“Another few days, Maria,” she whispered. After five days at sea, New York Harbor must be close. Once they arrived, they would need to find a doctor to tend to the fever immediately.
Maria moaned and turned on her side, her shoulder nearly scraping the underside of the woman’s cot suspended above hers. “I’m so thirsty.”
Francesca was thirsty, too. Their water rations had scarcely been sufficient, or their food for that matter. What did the crew care about a pack of hungry, dirty foreigners? They saw so many, week after week. Desperation was nothing new to them.
Francesca turned over her water canister in her hands. No one would part with their rations; she’d asked passengers in steerage all day yesterday and had finally given up. Poverty didn’t move them, or the story of her very ill sister. Each had their own story of woe. And it was out of the question to approach second or third class passengers. A guard stood at each of the doors connected to the upper levels to keep the wanderers out.
Unless…? An idea sparked suddenly in the back of her mind.
“I’m going to find more water.” She pulled the blanket around Maria’s shoulders. “Don’t try to get up again. You need to rest.”
Francesca rummaged through their small travel case for the only nice things she owned. She pulled on her mother’s finest dress, fastened on a pair of earbobs, slipped a set of combs into her hair, and kissed the medallion of the Virgin Mary around her neck. The medallion she had stolen two years ago.
For months, she had admired the shiny golden trinket as it winked from the hollow at the base of Sister Alberta’s neck. It was the first time Francesca had felt the sharp edge of envy. A rush of shame soon followed. She loved the nun like family, and Francesca knew it was a sin to want what wasn’t hers. One day when Sister sent her to fetch a book, Francesca found the necklace gleaming in a bright ray of sunlight that streaked across Sister’s dressing table. She’d held it a moment, stroking the outline of the Virgin Mother with her thumb, wishing she’d had the medallion’s protection. She’d been unable to resist it, and slipped it inside the folds of her dress. It wasn’t until the following day that she wondered why Sister had sent her to look for a book that wasn’t there. Perhaps it had been a test—a test Francesca had failed.
Francesca’s chest tightened as she thought of the nun. Sister Alberta was a Catholic in exile, though she’d never explained why, and had lived two lanes away from Francesca and Maria in their little village. The nun had befriended them when their mother disappeared, taught Francesca to cook and both sisters to read and even speak a little English. Sister had loved them.
“You putting on airs for someone?” said Adriana, an Italian woman from Roma. She wore thick rouge, and though she was traveling in steerage, her dress looked finer than those of the other women with its lace trim and shiny beading. It was also vivid purple. All the better to attract male attention.
“I need more water.” Francesca’s gaze flicked to her sister and back to the woman she was certain traded lire for sex. Not that Francesca minded. She wasn’t bothered by other people’s choices, especially when it came to survival. God must understand need when he saw it, if he was truly a benevolent God.
Adriana crossed her arms beneath her bosom. “Plan on flirting with the captain for it?”
Francesca snapped the compact closed. “I’m going to the upper decks, see if someone will spare some.”
Or perhaps she would just take their water. She was good at that, taking things.
“Better work it harder, amore, if you want to fit in with that lot.” A woman with no front teeth rose from her bed and dug through a handbag tucked beneath her pillow. “Here. Have some of this.” She held out an elegant bottle of perfume.
Francesca felt a rush of gratitude. She reached for the bottle and dabbed her neck and wrists.
“I’ve got some rouge, too.” Adriana produced a small tub. “You’ll have better luck with the guards this way.”
Another cabin mate watched them quietly, pushed up from her bunk, and took something out of a bag she’d been using as a pillow. “It was my nonna’s.” She clutched a cashmere shawl to her chest. It didn’t look new, but it had been well cared for and could still pass for acceptable among the upper class, at least Francesca hoped. “The gray will be pretty with your eyes,” the woman continued. “Please, be careful with it.”
Francesca hardly knew them, yet they lent their most precious belongings to help her. An unspoken sense of unity hung in the air. Tired of suffering, they’d all left their homes behind and hoped for better times ahead.
“I…I don’t know how to thank you all,” she stammered as a swell of emotion clogged her throat.
“Show those puttanas they aren’t better than us,” Adriana said, winking.
At that, Francesca smiled.
She blew her cabin mates a kiss to whistles and cheers. Holding her head high, she threaded through the narrow hallway, wound through a room filled with barrels and clusters of steamer trunks, and passed a huddled group of passengers playing card games. She approached the ladder leading to the second-class deck quickly, before she could change her mind, and ascended it.
And there, at the end of the next passageway, a crewman stood guard.
When he spotted her, he stepped to the right and crossed his arms, blocking the entrance.
She clasped her hands together like a lady should, stretched her five-foot, three-inch frame to full height, and, ignoring the thundering in her ears, marched toward the guard.
He stood stiffly in a navy uniform, the name “Forrester” stitched across his breast pocket in yellow thread. “I can’t let you through, miss. There’s no steerage allowed here.”
Her stomach tightened, but she forced a smile. “Excuse me, Mr. Forrester, I am second class. I have friend in steerage. I visit her but now I return.”
The wiry seaman peered at her, his gaze traveling over her worn shoes and dress.
Nervously, she dug her thumbnail into the flesh of her index finger, willing herself to remain calm.
“Second class, you say?” His eyes rested on her rouged lips.
“Yes. Excuse me,” she said, her tone clipped as if she were insulted.
He stared at her for a long, uncomfortable minute. At last, he angled his body away from her, leaving just enough room so her body would brush against his in an intimate way.