Swimming in the Moon: A Novel (10 page)

Of course I understood that Irena’s room couldn’t be left empty. Roseanne would store Irena’s things for a while in case Casimir came, but the room must be cleaned and rented out again. “We’ll take it,” Mamma announced.

“It’s fifty cents more a week,” I protested. “We can stay where we are until we’ve paid back the countess.”

“Come outside, Lucia. We’ll talk about it.” Walking up and down our street, we had a furious argument, our worst yet in America. “Listen to me,” Mamma said loudly. “We deserve that room more than the countess deserves our fifty cents.”

“We promised to pay her back. And that room was my friend’s.”

“Now it can be ours. Don’t you care that after working all day to keep you in school, I have to sleep in a coffin?” Her voice rose. When neighbors came to their windows to watch us like a show, I gave up, exhausted and embarrassed by her fury.

After relating “our” decision, Mamma hugged and kissed me. “You’ll see, Lucia. We’ll be happy.” That evening she scrubbed the front room until it reeked of borax, ammonia, and lemon oil. I still saw and felt Irena in the shadows, but Mamma was right: the old room
was
a coffin, and the bright morning light in the new one was a blessing. Donato dragged home a battered desk from his shop. I boxed up a cache of Irena’s buttons, her rosary, Bible, and framed prints of Poland for Casimir and wrote to Countess Elisabetta, explaining that we would repay her but needed a little more time. She thanked us for our diligence and sent a spray of dried lavender to perfume our room.

“You see?” said Mamma. “That wasn’t hard.”

Casimir never answered our telegram. If he had made other plans, perhaps it was better that Irena never knew this. I went back to scribing and studied hard to make up for missed schoolwork. As we drew close to the end of the year, the school principal said I might skip a grade if I studied on my own that summer. Yes, I said, I’d gladly do that. If Mamma lost her job or quit, as she often threatened to do, if she was hurt or sick, I’d have to go to work. Skipping a grade would hurry my graduation.

“Why does a diploma matter so much?” Yolanda asked. “You don’t need it for a job.”

“For a good job I do. And I
want
to graduate.” I wanted it for myself; it was the first prize I’d wanted so steadily. I wanted it for Irena’s sake. I wanted to be able to care for Mamma if I had to work for both of us. And if I had a chance for college, I’d need a high school diploma.

“Well then,” said Yolanda loyally, “I hope you get it.”

On a warm
July evening, Mamma was singing a silly popular song, “The Moon Has His Eyes on You.” I’d translated the lyrics for her and any American would have imagined that she understood each word. I was curled on the divan with my battered dictionary and
A Tale of Two Cities
. A knock at the door brought Roseanne rushing, for new boarders often came at that hour from the last New York train. In fact, a weary young couple stood on the porch, a neat stack of luggage behind them.

“Yes, I have a room to rent,” Roseanne said loudly before they could speak.

The man looked past her into the parlor. “Irena?”

My dictionary hit the floor with a thud. The piano slowed and stopped. Casimir was square-shouldered as Irena might have been before her accident, with the same blue eyes, thick blond hair, and open face. He carried a wooden box that surely held butcher knives.

“We need a translator,” Roseanne said quietly. “Lucia, go get your friend Henryk.” Then she explained to Casimir loudly in Italian that I would bring over a friend who spoke Polish. Meanwhile he and his wife should come in and make themselves comfortable in the parlor.

“Irena?” he repeated.

My shoes were too small, I remember. They pinched as I ran the few blocks to Henryk’s flat. When I blurted my news, Henryk said something to his mother, who used the
“shiksa”
word again. His father spoke in a steely, low tone of command, more unnerving than any Neapolitan shouting. I heard “Polski” and “Irena” in Henryk’s answers. Finally his mother and then father appeared to relent. Neither spoke to me.

“I’m sorry,” Henryk said as we left his flat and hurried down the foggy street. “They just didn’t like a girl calling on boys at night.”

“They thought I was—”

“Yes,
that
sort. But I said you scribed with me, study hard, good girl, respect your mother, all those things. And they want to help other Poles, even Gentiles.”

“Your mother sent over the soup,” I remembered.

“Yes, her magic soup.” He slowed his walk for me. “This brother must be exhausted, and now he’ll find out his sister’s dead.”

“Roseanne’s probably shouting at him in Italian.”

“My mother does that too. I keep telling her that Americans aren’t deaf. They just don’t speak Yiddish.”

By the time we reached the boardinghouse, Roseanne had brought Casimir and his wife wineglasses and little plates of
chiacchere,
the fried sugared strips that were her pride. They held these things on their knees, not eating or drinking as she rattled on about Cleveland.

Henryk bowed slightly to Anna and shook Casimir’s hand before taking a chair in front of them. When it seemed their glasses and plates might slip to the floor, Roseanne quietly took them away. Henryk leaned forward, speaking softly, his eyes fixed on them, even when asking me for details of Irena’s slender story. Their faces turned to wood; their hands sought each other. Finally Casimir spoke.

Henryk listened, nodded, and told us. “He never got your telegram. They must have already left for America. He’d like to see her grave.” Silence filled the room like thick new snow.

“Tell them,” I began. My voice cracked. Four blue eyes fixed on mine. “Tell them that Irena was given last rites and a funeral mass and buried in consecrated ground.” Donato mouthed the word
dress
and I added as Henryk translated: “The sisters put her in a good blue dress she wanted for the end.” Anna whispered to Casimir. Perhaps she knew the dress. “We’re very sorry that we couldn’t afford a headstone.”

Another exchange and Henryk reported: “Casimir says he’ll buy one as soon as he can. They brought some Polish earth.” When we looked startled, Henryk explained: “Three handfuls, one for each of their graves.” Nobody spoke.

I brought down Irena’s box. Casimir opened it and touched the buttons avidly, as if they still held her heat. I told them the jacket she made for Anna had to be sold. “Describe it,” said Roseanne, and I did: the deep red velvet, gold braid, and embroidered flowers. Anna smiled.

Then Casimir spoke at length and Henryk translated: “He wants us to know about Irena. She was always a happy child. She won footraces in their village. He made her a wooden doll and she dressed it.” He and Casimir conferred. “She dressed it in a gown of feathers and bits of moss. He wanted to emigrate first, but Irena said he should finish his apprenticeship. She said she’d be lucky in America.” Tears pooled in Casimir’s eyes.

Anna spoke and Henryk translated: “She says he loved his sister very much.”
How redundant words can be,
I thought,
how unnecessary.

“Tell them I happen to have a room available,” Roseanne said finally, “if they’d like to stay here where Irena lived.” Henryk conveyed this, adding some words and then giving Casimir’s answer.

“He thanks you all, especially Lucia, for your kindness to Irena, and the offer of a room. But I told him that in our building we’re all Poles, Jews and Gentiles, and we have space. He said he’d rather stay with us until he finds a flat. He hopes you understand. When they’re settled, they’ll invite you to a
stypa,
a feast in Irena’s honor. Now I’ll take them home with me. The journey has been difficult and they’re very tired.”

“You can use my handcart,” Roseanne offered. We helped load their bags and Irena’s box and watched them move slowly down the street. In the fog their bodies merged. I was ashamed of my flash of envy: Casimir and Anna would live near Henryk. They’d see him every day, hear his laugh and see the particular way he knit his brow when working figures. He might tell them about the bread-wearing pigeon.
Stop this. Stop.

“So many buttons Irena made,” Mamma said softly. “For nothing.”

“Henryk seems like a nice young man,” Donato said, glancing at me.

“He’s
Jewish,
” Roseanne announced.

“Oh. Well then.”

“He’s just a friend,” I added quickly.

Casimir settled quickly
into Cleveland, working for his cousin, the Polish butcher on Forman Avenue. Anna made sausages and was soon producing great quantities for Polish customers, Lula’s tavern, Roseanne, and other boardinghouse keepers. When Anna fell briefly sick, Lula sent over a special “reviving brew.” Her customers wanted Anna’s sausages, she said, and accepted no others.

After Casimir and Anna moved to a flat of their own, Henryk came to invite us to Irena’s
stypa
. “They’ll be months repaying the feast,” he predicted, “but it’s tradition. He owes her this honor.”

“Wear something nice,” Roseanne advised Mamma that evening. “You might snag a fella.”

“I have work, I have Lucia. Not everybody needs a fella,” Mamma snapped. In fact, her few evenings “walking out” with men who met her at church had ended badly. She came home early, said nothing, and the men never returned. She wore a work dress to the
stypa
.

Casimir’s flat was packed with Polish families and customers for Anna’s sausages. Lula came too. “That man loved his sister, but he’s one good businessman,” she noted. “All these folks will remember him.” We’d surely remember the tables heaped with sausages, stuffed cabbage, potato pancakes, smoked and pickled fish. A picture of Irena, young, straight-shouldered, and beaming, hung on a wall. She might have just won a footrace and perhaps already begun dreaming of America.

Yolanda came with a tall young man whose sandy curls covered his head like lamb’s wool. “This is Charlie Reilly,” she said. “We met in a candy store three weeks ago.”

“Yes, she’s my little Italian sweet,” said Charlie. His hand strayed to her waist as if he were constantly assuring himself of her presence. “And here I am at a Polish party. God bless America!” Yolanda had spoken mysteriously of a “fella,” never mentioning that he was American.

When I asked if he was also Catholic, Yolanda looked at me sharply. “Not that I know of,” Charlie said with a laugh. “Actually, my parents don’t even like Catholics, but that’s only because they don’t know Yolanda. Look, little rolled-up pancakes.”

“Blintzes,” I corrected primly, but they didn’t seem to hear me.

Charlie fed Yolanda a blintz. Her blissful smile, the soft curve of her body toward his, and the rich freedom of his laughter made a mesmerizing show. I watched them move along the tables, tasting every dish. Yolanda’s face caught the light. In a plain shirtwaist dress transformed by lace, new buttons, and a subtle band of tucks, she seemed as elegant as any young woman on the stretch of Euclid Avenue that people called Millionaires Row.

“They look so happy,” Roseanne observed. Yes, perhaps, but I couldn’t help being rudely critical of this fella. What would Dr. Galuppi have thought of the slight scoop of Charlie’s temples, the slope of his forehead? Could he be trusted? My teachers said phrenology was a bogus science, best forgotten in this century. I didn’t care. A handsome young man was leaning close to Yolanda while I stood by with my landlady?

Across the room a slim, dark-haired girl with lavish curls stood with her back to me, talking to Henryk, his father, and Henryk’s friend Abraham. Her rippling laughter skittered over the room. The men seemed bewitched. “Who’s she?” I asked Roseanne.

“Some Jewish princess from Pittsburgh, just moved here. Look at your mother. Why is she facing the wall?”

I hurried over. “Mamma, what’s wrong? Come, I’ll get you something to eat.”

“It’s Polish food.”

“Yes, everything’s delicious. And there’ll be singing later.”

“In Polish.”

“Yes, but you sing in English all the time. What’s the difference?”

“It’s so crowded with strangers.”

“It’s a wake for Irena, our friend. I’m glad so many people came. Look,” I said, pointing. “Even the Russian is here, her button dealer.” But Mamma was rigid and her eyes too wide. “Did someone say something to you? What’s the matter?” For a frantic moment, I thought she’d conjured Toscanini.

“I want to go home.” A film of sweat covered her face, and her breath came fast, like Irena’s at the end.

“I’ll tell Roseanne—”

“Take me
now
.”

“Fine, Mamma, we’ll go.” Halfway down the narrow stairs, we heard the singing start, rich and rolling, buoyed by violins. She looked back as a hungry man strains toward a feast, even took a step up toward the flat again, but at a burst of laughter, her face clouded and she hurried me out of the building.

On the sidewalk, her breathing calmed, the seeming fever passed, and she spoke calmly of a new piano roll she wanted. “Mamma, shouldn’t we see a nurse? You looked so sick.”

“Because I wanted to leave,” she said sharply. “Don’t you ever want leave someplace?”

“I suppose, but—”

She began humming the tune we’d heard on the stairway. Mamma never explained the attack, why it came or how it passed, but that evening began a new time for us in Cleveland.

F
ROZEN
W
AVES

By the chill
autumn of 1906, Mamma was the fastest dipper at Stingler’s, earning eleven dollars for a sixty-hour week without fines. However, possible fines were many: for being late or covering a friend’s lateness, dropping or miscounting chocolates, making imperfect swirls, damaging equipment, slowing the line, talking excessively, singing inappropriate songs, or for the vaguely defined “insolence.”

“Old Mr. Stingler’s gone soft in the head as a caramel,” Mamma said. He had started the company in his kitchen and designed every machine in the production line, but now between flashes of clarity, he wandered the factory, somberly studying the operations as if each was of the most astonishing interest. Sometimes he saw his dead wife sitting with the dippers. “Milly, you don’t need to work,” he’d say, tugging at a young girl’s sleeve. “Come home. We have servants now and a big house on Euclid Avenue.”