The Property of a Lady - Elizabeth Adler [52]
Their papers were checked carefully at Immigration, but there were a lot of Americans returning from the troubles in Russia, and the inspector was sympathetic. He smiled at Azaylee and patted the dog, and Missie and Sofia stared as the stamp was finally placed on their documents. They were really Americans now, and their new identity was official.
New York was big, sprawling upward and outward, noisy, dirty, intimidating, and bitterly cold. They found a small rooming house nearby that looked cleaner than the rest and counted their dollars and cents carefully while they searched for an apartment, but they soon found that an apartment was beyond their pocket: a couple of rooms maybe, and in the very cheapest area, the Lower East Side, where they could live unnoticed and unremarked on, just three more immigrants among thousands of others.
In the end, the only choice was between a dark room with a single window looking into an airshaft and a lighter, more expensive one with a window onto the street. Despite their poverty Sofia insisted they take the one with the window overlooking Rivington Street. It had a sink with a cold-water faucet in one corner and a shared toilet down the hall, and the furniture consisted of an ancient brass double bed, a small fold-up iron cot, a scarred unpolished wooden table, and four mismatched wooden chairs.
Missie could tell from Sofia’s face that she was thinking that this was the end of the line, they could sink no lower, and she was determinedly cheerful as she rushed them back down to Rivington Street, shopping among the pushcarts for the cheapest cotton sheets and blankets and the thinnest towels. She bought eggs and butter and bread for their supper and a few meat scraps mixed with rusk and a bone for the dog; she found a piece of flowered oilcloth to cover the stained wooden table and a bunch of shiny evergreen leaves to brighten up the place because it was March and there were no fresh flowers. And that night when they sat down to a simple feast of boiled eggs and crusty bread, with the dog gnawing contentedly on his bone beside them, they smiled at each other, thinking maybe their little room wasn’t so bad. And after all the running and hiding and the fear, it seemed a haven of peace and security.
As she tucked Azaylee into the sagging brass bed later that night, Missie said confidently, “Don’t worry, Sofia, tomorrow I shall get a job and we shall soon have a proper apartment of our own.”
Maryland
Now, looking back on those years, Missie smiled as she thought of the optimism of youth, when a boiled egg and a slice of bread, a roof of sorts over one’s head, and a bunch of green leaves decorating the table was just a beginning. And tomorrow would surely bring success.
She unpinned her brooch and put it away in its little Cartier box, and took out the old photograph album. As she looked through it, she thought what a beautiful child Azaylee had been; so sweet, so quiet, so gentle. A dream child that any mother would adore. Poor Azaylee, poor little girl, orphaned so tragically, and so young. Who could blame her for what happened later? Certainly not she.
She shut the album with a sigh as Nurse Milgrim came in bearing a tray with her nighttime cup of tea and her sleeping pill.
Maybe tonight, she thought, just for once, she would not have the dream. But she knew she would.
New York
It was another breathless New York day. The sun beat down from a brassy yellow sky, filling the stifling little room with the stink of fish and rotting cabbage from the pushcarts below in Rivington Street. The constant noise—of iron-rimmed wheels on the cobblestones and harsh voices bargaining shrilly in Yiddish, Russian, and Polish, of children crying and drunks cursing as they staggered down the street on their way back from the saloon—the dirt and gray grinding poverty filled Missie with