She was bold, and I liked it. For a nun, she had flair. And I liked how she seemed both old and young. I thought maybe she would be my first friend on Park Row. Even if she thinks I’m no good, I bet she’d still be my friend.
Mazie’s Diary, May 3, 1918
The war’s coming to an end, everyone’s saying it, on the radio, in the papers. I’ll believe it when I see it. But it’s putting everyone in a good mood. There’s a parade every other day. I think folks think we throw enough parades we can make anything happen. There’s been soldiers coming home, for weeks and weeks now. Hurrahs floating in the air. I can sometimes hear them. It’s all off in the distance, though. It’s out there and I’m in here.
In here I deal with the bums and the stragglers and the cons. The men in suits sleeping off the night before. Why they don’t just go home I’ll never know. I have to say they’re all starting to make me laugh. Except the ones with the children. The mothers with the kids for the funnies, that’s fine, that don’t get to me. I’ll give them a lolly, sure. I’ve got a jarful just sitting there. They pay full price and move along. But the cons with the kids, saying they’re begging on their behalf, using them. I can’t tell what’s true or not.
This woman Nance has been coming around more lately, I’ve seen her for a few weeks. I’d heard of her before, back when I used to have a lot more free time on my hands and I knew all the gossip from the bars. She says she has children but I’ve never seen them. I shoo her away from my line.
Off with you, I tell her. Stay away from my paying customers. We’re running a business here.
She scatters from the theater. Park Avenue, across the street to the King Kong Bar, a pause at the window, around the corner and she’s gone. Just a skirt in the distance. Too old to be a street urchin, too pretty to be a common whore. Only thing left’s a con.
Mazie’s Diary, May 10, 1918
Where’s our Jeanie, we’ve all been wondering lately. In the arms of Ethan Fallow, I suppose. He came by Grand Street last night. He brought her a bouquet of tea roses, and she held them in her lap for an hour, and then they went for a walk and I didn’t see her again before bed. There’s a first, me beating Jeanie to bed.
It seems like it takes a lot of time, courting. You sit and wait for them to call you. Then you sit and wait for them to come to your home. Then you sit and wait for them to tell you how beautiful you are. Then you sit and wait for them to fall in love. I’ve no patience for any of it. I want instant love.
Jeanie’s been spending a lot of time at the track, too. Making up errands she needs to run. And she’s been hanging out with Bella Barker now that she’s back in town again. Only now her name’s Belle Baker, like that makes any difference. She’s still got the same voice, the same eyes, those pits of sadness. Barker or Baker, you are who you are.
Jeanie does whatever she wants now. She works Rosie and Louis like a con. She took all my tricks and made them perfect. I’m not jealous of most of it. I wouldn’t want to hold Ethan Fallow’s hand for hours on end. I wouldn’t want to nod my head at everything Belle says.
Only the freedom I envy.
Jeanie gets to do whatever she wants, I told Rosie last night.
Rosie said: Jeanie I don’t worry about.
Mazie’s Diary, May 15, 1918
That little Nance came back again today. She stood in front of me after the line for the last show had died out. A dried-up girl, younger than me. The bottom of her dress was in tatters. Her hair was long and unbrushed. Her tan overcoat was stained with something purple. Still, I wasn’t buying what she was selling. She was no beggar. There was lipstick on those lips.
She said: Please, ma’am, please. I’m broke and hungry and I’ve got two little ones at home and we haven’t had food in a week and can you please please please help us. A penny, a nickel, something, anything.
Her voice was too singsongy for me to trust her. She’d made that speech too many times before.
I said: Scram, little miss. I know what you’ll do with any scratch I give you.
She said: I swear on my life it’s for my kids.
She reached down the front of her dress and pulled out a rusted locket on a chain. She struggled to open it, and it was then that I could see her hands were shaking. But when she finally released it, she pressed it up against my glass cage. There were photographs on both sides, a boy and a girl. Two faded babies.
Looking at the pictures, I got a choke in my throat. I might have lost all the air in my body if I didn’t go to these children straightaway and help them. I couldn’t help but think about Rosie. All the sadness. Her on the couch all those months.
I had a bag of chocolates sitting in the cage and I slid them to her. She grabbed it and stuck her filthy fingers in it. Keep it, is what I was thinking.
I said: Where’s their father?
She said: Their father went to war and never came back.
I said: My condolences.
She said: No condolences. He’s in France, the bastard. He met some girl there, surprise of the century.
I felt sorry for her. It’s easier to let things go when there’s no reminder of someone. But she had two babies in a locket.
She said: He couldn’t wait to get away. He got me hooked, and then he joined up to get away from it and from me and he left me behind with those two babies. Isn’t that funny? Easier for him to go fight the Germans than spend another minute with me.
She started licking her fingers.
She said: Sweet Jesus, it’s good.
I watched her eat. She put one chocolate after another in her mouth. She was a greedy child, is all. A hungry brat.
She asked me for money but I said no.
She said: They’re real, I swear on my life.
I said: Then let me see them. I’ll lock up right now and go there. Last show’s nearly over.
She had eaten all the chocolate. She could have run. But she didn’t.
So I gathered together all the food I had in my cage, another bag of candy, half a sandwich. Then I followed her home through the pitch-black streets. We didn’t talk about her problems, we talked about the city instead. How different it was now that there were cars everywhere you looked. Can you believe the noise? Can you believe the dirt? We talked about how we both loved the rain because it washed the streets clean. Even for a few hours New York City would sparkle again.
She said: What I wouldn’t give for the rain to clean me up.
We picked up our skirts over some garbage in a back alley off Mulberry Street, and she led me to a metal door, brass buttons around the edges, the center painted red. There was a thick, rusty keyhole. Nance pulled a key from the front of her dress. I guess she kept everything down the front of her dress.
She said: It’s Mama.
She stood there for a moment, as if she were afraid to enter. Which made me afraid to enter, too.
It was quiet, and it was quiet, and it was quiet, and then suddenly there was squawling and screeching, and I covered my ears.
Nance said: Oh come on now.
There was one candle lit and she walked toward it. There was the smell of piss and I breathed through my mouth. My eyes adjusted and I could see where the howls were coming from. There was a boy with white-blond hair, a thin sliver of flesh in the dark.
He said: You’ve been gone all day.
She said: I was getting you food, wasn’t I?
She gathered the boy and a little girl to her.
She said: This nice lady brought you some candy.
I opened my purse and handed them the chocolates. My eyes grew used to the dark, and I could see the girl was frail and curly-haired, a sprout of a thing. She stopped wailing when she took the candy. Even by candlelight I could see they ate just as their mother did, with greedy desperation, salivating like animals.