Willow Locke - Anarchist Detective

Zilpah

       

Zilpah had made her quota early and had earned some bonus pay. She had been given a couple of extra coins after the underboss, Mr. Fulton, had double checked her count for the day. She kept the coins in the lining of her black wool coat, where she had sewn a hidden pocket. The extra pay wasn't much, but it added up over time and every day she seemed to hit quota earlier. Her daily quota earnings had supplemented her regular pay enough that she was able to occasionally afford some little luxuries. She had saved for months in order to buy some fashionable new boots. Her old ones were scuffed and marred but not badly damaged. She had given them to Ayala rather than sell them to the cobbler. Ayala's boots had been in sorry condition, and Zilpah had been happy to help her friend.

Zilpah was just getting to know Ayala. Charles Fulton had rearranged their seating at the factory a few months ago, placing them together. The idea was that girls with high output like Zilpah would sit next to girls like Ayala who struggled to make daily quota, allowing them to improve their sewing through observation. The truth was that Ayala had a superior eye for quality, which held her back from attaining Zilpah's speed. She sewed slowly and perfectly while Zilpah ripped through her work. Zilpah had to mentor Ayala, and the weight of this responsibility was a barrier to their friendship. She thought how she must appear to Ayala: strong, composed and skilled. How different from the way she really felt about herself. She felt hopeless, suffocated by fear. She was drowning and the tenement was pulling her under.

Zilpah didn't want Ayala to learn the truth. They lived in the same building, Ayala with her family on the sixth floor and Zilpah on the second floor. They often walked to work together at dawn, discussing sewing technique or gossiping about the other girls. Zilpah had even been to dinner at the Lostch's a few times. But for all that she had always been able to engineer complications when Ayala had wanted to visit her.

Zilpah knew all about Yaakov, she had listened to Ayala go on about him at length. Zilpah never reciprocated information about herself. She didn't want Ayala to know. Instead she quietly deflected opportunities to share, or used humor to leverage the conversation back towards gossip. Ayala didn't find it odd that Zilpah had no suitors, and she seemed compelled to share every minute detail of Yaakov's wooing. Although she cared about her friend, Zilpah had come to disdain her. Why didn't she notice that she knew almost nothing about her? Ayala was just another person who depended on Zilpah's strength. But Zilpah wasn't strong. What would Ayala think if she knew the truth? It wasn't her fault. It was better this way.

She would never be able to talk to Ayala, not the way she could talk to Hannah. Sweet, caring Hannah—she had tried to hide from her too, but Hannah was just too perceptive. She calmly rebuffed Zilpah's sarcasm. One day, apropos of nothing, Hannah had abruptly taken both her hands and said simply "Tell me the truth." Zilpah's spirit had overflowed, she confessed everything. And now Hannah knew. She was even helping with Shek, wandering the broad avenues with her after work, calling her name. She trusted Hannah in a way that she could not trust Ayala. And Hannah had confessed her secrets too. A plot—incredibly daring. Hannah had wanted Zilpah to join her, but she didn't have the courage for that.

Zilpah sighed and pushed open the door to the tenement. She took the narrow stair up to the second floor, her sense of dread growing with each step. The gravity of her boots increased—her steps weighed down by guilt and fear. A metallic sound—was it the coins in the lining of her coat? She felt their outline through the soft wool. No, the coins were separated—positioned where she had stitched them.

A gray tabby strolled lazily along the dark hallway. It passed in front of her door switching its tail, then sat directly in her path, staring at her with strange green eyes.

Now she could hear the noises from her family's rooms. Something breaking, Yiddish curses. She felt so cold. She felt the coins through her coat lining again. She would know. She always knew somehow. Her door was slightly ajar, an oblong shaft of light spilled into the hallway. She reached for the door. The tabby hissed at her and leapt away.

Zilpah eased the door open and stepped inside. Her mother lay naked on the floorboards. Fragments of wooden furniture lay all around her. She had smashed the table and chairs and was burning the wood in the fireplace. A single candle burned in its holder on the floor.

"Daughter," she moaned, turning over and propping herself up to look at Zilpah. Something was happening to her. Her skin was ashen. Zilpah could see a pale, fibrous patch spreading across her shoulders and breasts. An infection?

"Mom," she choked, "You're sick. You have to see the doctor."

She grimaced at Zilpah, baring her gray teeth. She sat up and fumbled for her ever-present growler, a large bucket with a tight-fitting lid. The wood always smelled of spirits—like turpentine. Zilpah felt sick.

"Darling," she whispered "Go get your mother a growler of whiskey."

She looked like a demented infant, naked, burbling, holding out her favorite plaything. Zilpah violently longed to be free. Her hatred for her mother glowed like a burning brand. Anything would be better than this. She could survive on the street. But there was one thing that always kept her coming back—one reason she had to stay.

"Mom, where's Shek?" she hissed.

"Sheky is a good girl." she smiled with maternal pride. "I sent her out to sweep. She earns money for her mama, the fine gentlemen always give her extra, she's so darling." She rocked with mirthless laughter, her eyes wide with a strange light.

"She's just a child! She shouldn't be out now!" Zilpah was yelling, her eyes filled with tears.

"What street?" she demanded, standing over her mother. "Where?"

Her mother's only answer was to hold out the growler, mewling softly. Zilpah took it by the wooden handle, and for a moment they both held it. She could feel the tremor in her mother's arms transmitted through the wood. She wrenched it away, threw it onto the floorboards. She wanted to break the oaken bucket but it only bounced on the floor and rolled in a semi-circle.

"Oh Zilpah, you don't understand—I need it." She was prostrate before her daughter, clutching at her clothes.

"I hear terrible things—in my head. Her voice—it never stops. She whispers to me. Terrible secrets. Terrible secrets. But the whiskey keeps her quiet—I need it."

"Who?" Zilpah yelled "Who whispers?" Her mother's hand was on her coat, searching the lining. She stepped back, but her mother had already felt the coins.

"Get me a growler and I'll tell you what street."

Zilpah walked over and picked up the bucket. Disgust and rage boiled within her. She stood rigid and helpless, locked into herself, watching her mother writhe in the grip of delirium tremens. She wanted to run. Find Shek, and run. But she didn't know where Shek was.

She wiped away her tears with the back of her hand. Her resolve stiffened her posture. She knew what she had to do. She turned away from her mother, locked the door, and took the growler down to the saloon to get it filled.