My Notorious Life (8 page)

—That was a gas then, wasn’t it, on the roof?

—Yeah, I said.

—We’ll do it again now how ’bout? Last chance.

—Not me.

—You’ve not got the baubles for it?

—I cannot deny I’ve not got the baubles.

He laughed at me while I blushed and wondered should I scream out because he said baubles and made me say it. He did not seem wicked. We said nothing while nothing passed outside the window.

—Why don’t you have no mother? I asked.

He shrugged. —Legend has it, the traps found me wandering in my britches on the Battery, eating from bins, without no knowledge of how I got there. By my teeth they judged me to be three years of age.

I pictured him just bigger than Joe.

—They say all I known was my name, and the words to McGinty.

—Can you still sing it?

He waited. Then, soft in the dark of the train, he sang, so surprising, his voice half-drowned by the wheels’ chuff. —Pat-trick McGinty, an Irishman of note, came in-to a fortune, so bought himself a goat.

He crooned out the verses, all the dirty ones about the goat and Mary Jane in the lane, and how that goat ate somebody’s folderols, then swallowed some bank notes and kissed Nora, and was supposed to be a nanny but was found to be a bill. He had me laughing so hard I put my hand over my mouth so Mrs. Dix would not wake. I seen that Charlie liked to have me for his audience, and he sang out like a showman. —Leave the rest to Prov-i-dence and Paddy McGinty’s goat.

—People threw me pennies when I sang it, says he, rather proud.

—Too bad on you but I don’t have no pennies to throw.

Charlie then recounted how the police brung him to the nuns, and for eight years the Sisters of Charity spoilt him. They taught him the Our Father and the Hail Mary and the alphabet then made him read Mr. Aquinas and do the catechism. They said, Oh you’re so clever with your letters, you’ll be a priest!

—You’re not no priest, I laughed. —Not never.

—Reason is that at thirteen years of age the Sisters threw me out. They wouldn’t let me smoke. Just as well. I’m not a fella who likes to be cornered.

—How’d you manage then?

—A half-ate corncob tossed on the sidewalk makes a fine supper. Plenty of ways to get silver from the pockets of swells.

—So you’re a thief? I said, wondering should I scream.

—And what are you, Miss Half Orphan? A saint?

He twirled his bit of rope very angry now, folded it three times and
wrapped loops around the folds, counting them. —A noose, see? Thirteen loops for bad luck. When it slides, like this, see? He slid the coils in a slip knot. —Wham. It snaps the neck. He put the noose around my arm and pulled so it cinched the skin. —See? Snap.

—How fast do you die?

—You die slow. I seen it at the Bridge of Sighs. You twist in the wind.

We stayed quiet for a long while. Out the window the sun began to rise, pinkening the sky, and we seen thickets of houses and buildings as we closed in toward the city.

—So where are you off to in Gotham, Miss Half Orphan Muldoon?

—To find my Mam in Cherry Street, I said.

—I’ll escort you then, will I?

—Don’t be too sure.

—But I AM sure. Now he put the noose joking over my head and pulled like it was a necktie. It tightened up by my throat, strangely tender. I did not move nor say stop.

—You’re crazy, I said quietly. —Are you?

—Half crazy. His eyes was black and shiny as hard coal.

Mrs. Dix awoke now and saw me with the noose around my neck. She came lurching over, pink in the face. Mr. Dix trailed just behind her.

—What in heaven’s name is going on?

I lifted the noose off with a queer mix of tastes in my mouth, of fear, and that other disturbance without no name.

—Young sir! Mr. Dix shook his finger in Charlie’s face. —Just the other day I made it quite clear that your vile habits were not to be tolerated. Are you nothing but a ruffian? Where did you get this foul skill?

—Learnt it at the Tombs, Mr. Dix, beg your pardon, sir, said Charlie, all charm.

—Come away now, Miss Muldoon, said Mr. Dix. —We’ll arrive within hours.

I stood to follow, but Charlie caught my arm. —I’ll escort you to Cherry Street, he said. —I can find your mother.

—You can’t! said Mrs. Dix.

—H*** I can, he said. —I’ll find her other arm, too.

*  *  *

Arriving at last in New York, the Dix attempted in vain to convince me to come along to my new indentured status as maid to a lawyer. Charlie was to get work as a newsboy.

—No thanks, Charlie told them. —We’re off to Mrs. Muldoon’s.

—If you so stubbornly refuse our offer, said Mr. Dix, —the CAS has no further obligation to you. Indeed it is the policy of the Society that our youth must learn from experience. Honest servitude offers you both a chance at redemption.

—If you won’t take me to my Mam I’ll go myself, I told them.

The Dix conferred alone, shaking their heads. —That girl has always been unmanageable, I heard Mr. Dix say. Tsking and tongue-clucking at my certain downfall, them Dix left us orphans with their horrified admonishments, an address for the CAS, and a fortune of two dollars pocket money each, then they disappeared into the throng of Christmas travelers and the smoke off a chestnut cart.

—We’re off to Cherry Street, Charlie said. —To find your mother and her arm.

T
owards evening the fast city horses of the Harlem line pulled us by omnibus through the buildings and the mad roiling traffic, past the sidewalk throngs and mess of noise. We was happy at the press of people crowding the car, the regular clopping of hoofs on cobbles. Over the crots of snow the lamplight fell golden, and the smells of hot corn off the vendors’ carts mingled with whiffs of manure in the wind. The cries of the clam sellers and the catfish mongers was a ragged song of home in our ears, while above our heads the city’s buildings loomed, four and five stories. Their windows was yellow cat eyes watching, ready to swallow us like we was mice. I shivered in my charity coat.

—You’re cold? said Charlie.

—No.

He put his arm around my shoulders as if I was his small sister, and I did not say a word about the dangerous fact of it there or its chemical influence such as Mrs. Dix described. We got off the omnibus at Chambers Street and walked east. Charlie strode along, hands in his pockets, eyes shifting left right left. We didn’t speak. After many long blocks we found our way to Cherry Street, which I seen now with new prairie-tainted eyes of shame. The squatty buildings of the neighborhood was just as Brace and Dix described, cesspools of degradation, fevernests with all manner of garbage flung out the windows. Soused old geezers stood around grumbling on the gruesome stoops. A whiskered old woman with a pipe in her teeth
gave us a dead stare and held her hand out scranning for coins such as I had done. And would do again. That beggary was my fate now I knew with a hard certainty that made my palm itch for the feel of silver. Tough coves with smokes between their teeth looked ready to jump us, staring at me and Charlie like we was foreigners.

We made our way to 128 Cherry and down the muckled alley to the rear tenement. The stench when I smelt it in the stairwell was solid like a wall. I was home, with a taste of dread like chalk in my mouth. My mother waited at the top of these stairs. Did she? I feared her absence so bad I was ill of it and also trembled to face her without my sister and brother. Up we went three stories and I knocked, faint with hope.

—What is it? A man opened the door. His suspenders were at his waist and his shirt open to his hairy poitrine. He was that sot Michael Duffy. He and my Da’s sister Aunt Nance must have their baby born by this time. —Who is it now?

—Axie, I says, and when he still didn’t know me, I said, —Mary is my mother.

—The one arm woman?

—Yes, she lost her other.

—Just misplaced the f****r somewheres, Duffy says, laughing, and looks me over. —So ain’t you a clean big girl now? I didn’t recognize ya. The smell of poteen came off his breath. Charlie came out of the shadows behind me.

—And who is this great lout?

—Just Charlie, I said.

—Just Charlie looks just hungry, said Duffy. —I hope he just ain’t.

—Is my mother here? She’ll be glad to see me.

—We’ll have a party, then, won’t we? We’ll raise a glass. Duffy admitted us inside now with reluctance.

Looking around in the dim I seen the place was jammed more than ever. Barrels stacked in corners, pots and chairs and baskets hung off the ceiling. Two people were sleeping on the platform up the ladder. By the tops of their heads I took them to be the Kevin Duffys.

—Mary! Michael Duffy called. —That stubborn big girl of yours is here.

Now my mother appeared from the back room like my dreams of her, surprised in the lamplight. Her dark hair was down, her dress unbuttoned
too low in the front. And it was true. She had just the one arm. Another had not grown in its place, which shocked me somehow. When she saw me, her face lit and crumpled at the same time.

—Mam!

—Oh, she cried, and rushed me, making noises like a bird. —Oh, Axie. She put her single arm around me, cooing and clucking, the stump dangling in its sleeve. —I thought you were lost to me, she murmured, kissing me. —
Mavourneen machree
. She thought she would never see me again alive, she thought I was gone and lost to her, lost. I circled her waist, my head on her shoulder. Her body was thick now through the middle and it was plain all of a sudden that it was not just her arm that was missing. Her waist was gone too, now, her belly swelled. My eyes dropped down to it and she nodded her head quick and looked away with fearful eyes of shame and relief at the sight of me. We did not need no big words. Everything was said silent like that, so I known everything and nothing at the same time. I was home with her. I had not thought no further than that.

—Mam, I said, over and over. She smelled of cabbage and beer. No cologne from a Paris parfumerie ever matched her scent for heaven and I clasped her to me lost in the rush of it, her voice and embrace, till I remembered Charlie. I turned and introduced her. —Charlie this is my Mam.

—Hello Charlie. Mam smiled so he blushed. —You’re a fine lad, aren’t ya?

—Just a minute now, Duffy said. —Hold your horses. He was looking very frank at me, with his lip curled back off his teeth so he had the look of a fight dog. —I thought you was on the prairie, living off the fat of the land.

—There was not no fat, Charlie told him.

—Who axed you? Duffy said.

—I’m asking him, my mother says, and Duffy muttered HAG and TABBY and FEN under his breath. His little names for her.

Charlie and me now told them of our travails. Mam listened, stunned and betrayed. —The pity, she wept, and stroked my hair, murmuring her Irish endearments. —
Macushla machree
. Charlie turned his eyes away, and I thought of how nobody never said
macushla
to him nor even darling.

—And all along, for faith, I was thinking of you in clover. My mother bit her lip at the enormity of her mistake.

—We thought yiz was all cats in cream, so we did, said Duffy.

—Dutch lives in a great house, I told them, —with a swing on the porch and servants all to tend her, and she wears her hair in sausage curls, Mam.

—Does she then? she asked, with glittering eyes. —And our Joe?

I did not have the strength to tell her I didn’t have the first knowledge about Joe. —He goes to church regular with the family where he stays. They feed him horehound drops and carry him around like a prize chicken.

—All I wanted was to have yiz all safe and fed. At least I’ve you back, Axie.

—Hold on, said Mr. Duffy. —Do you think yer all coming home to mother now?

—Ah jayz, Michael, this here’s my dear daughter Axie who I pined for.

—And have you pined for this big cove here, too? Duffy pointed to Charlie.

My Aunt Bernice and Kevin Duffy now woke and peered over the edge of their sleeping loft and watched us like they was at the cockfights, lying on their stomachs with their heads propped in their hands. —He’s no son of yours, Mary, said Kevin Duffy.

Charlie scuffed at the floor.

—Muldoons oughta take him in, I said, surprising myself. —He’s got no last name. Charlie Muldoon’s good as any.

—Not so fast, Mam said, her eyes on the floor. —I am Mrs. Duffy now.

—She’s the new Mrs. Duffy, Bernice called down.

—That makes you the old Mrs. Duffy, Uncle Kevin told her, and the two of them up in their roost laughed big phlegmy cackles.

Nobody said a word about our father’s sister Aunt Nance who used to be Michael Duffy’s wife. Where was she? And what happened to her baby who would be my little cousin? My mother had her finger to her lips as it dawned on me Nance was gone and Mam shared her bed with the sot Michael Duffy. Now my new stepfather stared as Mam brought out half a loaf of bread from the cupboard and offered it to me and Charlie.

—Hold on there, said Duffy, eyeing the bread, his hand on her wrist.