The first time I reached to the ground, I was ashamed. But in the paper packet lay two warm chestnuts, whose buttery richness spread over my tongue. I reached eagerly for the next packet; in it sat a bit of salted pretzel, slightly damp—I tried not to think from what.
I might still find a room to let, if I had the money. To get it, I’d need to beg. So I looked for a place and chose a stately market house on Sixteenth Street. Perhaps a dozen others sat on squares of cloth before it, some holding paper signs attesting to the events that had rendered them homeless. When I’d walked through Germantown with Mother, we’d sometimes encountered such persons displaying their troubles; she’d complain of the city’s lax rules against vagrancy and begging, which excepted from arrest anyone who was blind, deaf, dumb, maimed, or crippled, along with women and minor children. Because of this leniency, she said, a stroll in the streets could be heartrending, and such persons were not motivated to seek a better solution to their poverty. Mother preferred to help through institutions or with direct assistance to people in their homes—for people who had homes.
But what of those who didn’t?
I drew closer to the outer wall of the market building, grief and defiance mingling in my heart. As I reached to open my valise, Charlotte startled in the sling of my shawl, then sank back. I tore a page from this notebook and wrote, “Please help a widow and her infant.” Then I claimed a spot among our new tribe, nodding in greeting to the others and drawing stares. I anchored the sign on the ground with the chipped cup from Margaret, which thus became our begging cup. And behind it I sat, my valise beneath me, becoming one more still point of neediness on a street thick with vehicles, any one of which might have careened onto the sidewalk and crushed us.
My whole being was aflutter at the strangeness, yet Charlotte barely stirred against me.
Children in rags sat nearby. One boy wore a tattered shirt and trousers; his bare calves were covered in burns. A girl with one foot bent sideways carried the remains of braids in her hair, perhaps put there by some caring hand. She sat upon a crate, holding to her flat chest a boy too young to walk.
My mother and her charitable friends had spoken of some parents maiming their children in order to live off the pity they inspired. Could these children have been harmed by intent, to loosen purses?
A sob escaped my throat. How could Helen de Jong’s own daughter and granddaughter have become figures in this tableau of tragedy? If Mother could have passed by and observed our abjectness, and if she’d known the source of our predicament, I wondered if she might have laid it all upon my sinful appetite and withheld her coin.
To the right of my spot lay a man on a wool blanket, his crutches beside him, drinking from a metal flask. He was missing a foot; his scrawled sign revealed he’d lost it in the war. He stank of liquor and unwashed flesh. It seemed he hadn’t noticed me until his arm shot out in my direction, proffering the flask. I declined, shuddering to think of placing my mouth over that dark hole and sucking down its enfeebling poison.
“Think yer too good for rotgut?” snarled the man. He adjusted the wad of chewing tobacco in his cheek and spit its juice into the street, fixing his half-closed eyes upon me.
In fact, I did think I was too good for it. I stared downward until he released me from his gaze. Yet who am I to say that the bottle wouldn’t make a fine companion, after a prolonged time of despair and neglect? My father chose it, in far less dire conditions.
All through this, well-dressed servants were stepping past with empty baskets. They walked into the market doors, then emerged laden with foodstuffs and small coins. Beggars nearest to the doors did the best at collecting, but some market goers were not moved by pity until they reached my cup. They tossed in pennies that clanked and settled. I didn’t like to meet their glances, ashamed at how low I’d fallen, but I quietly called my thanks. When a plump-armed maid held out a fresh bun to me, however, I could see the deftly embroidered flowers upon her dress, and I was drawn to look up. Her pink face showed a mix of distaste and pity.
No doubt I’d looked at many vagrants in that way. The chewed bits of bun scraped and dragged as they fell to my stomach.
Then a street boy ran by, yelling “Coppers!” Beggars rose or were helped to rise. An old woman croaked to me, “Shove off!” So I thrust the cup and sign into my pocket and stepped away with Charlotte and my valise, flowing like water into the passing crowd. I followed the old woman; on coming close, I tapped her shoulder. She turned with a hard look.
“Why did we need to leave?” I asked. “Aren’t most of us excepted from the vagrancy laws?”
“Excepted?” She opened her mouth to gape, revealing several holes where teeth had been. “You hain’t been carted in yet? Every one of us that has two legs, even the blind, gets charged with vagrancy and three months’ labor if we’re hauled before the magistrate.”
“But that isn’t the law!” I said. “My mother told me it isn’t!”
“I don’t care what law they write. This is what they do.” She spit. “Yer mother put you up ta begging?”
“Oh, no.” I blushed.
“Well, best get back to Mother and tell her this: the laws and magistrates don’t hardly meet no more.” She gave a vicious laugh that ended with a fit of coughing.
The law may be more fair in Germantown, or else we hadn’t bothered noticing how the beggars’ numbers rose and fell.
I gained thirteen cents for my humiliation. Hardly the way to get money for a room. But I will buy myself an apple.
Sixth Month 11
Today was better, though it began strangely.
With Charlotte in my lap, I sat among others in a corner of the train station, seeking to escape the throngs of travelers, when our group was accosted by a tall preacher with a stoop. He was clad in a faded suit that had half-moon stains beneath the armpits. Without any form of greeting, he raised his bent neck and began to shout lines I recognized from the Book of Job: “God has torn me in his wrath, and hated me….He broke me in two; he seized me by the neck and dashed me to pieces; he set me up as his target.” The preacher’s face, shiny with perspiration, beseeched his unwilling audience of paupers. “Have you known the wrath of God?”
The curious and hostile eyes of young and old, sane and insane stared at him. Did he truly intend to set us up as miniature Jobs? Some vagrants nodded their heads grudgingly.