Caraliza
Authors: Joel Blaine Kirkpatrick
Caraliza
Copyright © 2010 by Joel Blaine Kirkpatrick
Design Credits:
Cover © Serendipity Graphic Design by Kelly van der Staal (www.kellyvanderstaal.nl)
Images © Serendipity Graphic Design by Kelly van der Staal (www.kellyvanderstaal.nl)
Caraliza is portrayed by Maret Reutelingsperger
Dutch translations by Irma van der Staal
Book design by Joel Blaine Kirkpatrick
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real or historically accurate. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental
United States of America
May, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-557-46189-9
ISBN: 0-557-46189-8
CHAPTERS
New York, 1919
1. A secret desire and the camera
2. The questions and the dangers
3. The panic and the hiding
4. The loss too dear
5. Madness
New York, 1994
6. A waiting home
7. The Waterburys
8. The Clan war
9. Yousep’s plates
10. Disturbing the garden
11. The Lovers’ notebook
12. Under the stoop
13. Unceasing torments
14. The rise and fall of Shelly Reisman
15. Opening The Studio
New York, 1997
16. The closing
New York, 1919
17. A wish for Papa
She hated the sound of the rain on the crusted basement window above the rusted, tin kitchen sink. Rain in the slums did only two things on her street; it brought the smells of sewage and refuse right into the tenements, and it kept him home all day. To her the drops seemed as useless as petals tossed down upon a coffin.
The rain she remembered at home seemed always pleasant and fresh. It brought mud into the house as easily as the smell of sewage in the city, but it was a clean mud, just good soil. Mama would sweep it out when it dried and seemed never to be cross about it. Even if the pup came in wet from the brook, Mama would not complain about the mess.
Slum rain would make the already dank, dingy basement rooms smell worse no matter how she cleaned. If he was home, she had better be cleaning.
He could not get onto the roofs in the slums when it rained. Being a huge man, he could do such work; the materials were harsh and heavy. He would laugh at lesser men if they could not carry passed the third floor. He could carry as much as they, up to the ninth or tenth, before stopping to shift whatever load was his burden that day. However, he would work tomorrow and for several days after.
Rain brought leaks and he fixed leaks.
Caraliza could bear the horrid smell of the rain today, because he would not be home tomorrow. She cleaned to forget the sound of it and hoped he would go out for a drink. It might mean nothing to eat, but cleaning would take her mind off any hunger. She learned to endure hunger; she wondered how long she could endure him.
“
Come here!”
Come here!”
The brute would not be going out.
Her home; it was real, but no longer felt real to her as he crushed her with his weight. It was harder to escape to home when she closed her eyes to block out the abuse; it was a long, sorrowful time ago, somewhere else, some time before he forced his way into her life. When she tried to think of home, he would always appear in her desperate thoughts.
Caraliza understood she had no real choice in leaving; there was a desperate ‘yes’ - or there was starvation. Leaving might save her sister, who was so hungry; there would be no way to know, and she kept breathing life into the waning desire to know if her family had lived. The Great War ravaged Europe, and the people there found any means they could to survive, what meager food there was, always had too many mouths needing to taste it.
Kind souls would come and help as they could, and take those they could, sometimes children; to save them, as their parents might plead. Yet, not all rescuing souls were good and did as well as they promised. Some, who broke those promises, ought not to have a soul at all.
An awful price was paid for Caraliza, by one who kept no promises. An awful payment, so her family could pay some debts and buy better food, hoping she at least was being rescued for them. They sold her, in hope it was not an ill event. She did not want to, but she agreed; a bad life - was life still.
Mother screamed, and wailed: such things were not done; sell the house; live in the street; sell yourself - not your child. Mother wept bitterly as the brute stood in the door, ignoring her, watching the sisters. For her little sister, Caraliza could endure this awful payment. She would try.
The goodbyes were terrible; grieving parents to clutch in vain, and dark, vacant eyes, hidden behind little sister’s limp hair, as she lay too weak to rise from bed to be embraced. Those weak eyes, they barely looked at Caraliza, as she placed her hand on little sister's head, and kissed her goodbye.
He thundered in to take her arm; she had taken too long.
She was as desperate to block this memory as she was to close her mind to the near daily abuse in his basement home.
She pulled her dress back down when he rolled away, and she rose painfully from his sagging bed. She could breathe again; he never cared he crushed her nearly to death before he finished. When he rolled over and closed his eyes to fall asleep, she gasped to soothe her pounding head. The smell of him was all over her now, and the rain only kept the air heavy, and putrid.
She wiped herself with a whimper at the basin, and threw out the water into the street, refusing to notice the lags, sitting on the stoop, who were spitting on umbrellas that passed. She turned without a glance and went back down the stairs to continue cleaning. There were footsteps behind her; they were hurried and careless. Someone she did not look at, raced to meet her at the doorway, and shoved her roughly against the wall; a dirty face leered against her shoulder, and rude, groping hands felt her.
“
You stink!” But his eyes grew wide with understanding. “Don't you tell him! Don't you tell!”
You stink!” But his eyes grew wide with understanding. “Don't you tell him! Don't you tell!”
The footsteps rushed back up the stairs and there was laughter among the lags.
Caraliza slipped cautiously inside to resume cleaning before the brute awoke. He never bothered to teach her English, so she did not know exactly what the dirty fellow hissed into her ear, but she could guess. She wished the brute had caught him in the basement stair, even if she were beaten again as well - the others would leave her alone for a while at least.
She did not know, across the street in a small photographer's shop, a young clerk saw her below the stoop. He watched her wince with pain as she chucked the basin, he saw the limp as she turned to go carefully back down the wet stairs, he cringed as the lag jump down with a filthy hope in his eyes. The clerk did not know her name, but he saw her below the stoop nearly every day.
She never passed beyond the curb, or the stoops on either side. Her entire existence seemed to be contained in the clerk’s widow, hidden behind those walls, down those stairs, deeper than the filthy street. The clerk also knew the shape of the man who lived down those desperate stairs, so the fifteen-year-old boy who looked out the shop window never crossed that street.
The rain was not letting up, the crusted window was beginning to seep the filth from the sidewalk. The lamps were merely fumes, which granted little light. Caraliza did not dare go back to the stair to get any sky or breath. The only thing that would help would be some clean water, coppery smelling, but cleaner than the sweat, or worse, the brute had left on her.
She softly closed the water closet door and tried to open the spout, quietly as she could. A trickle of water came, and as it cleared, she removed her dress, the only thing she wore. She did not cry at the bruises or the scrapes on her knees. She cried because the water was iced cold. She had forgotten a warm bath; those were impossible to have. The brute used the baths near the barbershop, sometimes, because the closet was too small for such a big man to wash himself, and because he was too cheap for a tub big enough to use in the kitchen.
Caraliza took the icy rag and tried to wipe herself softly where she could reach. It was painful to wipe between her legs; she would try there last. She stood in the cramped, dark room crying and wiped his smell from her breasts.
At that moment, across the street, the clerk stood looking at her small world through the shop window, as the coffin-petal rain fell, and the carriaged horses added to the filth. His daydreaming of learning her name would get him into trouble.
“
You might want to waste your day spitting on umbrellas, Yousep, but you won't get paid for it. Finish those plates for Mrs. Hollsworth, she will be here tomorrow.”
You might want to waste your day spitting on umbrellas, Yousep, but you won't get paid for it. Finish those plates for Mrs. Hollsworth, she will be here tomorrow.”
Yousep turned to nod his head and went to get the darkroom apron from the hook. He picked up a new candle and stepped inside the closet to bathe the photographic plates in the developer. He could hear Mr. Reisman trying to sell another camera. They did not sell many, and each one was several months of Yousep's pay. The shop was desperate for sales of cameras.
Menashe Reisman, his employer, was well known and well loved as ‘Papa’ by entire neighborhood. Originally, this had been his portrait studio; it was not now, because a six-story tenement was pounded into place right next-door, blocking the morning light from the studio completely. Poor money and bad decisions meant the shop could not move to retain portrait clientele. They tried selling cameras instead. Years of dwindling business had worn Papa Reisman into an early old man. He took fewer portraits each year; the families, who once paid him handsomely, were forgetting him.
Yousep was fortunate to have the job at all. Except for the misunderstood daydreaming at the window, he was as good a clerk as Papa could hope to find; plus, Yousep was honest, which was impossible to find. His immigrant parents might try to keep him raised according to their traditional beliefs, but poverty often made thieves of even faithful men, after long enough in despair.
Yousep was unaffected yet by such despair. He even returned an extra dollar he accidentally received in his pay one week. His honesty might outlast his poverty. Such a lad was likely to escape the slums; if ever, God willing, that should occur - his brains would wisely keep him away forever. Papa Reisman felt fortunate Yousep remained at the meager job, even if the lad seemed in love with the window.
A whistle from the closet meant some of the image plates were ready to dry. Yousep waited until the door opened a slit, then he passed a dripping plate through just before it closed. This repeated four times and he was able to get back to the plates in the developer. They were almost ready for the fixer. He caught himself before he whistled a tune that was in his head; he was not ready to hand out more plates yet. He instead imagined walking across the street to those basement stairs.
Below that stoop, while Yousep thought again of the girl, Caraliza dropped her cloth into the basin and stood for a moment to dry her skin. She closed her eyes and tickled her fingers up one arm and down the other, barely touching until little bumps rose and she smiled. She tickled up her legs from her knees, passed her bruised thighs and lightly up her stomach to her breasts. She tickled softly until the bumps rose again and returned the smile to her lips. It was the only pleasurable sensation she could remember. It was time to clean her tender privates and it was more time than she dared take, but hurrying would make it unbearable. Her captor would pull her from the water closet if he awoke and thought she was hiding. If he found her naked….
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