My Notorious Life (16 page)

If thou must love me, let it be for naught except for love’s sake only

Do not say, I love her for her smile—her look—her way of speaking gently . . .

Love me for love’s sake, that evermore thou mayst love on, through love’s eternity.

—You see? said Frances, her eyes brimming. —It’s
love
that matters, not what salary a man makes. Or his lineage. Or whether her parents might approve. Or whether . . . whether death may part them, such as Matthew and I were parted. But only love. Only love matters. Do you see, Annie? If I could teach you this at your young age, perhaps you will find the happiness that I had, and now have lost.

I stared at her like she had grown a beard. Her words was electric to me. Love! Love’s eternity! It was a fine thing. Sure it was. And like all fine things it was far out of my reach, so I wanted it.

—You may borrow the book, if you like, Frances said. I thanked her and took it down to the kitchen, where Mrs. Browder screeched at me about why wasn’t the wicks trimmed in the lamps? That night I read the Portuguese Sonnets over again by the embers of the fire and thought that if the poem was right, that Love was all, then what would become of me? What of love did I have? I did not have a father nor mother, a sister or brother, and certainly not a true love, neither, or a hope of one. And yet, all my life I remembered Love’s Sake Only, and Mrs. Browning’s poetical lines. One in particular tormented me, where she wrote, Behold and see What a great heap of grief lay hid in me, And how the red wild sparkles dimly burn Through the ashen grayness.

O
n the morning of May 21, 1863, I dragged myself out of sleep into a stew of self pity. It was dark. It was my sixteenth birthday. Mam was gone three years already, her absence like an arm missing of my own. My brother and sister was a leg gone as well. I had no road, no ticket, no notion how to find them, and not a brown penny to my name. Happy birthday. There wasn’t nothing to look forward to but fetching slop pots of blood. I laid the fires in a grump. I went to the market and returned with sacks of flour and rice. By nine I went to bring the linen off the line in the back and brooded over my future. It appeared all ashen grayness without no wild red sparkles.

—Annie! said a voice from one yard over. It came from behind a row of sheets hanging off a line. —Annie. It was the German saucepot Greta from next door. I could not see her till she emerged giggling with a bedsheet wrapped around her like a Roman. —Annie Muldoon. She threw a clothespin at me.

—Ya dirty cat. I threw it back at her, wary.

—Do you like the dried cherries? She had a cup of them in her apron and offered some to me.

—Thanks, I said, surprised.

She poured cherries onto my palm and stared at my red sore hands. —Tsk, she said, and showed me hers. The two of us compared the skin of
our mitts, how cracked it was, from the ash and the lye and the scrubbing, and while she talked I tried not to laugh at her sauerkraut way of talking.

—Every day ze vashing, she said. —I hate it.

—It’s s***.

—Every day to bring ze vater. She spit out a cherry pit.

I spit one, too. She laughed and gave me another handful.

—Before now, she said, —I hate you.

—I hate you more.

—You are chust der little scullery maid next door.

—I’m sixteen. I spit another pit.

—I am twenty. Much more old. Alzo, I heff a problem. You can help me? Sometimes I need a medicine for Ladies pains. For der
monatliche Schmerz.
You know. The troubles. Maybe you borrow for me from Herr Doctor one day?

I shrugged. —Sure. I ate more of her cherries, thinking her problems was less than mine, for at least she had a salary, money to spend.

Now she looked at me, curious. —Do you ever see ze little babies murdered in that Evans house?

—Excuse me?

—Everybody knows. Your missus does killing of ze little
Kinder
.

—She doesn’t! I cried. —Who told you that? She never would. She’s a midwife.

Now Greta raised her eyebrows suggesting something wicked. —Frau Pfeiffer says Evanses helps der hoors und Magdalenes and whatnot. You don’t hear them cry out?

—It’s only normal to cry out when a baby comes, I said, quite the expert.

Now Greta smiled at me and whispered, —She does der fixes, you know. If the girl is
schwanger
. She fixes a girl up.

—She’d never harm no babies never, I said with my chin forward. —I seen her nurse one with an eyedropper one time.

—She scrapes them out, all bloody, mit the Fräuleins screaming, Greta whispered, —und she kills them before they’re alive.

—Stupid. How can you kill something before it’s alive? She’d never. Greta was wrong. Was she?

—Think what you like, Greta said. —Anyway I heff to meet a fella on Broadway tonight and why don’t you come out mit me?

She tossed her hair, dark and shiny as a lick of paint. Her eyes had a sleepy look and she held her mouth with the lips slightly apart, as if she was just about to sip a mug of sweet cider. Her appearance gave the impression she was not clever. Possibly wanton. Mrs. Browder said she was a Gypsy. When I saw her on the street, walking past the pawnbrokers and the trinket sellers and the used clothing merchants, she swayed her hips, and men looked at her and remarked, —Nice bit a bloss there.

Now in the yard she was acting the part of my friend. She raised her arms to the blue sky in a pose like she was on a poster for the opera, and sashayed around the clothesline in her bedsheet wrap. I had to laugh at her.

—Mein Gott, Annie, come out mit me up Broadway tonight.

—Why should I?

—Because you will love it.

You vill luff it
.

—Come. She thracked me very playful with a wet pillowcase.

—If I went out at night alone, Browder’d sack me.

—
Gott im Himmel
. You von’t be caught. Them old doctors won’t never notice. Who cares what they think? They are murderers. Und Broadway is
verwunderlich.
Vonderful, so.

—Can’t, I said, and stubbed at the dirt with my toe, angry.

—Are you on the tear, or something?

—It’s only my birthday.

—Your birthday! she cried. —I’ll drag you out by der laces then.

She did not have to drag me. All of a sudden I was hellbent. I would get out and do as I pleased.

*  *  *

That night, when the Evans was tucked in, with the doctor’s teeth in the glass by the bed, I met Greta on the stoop. We neither of us had aprons on, or caps. Our naked hair unfurled in the night wind. I felt plain beside her. Greta was a beauty same as Dutch, with an imp in her eye. In the lamplight, I seen that she had rouged her lips. —Psst, Greta, I said, and passed her a bottle of Medicine for the Female Complaint which I had stirred together that afternoon in the clinic, laudanum diluted in spirits of wine.

—Thank you, Greta said. She wore a plum color jacket waist and a petticoat that stuck her skirts out.

—You’re quite the article.

—Mrs. Pfeiffer’s old petticoat. Greta curtsied. —A present she give to me.

—I never had one. Not a present nor a petticoat neither.

Greta frowned, perplexed, and ran back inside the Pfeiffer’s shop. When she came out she carried a pile of ruffles. —Here. This one alzo is belonking to Mizzus Pfeiffer. Do not tear it.

She handed it to me, and in the shadows of the stoop with Greta standing guard, I pulled it up under my dress, so it stuck out now like the branches of a pine.

—Oh Du Tannenbaum, Greta said, laughing at me. —You’re a Christmas tree.

—Get Away with you, I said, and pushed her, but she started singing a German song full of
Vögel singen
and
Sonnenschein
and
Blumen blühen
so it made me laugh. Without a clue to the words, I sang along and went out with my new friend. Oh Blumen bloomin’, the night air was flavored with a smell of charred meat and spilled poteen from Crook’s Restaurant down the block, an odor of wickedness and adventure. Oh yes, Blumen bloomin’. We sang it out whatever it meant, and strolled uptown.

—My fella will meet me by Haughwout’s on Broadway, Greta said. —He is Mr. Schaeffer who come to the shop last Monday and asked me to come out mit him.

—Mrs. Browder says a lady don’t go out alone.

—A lady don’t. So lucky you’re with me.

On Broadway, the lamps was golden all along the boulevard, little colored ones dangling off the carriages, amber and ruby and green. Each shop was lit outside with gaslight that pierced the dark above us, and the windows lit inside to display such things as you could only slaver over, silverware and ribbons, doodads and trinkets. We walked up and down from Leonard Street to Broome and listened to the minstrels, fiddle music spilling out of the shebeens, the cackles of drunks and strumpets. Greta spent a nickel on a paper of candied nuts that smelled of honey and vanilla, and we ate them, strolling just to gawk. The throng was packed so tight you was jostled and stepped on worse than cattle in a market. —Excuse us, please, we said. We was giddy with the street party and hampered by our petticoats, tripping on the curb. You could not cross to the other side of the
road without risking death under the wheels of a carriage. So many hansoms, landaus and victorias was packed axle to axle, their horses whickering and restless. The sidewalks was jammed with walkers, gents and ladies who slid their eyes at us, and we likewise did the once-over at everybody we passed.

—I’d have that parasol, Greta said, nodding at a ruffled one.

—I’d have that cape, I said.

The two of us was pickled with envy. How plain we was compared to society. How low. Even the men were tricked out. You never saw such a variety of dandies, with their stovepipes and mustaches like the feelers on a beetle, their broadcloth jackets called Swallowtail and Cutaway. Here and there was an Officer in Union blue and bric-a-brac. We seen a lady in a headdress of trembling ostrich feathers, we seen flounces looped up with roses, silver tassels on a handbag, a cape of lace. We linked arms and pressed against the windows of the stores and lingered outside the Marble House off Canal Street. We seen carriages pull in front to disgorge females like birds alighting from a gilt cage, their feet so tiny, their waists cinched above enormous bustles like the rumps of cats in heat. Finally at Spring Street there was Haughwout’s famous dry goods store, where Greta was supposed to meet Mr. Schaeffer. It was a building like a wedding cake, with fluted columns and many stories of arched windows, each one blazing and sparkling. We went inside, our mouths agape, never so astonished. Silver, glass and china glinted like sun off icicles spangling every surface. Fiery drops lit by jets of gas sent shatters of brilliance around the room. I looked up to see how it was done, and there was a fairyland article dangling from the ceiling, all gobbets of ice. This was a crystal chandelier, high over our heads. I gasped, staring above.

—Ooh Gott, said Greta. —It’s brilliant. I want one all for myself.

Ooh Gott, I wanted one too. But I did not say this aloud. I only let the craving eat down like a secret weevil tunneling in my foundations.

—Greta Weiss? said a gentleman coming upon us.

—Mr. Schaeffer, she said, smiling, so pretty, with her dimples and curls. —This is my friend Miss Ann Muldoon.

I was not jealous to see Mr. Schaeffer. He was a porky nimenog in pinstripes, maybe thirty years of age, with a red face and dark yellow mustache that drooped over a small mouth, small lips. Greta took his arm and winked
at me. —I’ll meet you outside in half an hour. They strolled off to look at the millinery and soon was lost in the crowd.

The store smelled of lilacs and money. It struck me dumb. Reflected in the silver of a gilt-framed mirror I saw my watery face, so sharp-chinned, the black hair wild and loose, and the blue eyes dark with the hunger. I was no longer a pocky stripling but a young girl made sick by all the crystal and the dazzle of the merchandise. I walked the display of china like it was a foreign country, and lifted a dainty wee cup, painted with roses so delicate, the rim edged with gold. I placed it carefully down and picked up another, with forget-me-nots.

—Miss! cried a floorwalking porter, rushing at me. —DO NOT handle the goods. His small eyes was crazed with authority.

I reared back. —I’ll handle ’em if I want, ya bungstarter, said I, wounded. —Ain’t I a customer?

—That’s it for you, then miss. He took my elbow and escorted me toward the door in a hustle.

—Lemme go, I said, fighting him. —Take your mitts offa me.

In the midst of this humiliation, I heard my name shouted in a man’s voice.

—Axie! Axie Muldoon!

The fella calling me was about twenty years of age, trim and compact. His trousers were narrow in the leg as was the fashion, and he wore a flash jacket well fit over square shoulders, with white collar and cuffs. He had a luxury mustache and dark hair worn long over the ears. He held a cap in his hand, the color of rust. The cocksure way he carried himself was familiar and likewise familiar was the devil in his eye. I recognized the Dangerous Orphan, Charlie.