When We Were Strangers (17 page)

Hélène was as generous with me as she was with Jacob. She paid nine, then ten dollars a week. With the money I sent home, Father Anselmo took Zia Carmela to a doctor who had studied in Naples. Her fever passed, he wrote, but still she coughed and spent days huddled in a chair by the bakery oven, sometimes speaking of me as if I were still in Opi.

“Sending money home is
not
a plan,” scolded Molly one evening as I embroidered and she laboriously worked her accounts. “You should be saving for a shop. Women need property.
That’s
how we survive.” Her calendar, beloved as a Bible, was dark with numbers marked in pencil, erased, added, circled and boxed. She made her first loans in September.

*  *  *

The telegram from Opi came in early December. I felt it through the boardinghouse door as I stamped snow from my boots. I heard it in the yowl of an alley cat and the brush of Molly’s broom that ceased as I entered the foyer. The envelope glimmered in the dim hall light on a side table that Mrs. Gaveston had covered with my embroidered linen runner, loathsome now with too-bright roses and a fat bluebird. Molly leaned her broom against the wall. “Maybe it’s good news from your father,” she offered. “Aren’t they expecting a baby?”

“We don’t send telegrams for babies,” I said, my voice flat as paper.

“Irma, if you want—”

“I’ll read it.” The gold-brown paper seemed too frail to bear dark news. Perhaps my money
had
changed them. “Western Union,” I read slowly, then the date, my address and the message: “My dear Irma, Zia Carmela died peacefully last week, speaking of you. We used your money for the funeral. I will leave Opi soon to serve a church in Calabria. God keep you. Father Anselmo.”

“Sit down,” said a far voice. “I’ll make tea.” Soon a hot cup was wedged in my hands. “Not to be cruel, but wasn’t she coughing for months? Old folks don’t live long once that starts. Not in Ireland at least.” Tea pooled in my mouth and I made myself swallow. “Irma!” A strong hand shook my shoulder. “You’re scaring me, girl.”

Every day since leaving Opi I had pictured Zia in her chair, coughing perhaps, but always there, waiting for me. I imagined Father Anselmo hurrying through the sanctuary to greet me, sandals clicking on the stone floor. Now the long cord linking my soul to home was fraying over the rough Atlantic. When the parlor clock tolled, I found a damp cloth wound through my fingers.

“There’s cabbage and boiled beef,” said an anxious voice behind me. “Come eat at least.”

But I climbed the narrow stairs to my room and lay in bed weeping for Zia, the spare hardness of her life and her loneliness and long sickness. I wept for myself, seeing her empty chair if I ever returned. “If you leave Opi you will die with strangers,” my mother had warned a thousand times, but she might have added: “And those you love and leave behind will be dead to you. Someone else will close their eyes.”

I lay very still in the dark room, imagining women helping Assunta wash Zia’s body and put on her one good dress. With my money there would have been choirboys and wax candles, perhaps a good coffin. A fall breeze ruffled the curtains, curling through the narrow room. What of
my
soul if I died in America? Madame Hélène was not a believer and Molly would not waste money on the dead. I decided to buy funeral insurance from the Sicilian agent on Polk Street.

In the weeks after my Zia died, a dank cold settled over the city. Coal dust hung in the air, close as a cloak when I trudged to the shop and back again. Only work distracted me from billowing doubts. Why had I come to America? That I might live? For whose sake? Not for my people, all dead, disappeared or making new families without me. Not to earn passage home, I was slowly concluding, for who would truly welcome me there? In my father’s house a new babe would more than fill the space that once was mine. In Opi I rarely questioned my life. One does not ask “why” in a hunger year, only: “What will I eat tomorrow?” My ancestors who climbed our mountain never asked why. But alone in Chicago, a steady “why?” oppressed me.

“You
could
marry, you know, and have your own family,” Molly insisted. “Wouldn’t your aunt have said so? You’re thinking too much. Come dancing with me.”

I couldn’t.
Cut, sew
,
work
—the words filled my dark valley like iron bells, tolling me to sleep, rousing me in the morning and sounding beneath the clatter of carts as I hurried to the shop. Even pigeons on snowy roofs cooed
cut, sew
,
work.

Sewing machines only made rich women greedy for more finery: pleats, ruffles, flounces, dips, gathers and close fittings even in their day dresses. Much of this was handwork. New patterns came from Europe, New York and Boston. Our customers wanted them all, and before their neighbors. Madame Hélène made curt condolences when I told her Zia died, but she had seen too many die, and this was a sick old woman. My long mourning perplexed her.

Even Simone was puzzled. “Is it better now, the sadness?” she asked often.

“Yes,” I always said, “better.” But she and Madame exchanged glances.

“Come, Irma, try this on,” Madame said late in February. “Mrs. Straub wants to surprise her daughter, who is exactly your size.” I was handed a fine moss-green merino wool walking dress enriched with velvet ribbons. While Simone buttoned me in back, I stood stunned behind our dressing screen. Such lush softness had never touched my skin.

“Come, we mark the hem,” Madame called briskly.

When I walked, the dress caressed my legs with a whispering sigh. “When did you cut and piece it?” I asked.

“Sunday,” said Madame briefly, her mouth full of pins. “Up.” I mounted our hemming block.

“Look at the color,” Simone ventured. “Like the beautiful soft green of your eyes.” No one had ever exclaimed over my eyes. “And see how it shows off the little waist?” Tucks and velvet bands ran down the bodice, accentuating the tightening line. My own gray work smocks hung straight, masking my breasts. “And see, the new cuirass look,” Simone continued. “How it suits you.” Perhaps it did, the long waist dipping to points front and back, then easing out to the hips with a deep swan curve. Rich young women sought this line; it was far too binding for working girls.

“Oh, Irma,” Simone said, “You look like a gentlewoman.” How would it be to walk down the street in such a dress, to see myself mirrored in windows, to hear that rustle and feel the muslin underskirt against my skin?

Madame finished the hem and ran her fingers over my chest and breasts, across my back, around the waist, feeling where the bodice might be loose and making tiny marks with tailor’s chalk. At any other hand I would have cringed, but her careful touch was all for the dress and how perfect it must be for Mrs. Straub’s daughter.

Jacob’s familiar whistle sounded at the door. When Simone opened it, he stepped back, for a fine propriety ruled him, and he never intruded on fittings. “Don’t worry, it’s only Irma,” Simone said, pulling him in by the tatters of his sleeve.

Jacob entered cautiously, studying me intently. “Irma? Such a princess! Oh, Madame Hélène,” he said mournfully, “she’ll never marry me now.” For it had been his habit to gravely propose to Simone or to me on each visit, offering bouquets of daisies or bright feathers he found in his walks. “Alas, I’m an old man,” he would conclude with a sigh, “an old,
hungry
man.” Then Madame, in fond exasperation, would have Simone bring him thick ends of bread and cheese, an apple and slices of pickle. I hadn’t worked at the shop long before noting that Simone bought extra food for Jacob. Pulling a stool close to the stove where we heated our pressing irons, he would nibble his bread and speak of the Russian Jews and Poles flooding his neighborhood, their trials and sometimes joys.

“Do they need loans? Furniture?” Molly asked when I brought home these stories. “Ask.” But I never did.

That day of the green dress Jacob simply sat, regarding me as Madame Hélène turned her white hand and I turned with it as she studied the fit. “Irma,” said Jacob, carefully, wrapping the cheese and pickle in a clean rag, “you must not hide behind that scar. I have seen how you turn your face when any speak to you, even Simone and the good Madame. But you must not do this. That scar may be God’s special sign. And see how beautiful you are in this fine dress?”

“She was unlucky,” scoffed Madame. “Who needs a god who makes scars?” She marked the hem with pins where we would add the tiny lead weights that held down ladies’ gowns against immodest Chicago winds. When I slipped behind our screen to shed the dress, it seemed I was shedding my own skin. The hem must be finished today, Madame ordered crisply, and the bodice shaped with the tiny tucks at the chalk marks. Jacob left in a flutter of rags, and silence settled over the shop.

Finishing the dress left barely time for lunch and none for the bread Simone brought in mid-afternoon. Yet the wool moved so easily under my fingers, folding, curving, stretching and shaping itself to my needs. This once I was sorry for my speed, for soon the fine green would be boxed and delivered. I felt poor and shabby in my drab gray smock. Even old Jacob had seen me with new eyes.

The clock struck seven. I looked up and saw Madame Hélène and Simone standing together, smiling. How odd, I thought: Madame smiling. She took the long dress box from Simone and handed it to me. “The address?” I asked, for she always wrote it in chalk that I brushed off before delivery.

“Is yours, Irma,” said Madame.

I touched the box, incredulous. “For me, this beautiful dress?”

“Yes, so you feel beautiful and not so sad,” said Madame briskly. I scrambled to my feet, stammering thanks, but she raised a finger to stop me. “You are a good worker. My ladies like you. Now go home with your dress, Irma, go. I do not like the little scenes.
Merci
is enough. Enjoy your dress. Be pretty.”

“Yours?” breathed Molly when I opened the box at the boardinghouse. “You could sell that dress for forty dollars, then loan out those forty and earn, let’s see,” she scribbled furiously, then looked up, curious, as if she had never seen my face before. “You know, that green
does
suit you. It makes your eyes sparkle.” She threw down her stub of pencil. “Irma, you deserve something pretty. Listen, wear it on Sunday. I have to go meet some Poles. I’ll wear my good blue and we’ll have a promenade.”

Intoxicated by the green dress, I agreed. It was strangely warm that Sunday despite the season, with a soft breeze that scurried around my skirt, as if spring were peeking through the winter. We went west toward the new neighborhoods, my green swaying against Molly’s peacock blue. We had both washed our hair on Saturday night, brushed and bound it with pretty combs. I relished the delicious ripple of the lamb-soft green, its soft press on my chest, warm wrap of the waist and billowing waves of the skirt as I walked.

We came to a street lined with taverns. “The curse of whiskey,” Molly muttered. “Instead of drinking themselves to death, they could be buying houses.”

“With your loans?” I suggested.

Molly laughed and wove her arm through mine. “Come on, Irma, there’s no harm in a bit of show.” Men leaning against tavern doorways turned their heads like cats watching birds. Their eyes raked my body, tightening the bodice and burning my skin. Molly laughed, white teeth showing. Is this what other women felt, that every street was a stage, every watching eye hotly eager and all of this a happy game? Walking was never like this in Opi. Because I was plain and not beautiful like the baker’s daughters? Because my clothes were shabby? Now in this marvelous dress I was equal to the baker’s daughters, at least for men lounging by taverns. Yet when their whistles nipped my ears, the dress felt thin as voile and I crowded Molly on the sidewalk.

“Really, Irma, sometimes you’re such a nun,” she whispered, shaking herself free. “It’s fun, no, to play with men a little? Keep your chin up. They won’t do a thing if you walk fast. It’s like playing with kittens. You dangle a bit in their faces and then snatch it away. Come on, it’s a beautiful day and they’re just admiring the scenery. Relax.”

I tried. My dress was modest enough and decently covered, I reminded myself. Madame had been mindful of this. So as we walked on with Molly still laughing at me, I did relax. The dress helped, with its swish and softness, the glint of sunlight on ruffles, the gentle tightness at my waist and our sculpted shadows moving over brick. If Zia could see how eyes followed
me
, Irma Vitale of Opi, yes, she would be happy. I held my head up proudly despite my scar, my too-high nose and common brown hair.

Molly’s pace quickened. She grasped my hand. “Never mind the men. Look at all these houses, new families coming every day, Jews in these blocks, and Poles further on. A few years ago all this was fields. Look over there, three boardinghouses in a row. Gaveston should buy one.” Now we were walking past families whose men watched us cautiously, mindful of their wives. Girls held out their hands to feel our dresses brushing by. “Little grubbers!” Molly groused cheerfully, waving aside girls with dirty hands, but this was a game too, as we twisted and swerved to keep our skirts free of the giggling gauntlet. “You there!” Molly ordered a girl whose face was smeared with jam, “Scat!” I gave one child a penny. What a country, to be in this dress on this beautiful day with a friend on the streets in Chicago and money in my purse to scatter.