A House of Tailors

  “All right,” he said, almost smiling.

  I had to smile, too. He had forgiven me for Mrs. Koch. And someday I would be going home to Breisach after all.

  1 August 1871

  My dear Dina,

  I am taking a quick moment to write to you. I have been working on my trousseau with Mama and Friedrich: sheets and pillowcases with lace that we are crocheting by hand at night, petticoats with pleats and borders, . . .

  We have discovered something. Friedrich has that magic in his fingers that you have. He sews beautifully, and better still, he loves it. Even at the age of ten he tells Mama that someday he will take over the business and she can rest and eat lemon cookies with Frau Ottlinger.

  So it is Franz who now has the picture of the Fifth Avenue Hotel and Madison Square.

  Krist sends his best to his “almost sister.” And I send my dearest love to you.

  Katharina

  My dear Dina,

  Last night I dreamed about you. You were laughing. It makes me happy to think that.

  Love,

  M.

  fourteen

  Everything ached: my feet, my wrists, my spine from leaning over the machine. But the worst was my neck. When I lifted my head to reach for another pair of trousers, I could feel a stabbing pain that began in the back of my head and went through my neck so that I wondered if I’d ever stand straight again.

  But every stitch I took was one stitch closer to passage on a ship. Too bad I had no idea of the cost.

  Each week the Uncle gave me American paper money, and I went straight to the trunk and tucked it behind the torn lining.

  Barbara spent her days going from kitchen to roof, washing, then dragging baskets up to hang wet shirts and diapers. She swept the dusty apartment and cut vegetables for that night’s supper. In between she did the finishing work on the trousers, sewing on buttons, snipping threads, or catching openings in the seams that I had missed.

  At home that never would have happened. We sewed slowly and carefully, pressing each seam as we went along with irons that waited for us on the stove. But here everything depended on speed.

  Barbara was the only one of us who seemed happy. Maria spent hours crying and throwing her blocks because her molars were coming in, and the Uncle spent his evenings taking over where I left off, yawning, his face determined and grim.

  “Someday,” he said to Barbara, “things will be different. I will have a shop and life will be easier.”

  I thought the same thing as I raced the machine down the long seams of the trousers: Someday I will be home. I will open the door and there they will be, looking up at me, surprised. . . .

  Barbara smiled and nodded at both of us, then took five cents to buy a little green plant for the windowsill. “Watch,” she told us. “It will bloom this winter. Better than anything else we could spend it on.”

  The Uncle and I looked at each other. For once each of us knew what the other was thinking. We even smiled, quick smiles. Neither of us would have spent five cents on a plant.

  Barbara patted Maria, patted me, and patted the Uncle’s head as he sat sewing. She even patted the leaves of the little plant.

  And she sang, all day, every day. It was an American song about a small brown jug. And Maria and I joined in when she got to the part Ha, ha, ha, you and me, little brown jug, how I love thee!

  Sometimes Kristel, the girl who lived downstairs, brought up coffee and small squares of biscuit, and we’d stop for a half hour, but most of the time Barbara and I were alone, bent over our work as Maria crawled through the piles of trousers that the Uncle brought home once a week. She threw her blocks or sucked on rags dipped in sugar to make her forget about the pain in her gums.

  The piles of trousers never seemed to diminish. To get to the bedrooms, or the kitchen, or out the door, we had to climb over them.

  And the Uncle rolled his eyes at me when I tried to speak English. “Kristel is teaching me,” I told him.

  “Kristel barely speaks English herself,” he said.

  I narrowed my eyes at him. When I reached home in Breisach, I would never speak English again! Never!

  One afternoon, covered with bits of thread and lint from the fabric, I decided I had had enough. I finished the pockets on a pair of pants, pushed my chair back, and stood up, rubbing my neck and shoulders.

  I looked into the kitchen. Barbara’s hair was limp and her face shiny with perspiration.

  I went in and stood beside her, moving her hands from her work. “Let’s go for a walk. Let’s sit in the park.”

  Barbara stood up and began to heat the flatiron on the stove, her hand on her back. “It’s too much to get Maria ready,” she said.

  “I’ll take her with me gladly,” I said, bending down to look under the table as Maria peered out at me.

  Barbara reached into her pocket. “Take a penny,” she said. “Go for a walk. Go alone. You’ll be able to do twice as much afterward for the rest.”

  I felt my face flush. How generous she was. But I was as worried about saving as the Uncle. I shook my head. “Keep your penny.”

  She smiled, though, and dropped it into my pocket.

  I touched her shoulder, then brushed myself off, picked up the bottom of my skirt to straighten it out, and at the last minute went into the bedroom to put on my hat in case I saw the boy in the tailor shop.

  Heaven! I had left the hat at Mrs. Koch’s house and never even missed it.

  I put on the other one, the one I had worn the day I arrived in Brooklyn, and went down the stairs. The door to Kristel’s apartment, which she shared with her mother and four sisters and brothers, was open. I waved at her.

  The door to the apartment below was open, too, and I peeked in. Dust motes and smells of old food and milk filled the air. The pan under the icebox had overflowed not once but many times, leaving stains on the floor, and sometimes puddles that spread under the table. And today Mrs. Haberton lay on the sofa, her face red with fever. Her son bent over her.

  I went by quickly, down the stairs and out the door. It was cooler outside, a beautiful fall day, with a sky so blue it almost hurt to look at it.

  Homesick weather.

  To make it even harder, I could hear women sitting out on their stoops talking. I could understand every word. Of course, they were speaking German. After all, as the Uncle had told me, many of the German immigrants came right here to this section of Brooklyn called Bushwick.

  Two boys ran ahead of me, chasing each other, so close to the dray horses clopping by that I raised my hand to my mouth. But after a moment they reached the other side of the street, safe. Laughing and pushing each other, they could have been my brothers. I felt an ache in my throat.

  But after a few steps I told myself to stop thinking about home for an hour. I heard the whir of wings and looked up, shading my eyes. A streak of gray went by overhead: birds beating their pale wings against that blue sky. Pretty. I wondered what they were called.

  The ice cream man’s cart with its striped umbrella was just ahead of me. I could almost taste the cold drizzle of ice in my mouth.

  Forget about home, I told myself. Forget about trousers with their four endless seams, their two pockets, their three buttons.

  Forget about all of it.

  With my carefully chosen ice cream, I sat on a bench, eating it as slowly as I could to make it last. Katharina would love it. I wondered why we’d never had it at home. Maybe because we were never outside at this time of day, always working in the sewing room.

  A moment later the boy from the tailor shop sat down next to me, an ice cream in his hand, too. His teeth were white and straight when he smiled at me.

  “My name is Johann,” he said, wiping the drips off the side of his cup with one finger. “John now.”

  I didn’t answer him. In Breisach I would never have spoken to a stranger.

  “In America it’s different,” he said, almost as if he had walked into my brain and looked around to see what I was t
hinking.

  I couldn’t help smiling, but I kept my eyes down.

  “Your name is . . . ,” he began.

  I took a taste of my ice cream.

  “Hedwig?”

  I shook my head.

  “Anna Maria?”

  Another shake. Another taste of ice cream.

  “Juliana?”

  I smiled. It was my favorite name.

  “Ah, Juliana. That’s my grandmother’s name. She lives in Freiburg.”

  Freiburg. Grandmother’s house.

  I turned to him. Ice cream forgotten. Manners forgotten. “Where?”

  “Water Street.”

  Not far from the Rhine. He knew the swell of it on a stormy day. He knew the barges, and the small birds that hovered over the water looking for fish. I rubbed my eyes with my thumbs.

  “How long have you been here?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “It seems like forever.”

  “Yes.” He nodded. “I am here three years.”

  He was older than I. Maybe just those three years. I wanted to tell him about the terrible pains in my chest when I thought about Breisach, about how when I awoke in the morning I didn’t want to open my eyes in such a strange place.

  But I thought he must know it, too.

  “And sewing . . . ,” I began.

  “I want to be a locksmith.” His face lighted. “To make beautiful heavy keys, thick locks.” He broke off. “And you?”

  A locksmith, I thought, like Papa. “I don’t want to sew, either.” But then I thought about the hats I had made, the excitement of choosing fabric, the planning, adding lace, or flowers, or feathers. But that was different, not the same as the drudgery of the long seams, the endless hems, the boring pockets. Fashioning hats didn’t count as sewing.

  We were silent, watching the horses clop by, listening to the oompah-pah of the German band playing music on the corner. And then we saw a funeral carriage, its sides made of glass so we could see the coffin inside, and people walking behind.

  “Dead from the smallpox, I guess.” Johann turned toward me. “It’s getting worse every day. The health department comes to knock on people’s doors and take the sick to the hospital.” He shook his head. “It’s to stop the spread of the disease, they say, but most people who go to the hospital die, packed in tight with very little care.”

  I thought of the red ribbons Barbara and I had put around the apartment even though the Uncle said it was nonsense.

  My ice cream was gone. The time had gone, too. I had to get back before the Uncle did, to make a dent in that pile of trousers that was waiting for me. I nodded at Johann; then I stood up and started down the street.

  He called after me. “Come back tomorrow, Juliana.”

  I thought I just might do that. I might even tell him my real name.

  fifteen

  I saw the health department wagon in front of our place, the two men with their dark beards knocking on someone’s door, just as Johann had said. I hurried past them, but one called after me. “Say hello to the little girl who waves at herself.”

  He meant Maria, I realized, but I was too afraid to answer. I took the stairs as quickly as I could, happy to see the apartment door. The Uncle was waiting in the hallway, walking back and forth.

  “Dina,” he said, sounding excited. “You’re to come with me now, to Mrs. Koch.”

  My eyes opened wide. I never wanted to see Mrs. Koch or her beautiful house again. I felt my face flush every time I thought of that morning with her breakfast and the hats. But the Uncle was hurrying me out the door. I went past the kitchen first, seeing a plate of cakes on the table, and took one to nibble on as we went down the stairs.

  “Does she ever stop eating?” the Uncle muttered to himself, taking enormous steps. “Mrs. Koch is waiting. Waiting for you.”

  Downstairs he stopped at the door, looking at me, shaking his head. “The cake.”

  I brushed the crumbs off my mouth and straightened my old hat.

  “Your collar, not the cleanest.”

  I stopped there in the street, next to the building, and quickly unbuttoned the collar, turning it inside out. “What else?” I asked.

  “I think that’s all.”

  “What does she want, anyway?” I asked.

  “Mrs. Koch does not tell me, and I do not ask,” he said. “I take care of her horses, her barn, her garden. And that’s enough.”

  Ten minutes later we were there, going up those steps, my hand on the railing, my pulse ticking somewhere in my throat. We stopped in Aunt Ida’s kitchen while she went upstairs to knock on the parlor door to tell Mrs. Koch I was there.

  The Uncle was already out the back door on his way to the garden when he turned. “Say yes, say no, and otherwise, don’t talk,” he said.

  “You’re making me nervous,” I said.

  “You don’t know what it is to be nervous,” he told me, but he was smiling just a little.

  I tried to smile, too. “You’re right.”

  “For once,” he said, closing the door in back of him.

  I didn’t really have time to be nervous. Aunt Ida came bustling back, tugging at my skirt, straightening my hat, my sleeves. “You look fine. Go into the parlor.”

  “Where . . .”

  She rolled her eyes. “I’ll take you, or you’ll end up in a closet somewhere.”

  Upstairs, Aunt Ida reached out to knock, and then she was gone.

  Mrs. Koch was waiting for me. I caught my breath. Dangling from her fingers was my hat. My pink hat with the droopy brim.

  I looked from the hat to her face. I hadn’t remembered what she looked like. It had only been a second or two from the time she screamed to the time Aunt Ida had rushed me out of there.

  Mrs. Koch had a friendly face, with large dark eyes, and she wore a white lace morning cap over her faded red hair. Old-fashioned, those caps; only people like Grandmother wore them now.

  She pointed to a chair and I slid into it. “Talk,” she said, leaning forward. “Tell me about yourself.”

  And so I did. I told her the terrible thing I had done, I told her about Breisach and Katharina, and sewing, and a machine for straw hats. I told her about my river as it rushed along its cement banks, and König, my cat, and Franz and Friedrich. Mrs. Koch nodded all the while.

  I stopped suddenly and closed my mouth.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked.

  I swallowed. “I think I wasn’t speaking English.”

  “No matter, I came from Heidelburg a long time ago.” She waggled her hand. “You are speaking both, half German, half English.”

  “The Uncle said I don’t speak well.”

  She laughed, leaning even closer. “I can just imagine. He’s a little irritable.”

  Irritable. I ran my tongue over the word. I didn’t know what it meant, but I liked the sound of it.

  “Tell me about this,” Mrs. Koch said, patting the hat in her lap.

  “The hat?”

  I was off again, speaking one sentence in my own language, supplying the few words I knew in English here and there. I told her about the hat I had given to Katharina and the pattern from Elise. I leaned forward to explain how I had snipped away the bottom drawer of the dresser, and as I told her, she reached up to take off her morning cap and put my hat on her head.

  I stared at her, and then—how did I have the nerve—I moved forward to tilt the hat just a bit, fluffing the lace, and shook my head at her.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked.

  “Wrong color,” I told her slowly. “And the brim . . .”

  She went to the mirror. “You’re right about the color, but the brim is what makes this hat unusual.” She twirled around. “How would you like to make me a hat just like this one?”

  sixteen

  Every day the leaves became more golden, the sky the color of fall: sharp blue, and cloudless. I found the materials for Mrs. Koch’s hat in a store called A. T. Stewart, and used Elise’s pattern, excep
t that I formed the base with buckram, which was stiff but not so rigid that I couldn’t bend the edges to frame her face.

  I had to laugh when Mrs. Koch told me no one else would have a hat like it. Of course not, since the bent edges were a mistake.

  It was such a happy week, working on that hat, finishing it, trying it on Barbara and then on myself.

  I tried not to think about the smallpox disease that so many people in our neighborhood had. On one of my trips to the park, Johann told me some people were being vaccinated against it.

  A strange word, vaccination. I nearly fainted when I heard it meant to puncture the skin with a needle filled with the cowpox disease. How terrible, even though I heard that the Prussian soldiers had all been vaccinated during the war.

  One morning I awoke uneasily, thinking about the day ahead. The Uncle was leaving, driving Mrs. Koch in her carriage to a lake somewhere in New York. Even though it was out of season, she wanted to take the waters for her constitution. They would be gone at least a week.

  Taking the waters I understood. In Baden, people took the waters all the time for their health. I wished Barbara and Maria could do that, too.

  Maria had been sick for a few days, now her face flushed with fever, and the night before, Barbara’s face had been red, too, her eyes heavy as she bent over the little girl, checking her arms, her legs, her stomach for signs of the pox. But “Nothing,” she told me with relief. “Not one mark.”

  I dressed and went into the kitchen, planning my day: Run up a few pairs of trousers to make the Uncle happy before I began a second hat for a friend of Mrs. Koch. Sweep the apartment, which gathered grime from outside every moment. Go downstairs for water and wash Maria’s diapers. It was going to be a busy day.

  The Uncle was still in the kitchen, his hand on Barbara’s hair, looking worried. The Uncle, worried! We could hear Maria screaming in her crib. She sounded very much like the Uncle. I had to smile. Maria was much more appealing than he was.

  “I’ll bring her a bottle,” Barbara said.

  “She is like you, Dina, that baby,” the Uncle said.

  And as I stared at him in shock, he sighed. “I must leave now.”