My Notorious Life (31 page)

What he did bring me was the news he’d met a Private Detective, Mr. Renaldo Snope, a swashbuckling fellow, Charlie said, who claimed for a hundred dollars he would find Joe Muldoon Trow and bring him to us in a matter of months.

—Did you pay him? says I very eager.

—Half, says Charlie, appeasing me. —And the rest on delivery of information.

So I pinned my hopes on Snope, till it became a little rhyme with us. Heard from Snope? Nope. While the joke was funny the reason was not, and in time the joke was not either, for it seemed Snope had absconded with our deposit.

*  *  *

In those bewildered days, it was my little Annabelle who brought me the most of comfort and peace, and the business of Madame DeBeausacq which brought me distraction. One fine morning when Charlie was off and away somewheres, I put my two year old daughter on my hip and carried her out to the street. She babbled and razzed as we went along, her nose wrinkled in mischief.

—To Market, to market, to buy a fat hen, I sang to her.

—Hen! she cried.

At the butcher’s I ordered for the week just like snapping my fingers. —A rump of beef, a pound of neat’s tongue, and six blutwurst. No more scrag of mutton or neck bones, for me. I was a lady.

—Will that be all, Mrs. Jones? Oppenheimer the counterman asked from beneath the ledges of his mustache.

—Yes, thank you, I said, and paid him.

At the bakery I bought Annabelle a cinnamon bun. The brown sugar smudged on her lips and she hummed at the taste. The shop assistant laughed. —That’s a lovely girl you have there, Mrs. Jones.

We went out of the shop quite proud, past the fond envious glances of the women filling their market bags. They cooed at my daughter admiring how the April sun shone off her black curls. Though her blue eyes were bright with mischief, she had a fairy beauty like my Dutch so that sometimes when I looked at her I was struck mute by memory and cramped with despair over where was my sister?

At the grocery I bought a pound of sugar and some coffee. Mr. Pingree chucked the baby under the chin and asked, —Should I put it on your account, Mrs. Jones?

I had an account. I was Mrs. Jones. I paid our bills in full. My calfskin boots laced prettily up the ankle and carried me past the misfortunate and the wretched of the street. I did not look at them. They would grab me by the throat. They would drag me and my Annabelle back to the gutter where they grumbled and stank and begged. The weight of her on my hip was the same as our Joe’s when I lost him. As we came from the grocery with our packages, we passed a heap of urchins in a corner, shoeless and crusted with disease, the poor orphan castaways of a bad world. An old soldier crutched along with his leg cut off and his eyes dead. We passed a man spatchcocked in the alley, his beard crusted with dark matter. Ahead was a woman limping with her one hand out, the other clutching a boy not bigger than my daughter. You could hear his crying from a ways off.

—Baby cryin’, announced my daughter. —Baby’s sad.

The limping woman turned and came back in our direction, and as she approached I saw with a lurch how well I knew her. She was Greta, near unrecognizable. I turned on my heel fast and walked the other way. My stomach was sick with blame. Her eyes bored holes in my back. I turned again. —Greta, I cried.

She saw it was me. I saw she had a scab on her chin. After three years we was face to face again, our fortunes told, children hanging off our hips. The crowd teemed around, dogs at our ankles, carts rattling, peddlers crying out.

—Greta. I threw my reluctant arms around her. The smell of rank circumstances, grease and suet rose off her clothes, out from her skin. Her hair that was once so glossy was dull now and straggled. When she pulled back I seen dark rinds around the nails of her fingers, the collar of her neck.

—What is your boy’s name? I said.

—Willi.

I gave him the half a cinnamon bun out of Belle’s hand. He reached for it like a little organ grinder monkey and ate it steadily still hiccuping in tears. When she saw him with it, my daughter let out a screech. —No, now you’ve had enough, greedycat, so you have, I scolded her, dug in my pocket and thrust a fistful of money at Greta.

—I won’t take it, she said.

—I have a business, I said. —Selling medicines.

—Good for you, then. She bit her lips and her chin dimpled with ingrown tears.

—What happened? I whispered. —What happened to you?

—When they saw I vass . . .
schwanger
 . . . they threw me out the door to the street, in the night time, mit nothing, only the boots on my feet.

She stood with the light slanting through the buildings behind her, holding her filthy boy.

—Where did you go?

She shrugged. It was a long story painted in the gray color of her face.

—Where do you stay now?

—In the Bend. At the basement of Ratzinger’s.

Ratzinger’s was a cesspit, famous as a fortress of thieves and diseased hoors and murderers and hopeless hopheads, disciples of the pipe. Nobody who landed there lived many birthdays. I searched her for signs of pox and though no scabs nor ulcers was apparent yet I figured she was good as doomed.

—You’ll need this. I pushed a handful of money at her. —Take it.

She did not meet my eyes as she took the coins and started away, her gait slow.

—Come with me, I called after her, regretting it even as the words left my mouth.

She didn’t protest, only followed me home. I didn’t ask her more questions because I known the answers. Where she lived? In a hole. How? By such means as necessary. The father of her boy? A scut.

What would she say when she saw my five nice rooms, lace curtains in the parlor, the beef barrel full in the corner of the kitchen? She said nothing, only slumped in a chair with her son, eyes dull. I made them tea and boiled eggs. She and Willi ate quietly, his small teeth tearing at bread. Then, while Willi slept, she told me her sorry details, so ashamed.

—Now again, such
Kümmerniss,
she said, —I’m in trouble.

—Trouble.

—Two months.

I received this news flinching, very quiet, and put my hand out to cover hers. She took it away. I went to the crate where tablets were labeled, packaged
for mailing. Without her asking me I gave Greta two bottles of Lunar medicine, as it was a fact that her delicate condition was a grim sentence for her and Willi and whatever child was mustering in her to be born. They would not last long in Ratzinger’s hole. —Take these five times a day for three days.

—I heff tried them, she said, her voice dull. —They don’t work.

—They sometimes don’t. I’m not going to lie to you. But they sometimes do, too.

—And if they don’t?

I hesitated. —They could scrape you.

—Who?

—There was a woman on Lispenard. Named Costello.

—I can’t pay. Now she thrust her chin forward, pointing at me. —You, she said, very fierce.

—Me?

—Do it, she said, her eyes burning. —You sell the medicine but what about when it doesn’t do what you say? What do you do then? Greta stared me down across the table. Her son had fallen asleep on her lap, his fingers in his mouth. Clear strings of drool fell from his lips. My own child was asleep in her crib.

—You said once before it was a murder, I said, faltering. —You said Mrs. Evans does murders.

—Pphh, she snorted. —So I was wrong.

—Were you?

—You’re the one Axie. You said you can’t kill a thing before it’s alive. So. Do it then.

I looked away from her. Swallowed.

—Do it right now, said Greta. —Right now.

—I never have. But it’s true I felt a type of thrill. Like a power, because I could help her.
Always help the poor things if nobody else will,
my teacher said.

—Everybody knows you vass the assistant, Greta hissed.

—I only watched. I don’t have the practice.

—You’ll practice right here then. You know you can. You know.

I began to shake. —You could die of it. Just of the scraping.

—I’ll die anyway. And after that so will my son.

—Greta don’t ask me.

—I’m asking.

—It hurts, I said. —It’ll hurt you. Terrible.

—Pain now or pain later. No difference.

Pain later was pain I knew and it was worse and lasted longer and there was more that could go wrong. It was well known Mrs. Evans said that
more ladies die struggling their babies to be born than ever die from premature delivery
but that fact did not make such premature delivery procedures safe nor tidy nor something I’d like to try now.

—No, I said.

—Already I can’t feed Willi or myself. We’re good as dead now. Look at us. And you say to me NO?

The boy stirred in her arms, so thin, a crust of dry blood at his nose, a red rash on the exposed shank of his leg. His eyelashes made dark half circles on his cheek, and his lips were slightly parted as he breathed. He was a pure beauty even filthy as he was, so dirty that flies might rest on his eyelids as on a carcass, and his mother no better, just a husk left of her. Still when she looked at her son a softness came to my friend’s face so I known she was not depraved nor fallen to a state of infamy such as the Dix claimed was the condition of all hoors.

—This new one, she said, —it will be born in winter. Outside how do we live? We will die, and for why? For nothing. Because you say no.

—Don’t ask me.

—They’re asleep. The
Kinder
. Do it now.

—I don’t know how.

—You can’t deny me.

—Greta.

—If you don’t, she said, —I’ll do it myself.

It was the look in her eye. Raw. Clear and burning like spirits of turpentine that could flame up and consume her.

—What if I do it wrong?

—This is what I want, for my son and for me. I’m asking. How can you deny me?

*  *  *

It was Mrs. Evans’ voice in my head that afternoon. I heard her at my shoulder, the cold sun streaming down on Greta Weiss through the window of
our humble parlor.
You do not need light, only feel your way, and give the girl a glass of spirits as stiff as she can stand
. I poured Greta a glass of Barbados rum that Charlie kept, and poured her another. I kissed her. I took the kit of tools from the cupboard and unwrapped them from the chamois cloth. We placed Willi asleep next to Annabelle napping. My patient slipped off her rancid underthings with a grim face not at all resembling Greta the bright servant girl who gave me a petticoat and went gaily with me into the night of my sixteenth birthday.

—I don’t want to hurt you, I told my friend.

—I don’t care! Even if I say stop, do not stop.

—All right.

—Hurry, she said. —Hurry.

The girl is placed across the bed, with her feet resting on two chairs
.

—Feet up, I said, tense.

Greta was obedient, but in the eyes she was fierce and determined. I sat on a low stool between the chairs, below her skirts. I got a curette from Mrs. Evans’ kit and wrapped it at the end with gauze. I had a basin ready.

Pass the two fingers of the left hand within
.

Greta’s eyes were shut. She bit her lips.

You will maneuver the left hand fingers, and using them to enlarge the portal, with the right hand you will pass along the instrument using your left hand fingers as the guide, and finding the resistance there at the neck you will come to a second resistance, but through the opening you will push but not forcefully, and maneuver the instrument upward around a bend. This is the tricky part which is why the curette is a crooked tool. Whatever you do don’t go back straight or use a sharp probe. If you do you will perforate the woman and she will die. You are only to perforate the sack. When you sense you’re past the obstruction you will discover what matter is there. It will be soft as the liver of a chicken is soft but moreso even than that. The walls are firm but delicate. You will scrape gently two or three times
.

I done all this, listening for the faint gritted sound.

Like cleaning the guts of a pumpkin.

Greta cried out. She thrashed her head. The neighbors would hear, I thought.

Withdraw as much of the obstruction as will come away
.

Greta pulled her hair and suffered, but what she said when she cried I
didn’t know as it was in her hard language and I made my ears slam shut against the sounds even as my nerves was peeled raw by her sharp breath and her high whimper and her scream.

—I can’t do this, I said, and stopped.

—Don’t stop, Greta said, so wild. —I told you.

I began again.

Do not listen to her cries
.
Focus down hard on the innards, the twists and turns you must follow to relieve her. Just say, You’re doing fine, missus. Say, It won’t be long. It will only be a longer torture Axie if you stop each time she winces. You don’t stop until you’ve got it. If you leave any behind it will fester and she will die.

—Stop, Greta shrieked.

When she cries out remember all the ladies who have stood worse and longer, and remember that it is a woman’s lot to suffer, and she will not die if you do as I say. Only say to her, Shush, there, there, love, soon it will be all over.

—Shh, there, there, I said, shaky. —Soon it will be all over, love.

I was nauseous. The smell of fear was on us both. Greta cursed me in German like a witch. I grit my teeth and felt the sap drain out of my muscles so I was weak.

If she loses her mind or will not cooperate you will tell her BE STILL, for if she thrashes too much she will only endanger herself.

—Axie, she said, and vomited.

—Don’t move do you hear me? I said, harsh. —You’ll make me puncture you.

I feared her little son and my Belle would awake at the noise and come and see her lying there like I seen my mother, with Bernie and the bloody bowl alongside. I wanted to hurry
but you cannot hurry,
Mrs. Evans said.
You must take the time it needs
.

Withdraw the instrument, and discard any contents in the bowl and rinse the interior with a solution of ergot in vinegar.