What I had thought was a fine way to dress for leaving looked to the citizens of New York that day, I’m sure, like a farmer fantasy. I was clean, at the least, and my hair braided, coiled under a rabbit-fur bonnet made by my father.
I could see there was water to either side. Water meant boats; boats meant leaving. I put my head into my collar and walked against the wind until I found one of the rivers. The Hudson.
I was directed to the ship lines, where a ticket clerk confirmed I had nothing like the money required to purchase a passage to Europe, by sail or steam. As I walked away from the counter, my life fit in my hand, only as big as the coins in my purse, and it was not large enough. I could pay for a meal or a room, but not both. If I ate, I would have nowhere to sleep. If I chose a place to sleep, I would have nothing to eat.
As I walked the city of New York, not knowing now where to go, I cursed it silently, and my eyes felt like the judgment of angels, as if they could light my way in the gathering dark.
I still did not know where to go or what to do.
My family had been the borders of my world before then, and with them gone, the world had revealed itself to me.
The trees were the wrong trees; the buildings, the wrong buildings; the people, the wrong people. The reek of the streets, of the horse manure, the garbage, the spilled beer, and the drunken piss, it all seemed to say to me, Your mother is dead, your father is dead, your brothers are dead, and no one can help you.
And so I cursed these things. I cursed these wrong trees; the carriages; the low, sooty buildings; the high ones. It was warmer here, the ground not quite frozen, but cold all the same—I cursed that as well. The mud under my feet. I cursed the fine clothes and the poor, the buggies, the trains, the men, the women, the beggars, the horses, and the birds, all of it—I wished it all to burn, to become a fire that would lay waste to the city, for me to turn from ember to inferno under the breath of whatever it was that would listen to my prayer and answer it. And while I’d not cried once for the entire journey, I began to as I began my curses. I wept continuously, though I did not sob or shake.
§
By nightfall I remained more ash than ember. My face burned from where the tears had glazed my face and I had brushed them away. I sank against a stone wall. Nothing had answered my prayers, again. And so, having cursed everything that came near me, I cursed myself.
I was dazed from hunger—I’d never eaten away from home in my entire life. I looked at the window of a tavern full of people laughing and drinking, and saw no clear way to feed myself, no way to join them. I remember I was afraid that it was their house and they would not let me in.
The confidence that came with cursing the people in the street left me, and they frightened me now. They seemed to me like a swarm, indistinct from one another, foreign and of a piece with one another in a way I would never be. And while I was unsure how they fed themselves, what they would eat and drink, they were not unsure at all and this terrified me. I watched for signs of how it was done, in a furious despair. Not for wanting to die, but to live.
Girl, said a voice behind me, and I turned.
Are you lost? he asked.
I shook my head. This, at least, was true.
You look quite cold, more than half froze, he said. He smiled faintly, and a whisper of charm came through the air.
He was pale, somber, very tall. He had dark hair and whiskers, the whiskers a bit frozen from his breath and the wind, and he looked as if even speaking to me grieved him.
Come join me inside, he said, and indicated the saloon. Let me buy you a bit of something and get you out of the cold.
I went in. He bought me soup and a bit of beer, and I knew I might live.
§
Do you need a position? he asked.
I supposed I did.
He needed someone for help with the washing and the cooking, he said. His wife had just died. Was I handy? For it looked like I was. He was a new widower.
I was no good for it, but I nodded all the same, for I wanted at least another meal and a bed. I hoped desperation might make me better at chores.
Can you not speak? he asked, for thus far I’d said nothing.
I decided I could not and nodded yes. It would be easier this way.
Well, okay then, he said.
It was a very short charade we managed. His house that night was cold and clean, the farm large, familiar and unfamiliar both. My parents had never used hired men and women so I was unused to them and greeted them warily with a wave. He showed me to a small room off the kitchen he said was to be mine. When I came back through the kitchen and found him asleep by his bottle, a little whiskey was still in the glass.
I was still cold, and though I had come into the kitchen to be close to the fire, I thought to try this—he had said it warmed one, but had not offered it to me. The taste burned, but the warmth was there and ran through me, consoling.
I sipped again.
I roused him, for he should be in his bed, it seemed to me, and helped him up the stairs.
§
By the end of the next day, it was quite clear I was as bad as I ever had been at the cooking and the wash. He was nice enough, but as I cleaned the table and took his plate, he made a face.
I had found him asleep at the table again. He’d stayed late, drinking by the kitchen fire. I woke him to go to bed, and as I did, he looked at me and I saw his eyes.
I slowly understood; I was close to a lesson, one I had long understood would come. I could tell what he wanted from me.
I’d had to break the ice on the East River to wash clothes that froze before they dried. His eyes reminded me of that ice. I wondered if it would be worse than that and decided perhaps it was not.
I guided him to his room. I laid him out on his bed, helping him off with his clothes, pausing before also draping mine. I stood cold, naked, at the edge of this moment. I told myself I could still leave, though I knew I could not, and climbed into the bed on top of him.
He did the rest. There was pain that surprised me, and I was so cold, it burned as he entered me, the heat of him, but this also its own strange pleasure. I pulled his quilt up around me like a cape, pushing it against my face so he could not see me cry, my eyes starting at the shock of it. Soon there was only the terrible cold around us in the room and the new warmth of him, and beneath that, a surprise: the beat of his heart, strange to me, there in the veins.
It wasn’t his heart there, though, pushing in me.
He was tough and hard all over except here, with a wiry fur to his chest and belly. A tremor came over him like fear and his head rolled back, eyes shut. He was not a pretty man. Was he falling asleep? He was very drunk. I hoped he was. I reached down and put my hand along his beard, touched his lip to check. He pulled back.
It wasn’t to be tender then, I saw. He chose that moment to sit up and made to kiss me. I pushed him back down and held his arms in place until we were done. The kissing I could not bear.
The kissing would be worse than the ice.
Afterward, when he was done, he threw back his blankets and swore. Eh. I’ve ruined you, have I? he said, for there was blood on him and on me. He went to his basin and washed himself before telling me to do the same.
Men always said it that way—I’ve ruined you. I couldn’t explain, but, no, I did not feel ruined. I wasn’t sure what I felt at first, besides being shocked by the blood—I felt like I’d slain something else, though the blood was mine.
He let me stay the night in his bed, which was warmer than the room off the kitchen. It was a strange vigil, for he snored so loudly I couldn’t sleep. Instead, I felt my body warm.
I could feel how easy it would be to stay, and it was almost tempting, for being easy. I, with only ash for my trousseau, the new girl for the widower. I think he felt this also. But that was not what I wanted. It wasn’t why I’d come all this way.
What I felt, by morning, was how it was as if I were someone new. Or, perhaps, more: There was someone I had become, and she had made this decision by way of introduction.