Swimming in the Moon: A Novel (33 page)

“No, sir, of course not,” I muttered. When he asked why I couldn’t care for my own mother at home, I reminded him of my work with the union and how the union helped parents give their children a better life.

“But your method is misguided. This strike
must
end. The violence is unacceptable. Businesses suffer. The city suffers. For their own good, the workers must return. You’ve read the
Plain Dealer
?”

Yes, I said wearily, I’d read the latest diatribe condemning scuffles, fights, and general disorder, never mentioning ruffians paid by the bosses to batter us with insults, pick fights, and overturn water barrels so picketers regularly fainted from thirst.

“Bring your mother to the marches,” Josephine suggested. “Remember: long picket lines make short strikes.” How could I risk this? If Mamma had attacked Dr. Galuppi and threatened to castrate Little Stingler, why wouldn’t she return the first insult, hurled rock or bottle?

Roseanne gave me half a day to “make other arrangements.” Heat evaporated all thought. Who could help me?

Dripping with sweat, I reached Henryk’s shop. He gave me a glass of cool water from an earthenware jug. I drank gratefully. Perched on a stool, Miriam watched as wind from an electric fan ruffled her silky waves of hair. I listened dully as she explained how a motor drove the whirling blades. She used the fan in her bedroom at night and brought it to Henryk each morning. “You should get an electric fan, Lucia. After the strike ends, of course.” For so long I’d been intimidated by her family, beauty, charm, and promised future with Henryk. Now all this hardly mattered. I thanked her for the suggestion and relayed my problem, the fruitless avenues I’d followed and now my desperation. Out of the fan’s breezy path, Henryk stacked crates of beans.

“Roseanne’s right. Your mother does have to be put someplace,” Miriam interrupted. “You know how Americans are, Lucia,” she reminded me in her sweet schoolteacher voice.

Frustration made me bold. “I know how
people
are. They think mental illness is shameful. They don’t realize that anyone can get sick in
any
organ, even the head.”

Miriam looked away.

“What about Lula?” Henryk suggested quietly. “She has a storeroom behind the tavern for deliveries. It’s cool and clean. There’s even a bed she uses sometimes.”

Of course, Lula!
I hurried over, spilling out my plea as she washed a rack of glasses. “I run a tavern, honey. Not a sanitarium. There’s a difference, even if sometimes I’m not so sure.”

“Just for a few days,” I pleaded, “until this phase has passed. You don’t have to do anything. She’d just stay here during the marches. The tavern’s full of men, so she wouldn’t leave the storeroom. She could knit.”

“Knit? In this crazy heat?”

“Or clean.” Now Lula seemed interested. “You’ll be amazed. The copper, the brass, the windows; once she starts, your kitchen will shine. Or she’ll sleep. Even if she opens and closes doors, there’s already noise in the tavern.”

“That’s for sure. Could be she’s no worse than my regulars. Well, just a few days, mind you.” I tried to hug Lula. “None of that. It’s too hot.” She put her hands on my shoulders. “You want so much, Lucia. I don’t mean you’re greedy. It’s just—you want so much.”

“What do you mean?”

“Dunno, I’m just sure of it. Wanting ain’t a bad thing, but some folks have a lot of it. You better run along. Roseanne’s waiting, right?”

Early the next morning, I brought Mamma to Lula’s with her knitting. The tavern was full of “very bad men,” I had stressed, and she must stay in the storeroom or kitchen. The clean, closed spaces seemed to comfort her.

“Teresa did just fine,” Lula said after the first day. “She knitted some and cleaned my stove better than new. I don’t even want to use it now. Then she slept, I guess. I didn’t hear a thing.” I took her to Lula’s for the rest of the week.

Those were hard days on the picket line. “Europe scum, go back home,” street boys chanted. The few suffragettes who sometimes cheered us ceased coming. “Our fight is for women’s votes,” they reminded Josephine. “We must conserve our energy.” This was a blow. Well dressed and well connected, they had quelled the worst language and attacks with the mere fact of their presence. Now we walked a gauntlet of insults, hurled pebbles, and sometimes garbage.

“Don’t stop, don’t answer, don’t look at them. Think of victory,” Josephine and Isadore said. We dodged when we could. When we couldn’t we showed our stained clothing, scrapes, and bruises to reporters standing in the shade and drinking beer provided by the manufacturers’ association.

Pepe and Enrico marched in front, heads high, beating drums they’d fashioned from cans. The lilt of their step gave us heart. They wiggled into taverns with strikebreakers to bring back news we used to reroute our marches. Nobody begrudged them full votes in union business. Once, when Enrico came panting up with a message, his eyes glittering in triumph that he’d outrun “six big thugs.” I hugged him. “Hey, what’s that for?” he demanded. “It’s just a message.”

“If I ever have a boy, Enrico, I’d want one just like you.”

He grinned indulgently. “Well sure, Lucia. Maybe after the strike, you’ll get a nice Italian fella. Oh, I have to tell Isadore something.” He was off again. I smoothed my skirt, turning away from two garment workers standing nearby.

“Hard times,” one of them commented. “But we’re all marching for ‘after the strike,’ aren’t we? Take a break, Lucia. There’s a respectable tavern around the corner. Come have a beer with us.” I went. We shared stories from the picket line and passed an easy summer hour, the kind I’d thought had gone away.

The next day
a lid of white clouds closed over the city. The air was a tepid sponge, thick and hard to walk through. We were marching in Public Square, having pleaded with those who’d left the union to come back for one more push. Loyal priests and rabbis helped: “Our Lord is a lord of justice and will help the righteous,” they told the faithful. Strikers came in droves, despite heat and hunger.

Our spirits rose. We made a sport of dodging clods of horse manure thrown into the line until the ruffians ceased their game. Someone began old “Peg and Awl,” a cobbler’s lament for changing times. Our voices drowned the litany of insults: we were traitors, socialists, lazy, dirty parasites, Europe’s trash. Looking straight ahead to avoid the red-faced hecklers, I never saw trouble coming until Josephine tried to jerk me clear of a man charging head down like a bull at a matador. I wasn’t fast enough. He hit me full in the stomach. Doubled over, gasping, I heard Josephine call for witnesses.

In the chaos, I didn’t see Mamma. Then I heard her roar, the power of her voice quelling all the others: “Get your filthy hands off my daughter. I’ll kill you!” That morning I’d pinned her hair into a pompadour. Now it hung wild around her shoulders. Lula was pounding down the sidewalk after her. But Mamma ignored us both, leaping at the thug, tearing his shirt, grabbing his arm, biting. I saw blood. I heard Josephine calling for strikers to curtain off the melee. She and Lula closed their arms around me as police pushed through the line and seized Mamma.

“No!” I shouted. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying! She’s my mother, she’s not well, let her go!”

But Mamma was a tempest of hair and teeth, her voice billowing over the crowd: “Bastard cops,
bastards
. Castrate them all!” Now the police had words of their own:
hellcat, bitch, crazy wop.
The Black Maria came, bells and sirens tearing the air.

“Be quiet!” Josephine shouted in my ear. “If you get arrested too, who’ll help her?”

Enrico stared. “Is
that
your mother, Lucia? Is she crazy?”

“She’s—”

Mamma was howling: “Lucia, help me!” as the police handcuffed and shoved her into the Black Maria. Josephine pulled me back. Confusion roared all around: hecklers, union songs from farther up the picket line, and Josephine still shouting that I must keep calm, keep calm.

“That crazy bitch bit me,” the strikebreaker cried, showing his bloody arm. Then one sound pierced every other: the iron door thudding closed, trapping my mother in the stifling chamber that had so terrified me. I fainted into hot darkness.

When I opened my eyes, Lula’s face hovered over mine. Josephine was there and Enrico behind her. A sticky wetness covered my face. “It’s beer,” said Lula. “I asked for water and your little friend here”—she indicated Enrico—“went to one of those no-goods standing around, snatched his mug, and doused you. You’re back, that’s the important thing.”

“And not arrested,” Josephine added. Her voice came from far away.

“Where is she?”

“At the station by now; we’ll go bail her out. But first you’d better change into something that doesn’t smell like beer or they’ll arrest you too.”

The case might be tricky, Josephine explained as she and Lula walked me home. “She
did
draw blood. And everybody heard what she said. But we have witnesses that she was protecting you. Don’t worry, Lucia.”

“There was a crowd at the tavern, and she must have slipped out,” Lula explained, breathing hard. “Folks were talking about the picket route, so she knew where to find you. I’m so sorry, Lucia. She’d been quiet for days and never set foot inside the tavern. I didn’t expect her to bolt.”

“Nobody knows what to expect,” I said miserably. “It’s not your fault.” No, it was mine. I’d left her for what I’d held to be the greater cause, my union “brothers and sisters.” What was she feeling now, trapped in a jail cell, abandoned by her daughter? What had the police said or done to her? How far was she spiraling down?

At the station with Josephine, I waited in agony as a clerk slowly searched his ledger for a Teresa D’Angelo. “Nobody by that name,” he announced finally. “But we got an Italian female, age about thirty-five, medium height, dark green dress, gave her name as Teresa Esposito. Deranged and incoherent. Bit two officers here. Is that who you want?” I nodded. “Hey, Mac, where’d we send that crazy Eye-talian lady?” he called out.

“To the crazy house,” someone answered. “Captain said no mad dogs at the station.”

In the rolling peals of laughter, I nearly fainted again. Josephine rapped the counter sharply. “When you’re quite finished with your jokes, exactly where can we find Teresa D’Angelo or Teresa Esposito?”

“Cleveland State Hospital,” the clerk said after a last guffaw. When his eyes settled on my face, the smile quickly faded. “She’s a relative, miss?”

“My mother.”

“Well, that’s where you’ll find her. You want some water? You look a little pale. Never mind the boys. Long, hot day, you know.”

“We’ll be going,” Josephine said crisply. “Thank you so much for your help.”

As we hurried
to Cleveland State, my mind swirled with sickening memories of Dr. Galuppi’s experiments and the horrible photographs that Dr. Ricci had shown me. In a gray-green receiving room the pale clerk informed us that an Italian female, self-identified as Esposito, Teresa, would be under observation for a week on charges of criminal insanity. Visitors prohibited. Muffled howls wormed through the walls. When the clerk took up his pen again, discounting us, my fury rose like lava in Vesuvius.

“This is my
mother,
sir. She was defending me from attack, as any mother would. She is being treated by Dr. Ricci. She’s not a deficient. She’s not germ plasma. She was a star in Mr. B. F. Keith’s Vaudeville Company. There’s no need to keep her here. I can take care of her perfectly well.”

“But you didn’t ‘take care of her perfectly well,’ did you now, miss?” the clerk asked archly. “She bit a citizen and two peace officers. She’s a danger to herself and the general public. Therefore she must be observed. Then,
if
she can be released, we’ll determine if you are competent to keep her. You are employed?”

I was about to explain the strike when Josephine interceded: “She is a bookkeeper.”

“You have a responsible male here in Cleveland? Husband, father, brother, someone?”

Outrage surged through me. Was I nobody without a man behind me? Josephine’s foot pressed mine and I nodded.

“Good. Come back next week with a responsible male and you can discuss the matter with our doctor. We’ll need a declaration that she’ll be adequately confined at home, not roaming the streets, biting people.”

“She is not a dog, sir! She wasn’t—” Josephine pressed again and I was silent.

The clerk closed his ledger with a thud. “There’s nothing more to discuss. Bring this receipt.” I was given a slip of paper. Mamma was No. 4389F, received August 16, 1911. Like a dry goods shipment.

I endured the next week in an agony of waiting and fear. For distraction, I walked the picket lines, going by habit, for loyalty, and to pass the time. But I couldn’t eat; food was sawdust in my mouth. Between marches and meetings, I circled the hospital, trying to pluck out my mother’s voice from screams and howls cascading down from the barred windows. Was she being beaten or shackled? Was she being used like the “poor thing,” pawed by an attendant? Were they spinning her? Was she locked day and night in a Taming Box?

I called guards to the gate, asking for news. They didn’t know or wouldn’t tell me about Teresa Esposito. When Enrico brought me ice in a paper cup on the picket line, the pleasure of it made me gag. Even in the wildly improbable case that she was being exquisitely treated, respected, and spoken to in her own language, Mamma knew where she was. How could this not worsen her condition? Each day brought an agony of imagination and helpless guilt.

Dr. Ricci was in New York meeting great doctors, his housekeeper said. But even if he were here, he couldn’t swear that Mamma posed no danger to others or that he was making progress in curing her. I thanked the housekeeper and left.

Who would be my “responsible male”? Donato had taken his family to the country. Casimir apologized but couldn’t leave his shop and perhaps feared too close association with a madwoman. Charlie and Frank couldn’t leave their jobs, or wouldn’t. A union brother would gladly help, Josephine said, but I couldn’t bear to expose Mamma’s story to one more stranger. Anguish tore away my reserve. I walked past Henryk’s shop three times before I found him alone.