Grace's Pictures (5 page)

Wrapping a thin blanket around her shoulders, she crept quietly down the stairs and let herself into the front room. A window faced the street, where the gas lamps still burned, allowing enough light to help her find what she was looking for. Tucking the paper under her arm, she wandered to the window. On the way here, she hadn’t taken the time to properly observe her surroundings. She gazed out at the night. People still up, walking about. What were they doing? She leaned in until her nose touched the wavy glass panel. A large presence in a dark coat and hat lumbered by, something like a stick dangling from its arm. Seemed familiar somehow. She squinted her eyes. The man from the trolley.

He turned and stared right at her. She gasped and stepped back. Tugging her blanket tighter, she headed for the hall. A light rapping on the door made her freeze. It came again. If he woke the household, how would she explain herself?

She took a step toward the stairs. If Mrs. Hawkins woke, Grace would tell her she had gotten hungry and gone looking for a bite to eat.

Two quick knuckle thuds resounded louder. She darted to the door and peeked out the side window. It was him, all right. She cracked the door open. “What do you want?”

“Is everything all right, Miss . . . Miss Grace? That’s it, right? I saw you on the trolley.”

“Everything’s fine, Officer.”

“I saw you at the window. Are you sure nothing’s up?”

“Just getting my bearings. I’m going to bed now.”

“Good night, Grace.”

“McCaffery’s the name. Good night, Officer.”

“Lock the door, then. I’ll check again on my rounds.”

“No need to come back. I am sure you have to be catching some robbers or some such villains, aye?”

He turned away, stopped, and then turned toward her. “Oh, and it’s Owen. You can call me Owen.”

She sighed, closed the door, and turned the lock. No one had told her that Americans were so . . . nosy. With the newspaper gripped securely in one hand, she took the steps two at a time. Grace tossed the paper to her bed, removed her blanket-robe, and whispered into the dark. “Can’t leave my fate to others. I’m looking for employment.” Grace turned up the oil lamp on the table by the window.

The stories in the newspaper were confusing. Where was Queens? The Brooklyn Bridge?

And the positions listed. She knew what a seamstress was, but she’d never sewn. A piece maker? A typographer? What strange factory names she saw. She wouldn’t know what to do in a factory.

By the time Grace turned out the lamp, she had resigned herself to accepting whatever the reverend drummed up for her after all. Lots of people needed maids, it seemed. And since that’s what the reverend had in mind, she might as well get some experience with whatever he found. Later perhaps she could expand her possibilities, but she had to get started somewhere.
She could cook, or at least she imagined she could. The cooks at the workhouse just stirred watered-down buttermilk into gruel and baked bricks of black bread. How hard could that be? Sweeping wasn’t hard either. She could do that.

She was determined to. Becoming a maid instead of a workhouse inmate would mean she could leave her old self behind and become something different altogether. Someone much better, much more important.

She slipped beneath the cool bedsheets. As she settled down to sleep, she prayed, desperately hoping God would hear her, for Ma’s sake.
God, change me.
The past eight years rotting away in a workhouse would not steal her hope.

She rolled over and thought about Ma again. Grace had gotten away to America like Ma wanted, though at a great cost to Ma since she had to marry a peeler to get Grace out. Feeny might not have been there the day Grace and her mother were evicted, but he was still one of them, and Grace had not an ounce of affection for any policeman.

The next two days were spent getting an acceptable work outfit together for Grace.

“Where did you get your clothes? If you don’t mind me asking.” Mrs. Hawkins was altering some donated clothing for Grace.

“My mother. The only proper skirt and petticoat I ever had. They were in better shape when I left. Not new, but they suited me fine.” Grace flinched when the woman tapped pointed pins against her skin.

“The journey takes a toll. Even so, Grace, those clothes seem a bit old-fashioned to me, like what my Irish granny wore.”

Mrs. Hawkins was perhaps a bit past middle age, sixty or thereabouts. Grace didn’t see how her clothes could have been that old. “Well, I like the color, even a bit faded.”

“Hmm.” With pins sticking between her teeth, the woman kept working on the replacement dress that was the very shade of New York’s pavement.

Although the reverend had not mentioned it, Grace felt disapproval from people on the street. Obviously Americans didn’t like color. There was little of it on anyone’s frame.

On Sunday, wearing the rather ordinary gunmetal-colored dress, Grace attended services at First Church.

“Did you have a pastor at home, Grace?” Mrs. Hawkins spoke from underneath her large-brimmed hat.

“I . . . uh . . . There was a father.” She had a vague image in her mind of what the local parish priest looked like. She didn’t want to admit that the bulk of her religious training had come from workhouse chaplains who read prayers in the dining hall.

She sat on a hard wooden pew bench between Mrs. Hawkins and Annie. First Church was as foreign an experience for Grace as anything so far, and she understood little of what was happening. Candles, choirs, robes, even the prayers and hymns were unlike any she’d ever heard. She bowed her head and tried to follow what the others did and absorb the feeling of the place, if not the meaning.

The reverend’s voice rang out strong but still as caring as when he’d spoken directly to her. A kind of peace flowed from the pulpit and reached out to her. She liked it there, a place where no one stared at her, a calm in the midst of the squall of the city.

4

JUST BEFORE OWEN LEFT FOR WORK
Monday afternoon, his neighbor Otto knocked on his door. “Come, come. You have telephone call.”

Otto and his wife had the only telephone in the building. Owen had given the exchange to his mother for family emergencies. He couldn’t imagine any other reason she would call.

He was ushered inside and to the phone. He pressed the earpiece to his ear. “Yes, operator. This is Owen McNulty.”

The reply came crackled, but it was clearly his mother.

“Mother, what is wrong?”

“Owen. I’m coming for a visit.”

“A visit? Why? Is Father all right?”

“Oh, the old coot is fine and dandy. Always off at his club. A bit of indigestion at times, but with all that spicy food he eats, it’s no wonder. I tell him all the time—”

“Why are you calling, Mother? I need to get to work.”

“A visit, remember? Can’t a mother visit her son? Listen, I’ll be at the home of my friend, Amelia.”

“Mother, Miss Amelia lives near Washington Park. I live in Lower Manhattan.”

“For heaven’s sake, Owen. They have trains, elevated ones.
I will come calling at your police station tomorrow at three o’clock. Mulberry Street, correct?”

“Mother,” he shouted, making Otto jump back. “I go on the beat at four, and sometimes I pull a double shift.”

“Very well. Make it two o’clock before you are on duty, then. We’ll have tea or whatever it is one does down there. Now don’t argue. I must speak to you.”

“Mother, there
is
something wrong. What is it?”

“Nonsense. Good-bye, Owen.”

He lowered the earpiece and stared blindly into space. He just knew his mother was coming to find fault and to urge him to move back to the family home. And she said she was coming to the station. He couldn’t have that. He’d have to pay an early visit to Miss Amelia’s house and cut Mother off before she got on the el.

As Grace expected, Mrs. Hawkins told her she would be given various domestic jobs so Mrs. Hawkins could observe and correct her housekeeping skills. When Grace was young and in school, she knew a neighbor lad who kept a toad in a glass jar. She was like that toad now, trapped and observed on all sides.

Monday, while finishing the dishes, she didn’t know how much more she could take. With each plate she scrubbed, she renewed her will to learn and learn well. She needed money to bring Ma over. And then money for clothes, colorful clothes. Then she would be able to hold her head high when she walked the streets of Manhattan, despite the stares from the Americans, and not care if anyone said she was stupid and insignificant. One day.

“Aren’t you finished yet, lass?”

Grace lifted her soapy hands from the washbasin and turned. Mrs. Hawkins’s scowl made her look like a hawk somehow. That beak-like nose. Grace truly did not want to disappoint the woman, but frustration built inside her and threatened to boil over.

“I am finished, ma’am.” She lifted the basin to take the wash water to the curb beside the back gate.

“Careful. Mind the floor, love.”

Grace pursed her lips. If they didn’t like her at this place, she didn’t know where she would turn.

As she watched the water dribble down to the sewer, her gut tightened and tears choked her until she doubled over, tossing the metal basin on the paved sidewalk. The resulting crashing sound rattled in her ears.

“Are you all right? I was making my rounds and saw you here.”

She covered her face with her apron and tried to regain her composure. Pulling the cloth slowly away, she eyed polished black wing tips and realized the man was waiting for an answer.

A firm hand helped her stand. She lifted her head to find Officer McNulty holding on to her arm. There was something in his eyes that for a moment reminded her of Reverend Clarke’s caring gaze.

But, nay. This was a lawman. That just couldn’t be.

Grace wiggled away. “I am quite fine.” She scurried up the back steps, leaving the washbasin behind. She pushed past a startled Mrs. Hawkins. When she reached the stairs, she heard his voice.

“Here’s your basin, Mrs. Hawkins.”

“Thank you. Poor girl.”

“There’s something amiss with that one.”

“There’s always something amiss with immigrant girls, Officer McNulty. I’ll tend to her. She’ll be just fine.”

Grace locked herself in the washroom and leaned against the wall, desperately trying to relax her breathing. Aye, she’d been foolish. To think she could survive all the way across the ocean and so far from her anchor, Ma. She put a hand over her eyes. Reverend Clarke, Mrs. Hawkins, that policeman. Could she trust any of them? She wasn’t sure. She needed to hold on to something, someone. She wrapped her arms around herself.

Hold on. Breathe. You can do this.

As soon as she could, Grace retreated to her bedroom in hopes of getting a bit of time alone. But Mrs. Hawkins soon came to check on her.