“I see you have recovered,” he flicked off the ash. “Your cabin is back to normal?”
“Oh, yes—but it was truly awful. I nearly used Antonia’s potion, then thought better not. But now we are all well again, and so I really must learn to speak and understand American. Megan, the Irish girl, glares when Eugenie and I talk together in French. Bela doesn’t seem to care as much. I think she is quite used to no one ever knowing Polish—but poor Megan, she really needs to talk and, as I need to learn, would you please teach me right away?”
Pleased, Giovanni agreed. Every morning, bright and early before the dining hall became the hub, the meeting place, with her copybook spread open before her on the long table, pencil in hand and penknife ready to resharpen it, Giovanna received intensive instruction in the use of conversational English. Giovanni was a strict teacher, she a fast pupil, and so one evening when preparing for bed, Giovanna turned to Megan and said, with proud assurance, “Good night, Megan. I wish you good to sleep,” placing the accent on the last syllable of the girl’s name, whose delighted chuckle spoke volumes.
“Oh, my! What a fancy name I have! Go on! I like it—say it again!”
While Bela knitted yet another pair of thick socks for a husband with unusually large feet and Eugenie, feeling very sorry for herself, trimmed her boater with paper roses, Megan now chatted away like a chipmunk in spring. Although most of what she said was often far beyond Giovanna’s English language skills, she listened, recognizing the Irish girl’s need to confide her good fortune to someone.
“Patrick, that’s his name. Oh, if you could but see him! Hair black as a raven’s wing seen by moonlight, with eyes blue—blue as the sky—with his grin that can break a girl’s heart if not meant for her. Would you believe it? Found employment right off as head groom on a grand estate that breeds Thoroughbreds. I am not certain where it is exactly … a place called Virginia where me Patrick says even the grass is rich. The fine lady of the manor house, needing a serving girl to polish her silver, said I too could come work for her and someday, when we have saved enough, we will return home, buy the land on the Bluff, build us a grand house of our own, be looked up to. Look …” Jumping off the bunk, Megan pulled her trunk out from beneath, opened its battered lid, displayed its interior wooden tray filled with linen. “See … it’s me very own bridal sheets. I stitched them meself and … here …” Carefully, lovingly, she pulled from its paper wrapping a long apron, so starched it crackled, its square yolk edged in Irish Point openwork, a thing of true beauty. “This too I made with a proper dust cap to match. I mean to wear it on me very first day as a serving maid in a grand American home!”
Even Eugenie, permitted to admire the fine needlework, agreed that the apron was beyond criticism, would be deemed acceptable in the finest chateaus.
Naturally, now it was the French girl who was miffed, showing her disdain at being ignored by flouncing from the cabin whenever Giovanna practiced her newly acquired American, but Bela stayed, clicked her knitting needles, after a while joining in the sessions of practicing conversation. Using each other’s language skills, correcting each other, by the end of the many days at sea, they would be a triumphant duo of basic language for the country of their destination. Each could name themselves, their marital status, their homeland, their final destination, ask for food, water, washroom, and the price of things.
For those in the Upper Cabin classes, shipboard life settled into its structured routine. Men bonded over endless card games, exchanged impressive opinions engulfed in thick clouds of tobacco smoke, marched briskly circling decks on daily constitutionals, adhering to the strict boundaries of their class. Their women tended bored children, strolled while gossiping, crocheted, wrote into Morocco bound diaries that could be locked with very small keys.
Since the tragic sinking of the “Unsinkable Titanic” the year before, daily lifeboat drills were strictly observed. Everyone made certain they knew where their life jackets were at all times, some carrying them about, slung on one shoulder as though they were a part of clothing. Giovanna solved her problem of where to place her life jacket for fastest retrieval by wearing it to bed. She reasoned that as disasters at sea most often occurred in the dead of night, this was her most intelligent option. In daylight, she felt quite capable of taking whatever came in her stride. At first, Megan laughed when she saw Giovanna strapped into her bulky harness, then decided why not, and followed her lead. Eugenie refused, saying even if it meant she must drown, she would not wear it. Its rough canvas and wood slats would chafe her so delicate skin and whatever would Etienne say if his wife arrived covered in blotches! Quelle horreur! Bela’s bunk was already so crowded by her ample bulk to say nothing of the sausage she had sworn an oath to never let out of her sight, and bring to the waiting arms of a husband, that she hung hers on the door handle, hoping none of the girls would knock it off when rushing out to save themselves while she was still struggling to get down her ladder.
Below the water line in steerage, Giovanna’s ship designated it as Third Class, 1,074 immigrants also bonded. Like abused animals, they clustered, seeking comfort, safety within their languages and nationalities in order to survive.