CHAPTER 17
Alice shivered as she raised the heavy knocker on the big front door and let it fall. At least it was a shiver only from the evening chill and not from inches of snow on the ground. She stood wondering if she should knock again, when she heard footsteps approaching. With the click of an interior latch lifting, the door opened on the ruddy face of a breathless woman of uncertain age.
“Yes.” That was all she said.
Alice shifted the cumbersome bag to the opposite hand and took a deep breath. “I’ve just arrived from Chicago, ma’am, and the clerk at the station offered me this address as a safe rooming house for women only.”
“Oh, yes. Well, come right in, then. You’re in luck, as fate would have it. I was just done cleaning the only room I have. If you had arrived yesterday, you’d have been clean out of luck. Vacated only this morning, yes. And now tidied up, as if awaiting your arrival. If you’d’ve tried to reserve it, you’d’ve been out of luck entirely. But here you are. Now, set your things down there, and we’ll see about getting you fixed up. Right there, right there by the stairs. You’ll have to carry it up, now, when we’re done. It’s on the upper floor. It used to be an attic, but we’ve done it up good. There’s not plumbing up there, so you’ll have to come down one floor for your private needs. You’re not the frail type, are you?”
“No, no. I’m fully accustomed to walking up three floors. I’ll take it till I find work.” Alice pulled at the fingertips of her glove and slipped it into her left hand, ready to sign whatever was put before her. At least for the night. The long train ride had worn thin, and she was exhausted.
The room was, indeed, on the third floor. And Mrs. McLaren had spoken truly: the room was clean and orderly. It was also spacious for a third floor, though with the strangely tilted and erratic ceilings characteristic of attic space. Alice had just enough to pay the room and board for a good week and was able to negotiate a small reduction in exchange for helping in the kitchen while she searched for work.
Alice had a fair collection of copper pennies. She would need them for newspapers to search the help-wanted postings. The afternoon newspaper, the New Orleans Item, cost pennies. The Picayune, the same. She considered buying only one, but she dared not miss a possible opportunity. Her solution was to buy each one on alternate days, one the first day, the other the second. She operated on the assumption, which soon proved true, that most of the want ads would run for several days. She hoped her method would not put her at risk of losing out on the very one she needed.
The first day passed without result. There were openings for waitresses, but only in small, ill-paying cafés. Openings for help at laundries, for maids at hotels, and one for sewing alterations at a neighborhood dress shop. That was promising perhaps, though she had no concept of the various quarters of New Orleans. For two days, Alice made the rounds, only to find the position filled or to know she could not work in such a place. One turned out to be sewing for women at a house of legalized prostitution in what was known as Storyville. She had entered the house and was speaking with a woman in charge before she realized the extent of her mistake.
“You are here in reference to the advertisement for a seamstress?”
Alice nodded, aghast at the florid elegance of the woman’s dress, then shocked beyond speech to see in her peripheral vision a laughing girl in bloomers and camisole tugging a well-dressed gentleman up the stairs.
“Perhaps you would be interested in a better-paying kind of work,” the woman said, laying her hand over Alice’s. “You have the face and body for it, you know?”
Alice fled. At the end of the block, breathless, she stopped. She would not give up; she made an oath to herself that she would not despair. Despair had brought her here. She would not allow it to bury her.
* * *
The following morning, Mrs. McLaren appeared from the kitchen just as Alice came down the stairs, yesterday’s crumpled newspaper in hand.
“Hungry, dear?” she asked.
“No. No, ma’am. I, uh, I’m not so hungry in the mornings.”
She felt the intensity of Mrs. McLaren’s gaze. “Well, now. I’m enough of a busybody to insist on a bite or two to sustain you through the day, hungry or not. Come with me.”
Alice followed her landlady into the oversized kitchen, where a rack of random pots and pans hung over the center chopping block, on which sat a baguette, partially sliced.
“Here,” said Mrs. McLaren. “One slice of dry bread won’t harm you none.”
Alice took the bread, held it, took one bite.
“How’s your luck with that newspaper now? Anything promising for you?”
“Not yet.” She dared not talk about her appalling experience from the previous day. “Perhaps today.”
“You don’t know me, my dear, so perhaps you might not be accustomed to my bold speech, but how many days have you money for?”
Alice choked on her bite of bread.
“Well, now. You needn’t get that outdone about it, dear. But it’s my guess you haven’t much. You only have to nod.”
Alice did.
“Well, now. I been thinking on this, and you may want to know. May be just the thing for you. No more wasted pennies on that useless paper.” She cut another slice of bread and held it out. “Are you Catholic or Protestant, dear?”
Alice took the bread. “I am not Catholic.”
“Well, no matter, dear, but at any rate, perhaps you know we have a rather large number of orphanages in New Orleans, both Catholic and Protestant. Yellow fever, even when it’s not in epidemic, leaves a lot of orphans and half-orphans.”
“I know I look a bit childish, but I’m not an orphan, Mrs. McLaren, and far too old to be taken in.”
“Oh, that I know, dear. No, I’m thinking of the Poydras Asylum for Girls—it’s Protestant, by the way—where the orphaned and destitute are taken in. And they have been known to assist widow women.” Mrs. McLaren looked at her from the corners of her eyes. “The manager women who oversee it there bring in skilled women to teach the girls a trade, so they can make their way in life—not wind up in Storyville. You had a bit of a taste of that one yesterday.” She emitted a gutsy laugh. “Sewing is prized there at the asylum. You’d likely be welcomed. I’m thinking you might have some luck in making an exchange of your skills for sanctuary there, if that doesn’t sit too low for you.”
“No, Mrs. McLaren. No, not in the least. I would welcome sharing my skills with . . . with motherless girls.” She felt the tears close to escaping at the thought of her own mother’s hands so close to her own, the gift those hands had bestowed on her. She imagined her hands holding fabric and needle next to the hands of some young girl. Her heart lifted in hope.