The Girl in the Torch Read online

  Dedication

  For Annabelle and Olivia

  Epigraph

  Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

  A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

  Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

  Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

  Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

  The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

  “Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

  With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

  Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

  The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

  Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

  I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

  —from Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus,” 1883

  Contents

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Horses

  Crossing

  A Widening Circle

  The Golden Door

  Quarantine

  Volunteering

  Passed

  Uncle Jossel

  Salt Water

  Night Swimming

  The Watchman

  The Crown Room

  American Morning

  Cat and Mouse

  Hunting for Pennies

  Threat of Rain

  Maryk

  Roast Beef and a Pickle

  Mouse Trap

  Androcles

  The Niece

  Chinatown

  Mrs. Lee

  Stripped and Scrubbed

  Little Indian on a Horse

  The Wok

  Mrs. Fat

  Grace

  A Real Bed

  Midnight Intruder

  Fifteen Holes per Hour

  Smitty and Miss Jean

  Village of Men

  Tommy Grogan

  The Other Photograph

  111 Essex Street

  Partners

  Checkmate

  The News Business

  A Strange Expression

  Another America

  Bao Yu

  The Conversation

  Spotless

  Losses

  English Lessons

  Run!

  A Small Tugging

  Night on the Bowery

  The Egg

  Bleecker Street

  Meeting Mr. Duffy

  Girl Newsie

  Headlines

  Reaching the End

  Return to the Lady

  Jail

  The Girl in the Torch

  Judge Conklin

  The Decision

  Deportation Day

  Maryk’s Gift

  One Regret

  Going West

  Fifteen Years Later: The Boy in the Torch

  Author’s Note

  Note on the Origins of the Story

  Sources

  A Time Line of the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and United States Immigration Policy

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Horses

  SARAH HEARD THE SOUND FIRST, a low rumble that she thought was thunder, gently rattling the windowpanes of their house like a shiver. The noise grew louder until she could tell it was hoofbeats, pounding down the dirt road that ran through their village as if one hundred angry drums were beating ever louder, ever closer. She pulled the blankets up so they almost covered her entire face and lay still in the dark, hoping they would pass. Finally the sound grew so loud that it woke her mother, who rolled over and shook Sarah’s father. “Wake up!”

  “Huh?” he mumbled, still half asleep.

  They all slept in one room, the only room of the house, which was little more than four wooden walls, a thatched roof, and a floor. In the past year there had been other attacks, in other villages. So they knew what was happening.

  “The horsemen,” her mother said. “They’re here!”

  Her father sprang out of bed and pulled on his boots.

  “Get into the root cellar,” he said. “And don’t come out no matter what.”

  “Papa . . . ?” Sarah sat up from the straw mat beside their bed.

  “Don’t question, Sarah,” he said, grabbing her by the arm. “Just do as I say.”

  Though it was dark, she could see his eyes were hard and insistent. He turned from her, knocking into the table in the middle of the room. Sarah and her father had been in the middle of a chess match before bedtime and had left the board set up, frozen in midbattle. Now, he sent it flying into the air, scattering the carefully maneuvered pieces across the floor.

  Sarah instinctively bent down to pick them up and reset the board, trying to recall what positions she had held and which of her father’s pieces had been captured. But that thought was swept aside by her mother frantically pushing the table out of the way to get at the hatch of the root cellar that lay beneath it.

  Her mother strained to move the heavy piece of furniture. “Help me,” she gasped.

  Sarah and her mother lifted the table while her father grabbed the pitchfork leaning against the wall near the door.

  Her mother grasped his arm.

  “Please don’t go out there,” she said.

  He pulled away.

  “You both stay here,” he said, with a forceful, almost angry, authority that Sarah had never heard from him before. She had only known her father as a gentle man, a scholar, a buttonhole maker, not someone who yelled commands and used a pitchfork as a weapon. He looked at them and said, “Watch over each other. And no matter what you hear, don’t come out until they’ve gone.”

  Then he went outside.

  Her mother paused, as if she were considering running after him. Then she locked the door from the inside with a wooden bar that she needed both arms to lift into place.

  She pulled Sarah down into the small cellar that her husband had dug to store root vegetables and grain. Even in the chaos, something nagged at Sarah as her mother closed the door on top of them. Ivan! She bolted back into the room.

  “What are you doing?” her mother shouted.

  Sarah desperately felt around her blankets until her hand closed over the painted circus bear with a round belly and a silver hat with a pom-pom on top. Sarah’s father had bought the carved wooden toy for her years ago from a traveling trinket salesman, and she had slept with it every night since. It was one of the only toys she had ever owned.

  Sarah slipped Ivan into her pocket and returned to the cellar.

  “Foolish girl,” her mother hissed. Then she went silent.

  They huddled together in the darkness, barely able to stand in the cramped space among the baskets of grain, carrots, and small yellow potatoes. The noises grew louder and more menacing: angry cries of attack, howls of pain, even some husky laughter. And always the hoofbeats. Five minutes. Ten minutes. Fifteen minutes passed with mother and daughter sweating inside the cellar, breathing air that became heavier and sourer as their anxiety rose.

  Her mother ran her hands through Sarah’s long red hair in an effort to soothe them both. Sarah squeezed Ivan in her skirt pocket.

  Finally, after what seemed like hours, they heard the horses’ thunder roll back down the dirt road away from the village. Sarah’s mother waited another minute, her fingers digging into Sarah’s shoulder. Then she sprang up out of the cellar, hoisted the wooden bar off the door, and ran outside.

  Sarah gasped as the cold, sharp air stung her lungs, transforming her breath into puffs of steam as she trailed her mother into the center of town. A quarter moon lit the village in blue and black shadows. Dozens o
f men lay groaning on the ground, as other women and children tentatively emerged from their homes.

  Her heartbeat quickened as her mother raced from man to man, looking for her father, calling his name at the dark lumps lying in the dirt. Finally, Sarah saw him, sitting up against a tree. She noticed his red beard first. They were the only two redheads in their village. He looked as if he was lying in a dark pool of oil, but as she got closer, a glint of moonlight struck the puddle, revealing a flash of crimson. It was only then that she noticed the pitchfork in his chest, as if he were a piece of paper tacked to the tree.

  Her mother wailed and collapsed beside him, her nightdress soaking up the thick liquid as she unsuccessfully tried to shake him awake.

  A horse with an empty saddle galloped through the center of town, trailing its reins behind. As Sarah stared at it, the chestnut-colored beast charged. It stopped short directly in front of her and reared up with a terrible growling neigh, its front hooves suspended high over Sarah’s head. The girl stared into the snarling mouth of her certain death, her entire body frozen in terror.

  And then she snapped awake.

  Crossing

  AS SARAH’S EYES SHOT open, she was greeted by darkness. She blinked once, twice, trying to bring the inside of her house into focus, but all she could see were more shades of black.

  Then her body rolled to one side as the ship sharply crested a wave and she remembered that she and her mother were at sea.

  Sarah heard the whir of the engine and the muffled breathing and sleep sounds of her fellow passengers. She felt around until she located Ivan safely tucked into the inner pocket of her coat. Her mother was lying beside her, breathing heavily, hot beneath the blankets and clothes they had stacked on top of themselves to keep warm.

  The ship took another sharp dip, and her mother woke with a gasp.

  “Sarah?” she called into the darkness.

  “Yes, Mama.”

  “I need air. Come help me up.”

  Sarah reached under the covers to hoist her mother to her feet. The woman’s hands were warm and clammy, the blankets moist from her sweat.

  Sarah led her mother over the other sleeping bodies and up the rusted iron ladder to the upper deck of the ship. Even though she was only twelve years old, Sarah was already tall enough to be able to carefully balance her mother against her shoulder to keep her upright.

  The sight of the sea and the night sky, and the cool, salty October air filling her lungs, helped banish the memory of the nightmare. Her mother immediately ran to the side of the ship, gripped the railing, and violently sent most of her meager dinner overboard. Sarah recoiled; she couldn’t recall her mother ever getting sick back in their village. A knot formed in the pit of her stomach.

  Alone on deck, they stood in the quiet. Finally, her mother stepped back and drew a big breath. She steadied her hands on the railing, making sure there was nothing else coming up.

  “Show me the Lady,” her mother said. “That will make me feel better.”

  Sarah took a worn postcard from the pocket of her coat and handed it to her mother.

  On the front of the card, a full moon peeked out from behind thick, dark clouds. The Lady stood in the semidarkness, towering over the harbor like a benevolent giant, holding her torch aloft with beams of light shining out as both a warning and an invitation. Beneath the starred crown, her expression was kind and proud all at once. Tiny trees and a flagpole surrounded her base. Sarah wondered if she could possibly be that big in real life.

  She flipped over the card and read the words printed on the back, a poem that had been written about the Lady. Everyone in their village had been awed by the tantalizing message, as if it had been personally written for them.

  “‘Mother of Exiles . . . ,’” Sarah read. “‘With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses. . . . / I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”’”

  “Let it be so,” said her mother.

  Sarah wondered if there ever had been more wonderful words written. Surely America would be different from their old country, where her people were barely allowed to live, never mind be welcomed in the way that was promised in the poem.

  Sarah’s mother could not read or write, yet Sarah had been taught to do both by her father.

  “Why bother?” one of her father’s friends had asked. “Does a girl need to read to milk a cow or boil a chicken?”

  “My girl’s mind is as sharp as any of your sons’,” her father said. “So why not?”

  Sarah’s parents had been planning their escape to America for two years before the attack on their village. To prepare for their new life, Sarah had been studying English with the son of the village wool merchant, who was a university student. It was Sarah who had first translated the poem on the postcard and read it to her amazed family and neighbors. The card had been sent by her father’s sister, who had moved to the United States nearly ten years earlier.

  She held up the postcard against the night sky, trying to fit the image into the real horizon. She lined up the picture so it was just right, and her mother smiled and started to sing. Although she had never gone to school, her mother had a gift for melody and song. She improvised countless little tunes throughout the day—lullabies, work songs—to amuse them.

  Have you ever seen a golden door?

  So bright it makes your eyes feel sore.

  Good luck spills across the floor

  In the room behind the golden door,

  The golden door. The golden door.

  The lyrics came alive in Sarah’s mind with images of golden doors and streets paved with riches. Sarah imagined them living in a perfect little house along one of those streets with plenty of food to eat and peaceful neighbors. When her mother’s stomach felt settled enough, they returned belowdecks.

  The next night, Sarah’s mother woke her again. This time, she barely made it to the railing before vomiting over the side. But unlike the previous night, it brought no relief.

  She asked Sarah to hold the postcard up to the horizon once more.

  “If we do this every night, maybe the real Lady will appear sooner,” her mother said weakly. Sarah sent up a silent prayer to make it so.

  The next day, her mother’s fever didn’t break. She told Sarah that she was just seasick, that they weren’t seafaring folk.

  “I’ll never get used to living in a room with floors that move beneath my feet,” she said. “That’s all it is.”

  Worries whirled in Sarah’s mind. She had found her sea legs days earlier. But she didn’t argue. She just worried to herself.

  A Widening Circle

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING, HER mother wasn’t even able to get up the ladder before dizziness overwhelmed her and she was forced to go back and lie down. Sarah had to fetch a bucket and empty it over the side throughout the day and night. She constantly felt her mother’s forehead. Her fever grew higher and higher until her face felt like the side of a boiling teakettle.

  There was a couple on board who had come from a village very near their own and were traveling with their infant son. Earlier in the trip, Sarah’s mother had made conversation with them about people they knew in common and what their plans were for the New World. Now Sarah approached them.

  “Excuse me,” she said.

  “Please, stay back,” the husband said, holding up his hand and placing his body between Sarah and his wife and child.

  “Please,” Sarah said. “My mother’s fever won’t break. And she’s not making sense when she talks.”

  “Look, I really can’t help you. I’m not a doctor. I can’t risk my wife or baby catching her illness. I’m sorry.”

  Sarah retreated to her corner.

  The next night, Sarah made another trip to the top deck to empty her mother’s bucket. It was moments before dawn; the bottom of the sky was just beginning to lighten, a pale gray and yellow border on black. A group of large gulls dived after her mother’s waste as Sarah poured it over the side.
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  Glancing up, she saw dozens of the birds as they cawed and screeched and fluttered around the ship. She looked out through the waning darkness and saw another steamship, then a long wooden sailboat with two masts, and several small fishing boats. As the sky lightened, she could see more birds and boats appearing out of the darkness around her.

  And then she saw her in the far distance. Sarah had looked at the postcard so many times that she knew the Lady immediately, by just the faintest suggestion of her silhouette. The sun came creeping over the horizon and the ship moved them closer and closer. Sarah stared, transfixed, as the statue came into sharper focus.

  Another passenger, a thin man with a scraggly beard, appeared behind her from below. He froze in his tracks, his eyes went wide, and he yelled, “WE’RE HERE!”

  The Golden Door

  MOST OF THE OTHER passengers stirred and joined them on deck, excitedly pointing and cheering at the sight of the Lady.

  “Thank the Lord!”

  “America!”

  Some broke into song. Others cried. One couple hugged each other so tightly, Sarah thought they might never let go. Some literally danced for joy.

  Swept up in the moment, Sarah found herself clapping along, her legs kicking and jumping in place as if she could leap over the water to the promised land.

  As the statue came closer, Sarah slipped the postcard out of her pocket. The actual Lady was far more beautiful and majestic than could ever be captured in a picture. So many new details came alive as she stared at the real thing, from the Lady’s thick parted hair beneath the crown to the angular lines of her neck to the muscular firmness of her torch-bearing arm. Sarah let out a small gasp of delight as she saw the faces of several people inside the windows in the crown. She removed Ivan from her pocket.

  “Look, Ivan,” she said. “There she is.”

  More people came on deck, until it seemed as if everyone on board must have been standing at the railing cheering and watching the New World come into view. She saw a young mother holding a baby swaddled in a blanket.

  “It’s our new home,” the woman said to her baby.

  The sight of the young mother made Sarah remember her own. She shoved Ivan into her pocket, feeling guilty for having shown her toy bear the New World first. Sarah rushed back down into the hold and found her mother lying in a fevered sleep, a small lump in the middle of the otherwise deserted room.