The tomcat is back. His yowling pulls me from my place in the clouds and back to Bianca, who’s still angling for a job. “Doesn’t matter to them that you’re in desperate times,” I tell her, feeling a bit heartless, but ’tis true. She’s stuck on working with me, but I don’t know how else to make her understand. She expects me to work a miracle, and the front door of the new hotel isn’t even built yet.
“You’re only sixteen.”
“Almost seventeen. Come on. Anything, Rosie.”
I snort. “Laundry?” Ah, but she remembers my red, chapped, miserable skin from working in all that steam. I probably shouldn’t tease.
“If I gotta. I’ll clean boots if I gotta.”
I have nothing more to say on that, so I switch topics. “How’s your papa?”
Bianca’s father is a big fella. Strong and stocky, with a thick, black moustache and cheeks as red as tomatoes. At least, he used to be. He was one of them Italians working at the Dominion site. One of the men in charge, Bianca boasted, bold as brass. I saywasbecause a couple of weeks ago, a concrete block fell on his leg. Broke it to smithereens, it did, so that a piece of his bone stuck clean out. Da was there that very day. Didn’t he go a quare shade of green when he told me what happened. I haven’t seen hide nor hair of Bianca’s father since.
“We scraped together the money for a doctor, only for him to say Papa will never walk again. We’re in desperate times, you better believe it.” Bianca sucks in smoke and lowers her voice. “I heard Mama say that Papa owed a lot of money to some bad people. Don’t see how he’ll ever pay them back now that he can’t walk.”
“Roisin!”
Granny’s voice cracks through the warm evening like a whip. I stub out my cigarette and hear the window scrape closed above me.
Bianca’s used to Granny, who practically raised her while she raised me. Said Bianca needed some mothering before she could be expected to mother all those brothers and sisters herself.
“You got it easy,” Bianca says. “Your brothers can feed a family on what they steal.”
“Nah. If I saw them, maybe, but they never come home.”
“Then you have that big place all to yourselves with them gone. Think of me, Rosie. I got seven brothers and sisters, three of them not even four years old. Sergio and Leo gotta be six feet tall at least, bumping their heads on the ceiling, and they eat like bears. It’s rough, Rosie. I’m babysitting six other babies as well as my brothers, and most of their mamas can’t pay the pennies it costs.” She huffs in annoyance and presses her palms together like she’s praying. “Can you talk to them for me?”
Bythemshe means the hotel folks. “I’m not even hired yet,” I explain forthe hundredth time. I know I will be, though. My manager at the Queen’s Hotel has already given the Dominion people my name. I peer down the alley, wondering at the sudden stillness of the night, and I see the cat’s slunk off again. “I don’t know if they’re hiring Italians.”
“Us Italians are building it. They’d better hire us to work inside.”
“They probably will. But you’re still too young.” She’ll apply anyway. I know Bianca.
“All those rooms, Rosie! Just think of all the people they’ll need to hire to treat those rich folks like royalty. That’s what I can do.”
“Enough! The place isn’t opened yet, I’m not hired yet, and I have no idea about any of the other stuff. Maybe your brothers can pick up a second job.”
She’s gobsmacked. “I can’t believe you’d say that. They’re already working three each.”
Directly overhead, in our bedroom, Granny opens the window again and starts giving out in Irish. I think she truly loves Bianca, though she dislikes almost everyone else. Especially the Italians. Once, when I was little, she grudgingly told me that many a good tree grew on shallow ground, which I took to mean it don’t matter where someone’s from, so long as they’re a good Christian.
Granny’s still yelling. Bianca waits for a translation.
“She doesn’t like your cigarette. She says only whores smoke cigarettes.”
That makes her grin. “Scusa, Granny,” she calls, tilting her face toward the night stars. “Fumare non è un peccato, Granny. Questa sigaretta mi sta aiutando a dimenticare quanto ho fame. Hai qualcosa da darmi da mangiare?” She smiles at me. “I told her smoking’s not a sin, and when I smoke, I forget how hungry I am. Then I asked her if she could feed me.”
She knows Granny doesn’t understand Italian. Or at least, I don’t think she does. But nobody’s got much of anything to share in The Ward except tall tales.
One shiny day in the beginning of May, the most exciting thing happens. Anew construction team is working at the front entrance of the Dominion, assembling the front door and putting it in place. When it’s been done, I watch it open and close on its new hinges, and I can’t believe my ears. No squeaking at all. The sunlight flashes off the brass plates on the bottom, and I feel like something big is about to happen.
That night, Da comes home, groaning as he manages the stairs. He shuffles into the apartment, his back arched from years of laying carpets, and when I pull out his chair, he sinks onto it with a huff of relief. I bring him a bowl of soup, and he eats half of it before even acknowledging that I’m there. Then he lifts his scruffy chin and grins across the supper table at me.
“They’re hiring staff, my girl. Tomorrow morning.”
chapterTWO
TheNOW HIRINGsign hanging outside the hotel’s front door bids me to go to the side entrance, but I’m slow to get there because I dallied outside the main entrance’s glory for a moment too long. Even before the sun shows its face, I can see how the frames around the Dominion’s windows will shine, and how cheerfully the door will sparkle to welcome the guests. Folks will come from far and wide, just so they can pass through them very doors. They’ll climb out of their long, shining cars, sleek and smooth in tuxedos and furs…
