The end of her cigarette smoulders orange in the weak glow of the streetlamps. Bianca’s a beautiful girl with thick, raven hair and brown eyes that are too bold and saucy for her own good.
“Finalmente,” she exhales, like it’s taken forever.
“?’Twasn’t long in the doing of it,” I say.
I already feel connected to the hotel, so I’m quick to defend her. I don’t know when they’ll start the interviews for chambermaids, but I’ll be first in line that day. If I’m to work there, I’ll get to know the hotel inside like I know its outside, and we’ll be friends soon enough.
“Feels like it’s been forever.”
I inhale deeply on my cigarette. “Only two years.”
Bianca can’t apply yet because she’s too young. She’s fair vexed with envy, so I goad her just a bit. That’s what friends do, isn’t it?
“Tell you what. I’ll give you a wave when I get hired, I will.”
She scowls. “Ifyou get hired. Well, I’m gonna apply, whether you like it or not.Ai mali estremi, estremi rimedi.”
I glare at her. She only goes into Italian when she wants to annoy me.
“?‘Desperate times call for desperate measures,’?” she translates. “Mama says that. And you better believe I’m desperate.”
We slide our backs down the old brick wall, stretch our legs in front, and blow smoke rings into the night.
Bianca and me, and all these folks we’ve known since we were little, we live in a neighbourhood called The Ward. The old ones say this place started in 1850 or so, when poor, starving folks sailed across the sea and landed here, on Lake Ontario’s shore. Those same people go on and on, lamenting the fact that nothing in The Ward has improved since then, but how can I believe a word they say? They wasn’t around in 1850, was they? So how do they know what’s changed and what hasn’t?
Still, I’ll not argue that my home is in a slum. They probably aren’t exaggerating all that much. Some folks live and die here, carrying on with familyand whatever odd jobs they can find, but that’s not for me. Listen now, I was born here, but I will not die here. Death will come for me someday, but not here. How can I be certain? Because I have plans for where I’m going next.
Every day I walk to Front Street and stand in front of Union Station so I can watch the Dominion Hotel rise before me. The station’s new as well, being only a couple of years old. I’ll tell you, I hadn’t thought a train station might be a thing of beauty, and I’m no expert when it comes to art, but ’tis fair to say that Union Station is, in its own way, lovely. Across the street from it, well, there’s the true work of art. When I look at the new Dominion Hotel, that’s when I know for certain that I do live in a slum. In The Ward, there’s no automobiles driven by men in splendid suits. No gentlemen with briefcases escorting well-heeled ladies with their hair styled so grand, the bobs in their ears catching the sunlight. In The Ward, we hear the streetcars rumbling by, the bells clanging and the passengers getting on and off, but we rarely see the wonder of what disembarks. We don’t have clean streets or wealthy businessmen here. We don’t have silk stockings or regular meals or washing machines.
On the other hand, we do have a good mix of folks. To the east of the street where I live, there’s a whole block of Chinese people. They mostly live in little houses or apartments attached to stores, and it seems to me they’re always working. Even if they’re not, they seem like they are. I have a couple of friends over there, Li and Shang, whose father is a butcher. Sometimes Li sneaks me a ham bone or even a chicken, which goes straight into my soup pot. I don’t know what she tells her father about a missing chicken, but it’s not my worry. I’ve never met her father. The most interesting cooking smells come from their kitchen and the others in that area. Mind, the smells are so mouthwatering, they lure the dogs into the alley, and the mutts get into fights behind the butcher shop. I’ll tell you now, that makes quite a racket.
Li told me that her grandfather worked on the railways out west. She said he worked with his two brothers, but both died out there. The Ward is near the Union train station, so when I see the railcars and the cabooses, I try to imagine them outside of this city, chugging across a land I’ve never seen. I wonder what Li’s grandfather imagines when he sees the railcars here.
In The Ward, there’s more of God’s chosen, the Jewish folk, than other sorts. They mostly stick to themselves, so I don’t know much about what they’re like, God bless them. Sure, and then there are the Poles and the Ukrainians, who are all right, I suppose. Bianca’s always going on about them, saying she can’t abide the stink of cabbage cooking, but beggars can’t be choosers, I tell her plain. There’s hundreds of the Black folk living around The Ward, too. Indeed, they say a Black man was the first one here in The Ward, before it was called that. The story goes that he was an escaped slave. No telling where he got the money, but he bought up a load of properties. He helped more of his kind find homes up here, and they were fruitful and multiplied. His sounds like an interesting story, but I don’t know much more about it.
Bianca, she’s Italian, and she lives a block from me in a stone house built by other Italians. Their place has two bedrooms, but fourteen people, and three of the ladies are expecting noisy little bundles of joy soon enough.How’d they find the privacy?Bianca lately joked, but Granny heard her and prayed to God Almighty to silence Bianca’s tongue, cheeky divil. Bianca muttered to me that her family was building another room in the yard behind their house. Good thing her brothers know a thing or two about construction.
Where we rent, we’ve got two rooms. One where Granny, Da, my two brothers, and me sleep—when they’re home, anyhow. Everything else happens in the other room, like cooking and eating and sitting by the window, watching the world go by. Compared to Bianca’s cramped quarters, we’ve got loads of room that others only dream of. I keep quiet about that, since the last thing I want is someone banging down the door and disturbing our peace. Early in the morn, before even Granny’s awake, I sweep up the place, and if we’re blessed with flour, I’ll set a loaf to rise. If there’s meat, it goes into the pot with an onion and water and whatever else I’ve gotten my hands on. Granny will light the stove later and set everything cooking. That way we’ll have a meal when I’m home again.
Now, listen. I’m not after saying we’re starving. Not at all. Most of The Ward, including me, shops at the St. Lawrence Market, about a fifteen-minutewalk from the neighbourhood. A hundred years ago, that place was no more than a wooden building for about twenty butchers. They’d had no use for more than that, for a good many folk kept their beasts in their yards. Well now, didn’t The Ward get more crowded every day, with more folks from away coming in off the boats, bless them. Like Bianca’s family, that meant people gave their yards over to second buildings rather than to cows and pigs. And so the market grew, rickety stall by rickety stall, until it all burned to ashes in the Great Fire of 1849. The fire’s Granny’s second favourite tale to tell, after theFortitudesaga. Her mother survived it, she says with a right bit of pride. Barely escaped with her life by the sounds of it.
Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t. Who am I to say?
From the ashes, the city put that market back together, then didn’t they knock it all down again in 1904. They needed someplace grander, so they put up a massive brick building with a glass roof, large enough the farmers could drive their wagons and wares right inside.
Nowadays we can get what we need from the market, but it comes down to how many pennies we can afford to pay, doesn’t it? I get what I can, and if we find ourselves with grumbling stomachs, Granny is quick to remind me that the Bible says, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” I reckon this is her way of telling me to stop complaining.
Under our apartment are two shops. One is rented to Frenchie, a quiet cobbler. You hardly hear a squeak from him. He got the shop from his father, and I’d wager he got it fromhisfather before him. Mr. Jamieson, a fine baker famous for his drinking, used to rent out the other shop, but last year it burned down. We were lucky not to get our skins roasted along with it, but the Lord was watching that day. I’ve no idea where Mr. Jamieson is now, but his shop is still a black hole under our apartment. Wouldn’t you know it, after all this time I can still catch a whiff of old smoke if the wind is blowing wrong.
The only building I care about is the Dominion Hotel. It’s been growing like the biggest flower in a city full of weeds. I remember when they startedbuilding, with the dirt all cleared, and the horse and carts rolling in timber for the foundations. Soon enough, the Italians laid down the stone and the bricks and whatever else they needed. There were others, but truly, I’d say it was mostly Italians. They was hard to miss, with their rough manners and the way they ordered people around. Them Italians know how to get things done; I’ll give them that. Once the place became more of a building, and the steel walls were covered in a creamy limestone, in came the fellas with the money, wearing black wool coats, fine hats, and serious faces.
Now the hotel’s walls reach toward heaven. From what I can see, I know the building is just about done on the outside, but Da is working inside, putting in miles and miles of red carpet, and he’s told me it’s like a beehive in there. He said there’s so much red carpet that if they rolled it all out, it could go all the way from Toronto to Hamilton, which is about forty miles.
I asked him once if it’s hard work, carrying all those carpets around.
“?’Tis a good job, to be sure. I’ll never complain.” But then his hand went to the base of his spine. “But my old back…” His tired eyes sparkled with wonder. “Ten elevators, Rosie. Can you picture it? Twenty-eight storeys, every one of them with that beautiful red carpet.”
If I’d any doubt in my mind about working there, it disappeared when I learned about the elevators. Iwouldwork in that hotel, and not in the basement like at the Queen’s. I need to know what it feels like to step into an elevator and ride to the top.
