Jami Attenberg - Saint Mazie

I thought of Tee walking next to me, and what she would have thought about it all. Her habit gathered up around her as she bent to help. We never would have made it home, she would have stopped and helped each person. She couldn’t turn down a soul.

I fished in my pocket, and I squatted down next to a man on the sidewalk. There was a cut on his cheek. Stubble, dirt, dried blood. Blood on his collar and coat. He was shivering. Everyone on the streets was shivering.

I handed him a quarter.

I said: This is for a bed to sleep in.

I handed him another quarter.

I said: This is for a meal.

I handed him a final quarter.

I said: And this is for a drink or two.

That last part Tee wouldn’t have approved of, but Tee never knew how to have a good time.

The younger ones still have a chance to change their lives, and I’ll lend them a hand if they like. But too many of the older men, they’ve been on the road so long they wouldn’t know what to do with a proper home if they had one. The concrete feels right under their bodies. Their discomfort has become their comfort.

Elio Ferrante

Is it weird that I love teaching the Depression the most out of all the eras? I think part of it has to do with it being the most . Like it was the longest and the worst and it was global and terrible, and these kids only know how to pay attention to superlatives. Also the idea of businessmen jumping out of buildings freaks them out. Breadlines freak them out, too. A lot of these kids have had experience with food stamps, and then I get to tell them it was because of the Depression that food stamps were even created in the first place. This speaks to them. The image of New York City in trouble, with so many people down on their luck, that genuinely speaks to them also. They weren’t here for the seventies and eighties, which is when I was a kid, and when New York City was still, pardon my language, a shit show. But the idea that it exists, that so much of New York City was in trouble that there were breadlines everywhere, it freaks them out, it makes them pay attention, and more than anything I like it when I have a classroom of eyeballs facing forward. All those heads up, listening to what I have to say, I love it. I wish I could teach the Depression all year long.

Mazie’s Diary, February 1, 1930

Now I’m back regular at the theater, and Rudy and I met this morning about business. He said it’s no good. First, people were coming to the theater to forget their worries, but now the money’s run out. He thinks it’ll be bad for a while. Gloom and doom on that poor man’s face. Pale-faced Rudy, he is. The faintest sliver of a man.

I said to Rudy: We’ll run it at a loss for a while if we have to. We’re not closing this theater down. We won’t put the people who’ve worked here out on their behinds like everybody else.

I talked to Rosie about it all over dinner tonight.

I said: Who knows when it will pick up?

She said: We won’t close it.

I said: No, of course we won’t.

She said: I’ll sell all my jewelry, and whatever else I need to. Louis loved that theater.

I said: And those people are our family.

She said: I don’t even understand why we’re having this discussion.

I said: I only wanted to make sure. We choose this, there’s no unchoosing it.

She said: You and I disagree about a lot of things, Mazie, but I think we can both agree we will not send our people out on the streets until the last dime is gone.

Ah, I loved her then. I loved my Rosie.

Lydia Wallach

They kept the theater running for two years at a loss, paying people out of their own savings. Supposedly they had plenty of money, she and her sister. Secret stashes of cash here and there. But still, to support an entire staff like that.

Mazie’s Diary, February 15, 1930

There was no line at the theater today, we sold three tickets in the morning, and that’s it. Same as yesterday, and the week before, and the week before that. I decided to check out the competition. Everyone was standing in line instead at the Bowery Mission.

I wrapped myself up in my warm cloak, and brought an extra pack of smokes with me, thought I’d hand them out if anyone was craving one. I hadn’t seen the lines up close yet, or maybe I’ve seen them and just wasn’t paying attention. I wore gloves and a scarf and a hat and the new wool winter cloak Rosie gave me in December, and I walked briskly, I swung my arms, and still I felt the chill. And I was thinking if I’m cold, how are those fellas doing?

I walked the line, nodding at the gents. So many of them had suitcases with them and if I didn’t know any better I would have thought they were heading on a trip. But instead they were just carrying whatever they had left, what little remained in their lives.

I knew I’d seen some of them around before. Some of them were hustlers, but some of them were just regular old Joes from the neighborhood, working stiffs without any work, just stiff now. I couldn’t name them, I couldn’t place them exactly, and I thought maybe I was even making it up, them being familiar. But then a couple of them tipped their hats at me, and a few of them said my name. How do, Miss Mazie. So I knew I was right. These were my customers, starving on the streets. I offered out cigarettes to the fellas, and some of them took more than one and I didn’t say a thing.

One of them touched my arm and I turned to him, offered him the pack.

He said: It’s me, Mazie. It’s William. From Finny’s. Do you remember me? It’s been a while, I know.

It was Hungry William, who had savaged my breasts a few years ago. The bites and the bruises, how could I forget him?

I said: Oh, William, of course. I’d know you anywhere.

I was girlish and flirtatious. I wanted to make him feel special right then. He took a smoke, told me that he was down on his luck like everyone else.

I said: Even the bankers have fallen.

He said: Especially the bankers. But I was not so much a banker as a bank clerk, I must admit to you. And now I’m nothing.

He started to cry, standing right there in the line. I felt all hot and teary too. I touched his face. I remembered him as so rough and arrogant, I couldn’t stand to see him as anything but that. There’s not much I ask for in this world anymore, but I want my memories to remain intact.

I said: William, don’t be sad. We had such a good time together, think about that.

He said: There’s no more good times left for me.

I pulled my flask from my coat.

I said: Drink this, it’ll warm you up.

He sipped from it but then other lads yelled for it, and it was gone in a flash. Everyone was sipping. I couldn’t deny them a thing. After the flurry of cigarettes and booze there was nothing left for them to do but stand there in the cold, some of them jumping up and down to keep warm, others hunched over, arms wrapped around themselves. I started to feel it, too, the cold to the bone.

I said: Listen, when you’re done here, you come see me at the theater, I’ll let you in for free. All of you lads, you come in, warm up, see a show, it’ll take your mind off your problems. In no time you’ll feel better. It’s on me, you hear?

They all let out a cheer. I know it’s just temporary, a temporary gift for them. I can’t have them in there every day. I’ll never get another decent customer in if I do. But for one day, I can let these fellas warm themselves under my roof.

Later on Rudy told me half of them slept through the entire movie.

Mazie’s Diary, February 16, 1930