Mazie’s Diary, May 23, 1918
It was hot today, too hot, spring’s gone already, and I never even had a chance to love it. I sent one of the ushers to get me a beer from across the street, and then another after that, and then another before closing, and I let Officer Walters buy me one to take home with me, which I’m drinking right now by the open window. There’s a big pack of pigeons cooing on the roof across the street. The moon is nearly full. I’ll drink until I know I’m done. What else am I supposed to do with myself? No Sister Tee. The waiting is killing me.
Mazie’s Diary, May 24, 1918
Louis won big at the track and bought us all new purses. Mine’s pink and has a jeweled clasp and it’s very pretty and I don’t care because I haven’t heard anything.
Mazie’s Diary, May 25, 1918
Sister Tee brought me no good news today. I can’t stop crying to save my life.
She and some of the other Theresas were switching off shifts, all day and all night. Some sisters from an uptown church relieved them twice. The first two days the red door didn’t open. They knocked and they waited. There they all were, huddled amongst the rats in the alley, waiting for this hophead to open the door. I can’t believe I asked them to do this. I was feeling shame all over me. I apologized and Sister Tee told me not to worry. The weather was so pleasant they didn’t mind at all. And then finally, the third day, the door opened.
Sister Tee said: It creaked and moaned like a waking demon.
There was Nance, blinking in the sunlight. She was staggering. Her head hung down, and her arms drooped, and she was swaying. Sister Tee imitated her. Like a dead woman risen, is what Tee told me. The nuns rushed from their corner nest and pushed past her into the spoiled room.
Sister Tee said: The stench.
I asked if the children were dead.
Sister Tee said: Not dead, but not much alive either. The littlest one is too small for her age, and it might be too late, is what the doctors are saying.
She started talking about malnutrition and bruises and bad blood. I couldn’t pay attention to the details through the sting of my fury. I know what it means now to see red. I could feel the hellish flames within me. It was blinding me. I punched my fists against the counter and I couldn’t even feel a thing. Sister Tee took a step back. I had scared her, and I was sorry for it. I tried to calm down but couldn’t.
Sister Tee said: I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner to see you, Mazie. We had some praying to do.
I said: Where’s Nance? I’ll kill her.
Sister Tee said: Mazie, you need to be more forgiving. She’s an ill woman.
She told me Nance was in the hospital drug sick, her two children on a different floor. The little girl’s dying, the little boy’s fighting.
I started to cry. The faded babies, fading.
I said: What can I do?
She said: Same as us, just pray.
I didn’t tell her I wasn’t one for prayer but I’d give it a shot. I’m saying it now, this counts as my prayer. Please let them get well.
Mazie’s Diary, May 29, 1918
The youngest one died. Little Marie. Sister Tee says Nance will go to jail as soon as she’s able. She says the nurses won’t even look at her. They’d sooner throw her on the street. I’d do the same if I could.
Red-eyed in the cage all day long.
Lydia Wallach
Everything’s packed away in the guest room and I can’t bring myself to dig through the boxes. I’d have to unpack them all. I just can’t leave them half packed, or half unpacked, as it were. Once I start I’d have to finish the whole project. So it would be a whole thing I would have to do. And I don’t really have the time for it now. Or I guess the space, the mental space. It was enough to come downtown to meet with you. I’m happy to do it, don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to make you feel bad. It’s just an exertion. Like there’s taking the train to work, and then there’s work, and then there’s taking the train home again, and that’s all I’ve got in me. When I think of all those boxes it seems insurmountable. It could take days. And I’d have to find a place for everything. How will I know exactly where things will go? I’m just not prepared to make that kind of decision. This is why I can’t help you. It’s the boxes’ fault.
I know you wanted a different answer than that. I don’t think there’s much in there. I’m certain I’ve only ever seen one picture of her, and I have the faintest memory of it in my mind. But it’s been decades since I’ve seen it.
I’m sorry. I wish I could do this for you, but…right now I can’t. I’ve just moved into this new house in Westchester. I’m divorced. The marriage was brief, shockingly so. His mother died last year, and mine did as well, and a friend of ours who was very sick, suddenly, pancreatic cancer, and was given three months to live, and then was gone. And we just looked at each other at the end, and we should have been holding each other through all of it and instead we were separate, we were in opposite corners of the room, and we simply couldn’t find our way back to each other. It felt physical. There were all these ghosts between us. Everyone always thinks of ghosts as being invisible or like air but they take up so much space in a room, you’ve no idea.
I know you didn’t ask about this, I’m just offering this as an explanation. So there’s all these boxes from my mother in the guest room, and my husband would have been the one to unpack them. I’m organized, of course, but I can’t face my mother’s things right now. Another thing to face. All I have done is face things for months and months. So there they sit, in this room, I guess it’s a guest room. Maybe it will be a study. Honestly, I have so many rooms. This house is much bigger than I needed. It feels a little preposterous and self-indulgent. But there’s this deck out back, and I sit there in the mornings with coffee, and the birds are chirping in the trees, and there’s a little stream past the trees, etcetera, and it feels like a thing that I wanted, I’m sure I wanted it, and now I have it, but I do not think I wanted it all alone.
Mazie’s Diary, June 15, 1918
Sister Tee can’t find Rufus. She thought he was at an orphanage uptown, and she went up there looking for him, but he’d never made it there. She’s going to check three more orphanages tomorrow. She says there’s no point in calling. She says you’ve got to go there and see for yourself. I offered to go with her, but she says she can get more done looking the way she does.
At least he’s been released from the hospital. At least he’s well enough. But where has he gone to?
Lydia Wallach
I was a child when I saw the picture. I can imagine how frustrating it is for you to not be able to secure any photographic evidence of her. Truly. My entire job is to deal with evidence and facts. But my memory won’t help you much, because I only saw the picture for a moment. Okay. Let me think. The one thing I can recall is this — and I’m not sure it will be much help to you at all — I had heard many times that she was a bottle blonde. Brassy, sassy blonde. That was supposed to be her schtick. But in my memory, in the photo I saw, she was a brunette. She was young, and a brunette. She was standing in front of a ticket booth, her ticket booth, I am assuming, and my great-grandfather is standing next to her. They’re both saluting, as if they were soldiers. Oh, and there was a cross around her neck. That’s in my memory, but I don’t know how it could be true. Because she was Jewish.
Mazie’s Diary, July 3, 1918
I thought if I waited to write until I had good news it would make the good news happen. But there’s nothing good to report. I’ve been drinking cold beer all day long for weeks, waiting for Sister Tee to come back into my life. But she had disappeared until today.