Broken
Authors: Mary Ann Gouze
Copyright © 2014 by Mary Ann Gouze
All rights reserved. This story or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Fourteen miles south of Pittsburgh, St. Luke’s Hospital looks down into Warrenvale, one of the many mill towns in Pennsylvania’s legendary Steel Valley. Here, for over a century, thousands of immigrants eked out their lives in the brutal world of the early steel industry. These men—mostly laborers and many illiterate—stoically endured the horribly hard labor, the fiery explosions of the open-hearth furnaces, and the stench of sulfur that remained with them long after the blare of the quitting whistle.
In the bars along tavern row, many drowned their frustrations in alcohol. But some, like Walter Lipinski and his father before him, could not extinguish their hatred of the working conditions they were forced to accept. And these deplorable few…would go home drunk, and abusive.
February 11, 1951, Monday
Walter Lipinski, third generation steelworker, was stuck in the waiting room of old St. Luke’s. Occasionally he paced, leaving dirty footprints on the green shag carpet. Walter hated hospitals. He hated waiting. But most of all he hated his mother-in-law, Maggie McBride, who was dying in room 303.
With stumpy fingers, he fumbled into his pocket to retrieve his cigarettes. He stuck a crumpled Chesterfield between his teeth, glanced briefly at the naked woman faded into the side of his Zippo lighter and clicked. A flash of orange sent pungent smoke upward, stinging his eyes. When his vision cleared, he saw his wife, Sarah, who had finally returned from her mother’s room. Glancing at his watch, Walter realized she had kept him waiting for almost an hour. It seemed like two. “Well?” he asked in the raspy voice of a heavy smoker. “Did you tell her?”
Sarah, a small woman with a round face and a thick waist, avoided his eyes. She pushed a few strands of dull, brown hair from her forehead. Walter grabbed her by the shoulders. “Damnit! You didn’t tell her?!”
Sarah paled as his meaty hands tightened their grip. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I tried to tell her. But she keeps insisting that my sister will come home. Could we just keep the baby until she does?”
“Becky ain’t comin’ home! You go back and tell your mother we ain’t keepin’ that baby.”
With the veins in his neck now standing out, Walter turned and walked to the window. His breath fogged the icy pane as he looked into the distance, where the blazing open-hearth furnace was little more than an orange glow. He took a long drag on his Chesterfield, blew out the smoke and waited. Finally, he spun around, stubbed out the cigarette in a nearby ashtray and pushed his wife out of his way. “Then I’ll tell her!”
“Please,” Sarah cried grabbing his sleeve. “Don’t!” she pleaded, stepping in front of him to block his path. “Don’t you understand? My mother is dying!”
“Big deal,” he hissed into her face.
A nurse entered the room and asked them to go with her. They glanced at each other then followed the nurse down the hall and into the conference room.
* * *
Two minutes later, Sarah shot out of the conference room and ran down the hall to room 303. She stopped at the doorway, stunned and disbelieving. Her mother’s sunken blue-gray eyes were fixed upon the far wall. Sarah took a deep breath and walked over to the bed. With a trembling hand, she smoothed the sparse gray hair that lay tangled over the pillow like a damaged spider web.
“Mother . . . it’s me . . . Sarah,” she said, cupping her mother’s face in her hands and turning it toward her. Maggie’s skin was ashen and etched with a thousand lines. Her opaque eyes stared at Sarah. From the corners of her mother’s cracked lips, blood-streaked spittle dripped to the pillow.
“No!” Sarah cried. “Good God—no! Mother?” Her breath coming in huge gulps, she begged, “Don’t die now!” She dropped to her knees and buried her face in the sheet, her muffled voice pleading, “I want you to understand. I’m twenty-five years old. I know Walter married me just to take care of his kid. I always knew that.”
Blinded by tears, Sarah continued to beg her dead mother. “Please don’t make me keep Becky’s baby. Walter doesn’t want her. He’ll leave me. Tell me it’s okay to give her away. She’s only four months old. She won’t remember. Tell me!”
Sarah stood up, grabbed her mother’s lifeless body and began shaking it. “Tell me!” she screamed. “Wake up and tell ...”
Two hands broke Sarah’s hold on her mother’s body, and two more pulled Sarah away from the bed. They dragged her out into the hallway. The nurse stood by as Walter stiffly held Sarah against his chest until her sobs reduced to whimpers.
An hour later, Sarah and Walter Lipinski stepped out into the frigid air of late afternoon and descended the hospital’s wide stone steps. Although salted, there were still icy spots as they made their way carefully down to the sidewalk. When they reached Walter’s dark blue 1949 Buick, he got in and started the engine. While the car was running, he got out to brush snow from the windshield. Sarah tugged at her frozen door handle. He pushed her aside and yanked the door open.
Third Street, cobble stoned and winding precariously around steep drop-offs, had been sprinkled with black ash. Walter clutched the wheel, maneuvering the car to the bottom of the hill. In the small city of Warrenvale, the streets were clear, with snow piled into dirty heaps along the sidewalks. After driving a few blocks, Walter stopped the car at the bottom of Vickroy Street hill. He grunted for Sarah to get out. It was understood. He would go to the bar. She would have a cold walk home. She said nothing as she stepped out of the car and around a mound of snow. Walter reached across the empty front seat, slammed the door, and drove away.
Sarah stopped to catch her breath before ascending the four wooden steps to the front door. Though the house was warm, she still shivered as she removed her coat and walked down the short hall to the kitchen. Sitting at the table in a flowery red house-dress, her neighbor, Olga Nikovich, held a sleeping baby. “Vell?” asked the older woman in the thick accent of her Russian homeland.
“Mother’s dead,” said Sarah. “And,” she added, pouring herself a cup of steaming black coffee, “Walter said we can’t keep little Anna Mae.”
“You husband is wrong.” Olga pulled the pink blanket back, and the infant stretched out her legs until her tiny toes parted. The baby yawned and when she closed her mouth, a little bubble popped at the bow of her tiny pink lips
Sarah stepped closer. “Such a sweetie-pie.”
“You haf to do what’s right. It ain’t Annie’s fault she is born.”
Sarah’s eyes met Olga’s in uncomfortable silence. While returning the coffeepot to the stove, Sarah said, “Walter won’t let me.”
Olga stood up, walked to the stove, and placed the baby into Sarah’s arms. As little Anna Mae was moved from one woman to the other, her bright blue eyes opened. “Now you tell me,” Olga said, sitting back down at the table, “that those eyes ain’t—God rest her soul—you mother’s eyes.”
“They are. But they’re my sister’s eyes too. I can’t keep her.”
“So, little Anna Mae—you just throw her away?”
Holding the baby close to her chest, Sarah sat down and began to cry. Olga was silent. Several minutes passed with one woman weeping, the other just sitting. Finally Sarah sighed, “Olga,” she said as she coaxed the cover over the baby’s energetic little legs, “I had hoped that with mother dying, he might change his mind. But he didn’t. He said no, and he really meant it.”
Olga frowned. “You take care of Valter’s son, right?”
Sarah nodded.
“So now he takes you sister’s baby! And that’s fair!”
Sarah shook her head. “She stole money from him.”
“Your sister? Becky? When?”
“Before she left. I don’t know how much but it was a lot. Walter hates my sister and he hates this baby.”
“The baby—she stole nothing. You keep her.” Olga reached for the frayed cotton coat hanging on the back of her chair. “That vas you mother’s last vish!”
“Tomorrow, I have to call the adoption agency,” said Sarah.
“You better not,” Olga warned. “You take the baby an’ do just like you promise. You gif the baby away, you gonna be sorry!”
As Olga let herself out the kitchen door, a gust of freezing air let itself in and Sarah bundled the baby against the cold.
“When’s Aunt Becky coming home?” said a small voice. With his blond cowlick sticking straight up, five-year-old Stanley rubbed his eyes against the bright light of the kitchen. “I want Aunt Becky to take that baby home,” he whined.
“Go back to bed!” Sarah snapped.
“She doesn’t have to go to bed.” He grabbed the corner of the blanket and pulled so hard the baby almost slipped out of Sarah’s arms. Clenching a small fist, he aimed it at the baby. Sarah jumped from the chair, sending her half-full coffee cup smashing to the floor. She snatched a long-handled, wooden spoon from the dish drainer and swung, aiming at Stanley’s buttocks. But the spoon hit him across the back. The boy cried out, then ran to a far corner where he slid down into a crouch. Tears streamed down his reddened cheeks and he wiped his nose on the sleeve of his pajamas.
Suddenly, the front door banged open and a wave of cold air carried the stench of whisky into the kitchen. Walter’s heavy jacket thumped on the dining room table. “I should have known!”
She stood, frozen, his foul breath in her face.
“What’s he doing up?” Walter pointed to Stanley, still cowering in the corner
Stanley lifted his pajama top and turned enough to display a red mark on his back “She hit me!”
“Get out of here!” Walter ordered.
Stanley scrambled to his feet, crossed the kitchen, squeezed by Walter who was almost blocking the doorway, and ran down the hall and up the steps to his bedroom.
Walter took a step towards Sarah. She backed away. With the baby in her arms, she was unable to protect herself when her husband’s hand slammed across her face. She stumbled backward against the kitchen counter. Regaining her balance, she pointed to the broken cups and splattered coffee. “Look what your son did!”
“I don’t care what Stanley did,” Walter raged. “You keep your hands off my son.”
Sarah held tight to the infant as Walter pushed her out of the kitchen, through the dining room and into the dark living room where a bassinet sat in the corner. “Put that bastard down. Now!”
A faint glow from a streetlight cast a soft illumination across the room. Sarah placed the baby into the bassinet. Her eyes were striking even in the dark. As Sarah tucked in the edges of the blanket, Anna Mae’s tiny hand found Sarah’s finger and gripped it tightly.
Walter, already back in the kitchen, yelled, “Get in here!” The baby turned her head in the direction of the sound. Sarah pulled her finger from the baby’s grip. Walter’s fury shook the house. “You ain’t keepin’ that whore’s kid!”
Ignoring the frightened cries from the bassinet, Sarah went back to the kitchen. “I’m not asking to keep her. I’m just asking—wait until the funeral. Becky will come home for the funeral.”
“The thieving bitch ain’t comin’ back. She didn’t care when her mother was alive and she sure as hell ain’t gonna’ care now that she’s dead.”
“She does care!” Sarah cried.
Walter shoved Sarah backward. She tripped over a chair and landed on the floor. She scrambled under the table to get away from him. Her hand landed on the sharp edge of the broken cup. Looking at her bloody palm, she wailed, “Don’t you have any feelings? My mother just died!”
When he couldn’t get to her, he pounded his fist on the table. “Don’t tell me that shit,” he yelled. “You’re mother drove you nuts. Always bossing you around—always complaining. You ought to be happy she can’t bother you anymore.”
The cut on Sarah’s hand was bleeding down her arm and she wiped it on her blouse.
Dear God. What am I going to do? What in the world am I going to do?
