Enchanted Islands Page 6

  After a while, the city behind us and the fields of wheat stretching out on all sides like I imagined a vast ocean would, Rosalie said, “Would you like some water?”

  It wasn’t until then that I realized I was desperately thirsty. “Yes, please,” I said, adopting her overly formal diction.

  Rosalie reached into her bag and pulled out a stoppered bottle. I drank deeply and handed it back, and Rosalie sipped from it. Then she pulled out a deck of cards. “Shall we play?”

  We played war on the arm of the seat between us, and as usual, Rosalie beat me. We played a second game, and it began to get dark. I wondered where we would sleep, but Rosalie did not appear to be worried, so I tried to adopt her air of confident traveler. I’d never been farther than out on the lake in a canoe, but Rosalie had been to Milwaukee, so she knew better than I what a train trip entailed.

  At nine we reached Florence Junction. The young man gathered his belongings. “I wish you a good day, ladies,” he said, his first words to us, with the hint of an Eastern European accent. I wished I’d had the courage to speak to him.

  The conductor came around to do up the beds. What an ingenious contraption: The benches became a bed, and two more berths were lowered from the ceiling to form bunk beds. Rosalie and I volunteered to take the top bunks; the Norwegian ladies were much too stout and old to climb. I was relieved because I was worried that the beds might fall on me in the middle of the night.

  “Keep your belongings on your body,” Rosalie whispered. “I’ve heard stories.”

  “What stories?”

  “That at night, they drug the cabins and steal everyone’s money.”

  I gasped. Could this be true?

  Rosalie saw my face. “I’m sure it’s just a story,” she said. “Otherwise, people would stop traveling by train if it happened lots, right?”

  I climbed into my bunk and shivered beneath the thin covers. The train pitched and tossed, and I was afraid that I would roll out of the berth should I fall asleep. So I stayed awake until the very wee hours, when I heard from Rosalie’s breathing that she wasn’t sleeping either.

  “Rosie,” I whispered. “Are you awake?”

  “Come over, then,” she completed my thought. I climbed in next to her. Her familiar wood scent calmed me, and I curled up next to her for warmth.

  “Oh, Fanny.” She sighed. “What have we done?”

  “We’ve rescued ourselves,” I said.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The train station in Chicago held more people than I’d ever seen. I gripped Rosalie’s hand tightly as we looked around.

  “What now?” I asked quietly.

  “What’s that?” she said.

  “What now?”

  Rosalie didn’t answer, though I know she heard me.

  “This way,” she said finally.

  Rosalie amazed me with her resourcefulness. She went straight to the Rock Island ticket counter and asked the woman where we might find lodging. She concocted a story on the spot that we were going to visit our aunt but wanted to stay in Chicago for the night to wash off the train grime. The woman smiled and told us where we might find a room for the night, someplace respectable but cheap. Had Rosalie been thinking about this falsehood, or did her mind spin tales that quickly? I might have found it chilling had I not been so afraid. I was trembling with anxiety, and I would have gotten straight back on a train for home if I thought I’d have any chance of figuring out which was the right one.

  We walked the few short blocks and found the place. If the reception clerk wondered at two young women traveling alone, he did not let it show. Instead, he gave us the keys to a small bedroom on the third floor, sparsely furnished, with one bed that we were to share. There was a washbasin, a lavatory down the hall. The room’s one window looked across the alley to a brick wall, and so the threadbare curtain was unnecessary. Rosalie and I both agreed without speaking that it would do just fine.

  *

  The next morning Rosalie bought us coffee and a bun each from the little shop in the bottom of the hotel. We were both on edge, and I was even a little cross. “Let’s have a day of sightseeing,” she said. “We can go see the Columbian Exposition buildings. We’ll look for work tomorrow.”

  We had the hotel manager draw us a map and headed down to the lake. Like our own Lake Superior, Lake Michigan gave off a cool breeze and we had to bend into the wind to make our way. Once we reached Michigan Avenue, though, the wind tapered off and the views opened up. It was beautiful. In the distance, down the wide road, was a gleaming white building, like the Parthenon must have been when it was newly built.

  “That must be it,” Rosalie said.

  We paid admission to the art museum and wandered around, never moving far from each other. Here were pictures I’d only ever seen in books, and those in black and white at that. Here were Degas, Turner, Renoir. We went to see the Greek statues, and I blushed at the naked men, but Rosalie stared with the interest of a physician. As we walked among the art, my apprehension that we’d made a mistake evaporated. Here is where we were meant to be, side by side, studying the great artistic achievements of man.

  My heart opened, the way it does when you are filled with the sense of potential. My steps were buoyed, and I let my imagination proclaim me university professor, artist. I imagined Rosalie and me, our houses adjacent, our broods playing together, even perhaps with the same governess, while we pursued our Great Works (what these would be, exactly, was nebulous, but forgive a poor young girl her reveries). I remember, even now, the wonderful lightness of spirit, which produced an equal lightness of body. I might have floated off with contentment. When one is low, one feels bogged down, weighed by forces that tie one to the earth. To the very spot. And yet in the museum I felt myself equal to the high-hung pictures, lost in their swirls and dots, reflected in their mirrors, and enveloped in their abstractions.

  Rosalie and I had a small lunch at a diner and seriously discussed our options. First, we pooled our money. Rosalie had twenty-three dollars, and I had twenty-one (after train tickets and food and the week’s lodging). We had enough, we thought, for four weeks, if we lived frugally. I made a list of all the jobs Rosalie might do.

  Childminder. Though Rosalie had a little brother, she had never had to take care of him, whereas I had wiped enough of my siblings’ bottoms to last a lifetime.

  Secretary. Again, the experience was mine.

  Maid. I was more likely to be successful at this, since I had the experience with washing and helping my mother with chores, whereas Rosalie had never so much as even folded a dressing gown.

  Apprentice to a trade. This was a bit nebulous, as we didn’t know which trade would accept unskilled apprentices.

  Waitress. This seemed the most likely prospect for Rosalie, as she was pretty and personable, and all the other professions were dominated by my meager skills.

  We discussed, seriously, the issue of school. It was now late May and Rosalie had forfeited her term by leaving when she did. She was reasonably confident, though, that she could easily pass an entrance exam, perhaps even skip a year and enter her senior year of high school. I could teach her typing and shorthand in the evenings, and she could be ready to work in one year. In the meantime, I would have to sacrifice and earn our living, and then it would be my turn. And who knows, perhaps I could pass a diploma equivalency exam and enter university at the same time Rosalie did. I was doubtful of this; it had already been two years since I’d been at a regular school, but I played along to buoy her spirits.

  We purchased a paper and turned to the help wanted ads, circling the most promising. I bought a map and several tokens for the elevated railroad and we went to bed that night full of excitement, believing that our new lives would soon begin.

  What a bitter disappointment the following day. I spent most of it in the downtown area, applying for secretarial jobs. But as soon as I introduced myself they said the position had been taken, or told me to leave my information and they’d call
me. It must have been my last name, Frankowski. In Chicago, the Polish immigration had been particularly strong, and I wasn’t sure if being Polish or being Jewish was the greater sin. In any event, I decided to turn my sights to Jewish firms in the port area, since I had more than a passing familiarity with the terms and issues thereof. There weren’t any positions listed in the paper. Perhaps these things weren’t advertised but rather passed on via word of mouth. I’d have to arrive at the right time, and slot myself into a place before word got out.

  By now it was past one and I was hungry. I bought a hot dog from a vendor and ate it greedily. It wasn’t until after I’d swallowed the last bite that I realized it was most likely not kosher and contained swine. The thought brought it back up into a garbage can on the corner of State and Madison, and I wiped my mouth, looking around to make sure no one had seen me get sick.

  “Are you all right, dear?” a voice asked, and an elderly woman put her hand on my forearm. This expression of kindness brought tears to my eyes. “Can I help, at all?” I could hear from her voice she was Irish.

  “No, thank you,” I managed. I ran, the tears streaming freely now. I was embarrassed, and disappointed in myself. Perhaps I was, after all, still a girl.

  I ended up in the West Loop where the buildings petered out into tenements, and then, when I crossed a bridge over the river, into warehouses and derelict buildings. I turned around and walked back—like in Duluth, you could always orient yourself by the lake, where the buildings stopped abruptly like they were playing a game of Grandmother’s Footsteps.

  It had begun to rain, and I didn’t have a jacket or umbrella. Or anything, really, besides the skirt Rosalie had loaned me, which was too large. I had taken it in with embroidery thread, which was coming loose, and I clenched it to my body to make sure it didn’t fall down as I walked.

  I hoped, for her sake, Rosalie had had better luck, but when I entered our hotel room she was sitting on the bed, her head in her hands. I laughed, even though I wanted to cry, because it was rather funny, me bedraggled from the rain, holding up a skirt that didn’t fit and her assuming the position of Rodin’s Thinker. Rosalie didn’t know why I was laughing, but she joined in until we were both on the floor rolling around.

  Such an extremity of emotions. I now understand that it was a response to anxiety, but then it just was the way things were, tragic and funny all at the same time.

  *

  It was Rosalie who, the following day, hit upon the idea to go to a synagogue in the morning to see if perhaps our co-religionists could help us.

  “Rosalie, you’re brilliant.”

  “At the very least maybe they’ll have some clothes for you so you don’t have to walk around holding your waist all the time.”

  But how to find a synagogue? Our hotel clerk wouldn’t know, that was obvious. I suggested we look for a directory, and that we would probably find one in the library.

  The main library in Chicago was a grand thing, on a much bigger scale than our little house of learning in Duluth. I tried to walk softly. Rosalie asked the librarian where we could find a directory.

  “You’ll have to speak up, dear,” she said.

  “A directory,” she repeated. Another librarian shushed her.

  The deaf librarian brought over an enormous volume. “Here you go. You can look at it on that table there, then bring it back here.”

  We spread it on the table. The type was tiny. Rosalie looked under “Synagogues.” There was no listing.

  “Try ‘Houses of Worship.’ Or ‘Worship,’ ” I offered. But there was nothing there either.

  “Temples,” Rosalie said. And there was a list, of all the synagogues in the world, well over fifty. I could hear Rosalie gasp too. There were four synagogues in Duluth, and everyone knew which one everyone attended (or didn’t attend, as the case often was).

  We split up the copying, and I started from the bottom. “I’m tempted,” Rosalie said after a while, “to take the page.”

  “How?” I asked.

  “You make a coughing noise and that masks the sound of the page ripping.”

  “Rosalie!” I was shocked.

  “I just said I was tempted,” she said. “Don’t be so censorious.”

  I made a note on my piece of paper to look up the word.

  Finally we finished our list. Rosalie turned the pages of the directory to the listings of residents.

  “What are you looking for?” I asked.

  “Nothing.” Rosalie had become more secretive since we got to Chicago, seeming to draw her own conclusions and neglecting to share them with me. I didn’t want to say anything to her for fear of upsetting her further.

  We went straightaway to the closest synagogue on the list, but it was a run-down building and two men sitting on its steps glared at us. The next one looked like a school. It was plain and nondescript, hardly an inspiration for worshipping the Almighty. But by that point I wanted to use the toilet, so we went inside.

  The receptionist looked us over and was obviously unimpressed. Rosalie explained our presence patiently, saying that we were cousins, recently orphaned, who were looking for work and to finish school. When she stopped talking, the woman didn’t respond.

  “May we speak with the rabbi?” Rosalie asked.

  The woman shook her head slowly. “I don’t think we can bother him with this.”

  “May I at least use your toilet?” I asked.

  The woman pointed down the hall behind her, as if words were too expensive to waste on directions. I left Rosalie to work her charms and proceeded down a tiled hallway with unmarked windowed doors. The rooms were all dark. Finally I found a door marked “Girls,” cementing my suspicion that this had once been a school. I used the toilet and was washing my hands when the door opened and a woman about my mother’s age walked in.

  “Oh!” she said. “You startled me. I thought I was the only one here.”

  I smiled in apology.

  “I’ve just come in to loosen my girdle a bit. For some reason I can’t breathe today. It might be that the reason is the cookies I had yesterday.”

  I smiled again.

  “Do you think you could help me?” she asked. “I can do it myself but it involves a lot of twisting and turning around.”

  “All right,” I said.

  She put her back to me. “No one is around today. I thought the Aid Society meeting was today, but I got the date wrong, it’s on Thursday, and now I’ve come all the way downtown for nothing.”

  I nodded, then realized she couldn’t see me. “Oh.”

  She untucked her blouse from her skirt and I could see the stays of the corset digging into her flesh. She had cinched it way too tight.

  I undid the knot and her lungs filled with air. “This is barbaric, what we do to ourselves, but it’s almost worth it for the relief you feel when it’s over, isn’t it? Now tie it back up, tight, but not too tight, there’s a dear.”

  I had never tied a corset before. In Duluth women rarely wore them. But it didn’t seem too hard. Just pull on the strings and tie a knot. Knots I could do. The woman had a mole on her right shoulder, an angry brown stub.

  “There you go,” I said.

  “Thank you,” she said. “What’s your name, dear? Why aren’t you at the rally?”

  “Fanny—Frances.”

  “I’m Mrs. Bloomfeld. Who are your people?”

  I was confused by the question. Then I realized she was asking my last name. I opened my mouth and without even thinking about it, I said, “Frank,” leaving off the Polish “owski.”

  “I think I know them. Bankers, right?”

  “I’m not sure,” I answered. “We might be from a different part of the family.”

  “All the young people have gone to the rally. Why aren’t you with them?”

  “I didn’t know about it,” I said. I looked at our reflection in the mirror. Mrs. Bloomfeld’s hair was curly around her face and long in the back where she’d gathered it into a ta
il. She smoothed it with her fingers.

  “My cousin and I just arrived in town a few days ago,” I said. “We’re orphans.”

  Mrs. Bloomfeld revealed herself neither impressed nor particularly sorry for our plight. Maybe lots of “orphans” passed through the synagogue.

  “Maybe if you hear of some work,” I said.

  She smiled at herself in the mirror, turning her chin back and forth.

  “Where are you staying?” she asked. I gave the name of the hotel.

  “Oh that’s terrible,” she said, but gave no further comment. “Well, nice to meet you, Frances Frank. Thanks for the help with the laces.”

  When I returned to the entrance, Rosalie had indeed charmed the receptionist, who was pouring through a synagogue directory. I stood back and let them look, their heads bent together, whispering. That’s how Rosalie and I must have looked, I realized, when we were studying. When Rosalie and the woman were done conferring, Rosalie kissed her on the cheek and promised to come and see her soon. I waved goodbye.

  “Oh, she was nice.” Rosalie linked her arm with mine. “We are to come to the Young Ladies’ Aid Society meeting on Thursday. And I think I shouldn’t bother to look for any work before then.”

  I was not convinced that we should give up our search, but I let myself be persuaded by Rosalie’s good mood to go to Oak Street Beach, where we lay in the sun in our shirtsleeves and had an ice cream. Rosalie bunched her skirt up to her knees and took off her stockings to “get some sun on my legs,” but we were too close to the buildings to really feel we were at the beach. City rules applied, not beach lawlessness. Rosalie had always suffered from a lack of modesty. Now, in light of what I knew about her, I wondered which was her natural inclination and which a response to her circumstances. We never spoke about what had happened. I took Rosalie’s lead, and it was clear she never meant to discuss it.