Chapter Two
Pittsburgh
I’ve learned how to hide my disgust. The sight of the men, their sounds, especially the way they smell—the reek of their skin, their breath, their desire. “You win more bees with sweet honey,” Mamma always chides. So sweet honey I try to be, even when the task tastes like sour vinegar.
Rent collection day means I’ve got to knock on each of these boardinghouse doors and deal with whatever I find staring back at me.
Mr. Jonas stands before me now, and he might just be the worst of them.
His whiskey breath hits my face in a warm wave, but I keep my gaze steady.
I resist the urge to recoil as he says: “I got it somewhere in here. Why don’t you step in, and we’ll have a look?
” The short, thick man creaks his door open wider, offering just enough room for me to pass between him and the doorframe.
There’s no way I’m stepping into his room.
“That’s quite all right, Mr. Jonas. I can wait.” My voice is courteous but firm as I remain where I am, feet planted in the hallway, where any number of our fellow boarders might be able to overhear our exchange. Or my cry for help, should I need to holler.
“Suit yourself,” the man responds, his stubbled face making plain his disappointment. “Give me a minute.”
I nod, flashing a bland smile as he slumps his shoulders and lumbers deeper into his room to scrounge up the two dollars he owes for December rent.
Just get it over with, I think to myself, fidgeting where I stand outside the doorway.
Each month it’s the same: Mamma and our landlord, a crusty old man by the name of Mr. Leonard, have worked out this deal by which I traipse up and down the hallways of this dingy boardinghouse, collecting the two dollars due from each of its tenants.
The place is filled with male boarders, save for Mamma, Kit, and me squeezed into our room on the second floor and one other couple—they claim to be brother and sister, but Mamma tells me she has her doubts.
“My girl can collect it all,” Mamma suggested to Mr. Leonard. “Save you hours of haggling and irritation. Look how pretty she is. No man would ever tell her no.”
When Mr. Leonard agreed to the idea, Mamma, ever the opportunist, slipped in: “In exchange, you just give us a break on ours, and we’ll call it square.”
So here I stand, every month, collecting rent in exchange for a quarter lopped off our bill.
And each month I loathe it more than the last. These men have landed here in this dirty, dark boardinghouse for a reason.
No wives, no children—at least, not any in sight.
Not here in these single rooms that smell of coal dust and sweat and defeat.
Each month at collection time Mamma has me wash my face and tuck my nicest white blouse into my knee-length navy skirt. She ties back my hair with a ribbon and reminds me to smile. “You are to be sweetness itself, you hear?”
I get the money. Knowing that otherwise Mr. Leonard will be cross with Mamma—and Mamma with me—I make sure to get as close to the full amount as I possibly can.
But it always feels as if I have to pay a steep price to do so.
The way their eyes linger and rove as I appear alone outside their bedroom doors.
They get to look, even as I stand far enough back that they can’t touch.
Thankfully Mr. Jonas is now all that remains between me and the completion of this month’s ordeal.
He, like nearly all the others in this establishment, is one of the men who rakes coal, or sweeps the railroad tracks, or hammers and hoists out on the Pittsburgh avenues where the mansions are being built.
And then they come home to this boardinghouse, the misery wafting off them like the grimy sweat on their skin.
He’s loitering inside his room now, looking at me expectantly.
“Here you go.” Finally, he puts a fistful of coins into my hand, his paw closing around my fingers.
My heart lurches. Why is he grabbing me like this?
My gaze flies up from the coins to meet his eyes.
They are two small beads of smoldering coal as he speaks, his voice little more than a hoarse whisper: “You sure are pretty, ain’t you? ”
I swallow, saying nothing in reply.
“You know, a nice girl like you, you don’t need to be in a place like this.
” My palm has gone clammy in his. He goes on, his hand closing tighter around mine.
“I got a house. A big house, out in the country. So big you’d take a wrong turn finding your way from the pantry to the kitchen.
But the maids would help you. I’m only here on business.
But I’ll be going back out there soon. I could bring you with me. ”
“Maybe,” I say. “That sounds awful nice.” When his eyes flash shock—and what is that, hope?
—I seize my chance and dart backward before he can stop me.
My fingers ache where he squeezed them, but they are yanked free.
Holding tight to the coins, I turn on my heels and dart back down the hallway.
I take the narrow dark stairs two at a time, and I don’t stop until I’m out in the alleyway, the cold December air hitting me with a most welcome wave.
I take off at a trot, even though I know Mr. Jonas isn’t following me.
I want to put as much space between myself and the inside of that building as I possibly can.
The coins jangle in my pocket, but I’d never dream of spending Mr. Leonard’s money.
No, I’ll go scour the spot behind Haudenshield’s Butcher, I decide.
Scrounge up a little something special for Kit and me to eat.
It is Christmas Day, after all—I remember this fact with a surge of emotion that comes at me too messy and muddled for me to even sort through it all, so I blink and try to stuff all those feelings back down, deep into that place between my heart and my belly.
The afternoon is frigid, and I’m wearing only my blouse and skirt, so I begin an exaggerated skip in the hopes of warming myself.
I shiver, but I force all the unpleasantness from my mind, banishing the memory of Mr. Jonas and his beady, expectant eyes.
It was as odious a task as always, but it’s done now.
I won’t need to make those rounds for another whole month.
And my daily schedule of going to and from school is different enough from most of these boarders’ work shifts that I likely won’t have to lay eyes on the revolting Mr. Jonas before then.
I’m young and I’ve been gifted with an inherently sunny disposition—in spite of the trying circumstances in which Mamma, Kit, and I currently find ourselves—so I’m generally quite skilled at pushing away my unhappy thoughts.
Skilled at it and well practiced, too. I’ve learned it the hard way: best to fight back at the first glimpse of gloom to keep an even bigger gloom away.
Like I did when Daddy left us. Daddy. Now I can’t ignore the tugging feeling, the ache that pulls on that place deep behind my belly.
Daddy left us, Mamma always says, her words tinged with the barbs of bitterness and resentment.
As if he meant to do it. No, Daddy died.
There was no choice in the matter. He’d never have left me had there been a choice.
Winn Talbot, my father—how I’d loved him.
He was both the steady ground beneath my feet and the open sky above my head.
Everyone loved him, friendly neighbor and small-town lawyer to all in our hometown of Tarentum.
Daydreamer, he always teased me that we should slip away together with the circus troupe that passed through our town each hot July.
And then in the cold winter, he’d take me skating across the frozen ponds; how I used to hoot and holler with joy, relishing both the risky thrill of the slick ice and the rock-solid comfort of knowing I was sure and safe in Daddy’s grip.
’Course, Daddy’s dreams for me were bigger than the circus—he always told anyone who would listen that I’d go to school, even high school and then college.
Not only his boy, Kit, but his daughter, Florence Evelyn, as well.
He taught me my letters, and I never saw him smile quite so big as when we’d settle in together and I’d read aloud to him and Kit.
I’d take one of Daddy’s arms around myself, and Kit would take the other.
Daddy loved Horatio Alger the best. “Rags to riches, my sweet Eve. Not that you’ll ever see rags.
But you’ll see the riches.” When it wasn’t the stories of Mr. Alger, it was the fairy tales of the Grimm brothers or the legends of King Arthur.
“You’re my Guinevere, darling. My little queen.
” Or the tales from The Arabian Nights. “Someday I’ll take you as far away as these places.
We’ll ride on camels and search the caverns for lost treasure. ”
Yes, he was the sun and moon for me, and I was his star. Now, with Daddy gone, it seems as though there is no more light.
He died suddenly. Something burst in his brain, was all I was able to make out from the doctor’s whispers with Mamma. She didn’t ever explain more. She just burned all the photographs that showed Daddy’s kind, smiling face and threw daggers with her eyes when I cried or asked for him.