Gift House pt 2

Liza woke up slowly to the mid-morning sun glowing through the single window.  She groaned as she sat up, glancing at the other side of the bed.  Her mother was there for once, snoring softly.  At least I know she’s breathing, Liza thought as she climbed out of bed.  She looked around their single room.

The wallpaper was stained and dingy except for Liza’s postcard collection pinned on the wall by the door.  The floor was in need of sweeping and mopping and there were hardly any clean dishes left.  It wasn’t any messier than the night before, except for her mother’s clothes strewn across the floor.  An unpleasant smell came from the chamber pot.  Liza did her business and dumped the whole mess out the window before dressing.

She dressed for work in her well-darned black dress, but she wasn’t going to work.  The factory had let her go…again.  She should have been there at six-thirty, and it had to be at least nine now.   She pinned a little bunch of silk flowers at her throat, and began to braid up her hair.  Twelve hours a day six days a week for a dollar a day—there had to be more to life than sitting behind a dusty, noisy machine all day. 

She found a package of crackers in the cupboard and munched on a few, staring at her mother’s prone form.  She needed a job. They couldn’t pay rent and eat on what her mother brought in at the end of the night, and most of the time she brought home more opium than cash.  She picked up her mother’s discarded skirt and rummaged through the pockets, coming up with a half dollar and a few pennies.  All night on the streets, selling what she had left of her body, and this was all she had.

Liza put the money in her pocket, dropping the skirt quickly as her mother moaned and stirred. “What you doing?” she asked from the bed, her voice hoarse.

“Going to work, Ma,” Liza said, banking on her mother being too out of it to notice the time.

“Before you go run to the corner store and get me some snuff,” she drawled, rolling over.

“Sorry Ma, I’m running late.”

“Worthless slut.”

Liza frowned. “Takes one to know one,” she replied, rushing to the door and slamming it shut behind her before her mother found something to throw at her.   

She turned down the corridor to the stairs.  Crazy Willie was slumped over on the landing, a bottle hanging from his limp hand but when Liza stepped over him he grabbed her ankle, his grip surprisingly tight. “I’ll kick you so hard in the jewels you’ll wet yourself,” she warned. 

For a moment he gripped her tighter, but finally he let go. She kicked him hard in the hip as she hurried on, taking the stairs two at a time to the ground floor.  She noted the pink eviction notice sticking out of Patty the Pox’s mailbox by the door.  If she didn’t find another job soon there would be one in their box, as though their single dingy room was worth the five dollars a week they paid for it and the handful of change Liza had just liberated was not going to get them very far at the market. 

Out on the street Liza looked south towards the tall red brick buildings and even taller smokestacks spewing black clouds into the sky.  The last thing she wanted to do was go begging at factory doors for a position. 

She had worked the spooler at a factory that made parts for mechanical limbs.  Her job was to run the machine that spun the hair-thin wire they produced onto spools.  Jeanie Coolie had worked the machine next to her, and only four days ago poor Jeanie’s screams rang louder through the factory than any sound of the machines.  Her hair had gotten caught in the spinning tie rod of the machine.  There hadn’t been much left of her skull by the time the equipment was turned off and she was pulled out of the gears.

Liza lifted her hand to her head, remembering Jeanie’s beautiful blond braid, wrapped around the rod and covered in grease and blood.  She had screamed at the foreman because there should have been a cover over the machine.  She stood there, covered in Jeanie’s blood and she screamed at him until he slapped her and told her to get out. 

No. No more factory work. Not ever again.  Maybe she could get a job at a shop…except she wasn’t good at saying polite things like “may I help you” or “thank you, please come again.”

“Liza!” someone called, and she saw Nandie across the street, sitting on the stoop in front of her tenement.   Nandie was fifteen, two years younger than Liza, and she had phossy mouth.  Liza crossed the street to say hello, even though she hated to look at the other girl.  Nandie’s teeth were gone and big rotting holes were visible in her gums.  Her face was swollen and covered in oozing sores.   Liza had seen others like her, after dark, their mouths glowing from the phosphorous eating away their faces.

“Still no job?” Nandie asked, her bare legs sticking out from under her too-short dress.  “I’m starting at Wyler’s next week.”

This was an outright lie. No one was going to hire poor Nandie looking the way she did. Fortunately the poison in her system would kill her before she starved to death.  Liza was a little surprised she was even still coherent.  “Tizzy said they’re always looking for dance hall girls,” Liza said.

“Yeah, but you only make as much money as you’re willing to—“ and Nandie began to mime fornication with her hands. “Life’s too short, you know?” She said this with no irony in her voice and Liza tried not to be horrified. This was Storyville. Either you died young, or you sold your body until you wished you were dead.

“I know it, girl,” Liza said.  She gave Nandie the four pennies she had in her pocket and moved on.

She found Manny and James hanging around by the trolley stop. Manny was sort-of her beau.  At least, she liked to pretend he was. “Hello boys,” she said. “Going uptown?”

“Doin’ a job,” Manny said trying to sound important even though he was just running opiates for the Prince.

“Can I come?”

“As if,” James replied, and Manny said, “What do I get if I let you?”

“Something,” she said with a false smile and a wink.

When the trolley came Manny paid her dime to ride and she sighed with relief as the car pulled away. Even if she was only leaving Storyville for a few hours, it was better than nothing.

***

Fancy walked across the street from the boarding house and stepped into Storyville for the first time as a non-resident.   She didn’t feel happy—only relieved.  For forty-one years she had remained sane, sober, and healthy in an underworld where the residents were rarely one of the three.  Even escape from the place brought her no happiness, because Storyville still existed for thousands of others…and it always would.

She walked past prostitutes old and young, beggars, young men with gang tattoos inked onto the backs of their hands, and old men passed out in the street—if they weren’t dead.  Factory workers lived in Storyville, and families too.  When one became too poor or sick for the tenements of Cheapside one came to Storyville to rot. Sex, drugs, and sorrow ruled this world.

Fancy hadn’t grown up there. She’d had parents once, in Cheapside, but they died, and she had had to make a living for her…and her sister. 

Her sister’s apartment building boasted broken windows and the smell of human waste in the stairwell.  She climbed to the third floor and knocked on her sister’s door. She heard a rustling and a groan on the other side, but when she tried to open the door it was locked.  Finally her sister Mona opened the door, leaning heavily on the frame.  “Well if it ain’t the holier-than-thou whore,” she drawled.

Mona wore stays yellow with sweat over a dirty chemise.  She was all skin, bone and angles where Fancy was plump and healthy.  Her sister had not adjusted to moving to Storyville and had quickly fallen in with drugs. The fact that she was thirty-eight and still alive sometimes shocked Fancy.

But she wasn’t there for Mona.  Over the years she had done all she could for her broken sister.  Her concern now was her niece, Liza.

“Hello Mona,” Fancy said. “You’re looking well.”

“Bull,” Mona answered, and let Fancy in.  She was appalled by the state of the rooms. Liza didn’t try very hard to keep the place clean, but it was even worse than normal. Clothing was strewn across the door and dirty pans stacked on the tiny stove.  The entire place smelled of unwashed person.

“Where is my lovely niece?” Fancy asked.

“Shoulda been home from work by now,” Mona said, falling back on the bed. “Out with that boy I suppose.”

“What boy?” Fancy asked, alarmed. Liza hadn’t said anything about a beau the last time she had visited. She prayed the girl hadn’t gotten into anything unsavory, and that it wasn’t too late.

“I don’t know,” Mona said. “Can you buy me some snuff? That devil child took all my money again.”

“I don’t have anything extra this week,” Fancy lied. “Times is hard.”

“Even for the Lady Whore of Storyville?” Mona scoffed.

“You know I ain’t never been a lady,” Fancy said.

“You sure act like one,” Mona said, but before she could continue her rant Liza walked into the room, carrying a paper package and reeking of cheap cigarettes.

“Aunt Fancy!” she exclaimed, dropping the parcel on the stove.  Liza was a pretty girl when she smiled, though it wasn’t very often.  She gave Fancy a hug, and Fancy felt a warmth for the girl that she didn’t feel for anyone else.  She had to get her out of there, before it was too late.

“You left your poor ma without any snuff,” Fancy scolded lightly. “Why don’t you and I walk over to the shop and get her some?” She gave her niece a warning look, and Liza nodded.

***

Liza had bought and smoked two cigarettes on the way home trying to get the taste of Manny out of her mouth.  She’d gone farther this time than she ever had before, and she hadn’t liked it. And now here was her aunt, the only person who would really disapprove of what she had just done. Liza’s day could not get any worse.

They didn’t speak until they were outside, walking slowly towards the nearest corner market. “I have a proposition for you,” Fancy said, and told Liza about the house, and her intention to turn it into a boarding house.

“Who would give you a job running a boarding house, of all things?” Liza asked.

“A very good friend,” Fancy replied with the tone that said Liza should stop asking questions.  She almost laughed. All her life Fancy had pretended not to be a whore, but here she was accepting gifts of entire houses from her johns.  “I’m going to need help,” she finished. “Someone to keep things clean, and to cook and do washing and the like. I know you have a job at the factory, and I can only pay you three dollars a week plus board—”

“I’ll take it!” Liza said immediately, not even having to think.  All that money for herself instead of spending it towards a room—she would be rich in a matter of weeks.  “When can I start?”

“What about your mother?”

“She can take in Patty the Pox, she’ll be…as fine as she can be. Aunt Fancy—thank you.”

“Get your mother taken care of and you can start tomorrow,” Fancy said, and Liza beamed. Things were finally looking up.

***

A/N:

Phossy mouth was a real thing during the industrial age. It was caused by white phosphorous used to make matches.  The employees would eat their lunches in the same room as the equipment, causing necrosis of the jaw. And it really did glow in the dark. Storyville, incidentally, was also a real place, the redlight district of New Orleans from 1897 to 1917.

Don't try to hurt your brain too hard coming to grips with the currency in this story. I'm having a hell of a time with it myself.

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