Hereafter

Hereafter: Part III The Soul Stitchers, Chapter 48

48

ANTONIO RETURNED AS PLANNED with a bottle filled with infected water from a pond in the Bronx. The outbreak began with a bad batch of diseased oysters harvested in Long Island Sound. People got sick and without the proper treatment of their waste, the surrounding water sources got infected further spreading the nasty malady throughout the area. He quietly dosed my water canister before randomly picking two other Cholera guinea pigs from among the girls.

Upon waking, we each took a drink from our canisters, sealing our medical fate. By the middle of the afternoon the nasty bacterium, Vibrio cholerae, had worked its way past the acid defenses of our stomachs and set up housekeeping in our small intestines. The symptoms came on fast. I couldn’t keep anything down or in.

During a routine pass down my aisle Egoor initially simply noticed that I was falling behind and he cracked his whip catching me on the neck. Instead of jolting me back to attention, it drained my last drop of conscious energy and I passed out slumping over onto the body of my sewing machine. It was then that he noticed my pale at-death’s-door look and bluish-gray skin and knew something was terribly wrong with me.

With no one else to help out, Egoor had to handle the situation himself. My head was draped over the Singer exposing my neck. He could see the fresh flesh wound from the whip and as well as my rather large heart-shaped birthmark about the size of a ping pongball. Before executing his heartless standard procedure and pushing my limp unconscious body into the pen under the machine, Egoor first had to lift my head up. Noticing the birthmark, he reflexively pulled back after focusing in on the shape, but his hardened heart refused to make a conscious connection to the past and what the incredibly rare and unique image might actually mean in the greater scheme of his life.

Stashed away, out of sight, out of mind, Egoor continued his rounds and soon came upon the second girl, then, the third who’d contracted cholera. He could see we all had the same symptoms. Though not emotionally invested, he was enough of a businessman to understand that a virulent disease might spread and wipe out his workforce. Though he had the missing morals of a Genghis Khan, we were all removed to his office to contain the outbreak.

Because of their weakened condition, and without any medical attention, the other two girls died around midnight. Antonio made sure their souls got special fast-track treatment on the other side. After disposing of the bodies, Egoor returned to find me writhing in agony. While sponging off my face and neck, he once again noticed my heart-shaped birthmark. This time he reached out to examine it more closely, primarily to make sure it wasn’t a tattoo.

It had been years—12 to be exact, since he last seen a birthmark like mine—on me, in the hospital, when his lover had given birth and he held me for the first . . . and last . . . time.

MY MOTHER WAS A DOMESTIC employed in the rather impressive estate that was the Csrezenebe family brownstone. Egoor took a fancy to the young, attractive Irish immigrant who was often cleaning in his presence—reaching up to that top shelf or on her hands and knees washing a floor.

Not an uncommon custom at the time, he had his way with her whenever he felt the urge. When she got pregnant, any thoughts of their getting married were impossible. Not only wasn’t she Jewish, their class difference would have left him shunned from the family and the greater New York Jewish business community.

Facing the prospect of financial and person ruin, Egoor did the best he could, was with her in the hospital during the delivery, saw me, held me, pointed out my birthmark, but left for good after giving my mother enough money that we wouldn’t be destitute. Walkingaway from us was the final callous act, among many others, that hardened his heart into a block of cold crystalline unfeeling granite.