Crimson Snow (15 page)

“Perhaps she cannot write English,” suggested Hilda, ever sympathetic to immigrants.

“Possible, I suppose. But she could've sent someone to tell us.”

“If you will give me her address, sir, I will talk to her and find out what is the matter. Has she been a good worker until now?”

“One of the best, my housekeeper tells me. Reliable, works hard, never complains. Of course, her English isn't so good, but that doesn't matter much. She hardly ever has to talk to a hotel guest.”

“Then please give her another chance. It is not so easy to get a good job, and I do not think she would risk hers without a good reason. I will find her and then tell you what has happened.”

“And how's that going to help me get my money back?” he demanded.

“That is why I want to talk to her.” Hilda held onto her patience. “She may know something she has not told. If she cannot speak English well, it would be hard for her, maybe. Or maybe she has remembered something since you talked to her.”

“And I suppose you speak Polish?”

“No, but I have friends who do.” She stood. She was growing tired of this man. “May I have the address, please?”

Mr. James grinned. “Might as well, I suppose. You're a determined young woman, aren't you?”

Hilda lifted her chin. “Yes, sir. That is why I am good at what I do.”

“Hmm. And pretty, too. You ever want to change jobs, you come to me. I could use a bright go-getter like you.”

Hilda simply nodded. She couldn't afford to offend the man, but her temper was rising.

The manager took her to the front desk, told the clerk to direct her to the housekeeper's office, and finally went back to his own work. Hilda breathed a sigh of relief and found the housekeeper, who gave her Nellie's address. “And I hope she's all right, I'm sure,” said the woman. “It's not like her to miss work, and it's been several days, now.”

“Several days! Mr. James only said today.”

The housekeeper sighed. “It's been since the middle of last week. She worked the late shift on Tuesday. That'd let her off at close to midnight. I worry about girls like her walkin' home that late at night, but the trolley goes close to her house. Then her day off was Wednesday, but she never came in on Thursday and I haven't seen her since. I let it go till today. She has troubles at home—her mother has the rheumatics somethin' fierce and gets sick a lot. I hated to tell Mr. James, but when it went into a new week, I had to. It's over my dead body he'll fire her, though. She'll have a good reason for bein' away. She's a good worker, and they're not so easy to get nowadays.”

Neither Andy nor Erik was in sight when Hilda left the hotel. She hesitated for a moment and then decided they were both old enough to look after themselves. Mama might baby Erik, but Hilda didn't intend to. She had work to do.

The sun was high in the sky. Hilda walked through increasingly thick mud toward the Polish part of town. Most of the Poles lived in a section of the west side not far in distance from Tippecanoe Place. In character it might have been a different world. The streets were unpaved, the houses tiny and close together. The snow here was left to be trodden into ice or slush. Most of the residents made heroic efforts to keep their curtains and their children clean, but they had no money to paint the houses, and the landlords didn't bother. Some people had given up the struggle. Gray rags hung at the windows, and in summer one could see filthy, half-starved children playing in the streets.

Hilda was struck, as always when she came here, with a mixture of pity and fury. How could employers pay their workers so little? And why did these women go on having baby after baby, ruining their health and stretching family finances to the breaking point and beyond?

Hilda thought of her conversation with Norah. The memory bought a hot flush to her cheeks. Perhaps these women did not know that there were ways to avoid huge families. Someone should tell them.

But they were all Catholic. And the Church forbade such practices. And when she married Patrick…well, she and Patrick would have to talk seriously one day.

She found the house number she was seeking, negotiated the muddy path, and knocked firmly on the door.

A woman opened it. Her gray hair was tied back with a cotton scarf, once printed in gay colors, now faded and patched, but clean. She wore a black dress with many petticoats and a white apron—darned, its lace missing, but again, spotless. Her figure was stooped and bent, and she moved with difficulty.

Her expression, eager when she opened the door, faded at once.
“Tak?”
she said.

Hilda remembered, too late, about the language problem. Did
“tak”
mean yes?

“Do you speak English?” she asked, without much hope.

The woman shook her head and unleashed a torrent of Polish, of which Hilda understood not a word except the repeated “Nelka.”

Nelka. Nellie? “Nellie. Is she here?” Hilda gestured, hoping she was understood.

More Polish, accompanied by tears and gesticulations. The woman shook her head vigorously from time to time and lifted her arms and shoulders in the universal “I don't know” gesture.

“Nellie not here?” said Hilda, using gestures of her own to try to convey her meaning.

It became apparent that Nellie was not at home, and that the woman, her mother presumably, was upset.

“I come back,” said Hilda, pointing to herself, then away from the house, then back to the house.

The woman looked confused.

“Do not worry. I will be back.” On impulse Hilda put a hand in her pocket. It was difficult, wearing mittens, but she pulled out a few coins and gave them to the woman. “For you. I will be back.”

She fled as fast as she could before she could see if the woman took offense.

Something was seriously wrong. That was apparent. Hilda needed to find one of her bilingual Polish friends and come back as soon as she could. But lunch was becoming an urgent matter, and home was nearer than any of the other places she needed to go, so she slipped and slid back to the neighborhood where there were paved streets and sidewalks that were always kept clear. She scraped her boots carefully at the back door. Mrs. Sullivan would not take kindly to mud on the floor.

The midday meal for servants and family had been served and cleared away, and the house lay in the lethargy of early afternoon. Some of the dailies were at work, but the live-in servants were taking their well-earned rest. Hilda found some bread and butter and cold ham in the larder and made herself a sandwich.

She ate it in the servants' room, sitting at the table with its spotlessly clean cloth. The fire in the grate burned with a cheerful warmth. The clock on the mantel ticked. The only other sounds were the snores of Mr. Williams's bulldog, asleep on the hearth, and the gentle creaks and groans of a great house at peace.

Hilda sighed, tidied up after her quick meal, and then tiptoed up to her room to change her clothes.

Elsa was asleep on Hilda's bed, but she woke when Hilda came in.

“Oh! I didn't expect you until supper time!”

“Shh!” said Hilda. “Speak quietly. I do not want to wake the household. How did your work go this morning, my sister?”

“We-ell—I don't like that Janecska. She got mad at me when I couldn't say her name right, and then she tried to make fun of me to the other girls. But they didn't like that any more than I did, so she stopped. The work isn't hard. Easier than the shirt factory, only I don't know how to do everything.”

“You will learn. It is hard when there are big parties, but not too bad most of the time. How is Mr. Williams, did anyone say?”

“No better. But no worse, I guess. Everyone is worried about him. That's funny, Hilda. You always say what a mean man he is.”

“He can be. But he can be kind, sometimes. And we have all known him for a long time. We will not say bad things about him while he is ill.”

Elsa was glad to change the subject. “So what did you do this morning? Was it exciting?”

“Not very. I will tell you all about it tonight. Rest now, little sister. I will be back before nightfall.”

She had better be, she thought. It was not safe out there after dark.

Hilda's best Polish friend was a young policeman, Sergeant Lefkowicz. She had met him on a dreadful occasion when she had discovered a dead body in the shrubbery, and he had been kind and pleasant to her, unlike his boss, who had bullied her. She hurried now to the police station to see if he was on duty.

She hated visiting the station. The men there were often rude to her, and today was no exception, but she had learned to ignore their innuendos and persist in getting what she wanted. Persistence was one of her specialties.

She was out of luck today. Sergeant Lefkowicz was not working. And just what did Hilda want with him anyway? Hadn't they heard she was engaged to that Irishman? Paddy wouldn't take kindly to her going around with a Polack.

And so on. Hilda waited it out and then asked if they knew where the sergeant was, which caused more hilarity. She gritted her teeth and said nothing, but stalked out of the station with the information that she'd probably find him at home.

She had been to the sergeant's house once before, and knew more or less where it was, not far from Nellie's house. Hilda could have saved herself many steps if she had known earlier that Mr. Lefkowicz was at home. She hadn't known, and that was that.

The sergeant wasn't yet married, so he lived at home with his mother. When Hilda walked up, he was busy clearing the front path of snow and mud.

“Why, Miss Johansson! How nice to see you. I'm sorry, my mother is at work right now.”

He meant, Hilda understood, that he could not invite her into the house. It would be most improper for them to be alone together, unchaperoned.

“It is all right. I came to ask for your help, if you can come with me. There is a Polish lady I need to speak to, and she speaks no English.”

He put aside his broom and wooden shovel and bowed. “I am at your service.”

Nellie's house was in the next block. Hilda explained the situation as they went, and why she needed to talk to Nellie. “Something is wrong, but I could not understand what. I think perhaps Nellie is very ill, in the hospital maybe, but I do not know. The woman we will see is probably her mother. Maybe her grandmother. She looks very old.”

“People grow old early when they are poor and worked to death,” replied the sergeant soberly.

The woman answered the door of the shabby house at their first knock. Her look of expectation was replaced by one of despair.

Sergeant Lefkowicz spoke a few words, and the woman asked them both in, speaking volubly as they entered.

The sergeant turned to Hilda. “It is more serious than you thought. This lady is Mrs. Chudzik, Nelka's mother. She has been afraid to go to the police—and I have not yet told her that I am a policeman—but Nelka has been missing from home for nearly a week.”

For the issuing of a dispensation for a mixed
marriage, the Church requires three conditions;
that the Catholic party be allowed free
exercise of religion, that all the offspring are
to be brought up Catholics and that
the Catholic party promise
to do all that is possible to
convert the non-Catholic.

—
The Catholic Encyclopedia,
1908

 

 

15

H
ILDA HAD FEARED THIS, but she gasped. Immediately she was sorry she had let her feelings show. Mrs. Chudzik turned to her and began to speak passionately.

“She says,” the sergeant translated after a moment, “that she is afraid the man who goes about killing innocent young girls has murdered Nelka. That is her real name, you understand. She says she thinks you believe that, too, or you would not be so frightened. She pleads that you will do something to find her daughter. I'm going to tell her who I am and that the police will start looking.”

Hilda could grasp much of the exchange that followed even though she understood not a word. Mrs. Chudzik was frightened that a policeman was in her house, and protested that she had done nothing. She looked to Hilda for protection, and Hilda tried to reassure her. Gradually the woman became calmer, as Sergeant Lefkowicz spoke quietly and patted her shoulder. Finally she collapsed onto a threadbare sofa and began to sob.

Hilda sat down next to her and took her hand. “Will you tell her, please, that I will do my best to learn what has happened to her daughter? And that I am very, very sorry.”

They sat in that small, bare, painfully clean room and waited for Nelka's mother to compose herself. When the sobs diminished to an occasional sniffle, Sergeant Lefkowicz began gently to question the woman. Slowly, with tears often choking back her words, Mrs. Chudzik answered him. Hilda could guess at the kind of information he was seeking, and itched to ask a few things herself, but the policeman would get on faster if he didn't have to translate as he went. Hilda waited as patiently as she could.

Finally he turned back to Hilda. “Mrs. Chudzik last saw her daughter on Wednesday of last week.”

“But that is the day after—”

“Yes. That is one reason she is so worried. It seems that Nelka was assigned to the late shift at the hotel on the day before, the Tuesday, so didn't have to report for work until three-thirty in the afternoon. She was in a particularly good mood that morning, her mother says, smiling and laughing and helping with the housework. Mrs. Chudzik tried to get her to rest, knowing she would have hard work to do later at the hotel, but Nelka was happy to help. They are very poor, Miss Johansson—Mr. Chudzik died years ago and there is little income—but they are proud and like to keep things as nice as they can.”

“I can see that.” Hilda glanced at the crocheted doilies on the couch, at the hooked rug on the floor, at the curtains, so darned and mended that there was little of the original fabric left. She looked back at Mrs. Chudzik's gnarled and swollen hands and understood what pain had gone into the desperate attempt at respectability.