City Of Fire Trilogy 1 - Dreamland (49 page)

She could do nothing with the woman, and the police weren’t interested. She tried complaining to their alderman, who sent a member of his staff around to investigate—but the next thing she knew, her daughters saw the alderman’s assistant, young and shy as a
yeshiva bocher
, standing with his hat in his hand in her room. And soon he, too, was heaving and bouncing around wildly on her narrow little bed, without even taking his pants off. He was one of the quick ones—

They continued to watch her, every moment they could. It wasn’t so much her profession that fascinated them as it was this peek into adulthood.

They studied her avidly for clues. They watched how she dressed, pulling up her stockings and garters, and strange, silky underwear. They watched her brushing her hair in the morning, and eating a piece of chicken, alone at her little table, on a Sunday afternoon. And sometimes, late at night, a sound would wake them—cats fighting, or an ash can ringing on the pavement—and they would look out to see her coming in, gliding around drunkenly as she shucked off her clothes.

When she thought about it, years later, Sadie thought that was probably why she really kept her curtains open. So
somebody
, anybody, could see her there and know she was still alive.

And still—one morning after Mama went out they rushed to the window and saw her sleeping on the floor of her room. At first they thought this was another perverse adult prerogative, but then they had noticed that her skin appeared to be even bluer, even more translucent than ever. She seemed to be in a deeper sleep than they had ever seen before, and in an even stranger position—her back arched up, and her neck twisted to one side, completely naked again, but with her feet curled, and her fingers bent toward her palms, as if she were clutching something.

She slept like that the whole day, and the next day, too—but they said nothing, afraid for Mama to know they were spying again. There didn’t seem to be a mark on her, but she was still lying on her back, hands clutching the air. Soon after that, they saw the landlord come in and open the door, accompanied by the same shy young alderman’s assistant who had fetched him. And when he opened the door, they could see, both men grabbed their faces with their handkerchiefs, and the landlord hurried out while the
yeshiva bocher
of an aide stood there, hat in one hand, handkerchief in the other. Until finally, after a long time, the crew from the morgue came, and tossed her cold, blue body up on a stretcher, throwing a horse blanket over her nakedness before they carried her down to the street.

Her mama always liked to say that it marked her, but Sadie knew something about life, even then. She had never felt any desire to be like that woman—not even on those achingly tired mornings after she and her sisters had started going to work at the box factory, and they used to envy how late she could sleep in the morning. She never
wanted
to be a whore.

The trouble came later, when Sadie started going up on the roof to hang the laundry. She liked it on the roof; it was airy, and cooler, and there were always people around: Mothers and daughters hanging the wash. Naked little children, running around giggling. Bill collectors and nurses from the Health Department, both with their little black satchel bags, going house to house down the whole block without ever having to set foot in the street.

The young men liked to sit up on the roof, too. They drank beer, and tossed the cans down into the courtyard, and raced the pigeons they kept in narrow, tiered coops behind the water barrel.

She loved watching the birds—the gorgeous jacobins and the fantails, the puffed-up, strutting pouters and the tumblers and rollers, turning their fancy tricks in midair. Soon she was going up every evening to watch them swoop and sail between the tenements, descending in tighter and tighter circles, always returning to the tar roofs and their cramped coops behind the eternal, wooden-staved water barrel.

The boys let her sit by them, and watch the birds for as long as she wanted. One of them, whom they called Crazy Butch, was especially nice to her. He was their leader, and the handsomest one, she thought—tall and big-shouldered, with a sleek moustache and a little scar on his left cheek, and a bowler hat he wore at a rakish angle. He always had an easy grin for her, and he let her hold the pigeons, even his most beautiful fantails, and gently stroke their heads in their cages.

She was still no fool about it. She knew he was older than her, and a
shtarkeh
for some street gang, and probably a thief as well. But sometimes, in the room she shared with her sisters, Sadie couldn’t help but dream about him taking her to a show or one of the dancing academies on Norfolk Street.

From when she was a little girl, she had stood in the street before the entrances of the dancing academies. On the nights of competitions, every girl in the neighborhood would stand by the door, just to watch the dancers enter: the women in their beautiful dresses, the men in their best cutaway suits, their feet already barely touching the sidewalk as they floated inside to dance.

Inside, it was really a very different thing—but no less fun. As soon as she was old enough to make any money, Sadie would run right over in her kitchen apron, whenever Mama was away for a few minutes. She had never been anywhere so exciting. The whole room vibrating, the dancers sweating and stomping, cheek to jowl, around the floor. A wild-haired, apoplectic dancing professor standing in the middle, trying to keep time by tapping a cane on the floor. Everyone ignoring him, flirting and eyeing each other around the soda bar, over their celery health tonics—

Sadie smoothed down her skirt, checking her apron at the door with all the Other mama’s girls—looking about for a partner who might take her swooping and rolling around the room as weightless as the pigeons turning their tricks in the air.

One summer evening, she went up on the roof when it was empty. Usually it was crowded at that time with women taking in their laundry, but it had been raining that afternoon, and none of them had put their wash out. It was risky, she knew, to be up on the roof all alone, but the evening was so beautiful, after the furious late-afternoon shower had died away, that she couldn’t resist. Besides, when she got up she saw that the young men were there, removing the oilcloth they had draped protectively over their coops, carefully looking over their delicate birds to make sure none of them had caught cold.

“Hey—c’mere, c’mere!”

She sidled up to them quietly, around the water barrel, not wanting to disturb their solemn inspection of the birds. They looked like little boys, she thought, dressed up in their fathers’ clothes—in their cheap, fancy suits and oversized bowlers, so serious and preoccupied with their pigeons.

“C’mere!” Crazy Butch had spotted her, grinning as infectiously as ever.

She had walked on over, shy but pleased they were happy to see her. The rain had stopped completely now, sunshine glinting off the black puddles on the rough tar roof. It was one of those few cool moments of relief after a summer rain, before the muggy air rose again, turning the evening even hotter than it had been before.

“C’mere,” he said, holding out a bird to her, and she had taken it in her hands and held it there. It was one of his best fantails, she saw—the broad, blue-and-white tail feathers spreading out between her fingers.

She clutched it there, feeling its small life, its throat and heart throbbing in her hands, and looked up at the roof boys. They stood all around her, grinning, and she grinned shyly back—thinking that she must be holding the beautiful bird wrong, thinking that she must not be able to appreciate just what it was they knew about the pigeon.

“C’mere,” said Crazy Butch again—and holding her not ungently by the shoulder, he kissed her on the mouth.

She couldn’t quite comprehend it immediately—her mouth hanging limp, unanswering, still grinning foolishly over the pigeon in her hands.

“Whatsa matter, wasn’ that good enough for you?” he said, and kissed her again—right in front of all of them, right on the mouth again. Then all down her cheek, and her neck, running his hands roughly, probingly up and down her breasts, her sides, her hips.

She stepped back, stunned, still holding the pigeon. One of the other boys shoved her back, and Crazy Butch kissed her yet again, his teeth tearing at her lips this time. Then another one of the young men stepped up and kissed her, and another.

There was a raucous cry from the pigeon—nothing like the cooing noises she had heard them make before—and she realized dully that she must be squeezing it too hard.

“Leggo a de boid,” Crazy Butch said, still grinning that boyish, infectious grin at her.

“What?” she asked.

“Leggo-of-de-boid,
“he repeated, impatiently this time.

“What?”

She didn’t feel like she could understand anything. They were still kissing her, the roof boys, stepping up and groping at her, running their tongues over her face, grabbing at her breasts.

“What? What?”

The grin still on his face, Crazy Butch shook his head and walked up to her, pushing his way past the rest of them. He raised his arm, and she thought
He’s not going to hit me He couldn’t possibly be going to hit me.
And then he did, slamming the back of his hand across her face.

She fell backwards, her hands opening, releasing the pigeon at last. It shrieked off, gorgeous blue-and-white plumage spreading out behind it. Crazy Butch, still grinning, offered her a hand up. When she just lay there, he yanked her up by one arm, and pulled her back behind the water barrel, squeezing her head under his arm until she could barely breathe.

“C’mere, c’mere. Dat’s it. Be a good goil, now, little
kalleh.
Be a good goil—”

—his pals standing back a little now, still leering at her. Sadie realizing in that moment that he didn’t even know her real name.

“You just let us do it to ya, or we’ll do ya,” Crazy Butch promised, starting to tear away her dress and petticoats.

It was then that she started screaming. She didn’t think about it, she didn’t even realize that she was screaming at first. Before, when the kissing had started, her throat had been too dry for her to do anything, but now she started to scream, and kick, and hit out. They tried to stick their hands in her mouth but she bit them, bit at their fingers until she could taste their blood. She kept yelling and screaming as loud as she could, screaming for Mama, and her sisters, and anyone else who might come to her rescue.

But it had been raining, and there was nobody else on the roof. She herself had often heard screaming, down in their rooms, and she was never sure where it came from, or if it was for real, or just the make-believe of children. That was just the way things were in the City. At most she might look out the back window—but there was only the narrow view of the courtyard, a few windows below and above—

Something was shoved into her mouth—something oily and horrible that made her gag. She was hauled behind the weathered, bulging water barrel, where they pulled off the rest of her dress and her underclothes, tugged down the cheap stockings Mama had bought her in the
Chasir Mark
against her better judgment, and raped her right there on the tar roof, beneath the pigeon coops. Two of them holding her arms down, two more on her ankles; the rest of them joking, and smoking, and drinking beer. Crazy Butch first, then another and another, until her thighs were one numbing mass of pain.

It seemed to go on forever, the yolk-red setting sun blazing in her eyes from just over the edge of the roof. The pigeons cooing just above her head—rustling and fluttering around at first, but then settling down to sleep as the sun set. The boys’ grinning, peach-fuzzed faces above her, still wearing their daddies’ bowler hats as they sawed back and forth, cutting her slowly in half. Behind them she could see the water barrel and she tried to concentrate on it. She tried willing it to burst its old staves, and flood the roof, so that the water might sweep away everything before it—herself, and the boys stabbing into her, and the indifferent pigeons—all of it, all of them, right off the roof. But it did not.

They didn’t let her up until the sun had set, and they knew that people would be coming up soon, to smoke and chat, and sleep outside in the restless, humid night. Down below she could already hear the sounds of supper ending, all throughout the tenement: the plates being scraped and washed, chairs pushing back from the tables, and pipes being lit, and she thought that there would soon have to be an end to it.

Instead they stood her up, threw the oilcloth they used for the birds over her head, and dragged her staggering and stumbling down the stairs. They took her along darkened, subterranean hallways to a windowless basement room, where they pushed her in and locked the door. Leaving her to pass out on a narrow metal cot she found there.

She awakened in the darkness, hours or days later, she was not sure which. Her throat burning with dryness, thighs crusted with her own blood. Thinking of her mother and sisters, far above, and wondering if she was going to live. She had to figure out some way to live, she decided, not like that woman down in the courtyard—

They put her through the lineup. They kept her chained to the cot, with nothing but a single blanket and an old pisspot, and came back to rape her over and over again for weeks. Bringing their friends, pouring cheap whiskey down her throat, making her do more and more disgusting things. Feeding her only a few scraps of old bread and herring, until she lay dizzy and feverish, too weak to do anything but lie on the bed.

When they finally let her out, it was too late. She tried to find Mama and her sisters but they had moved, and no one knew where they had gone to. It took her many more months to locate them, and by then it was too late, she had become a whore, just like they wanted.

They sold her off to one pimp after another, as she worked her way up from Mott Street to Fourteenth Street and the theater crowd. For a time she was in a house in the Tenderloin where she worked a badger game for young girls—dressing up in short fluffy skirts, with ribbons in her hair, and a corset to hold in her womanly breasts. When she got too old for that she went to another house, one with a madam, where she at least got to keep a little of her money. There was nice carpeting, and a real piano downstairs, and sometimes in the late afternoon, before the evening trade started, she and the other whores would all sit around and sing their favorite, weepy old hymns: