She loved to see how large they looked, in their suits and coats, turning around in her shabby little room, wondering aloud how she managed to keep body and soul together in a place like that. Some of them brought her gifts: bracelets, perfume, stockings, and she was always delighted, and never thought twice about accepting them.
She couldn’t wear the jewelry—Tony would notice eventually, and it would furnish him with the perfect excuse to skip out on her for good—so she wrapped those gifts in a handkerchief and kept them hidden under her mattress until that morning the police knocked on the door. She wondered if anyone had discovered them yet, tucked between the boards in the bathroom ceiling. She wondered how long it would be before she could retrieve them, and how much money they would fetch.
Nothing she did felt, at the time, like the calculated maneuver it appeared to be now, in hindsight. An arrest has a way of clarifying things, of casting a prism of criminal intent over actions that, at the time, seemed reasonable and entirely justifiable. Why shouldn’t Minnie have left home, if she wanted to? She was sixteen and old enough to work or marry, so what was the crime in wanting to live on her own?
And was it her fault that the mills didn’t pay enough to put dinner on the table? Although she hadn’t wanted to go back to factory work, Tony had encouraged her and she’d agreed. He had a friend who earned twelve dollars a week at the jute mill, which was quite a bit more than she’d ever made in Catskill. But when she went to speak with the girls’ superintendent, she was offered only half that. She was bold enough to ask why and was told that the men had families to support. Someone must have been looking after Minnie, the girls’ superintendent suggested, and it was good of her to want to earn a little extra, but she wouldn’t want to take a salary away from a family man, would she?
Minnie tried to say that no one was looking after her, but it was too awful, and she couldn’t bring herself to utter another word. She took the job, and the wages that never quite paid her rent, because she couldn’t find anything better and she couldn’t go home.
What was Tony to her, once he’d helped her settle, however precariously, in her little room? He came around on a Thursday night now and then, expecting her to play the wife and cook him dinner, but he’d been eating his mother’s good Italian cooking and Minnie couldn’t put anything on the table that pleased him. He claimed not to be able to afford to take her to the moving pictures. When she offered to pay, one Saturday after she’d just collected her wages, he looked disgusted and said that he’d never let a girl spend money on him. It was a question of honor.
But where was his honor when it came to looking after her? He obviously felt that he’d done his duty. He never said a word about a future for the two of them, not that Minnie was too certain on the subject herself. And if he ever wondered what she did, on all the nights he wasn’t with her, he didn’t ask.
Then one night—early one morning, really—she heard his footsteps on the stairs just as a sheet music salesman from Pittsburgh was putting on his shoes. There was no place for him to hide, nothing for him to do but to stand and face what was coming to him.
No matter how indifferent Tony might have been toward Minnie, he couldn’t take the sight of another man in her room. He threw the salesman down and would’ve given him a good pounding, except that the man scuttled over to crouch in the corner, to Minnie’s everlasting embarrassment, and Tony just laughed at him. But then he turned and took in Minnie—half-dressed, caught in a lie—and he tore the place apart. He threw every picture off the wall, broke a chair, and smashed dishes—while Minnie screamed at him to stop.
All the shouting and banging on the walls rousted the neighbors, including their landlord, the baker downstairs, who had just come in to light the ovens. Minnie would’ve been evicted on the spot, except that Tony was flooded with remorse. When the landlord demanded to know what was going on, Tony pretended that the salesman was his brother, and that they were fighting over some feud in the family. The landlord relented and they were allowed to stay on one condition: that they furnish some proof they were married.
That left Tony and Minnie alone in their room, huffing and panting. Minnie spoke first.
“This is your fault.”
Tony laughed at that. “I didn’t invite a fellow upstairs for the night.”
“If I lose this place, where am I to go?”
“You should’ve asked him that.”
This was getting her nowhere. She would’ve been perfectly happy to never see Tony again, but where was she to go? She thought about the little bundle of jewelry she’d hidden away, and wondered how far that would get her. She’d been holding on to anything of value she owned against the day she’d have to save herself. Had that day come? Or was there something worse around the corner?
“Get a marriage license and show it to our landlord,” she said, “or I’ll pay a visit to your mother and tell her everything.”
She’d never met an Italian man who wasn’t terrified of his mother. He went off in a huff, but she knew he’d be back.
A FEW DAYS LATER, he walked right in without knocking.
“I thought you’d be out with one of your fellows,” Tony said.
“I don’t have any fellows,” Minnie said.
Tony stood across the room, with his back against the door. “Well, my sister moved back home, and she’s got a no-good husband and two babies. They want me out of the basement.”
“But you can’t stay here!”
“Of course I can. I just paid the rent.”
Minnie felt a little knot inside of her, but she stood very still. She ticked off the choices in her head: Go home. Stay here. Run away.
“I thought we couldn’t stay unless we were married,” Minnie said.
Tony reached into his pocket and pulled out an envelope. “It’s a marriage license, just like you said. I even signed your name.”
So this was how it would be. He had every right to stay. She was free to leave.
But somehow, neither of them did. One night turned into a week, and a week turned into two. They slipped into some semblance of a sham marriage, with Tony paying the rent and Minnie burning the potatoes at dinner every night.
It was nothing that Minnie wanted. She didn’t love him. She was starting to hate her life in Fort Lee as much as she’d hated Catskill. But she couldn’t seem to put more than a dollar or two together at a time, and where would she go, anyway? What could she do that was any different from this? Work in a different factory, in a different city? What was the point of it?
When she didn’t come up with an answer herself, one was forced upon her. Here it was: a metal cot in a dormitory, surrounded by a dozen girls who were just like her.
30