Paradise Alley (58 page)

She had a brother, in
his
version of her life, a boy they put to thieving, though he didn't want to. A younger sister, as well, an angelic sort with blue eyes and blond hair, who tried to get to the Protestant missionaries at the Old Brewery. The evil parents beat and starved the sister to death—though she died still looking quite angelic, according to the plate next to the deathbed scene.

And then there was herself.
Maddy Boyle, now Mary Boggs.
Described to a fare-thee-well, right down to the birthmark on her cheek. There was no mistaking it. Nor, for that matter, was there any mistaking his typical asides and turns of phrase, his sense of humor and little jokes.
It had to be him,
she had discerned before the end of the first chapter.

And it had to be her, his innocent girl. In the end she was left alive—he had the good grace to do that much for her, at least. Packed
off to a good, Protestant home up in Pelham. Not only redeemed, but redeeming others, making her parents see the light.
Though if her real parents had done such things she would have redeemed them with a grappling hook—

She had read it all through the night, finishing just as the first birds had started to sing in the ailanthus tree, and when she was through she had wanted to weep. Knowing, then, that he had never really seen her at all. Knowing that he had always regarded her, right from the beginning, as no more than his model.

No more than his hot-corn girl. His White Captive.

But even worse than this fantasy, this
book—
worse than his gross distortion of her life, his disregarding of all that she ever was and all that she had ever felt toward him—was how bad it was. How tedious, how lacking in sensibility.
How poorly drawn the characters were, how weak the dialogue, how offhand the descriptions—

She had been mistaken in him, she knew it now.
He had never seen her. And she had not seen him.

And now what was there for them both, save for the time they had put in? Hanging on to each other, for no better reason than the past—against the usual frightfulness of the wider City outside?

She looked around for a glass, any glass. Pulling the cork out of the jug with her teeth.
He was not coming.
There was little light left in the house now, but instead of trying to light the gas, she had simply gone to the front windows and thrown open the shutters. Pouring herself a long drink of the whiskey. Convinced, now
—He's not coming.

The day already slipping rapidly toward late afternoon and evening. She had been mad to think he would be back, to take her back to his house.
He only wants to see me as his captive, shut away here—

She was still standing there, having her glass and looking out the unshuttered window, when they threw the first rock. It was half of a paving stone, thick and grey, and she had watched it tumble end over end, unable to believe even as she watched it that they would hurl such a thing at her—

Then it had smashed through the parlor window, and she had screamed, and thrown her hands up over her face, shielding herself from the flying glass. Listening with even greater shock to the jibes and laughter, coming from her neighbors out on the street.

Another heavy stone slammed against her front door. Then another,
and another—rocks and bricks and granite paving stones, raining down on the front of her little house. They smashed through the rest of the parlor glass, cracking the slats of her shutters.

She ran to the door, tugging it open and staring out in disbelief. A fragment of brick the size of her fist hit the door frame just above her—showering her with red dust, sending her reeling back inside. She peeked out again, but there was no mistaking it. The white women were holding their stones in their aprons as they advanced, shouting for her as they heaved them at her home.

“Come out, come out, where'ere y'are!”

“Come on out, ya whore! Ya cheap molly bit!”

“Come out an' face what you got comin', ya nigger's whore!”

To her own surprise she had felt the tears welling up in her eyes when she heard them mocking her. Then she had the revolver in her hand, storming back out the door. Unsure, now that she'd had the drink, of how to use the thing, but not caring. Charging on out into the street—

“Here I am! Here I am, ya bitches!”

She waved the gun wildly, trying to fiddle with the hammer, the trigger. Grinning with satisfaction as she saw the other women retreat at first, back across Paradise Alley.

“Here I am!”

But they had regained their courage quickly, as they watched her fumbling with the gun. More rocks and bricks bounced off her home—one whizzing just past her cheek. The women advanced again—laughing at her, gesturing at her to come on—

A stone struck her in the head—a glancing blow, but enough to send her scrambling to her knees. The pistol skidded out over the pavement ahead of her and she crawled after it, cursing to herself.

“The bitches. The goddamned bitches!”

They laughed and shrieked like crows now. Moving still closer, picking up more stones.

“Where are your niggers now? Eh? Where's your Yankee gentleman?”

“Take our sons, willya!”

She moved after the gun, feeling another brick strike her side. Realizing only now what they were doing to her, through some dim recollection of a Biblical story—

They are stoning me.

•
57
•

All that day they heard the wild, animal cries again—the sounds of things breaking or burning, off in the distance. But not so far off now. It seemed to Ruth that it was drawing slowly in on them, from all sides. She knew that Deirdre noticed it, too—saying less and less as the day wore on, her lips drawn steadily tighter.

The white women held the block now. They ran back and forth in the street like schoolchildren. The pale, pinched faces excited, even gleeful, as they informed her that Horace Greeley himself had been hanged, or that a whole regiment of infantry had been massacred in the Arch Block. Mrs. McGillicuddy had even come by to tell them they should leave now.

“You best get out while the gettin's there for ya,” she advised, her statuesque figure swaying a little in the doorway, her breath sour with whiskey. “Otherwise, ye'll see, they'll lynch all your children, the poor darkies, right before your eyes!”

Deirdre came into the front room, her face chiseled in anger.

“Missus Mack, you best go find a better use for your teeth and your tongue.”

“But it's true! There's a hundred thousand Irishmen on the way right now. They're marchin' down the Bowery, burnin' out every nigger they come across—” She leaned in toward Deirdre, pointing a thumb toward Ruth and talking as if she could not hear her:

“Me cousin Seamus already seen her husband swingin' from a lamppost in the Fourth Avenue, near the little niggers' home. Everybody pokin' an' cuttin' at the body, an' puttin' it to the oil—”

“Go on with you now!”

Deirdre gave the larger woman a furious push away from her door, shoving her until she was halfway back across the street.

“You know as well as I your cousin's been cowering in your kitchen the last two days, Mrs. Mack! He wouldn't know about a thing beyond the end of your apron strings.”

“Not hisself, no, but someone said—”

“No, but you're willing to come over and say that it's so, once you've drunk your courage up.”

Mrs. McGillicuddy's face hung sullen and spiteful.

“We know that she's here, she an' her nigger brood,” she said now, in a voice that slipped like a knife through Ruth's ribs. “We'll take care a them, all right—an' that other one up the street, what trucks with the black sailors—”

“Get off, I said!”

Mrs. McGillicuddy moved on reluctantly, retreating from the promise of Deirdre's wrath but still mouthing her threats over her shoulder.

“Don't think they're safe here. Don't think ya can get away with it, just because they're under your roof!”

“But she's right, we'll put you all in danger,” she told Deirdre as soon as Mrs. McGillicuddy was gone and they were bolted back in the house again. “We can't stay—”

“Don't be daft. Where would you go—and you have to wait for Billy—”

“But it's your house, what you done so much for.”

“Go on now,” Deirdre said dismissively. “It's a house, that's all.”

She hesitated then, looking more closely at Ruth and lowering her voice.

“You know she's lying, don't you? You know she doesn't know a thing she's talking about.”

“I know.”

“Not her, or a hundred of her Seamuses—”

“I know. I know it's a lie,” Ruth said softly.

The picture of Billy, hung from a lamppost, piercing her mind anyway. His beautiful person, degraded, mutilated.

“Whatever you do, though, don't tell the boy—” Ruth asked her.

“No, of course not!”

“Please don't tell him. I wouldn't want him to hear it, even though I know it's a lie.”

“Of course it's a lie. ‘A hundred thousand Irishmen, marching down the Bowery!' “ Deirdre snorted loudly—for her benefit, Ruth knew. “When did you ever hear of a hundred thousand Irishmen able to do anything together—”

There was a sound like hail out in the street, and they went to the window shutters. The women were throwing rocks and chunks of loose brick at Maddy's house now. Standing out in the street, screeching and crying like so many gulls or jackdaws—

“Whore, whore, dirty whore!”

“Come out, come out, the niggers' whore!”

There was the sound of breaking glass, and the women yelped with glee. Then, to their amazement, Maddy came running out into the alley—wearing only a red silk dressing gown, and waving her gun above her head.

“Get out of here, all of yas, before I blow your brains out!” she was screaming, holding up her pistol.

The women only laughed and screeched at her some more. One of them threw a stone that glanced off the side of her head, knocking her down and sending the gun sliding along the gutter. Maddy crawled after it on her hands and knees, still screaming and cursing, tearing and muddying the dressing gown as she did. But another stone hit her in the ribs, then another and another—the women in the street screaming in triumph with each hit.

“Jesus God, but what's this block come to!”

Deirdre was already throwing a shawl over her shoulders, running instinctively out into the street. Ruth followed behind her—thinking they were going to be killed, but following her nonetheless.

When they reached Maddy, though, the stones stopped. The women were still mingling about across Paradise Alley, but Deirdre was able to stare them down as she helped Maddy—brushing off her fine gown as best she could. Not knowing what else to do, Ruth leaned down and picked up the pistol where it had fallen, holding it gingerly.
It looked very different from the gun she had envied earlier, at the Croton pump. This one seemed very new, with a pearl handle and a fat, shiny, revolving chamber.
A gentleman's gun,
she thought.

“God's shame upon you for Christian women!” Deirdre was yelling across at the other white women. “I would tremble to think what the Father would think if he could see this!”

“Ah, go on back an' tend to your niggers!” one of them jibed back at her, and there was another gale of laughter. But they moved grudgingly off down the street, averting their faces from Deirdre's wrath, at least for now.

“Where's me gun?” Maddy had asked, as soon as they had her inside, and down on Deirdre's fine reclining couch.

She had seemed nearly unconscious out in the street. Now that they had her inside, though, she was full of fire once more.

“
Where's me gun?
I can take care a all a those cows an' kisses with that—”

“Never mind about that now!” Deirdre commanded, holding her head while Ruth washed out her wounds with a cloth. “There'll be no shooting going on from this house. And you'll manage your tongue, there are children here.”

“I do as I please! That's what I told him an' I'll say the same to you!”

She jerked away from the wet cloth.

“I don't need
you—
”

Ruth thought that she seemed like a wild Indian, or some other half-savage creature. Sitting up on Deirdre's couch, dripping blood over her embroidered yellow slipcover. Her arms were wrapped defensively around her knees, her legs tucked up under the now-shredded red silk gown like a child's.

She was still very pretty, Ruth saw. There were some lines around her eyes and mouth, her face a little dissipated. But undeniably pretty—even with her hair unwashed, the dirt ground into her skin from well before her fall outside.
Pretty enough so that any man would still want her—

“As long as you're in my house, you will do as I say,” Deirdre told her, in her sharpest, most obedience-inducing voice.

“I'll go, then!”

Maddy jumped up from the reclining couch, her tangled hair falling wildly over her face.

“I didn't ask to come here, an' I won't take it from you, or anyone else. Where's me gun?”

She began to stalk about the room, looking frantically for her pistol—even though it was in plain sight, where Ruth had stuck it inside the glass cabinet of the falling secretary.

“I ain't afraid of those bitches. I know them an' I know their husbands, an' I ain't afraid of either one!”

“They'll beat you to death in the street.”

“Let 'em come an' try! They want to run me out, let 'em come an' try—”

She lurched suddenly over to the window at that thought, staring out through the shutters.

“They better not be into my house. The cowards!” She looked at Deirdre and Ruth very earnestly then. “My man'll see to them. He's a real American, not like these shiftless Irish sons a bitches. He'll see to it they get theirs—”

“I thought you took care of yourself.”

“I can, all right! Just gimme my goddamned gun, I'll take care of it!”

Maddy charged for the door at that, but it proved surprisingly easy to stop her. Through her gown she felt almost hollow to Ruth, her arms and legs mere sticks, and as soon as they stopped her, she gave up.

She let them lead her back to the couch, and patch up her head and the scrapes on her knees. Ruth fetched her some lamb stew from the pot they had cooked the night before, while Deirdre kept watch over her. Maddy eating the stew up ravenously, even though it was still cold.

“Thanks for the food. Now give me the gun, an' I'll be on me way—”

“Why don't you get your man to take you off this block,” Deirdre suggested, ignoring her demand. “Doesn't he see it isn't safe for you here?”

“To hell with that!” Maddy cursed, sitting up straight again. “These mabs don't scare me, I can take care of 'em. Let 'em try to come burn me out—them or any of their men!”

“Enough of that talk now, no one's going to burn you out!” Deirdre told her sternly—but Ruth remembered the threatening voice from a
few days before. Familiar, somehow, but strange in its hardness.
A voice that meant what it said.

We'll see to your niggers—

“I'll talk as I like! I do as I like, an' I go when I like, too—”

“
Enough,
I said!”

Maddy struggled to get up off the couch again, but Deirdre pushed her back down easily, and Ruth helped to hold her there.

“What's it to you, what's it to you!” she screamed, at the top of her lungs, until the children came and stared fearfully into the parlor.

Yet after a few more minutes she ceased to struggle. Sitting quite still now, wiping her nose on her sleeve as she looked around herself.

“This is a nice place,” she said softly, suddenly docile again, admiring Deirdre's parlor. “I had a room like this once. My man got it just for me. Just like he got me the house.”

She gave a long, openmouthed yawn then, and curled up on the couch, as casually and comfortably as if she were in her own bed. Within minutes she was sleeping soundly, even snoring, and Deirdre put a blanket over her.

“Look at her there, the little darling.”

“It's all right, once she calms herself.”

“Yes. If we can just get her out of here without killing us all in our beds, we'll be doing all right.”

Watching her, Ruth remembered how beautiful Maddy had been when she'd first come to live on the block. Her clothes still well-kempt, and her mother living with her. There had never been any doubt as to what she was, the well-dressed gentleman accompanying her, then vanishing back into his carriage. Yet she had acted genteel and exotic enough for them to almost believe some mysterious foreign lady had come to live among them.

By then they had settled into their lives on the street. Billy was still working up with the orphans, and she was still walking all the way up to the German ladies and their ash piles every day. Every two years or so, there was another child, Mana and Frederick, Elijah and Vie. And Milton, all the time growing like a vine stalk—bigger and taller than his daddy, and nearly as handsome. And so smart, reading everything he could find, after only a term at the common school they had sent him to.