Water Street (6 page)

“All the time,” Bird said, and took a damp finger to a bit of oatmeal on her shirtwaist.

Someone was coming up the stairs as Annie went down, probably a patient looking for Mama. Bird felt a little tick in the back of her throat. It was hard to breathe when she
thought of Mama and her patients; the milkman's boy. How disappointed Mama must be in her.

How disappointed she was in herself.

That day, that terrible day, she had come up the stairs with Thomas, and in the bedroom Mama had helped her pull off her bloodstained waist and stood there, her hands on Bird's shoulders, as she washed her arms and hands. Bird had told Mama then that she could never do anything like that again. That grayish white bone, the blood seeping out—

“This is the way of it,” Mama had said, almost sternly. “We've all been through it.”

Now Bird bent down to kiss Mama at the table, getting a whiff of the sweet smell of her. And Mama reached up to cup Bird's cheeks in her hands, hands that were rough from washing and ironing and working with her patients.

Bird slid out the door as a woman came in, and looked back to see Thomas shoveling in oatmeal as if he had spent his childhood in the Old Country and this was the first good meal he'd had in his life.

She hurried for the first few blocks. Who knew if he'd try to catch up? The last thing she needed was to have anyone see her walking along with Thomas Neary.

Besides, she'd waited for this day all summer. This was the last year she'd ever spend in school. She'd be fourteen next July, and it would be time for her to go to work.

To work. But not to walk through the streets of Brooklyn carrying a medicine bag of her own.

Would it be the box factory like Annie during the day?

Would it be the fish store or a vegetable market? Or worse, cleaning someone's house?

How could she spend the rest of her life like that, doing something that didn't matter to her? And remembering what Da always said:
“We have to better ourselves in this new country. Each generation doing better than the last no matter how hard it seems.”

There was a spot of pain in her chest like one of Annie's oatmeal lumps. She shook her head, shaking it away as she reached the schoolyard and went in between the great iron gates.

He'd never been to a school like this before. Girls and boys in the same classroom. In the other schools they'd even gone in separate doors.

Strange to see the girls lined up on one side of the room, big bows in their hair like butterflies, nails buffed, looking at the boys from the corners of their eyes.

And all because Brother Anthony, who had taught the boys, had been transferred out to Canarsie at the last minute and Sister Raymond had volunteered to take on all the boys and girls in the eighth grade by herself.

He angled his way around on the boys' side so that he was sitting beside Bird.

Halfway through the afternoon she left a couple of lemon drops on her desk next to her inkwell, and he leaned over to take one, thinking they were there for him.

What a look she gave him, eyebrows almost meeting in
a frown! It made him laugh, leaning over his desk, trying to listen to Sister Raymond going on about the eighth-grade essay. It wasn't even due until June. What he wanted to do with the rest of his life! He could write that in ten minutes.

He looked across at Bird, and she glared back, making him laugh again.
Eldrida
, he wrote on a scrap of paper so she could see it. But Sister tapped her pointer, frowning. “For most of you,” she was saying, “it's the last year of school.”

For him.

He didn't mind. He could work during the day if he had to, doing anything. But at night! What he wanted to do was write.

He half listened to Sister as he pulled himself up in his seat. He could see the bridge towers outside, and thought of writing about them. It seemed that everywhere he looked there was something to write about.

He thought of the lemon drop, and leaned over to take the second one, but before he could, Bird slammed her hand down on his.

“What's going on back there?” Sister Raymond said, and he looked away.

They worked on geography, on history, and the clock barely moved; then science, and arithmetic. It was all easy for him. At the end of the day Sister read from a thick book—
Great Works of Literature
—and he barely heard the bell. If only he could write someday like Victor Hugo did, or Sir Walter Scott.

They lined up, and he heard one of the girls laughing as she whispered, “She gives him candy. They're probably going to get married.”

He turned. Bird's face was scarlet, and he tried not to grin. And when she saw him waiting at the door for her, she looked so angry that even the huge bow on her head quivered. It made him laugh again, and he went ahead without waiting for her. At home he stood on the landing until she opened the door downstairs.

“Cup of tea, Bird?”

“Thomas Neary,” she said, “I'll thank you not to take my candy.”

“My father left cinnamon buns from Sullivan's Bakery up here,” he told her.

“No, thank you.”

“Want to see the towers from the window?”

She hesitated. “All right. Some tea and a look at the towers then.”

Her voice was almost like her mother's.

He left her in the living room and rattled around in the kitchen. The milk was sour; what was he going to do about that? And the buns didn't look so fresh after all. He made the tea anyway, reached for a plate, and knocked it off the counter, smashing it on the floor into a dozen pieces in his haste.

“What's happening?” she called in.

He looked out the kitchen door. She was running her hands over Pop's leather-covered books. The best thing they owned, they'd been left behind by a tenant in one of their apartments. Pope and Dryden, Edgeworth and Swift.

His opened writing book was on the table. He saw her walk over to it. She'd see the story with Eldrida as the heroine and know in an instant he had written about her. Or
maybe she'd read about her mother on her way to a patient, her blue bag over her shoulder, or the scent of dried herbs hanging in bunches from their kitchen ceiling.

He never thought about the picture of Lillie until he was coming into the room with a cup of tea in each hand. There was a story under that, a mother reading poetry first to him and then to an audience.

He took a step closer to Bird and saw the picture, the newspaper clipping. Lillie with pearls the size of marbles looped around her neck. The hat with the feather dipping over her forehead. Beautiful Lillie.

Bird looked a little guilty that he'd seen her peering at the book.

And he felt a sudden flash of something; he didn't even know what it was. He knew the Mallons felt sorry for him, and maybe that was even why Bird was here now. Before he could stop himself he was saying, “She's in London, acting,” he said. “Someday soon she'll come back.”

He didn't say she was his mother, but he knew that was what Bird thought. He let her think it.

It was late fall, most of the leaves gone from the trees. And it was almost dinnertime. From the bedroom window, the houses across the yards were beginning to blur into the sky. It wasn't all dark, though. Squares of light flickered from some of the apartments.

Mrs. Daley had forgotten to pull in her wash and the wind had picked up. On the line, her shirtwaist sleeves were puffed out as if her arms were still in them, and her long underwear kicked at the shadows.

As Bird watched the light fade outside, she thought about that eighth-grade essay, even though it wasn't due until the end of the year. How could she know what she wanted to do with her life? All these years she'd thought she'd be a healer like Mama, and now she knew it was never going to happen. She brushed thoughts of the milkman's boy away and thought about the essay.

Writing wasn't easy for her. It wasn't like arithmetic, not like a column of numbers to be added or subtracted from the top of the blackboard to the bottom, neat and organized; or science, figuring out the why of things.

Her mind jumped to another problem. Sister Raymond, her eyes large under those straight dark brows, had said today, turning to look at the class, the crisp white bands under her veil crackling with starch, “Wouldn't it be wonderful,” she had said, “if any of us who had a book at home would bring it in to share?”

Ellen Burke immediately said her father had books. Ellen Burke, who had shamed Bird with that talk of candy and marrying Thomas Neary. Bird shuddered, thinking about it.

In the classroom, there had been a chorus of yeses about bringing books. All except for Thomas, who was half out of his seat, looking out the window.

Bird had stared up at the painting of the Alps that hung over the blackboard. She thought of her apartment, filled with Hughie's cot, the table, the stove, the ice box, Mama's dried plants hanging in wispy bunches from the ceiling, and the painted cabinet with the glass doors.

In her mind she had gone through the curtains that led to Mama and Da's bedroom, to the teeny one she shared with Annie. Among all those beds and covers and skirts and coats, the washstand with a sliver of soap and bits of towels draped over the edges, not a book was tucked in anywhere.

Now Mama called from the kitchen. “Bird?”

She stacked her papers, glad not to have to think about
the essay, and listened to Mama's footsteps going from the stove to the ice box. She went down the hall.

“Soup with a bone,” Mama said. “Only two shreds of meat on it, but a bone is a bone.” She held up five fingers, and nodded for Bird to put the bowls on the table.

Five of them tonight. They could fit at the table. Da had started work early.

Bird gave Mama the best bowl, with the roses in the bottom. Hughie got the plain one because he wouldn't care. Bird wanted the one with the pink flowers on the rim, but she knew it would be nice to give it to Annie, so she took a plain one like Hughie's, and the last one, the one with two chips, was for Thomas.

Mama reached for the bubbling pot on the stove, her hands covered with old rags. “Call up to Thomas,” she said. “Call softly.”

Bird nodded, but she could make as much noise as she wanted; no one was there but Thomas. If only his mother would come home. He'd be upstairs at his own table instead of waiting for her to call him down.

It was terrible that Thomas's father was over at some pub, sitting on a high-backed stool in front of the dusty window, or stumbling along in the street.

Following in back of Thomas on the way home from school, she had seen Mr. Neary raise his mug to Thomas, pushing open the door with one foot and tossing out a coin, a nickel. At first, she'd thought Thomas wasn't going to reach for it, but he had picked it up and tossed it in the air before he dropped it into his pocket.

“Thomas has a nickel,” she said.

“A nickel,” Mama repeated. “In Ballilee that would have bought enough greens for a pot of soup I could stand in up to my neck.”

If Da had been home, he would have said,
I never saw a pot that size, Nory.
And the two of them would have laughed.

Bird went into the hall. “Thomas,” she yelled. “That's softly?” Annie said to Mama.

Thomas clattered down the stairs carrying a tiny pot of chives. He knew the best way to please Mama.

They sat at the table. Hughie came in at the last minute. He looked at the chives, nodding, and they said grace. “Come, our Lord, and be our guest….”

Bird said a quick amen; then Hugh grabbed one heel of the bread. She took the other, hot to the touch.

“No fair,” Annie told both of them. “I was the one who made that bread.”

“True for you,” Bird said. She tore off a chunk and put it on Annie's plate.

Bird sat there chewing. All of them were there together. How terrible that Mr. Neary spent his time sipping at his pint instead of making his own bread and soup for Thomas, and Mrs. Neary was so far away on a stage somewhere in England.

A beauty called Lillie.

She slid another chunk of the crusty heel onto Thomas's plate. He gave her a quick nod, spread enough lard over the bread to fill a bucket, and wolfed it down as if he hadn't had anything to eat since breakfast. Maybe he hadn't.

Hughie wolfed down his bread too, making loud noises over his soup. Bird knew he was in a hurry to go down to the cellar, where he said he could breathe. He had a punching bag there, and he spent hours pummeling it until his knuckles were red and bruised.

She'd never go down to that freezing cold and dark place by herself. Mrs. Daley had told her a horrible story about it just the other day.

“Hughie,” Bird told him, “watch out in the cellar. Make sure you leave the wedge in the door so it stays open.”

He wiped his mouth. “Afraid I'll get locked in?”

“What are you talking about, child?” Mama asked, her hand on Bird's arm. “There's no lock on the door.”

“Mrs. Daley said—” Bird began.

Mama and Annie shook their heads at each other.

Bird leaned forward. “A woman went down there—”

Hughie polished the bottom of his bowl with his bread. “Go on,” he said. “I may be so afraid I won't be able to go past the coal bin anymore, Birdie. You'll have to go for me.”

She tried to smile. She was too old to believe Mrs. Daley, but still the rest of the story came out in a fast breath. “The woman was never found. Only her shoes. She had melted clear away like ice on a summer day.”

“Ghosts,” Annie said.

“That's what Mrs. Daley said. Ghosts of the people who used to live here.”

“If I were a ghost,” Hughie said, and Bird heard the bitterness in his voice, “would I stay here?” He pushed back his chair.

She raised her voice. “Mrs. Daley said her shoe buckle was so cold it steamed the way your breath does in the dead of winter.” But she was talking to Hughie's back as he went out the door.

Bird lifted the spoon for the last sip of soup, and Annie took herself over to sit on Hughie's cot. She picked up her knitting: black wool socks for Da. And soon Thomas went back to his apartment upstairs, saying, “Thanks, Mrs. Mallon,” over his shoulder.