Sing for Me Read online

  I was seven years old that winter night. But I remember every breath, taken and not taken. Every moment. I could tally them all. I could arrange rooms in my mind to exactly mirror the layout of Aunt Astrid’s weathered farmhouse. I could traverse them mentally, taking in the place. But I don’t. I go straight to my mistake, and the room that contained it. I go to the drafty upstairs bedroom where Sophy, newly born, lay in a cradle and under diminutive flannel blankets that until a few moments prior had belonged to my doll.

  My doll lay on the floor, her yarn hair caught beneath Dad’s boot.

  It had been a long, cold night at the end of a long, cold day at the end of the series of long, cold days that contained Mother’s labor. After delivering Sophy six weeks early, Aunt Astrid and the doctor were suddenly somewhere else. Rob was staying out of the way, watching from a shadowy corner. Mother lay in the bed, frighteningly silent and still. Dad kneeled over my doll’s cradle. He touched the deep indentations in Sophy’s skull, where the doctor’s forceps had left their mark. “She’s breathing now,” Dad was saying, and in the next moment, “Oh, no. Oh, daughter, breathe. Oh, apple of my eye, light of my life, live.”

  Up until that night, I had been the apple of Dad’s eye. Now this blue-tinged baby had taken possession not only of that distinction but also of my doll’s cradle.

  “Help her,” Dad cried, even as, with his finger and his thumb, he pried open Sophy’s fingernail-thin lips. He bowed low and covered her tiny mouth with his own. He blew air down her throat, into her lungs. Moments, breaths, passed. Then Dad sat back on the heels of his boots, ripping strands of hair from my doll’s head.

  “She’s all right,” he said, gasping. “She’s all right now, Tekla. She’s breathing again.”

  Mother didn’t respond.

  I wanted someone’s attention, preferably Dad’s, with Mother the way she was and Rob a shadow in the corner. So I knelt beside the cradle. I leaned over my newborn sister. I began to sing. I sang la, la, la, and lu, lu, lay. I sang pretty nonsense. I tried to be the apple of Dad’s eye, the light of his life.

  Instead, I woke the baby. Sophy, scarcely bigger than Dad’s hand, arched her back, rocking my doll’s cradle. She writhed, twisting the little blankets that Mother had stitched from Dad’s old handkerchiefs, which had been stitched from his even older shirts.

  “Stop it, Rose! Don’t you see what you’re doing? Stop singing! Be quiet!”

  Dad blamed me for Sophy’s first fit.

  Months later, and repeatedly throughout the years since, Mother, in her own way, blamed me, too. “Who knows what caused Sophy’s trauma? The forceps, maybe. Or maybe it was that episode she had just after her birth. If she’d just stayed sleeping, she might have gathered the strength she so badly needed to restore her health. But once that episode started, there was no turning back.”

  Stop it, Rose! Don’t you see what you’re doing? Stop singing! Be quiet!

  There was no turning back.

  Somehow over the years I remembered my voice, approaching song as one might approach a wild animal. Sophy, during her baths, was the first person to hear me softly sing. Later, Rob. Then Mother heard me, and she told Pastor Riis, who asked to hear me, too, and when he did, he called the choir director, Mr. Helt, long dead now, who gave me a hymnal and asked me to sing “Away in a Manger,” and then proceeded to give me free lessons, twice a week, for several years. Mr. Helt was a kind old man with crooked, broken teeth who was prone to cry when a song touched his heart. I learned to ignore his weeping; I simply did what he told me to do and kept singing, even as the tears rolled down his fleshy cheeks. I learned to drop my jaw, control my breathing, extend my range, transpose a song. Under Mr. Helt’s tutelage I learned my deep love for songs written in a minor key.

  It was Christmas Eve when I sang my first solo in church. I was nine years old, still getting used to Oak Park, still missing Aunt Astrid’s farm, and the praise I received afterward made me feel finally at home. By the time Mr. Helt died, I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else, singing anything other than hymns and sacred songs. I was fourteen. I was sure of the way the world worked, and of myself in it. And then one day only a few years later, I heard as if for the first time the music in alleys, on streets, from open windows, in shops. I couldn’t get these new songs, these worldly songs, out of my head; they held me in their sway. I started singing them when I thought no one else was around, only to look up and see Rob and, sometimes, Sophy, watching me wide-eyed, open-mouthed, delighted and amazed.

  Only Rob and Sophy have known about the wild animal, the late-blooming love that lurks inside me, deep beneath the surface of my every night and day. As of Friday night, Zane has a hint, too. But I think of all the people I know, only the man at Calliope’s, the man who knows my name, might truly understand what this love means to me and why, try as I might, I just can’t turn away from it. I just can’t let it go.

  I have taken hold of a lock of Sophy’s hair. She winces; as my thoughts got the better of me, I twisted her hair too tightly around my finger. Quickly, I let the little lock fall free. Quickly, quickly, I stroke her hair just the way she likes it. We’re moving into the altar call now. As the organist softly plays “Just as I Am,” Pastor Riis describes our human condition.

  “Come, all who are heavy laden. There’s no better time to give your life to Jesus. Accept His life-giving salvation and be received in baptism.”

  “Bap—” Sophy clears phlegm from her throat. I hold out a handkerchief and she spits into it, then hoarsely whispers, “tism.”

  There’s urgency in her voice. I smooth her hair, trying to calm her, but she bats my hand away.

  “Easter!”

  “Yes, you’ll be baptized this Easter, Sophy,” I whisper. “Hush, now.”

  Sophy’s expression relaxes. A man I’ve never seen before stirs in the pew across the way. Now he stumbles up the aisle toward Pastor.

  “He looks like he’s just off the bread lines,” Mother murmurs. “At least he’ll receive spiritual food today.”

  “Coffee,” Sophy says meaningfully.

  There’s always food at coffee hour. She wants to make sure he receives some of that, too.

  Mother nods and smiles. “I’ll invite him downstairs.”

  I open the hymnal to number 348, “Just as I Am.” I’m adjusting the hymnal so Sophy can see the words when Mother nudges me. I look up to see mustachioed Mr. Lund, who’s an usher today, beckoning to me from the end of the pew. “Go,” Mother says, so I ease myself from beneath Sophy. Mother slips into my place as I step into the aisle, still holding the hymnal.

  “Pastor asked that you lead the congregation in song, singing every other verse of the hymn as a solo,” Mr. Lund whispers through the long white strands of his mustache.

  Mother nods at me. She likes it when I sing in church. I like it, too, when I’ve had a little time to prepare. Good thing I know “Just as I Am” as well as I know the alphabet. I wouldn’t have opened the hymnal if it hadn’t been for Sophy.

  Mr. Lund steps aside, and I walk down the aisle and up to the podium. I raise my hands to lead the congregation in the first verse of “Just as I Am” and then see Rob sitting in the second row.

  “Tuesday night,” he mouths. “Calliope’s.”

  Worldly songs. Those are the only songs I’m thinking of now.

  I bring my hands down and, God bless the congregation, they sing the right words:

  Just as I am, without one plea,

  But that Thy blood was shed for me,

  And that Thou bidst me come to Thee,

  O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

  A hymnal is open on the podium. With the words in front of me like this, I can sing the second verse alone, as Pastor Riis requested:

  Just as I am, and waiting not

  To rid my soul of one dark blot,

  To Thee whose blood can cleanse each spot.

  O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

  I’ve nearly pushed the other songs out of m
y mind. It’s my soul that’s aching for that music, my soul that I have to cleanse.

  Though Pastor and the man are still praying, the hymn is done, so the service is as well. Mother beams at me. Nils, too. I manage not to look at Rob, who will only remind me of my blotted soul. I walk right past him down the aisle toward Mother and Andreas, who holds Sophy in his arms. Perhaps Nils will follow us down to the basement, and he’ll look at me like I’m all bright, celestial elements combined. Perhaps when that shock of hair falls in his eyes, I’ll be the one who reaches up and pushes it back into place.

  “Rose Sorensen!”

  I stop in my tracks at the sound of Dr. Nygaard’s voice.

  “Come here, please.”

  I turn back to the front of the sanctuary, where the Nygaards await me. Dr. Nygaard, a swarthy, bearish man, is tapping the head of his cane against the palm of his thick hand. The tapping beats out a warning: Do as I say or else you may not have a roof over your head. Mrs. Nygaard, a willowy woman, preserves her energy by leaning languidly into her husband. Her buffed nails flash as she drums her fingers against his arm.

  “Alas,” Dr. Nygaard says when I stand before them. “We’ve learned that the man in 2B, 546 Marquette left his apartment in a state of filth.” With the handle of his cane, Dr. Nygaard scratches meditatively at his chin. “We have a new family moving into 2B first thing tomorrow morning. I’m loath to ask you to do this on a Sunday, Rose, but we must have the place cleaned today.”

  “This family would be living on the streets if we hadn’t provided a place for them,” Mrs. Nygaard says coolly. “So we might consider it an act of service. You’ve been to our Marquette building before, haven’t you, dear?”

  I nod. Their Marquette building is just off Maxwell Street, near Jane Addams’s Hull House. It’s not the safest neighborhood by day. After the sun goes down, I don’t want to be there alone.

  “Here are the keys.” Dr. Nygaard holds out a set. “You’ll find cleaning supplies in the janitor’s closet. There is no electrical hookup yet, so you’ll need to hurry in order to do what needs to be done while it’s still light out. I’m afraid you may not even have time to put on your work clothes.”

  I smooth my last best skirt.

  “We could drop you off on our way home, I suppose . . .” Mrs. Nygaard’s voice fades unenthusiastically away.

  “I’ll take the El,” I say.

  SIX

  There’s a crowd outside Hull House—families lined up for medical attention, food, and heaven knows what else. Could be us someday if things keep going as they are, Dad once hinted, grimly polishing his bayonet. People are speaking Italian, Russian, Yiddish, and others have accents that I recognize as Irish. There are black people waiting outside Hull House, too, and people speaking quietly in Spanish, newly arrived from Mexico, I’m guessing.

  I wend my way through the crowd and down peddler-packed Maxwell Street to Marquette. There’s number 546. The bottom floor is a butcher shop, the front window of which is filled with plucked chickens and a single, spectacularly large goose. (What Mother once upon a Christmas could do with a goose!) Beside the window is the narrow, locked door that opens to the steep stairs that lead to the apartments jammed into the building’s second story. I fumble with the keys, fit the right key into the lock. The foyer is barely big enough to turn around in. There is the door to the janitor’s closet. I open it.

  Cockroaches scatter beneath my feet.

  In three trips I carry up: two buckets, one filled with clean water, the other with water and vinegar. The jug of vinegar, in case some mess demands undiluted application. A basket of rags, several of which I recognize as scraps of the rose-patterned bedsheets from my childhood. (Back then everything of mine seemed covered with roses.) A broom, dustpan, and mop. A bin for trash. Three scrub brushes with the metal bristles all but worn away. A wooden stepladder.

  When these things are clustered on the floor outside apartment 2B, which is at the shadowy far end of the hallway, I muster my courage and unlock the door.

  It’s a studio apartment. One room. At least there’s that. I won’t think about the fact that a family will be living here when there’s barely enough space for a single person.

  As Dr. Nygaard warned, there’s also no electricity. The shades are drawn over the main room’s two windows. The light is amber-colored at best. Sepia-toned to muddy brown in corners. I hear the sound of many little, brittle feet, skittering away into hidden parts of this small place. I have had dreams like this after a day of cleaning. Dreams of such light and such skittering. Tonight I most likely will have these dreams again.

  The place smells of something rotten. Something dead.

  I swallow hard, pray harder. I pray about calling and service. I pray about my life, Sophy’s life, Mother’s, Dad’s, and Andreas’s, too—all of our lives held in precarious balance. I pray that God weaves a net beneath us all. Then I choose my best weapons against the unknown—the mop and the broom—and step into the apartment.

  The little brittle-footed creatures have gone into hiding, so that’s a mercy. But the smell. The smell is out and about, taking full possession of the place. As does the garbage on the floor—newspaper, wax paper, unidentifiable bits and smears of dried food, open tin cans, and what looks to be the leavings of an animal.

  Gagging, I stumble back into the hallway, where the close air is at least not putrid. Before I bring in the rest of the cleaning supplies, I tie a scrap of old, rosy bedsheet around my mouth and nose. I must look like one of those people suffering through the Dust Bowl storms. If they can endure, so can I.

  Back to work.

  First thing I do is open the windows as far as they will go. They’ve been painted sloppily shut—Dad would never have done this; it must have been the work of the Nygaards’ previous superintendent—so I have to bang on them. Finally they give and lift. The cold air outside smells of the garbage cans lined up in the alley just below. Which is to say, in comparison to what I smell inside, the air smells fresh and fine.

  With the broom and the mop held aloft as a defense against rats or mice, I begin searching out the stinking thing. I think (though I can’t be sure, because the smell pervades the room) that the stench is caused by the rotting fish lying on a shelf in the warm refrigerator. From the long whiskers and sharp teeth, it appears to be a catfish, perhaps pulled from the filthy Chicago River. Its empty eyes stare balefully at me as, using the broom handle, I nudge the carcass onto a piece of newspaper that the tenant so thoughtfully left behind. I toss aside the broom. Holding my breath and the catfish, I run to an open window and drop the catfish into an open garbage can below. Then I plunge my hands into the bucket of water and vinegar and, to the best of my ability, wash them clean of eau de rot.

  Now I can really start cleaning, working from top to bottom as Mother taught me. Using the stepladder, I wash the ceiling first. Then the walls. Then the windows, which means having to close them. Closing them forces me to open the door to the hallway. Never mind who sees me cleaning. I need to breathe. Once I’ve opened the windows again, I decide to leave the door open, too. It helps with circulation. It’s cold in here now because of the draft, but the fresh air is life-giving. I clean the small kitchen and the smaller bathroom. Time is flying, and I’m not nearly finished. Never mind that I’m tired, I must work fast, faster.

  I try to pretend I am a machine. I try not to think or feel.

  This doesn’t help.

  I start to sing.

  This helps.

  Singing “Bringing in the Sheaves,” I pick up the litter from the floor. It takes a good while, especially since I have to keep emptying the trash bin into the garbage cans in the alley. We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves. I don’t toss the litter out the window, because the wind tunneling through the alley would blow it hither and yon. I walk the bin down the stairs, empty it carefully, return for more. Seven times I do this before the floor is finally free of litter. Now, to sweep. Sweeping, singing, I think of Ma
halia Jackson. Hers is a voice that holds hundreds of years of hard history, trials and labors beyond any I can imagine, any I’ll ever know. I’ll never sing like Mahalia Jackson, but I can sing inspired by her.

  I clear my throat and test out my best, lowest register. My voice isn’t nearly as low as Miss Jackson’s, or nearly as rich and lush. But warmed up like this, I’m surprised by the notes I’m able to reach. Mr. Helt would be proud. My voice doesn’t falter or break. I can sustain the song:

  Amazing Grace,

  How sweet the sound . . .

  I sweep back and forth, back and forth, the broom’s straw bristles against the stained-wood floor my steady accompaniment:

  I once was lost

  But now am found . . .

  There’s no blot on this music. It’s spotless, as is my soul when I sing it. And if I keep up the effort, soon this place will be spotless, too.

  I make bold and ask God to bless Miss Jackson, wherever she is, however she is, whatever she is doing on this day. Then I tuck the hem of my last best skirt up into my waistband. I pull off my shoes and stockings, get down on my knees, plunge a rag into the bucket of vinegar and water, and start to scrub the floor.

  Before Dad came to America, he was a cabin boy on a Danish ship, and then a sailor. Though Mother winced, he’s told us stories of swabbing the ship’s deck, the raucous songs they used to sing. The only sea chantey I know is “Blow the Man Down.” Swabbing, I sing that:

  Yo ho, blow the man down . . .

  Because I am alone, and because this is the most fun I’ve had all day, I pull out all the stops. Forgive me, God (and, by extension, Mother), but I really let ’er rip:

  Give me some time

  To blow the man down . . .

  “Miss Sorensen.”

  As clear as a ship’s bell, my name sounds in my ears. I look up, frightened. Too late, I remember to yank down my skirt’s hem.

  He’s standing in the open doorway. I’d recognize him anywhere.

  “How on earth?” I hear myself say.