.

Annabelle and Mollie undressed, hanging up their skirts and shirts and underthings.

“Damn, that water looks cold as a witch's tit,” Annabelle said.

Holding her breath, Mollie flung herself into the tub. “Ain't so bad.”

Annabelle removed her wig, careful to hang it so it would not fall onto the wet floor. She hugged her arms to her chest and dipped a toe in the water.

Mollie blinked once, then again. “Jesus Christ, Annabelle. You're pregnant.”

“Looks like it.” She climbed in, facing Mollie. She held her breath and submerged her face. Bubbles wisped across the water. Then she sat up abruptly, sloshing water over the edge. “I tried to get rid of it, got some herbs, but they only sent me to the infirmary for a coupla days.”

“Shit.”

“That's all you can say?”

“What the hell else can I say?” Mollie grabbed the edge of her towel, wet it, and rubbed it into the large soap block.

Oh, how the grime turned the water black! She yanked her fingers through her hair to untangle it, then took up the comb, pulling hard enough to yank half the sopping hair off her head. But eventually it went through smoothly, and finally the water was dirtier than her skin.

She could barely look at Annabelle, at that firm, round belly. Of all the things that could happen in the world, this was the worst. She thought of all the men Annabelle'd let in and out. How Annabelle pulled away from those who refused to use the French letters she provided. How Annabelle got pregnant anyway. Annabelle was trapped now—not with a man—but with something growing in her. Too bad the herbs in Blackwell's didn't work. “What are you gonna do?”

“Don't have one damn idea. Get Tommy to marry me, I suppose. Go honest, least when it shows too much. I don't know.”

“How the hell we gonna take care of it?”

“We always said we wouldn't be stupid like that, Annabelle. You told me that. Now what? You're gonna marry Tommy? He ain't gonna marry you. He just wants his cut of the money you make.”

“Stop.”

“What about me? I kept the place for us. What about Brooklyn? What about our plan, that we was gonna start over?”

Annabelle rested against the back of the tub and closed her eyes. “I can't do this now.”

“Get rid of it.”

“No.”

“Fine.” Mollie stepped from the bath. She shrugged on her undergarment, and was about to put on the dress—but now that she was clean, she saw more clearly the muck that lay a good six inches up from the hem of her skirt. She held the dress over the tub, and began to rub it clean in the water.

“Washtubs for clothes are downstairs in the basement.” The under matron glared at them from her seat. Her voluminous skirts and broad waist showed decades of fatty corned beef and very little cabbage. “Two cents extra.”

“We don't have two cents. And we've got at least a minute left.”

“First time here?”

Mollie shot a look at Annabelle. “Sure.”

The under matron glanced at her colleagues to make sure they were occupied elsewhere. “Just this once, then.”

The dirt did not come completely out of her skirt. Still, it was better than it had been. Mollie braided her hair and rolled it into a bun. She put on her coat.

Annabelle dried herself, then dressed. She looked flashy and bold, the material of her skirt too thin to be of much use but to pull up in an alley.

“Exit right at the bottom of the stairs,” the under matron said. “God bless.”

“And God damn,” Mollie added.

At the new and rapidly expanding Cherry Street Settlement House, one was not allowed to exit the door through which one came. No, Mollie and Annabelle, who had come only for baths, were forced to trot by shining new classrooms, wherein sat women learning English (“How Do You Do?”) and politics (“What Makes a Republican?”) and proper raising of children (“Never Let the Child Rule”). The board near the exit was filled with many pieces of paper, offering lectures and classes on everything from the question of “the women's vote” to typewriting.

“Anything of interest?” There was a rustle of silk behind them. The woman who spoke was not much taller than Mollie. Her eyes were light blue and sharp behind her glasses.

The Do-Gooder. Miss DuPre. The rich bitch who had apparently just fired all the under matrons upstairs. One of those odd ones, with money and a college education, hell-bent on changing “the Poor.”

“I'd be interested in knowing where we're gonna take baths,” Mollie said, “now that you've removed them all.”

“Just making room. As you can see from the board, we're adding classes. Sewing, reading, mathematics, typewriting, morals, housekeeping.”

“I know cleanliness is next to godliness, but typewriting?”

“You teach reading?” Annabelle asked.

“And we have a board for jobs.”

“We've got jobs, thank you,” Mollie said. “I'm a thief and she's a whore. We could teach classes if you like.”

The Do-Gooder frowned. “I thought you were an opium runner.”

“A what?”

“Isn't that what you said last week?”

“I did?” Mollie shrugged. “Change in career.”

“Are you a good thief?”

“Not too bad, if I do say so myself.”

The woman looked as if she might laugh, but then her gaze flicked over Annabelle's stomach. She pulled a flyer from the board and offered it to Annabelle.

Mollie grabbed the paper. Annabelle grabbed the other end. “If you give it to me, I'll read it to you.”

“If you come here,” the woman said to Annabelle, “you can read it yourself.”

 

 

On the way home, Annabelle stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “I want to learn to read.”

“Since when?”

“I want a better life. If I learn to read, maybe, just maybe—”

“So
I'll
teach ya. You want to be preached at all day by some do-gooder? Reading? Christ, Annabelle, what's happened to you?”

“I ain't going to jail again.” She squeezed the bridge of her nose; her cheeks flushed pink.

“Aw, you gonna cry? You don't gotta go to jail again. Look, it's all right. We're gonna go meet the boys and have fun and everything's gonna be the way it was, all right?”

“But it's not the way it—”

“I
know
already. I know.”

LEFTY MALONE'S DANCEHALL

IN THE BOWERY AND along Mulberry Street and Mott and Delancey and Chatham Square and Paradise Alley, in the empty lots and busy corners and dark walkways, there were many boys who claimed to be king. They swaggered in princely packs, in fours or fives or eights. They had grand names for themselves: Rum Runners, the Growlers, Black Hats, Guts and Glory. Each gang staked a territory and waited for their rivals to set foot in it. Should another group, whether by accident or design, happen by, bricks and bats and cans appeared from nowhere. And when the munitions were depleted, hard fists took their place. They fought until blood flowed and would have fought to the death, but usually a policeman or someone's father turned up.

Then a boy—usually the one with the bloodiest head—would get another beating from his father or a good smack of the policeman's wood baton. He would be sent home, cursing every step of the way.

The rival gangs would separate with only a can or two thrown as they went their different ways. General loafing would be the next activity, or perhaps a bit of gambling and a pail of beer passed among the swaggering princes.

The most revered boys were those whose pictures graced the
Police Gazette
. And of those, Tommy McCormack, lead fellow of the Growlers, took the prize. His photo had been seen three times in the newspapers; he cut the pictures out and kept them in his wallet for good luck. He had a beautiful face, did Tommy McCormack. Angelic, even, with his soft lips and clear blue eyes. Those eyes had gotten him released from court nearly every time.

Tommy McCormack, Hugh O'Dowd, and Seamus Feeney sat at a small round table right up front near the dancing women onstage. They wore hard, shiny black bowlers. Their stiff collars, pinned in the back by a single pearl stud, flapped loose like birds' wings. This was the mark of a Growler.

At Lefty Malone's, the stage wasn't much to speak of, but then again, the whole place wasn't much to speak of. Ribbons of red, white, and blue draped the walls; the fuzzy dust dated them from the Civil War, if not before. The walls themselves were black from cigarette smoke. The floors were warped and sticky, the chairs broken, the tables full of white rings. Tuesdays and Thursdays were ladies' nights, which meant old prostitutes came to dance with the patrons. Five cents a dance. The bill went higher for a feel (or more) in one of the small rooms down the hall.

Lefty served just enough food so as to remain within the liquor laws: two salted pigs' knuckles and two pieces of dark bread per table. Otherwise, he left the saloon alone. He preferred to let the Growlers keep the peace. He allowed Tommy to choose the dancing girls. He allowed Tommy to make the payoff to the police.

Annabelle Lee nuzzled Tommy's shoulder. Her fingers played with the blond hairs on the back of his neck. She wore the red dress. She had put on more makeup. Mollie thought she looked like a china doll next to Tommy, and she remembered how much this always bothered her. She was a different Annabelle Lee around the boys. She was the whore who smiled at the right times and kept her opinions to herself. But then Annabelle gazed at Tommy, and it wasn't a whore's lie, but something real and wanting and desperate. Waiting for a smile turned just her way. Looking for a small hint that her coming back meant something more than a warm body sometimes at night.

“You've got fat, Annabelle.” Tommy took a sip of beer, set the mug down lightly. He removed a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and wiped his mouth. “Jail must've been good to you.”

“I ain't fat.” She shot a look to Mollie. “I look just the same's I went in, right?”

“Sure,” Mollie said.

Annabelle ran the back of her hand along Tommy's cheek. “I ain't fat. And stop staring at the girls on the stage.”

Tommy threw her a half smile and patted her leg.

“And I ain't a dog, so stop patting me.”

Mollie rolled her eyes. Although she loved Annabelle, she had to admit that sometimes she was an idiot. And Annabelle was just at that point of being drunk where you didn't know what she'd do.

Seamus ran his hand down Mollie's arm, and up again near her breast. She should have liked it, that simple and gentle touch. But all she wanted was some space and to sit up straight.

“Where ya going?” Seamus pulled her tighter.

“Here, Seamus, pick a card,” Hugh said. “I'll guess what it is. If I'm right, you buy the beer.” Hugh stuck his fingers in his vest pockets. He sported his hat at a steep angle, low upon his eye. He must have thought that made him look tough, but instead he looked like he was dressing in his father's clothes.

Seamus sniffed, winked at Mollie, then pulled a card. He palmed it toward her. Three of spades.

“Now stick it back in the deck.” Hugh stretched his arms, then shook out his fingers. He adjusted the daisy in the lapel of his yellow-and-black-checked suit. “Get ready to lose, my friend.”

Hugh laid the cards faceup in an arc. He ran his fingers over them, lightly tapping certain ones, then shaking his head. He stacked the cards, shuffled them, and pulled the top one from the deck. “Three of spades.”