Nellie’s salty remark, peppered with big words she no doubt knew Katie couldn’t understand, stung. But their meaning stood out stark clear as the sun rose over the water and the men below them cursed louder still, something about the hot sun heating up the already humid air.
Katie turned and faced Nellie, eyes wide. “Nellie Bly, do you mean to tell me that you believe in your heart of hearts that cooking good food doesn’t require an education?”
Nellie returned her stare without emotion.
“I have been learning to cook at my mother’s elbow since I could toddle. I’d say that’s quite a lot of education. Hard earned too.” Katie paused, a strange heat welling up from within her. “And a dang sight better than Joe’s or anyone else’s.”
Nellie’s stoic face broke into a beaming grin, but before she could say anything, a shrill whistle cut through the early morning air. Both Nellie and Katie turned toward the unappealing sound, which came from the tar-paper shanties that lined the docks behind them.
A slight, blond woman, with bobbed hair, probably no older than Katie, stood in an open doorway wearing nothing more than a dirty, torn slip.
“Would you look at that,” Katie whispered. “Why, she’s standing outside calling attention to herself in her undergarments!”
“Open for business when the loadin’s done, boys,” the woman called.
Katie glanced down at the docks where several men appeared from seemingly nowhere, and joined the burly man with the stringy black hair.
At once, the muscular sailor stuck two fingers in his mouth and returned the woman’s catcall.
Nellie grabbed Katie’s arm and started down the street to the tune of crying gulls and slapping waves. She didn’t offer any explanation for their sudden departure from the docks, or the man and woman’s strange display.
“What was all that?”
Nellie didn’t answer, but only walked faster.
“Where are we, Nellie?” She fought her whipping hair to look around. Tar-paper shacks lined the street and more and more women, some with bruised faces and torn underclothes, appeared at their doors. If they could be called doors. Some were no more than tattered blankets tacked over the entryway of their shack.
Nellie stopped sprinting so quickly that Katie plowed square into her. Annoyance tinged her words and colored her porcelain cheeks. “There are dregs of society everywhere, Katie Knepp, and can be found in every society, probably even among the Amish.”
With her arm still firmly in Nellie’s grasp, Katie felt little more than a spoiled child being admonished by a too-tired mother. “What is this dreg?”
“The ones you do not want to end up like. The prostitutes, the drunks, the wretches. The losers, Katie Knepp.”
Katie narrowed her eyes at Nellie, the woman she thought would be her friend in the English world. “Did God not create us all in His image?”
Nellie rolled her eyes with a huff and turned away, leaving the answer to hang in the air unanswered.
Katie’s arm began to throb as Nellie pulled her down the street much like a horse might pull a plow. Her mind drifted to Indiana. And try as she might to prove Nellie Bly, the woman who spent ten days in a madhouse and was now set to break a world record, Katie couldn’t think of even one person who could be labeled a dreg back in Gasthof Village.
***
As they passed under a giant sign that was stuck to a post on the roadside that read East 28th Street, Katie couldn’t take it anymore. She yanked her arm from Nellie’s grasp and sunk onto some stone steps. She wasted no time in clawing at the unforgiving laces that seemed to cinch tighter as the night turned to day. Katie hadn’t been able to properly feel her toes since they left Joe’s All Night Diner, and now the cramps in her calf muscles were so severe, she had to sit down or risk falling down.
“Katie Knepp, what do you think you’re doing?”
The cold stone stairs felt strangely comforting against her backside as she battled it out with the laces. “I cannot feel my feet. At all. I think these shoes have squeezed the life out of them.”
“Those are patent Italian leather,” Nellie quipped, her bright face now unsmiling and strangely gray. “You have to wear them when they hurt. Wear them through the pain, it’s a good thing!”
“A good thing?” Exhaustion made Katie laugh as the absurdity continued to flow out of Nellie’s mouth.
“Yes. It’s called breaking them in. Everybody knows that.”
Katie shook her head. “That’s the most ignorant thing I’ve ever heard, Nellie Bly!” Katie freed one foot from the constricting boot and went to work on the other. “Back home in Indiana, we make our own clothes and shoes. And we make them to fit, not to hurt until we get used to them or lose feeling in our whole body. Whichever comes first.”
Nellie stood staring at Katie, her mouth agape. “Well I never!”
“Me neither.” Katie yanked the second boot off and closed her eyes. “Ahh, now that’s so much better.”
Katie dropped the second boot, which tumbled down the stairs, taking the first boot with it.
“Oh Heavens! They’ll get scuffed!”
“Serves them right, the way they pinched my toes.” Katie rubbed her feet and relaxed against the black, wrought-iron hand rail that lined the steps.
Nellie scrambled to collect the misbegotten articles that Katie dropped with such blatant disregard. After picking her way back down the stone stairs, Nellie hung her head and clutched the unkempt boots, that looked to be as done with Katie as she was with them, to her chest. “Come on, Katie, we have plans to finalize before we set sail for London. That starts today, you know.”
Nellie glanced up at the giant building that belonged to the stairs where Katie had taken up residence. “According to The Church of Our Lady of The Scapular of Mount Caramel, it is almost eight o’clock.”
Katie stopped rubbing and followed Nellie’s gaze to the giant watch face on the building’s front. Funny looking numbers, the likes of which she’d never seen, were there. Katie shrugged and went back to rubbing. “If you say so. But I can’t read those numbers, so I’ll have to take you at your word.”
“I’m leaving, Katie Knepp. Are you coming?”
Katie squeezed and rubbed, relaxing the knots and soothing the angry muscles. “Yes, I’m coming. Just not yet, unless you’ll have me hobble along like a three-legged mule behind you.” She dared a peek at Nellie. “What is this place where I’ve chosen to rest anyway?”
Or the place that chose me.
“It’s just a church, Katie Knepp. A Catholic Church.” Nellie glanced at it with a huff. “It will probably be torn down this time next year, like so many more before it.”
