The Daughter's Walk - Jane Kirkpatrick [39]
“I wish we’d splurged and bought new clothes the day we arrived,” Mama lamented. “At least then the thief would have less of our money and we’d have nice things to show for our trip.”
Sometimes we walked through Central Park, invisible to all but each other in the sea of strangers. I didn’t mind the anonymity, but I think Mama did. I think she missed the applause of her programs about our journey, the attention from the reporters, and reading about ourselves the next day in the paper. At night, she wrote. She seemed content to work and save money for the tickets, believing we remained under the original obligation not to request help but to work for our needs.
We didn’t receive many letters from home, or at least Mama didn’t say we had. She’d taken piecework so could stay in the room with her needles and thread while I found employment scrubbing pans in a restaurant at half the wages of men who did the same task. So she was the one at home when the postal bell rang and everything changed.
“Ole’s written!” Mama shouted. She waved the letter as I came through the door. Outside, April buds woke up spring, and even Brooklyn freshened up with the smell of blossoms. “I hope it’s all good news, nothing about the mortgage.” She put the letter on the table, then stepped back, staring at it as though it might jump out at her and bite.
“Well, open it,” I said. “Maybe Papa’s sent money so we can go home.”
“Not likely,” Mama said. She still stared. Her smile looked pasted. “Everyone’s in bad straights. Even the Brooklyn papers are filled with stories of property worth five thousand dollars sold for three thousand at auction because the original owner owed two hundred in taxes. One bank disgorged a family and allowed another to purchase the house for a pittance because they fell behind on their payments back in ’93.” She picked the letter up, put it back down. “The Brooklyn Bridegrooms hope to put their losing season behind them,” Mama said. “I read that in the paper too.”
“Well, I’d like to put our losing season behind us too,” I said. “Now open it.”
Mama sighed, turned the letter over and over in her hand.
“Maybe there’ll be a little drawing from Lillian,” I said. “She turned three last month. And Bertha is fifteen now. Those two get to celebrate birthdays every March 12 together.”
“I’ve missed a year’s worth of their celebrations,” Mama said as though the thought just occurred to her.
I did quick figuring remembering each of my brothers’ and sisters’ birthdays. “Three March birthdays in our family. June must have been a … special month for you and papa. Olaf was born in March too.”
“Ach,” Mama said. “How you talk.” She actually blushed a little. “All right.” She took a deep breath and opened the letter.
She began to read.
I would not have believed a person’s countenance and demeanor, attitude and hope, could change so profoundly by the reading of another’s words.
Color drained from her face. A slow moan grew as her hands shook, and tears coursed down her cheeks.
“What is it, Mama? What’s happened?”
Mama handed me the letter then lay her arms on the table, covering them with her face as she wept.
“Diphtheria,” I read. Diphtheria had entered our home while we worked away, window-shopped, dreamed of a future. Diphtheria had claimed Bertha.
“Alone,” Mama wailed, holding her stomach as she rocked. “He had to bury her alone, make her casket by himself. Oh, my God, my God. They were quarantined. I wasn’t there! I wasn’t there.”
Bertha. Hedvig. My sister. Gone. And Ida, left behind to care for the little ones. Papa, tending to Bertha. Would he have sent Ida and the others somewhere safe? I looked at the date. It was written April 8. Bertha had died on the sixth.
“Mama.” I put my arms around her as she rocked and cried. “Mama.” I kept my composure. I’d cry later. “We must go to the charities commission. We must find a way to get home.”
“No, no begging.” She looked at me as though I’d suggested she take