Grace's Pictures (8 page)

The carriage’s sudden jolt as it halted to avoid hitting people in the street caused her to swallow hard just as a disheartening thought struck her. As much as
she
wanted to capture images and light and shadows, she wasn’t very good at drawing a person’s likeness.

You are smart. You are able.

She squeezed her eyes tight. The pencil sketch of Ma pinned to the wall in her room had brought Grace comfort, but Grace had not captured what she’d hoped to see. A camera could do that. Cameras froze a moment and forever captured the truth without bias. Photography was different from paintings, where the artist interpreted what he saw for others.

As soon as the notion of taking photographs herself occurred to her, she heard the long-ago voice of her father in her head.
“Weak. That’s what you are. Pitiful. You’re just lucky you’ve got a kind father, lass. There’s not another would put up with the likes of ya. You or your mother. Yous would not survive without me, and don’t you forget it.”

Weak. Pitiful.

She’d carried those messages with her to the workhouse, where no one retained a smidgen of self-respect. Grace could still feel her mother’s hands cradling her youthful head as
her father hurled hatred. “Shh, child.” And then Ma would say those affirming words to her, words so smooth and even-flowing. Words that most times could not battle past her father’s harsh, steely assessment of his daughter.

Grace leaned into the window of the carriage and gazed toward the tops of the skyscrapers. This was America. There need be no demise of aspirations any longer. Perhaps photography would suit her. It was worth finding out.

They entered an ordinary clapboard-sided building and made their way to some folding chairs. Mrs. Reilly was already there.

“Good evening, Edwina,” Mrs. Hawkins said as she sat, causing the chair to squeak under her weight.

“Agnes, Grace. Lovely to see you.”

Mrs. Hawkins motioned for Grace to take the empty chair between them. In front, a makeshift platform had been erected for the speaker, just a series of crates nailed together so the audience would be able to see Mr. Riis with ease. Grace glanced at the program bill they had been handed when they came in.
Mr. Jacob Riis
was boldly inscribed at the top, along with the description “Author of
How the Other Half Lives
.”

Mrs. Reilly leaned over to whisper. “He’s a very intelligent man, Grace.”

“Who is the other half? Half of what?”

“There’s the rich half and the poor half. You know.” The woman turned her head away.

Grace thought surely there were more divisions in American society than that. She did not consider herself poor, not truly. She’d been poor. She’d gone to bed with gnawing hunger in her stomach. She’d lacked fresh water and combs for her hair. Now she had those things. She was . . . well . . . dependent. Who
would write a book on the dependent masses? Grace started to ask another question, but the woman hushed her as a man in a suit came to the podium.

“Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the Children’s Aid Society, I welcome you to tonight’s lecture.” He droned on about financial donations and the progress his charity was making until Grace had to cover her yawns with her palm.

Finally the man of the hour gingerly picked his way along the crate slats and turned to address the crowd. When he spoke about tenement houses, Grace knew that those were the places she had been fortunate enough to avoid. The most misfortunate of the lowly lived there.

Mr. Riis pulled on his coat lapels. “The poorest immigrant comes here with the purpose and ambition to better himself and, given half a chance, might be reasonably expected to make the most of it.”

There! She’d heard it from someone who had been an immigrant and made something of himself. There was hope for her now, she supposed.

He went on. “Yet high rents for squalid living conditions and low wages depress the immigrant and squash his resolve.”

Oh, so it wasn’t so. Grace was confused, tired, and hearing her father’s voice in her head again as Mr. Riis elucidated eloquently about the tenements and the immigrants’ plight. “And these are the dungeons where crime springs forth, though it need not be. This, my friends, is where the line lies—that place that marks below it the dwelling of the ‘other half.’ My photographs will illustrate my contentions.”

The words caught Grace’s attention. She wondered if this man’s photography was anything like Mr. Sherman’s on Ellis Island.

An assistant dimmed the lights and turned on a tin box machine to project what he called lantern slides on the wall. Gigantic images. The crowd gasped. She was not the only one amazed. What a wondrous invention.

Grace strained her neck to see around heads. Scene after scene of dingy buildings and glum-faced families living in cramped quarters sprang into view in black and white. Instead of the creative compositions she’d expected, these images captured sullen faces and filth. Perhaps if the photographs were in color . . . but no, all of New York was mostly gray, as she had observed. Why he wished to capture faces so like the ones Grace had lived with in Ireland, she could not imagine. Grace longed for beauty. That spark of hope. That’s what someone should capture. Mr. Riis had done that with Harold Hawkins’s portrait. He had not accomplished it with these lantern slides.

She continued to stare at the images on the wall. As sad as it appeared, Grace couldn’t help but feel that those children were more fortunate than many in Ireland. At least the children in Mr. Riis’s photographs lived with their parents. In Ireland’s workhouses the children lived in the attic, separated from parents they rarely got so much as a glimpse of, if indeed they weren’t cared for in some far-off orphanage. She turned away, not able to summon a reaction as those around her did, bellowing with shock and indignation.

She glanced to her left. Mrs. Reilly sat stick straight, lips tight. She worked for a charity and likely felt that the indignation was appropriate, but she showed no emotion. On her right Mrs. Hawkins dabbed at damp eyes with a handkerchief. “Pity,” she said to Grace. She reached over and patted her hand. “So happy we could save you from that.”

Grace pulled her chin down to her chest, fighting her own
tears. She could not comprehend why anyone would want to save her. And there were so many immigrants. No one could save them all. But what struck her most in that moment was that these people even cared to try.

After the lecture, when cookies and punch were served, Mrs. Hawkins urged her toward the door. “We have some ironing to do before bed, and I have seen enough suffering for tonight, love.”

In the carriage Grace pondered further. “How do you suppose he learned the trade?”

“Here and there at this newspaper and that, love. He worked with Governor Theodore Roosevelt back when the man was president of the police commission. If it weren’t for Mr. Riis’s photographs, the tenement situation would be worse than it is.”

“Why is that?”

“He brought knowledge of it to people and then reform. We’ve a long way to go, but with people helping, change can happen.”

“Is he why you and the Benevolents opened Hawkins House?”

“In part I suppose he was, love.”

The influence an image could stir up enthralled Grace. She was unsure if she could afford photography equipment and doubted she could manage to use it anyway. But she could purchase pencils and paper. The possibilities were endless.
You are smart. You are important. You are able.

The next morning after Annie had gone off to do the mending, Mrs. Hawkins reached for Grace’s hand as the two of them sat at the breakfast table. “I see how interested you are in
photography, love. Why don’t we look up that man who took your picture on Ellis Island? Still have that card?”

“I do.”

“Good. Go and get it. I’ll go next door to telephone him, and if he’s available, we’ll go see him. I’m curious myself about the photographs he takes of immigrants. I wonder if they are anything like Mr. Riis’s.”

Grace honestly could not remember many of the faces of her fellow immigrants on the ship, but the poor people Mr. Riis had photographed had probably walked down the same staircase at Ellis Island that she had when they entered the country.

Mrs. Hawkins returned in short order. “He is available, love. Let’s go now.”

“Oh, I . . .” Just as soon as Grace got the courage to do something, it seemed to wane.

Mrs. Hawkins placed a hand on Grace’s shoulder. “It is all right, love. Like my Harold used to say, ‘Carpe diem.’”

Grace shook her head.

“It’s Latin, love. It translates roughly: pluck the day when it is ripe. You understand. Seize this opportunity. You are interested in photography. You told me so, and it’s clear from your admiration of my Harold’s portrait. So here is your opportunity to learn more and to see your own photograph.” She clapped her hands together. “Now, isn’t this lovely.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Hawkins.” How could she refuse when this woman encouraged her so? And she certainly wouldn’t want to deny the woman this memory of her husband. Grace had never heard a man spoken of so highly—and long after he was gone.

Right before Grace and her landlady were to depart to see Mr. Sherman, the mailman came to the door, whistling as always. Annie appeared, unforeseen like a ghost, and opened the door
before he could place the letters in the mail slot. “Here’s one for you, Grace.” Annie held it out, but Grace hesitated, stunned.

“Another one?”

Annie bobbed her head. “Sometimes the mail gets backed up and you get letters on the same day that were mailed a week or two apart.”

“But so soon?” Grace found this strange.

“Perhaps your mother wrote to you while you were still on the ship.”

“I had not thought of that. I’m sure that explains it.”

Mrs. Hawkins motioned to her housekeeper. “Leave it on the table, please, love. We’ve got to be going.”

Annie placed the letter on the tray they kept on the hall table. “To see the Ellis Island photographer?”

Mrs. Hawkins put on her gloves. “That’s right, but we’re just going a few train stops north. He is not working today and couldn’t see us if he was. The immigration station is remarkably busy these days.”

“I’ll take it with me.” Grace snatched the letter. She could not wonder all day what was inside.

Aboard the el, she tore it open.

Dear Grace,

We are so blessed with a good crop of potatoes this year, thanks be to God. So all is well here. You and I had a difficult time once, but it is all past. Isn’t that so, darling?

Tears sprang to Grace’s eyes. While Grace was treated well and enjoyed enough to eat in America, her mother was still in the clutches of that man in damp, dismal Ireland.

“Is everything all right, love?”

Grace sniffed. “Aye. As well as can be expected.”

“There, there. God has a plan.” The woman patted Grace’s shoulder.

God would not have planned this.
Grace read on.

Do tell me all about your new home, Grace. Is the mistress there nice? Have you found work yet? Please write, even if you do not hear from me for a time. I need to hear from you and know that you are well.

Grace folded the letter and tucked it away. She would answer before bedtime that very night. She would let her mother know that help was on the way.

They exited at Christopher Street. When they approached a church, Grace paused. “Why are we here?”

“He’s going to meet us at his church. He lives with his mother and several other boarders, love. He thought we could talk better here.”

“But I thought I would be observing.”

“To do that truly, we’d have to go over to Ellis Island. He doesn’t have room for photography elsewhere. And you know what it is like there, love, all those crowds.”

Grace frowned. She did not wish for mere conversation.

“Don’t fret, love. He’ll have his camera and his photographs. He’s being quite generous to take the time.”

They mounted the steps to St. John’s. They stepped inside, their movements echoing in the cavernous building. Grace gazed at the stained-glass windows over the altar. She didn’t hear the man approach until he spoke her name.

“Miss McCaffery, a pleasure to see you.”

She turned to find the man with the receding hairline and a small bow tie that she vaguely recognized from her arrival on Ellis Island. “Thank you for agreeing to see me, Mr. Sherman.”

“I’m most pleased to.” He turned to greet Mrs. Hawkins.

The woman held his hand in both of hers. “You are looking fine, Gus. How is Stella?”

Grace stared at her landlady. Mrs. Hawkins obviously knew Mr. Sherman well. Of course Mrs. Hawkins was the reason he was being so generous. Not for Grace alone.

“My mother is fit,” Mr. Sherman answered. “A bit of the rheumatism but otherwise sound.”

“Glad to hear it.” Mrs. Hawkins turned back to Grace. “I’ve been acquainted with Mr. Sherman’s mother since before my husband passed away, Grace.”