Читать книгу Sing in the Morning, Cry at Night - Barbara J. Taylor - Страница 17

CHAPTER NINE

THE FIRST WEEK OF OCTOBER, Stanley suggested they go downtown. He liked to spend time over at the Wholesale District on lower Lackawanna Avenue, where men of all sorts, Welsh, Irish, Italian, Pole, Negro, even the Turks, loaded up their wagons with the produce, meats, and dry goods they’d sell in their own neighborhood stores. It always thrilled him to meander through the maze of vendors whose accents were as thick as their cigars.

Halfway to their destination, Stanley paused in front of a large white sign, lettered in black. “Do your part to lead souls to Christ,” he read aloud. “I wonder what that’s about.”

“Probably some message from the holy rollers.” Violet didn’t exactly know what a holy roller was, but she’d often heard her mother use the expression when discussing the “goings on” in other people’s churches. “Look!” she yelled, pointing to a sign on the next corner. “There’s another one.”

The pair ran to the end of the block, and Violet read this time. “How many persons are going to be steered to the straight and narrow path?”

“Twenty-nine!” Stanley hollered, and laughed at his own joke. When Violet looked at him annoyed, he added, “It’s as good a number as any.” Stanley stood back for a moment and examined the barren piece of property, a full city block in size. “They’re on all four corners.”

Violet nodded, and they headed to the third sign. “Future home of Scranton’s largest tabernacle,” she read out of turn.

“Holy rollers must be building a church,” Stanley said. “Hey, what is a holy—”

Violet ran toward the fourth corner before Stanley could finish his question.

“Wait up, so I can read!” Stanley sprinted and the two arrived together in front of the last sign. “Reverend William A. Sunday,” he paused a moment to catch his breath, “the world’s greatest evangelist, will begin his siege on Scranton, March 1, 1914. Will you join his army?” Stanley stood, amazed. “Well, isn’t that something?”

“What?”

“Billy Sunday.”

“Who’s he?” Violet asked.

“Only one of the best outfielders to ever play baseball.” Stanley shook his head. “Girls! Come on.” He tugged on Violet’s arm. “Let’s get to town while there’s still time.”

Once they arrived at the Wholesale District, Stanley looked at Violet and said, “I have a better idea.” He turned onto Wyoming Avenue.

“Not another one.” Violet winced but followed. “Do I need to remind you of what happened the last time you had an idea?”

Stanley stopped in the middle of the block, pointed to a sign, and grinned. “A minstrel show. Sounds promising.”

“How do you figure?” Violet knew better than to go inside Poli’s Theatre. To begin with, she didn’t have the money for a ticket any more than Stanley did. They’d have to sneak in. Just as important, according to the sign on the easel out front, dancing would be “the highlight of the performance.” Violet knew full well that Providence Christian Church did not tolerate dancing of any kind, and she was sure that included, the “Shim Sham Shimmy” and the “Buck-and-Wing,” whatever they were, and she told Stanley just that. “How about a game of Nipsey instead?” she suggested. “We can get sticks down by the creek. See who can hit them the farthest.”

“I think you’re yellow,” Stanley said. “Who woulda thunk it?”

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

“Am not.”

“Prove it.”

Violet pushed ahead of Stanley, held her breath, and slipped in the side door. After taking a moment for her eyes to adjust, she glanced up and screamed at the oddest-looking colored man she had ever seen. His dark face glistened like wet paint. Skin, the same color as her own, circled his eyes and bright red mouth. He stretched his arm forward and plucked a cowboy hat from a rack to the right of Violet.

“Watch where you’re going, kid.” He placed the hat on his head and disappeared through a door labeled, Backstage.

Violet turned to leave.

Stanley opened another door, this one marked, Theatre, and pushed her through. Both of them froze at the sights before them. Electric lights, velvet curtains, and signs pointing to indoor comfort stations, one for Ladies and one for Gentlemen. Neither of them had ever seen anything so fine in their lives, and they paused to take it in. Stanley pointed to the columns surrounding the stage decorated with garlands of plaster vines and flowers.

A burgundy-jacketed usher started toward them, his brazen buttons catching the reflection of the lights. Stanley yanked Violet by the arm, and into a curtained alcove. They watched as the usher made the turn away from them toward the Gentlemen’s arrow.

“I want to go home,” Violet muttered.

“Not a chance,” Stanley said, leading them toward two vacant seats.

As soon as the curtain opened, Violet closed her eyes. She may have been obligated to stay for Stanley’s sake, but she didn’t have to watch the show. Maybe if she kept her eyes shut, she could escape damnation. She imagined being at home, sitting in the kitchen by herself. She looked around and saw the stove, the table, the sink, and the motto hanging above it. Rules for Today. The needlepoint words hit her like the back of her mother’s hand.

Do nothing that you would not want to be doing

when Jesus comes.

Say nothing that you would not want to be saying

when Jesus comes.

Go to no place where you would not want to be

found when Jesus comes.

She opened her eyes and looked around. She could think of no worse place to be when Jesus came, and she knew He was coming. Every nerve in her body told her so. She squeezed her eyes shut and saw the words emblazoned in gold thread.

Go to no place where you would not want to be found when Jesus comes.

Thanks in equal parts to her mother and her sister, Violet had had the motto memorized by the age of six. She thought about that day and the horrible pain. It was washday, so it had to have been a Monday. Her mother had just finished filling the copper tin when Daisy accidentally knocked into it, sending boiling water down her sister’s backside. It truly was an accident. Violet was convinced of that, but pain was pain. In spite of her mother’s home remedies, angry blisters rose up from Violet’s skin.

Every night for a week, Violet balanced on a stool bending over the kitchen sink while her mother carefully tended to her burns.

“Read the first two words for me,” she’d say.

“Do nothing . . .”

“That’s right, and the next couple?” Her mother would pass a needle over the flame of a candle.

“. . . that you . . .”

“Good,” she’d say. “Keep going.” She’d slowly inserted the needle into the first blister. Stick, pop, squeeze until the wound was drained of fluid.

“. . . would not want to be doing . . .”

Her mother would move onto the next blister and start again.

“. . . when Jesus comes.”

“Close your eyes and see if you can say it back for Mother now.”

And so it went for seven days, and by the end, she had the motto memorized.

* * *

Violet pulled on Stanley till he got up from his seat and followed her out the side door. Given a choice between coward and sinner, she thought coward the more favorable option.

“What’s going on?” Stanley asked, stopping to let his eyes adjust to the sunlight. “It was just starting to get good.”

“You’ll thank me when the Pearly Gates open up to you, Stanley Adamski,” she said, as she pulled him toward home.

* * *

School had let out by the time Stanley and Violet got back to Providence from downtown. Hungry from all that walking but hesitant to return to their own homes just yet, they found themselves on the widow’s porch steps.

“Go ahead and knock,” Stanley said.

“Third time this week. Maybe we’re making pests of ourselves.”

Stanley pushed past Violet. Just as he raised his fist to knock, the back door swung open.

“Well, hurry up.” The widow ushered them into the kitchen and headed toward the stove. “Don’t want my pączki to catch.” The children exchanged confused glances. “Doughnuts. I already have some cooling on the sill. Give them a few more minutes, or you’ll burn your tongues.” She picked up a fork and tipped one up. “Perfect,” she said as she flipped all the golden confections frying in the pan. “Stand back,” she warned. “The lard’s very hot. Violet, you set the table, and Stanley, you pour the milk. Nobody makes pączki better than me!”

After the incident with Myrtle Evans at Murray’s store, the widow Lankowski had waited for the children to start showing up at her door. She didn’t have to wait long. She took to baking sweets and ordered extra bottles of milk to have on hand when they came calling. She thought both were in sore need of a mother’s love, though in Violet’s case, the widow held out hope that Grace would eventually come around, poor soul. The same could not be said for Stanley. She just had to look him in the eye to know. If his dear matka were still alive, maybe things would have been different, but with only Albert in the house, the boy had no chance at all.

God had not seen fit to bless Johanna Lankowski with her own babies. She’d pocketed that hope twenty-five years earlier, on the day two miners dropped her husband Henryk’s broken body on her front porch steps. Of course, she had been young enough to marry again but never considered it, even though there had been a few offers. She’d submitted to Henryk’s will without complaint, as God required a wife to do, but she vowed not to make the same mistake twice.

Fortunately for the widow, she’d come to America as an eighteen-year-old bride with a gift for languages and lace-making. Back in Poland, her father, a teacher, had taught her German in honor of her paternal grandmother, and English, so she could read the works of William Shakespeare in his native tongue. Her mother, like most mothers in the mountain village of Koniaków, taught her the art of needle lace, so she could help out when they came up short at the end of the month. She took to the crochet hook like a baby to the breast, quickly mastering the scallop, swirl, and petal patterns handed down from her ancestors. Soon, she began creating her own openwork designs, inspired by nature. In winter, she studied frost blossoms on the windowpanes and reproduced their intricate shapes. In summer, she collected feathers and mimicked their lines. Much to her mother’s delight, several of Johanna’s cloths adorned the altars in the local Catholic churches, and some of the wealthier women hired her to make baptismal gowns for their children. She could turn cotton string into a work of art as easily as she could turn a page, and although needle lace was her specialty, eventually she could imitate any style of European lace set before her, including point, pillow, and bobbin.

After Henryk’s death, she took a job at the Scranton Lace Curtain Company on Meylert Avenue, down past the Sherman Mine. They specialized in what the English called Nottingham lace because the looms that originally produced it came from that town. The seamless fabric created on the factory’s machines looked homemade to the untrained eye, but Johanna could tell the difference. No heart. No life. The Lace Company’s curtains and tablecloths were too exact, too smooth for human hands.

In spite of her aversion to machinery, the widow quickly moved through the ranks from operator to winder, apprentice to weaver, jobs more often assigned to men than women. As a female, she still did not earn enough to keep herself. Males made a better wage since they had households to support and women could always marry. She took in sewing to earn extra money. At first, she mended a variety of goods, but slowly, she became known in Scranton for her ability to repair damaged lace by hand. Soon, the wealthy wives from all over town started sending their torn curtains and tablecloths to the widow Lankowski. One day Mrs. Dimmick, wife of J. Benjamin Dimmick, the president of the Scranton Lace Curtain Company, sent a servant to the widow’s home with an heirloom cloth. It seemed one of the children had gotten his hands on a pair of scissors and cut a gash across the middle.

“You’re wasting her in that factory,” Mrs. Dimmick told her husband after the widow had stopped by their Green Ridge home to return the repaired tablecloth. “I dare you to find the damaged portion.” Mrs. Dimmick handed the cloth to her husband. “I’m sure you have customers who would pay dearly for such attention to detail. Better yet, there are many who still prefer one-of-a-kind creations.”

By the end of the week, the widow started working from home for the self-supporting wage Mrs. Dimmick encouraged Mr. Dimmick to offer her.

* * *

The widow poured sugar into a paper sack, set it on the table, and grabbed the plate of doughnuts from the windowsill. “Take turns,” she said. “Drop a pączek into the bag, fold it closed, and shake hard.” Stanley grabbed for the doughnuts. “Where are your manners?” the widow asked. “Ladies first.” She pushed the plate toward Violet and went back to the stove.

Their bellies full, Violet and Stanley had as much sugar on their faces as they’d had on their pastries. “Don’t forget to wash up,” the widow said.

They both nodded and took turns at the sink.

“Thank you kindly,” Violet said as she dried her hands. “I never tasted anything so wonderful.”

Stanley added, “Me too,” then smacked his lips and laughed as the pair headed out the door.

* * *

The widow sat at the kitchen table long past suppertime thinking about her situation. She had her books, her garden, her lace. All gave her pleasure, though the books caused some of the neighbors to regard her with suspicion.

“Always has her nose in a novel, that one,” one remarked in a disapproving tone. “Wish I had time for such folly.”

When Violet and Stanley came into her life, the widow realized what she had been missing all these years. “If only we’d had children,” she directed toward a sepia photograph staring down at her from a wall. In the picture, Henryk stood behind a seated Johanna, his hands on her shoulders, eyes glaring straight into the camera. He wore the new suit of clothes they’d purchased their first week in America. Like so many immigrants, they’d gone out and bought new American clothes and had their picture taken to show their families in the old country how well they were doing in the land of opportunity. In the end, that had been Henryk’s only suit, so of course the widow had him buried in it.

Finally, the widow stood and cleared the pączki dishes from the table. It had been a long time since she had allowed herself to imagine how children might have changed her life. Just as sadness started to settle in, she glanced over at her husband’s picture once more. Henryk’s eyes, cold marbles, stared back at her. “I suppose God knew best,” she said aloud, “considering.” She pulled a lace-trimmed handkerchief from inside her sleeve and spit the word “świnia,” bastard, into its center.