Jami Attenberg - Saint Mazie

Mazie’s Diary, February 26, 1933

One more body in the late-night frost. I tried to rouse him but his skin turned my skin cold.

I thought: We’re both the same color. We’re both blue.

But then I realized he was bluer than I’ll be in a long time.

Mazie’s Diary, March 15, 1933

Called six ambulances this month and they’re sick of my voice and my face and I don’t care.

Mazie’s Diary, June 1, 1933

Lately I’ve been noticing that the bums are waiting for me to get to work. Just a few of them, same fellas, sometimes a bigger group of them. Waiting for their morning handouts so they can get a little of this or that and move on through their day. What’s it hurt? Tee’d tsk tsk me, but what did Tee know about fun?

All of it makes me feel needed. And that I can help them. I can’t help Rosie, but I can help them.

Mazie’s Diary, June 5, 1933

A guy named Wilson died and I didn’t know him but all the fellas were reeling this morning. He’d been good to them. They said he’d looked out for them. Someone stabbed him in his sleep, and he’d been sleeping on an old mattress in an alley and the mattress was all red when they found him. I was shuddering when they told me this and I didn’t even know it till Rudy came out and shooed them all way. Ghost white I was, that’s what Rudy told me.

Mazie’s Diary, June 13, 1933

A boy with blond hair in my line, sixteen, seventeen, everything about him ragged and worn, his clothes, some scars, a sad, dazed squint. Willowy and breakable. Too young to be in line with those other fellas, and I told him so. Too young to be that battered is what I thought. He deepened his voice, swore he’d been working on the trains for a few years already. I asked his name. Rufus. It couldn’t be, I thought. Not the same. I asked if he had a mother named Nance. He told me it was the name of the woman who bore him but that he barely remembered her.

I said: Who raised you?

He said: A hundred kind people and a hundred mean people and no one in particular.

I couldn’t stand to see his face in my line. He told me he’d been working on the rails here and there, but that he dreamed of working on an apple farm in New Jersey. It seemed safer than the rails, where it was nothing but drunks and trouble. He’d heard it was all sunshine and fresh air on the apple farm. I gave him a few big bills. I told him to go to New Jersey now, get a head start on apple-picking season.

I said: I don’t want to see you around here again, you hear?

He promised he’d never come back. Who knows if he was telling the truth or not? It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been conned. Only I needed to know I tried.

Mazie’s Diary, August 9, 1933

Here she goes with the smell again. Chinatown in the summertime, it isn’t pretty I agree. I finally told her about George Flicker’s building.

She said: That’s a terrible block.

I said: I told you they’re tearing down those buildings.

She said: It’ll be as if we’re living on a cemetery.

I said: It’ll be as if we’re living in a brand-new apartment building. Rosie, it’s built from scratch. There will be a garden. It’ll be the fanciest in the neighborhood. We could live high up in the air, look at the bridge from our window. Look at the water. No bad smells, no street noises.

She was staring at me across the table, maybe for the first time understanding my desperation although I thought I’d been plenty desperate already.

I said: It’s a chance at a fresh start.

I said: It’s the best we can do.

I said: It’s the best I can do.

Elio Ferrante

I dated a girl who lived in Knickerbocker Village once. This Chinese girl I went out with junior year at Hunter. Her name was Ella, which was not her real name but just what she wanted to be called. It’s weird but I don’t even know what her real name was, or maybe I did once and I can’t remember anymore. It’s not important, I know, my ex-girlfriends.

Anyway there’s lots of Chinese there. Chinese and Italians. The families get in there, and then they bring all their extended family members in, or sometimes the kids grow up and get their own apartment. People move in and just stay. It’s not totally impossible to get in the building otherwise, but it’s hard. The wait list is long. It’s like Stuy Town, only smaller, and with way more soul.

Ella took me on a tour of it once after a big night out on the town so yes that’s code for we were wasted. [Laughs.] There were two courts, an east court and a west court, and the buildings looked over these big courtyards. I don’t remember much more about it physically. The things I do remember have to do with the history. Of course. Like the Rosenbergs lived there before they were executed and there were all kinds of Mafia connections and of course the whole Lung Block thing. That’s the information my brain traps. You know what I mean; you get it. You’ve got a one-track mind, too.

I slept over that night actually. It was pretty dumb of me, her mother was in the next room. I snuck out early in the morning so I can barely tell you what the place looked like. But I could hear birds chirping in the courtyard from her window and I thought when I woke up, before I remembered where I was, that maybe I was in the country somewhere. It was quiet, it was early, and there were birds. And the ceilings were high. I don’t know why I remember that. Oh, and when I walked out the front gate I smelled bread. I followed the scent to an Italian bakery across the street. I bought a loaf of bread and ate hunks of it while I walked to City Hall to catch a train to Brooklyn. Ha! That was a night. Her mother found out and wouldn’t let her see me anymore. Maybe there was another guy involved, a long-term boyfriend. She thought I was a bad influence on her daughter. Me, can you imagine?

Pete Sorensen

We walked by there, you and me, last summer, do you remember? We went to Chinatown for dumplings. You had just cut off all your hair and you asked me a hundred times if it looked good and I told you that you’d look good without any hair at all and then we were standing in front of it, looking inside the garden, and you wondered if we could just walk in…and you tried but the security guard stopped you. “Just a peek,” you said. And he said, “No peeking.” And you tried all your wiles on him and it didn’t work and then when we left I tried to make you feel better about it all and you said, “If I hadn’t cut my hair he would have let me in.” I told you you were so beautiful and you didn’t hear a word I said. Why do you never hear a word I say?

Mazie’s Diary, September 29, 1933

This morning’s crew came, scuffling feet, filthy overcoats. Then the lineup, hands out, wishing me a good morning. I was busy thinking about the move, hoping Rosie can hold out a little longer, so I wasn’t even looking in their faces, in their eyes. Here’s a dime for you, a nickel for you. Told them to get a move on, and I got in my cage. Then one more man said my name while I was pulling out the tickets and the cash box.

I said: Hold on, hold on, buddy.

He said: Mazie, it’s me.

I looked up and up and up because there was the tallest man I’d known in my life, Ethan Fallow.

I was confused for a second, thought he was looking for a handout like the rest of them.

I said: Not you, too!

He said: Not me, too, what?

I eyed him. His overcoat was clean, not a tear, not a tatter. He smelled like fresh soap and his hair was still damp and slickly parted to the side.

I said: You’re not looking for some change?

He thought that was funny.