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Authors: Jami Attenberg

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BOOK: Saint Mazie: A Novel
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Mazie’s Diary, May 15, 1918

That little Nance came back again today. She stood in front of me after the line for the last show had died out. A dried-up girl, younger than me. The bottom of her dress was in tatters. Her hair was long and unbrushed. Her tan overcoat was stained with something purple. Still, I wasn’t buying what she was selling. She was no beggar. There was lipstick on those lips.

She said: Please, ma’am, please. I’m broke and hungry and I’ve got two little ones at home and we haven’t had food in a week and can you please please please help us. A penny, a nickel, something, anything.

Her voice was too singsongy for me to trust her. She’d made that speech too many times before.

I said: Scram, little miss. I know what you’ll do with any scratch I give you.

She said: I swear on my life it’s for my kids.

She reached down the front of her dress and pulled out a rusted locket on a chain. She struggled to open it, and it was then that I could see her hands were shaking. But when she finally released it, she pressed it up against my glass cage. There were photographs on both sides, a boy and a girl. Two faded babies.

Looking at the pictures, I got a choke in my throat. I might have lost all the air in my body if I didn’t go to these children straightaway and help them. I couldn’t help but think about Rosie. All the sadness. Her on the couch all those months.

I had a bag of chocolates sitting in the cage and I slid them to her. She grabbed it and stuck her filthy fingers in it. Keep it, is what I was thinking.

I said: Where’s their father?

She said: Their father went to war and never came back.

I said: My condolences.

She said: No condolences. He’s in France, the bastard. He met some girl there, surprise of the century.

I felt sorry for her. It’s easier to let things go when there’s no reminder of someone. But she had two babies in a locket.

She said: He couldn’t wait to get away. He got me hooked, and then he joined up to get away from it and from me and he left me behind with those two babies. Isn’t that funny? Easier for him to go fight the Germans than spend another minute with me.

She started licking her fingers.

She said: Sweet Jesus, it’s good.

I watched her eat. She put one chocolate after another in her mouth. She was a greedy child, is all. A hungry brat.

She asked me for money but I said no.

She said: They’re real, I swear on my life.

I said: Then let me see them. I’ll lock up right now and go there. Last show’s nearly over.

She had eaten all the chocolate. She could have run. But she didn’t.

So I gathered together all the food I had in my cage, another bag of candy, half a sandwich. Then I followed her home through the pitch-black streets. We didn’t talk about her problems, we talked about the city instead. How different it was now that there were cars everywhere you looked. Can you believe the noise? Can you believe the dirt? We talked about how we both loved the rain because it washed the streets clean. Even for a few hours New York City would sparkle again.

She said: What I wouldn’t give for the rain to clean me up.

We picked up our skirts over some garbage in a back alley off Mulberry Street, and she led me to a metal door, brass buttons around the edges, the center painted red. There was a thick, rusty keyhole. Nance pulled a key from the front of her dress. I guess she kept everything down the front of her dress.

She said: It’s Mama.

She stood there for a moment, as if she were afraid to enter. Which made me afraid to enter, too.

It was quiet, and it was quiet, and it was quiet, and then suddenly there was squawling and screeching, and I covered my ears.

Nance said: Oh come on now.

There was one candle lit and she walked toward it. There was the smell of piss and I breathed through my mouth. My eyes adjusted and I could see where the howls were coming from. There was a boy with white-blond hair, a thin sliver of flesh in the dark.

He said: You’ve been gone all day.

She said: I was getting you food, wasn’t I?

She gathered the boy and a little girl to her.

She said: This nice lady brought you some candy.

I opened my purse and handed them the chocolates. My eyes grew used to the dark, and I could see the girl was frail and curly-haired, a sprout of a thing. She stopped wailing when she took the candy. Even by candlelight I could see they ate just as their mother did, with greedy desperation, salivating like animals.

All I wanted to do was steal them and give them to Rosie. She would have loved them. She would have fed them.

Later Nance and I shared a cigarette outside in the alley.

I said: They can’t live on candy forever.

She wasn’t paying attention to me, though. She had her eyes on my cigarette. She wanted her own.

I told her I’d bring her food tomorrow, and I asked her what she’d do after that. I gave her a cigarette and she didn’t say thank you. I told her I couldn’t help her forever.

She said: Are you sure you can’t? Come on, Miss Mazie.

She stroked my arm for a second. She had this sleepy smile. The lipstick held steady.

She said: I can tell you’re a girl who likes to have a good time. Everyone knows Mazie Phillips likes to have a good time.

I swatted her hand away. Then I shoved her up against the wall. I could have punched her. The only reason I didn’t was because of those babies.

I said: You better be thinking of your children now. Else you’ll end up like the garbage in this alley. All of you.

She started to cry.

She said: I’m sorry, it’s the only way I know how to be. I ain’t bad, I swear it.

I felt bad for shoving her. She wasn’t much different than me, just like Sister Tee wasn’t different either. Just a turn here, a twist there. No one to love you.

I said: That’s how I feel too. I ain’t a bad girl.

She said: I’m just hooked. It makes you desperate.

I said: Stop thinking about you. Think about them.

I promised to bring them food tomorrow morning. I left the stinking alley behind. It was past midnight when I got home and Rosie wasn’t happy about it. She had her arms crossed, and a cup of tea in front of her at the kitchen table. She was squinting at me. She didn’t look pretty. Louis was slouched back in his seat, his hands behind his head, just waiting for it.

But I had a good reason! I was sad and full of life at the same time, thinking I could help this family. For once they couldn’t be mad at me for coming home late.

So I told them the story, about Nance and these children, locked in this dark basement all day long with nothing but a candle to light their way. I asked them if there was something we could do to help. Louis, with all his connections, had to know someone. I was looking back and forth between the two of them. I was waiting for them to tell me I did something right for once.

Then Rosie stood up from the table.

She said: I don’t want to have nothing to do with it.

She was calm and icy. She picked up her cup of tea and left the room.

Louis sat there for a minute, just shaking his head at me.

He said: Why are you telling this story in this house? I don’t understand you.

He wasn’t talking much louder than a whisper.

He said: After everything we’ve been through. After everything she’s been through. You’re just throwing it in her face.

Then he got up and left me there. It stung me all over. I’m crying now while I’m writing this. Sitting in the candlelight, while in the other room the two of them are thinking I’m some cruel, vile girl. When all I want to do is help.

I won’t mind them, though. I won’t. I will help those children.

Lydia Wallach

Part of Mazie’s legend within my family can be attributed to her charitable contributions, not within the community where she lived, although my understanding was that she was ultimately exceptionally charitable, but more specifically, she was giving to my great-grandmother, and to my uncles after Rudy passed away. “Legendary” [puts her fingers in air quotes] doesn’t cover it actually. There were pictures of her on the wall, framed photos of her and my great-grandfather. My mother said there was a shrine in the living room. Sadly, none of them exist anymore, or if they do, I don’t know where they are. There have been too many apartment moves along generations. Things get thrown away. I know you’ve been trying to find a picture of her. I wish I could help you. I’m sorry, that’s all I can say.

I think it meant a great deal to my mother to hear all these stories about Mazie and Rudy. She loved her uncles very much and they didn’t have any other family around—they were the only relatives that made it over. My great-grandparents were trying to create their own universe by the force of procreation. But none of my great-uncles had children except for my grandfather, and then it was just my mother, and then she only ended up having me. So their grand experiment to populate the world with Wallachs failed and ends with me as I have no intention of having any children because number one, there are too many people on this planet already, and number two, who has time for it? You have to really want it, and I do not.

It broke my mother’s heart when I told her that I was uninterested in childbearing, but, to be fair to me, she had a heart that was easily broken. But that was because she had a beautiful soul. A gorgeous, gorgeous soul. I think this was because she grew up with all that attention from her uncles. There is something about being beloved by men from a very young age, being made to feel special, that makes a girl blossom in a particular kind of way. I did not have that same kind of attention. I had just my father, and he loved my mother most until he did not love her at all.

You know I think I was always fond of hearing these stories about Mazie in part because she went down an unconventional path. Marriage and children, they just weren’t important to her. It’s important to be exposed to alternate lifestyle possibilities, even if you don’t embrace them for yourself. It’s just good to know the possibility exists.

Mazie’s Diary, May 16, 1918

Jeanie worked my morning shift for me today.

I said: You don’t need to mention it to Rosie.

She said: Oh I wouldn’t dare.

Her tone was sweet but I’ll likely have to repay the favor someday. A sister knows the difference between a gift and a favor.

Then I went shopping on Hester Street for the babies and Nance. I bought a loaf of bread, a jar of strawberry jam, a bushel of crisp, rosy apples, and a fistful of dirt-lined carrots still on their stems. I wanted to give them the earth. More chocolates, butter, milk. I tried to buy food that would keep. Food they wouldn’t have to cook. Food they could just shove in their hungry little mouths. I was delivering to them a wish with this food. A hope for good health.

The door was open an inch when I got there. I pulled it wide open and let the sunlight stream in. There was no stove in the room, no fireplace, no icebox, no sink, nowhere to wash. It was nothing more than a box, and inside it this small, sad family.

The children ran toward me saying my name over and over again. Nance told them to give me a hug. She was jammed up in a corner, her knees pressed against her, a cigarette in her fingers. She was blocking the light from her eyes with the other hand. The little girl reached up toward my waist and rested her head along my backside. She felt like a feather. The boy grabbed the food from my hands. He tried to rip the loaf of bread in half but his hands were too small, and he was weak. I took it from him and broke a hunk off and handed it to him, and another to her. The whole world disappeared for the children while they ate. In the sunlight I could see that both of their eyes were runny and pink, with crusts around the edges. Oh I’m crying now writing this, just as I was then.

I realized I didn’t even know their names, and I asked Nance. Rufus and Marie, she told me.

I handed them the jug of milk from my purse, and I told them to drink it. The boy let the girl go first. She drank until she spit some milk down the front of her dress, and then she started retching, and everything she ate started coming up. Nance stayed in the corner. I burned. I pulled a handkerchief from my purse, and I tried to clean her up as best I could. She was crying. I told her it was going to be all right, and so did her brother. I told her to eat slowly, and she did.

I have no plans beyond but to keep feeding them. Before I left I handed them a fistful of lollies, a box of crayons, and some paper. I told Nance I’d be back tomorrow.

She said: What about me?

I said: What about you?

She said: Don’t I get any lollies? Don’t I get anything?

She sounded no older than her children.

I threw one at her.

Mazie’s Diary, May 17, 1918

They were spread out all over the floor coloring when I got there. Marie had drawn a circle with swirling rays surrounding it. I asked her what it was.

She said: It’s the sun. It’s the outside.

I asked Rufus what he was drawing and he told me it was a forest of lollies.

I’d steal them if I could. I would.

Mazie’s Diary, May 18, 1918

I only had a few moments before work today. I was thinking I’d show up and everything would be better, that some magic would have healed Nance. But I was a fool of course. A sick person doesn’t get better overnight.

The door was locked when I got there and I had to bang on it for a while. Finally Nance pushed it open. The room smelled of retch. She crawled on her knees back to the corner where she had made a nest of blankets. Her children were curled up with her.

I asked her how I could help. I said I’d call a doctor.

She said: There’s no doctor’s going to help me. I’m just going to feel this way for a while until I don’t anymore.

I said: Maybe I should take them home with me. Just so they’ll be safe.

She said: You’d love that, wouldn’t you? Taking my babies away from me.

I said: I only meant to make it easier. I’m here every day trying to help you, missy. You don’t want my help, fine. But you should be looking after those children of yours. They didn’t do a thing wrong. They don’t deserve this.

Christ, maybe I was yelling too loud, I don’t know.

I said: You asked me for help, remember?

She said: Well now we don’t want it.

She struggled her way to standing. Her legs were quivering but still she stood.

She said: You don’t come in here and tell me how to live my life. You don’t tell me how to love my children.

I said: Nance, I didn’t say you didn’t love them.

I was trying to be softer with her. I didn’t want her to throw me out.

She said: You think I don’t know what you think of me? I know the truth.

Marie started crying, and then Rufus did too.

I said: You’re just sick right now. You’re not thinking straight. I’m here to help.

Nance pulled those babies tight. It was the strongest I’d seen her.

She said: Say good-bye to Miss Mazie. Saint Mazie’s more like it. Thinks she’s better than all of us.

I said: I’ll be back tomorrow. I’ll bring you more milk.

She said: We don’t want it.

I said: I’m coming anyway.

She said: See what I care. I don’t have to open the door for nobody.

I’ll throttle her with my own two hands if she hurts those babies.

BOOK: Saint Mazie: A Novel
9.85Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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