Jami Attenberg - Saint Mazie

Do I have to? [Groans.] I have to. All right.

How did I find the diary? Well, I keep my head down a lot; I’m always looking at the ground, because I find things. Sometimes I find stuff I can sell, or I can use in the shop. For a long time the best thing I ever found was thirty-two Polaroids of this middle-aged Chinese lady stripping. They looked like they were taken in the eighties. They were all washed out, and there was something about her skirt that looked kind of eighties, maybe my mom had one like it? God, I don’t want to think about my mom stripping. [Laughs uncomfortably.]

Anyway, there was an order to the photos, like shirt on, shirt off, bra off, skirt off. There was definitely a little act to it, although I don’t know how sexy it was. I kept the pictures for a while. I couldn’t stop thinking about who she was undressing for. Whoever was taking the pictures, or if there was someone else in the room, too. For a year or so, I guess, she was on my mind. But then I stopped thinking about her. I just gave up trying to figure it out. I was never going to know, and then I stopped caring. I didn’t need to know how the story ended. It was sort of enough that I had seen the pictures in the first place, you know?

Now, the diary was a whole different game. I found it two years ago, give or take. It was in the fall. I was over near the Navy Yard walking to work. This was just a few months before I opened the shop, and I was still working at a studio there. I saw a big box over by where they used to have the used car auction. Most of the stuff in the box, I couldn’t use it or sell it. It was like, old lightbulbs and a roll of movie tickets and a flask. I opened the flask and it still smelled like booze. I mean old booze, but still.

But also in there was the diary with the postcards. Everything was pretty ratty. The diary was leather-bound once, but most of the cover was coming off in strips. The pages were loose — I had to be careful or they would slip out and blow away. All the paper was yellow, everything was crumbling in my hands. But all of it was like, chattering at me, asking to be read. I know that sounds kind of nuts. It looked like junk, but it was actually the exact opposite of that. So I stashed it all in my backpack and took it to work.

During my lunch break I started reading everything and then I was late getting back to work, and then after work I went to a bar and sat there and read them all the way through. Her handwriting wasn’t the greatest, you know that, but I made it through. I didn’t know anything about her, except that she sounded like a saint, the closest thing I’ve ever heard of anyway. I went to Catholic school, I studied them, but I never believed any of them were real people. She was definitely real. Because I saw the words in front of my own eyes.

There were parts of it that felt pretty personal to me. This person who felt like she had been bad but didn’t want to give in to it entirely. She thought maybe she had a shot at being a better person but she couldn’t shake who she had been. We all live with our pasts. I live with mine. You live with yours. I don’t even think she did anything wrong. She had just lived a big life, even though it was mostly in this confined space. And when you live big you fall big.

Near the end I started reading really slowly because I didn’t want it to be over, I just wanted it to go on and on. I wanted her to live forever. At the very end I cried. Then I put the flask in my pocket, close to my heart, which is where I still keep it. I fell in love with her a little bit, and I wanted a piece of her right next to me.

Mazie’s Diary, October 1, 1924

We’re back on Grand Street, six doors down from where we once lived, the home where I was raised. Now we’re in a two-bedroom flat, one room for Rosie, one for me. We’ve given up on Jeanie coming home. The only thing that feels familiar anymore is our table and our couch. Those things we brought with us. A table to eat on and a couch to faint on.

I’ve been walking to work again, through the throngs of the Lower East Side, the Jews, the Russians, the Italians, the Germans, the Chinese, the Gypsies, the cops, the children, the lads, the broads. The swirl of people, it’s heaven.

I miss taking the train sometimes, though, and the time I had to gather my thoughts before the day began. I always had a seat. I could watch the people get on and collect themselves. A tidy and a tug. I’ll miss seeing the people from across Brooklyn heading to work. I’ll try to remember what they looked like. I won’t have cause to return to Brooklyn again anytime soon. Once you cross the river you stay there.

But it’ll be nice to stay here, I think. I’m still trying to understand what here means. All our things are still in boxes. Rosie’s promised to unpack but it’s been weeks and she still hasn’t touched a thing but what she needed for the kitchen, a few dresses, some pairs of shoes. I kept you for myself, though. A book of secrets. Mine, and Jeanie’s.

Mazie’s Diary, October 11, 1924

Rosie hates the kitchen now, says there’s mold, can’t get rid of it, no matter how much she scrubs. I can’t see it, but she swears it’s there.

She says: There! There!

I say: Where?

She says: There.

Mazie’s Diary, November 1, 1924

I’m twenty-seven years old today. Rosie served me ice cream with raspberries and chocolate sauce when I came home, and there was a chocolate bar on my bed, as well. Sweets for the sweet. A quiet birthday, I didn’t mind it. She was calm for a moment. Not a word about the kitchen.

Mazie’s Diary, November 14, 1924

A postcard from Jeanie, birthday greetings, two weeks late.

It said:

You’ll always be older than me & wiser too. I hear you in my head when I least expect it.

Like she’d listen to a thing I have to say.

Pete Sorensen

Oh yeah, all the postcards are pretty special. All the places she saw but never went to. Oh California! [Clutches heart.] You and I disagreed about that Niagara Falls postcard, and what it meant exactly. “It could have been you.” You think it’s romantic but I think it’s ice cold. The Captain was spitting in her face. Why would you tell someone something like that? That you’ve married someone else but you had your shot. I’d rather not know. I think it’s disrespectful.

Mazie’s Diary, January 4, 1925

We’re moving again and there’s nothing to be done about it. I can’t argue with her any longer. I can’t listen to her yelling. I can’t bear the neighbors knocking on the wall. I can’t bear the tears. The pointing at the floors, the ceiling, the corners, the crevices, the mold, the germs that don’t exist. I don’t see a damn thing and she sees everything. I have dreams about her pointing at things.

Mazie’s Diary, March 1, 1925

234 Elizabeth Street, second floor, new kitchen. Scrubbed clean. Sparkles. Sunlight through the window, hands in front of our squinting eyes.

I said: Can you argue with this?

Rosie said: I cannot.

Mazie’s Diary, July 31, 1925

Rosie hates all our neighbors. Let’s see, what’s her list of complaints. Hershel downstairs reeks of fish, she hates passing him in the hallway, especially when it’s hot, and lately it’s hot. Menachem on the third floor is too religious and she swears he’s judging her for not going to services every Friday night. But that Russian seamstress next door with the newborn, it’s her she hates the most. Says the baby’s too loud, and that I don’t even know the half of it because I’m gone all day.

I said: Then take a walk.

She said: All day? I can’t walk all day.