A House of Tailors Read online

  eleven

  While I waited to hear if there was a place for me, I sewed during the day, or helped Barbara, who grew more tired each day. A few times I walked past Schaeffer’s Tailor Shop to see what the boy was doing. Most of the time he was staring out the window. I wondered if he hated sewing as much as I did.

  One afternoon I returned from my walk, went into the hall, and began to pin the pattern to the fabric the Uncle had left for me.

  Hideous, the whole thing: pattern, thread, and brown fabric.

  Horrible thick material. Who would buy such a jacket? And what would they pay?

  As the sun poured in through the side window, I sat there cutting, changing, then marking in darts with tailor’s chalk, to give a little shape to this poor piece of work.

  And all the while I thought about that pattern Katharina had sent me. The hat dipping down over the eyes, the lace. How it would look in church on Sunday. And another thought. The boy in the tailor shop. He had been in church last Sunday.

  I couldn’t make a hat from straw, but something kept tugging at my brain. I stood up and stretched, wiping my hands on the sides of my skirt. There wasn’t a breath of air in that hall. Not a breath of air in Brooklyn. And poor Barbara was downstairs on the steps trying to keep Maria happy.

  I wandered into the kitchen and poured another cup of water from the pitcher.

  And then that little tug at my brain pulled everything into focus. Instead of straw I could use . . .

  What could I use?

  A piece of cardboard, perhaps, covered with . . .

  Not one piece of fabric in the hall was possible. The Uncle had no idea of style.

  I pictured Mama bent over the trunk before I left, her hair falling over her eyes as she tucked the pink fabric around the insides. “At least this,” she had said, patting the edge of the trunk, and sewing it carefully. A pink hat would be perfect with the new cotton dress. I could do without a lining in my trunk very well.

  And then I was moving through the kitchen, opening drawers, going back to my bedroom, searching for . . .

  And there it was, the bottom drawer of my dresser. I stood there thinking about it, Mama frowning in my mind, Katharina’s horrified face.

  The bottom drawer wasn’t made of wood; it was nothing but a thick piece of cardboard.

  What would the Uncle say to my hacking the cardboard away from the wood?

  What would poor patient Barbara think?

  Even so, I was back at the machine pulling out the large scissors, scissors that certainly would need sharpening after I was through with them.

  Another picture of Mama in my head, saying, “A tailor is only as good as his scissors and thread.”

  But never mind that. I stabbed at the inside of the drawer, the dresser groaning and trembling as if it were alive.

  When I was finished, I knelt on the floor to draw a circle on the heavy piece of cardboard, then cut it out. I plopped it over my head and stood up to see myself in the dresser mirror.

  I could cover this with the pink lining, cut petals from the pink fabric, and dye them a deep rose.

  I dropped the circle on the dresser, thinking it was a wonderful plan, a perfect plan, and while I was congratulating myself, there was a tremendous bang on the door. The health department men were there, coming into the house, down the hall, looking into the kitchen, the bedroom, to make sure we harbored no one sick with smallpox.

  I drew myself up. “We are healthy,” I said. “Don’t you worry about that.”

  And later, to make a perfect day, the Uncle came home and told me that Aunt Ida had a place for me at Mrs. Koch’s house. I was to replace a helper who had left for the West.

  14 July 1871

  Dear Dina,

  I write this on your birthday, dear sister. We have not forgotten you! I think of you all the time, but I have given up the idea of coming to America. Don’t feel sad for me, Dina; it was just a childhood dream. I have taken down the picture of the Fifth Avenue Hotel and Madison Square and have given it to Friedrich. Perhaps he will go to America someday.

  But now the really important news. With Mama’s permission, Krist has given me a ring. We will be married in September. Such a few words, but my heart is beating with excitement as I write them. You can see now why it’s possible to give up my lovely dream.

  Hugs and kisses,

  Katharina

  Dina dear,

  I add this quickly so Katharina won’t see. Do you remember the lace handkerchief you made for me? With your permission I will add Katharina’s initials and yours for her to carry on her wedding day. She is so happy, Dina, smiling often, singing. And I approve of her choice. Krist is a good man, loyal and upstanding.

  Happy birthday and love,

  M.

  twelve

  Katharina to carry my handkerchief! I remembered the day I had found the perfect pieces of lace to sew around the fine lawn fabric. Thinking of her wedding made me happy even though I wouldn’t be there. I pictured her as a bride. Together we had sewed many wedding dresses . . .

  But now I had to pay attention to the Uncle’s mutterings as we walked toward Mrs. Koch’s house.

  “How is this going to work?” he was saying, as if I weren’t there. “She can’t even speak a word of English.” He took long steps so it was hard for me to catch up.

  “I know pliz,” I said, trying to keep my new skirt out of the dusty street. “I know tenkyou.”

  He stopped and waited for me to catch up. “Please,” he said in such a loud voice a woman ahead of us turned around to see what was the matter with him. “And thank you.”

  To me it sounded as if there weren’t any difference, but I said the words under my breath all the way to Mrs. Koch’s house. I knew more than those two, of course. I knew at least a dozen words, door and stairs and greenhorn, which was what the iceman had called me yesterday, and izecrim, which was now not only my favorite word—I loved the sound of it—but my favorite food as well.

  And Fifth Avenue Hotel. I knew those sad words now. It made me think of Katharina’s dream that was gone. And here I was in America, and I had never seen that hotel myself.

  The Uncle looked at me. “That hat.”

  I raised my hand to my head. The hat was a disappointment. The cardboard wasn’t stiff enough, so the sides curved down under the weight of the lace and ribbon.

  “And I thought . . . ,” the Uncle said.

  I raised my chin.

  He sighed. “You are not a hat maker, I can see that.”

  We turned the corner. It was clear that this was the best street in Brooklyn! It wasn’t that the houses were so different—they were still made of the same brown stone—but the steps were higher and wrought-iron gates were everywhere. Even the horses in the street looked elegant. They had been brushed until they gleamed, and were attached to carriages that waited for their owners to step outside.

  Carriages with velvet seats!

  I whooshed up the steps of the house in back of the Uncle, pretending I lived there and the horse belonged to me. What would I name him?

  “Pay attention,” the Uncle said as he pulled the knob of the doorbell.

  In a moment, Aunt Ida was in front of us, round in her long white apron. I thought again that she looked like Mama except that she ate much more. I could sympathize. I was hungry already and I had just finished breakfast.

  “Ah, Dina.” She pulled me inside, glancing up at the great stairs that led to the second floor, shooing the Uncle toward the back of the house with three fingers, and whisking me down one flight into her kitchen.

  The kitchen was as large as the Uncle’s house.

  Aunt Ida smiled at my hat with its droopy edges, took it off, and placed it on a shelf. She straightened my collar, then reached for a starched apron on a hook. She twirled me around, tying the apron strings around my neck and yanking gently at the ones down at the bottom. “Later,” she said, “you can tie those, too. Pull up your dress to form a little bustle over them and it will be easier to work without falling all over your skirt.”

  Next she poured me a coffee mixed with condensed milk and slid a plate of toasted bread over to me. And all the time she was talking, asking about Breisach and the Rhine River—my river—and Mama, and Katharina, and the boys, clicking her tongue over poor Papa, whom we would never see again.

  I slid onto a high stool, watching her prepare a breakfast tray, while I took bites of the buttery bread that melted in my mouth, and sips of the sweet coffee.

  “Mrs. Koch came from nearby at home,” she said. “Heidelberg.”

  I had been there once, a small bit of a town tucked in the mountains.

  “She came here with her husband,” Aunt Ida said. “They worked hard, so hard, at horse training.” She leaned over to take a nibble of the bread. “And now they are rich.” She paused and leaned forward. “Are you homesick?”

  Homesick. I felt a terrible longing for home in my chest. Even if I saved all I earned, it would take years before I’d see my river again.

  But I wasn’t going to tell Aunt Ida anything about my plans to go home again. I wasn’t going to tell anyone.

  I gave a quick shake of my head, and by that time Aunt Ida was telling me about herself. “I work hard, too.” She swept her hands around to show me the immaculate kitchen. “Someday soon there will be enough money for me to join Peder out west.”

  “How long ago . . . ,” I began.

  “Two years, long years,” she said. “But he is building a house for us and tilling the land. And soon I will bring money for a cow and some hens.” She shut her eyes tightly. “I will take the train from Manhattan at Varick Street, a long ride, out to the fields and the hills. . . .”

  A bell was ringing somewhere upstairs, and Aunt Ida handed me a tray. “Take this up. Can you manage? Knock on the door with one hand. Don’t drop it. . . .” She wiped her hands on a towel. “Top of the second set of stairs.”

  She took three or four steps behind me, tying the bottom strings of the apron and pulling my skirt through so I had room to walk, and up I went with the tray, up two flights of red carpet with fat blue blossoms.

  The tray was filled with more of the buttery bread, a pot of coffee, and a pitcher of cream. There were two little bowls, one filled with raspberry jam and the other with marmalade, that made my mouth water. They slid back and forth on the tray as I took the turn in the stairway.

  I was so busy thinking about all the good things on the tray that I forgot to knock but opened the door with my elbow, just glad to have arrived with everything still in one piece.

  No one was there.

  I slid the tray onto a round table in the center of the room, wiped up a little marmalade that had spilled onto the tray with my apron, and wondered what to do next. Call out?

  The Uncle was right. I didn’t even know the English word for breakfast. As I tried to decide what to do next, I saw hatboxes piled up on the shelves in back of the half-open door to the closet. The boxes themselves were tied with ribbon and bunches of lily of the valley. They were so beautiful I could only imagine what the hats inside must look like. My fingers itched to lift the lids.

  If only I had a dust cloth, I could dust my way into the closet before the woman came back for her breakfast.

  I tiptoed to the hall door and poked out my head. Everything was quiet. I looked at the thick red rug with its fat roses that went on forever, the closed doors on each side, four altogether, painted a shiny brown.

  I went back to the tray. A shame about the toasted bread. It would be cold by the time the woman ate it. I removed a tiny blob of raspberry jam from the rim of its little bowl with my finger and slid it into my mouth.

  I could have eaten everything on the tray myself in about two minutes.

  Instead, I went into the closet, closed the door in back of me, and stood there taking in that wonderful space, as large as my bedroom at the Uncle’s house. A framed mirror hung on one wall, almost like the one in Mama’s living room, but this one was much larger, with more gilt and a baby angel flying on top.

  I leaned close to the mirror. Good thing. I could see a dab of raspberry jam in the corner of my mouth and quickly licked it off. What would Mrs. Koch or Aunt Ida say? It would be hard to explain that I had been neatening up the tray.

  I wondered if I dared to open one of the hatboxes, but then I saw that two of them were open on the back shelf, the tops leaning back against the wall.

  I reached up and pulled the nearest box off the shelf, still listening for the sound of the door outside. What was the word for dust? I could say . . .

  I forgot about all that. The hat was in my hands. It was like the chiffon cake at the bakery in Freiburg, all swirls and cream on a round piece of white silk.

  At the mirror I put it on, dipping the front down over my forehead, using the white velvet band in back to keep it in place. Clever, that band. I had never seen anything like it. And the swirls, almost as if the ribbons had been let loose across the top and held down with rosettes.

  I admired myself for the barest second before I took off the hat and examined that little band in back. I could do that; I could do better than that. Up close the stitches weren’t nearly as fine as they should have been. Mama would snip them out and have us start over.

  I took down the second hat. It was almost exactly like the one I had made for Frau Ottlinger. I had to smile.

  This was the America I had dreamed about.

  In back of me the door opened and someone screamed.

  I spun around, the chiffon cake hat still in my hand, the Ottlinger hat on my head.

  It was Mrs. Koch. And even as I scrambled to put the hats back in the boxes, I tried to remember what sorry was in English.

  And next came Aunt Ida, rushing up the stairs as if the French army were after her.

  “In my dressing room?” Mrs. Koch said. “What? Who?”

  And Aunt Ida took a deep breath, telling me in a fierce voice to go down to the kitchen while she explained.

  Before I had been there an hour, I was sent back to the apartment and Barbara in disgrace.

  thirteen

  “What is it?” Barbara asked. “Are you sick? Come inside. Tell me.”

  I sank into a kitchen chair, shaking my head, the Uncle’s angry face in my mind. What would he say? And just as bad, the money, my savings that I had counted on for going home, had flown away.

  Barbara brought me a glass of cold water with chips from the icebox. I gulped most of it down as I watched Maria in her high chair mimicking the face I made as I sobbed. She reminded me of Friedrich when he was a baby, mouth coated with cookie crumbs, laughing—a handful!

  I’d never see Friedrich again, never see any of them at home again.

  Through the archway into the hall, the sewing machine sat on the worn rug like a huge black beetle. That was where I’d spend the rest of my life, and it was my fault, all my own fault.

  I told Barbara the story of Mrs. Koch. “How was I to know I was in her dressing room instead of her bedroom?”

  She didn’t say, “You should have known.” She didn’t say, “You shouldn’t have been in Mrs. Koch’s closet anyway.”

  I hadn’t told her about eating a little of the jam, which Aunt Ida had suddenly realized from a bit on my chin that I hadn’t noticed.

  And I hadn’t told her that Aunt Ida had sat in the kitchen trying to catch her breath as I watched, thinking I’d have to send for the doctor.

  “Do you know the word for Doktor in English?” I asked.

  Barbara blinked and shook her head. “Are you that sick?” she asked.

  She clucked over me the way Aunt Ida had clucked when she’d first seen me that morning. “I would have been terrified to try on the hats,” she said, as if I had accomplished some brave feat.

  I ran the cool glass over my forehead. It had been a long hot march back from Aunt Ida’s kitchen.

  “We’ll take a walk,” Barbara said. “We’ll find the ice cream man and sit in the park. . . .” Already she was looking into her pocket, frowning as she pulled out a few coins.

  I didn’t know American money yet, but I could tell from her face it wasn’t enough for all of us.

  I shook my head. The coarse brown fabric was piled up on the chair in front of the machine, waiting for me. I’d have to begin now anyway. “Go ahead,” I told her. “Take Maria.” I waved my hand at the black beetle. “I’ll sew.”

  To show her I meant what I said, I went into the hall, pulled out the chair, and began to pin a pattern to the fabric. I told myself I’d have to be starving in the street to wear such a scratchy thing.

  I heard a banging at the door. Now what? I wondered. “Coming,” I called. “Coming right now.”

  I could hear the Uncle roar. So he had heard about what had happened. How was it he was home in the middle of the day, though?

  I took a deep breath and went to the door.

  The Uncle was bent over almost double, and on his back and over his head lay piles of trousers. Dozens of them.

  He straightened up, the trousers sliding onto the floor. He held up his hand. “You are nothing but trouble.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “If I ever get money enough, I will take the ship straight back to Hamburg. And from there I’ll go to Breisach, even if I have to walk all the way.”

  “And worse than trouble,” he muttered. “Always with the mouth.”

  I bit my lip. I remembered Mama shaking her head, telling me the same thing.

  “Never mind,” said the Uncle. “Now that service is out of the question, I have taken myself to Mr. Eis, who sells trousers.”

  I looked at them, a mound halfway to the ceiling.

  “All you have to do is seam them together,” he said. “If you begin every morning and work until dinnertime, we might get a dollar a day.”

  We. He had said we.

  I began adding in my head.

  “Seventy-five cents for me,” he said, “twenty-five for you.”

  I opened my mouth. “Fifty.”

  “Don’t forget. It is my machine, my thread.”

  “Forty for me,” I said.