Authors: Lynn Austin
While my back was turned, Vera wandered over to the still. “What’s this thing, Emma?”
“It . . . um . . . it isn’t mine. It sort of came with the apartment.”
“But what’s it for?”
“I’m going to find a better apartment the first chance I get,” I explained, “but the landlords all want a month’s rent in advance, so I have to save up some money.”
“Emma, you don’t need another apartment,” Mama said quietly. “We’ve come to bring you home.” I looked away.
“Did Papa send you?”
“No, he thinks we’re Christmas shopping. Karl paid our train fare.”
How clever of Karl
, I thought as I turned to finish making the tea. He knew I’d be ashamed to tell my mother the truth or to discuss my reasons for leaving him in front of Vera. I cut a piece of pie I had brought home from the diner into two tiny slices. It was the only food I had in the house to serve them.
“Vera, come sit down and have some pie,” I said. She was still walking around the strange contraption, eyeing it curiously.
“Aren’t you having any?” she asked as I handed her and Mama each a cup and a plate.
“I only have two cups,” I said, trying to smile. “I suppose you could sip from one side and I could sip from the other, but I just ate at work. I’m full.” I patted my stomach for emphasis, then felt my cheeks flame when I saw Mama avert her eyes. Papa must have told her about my condition beforehand, but Vera hadn’t known. Her mouth went slack with surprise. The silence in the room was deafening.
I wanted to hide from them in shame, but there was no place to go in my tiny cell. I sank down on the floor across from my mother and leaned my back against the wall. “I’m sorry, Mama . . . And I’m sorry you had to come so far for nothing, but I can’t go back home with you.”
“Please, Emma,” Vera begged. “Karl is so lost without you. He—”
“He’s lying. It’s only his pride that’s hurt. He doesn’t love me, Vera. Karl and I have been unhappy from the beginning. I know he’s Aunt Magda’s son and that you think the world of him, but . . . but you’ve never lived with him. Karl is a different man at home than he is in the store or in church.”
“What do you mean? How could he be any different?” Vera was clearly on Karl’s side and had come to plead his case. I felt weary with hopelessness.
“See? I knew no one would believe me. That’s why I left. But I can’t live with him anymore. He’s angry and violent and . . . I won’t ever go back.” I wrapped my arms around my knees and lowered my head in despair. I felt utterly alone.
“I believe you,” Mama whispered. If the room hadn’t been so small I might not have heard her at all. I looked up and saw her staring with vacant eyes at a scene only she could see. “I believe you, Emma,” she said again.
“You do?”
She nodded sorrowfully. “No one knew what Karl’s father was really like, either, inside the four walls of their home. I was the only outsider who saw Magda’s bruises. And I once saw the welts he’d made on Karl’s back with his belt. Magda made me swear to keep it all a secret. She wouldn’t leave Gus. She loved him.”
“I never loved Karl, Mama. I tried to, but—”
“I know, Emma. I know how hard you tried. You married him to please Papa and me, didn’t you.”
“I’m sorry. . . .”
“No, I’m the one who should apologize. I made a grave mistake. I thought that you were like me, that you would be perfectly happy living in Bremenville with a husband and children because I was happy with that. I thought Karl would be the kind of husband Friedrich was. But you’re not me, Emma. You couldn’t walk in my shoes, and I was wrong to expect you to. And Karl isn’t like your father. Karl thought he could buy your love with jewelry and servants and a beautiful house, just like he bought the respect of the community with his fancy drugstore. Your father won my love by sacrificing himself for me—that’s the purest demonstration of love. You demonstrated it yourself when you set the man you loved free to become a priest. . . . I’m sorry, Emma. I was wrong to encourage you to marry Karl. Now my mistake will cost me my daughter.”
I was so relieved and so astounded to discover that she understood that I buried my face in my hands and wept. Mama set her plate and cup on the floor and knelt beside me, gathering me in her arms.
“The truth is, I want you to come home for my own sake. Because I love you, Emma. Because I can’t bear the thought of being separated from one of my daughters. But if that means going back to Karl, I won’t ask you to do that.”
“I could force myself to stay with Karl, Mama, but he doesn’t want the baby. He wants me to give it up. I’d sooner live in this hole for the rest of my life than to do that.”
“I know. I lost two of my children—Eva and now you. I understand why you can’t give away the child you’re carrying.”
Mama let me weep in her arms for a long time. Vera didn’t say a word. She seemed stunned as she struggled with the knowledge that Karl wasn’t what he seemed to be. At last, Mama pulled out her handkerchief and helped me dry my tears.
“Come, sit on the bed beside me. I brought you something, Emma—an early Christmas present.”
She opened one of her bags and handed me an envelope. Inside were photographs—my three sisters and me in white dresses and high button shoes; Mama and Papa posing in front of the church; Eva in her Red Cross uniform; Karl and me on our wedding day. I wanted to tear the last photo into pieces, but something told me I might want it someday to prove that I really had been married.
“Keep them so you’ll always remember us,” Mama said. “And I want you to have this too.” She unwrapped a wad of tissue paper and laid the gift in
my hands—her grandmother’s crying cup. “Oma gave this to me to ease my sorrow so I would always remember my home and the family who loved me when I was far away. I don’t need it anymore, Emma, but you do. Let it remind you that you have a family who will always love you.”
I held the delicate cup to my breast, and when I closed my eyes I was a child again—sipping milk from it in Mama’s kitchen to comfort my tears. I smelled her chicken and dumplings cooking on the stove, heard Papa’s warm laughter, and Eva’s voice begging, “
Come play with me, Emma.”
But when I opened my eyes, I was in my squalid basement apartment again. Papa was gone, Eva was gone, and my mother and sister were about to leave me too. Like all the other people I loved, I might never see them again.
“Right now your measure of sorrow is full,” Mama said as we kissed goodbye. “But always remember . . . ‘Joy and sorrow come and go like the ebb and flow.’”
I worked in the diner until my condition became so awkward and obvious, the owner fired me. In those days, expectant mothers went into confinement in their later months. They didn’t flaunt their condition in public, and they certainly didn’t wait on tables.
I had saved enough money to move, but I discovered that many landlords wouldn’t rent rooms to a single woman, much less one who was obviously pregnant. I came home in tears from another unsuccessful day of apartment hunting and found O’Brien, Black Jack, and Booty in my room, huddled around the malfunctioning still.
“Hey, now, what’s the matter, Emma?” O’Brien asked when he saw my tears.
“I need to move out of here before the baby is born, and I can’t find a decent place to live. No one will rent to me.”
O’Brien hurried to my side, draping his arm around my shoulder. “Why didn’t you say something sooner? I’ll be glad to move in with you and pretend I’m your bloke. I’d much rather wake up in the morning to your pretty face than Black Jack’s ugly mug.”
“Thanks for the offer, but I’m a married woman.” I gently shrugged his arm away.
“Aw, Emma, I ain’t gonna try nothing. I’ll just come along to help you find a place. I can sleep on the floor for a couple of months, then I’ll be a no-good
rotten so-and-so and desert you after the baby is born.” His offer touched me.
“You’d really do that for me?” I saw him and Black Jack exchange amused glances.
“It wouldn’t be the first time that he deserted—” Black Jack began, but O’Brien shushed him.
“Never mind, she don’t want to hear about all that. Now then, Emma, is that the only thing that’s troubling you, or can we help you with something else?”
“Yeah, we’d be glad to take care of that husband of yours if he’s being a problem,” Black Jack offered.
“No, no. He’s not a problem,” I said quickly. I imagined Karl lying at the bottom of the Squaw River with rocks tied to his ankles. “I could use another job now that the diner sacked me . . . but I don’t suppose you know of any place besides the circus that will hire a fat lady, do you?”
O’Brien raked his fingers through his mop of wild red hair as he pondered my problem. Before he could reply, there was a knock on the door. Black Jack sprang to his feet. O’Brien tensed, as if ready to bolt. “Who is it?” he asked.
“Sheila Higgins.”
Everyone looked at Booty, who was sitting on the floor beside the still. He nodded for O’Brien to open the door. When he did, Sheila rushed inside and grabbed me roughly by the arm.
“Hold it right there, Miss Floozy!” she said. “You’re not going anywhere.” She turned and called to someone outside the apartment. “You can come in now, Father. They’re all in here, including that kept woman I told you about.” A tall, black-clothed figure stepped through the door. I found myself standing face-to-face with Patrick.
Instantly, all the color drained from his face.“Emma?” he breathed.
Sheila’s jaw dropped. “How did you know her name, Father?”
Patrick was incapable of uttering another sound. He stared at me, clearly horrified to see my face when he’d expected to see Booty’s mistress. Then he turned whiter still as his eyes traveled to my bulging stomach. I was afraid I was going to be sick. I wanted the earth to open up and swallow me.
Booty scrambled to his feet. “Sheila! You went and called Father O’Duggan? What did you think you were doing?”
“You wouldn’t give up your woman or your gin mill, so I had to do something!”
“I told you, she’s not my mistress!” He and Sheila began to argue. O’Brien
and Black Jack joined, everyone yelling at the same time. I felt faint.
“All right, everybody shut up and listen to me!” Patrick suddenly shouted. He waited until the room was quiet. “Now then, who owns this contraption?”
“The three of us do, Father,” Booty said softly. He gestured toward O’Brien and Black Jack.
Patrick took a step toward Booty. “I won’t even ask how you got mixed up with the likes of these two, Ian, but I know you’re a God-fearing man. Surely you know that what you’re doing is illegal. Is it worth going to prison, losing your wife and your store—not to mention your soul—just to make a few extra bucks?”
“I . . . I thought . . . I mean, it seemed like . . .” Booty stammered, staring at his feet. “No, Father. I’m sorry.”
“If you’re truly sorry, then you can prove it by taking that thing apart and throwing it into the trash.”
“Hold on, now—” O’Brien began, but Patrick cut him off.
“Enough! Get started now, Ian—tonight! Or I’ll report all three of you to the police myself!” He swung around to face Sheila, managing to avoid looking at me. “Why don’t you go on home now, Mrs. Higgins,” he said gently. He rested his hand on her shoulder and guided her to the door.
“What about
her
?” Sheila asked, tilting her head toward me.
“I’ll take care of everything,” he promised. “I’ll come by the store tomorrow, and we’ll talk.”
When she was gone, Patrick stood with his arms folded across his chest, watching Booty and the others dismantle the still. He finally turned to me, but he looked at the floor, not my face. “Let’s go outside where we can talk in private,” he said.
My heart pounded as I struggled into my coat and followed Patrick outside. He pointed to a deserted bench on the corner at the streetcar stop. “Let’s sit over there.”
I sank down on it wearily. Patrick sat a moment later. His hands looked pale under the glow of the streetlamp as they rested on his thighs. We were far enough apart that we might have been two strangers waiting for the streetcar to come. An enormous weight of silence sat between us.
I wondered what he was thinking. Did he really believe that I was Booty’s mistress? I remembered the look of horror on his face when he saw that I was the accused woman. Now neither one of us knew how to begin. I decided to speak first and get it over with.
“Patrick, I’m not Booty’s mistress. His sister is a friend of mine. I needed
a place to stay, and Booty was kind enough to take me in and—”
“Hush, Emma. You don’t need to explain. I believe you.”
I fought back tears of relief. He looked up at me, and our eyes met for the first time since that horrible moment when he first walked through my door. “What are you doing here in the city, Emma?”
“I’ve left Karl.”
“Why? . . . Because of me?” When I didn’t answer, he grew angry. “The Bible says, ‘What God therefore has joined together, let no man put asunder’! I need to know if I’ve destroyed a marriage!”
“No. Our marriage was destroyed long before you came back to Bremenville.”
“Then why—?” He stopped when we heard footsteps approaching. I turned and saw O’Brien hurrying toward us. Black Jack stood framed in my apartment doorway.
“Hey, Emma, you don’t need to be taking any heat from a priest,” O’Brien said. “Come on back inside.”
Patrick sprang to his feet. “She’s not stepping foot in there until that still is gone. Do you have any idea what would have happened to her if the cops had found her living there, guarding your still? She would have gone to prison! For
your
crime!”
“We were looking out for her. The still was safe.”
“Yeah? Then why wasn’t it in
your
apartment?”
“That’s none of your business!” O’Brien’s hands curled into fists and he stuck out his chin, challenging Patrick.
Before either of us could blink, Patrick swung his fist into O’Brien’s jaw, then followed it with double left-right punches to his gut. O’Brien crumbled to the ground, holding his stomach.
“Get up!” Patrick said, waiting to hit him again.