The Property of a Lady - Elizabeth Adler [110]
“That night he took me home with him. He himself lived in a basement room on Stanton Street, but there was a lean-to shed where he kept his pushcart and that is where I slept. I worked six days a week and earned three dollars, I had a roof over my head and food in my belly, and at night in my shed I was safe. I was one step away from an animal, but at least it was a step.
“Mr. Zametkin was seventy-five years old. He had left his wife and family behind in Poland thirty years before and come to America to seek his fortune. He never found it and therefore he never sent for them. He heard many years later that their village had been destroyed in the pogroms and they had all perished.
“For three years I lived in the wooden shed on Stanton Street, freezing in winter and boiling in summer. I was not happy, I was not unhappy; I was just a ‘being’ who existed. I cannot remember ever laughing,” he added quietly, “but nor do I remember crying anymore. I never went to school but I learned bits and pieces of English on the streets.
“One morning as usual I got the pushcart ready, loaded with the eyeglasses and scissors and padlocks and keys and bits and pieces that old Zametkin sold, and I waited for him to come to the shed as he did every morning at six-thirty. But this morning he did not show. After a while I walked around to his room and knocked on the door. There was no reply. It was never locked and so I went in. He was lying on the floor with his head bleeding and his eyes staring wide. I had seen that same frozen look in my father’s eyes and I knew he was dead. More—somebody had killed him, hit him over the head, murdering him for the few dollars he carried on his person. I heard noises at the door and looked up; there was a sea of faces, all staring at Zametkin and then back at me, and I knew what they were thinking. That it was me who had killed him.”
His voice faltered and Missie stared at him, spellbound, squeezing his hand tightly.
“The police came and took me away. I went quietly. I did not know what to say to them, only that he was my friend, that he was kind, that I worked for him and I would not do such a thing to old Mr. Zametkin. They put me in a cell and left me there. There was no window, just four stone walls, oozing water and slime. They turned off the lights and left me alone in the dark for a long time; I did not know whether it was day or night nor how much time had passed. I could hear the rustle of cockroaches and the whimper of rats and feel them brushing past me as I cowered on the bench. I felt the whole place was alive, seething with vermin. Every now and then someone came and thrust a plate of food at me and a tin mug of water, but I could not eat. No one came to see me, there was no one who cared. I fell into a despair so deep that nothing could remedy it.
“Then suddenly they came and turned on the light. Out,’ they said to me. ‘You are free.’
“They had caught the real murderer. He had killed a second man and this time someone had seen him. I was back on the streets again, verminous, filthy, and alone.
“I went back to my shed but it was already occupied by someone else’s pushcart and there was a padlock on the door. I slept that night on the street again, and the next day I went to the public baths and asked to be deloused. I came back to Rivington and asked among the vendors if anyone needed help. I worked a little here, a little there. And then someone told me that Mr. Mintz the pawnbroker was ill and needed somebody to watch over his business. I was twelve years old and not a big boy, but I did not have the look of the young. I was already an old person and Mintz knew this. He took me as his assistant and let me sleep in the shop. His wife had died the year before and his only daughter had left home as a young girl and never spoken to him again. He never knew where she went or what became of her. For three years I looked after the business, earning five dollars a week. No raise was offered and I was too afraid to ask for one in case