Swimming in the Moon: A Novel (11 page)

“Some girls would gladly be Milly,” Mamma said, “if they could stomach Little Stingler, that nasty little cock who never dipped a chocolate in his life.” In our parlor, she mimed him pacing the line, chest thrust forward, short, thin legs as stiff as rods, arms flapping as he urged the workers to be more industrious and attentive to their swirls. “Someday a cat will tear that cock to pieces,” she took to muttering.

“The other girls might tear
her
to pieces first,” Yolanda warned. “Little Stingler’s always telling them to work as fast as Teresa D’Angelo. She needs to slow down.” But as we dressed for bed in our chilly room, Mamma said she
couldn’t
slow down. “If I do, my head fills up with bad thoughts about Little Stingler. Besides, if I’m learning a new song with a quick beat, I
have
to dip to that beat.”

“Perhaps you could talk to the priest about your thoughts.”

“They’re
mine
and I’ll think them.”

“Be careful, Mamma.” When did that tone of mine begin, that patter of advice, as if I were the mother and she the child? I didn’t ask again. After all, that autumn began as an easy time. We chipped off bits of rent by doing chores for Roseanne; we were faster and more exacting than her cleaning girl. We had finally paid our debt to Countess Elisabetta. This meant nothing to Mamma, but it was a triumph for me. I stood straighter, wrote to the countess more often, and received longer letters back from her.

In October she trusted me with her great secret: lurking beneath Count Filippo’s malarial fevers was syphilis. His rages had grown worse and more frequent with the pain of his great disease. His mind half gone, he gambled wildly, signing notes against the estate. The countess didn’t know how many or to whom. “He spent the summer with us, which was a torment, as you know. At least he gambled less. Paolo turns away the ‘gentlemen’ who come like vultures to profit from his weakness. But tell me about school and all the wonderful things in America. I want to hear that you and Teresa are happy.”

“He won’t last long, she can hope,” Mamma observed.

“What should I write about?”

“Anything except that bastard.” I wrote about Cleveland, the parks and grand stores and the noisy immigrant quarters. I described Central High School. Students constantly left to find jobs in the factories, mills, and limestone quarries south of Cleveland. Little was done to keep them. Only eight in one hundred Americans had high school diplomas, our teacher told us. I was determined to be one of those eight.

Having skipped tenth grade, I was now in eleventh, gorging on speeches and poems to memorize, chapters to read, essays to write. When my first dictionary broke into pieces from constant use, I won another for reciting Mark Antony’s speech to the Romans. I wrote to the countess about algebra’s secret language of
x
’s and
y
’s
.
My geometry lessons made the city an intricate mosaic of shapes: arches of doorways, cones and pyramids of gaslights, cylinders of smokestacks, tangents and trapezoids of pathways and streets. In those days, I dreamed less of finding a fella than of holding a diploma in my hands.

“Don’t waste your chances,” Yolanda warned. “You need to get married in high school. Your friend Henryk’s family wants a Jewish girl, so don’t bother with him. Maybe Charlie knows somebody good for you. Should I ask?”

“Not yet. I don’t have time anyway, with school and scribing and work in the boardinghouse.” I saw Henryk often, for he too had skipped a grade, and we sometimes worked in the public library together. Sitting across from him at a long oak table, each in a pool of light, I tried to nail my eyes to books, away from the glossy falls of his black hair, wide mouth moving slightly as he read and long fingers scribbling. When we did our math together, droll little stick figures marched up and down his notebook pages. “They help me think,” he said, but they couldn’t help him think how to keep up these library hours when he had to work more afternoons with his father.

“Charlie wants me to graduate,” Yolanda was saying, “but school is so boring. I want my own hat shop. Charlie says . . .” She talked constantly of him: where they’d gone, what he said, how he’d own a factory or limestone quarry one day and they’d have servants.

“Have you met his family yet?” I interrupted.

“No, but I will at Christmas.”

“Why not now?”

“Because Protestants announce big things at Christmas. That’s how they are. Lucia, you should be worrying about your mother, not about me. She keeps saying things about Little Stingler, crazy things she shouldn’t say, even in Italian.”

I fretted for days about how to ask Mamma about the “things,” afraid she’d slip into another of the dark silences that often encased her. Finally one night I blurted my worry. She backed away from me and snapped: “The girls make up stories. Everyone’s crazy with this cold. And your friend Yolanda is crazy with Charlie.”

It’s true that the cold pushed into every corner of our lives. The last winter had been mild, with barely more snow than we saw on Vesuvius. Now ice froths rimmed the lake; we stuffed paper in our shoes and wore coats in the house. I wrote to the countess that the Alps couldn’t possibly be this cold. Even Miss Miller, born in Cleveland, remembered no winter so hard.

By December Lake Erie had frozen in ragged silver-gray waves as the wind drove icy chunks into hummocks. The sky shook down snow, paused for breath, and shook again. Frigid gusts raced down the streets, drilling through the boardinghouse walls, laughing at our coal stove. Every floor, table, door, book, and plate was cold. “Even the fire’s cold,” said Donato. Much as I missed Irena, I was grateful she was spared this suffering. Like a great plug pulled from a washtub, color drained from the city. Green was long gone, of course, and now constant frost dulled each surface to a dingy gray. New snow turned quickly black from coal and wood ash. Under a milky sky we scuttled to and fro, swathed in coats and mufflers. “How can we stand it?” I asked Miss Miller, wrapped in my coat for scribing.

“What can we do but stand it?”

Donato spent his evenings at Lula’s, drawn by the comfort of her potbellied stove, many bodies, warm beer, and hot cider. When demand drove up the cost of coal, poor families huddled under blankets. Coroner’s trucks passed each morning; black-garbed men plucked stiff bodies from the gutters outside taverns and hurried up apartment steps, returning with small bundles as mothers followed, weeping into their shawls.

In school we ran in place each hour to keep our feet from freezing. Rich women knit scratchy gray mufflers that signaled us as charity cases. “If they
really
wanted to help poor folks, they’d send around free coal,” Roseanne muttered. Exactly as she had predicted, clothes froze on the lines outside as fast as we could hang them, creaking in the wind like metal sheets. How could it be that once on Christmas day in Naples, wearing only shawls over linen gowns, we sat on our flat rock without freezing, drinking wine and eating marzipan? Last summer we slept soaked in sweat. It seemed that heat had left the world forever.

Hard cold brought Mamma new troubles at Stingler’s. First came the day she was late to work because a horse pulling a load of beer kegs slipped on ice and fell across the streetcar tracks, overturning his wagon. A keg split open, slicking the ice with beer. In the tumult of men slopping after rolling kegs and frantic, rearing horses, her streetcar couldn’t pass. She ran to work but was late and fined a half day’s pay. Still she had to dip all morning or lose her job completely.

“Promptness is paramount,” Mamma mimicked that evening at dinner, thrusting out her chest and peering down her nose at us. “They say every cockroach is beautiful to its own mother. Ha! I bet even Milly hated Little Stingler.”

“It’s not fair they didn’t pay and still made you work,” I protested at dinner. Mamma flared at me. “
Fair!
You think that little bastard cares about
fair
? Of course I worked without pay. Don’t you have to stay in school? Don’t we have to pay our rent? Pass the potatoes!” In bed that night, she turned against the wall, her shoulders heaving, her muttering like distant, roiling water.

Guilt washed over me. She had raced down icy streets only to be fined. She sat for hours hunched over steaming vats. She had no Vesuvius for comfort, no warm bay for swimming, no fella or friends that I knew of, only an old player piano for pleasure. I had school, books, the company of friends, and my diploma dreams. How could I ease her life? Even if I went to work, I’d never make enough to support us. Girls were paid less than women, who earned less than men or even boys for the same work. As she drifted to sleep, I wrapped my arms around her against the piercing cold.

Wrapping her.
Yes! I could buy her a warm coat like the ones in Higbee’s window for seven dollars. Watching the first flakes of yet another snowfall, I pawed through schemes to earn seven dollars. Not scribing: that money went to Roseanne for the rising cost of coal. As the night sky gleamed with snow, it came to me that I could polish silver for pay.

Last week, I’d overheard Miss Miller complaining to a wealthy Hiram House patron that the family’s silver was a disgrace; their butler was quite incompetent. Paolo had taken pains to train me for this task. I knew just how much fine English polishing cream to apply, how long to let it sit, and how to buff with soft cloths until my face pooled in every spoon. I could clean neglected silver, uncovering intricate designs in what had seemed merely gray knobs of tarnish.

The next day I drew Miss Miller aside to make my offer: I’d polish two cabinets of silver until they shone like moons for seven dollars, streetcar fare, and lunch on the two days I estimated this work would require.

“Three and a half dollars a day!” whistled Yolanda. “My father makes less than that. Does she feel sorry for you?”

“I don’t care. I just want a coat.”

The next Saturday I went to the Millers’ back door and was bustled in by Agnes the cook, a sharp-angled woman whose odd accent, she explained proudly, came from Boston. She brought me to the butler’s pantry, where a long table was heaped with platters, tureens, vases, pitchers, candlesticks, and silverware. Jars of English cream had been set out, neatly folded flannel cloths, and a plate with two thick slices of buttered bread. “No point working hungry,” she said. “I’m in the kitchen if you need anything.”

I set to polishing. With blessed warmth, a steady kitchen chatter of servants, and an abundant lunch of veal stew with cabbage, it was deep into the afternoon before I stopped to shake out the cramps of work. “You’ve been slaving like a Trojan, my girl,” Agnes called from the kitchen. “Come get some hot cocoa and oatcakes.”

She was an eager gossip and I was a fresh ear. “If Mr. Miller had known his daughter would come back all fired up to teach immigrants,” Agnes began, “he’d never have sent her to Vassar College. But she’ll marry soon and have a great house of her own. Richard Livingston’s family made a fortune in limestone. He’s sweet on her, and Miss Edith’s a lovely girl. As you could be, Lucia, if you got yourself fixed up.”

I thanked her, took another oatcake, and exclaimed over it to hide my astonishment. Miss Miller had told us often and earnestly that teaching immigrants was her life’s calling. Now it seemed we were only a private charity before a splendid marriage, a harmless diversion, like tennis, golf, or watercolors.

The butcher’s boy dragged in crates of meat, stamping his feet and sniffing cocoa in the warm kitchen air. “It’s the blasted Arctic out there,” he announced. “A dozen dead dogs and cats I saw today, frozen stiff as boards, a sight to sober up a tinker. Thank you, missus, very kind,” he finished, as Agnes handed him a steaming mug. He gulped it and left, hunched into the cold.

Anxious now to finish work and be home, I was buffing the last platter as Miss Miller swept into the pantry. Her lush red velvet gown dipped low in front, pinched at the waist, and flounced behind. Her hair was a mass of ringlets and loops. “There you are, Lucia,” she said in a high, breathy voice I’d never heard before. “Richard will be so cross that I’m late, but I just had to see those silver moons you told me about.” Hanging lights did make moons on the platters, while vases, tureens, and pitchers reflected the gleaming red of her gown, black sheen of hair, and long loops of pearls against a creamy chest. At Hiram House, Miss Miller was always modestly, even severely dressed in high starched collars and dark woolen skirts. Was that penance for her other, gilded life?

“Mother will be delighted,” she said, counting out my first day’s pay and streetcar fare from a beaded purse. “Someone who served
a countess
is cleaning our silver. Be careful in the cold now, Lucia. Hurry home and we’ll expect you in the morning.” With instructions to Agnes for Sunday’s tea in the conservatory, she was gone, trailing a heavy scent of roses. Her voice turned high and tinkling as she called out to Richard.

Out of the habit of constant work, my arms were stiff as stone as I put on my coat, gray muffler, and the woolen socks I used as mittens. In the long wait for a streetcar, cold winds flew down Euclid Avenue, drilling me like icy spikes. All the warmer inner seats were taken; I was pressed against ice-caked windows. Stamping my feet, clenching my fists inside the too-thin socks, I endured the ride, consoled by the weight of $3.50 in a cloth bag around my neck.

I reached the boardinghouse just before Mamma returned from her Saturday shift. Roseanne sat me by the kitchen stove. “Don’t move until you thaw,” she said, “and don’t rub or your skin comes off. You’d think rich folks would send you back in one of their fancy automobiles. Ask if they will tomorrow.” I didn’t ask, and in Sunday’s bustle of service for Miss Miller’s tea, there was no break for cocoa and oatcakes. Still, in the frigid ride home, I had something better: the rest of my seven dollars.

Yolanda came with me to Higbee’s so I wouldn’t choose “something awful.” She had been moody and anxious since Christmas. Charlie was still hovering, kind and attentive, still calling her his “dear Italian sweet,” but, with various vague excuses, had never taken her home.