Yesterday ended up being the most agonizingly long day in the history of all days. Once Duvid Kraskov yanked Mitzy away, I had no one to talk to and nothing to do. It was just me, myself, and my thoughts—not a good combination. I spent the rest of the day in the flat, obsessing over our pathetic plight, over my missed opportunities. Will there be another chance, I kept asking myself, another chance to save someone? Will Mitzy ever get a shot at boarding a boat?
Then I started ruminating over what kind of chaos Asher and Maya might be creating for us. For all I know, that guy is failing me out of school, or daring to talk back when my sister calls him names. Mitzy’s substitute could be mingling with the popular girls, raising her hand in class, doing all sorts of non-Mitzy stuff.
All day long I hoped Mitzy would call down to me through her window, but zilch. When my mum got home, long after dark, we ate days-old pickled herring and brown bread, and she told me all about the gossip buzzing around the factory. Gossip about the fiend, the Ripper. It was the worst day ever.
So when today dawns in a gray monotone, I’m actually glad to have somewhere to go, even if that somewhere is a job I know nothing about. I tear off another chunk of brown bread, lace up my boots, say goodbye to Mum, and head downstairs. Outside, the day matches my mood—overcast sky, gritty chimney smoke, sooty cobblestones. Perfectly miserable.
I pull up my jacket collar and keep my head down as I round the gate to the Workman’s Club. Pushing open the clubhouse door, I find myself in a social hall set up with benches and a small stage at the front.
The room is empty. The building is silent.
“Hello?” I call. No response. “Mr. Diemschutz, sir?” I try again.
This time I hear sounds through the floorboards above, then a door opening, and finally feet on stairs. A woman appears at the far end of the room, her sandy hair in a single braid down her back, a coat thrown over her nightclothes, her feet in stockings. This must be Mrs. Diemschutz.
“Oh, Asher, it’s you.” Her hand goes to her chest as she walks over to me. “I thought perhaps…but no. Anyway, Mr. Diemschutz is at the inquest today. There was a terrible thing happened here Saturday night. You did hear about it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“He’ll be at the inquest all day. Possibly tomorrow too. I guess you have an unexpected holiday.”
I nod, not knowing what to say. I want to say something comforting, but what?
She pushes some loose strands of hair off her forehead. “I’ll let Mr. Diemschutz know we talked.”
“Thank you. Oh, ma’am?”
“Yes?”
“Where is the inquest happening? If you don’t mind my asking.”
“The vestry hall on Cable Street.” She digs her hands into her coat pockets. “But I wouldn’t bother if I were you. The show is sure to be sold out.”
“Right,” I say, but she’s already on her way back to the stairs.
Out on the street again, I wish I had Google Maps or even an old-fashioned paper map. It’s okay, though, because the first person I ask knows how to direct me to Cable Street, and it’s only a short walk. The vestry hall is a boxy, two-story stone building with a rounded front door. The problem, as Mrs. Diemschutz predicted, is that it’s a packed house, and they aren’t letting anyone else in. Instead, I join the loiterers huddled around the open window at the back of the building.
From inside, someone introduces himself as Coroner Wynne Baxter, presiding. After some talk I can’t make out, I hear my boss’s voice.
Mr. Diemschutz: “…I could not see what it was, so I sent my apprentice on his way, then jumped down from my barrow and struck a match. It was the figure of a woman.”
Coroner: “What did you do next?”
Diemschutz: “I ran inside for a candle and went off at once to look for a police officer. The officer called in a doctor and an inspector, who questioned and searched everyone at the club.”
Coroner: “Thank you, Mr. Diemschutz. That will be all for the moment, but please do not leave the premises. We shall take a twenty-minute recess.”
Most of the loiterers drift away at this point. I keep my feet rooted to the spot, but my heart is racing away. Why did Zinnia send us back to this particular week? For me, it’s to stop someone from dying, yes, but who? Assuming I haven’t lost my chance already, that is.
Am I supposed to prevent the Ripper’s next murder? Or am I supposed to shield the Ripper—like, keep him from getting caught? Or maybe it’s not that direct. Maybe the Ripper is stalking a woman who has a little boy, a little boy who will die of neglect if he gets orphaned. Or maybe it has nothing to do with the Ripper at all. Let’s face it, this future victim could be anyone. Maybe it’s even Mitzy. Maybe she’s the one I need to protect. But why would we have to travel to the Victorian slums for that? And how does her boat ride figure in? Ugh, I can’t figure it out.
Suddenly something dawns on me. Mitzy said her uncle works six days a week. He had yesterday off, which means he’s back to his butchering today. I run to Berner Street.
***
Mitzy’s mother answers the door. “Asher, everything is all right? Why you are not working? Maya says you sell the jewels.”
“Everything is fine, Mrs. Kraskov,” I tell her. “Turns out I have the day off.”
“What luck,” Mitzy calls from inside the flat. “You’re just in time to help shell.”
“Shell?” I step in.
“Mama and I have taken up work.” She sits at the kitchen table with a wooden bucket on her lap, a nutcracker in her hand, and an ocean of walnuts spread in front of her. “The costermonger on Sage Road is going to give us a shilling for every bucket we fill.” Then under her breath she adds, “Whoopee.”
I watch her feel along the table for a walnut, crack it, and pop the meat into the bucket. The shell goes into the washbasin at her feet. “We’ll be rich by year’s end, don’t you expect, Mama?” You could cut her sarcasm with a butcher’s knife.
Mrs. Kraskov sits down at the table and pulls a nutcracker out of her apron pocket. She starts shelling a walnut, but her eyes are on Mitzy’s fingers.
“Here, let me,” I tell Mitzy.
Mitzy shakes her head. “Take Mama’s.”
“No, you give, Maya,” Mrs. Kraskov insists. “Asher and I, we work. If Asher does not mind.”
“I’m fine, Mama.” Mitzy stands firm. “Besides, don’t you need to get to the market for Uncle’s dinner? This is the perfect time.”
Mrs. Kraskov looks to me. “I do not like for to leave Maya alone.”
“I’m happy to help.” I take the seat next to Mitzy and hold my hand out to Mrs. Kraskov.
She hesitates, then gives me the nutcracker and unties her apron. “I not be going long.”
“I’ve got all day. Take your time.”
“Thank you, Asher. Maya, you watch your fingers.” She grabs her coat and basket from the door hook and heads out.
“What’s going on with the walnuts?” I ask as soon as we’re alone. “Trying to earn your way out from under the ogre?”
She rolls her eyes. “Mama told the ogre she wants to pitch in. Next thing you know, he makes a deal with the nut guy—the costermonger—and we’re swimming in walnuts.”
“Sheesh,” I mutter to no one.
Mitzy cracks a few more nuts. “Mama should’ve gone to Annie’s instead.”
“Whose?”
“Annie. Our cousin in Brooklyn. That’s where Mama should’ve taken us when Papa passed. Not here.”
“Yeah, well.” I tap the nutcracker against the table. “Our pal Zinnia seems to think we belong here in London.”
“Freaking Zinnia.”
“Yep.” Then we just sit there.
“You want me to show you how?” Mitzy asks after a while.
“Hmm?”
“The nutcracker.”
“Oh no, sorry. I was just busy, y’know, feeling wretched.” I put a nut in the cracker and split the shell.
“At least we have snacks.” She takes a nut from the bucket and slips it into her mouth. “You like these?”
“Walnuts? Don’t know—I’ve only ever had them in brownies.”
“Here then.” She takes another nut from the bucket and moves closer. Touches my face, finds my mouth, and presses the nut to my lips.
Something in my belly wriggles and flutters.
When I was little, my mother—my real mother, my twenty-first-century mother, my then-and-there mother—used to tell me this one story at bedtime. She said that when sighted children close their eyes at night, blind children on the other side of the world get to borrow their vision. It was supposed to make me more willing to go to bed. It didn’t. But now. Now if I could lend my sight to Mitzy, I’d close my eyes all day long.
I bite down on the nut.
“Good?” Her face is so close to mine, I can feel the tickle of her breath on my cheek. I nod. “Sort of buttery and smooth?” she asks softly, her voice more like air than sound.
“Mmm.”
“Good,” she says, but her tone changes. “Now, will you kindly tell me why you have the day off from work all of a sudden?” She sits back with a thump, a temper. “And stop keeping secrets from me, Abe Pearlman.”
The nut turns dry and cold in my mouth. “No secrets, Mitzy, I swear. My boss had to be at the murder inquest today, that’s all. He’s the one who found the body.”
“Oh. Sorry, I mean…” She lowers her head. “Look, you’re my only source of info around here, and I can’t stand the thought of you holding out on me.”
“I’m not. I won’t.” Her hand is close enough for me to hold, but I don’t because I’m that much of a loser. “I’d never do that.”
“And I keep thinking, what if this is my life? Like this. Blind and cracking walnuts and sneaking around the ogre.” She winds her hair around her finger. “What if we’re doomed?”
“We’re not.”
“You’re pretty good at that.” She releases her hair.
“At what?”
She picks up another nut. “At sounding like you mean it, like you’re positive, even though you don’t have a clue.”
“But…” She’s right, of course. I don’t have so much as an inkling.
The apartment door squeaks open then, and Mrs. Kraskov appears. “It is good going to market early morning. Much more fresher.”
She comes to the table and takes four potatoes and an onion out of her basket. “Here.” She hands me the newspaper she was carrying under her arm. “You read us later, yes?”
“The news, sure.”
“Not so much new.” She winks. “It is from two days ago.”
Two days seem so long ago already. Two days ago, I was living in the twenty-first century. I hadn’t set foot in Zinnia’s Fortunes and Futures, hadn’t tripped down the rabbit hole of doom. Two days ago, the world still followed some basic rules, like time running forward.
I try to recall how it was, how it felt in that distant time. Yesterday at school, I had PE and we watched a video in Spanish class. But what did I have for lunch—the pizza or the veggie burger? Was I wearing my red hoodie or my Mets sweatshirt? Crap, I can’t remember. It was so long ago. And so much has happened since then.
“First,” Mrs. Kraskov says, “I have surprise.” She reaches into her coat pocket and pulls out an envelope. “It is letter from cousin Annie in New York.”
Mitzy lights up. “Read it to us.”
Her mother sits down and tears open the letter. “‘My dear Bina,’” she reads the Yiddish greetings. “‘I hope you are settling smoothly into your new home. How is Maya adjusting?’”
Mrs. Kraskov reads on about cousin Annie’s job sewing waistcoats, her husband’s work as a bookbinder, and their twin daughters’ antics. “‘Now before I close,’” she continues, “‘I will tell you something exciting I heard talk about. Something wonderf—’”
Mrs. Kraskov’s voice trails off, her eyes scanning the lines at the end of the letter. Quickly, she folds the note and shoves it into her apron pocket. “Yes, that is good letter.”
“Don’t stop now, Mama,” Mitzy urges. “What did she hear talk about?”
“It is nothing.” Her mother picks up a knife and starts paring a potato. “Just mothers’ talk. Asher, you read paper now.”
“All right, let’s see.” I open the paper, dated October 1, 1888. “Measles reported in Staffordshire. Inventor behind aquarium craze passes on. Oh look, the Royal Court Theatre opens. Shall I read that one then?”
I spend the rest of the morning and half the afternoon at the table with them, which is fine and everything, but I can’t get two seconds alone with Mitzy, and her mother won’t let her out for a walk in the wake of the murders, so we don’t get to strategize. Then Mrs. Kraskov pulls me aside. She tells me how Duvid sometimes comes home for a late lunch. How he doesn’t want any boys near his “invalid” niece. How it would be best if I disappeared myself for the rest of day. How she’s sorry to cut my visit short. Then she sends me off with a pocket full of walnuts and permission to come again.
So when are Mitzy and I supposed to talk, really talk? If she could see, then at least I could sneak notes to her sometimes. But this. This is hopeless.
Too frustrated to sit around in my own empty flat, I head over to the Cable Street vestry again. They still aren’t letting anyone in, so I join the men outside the window. An old guy in a bowler hat tells me they’re dealing with the second murder now. I listen in.
Coroner: “Inspector McWilliam, based on your examination of the second victim, do you have any conclusions as to the instrument that was used?”
McWilliam: “It had to be a sharp-pointed knife, at least six inches long, I should say. The kind of knife a butcher would use, perhaps.”
Coroner: “Now tell us about the apron.”
McWilliam: “Yes, we discovered a bloody scrap of apron farther down Goulston Street. The fabric matches that of the apron worn by the victim.”
Coroner: “Indeed. Now, tell us what you know about the graffiti found near this bloody apron.”
McWilliam: “On Sunday morning, your honor, I saw some fresh chalk-writing on the wall at Goulston Street. It said: ‘The Juwes are not the men who will be blamed for nothing.’ I penned a copy of it and gave instructions to have the graffiti photographed. But instead, the city police rubbed out the graffiti, saying it might cause a riot against the Jews.”
So the graffiti was put there to blame the Ripper on the Jews. And someone else was casting suspicion on a butcher. It wouldn’t be hard to connect the dots—to blame a Jewish butcher. I wonder if that’s what’s going to happen, or if that’s what actually did happen, since this is the past. I don’t know. We got all of about one sentence on the Ripper case in Western history class, and that was about how he might have moved to the U.S. after London. So yeah, I have no idea. All I know is I can’t listen to another minute of this. I think I’ll go walk Mum home from work.