“Have you anywhere to live?”
Wondering at her directness, I swallowed and replied that I’m a widow looking for work, with many hopeful prospects but nowhere to live at present. Her cheeks grew rosy with what appeared to be sympathy.
“You look awfully tired. I have an idea.” She turned to the bloody-aproned butcher at the next stall and asked him to tell potential customers that she’d return shortly. At her beckoning, I rose and followed her down a crowded row of stalls to the back doors of the market shed. She opened a door and directed me to follow further.
“What does thee want with me?” I asked. My chest constricted. Could she be aiming to trick me as Nancy was tricked?
“Oh, goodness.” She allowed the door to close, straining to be audible amid the shouts of buyers and sellers that echoed off the metal roof. “Of course you’re afraid.” She reached and shook my hand; her shake was sturdy. “I’m Mrs. Bernstein. I’m a widow, too.”
I still didn’t understand her intentions.
“You can rest and nurse the baby in my wagon out back.” She had to yell above the haggling, which rose louder as she gestured to the door. “Would you like to rest there?”
I examined her a moment, from her laced brown boots to the thick braids pinned in a crown about her head and then her genial face, which spoke of a person unaffected by the straining or pretensions of a liar. Her chestnut eyes compelled me.
“Come. There’s nothing to fear.” She waved me toward her.
I followed through a shaded lot to her wagon. It was a fishy-smelling affair with a sagging horse at its helm. The safest place I’d seen in days. I thanked her and climbed to the bench.
She leaned her forearms on the wagon’s side. “My husband died twenty years ago last spring. Like you, I had a baby to care for, and I lost our house.”
“I see,” I replied, glad to have an explanation for her kindness. How sad, that kindness should require an explanation in order to be trusted.
“I close my stall at three. That’s when I’ll load the wagon. Until then, you can rest here.”
She departed. I changed Charlotte and took stock of her condition. The sore on her bottom had closed, and her cough was nearly gone. Nevertheless, I vacillated between worry and hope. Worry: Could malnutrition and neglect have stunted her for good? Hope: She flashed me a gummy smile, which my heart swelled to see, and turned up her eyes for a period of staring. Her soul ran like a river behind her eyes. I sensed two rivers joining in our gaze.
Then she attached her mouth firmly to my nipple, and my happiness soared. For even in her weakened state, her body conveyed the force of a thousand sprouting seeds.
In time her lips parted and released me, and her weight grew heavier. I took that blessed chance to join her. Amid the sounds of mules and horses neighing softly, drinking from buckets at their feet, and shaking to find relief from the rub of harnesses, I fell into a fathomless sleep.
Some hours later, I opened my eyes with difficulty to Mrs. Bernstein’s gentle nudging. My mind pulled free of sleep’s grasping arms as she spoke.
“Would you be willing to stay the night on my back porch?” Over the edge of the wagon, she patted my knee. “You’re welcome to it.”
I accepted gladly. So Mrs. Bernstein loaded her wagon with the remaining fish and ice, then drove us south and east. The Hebrew lettering on the shops informed me that the area had many Jewish residents. I felt a thrill at the strangeness, as though I’d stepped into a nook of some far-off city.
She tied the horse to a post, then led us to the side door of a row-house and into a single room on the first story, at the back. As she passed inside, she kissed a totem that bore Hebrew lettering. She insisted that I sit in her one chair at a small table, which I did, with Charlotte at my chest. The room was clean, with whitewashed walls and a scratched pine floor. A narrow bed sat against a wall.
Somehow Mrs. Bernstein knew that I’d want most of all to wash myself and Charlotte. I helped her carry a large wooden washtub to the porch, which overlooked a shallow yard protected by a high stone wall. She poured hot water from the stove into the washtub, added cold water, gave me a bar of soap and towel, and drew a curtain across the porch.
Charlotte went in first. And oh, the glad sounds she made as I slid her naked form into the water! She even chuckled as I held her with one arm and scrubbed her. I kissed her belly, and she thrashed her legs, raising up water that spotted my clothes. She grabbed a lock of my hair and pulled, making me yelp. Then I dried her and left her naked, for the novelty of it.
How does a baby know to look its mother in the eyes? Charlotte looked eagerly, as if drinking in what she found. On a length of flannel she wriggled and cooed, gazing at me with an utter faith I don’t deserve.
Our hostess had by then unloaded some fish for our supper and left to deliver the remainder to a relief society and to take the wagon and horse to a stable. Upon returning, so I could bathe, she brought a freshly diapered Charlotte into her room and amused her.
The pleasures of clean water cannot be overstated. I fairly melted as it flowed along my skin, taking off layers of dirt and sweat, and bringing on a state of newness and optimism. And my feet—oh! They shed layers of blistered skin and dirt, till only tenderness remained. When the water had cooled, I dried off and donned my Mother Hubbard dress, cherishing its looseness. Then I washed all my other clothes, as well as Charlotte’s blanket, diaper, and gown. I cut a half-dozen more diapers, enough to last the night at least. I hung our wet things on the clothesline in the yard and lay my valise open in the slanting sun.
Mrs. Bernstein cooked up a heaping plate of fish. She said I must call her Vera. I ate with passion, continuing till I was overstuffed. As we cleaned, I asked how she had gotten her start at fishmongering.
“My husband was a fisherman, and after his death, his friends began supplying me,” she said. “For eighteen years I sold fish from a cart. By two years ago, I’d saved enough to pay the annual rent on a market stall.” Her son is now twenty-one and works as a fisherman, she said; he rents a room nearby with his wife and their baby. “I hope to find a little house for us before long,” she said. “And what are your good prospects?”
“Good prospects?” I was taken off guard.
“The ones you mentioned at my stall.”
I faltered a moment before admitting that I had no good ones, or truly, none at all.