Chapter 8 A Bra for Esther
The window Angela had opened in Dr. Larch’s office was still ajar.
The Winslows could hear the hullabaloo all the way from the girls’ division, where the girls were weeping and wailing.
“Esther has been packed and ready to go for hours—she wouldn’t wait till she met you,” Edna explained to the Winslows.
“Esther read your letters—she decided she liked you,” Larch told them. “If you decide you don’t want her, she’ll try to go with you anyway,” the doctor forewarned the Winslows.
“She is taking forever to say goodbye to the girls—it’s her long goodbye that makes them cry!” Edna exclaimed.
“Esther will keep it short with the boys, but they’ll cry harder,” Nurse Angela predicted.
“All of them should be happy for Esther—Esther has found a family!” Larch shouted.
“They’re happy for Esther, Wilbur—they’re just sad for themselves; they’re going to miss her,” Angela said.
“We’re all going to miss her,” Dr. Larch told the Winslows.
“You should tell them about the tattoo before Esther gets here,” Edna reminded the doctor.
The Winslows watched Nurse Angela close the window.
Either the girls stopped crying or their lamentations no longer penetrated Dr. Larch’s office.
The tattoo story turned out to be interwoven with Larch’s third trip back to Portland—the one he took with Esther.
He’d had time to prepare her for the meeting with the rabbi at Shaarey Tphiloh.
Esther understood that one of the synagogue’s leaders would be there; she knew why they wanted to meet her, not only to give her the passports.
Before they boarded the train to Portland, Dr. Larch told the fourteen-year-old that she’d been born in Vienna, and what had happened to her mother.
Esther’s reaction to her mother’s murder was very composed, Larch said to the Winslows.
“Those two women should be found and killed, but that won’t happen,” was all Esther said about it.
More surprising to Larch was Esther’s reaction to Portland; she remembered more of the Old Port than he expected.
They’d arrived the night before their appointment at the synagogue, and they stayed in a hotel near the waterfront.
They had dinner in a fish place, where they overheard a conversation.
A tattoo shop was going under, or it was sunk from the start.
It had never worked. “Sailors get tattooed, don’t they?
Why would a tattoo shop sink to the bottom in Portland? ” Esther asked Dr. Larch.
“I haven’t the slightest idea—a tattoo is indelible, you know,” Larch told her. “The pigment is inserted into punctures in the skin—it’s permanent, Esther.”
“I know. I want one. I want to talk to a tattooer about it,” Esther said.
This was when the story of the sinking tattoo shop was interrupted by the boys—their piteous cries were coming from the floor above Larch’s office, where they were supposed to be in their beds.
No boy could have slept through the sounds of such unrelenting sorrow.
The boys’ plaintive howls reflected their unending misery.
“Good grief!” Larch exclaimed, getting up from his desk.
He stomped off to the staircase in the hall, shouting upstairs to the boys.
They were beside themselves with anguish over Esther’s departure.
“She has found a family—be happy for Esther, you whiners!” he shouted to them.
“And don’t take all their clothes, Esther! ” Larch called to her.
When Dr. Larch came back to his office, Nurse Angela was perturbed. “The boys aren’t whiners, Wilbur—they just love her, like the rest of us,” Angela told him.
“Esther has already taken some of the boys’ clothes. She’s taller than they are—most of their clothes are too small for her,” Edna explained to the Winslows.
“Esther doesn’t need another flannel shirt—the boys must be out of flannel shirts, and they don’t have anything else that fits her,” Nurse Angela told the Winslows.
“Esther doesn’t like to wear women’s clothes?” Constance asked the nurses.
“She likes men’s clothes better,” Edna answered.
“Esther won’t wear a bra at all—she just plain refuses,” Angela said to the Winslows.
“Esther is small-breasted, and she’s only fourteen—I think she can get away with not wearing a bra,” Dr. Larch told them all. As for the three women in the doctor’s office, Constance included, their united expressions stood in contradiction to Larch’s opinion.
All Constance said was: “We’ll do our best to find a bra for Esther—one she likes.”
“I wish you luck with that,” Larch told Thomas, who just smiled. Given all the women in the Winslows’ extended family, Thomas had learned to mind his own business when it came to bras.
The sounds of distress from the boys upstairs were somewhat subdued when Edna urged Dr. Larch to hurry up and finish the tattoo story.
It was after dark, but not late at night, when Larch took Esther to Anchor Al’s on Commercial Street.
Al was a maritime tattooer—from New York, another seaport.
When they arrived, he was packing up his tattoo flash: anchors and mermaids, tall ships at sea, true-love tattoos—bleeding hearts pierced with daggers.
For Esther’s sake, Larch was hoping against a mermaid; he still didn’t know exactly what Esther wanted.
Al knew Esther was the one who wanted a tattoo, notwithstanding that she most likely wasn’t old enough to get one.
“If I had to guess, young lady,” the tattooist began, “you’re not lookin’ for a bleedin’ heart, or a tattoo of a seafarin’ kind.”
“She’s not old enough to get a tattoo, but she has imagined one in her future,” Larch told the tattooer.
“It’s just words, no pictures—no sharks or sea serpents,” Esther began. She sounded apologetic.
“Words mean as much as pictures, young lady,” the old maritime man assured her. “I’m goin’ back to the Bowery, but tell me what words you’re thinkin’ of, and where you imagine puttin’ ’em.”
Dr. Larch knew Esther well enough to know that he should have been watching her, but he wasn’t.
The bare breasts of the mermaids might have distracted him; as Larch later told the Winslows, the mermaids’ breasts were “harbingers” of Esther’s tattoo.
When Larch belatedly turned his attention to Esther, she’d already unzipped her parka and unbuttoned her flannel shirt; she was untucking her T-shirt.
Before Larch could stop her, Esther had hiked her T-shirt up to her chin—exposing her long torso, from her collarbones to below her navel.
Anchor Al maintained a respectful dignity.
“No bra, Connie,” Thomas reminded her.
“I know, Tommy,” Constance said crossly.
“I want the words here—if they’ll fit, if the letters won’t be too small to read,” Esther explained to the old New Yorker.
“Not that you’ll be showing this tattoo to everyone, I hope,” Dr. Larch cautioned her.
“You know the words I want—you know everything I’ve read and what I like,” she said to Larch.
“I don’t care if no one but me ever sees it, and I’ll have to read it backward in a mirror—where the letters will be reversed.
” Larch knew then what the tall girl’s tattoo would be, provided Esther’s torso could accommodate the lengthy passage.
Larch had heard her read Jane Eyre to the girls—later, to the boys.
When she was reading aloud, Esther always read a certain passage twice.
Larch knew Esther believed the passage merited repeating, especially to the boys.
“ ‘I care for myself,’ ” Esther started reciting. If not her words, her pretty breasts held the Bowery man’s attention. Esther’s breasts were noticeably smaller than those on the surrounding mermaids.
“ ‘I care for myself,’ ” Thomas Winslow repeated in reverence; as if on command, he stood at attention in Dr. Larch’s office.
Constance knew how many times he’d taught Jane Eyre to the uncaring boys at Pennacook Academy.
He’d hammered some sensitivity into those insensitive boys.
Thomas had made them memorize the passage near the end of Chapter Twenty-seven.
Even the dullest of those boys would remember this about Charlotte Bronte; the passage was the epitome of Jane’s indomitable spirit.
“ ‘The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am,’ ” Esther went on reciting to the old tattooer, “ ‘the more I will respect myself.’ ”
Larch was looking at the tattoo flash. Sharks and sea serpents beat staring at Esther, who went on showing herself to the maritime man. “What are you lookin’ for?” Anchor Al asked Dr. Larch.
“If you have a scrap of paper around, I could write out the passage—so you can see it as a whole,” Larch told him.
“Sure thing, I got paper—I’m always drawin’ when I’m not tattooin’,” the old New Yorker said. When Larch began writing, Esther finally lowered her T-shirt. She watched what he wrote to make sure he got every word right.
“I know this passage almost as well as you do,” Larch told her.
“There are twenty-one words and five punctuation marks—three commas and two periods,” Esther informed the old tattooer. She’d not yet buttoned up her flannel shirt. Larch thought she wanted to be ready to show herself again.
“With tattooin’, you count the spaces, too—when you’re letterin’, you count the spaces and the letters, young lady,” Anchor Al told her. As Larch wrote out the passage, Esther counted the spaces and the letters; she would learn there were about the same number of spaces as there were words.
The old maritime man was sorting through his tattoo flash; he found some lettering fonts to show Esther. She didn’t like the Luminari, a boldface font—a composite of medieval styles. “Maybe it’s too dark and serious for you,” Al told her.