Читать книгу Sing in the Morning, Cry at Night - Barbara J. Taylor - Страница 13

CHAPTER FIVE

HATTIE HAPPENED TO BE OUT SWEEPING THE FRONT STEPS when she spotted Grace trooping toward the boarding house. Even before her sister reached the yard, Hattie could tell she was distraught. Grace had the habit of chewing her lower lip when she was troubled. Hattie put down her broom, grabbed two shawls, and led Grace upstairs and out to the second-floor porch for a little privacy.

After some coaxing, for Grace had always needed coaxing, even as a child, she told Hattie that Owen hadn’t come home in almost a week. Hattie’s hand flew to her heart, but before she could say a word, Grace explained, “He’s rented a room over Burke’s. A gin mill, of all places.”

Hattie wasn’t entirely surprised. He’d taken Daisy’s death about as hard as any father could.

Once Grace opened up, she recounted the whole night, including Owen’s drunken antics and the argument it had caused. Grace was upset about his leaving, of course, but Hattie couldn’t help thinking his comments about their father bothered her sister even more.

Owen had been right, Hattie thought, as she tried to comfort Grace. Mean-spirited, but right. Not that this excused his behavior, but their father had been a “no-good coward.” Old wounds opened and anger festered anew, surprising Hattie with their intensity.

Growing up, Hattie and her family had lived in a grand home, with the largest wraparound porch on North Main Avenue. Green-shingled second and third stories sat atop a ground floor of fieldstone. Six gables poked out of the roof, much to the disappointment of Hattie, who thought they should have seven like the house in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel.

Hattie and Grace’s father, Ivor Jones, a third vice president for the Delaware and Hudson Railroad, had amassed his wealth by investing in the mining industry and businesses associated with anthracite. As his fortune increased, so did his enemies, who accused him of making his money on the broken backs of the poor. Not that those in his circle were concerned about the poor, more likely they were simply jealous of his knack for using them to his advantage. At the same time, Ivor Jones sat on the board of the Hillside Home, an almshouse and insane asylum on the outskirts of Scranton. Unlike most board members, he spent time with the wards, and many a preacher praised Ivor’s dedication to these hapless souls.

In the fall of 1888, Bronwyn Jones, Ivor’s wife, had given birth to a son named for his father. Ivor Jr. made four children in all, including Hattie, thirteen; Lizzie, ten; and Gracie, seven. Although Ivor Sr. had always shown affection toward his children, at least in public, he seemed particularly taken with the boy.

“God has seen fit to grant me a son,” Hattie would often hear him say at church. “It’s about time,” he’d add, “don’t you think?” and chuckle.

But soon, their idyllic life began to crumble. Evidently her father had been offering more than just sympathy to the female residents of the Hillside Home and his enemies exposed him as soon as they’d gotten wind of the scandal. The D&H directors dismissed Ivor from the railroad, and investors pulled their money from his interests, bankrupting the family in a matter of months. By the spring of ’89, her father had hanged himself from a rafter in the attic. Unable to cope with the loss of her husband and her sudden poverty, Bronwyn had a nervous breakdown herself and became an involuntary occupant of Hillside. Hattie and her sisters were sent to the Home for the Friendless. There, they could expect to spend their days with other abandoned and orphaned children until they reached adulthood. The baby had been given to the Athertons, a childless couple in the Green Ridge section of town. From what Hattie would learn long after, the woman was barren, and they welcomed Ivor as their own, changing his name to Peter, like his adoptive father. A few years later, after the death of her husband in a mine explosion, Mrs. Atherton and the baby moved to Baltimore to live with her sister. Neighbors lost track of them after that.

The Home for the Friendless, a monolith of stone walls and turrets, stood on the hill near Jefferson Avenue like a guard dog poised to strike. Mothers and fathers pointed the structure out to ill-behaved children as a warning. If you don’t straighten up, it’ll be the Home for you.

Those inside the walls knew differently. The place was better than some and no worse than others. “At least they feed you here,” one girl said to Hattie at breakfast. “And not a one of them will take a switch to you.” And it was true. The women who ran the institution offered serviceable beds, three meals a day, schooling, music lessons, and religious instruction. Yet it was not their own, and Hattie vowed to one day earn enough money to make a home for her sisters and mother.

Four years later, on her seventeenth birthday, Hattie found employment as a maid with the Watres family. She received room and board, and a small salary. By year’s end, with the money she’d saved, she secured three rooms over the bakery on West Market Street. Though it lacked the decorative moldings and vaulted ceilings of her youth, the place was very much a home.

First, she assumed custody of her sisters. Brother Kinter from the Providence Christian Church vouched for Hattie’s character, and the women in charge gladly handed Lizzie and Gracie over to make room for other unfortunates. Next, she took her mother out of the Hillside Home, initially on short visits, then overnight on weekends, and finally to stay for good. That first year as sole provider proved difficult. If it weren’t for the generosity of church members, particularly Michael Goodfellow, owner of a local boarding house, she knew they would not have survived. As it was, they lost Lizzie to influenza the following winter, a blow from which Hattie never truly recovered.

That spring when Michael proposed, he offered to give Hattie the world if she’d only marry him. As it turned out, she didn’t need the world, just a room for her mother and sister to share. Her mother Bronwyn could often be heard saying, “This is no place for a lady,” when she sat out on the boarding house’s modest front porch; but in spite of her insults, Michael always treated his mother-in-law with kindness and seemed overwrought when she succumbed to consumption that same year.

Now that was a man, Hattie thought. Unlike Owen, Michael stayed put until ’98, when the good Lord carried him home. Diphtheria, God rest his soul.

* * *

Hattie glanced across the porch at her sister, wondering how best to handle Owen’s absence. Her heart told her to move Grace and Violet into the boarding house right away so she could take care of them. It would certainly make her feel better to have them close by. But was that what was best for Grace? She was a woman, not a child, with a family of her own. And what about Owen? If he was ever going to find his way back home, Grace had to be there.

“I’ll have to sell the piano,” Grace finally said as she stood and wandered to the edge of the porch.

Hattie stiffened in her rocker. “Why on earth would you do something like that?”

When Owen had left her boarding house to marry, he and his friend Graham had carried the red-lacquered Tom Thumb piano ten blocks uphill to the new home. Though a third smaller than most uprights, and in spite of its wheels and handles, the instrument proved to be about as difficult to move as a mule in a coal mine. Owen had never told how he’d acquired the piano—Hattie’s best guess, a winning hand of cards; Grace thought barter a more likely explanation—which he presented to his wife as a wedding present.

“It’s what I can spare for now,” Grace explained, “and it’ll keep a roof over our heads for another few months.”

“You’ll do no such thing,” Hattie said, a little louder than she intended. “As much as I hate to take up for Owen right now, you and I both know that if he has breath in his body, he’ll provide for you and Violet.”

“And we both know what drink does to a man.” Grace took off her shawl and handed it to her sister. “I have my family to consider.”

“You can come here,” Hattie offered. “There’s plenty of room, and I’d like the company.”

“Company is the last thing you need. And besides, I don’t want to leave my home.” Grace paused for a moment and blinked back tears. “How will she know where to find me?”

“She’ll come with you, naturally.”

“Daisy . . . I mean Daisy.”

My sister’s worse off than I realized, Hattie thought, as she decided to take matters into her own hands.