Mazie’s Diary, July 9, 1923
I know that it was wrong when all Rosie did was clean, but now the house is pure filth. Worse, the summer heat is roasting the dirt. A trail of tea leaves across the kitchen table. A line of ants following. A march. I’m at the theater all day and night, holding everything together while Rudy’s out again. I can’t do it all. I can’t. I need help.
Lydia Wallach
Rudy had five heart attacks in his lifetime. I’d guess in 1923 it was probably his third heart attack? Some of them were smaller than others. Each one he bounced back from within a few weeks, until the last one, from which he did not bounce back at all. He was this calm, loving, supportive man who took on the pain and stress of others without flinching, and his heart attacks were his moment of flinching. And when he was in the hospital, everything collapsed around him. My great-grandmother, their children, the theater. He held all these worlds in his head. I understand this. If you let go for a second, it all unravels. The loose threads of the universe.
Mazie’s Diary, July 15, 1923
I told Sister Tee everything about Rosie. It felt so good to tell someone even one little thing about my life, and this feels like the only thing in my life now. That and the theater.
Tee hates the gypsies as much as Tee is capable of hating anyone. She thinks they’re godless. I told her I’d known some kind ones but she’s come up against them too many times to forgive or at least to forget.
She said: They’ll rob you blind then leave you standing on the corner in the cold and the dark.
I said: I don’t think she thinks she’s being robbed.
She said: I think that money could be better spent elsewhere.
I said: But what if it soothes her?
She said: A con’s a con. Those gypsies should be punished.
When Tee turns to tough talk I have to laugh and kid her.
I said: Where’s your forgiveness, Tee? I thought everyone had a saint.
She stopped her ranting and thought about it.
She said: Saint Dismas watches over criminals. But it’s the ones who are seeking pentinence that he cares for.
I said: And these gypsies don’t care.
She said: They don’t care one bit.
Mazie’s Diary, August 28, 1923
I took the money. I took it and I put it somewhere she can’t find it. There were just twenty envelopes when I did so. More than enough money to last us a long time, yet it seemed like not very much at all considering what we started with. It’s not hers, it’s not mine. It belongs to strangers now.
Isabel Kaller, bookkeeper, Church of the Transfiguration, Chinatown
We’ve got archives dating back to the late 1800s. They’re treasures, really. All of the bookkeepers over the years have had the most darling handwriting. These teeny tiny letters and numbers in perfectly straight rows. It’s very sweet to me. I like the way the ledgers feel too. They have a real heft to them.
I found the ledger from 1929, and it indicates there was a fund set up by Miss Phillips-Gordon in honor of her mother, Ada Phillips. The money was earmarked to help women and children. It was blind on the part of Miss Phillips-Gordon, meaning she gave the church the money, but had made a request to never know what was done with it, or rather, who was helped with it. The fund was used to establish battered women in new homes, pay for doctors’ bills for them and their children. At the time we worked in tandem with churches in Montreal and Buffalo, and so these women from New York were set up with new lives in those communities. I wouldn’t be able to tell you how many women she helped. Hundreds? Thousands? I’ve no idea. Many, many women. There was a substantial initial deposit, and then this fund was maintained annually until Miss Phillips’s death in 1964.
I don’t know what we’d do if we got a comparable donation now. Gosh, we could do so much good with it. I don’t even want to think about it, but I do, you know? What a dream it would be.
Mazie’s Diary, September 2, 1923
She’s lost her mind. Tore the room apart looking for the envelopes. Bed up, sheets off, curtains down. Rug on sidewalk. I think she threw it out the window, but can’t be sure.
George Flicker
There was some bad blood between Mazie and Rosie for a while but no one knew why.
Mazie’s Diary, September 3, 1923
A screaming match at the cage. She was trying to claw me at the window. I didn’t even recognize her at first. The eyes confused me. The cruelty of her gaze. Then her hands were up against the cage, trying to shake it, shake me out of there. No blood of mine, is what I was thinking. She’s not my sister.
She said: Where is it?
I said: It’s gone and that’s all you need to know.
Rosie said: Give it to me. I need it.
I said: You’re being a fool, Rosie.
She said: You don’t know anything about anything.
Rudy came running and held her back as best he could with those tiny hands of his. She shook him off and ran.
Mazie’s Diary, September 4, 1923
Tee said: Wait it out. It’s all you can do.
What I want to say to Rosie is that I know her pain is like no other, but also that it is no worse or better than anyone else’s. We do not get to suffer forever.
Mazie’s Diary, October 1, 1923
She’s out there somewhere. I stopped by the Bayard Street building to collect this month’s rent, and the tenants said she’d been there already and taken their money. Likely handed it straight to the gypsies.
Mazie’s Diary, November 1, 1923
Happy Birthday to me. Twenty-six years old and my life’s chaos.
Sister Tee brought me some daisies, and later I threw one back with Mack. I haven’t forgiven him one thing. But I was lonely. Surrounded by people all day long yet as lonely as can be.
Mazie’s Diary, November 2, 1923
The rent’s gone again, in her pocket, in their pockets.
Mazie’s Diary, November 5, 1923
Saw her on the street, grabbed at her arm, and she ran. I chased her, chased her through Chinatown, we ran and ran.
I said: Please, Rosie, please.
I said: Please come home.
I said: Please, I love you.
I lost her on Canal Street.
I don’t even know if it really happened or if it was just a dream I had this morning. Or if it was even her, even Rosie at all.
Mazie’s Diary, December 4, 1923
Rosie’s home. I found her last night on the couch. Thin and gray and snoring. I just covered her with a quilt a moment ago. I was afraid to touch her, I thought she might disappear.
I’ll forgive her anything if only she’ll forgive herself too.
Elio Ferrante
The thing about these gypsies is eventually they leave. There’s no long con in their world. Get in and get out. Change your look, and hit the road.