The Daughter's Walk (16 page)

Mama asked her to telegraph her response, which the woman did. She had no influence, she said, and told us she didn't want to jeopardize whatever negotiations we might yet work out by sending money.

“There is no agreement; nothing's being negotiated,” I told Mama. “You shouldn't have told her about the book. That's a dream.”

“No, Clara, listen. If she doesn't want to break the agreement that we not beg, then that means there is still hope that the sponsors will come through. Yes. Meanwhile, we'll support ourselves here. We can do this. But we will have to walk.”

“To the charity offices? Please?”

“No, to Brooklyn. Manhattan is too expensive.”

1897

I
'll remember Brooklyn for the pans I scrubbed while we lived there and maybe for the little flowers that grew in the window boxes. These were watered by the wet clothes we hung to dry on lines that crisscrossed between the tenement houses, where I could hear languages from a dozen different countries spoken between mothers and their children, between husbands and wives. Families, working things out together—though from the arguments we heard in the evenings, not always successfully.

I wished I could have been cheery like the other working girls, who stopped asking me if I wanted to join them after we finished our duties for a soda or a walk in the park. I didn't recognize their offers of friendship; I worked to save every penny for tickets home. Besides, my ankle ached after standing for the day, and I found little joy in the daily grind of the labor that split my fingernails and gave me red, harsh-looking
knuckles. I remembered with fondness my domestic duties in comfortable Spokane homes. The only advantage to this daily grunge was that the work required no great thoughts. I was free to daydream, to imagine a life with Forest when I got home, to speculate about my mother's life before she married. I also had time to be frustrated and angry at the sponsors, at my mother for trusting them, at myself for getting sick and spraining my ankle. Any lessons I had to learn had occurred on the journey. New York City had nothing new to teach me, or so I thought.

Spring came to the city with no word from the sponsors about the book. Mama and I walked by the windows of the finer stores naming things we thought Bertha or Arthur or Ida might like, wishing we could buy that wooden horse for Johnny or the doll with a china face for Lillian.

“Seeing you again will be their present, Mama.” She nodded. We stopped in front of shops with elegant jewels and furs, grateful the weather no longer required the worn coats and winter hats we'd bought in Chicago.

“I wish we'd splurged and bought new clothes the day we arrived,” Mama lamented. “At least then the thief would have less of our money and we'd have nice things to show for our trip.”

Sometimes we walked through Central Park, invisible to all but each other in the sea of strangers. I didn't mind the anonymity, but I think Mama did. I think she missed the applause of her programs about our journey, the attention from the reporters, and reading about ourselves the next day in the paper. At night, she wrote. She seemed content to work and save money for the tickets, believing we remained under the original obligation not to request help but to work for our needs.

We didn't receive many letters from home, or at least Mama didn't say we had. She'd taken piecework so could stay in the room with her needles and thread while I found employment scrubbing pans in a restaurant
at half the wages of men who did the same task. So she was the one at home when the postal bell rang and everything changed.

“Ole's written!” Mama shouted. She waved the letter as I came through the door. Outside, April buds woke up spring, and even Brooklyn freshened up with the smell of blossoms. “I hope it's all good news, nothing about the mortgage.” She put the letter on the table, then stepped back, staring at it as though it might jump out at her and bite.

“Well, open it,” I said. “Maybe Papa's sent money so we can go home.”

“Not likely,” Mama said. She still stared. Her smile looked pasted. “Everyone's in bad straights. Even the Brooklyn papers are filled with stories of property worth five thousand dollars sold for three thousand at auction because the original owner owed two hundred in taxes. One bank disgorged a family and allowed another to purchase the house for a pittance because they fell behind on their payments back in '93.” She picked the letter up, put it back down. “The Brooklyn Bridegrooms hope to put their losing season behind them,” Mama said. “I read that in the paper too.”

“Well, I'd like to put our losing season behind us too,” I said. “Now open it.”

Mama sighed, turned the letter over and over in her hand.

“Maybe there'll be a little drawing from Lillian,” I said. “She turned three last month. And Bertha is fifteen now. Those two get to celebrate birthdays every March 12 together.”

“I've missed a year's worth of their celebrations,” Mama said as though the thought just occurred to her.

I did quick figuring remembering each of my brothers' and sisters'
birthdays. “Three March birthdays in our family. June must have been a … special month for you and papa. Olaf was born in March too.”

“Ach,” Mama said. “How you talk.” She actually blushed a little. “All right.” She took a deep breath and opened the letter.

She began to read.

I would not have believed a person's countenance and demeanor, attitude and hope, could change so profoundly by the reading of another's words.

Color drained from her face. A slow moan grew as her hands shook, and tears coursed down her cheeks.

“What is it, Mama? What's happened?”

Mama handed me the letter then lay her arms on the table, covering them with her face as she wept.

“Diphtheria,” I read. Diphtheria had entered our home while we worked away, window-shopped, dreamed of a future. Diphtheria had claimed Bertha.

“Alone,” Mama wailed, holding her stomach as she rocked. “He had to bury her alone, make her casket by himself. Oh, my God, my God. They were quarantined. I wasn't there! I wasn't there.”

Bertha. Hedvig. My sister. Gone. And Ida, left behind to care for the little ones. Papa, tending to Bertha. Would he have sent Ida and the others somewhere safe? I looked at the date. It was written April 8. Bertha had died on the sixth.

“Mama.” I put my arms around her as she rocked and cried. “Mama.” I kept my composure. I'd cry later. “We must go to the charities commission. We must find a way to get home.”

“No, no begging.” She looked at me as though I'd suggested she take poison for her pain. “That won't be good. The sponsors—”

“We have to, Mama. It's the right thing to do now. It's what the family needs.”

Those were the words that cut through to her.

“
Ja, ja
. You're right,” she said. “You're right.” She wiped at her eyes. “We'll go now.” The task would help her set aside her grief for the moment. “We'll tell the newspapers. They'll cover the story maybe, put pressure on the charities commissioner or on the sponsors. Yes, that's what we'll do.”

“Let's ask for help, Mama. And accept it.”

“He would send us to the almshouses, Commissioner Brute would,” Mama told the reporters. We'd met with the commissioner but had no success. Neither my mother's desperation nor charm moved him. “He must be a Swede,” Mama said. “They're so stubborn and unimaginative.” I hoped the reporter wouldn't quote that. “I told him we had no time to be housed and fed at the almshouse,” she continued. “We'd be taking food from poor immigrants. We have jobs; we can pay a loan back, but we need it now. We need money for the tickets home. I am good for a loan. I can pay back the commissioner,” she insisted. “Or anyone. But he sent us to the Bureau of Charities on Schermerhorn Street. They cannot help us either. I tell them of all our past trials, all we've endured, and that I am a woman good for her word.”

“May I include some of those past trials in the story?” the reporter from the
Sun
asked her.

“Yes, yes. Say anything. Let them know I will repay. I must go home; my daughter and I must go back. Diphtheria entered my house.”

Diphtheria could even now be slithering through the barn boards, seeping its way into the throats of my brothers and sisters, choking out more lives. Something sharp forced down the child's throat could break the membrane that cut off air. I wondered if Papa had thought of that.
Of course he would have! They all knew what to do. There'd been that terrible epidemic in Minnesota. Mama's cleanliness, exceptional housekeeping, keeping food in good condition—those were things that kept diphtheria at bay.

But we weren't there to do that this time.

At the
New-York Tribune
office, I told the story. I sounded firm but not desperate, though I'd never felt more powerless in my life. The night before, Mama hadn't slept at all. She'd scrubbed the floor instead, scraping with the rough brush over and over. I fell asleep to the grating sounds of grief.

When it was published, the
Sun
article spoke of our “intelligence and perseverance” and suggested that we would be good for a loan.

But no one contacted the paper to offer one.

Especially not the sponsors.

M
y teeth chattered less from the cold than from the shock of the past three days. We stood in the entry room of the offices of Chauncey Depew, president of the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad. He'd contacted us, inviting us to come. Mama looked gaunt and wild-eyed at the same time. She'd spilled all our family details of loss and accident and deaths to reporters, so the world now knew of our journey from poor to destitute. There'd be no happy ending even if the sponsors came through, what with dear Bertha gone forever. Since the letter, I never knew what state I'd find Mama in: one moment scurrying about, raving about sponsors or her failure to be there for her family; the next moment sobbing and still as a cemetery on a hot summer's day.