Jami Attenberg - Saint Mazie

I’d kill to take a walk all day but that’s not what she wants to hear.

I said: It’s a baby. How can you hate a baby?

She said: Well it’s no blood of mine.

I said: It’s a helpless human being.

She said: It’s rattling me.

Rattle’s a word I don’t like her using. When she gets shook there’s no unshaking her.

Mazie’s Diary, August 3, 1925

Mack Walters passed. His heart gave. Tee and I went to his funeral in Queens this morning. I hadn’t seen him in a long time, a year, maybe more. We’d stopped talking, stopped flirting, and then he transferred uptown. After that it was like we hadn’t even known each other in the first place. Still I remembered that day we all ran downtown when the bomb went off. Tee did, too. A day when you witness something terrible together, you don’t forget a day like that. You can’t unsee what you saw. So I’d give him tribute.

Mack was Catholic, and Tee knew every single prayer before the priest said it out loud. I liked the church, the cool wooden pews, the stained-glass windows dividing the sun, the statues of Jesus and Mary all around us. A mother and her son. It meant nothing to me, none of it, but it meant everything to Tee.

There was no family at his funeral, just other police officers. He was an orphan from a young age, is what I learned. These officers were the only family he had, and I noticed a few of them pawing away their tears. I was an orphan in a way but I’ve always had Rosie steady in my life, even if she’s unsteady herself. Poor Mack didn’t even have a lunatic sister to call his own.

Afterward someone asked me if I was Mazie and I told him I was and then a few other officers came to greet me and suddenly a whole crowd of them was around me. The famous Mazie, is what they were saying. You’re the one. They told me Mack talked about me all the time, that I was a heartbreaker. I forgot I could do that, break a heart.

Tee and I held hands the whole time. She told me later she could tell I was nervous. My whole life I handled attention from strangers just fine. It’s just lately I’m used to the bronze bars of a cage between us. When the rush stopped I remembered that some of these men could have been the ones beating up on Al Flicker. I wished that I could humble them instead of being so humbled myself. But I was there to pay respects, and that’s what I did.

Mazie’s Diary, August 15, 1925

A postcard from the Captain. Washington, DC.

He wanted me to know he’s back east now.

The picture on the front is of the Washington Monument. A giant prick.

Pete Sorensen

I’ll be honest, I like a girl with a little seasoning, a little special sauce. I’m not interested in the helpless young virgin type, I guess partially because I’m not so innocent myself. And women that have had some experiences in their lives, there’s some kind of wisdom that comes with that. Also they’re less likely to make certain kinds of demands, particularly of, say, a permanent nature. I just never wanted to settle down or anything like that. Opening my shop was about as settled as I was going to get. But I swear to god, reading this diary made me want to settle down. I actually found myself wanting to marry her! I know it’s nuts. I just heard her in my head so clearly and thought I know her. I mean I didn’t know every little thing about her. But I knew that she liked to walk the streets of New York, and that I love more than anything. And I knew the quality of her character, which made me think I could spend the rest of my life with her.

Mazie’s Diary, September 1, 1925

112 Delancey Street. Only elderly women reside in this building, polite old Catholic ladies. Tee told us there was a room for rent — she’d heard it through the grapevine. They’re all her favorite tithers. Quiet mice with hair like snow. They’ve even got a knitting circle every evening at sunset. Dolores with the bad knee one floor down has already offered to make us a quilt. We’re on the fourth floor in three rooms. There’s no street noise. Kitchen’s clean, I made Rosie run her finger on the counter and show it to me. Here we sit, here we stay.

George Flicker

So that was a thing that was very strange for a long time with these two ladies. They could not stop moving. Six months max, that’s how long they lasted in each apartment, and it went on for years, this moving-around business. This was when I was just starting to investigate a career in real estate. It seemed like the only economy that never changed in New York. People always needed a place to live, and you didn’t have to have much of an education to get started in it. So I started circling everyone. I got to know a lot of the building owners on the Lower East Side. A few of them, I had grown up with their families, or I’d seen them around. So I was just schmoozing with them. The good ones and the bad ones, both. I wanted to know what they knew. And one of the things I kept hearing about, just as part of everyday gossip, was that the Gordon girls were on the move. Who knows why, but they had turned themselves into gypsies.

Mazie’s Diary, November 1, 1925

Twenty-eight. My waist is still trim, but my breasts have gotten bigger this year, maybe it was last year and I didn’t notice. As if they weren’t already big enough. My back aches, sitting there, hunched over those tickets, counting cash, head in my stories. The lines are longer at the theater. We make money. Good money, legal money. I give Sister Tee a fistful every month. I’m a good businesswoman. This is what I learned this year. This is what I know.

Dolores prayed for me, she told me. Sister Tee said she did too, and she gave me a box of peppermints. Rudy hugged me and gave me a new scarf. Rosie rubbed my shoulders when I got home, she’s seen me hunching, knows my posture’s gone.

She said: It hurts for you now the same way it hurts for me.

I don’t think she knows my pain, though. Just like I don’t know hers.

Mazie’s Diary, November 8, 1925

He was here again. How long has it been, one year, two, three, and there he was, and I was not surprised. He came to me, and I went with him. Didn’t blink, didn’t pause, just went. He stood in line with all my regulars, the last show of the night, at the very end of the line, and he bought a ticket like everyone, and when I handed him the change, he held my hand. I sat there, burning, both of us burning, stupidly burning, looking at each other, and holding hands. I rested my head forward on the cage, and he put his hand against my other cheek. His hand was cold, and my face was warm. Burning, burning, burning.

I said: You’re late.

He said: For what?

I said: You just missed my birthday.

He said: Oh, Mazie, I’m always going to miss your birthday.

I said: I’m going to think of you as my present anyway.

He said: You can if you like. But I think you’re mine instead.

Later, in the hotel room, he held his prick against my cunt for a while, and he commented on the size of my lips, the way his prick looked up against them, all of those swollen things next to each other. It looked beautiful and I became fascinated with it, I couldn’t look away, and he couldn’t either, and together we did that, we looked at our parts touching, while he moved everything around slowly with his prick.

I’ll never be more intimate with any man than I am with him.

He’s married now. I knew it, but he showed me his ring anyway, which he had in his breast pocket.

He said: I want to speak the truth to you, Mazie.

I told him that it didn’t matter, and it doesn’t. Our union is our union, and theirs is theirs. This bride in Connecticut means nothing to me. I had him first. I chose not to keep him because I knew he couldn’t be kept. Him standing before me at that very moment last night proved it.