A Feather on the Water
Lindsay Jayne Ashford
For Mum
July 30, 1932–November 19, 2021
PART ONE
CHAPTER 1
Williamsburg, Brooklyn: June 1945
Martha sneaked into the hallway in stocking feet and stood for a moment, listening. The snoring had a steady rhythm, like waves breaking on pebbles. So long as he stayed asleep, she was safe. Closing the door as gently as she could, she tiptoed across the cracked linoleum and made her way down the stairs, hugging the suitcase to her body to stop it from catching on the banister. Only when she reached the front door did she slip her feet into her shoes.
The linden trees on South First Street were heavy with blossom, their honey scent tainted by the stink of garbage as she passed the alley that ran alongside the grocery store. Ahead of her, on the corner of Wythe Avenue, a young man in paint-spattered pants was doing pull-ups on a bar of scaffolding. As she passed by, he whistled. She dug her chin into the collar of her blouse, dodging past him.
She headed downhill, toward the welcome black shadow of the Domino sugar refinery. Pausing to catch her breath, she tasted a sweetness mingled with fumes from the factory chimney. From where she stood, she could see the East River. The water was smoky quartz beneath a clear blue sky. Great barges and motorboats glided past. And on the other side, glinting in the morning sunshine, was the towering glory of Manhattan.
It was too early to get the subway to Queens. She set her suitcase down next to a low wall by the river’s edge. It was as good a place as any to kill time. He’d never think of coming to look for her here. Reaching into her bag, she pulled out a newspaper cutting and unfolded it. There was a stain over the first couple of paragraphs, from when he’d thrown an empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s across the kitchen, and the dregs from the smashed remains had spattered the front page.
She smoothed out the scrap of paper and laid it on her knee. WAR LEAVES 4 MILLION HOMELESS IN EUROPE. Under the headline was a photograph of a hollow-eyed woman standing outside a makeshift shelter, a baby in her arms and a frightened child peeping out from beneath her skirts. It was impossible to look at those faces without something tightening under her ribs—as if some invisible thread were tugging at her heart. She’d read the report so many times, she could almost have repeated it with her eyes closed. And at the end was an appeal for recruits: a few short sentences that had set her mind reeling. “Must be free to travel at short notice. No dependents.”
The interview had been easier than she’d expected. She’d felt foolish at first, when they’d asked her if she spoke any foreign languages. How could she not have realized that they’d want that? She’d mumbled something about knowing a little Louisiana French Creole, courtesy of her New Orleans grandmother. To her relief, they’d simply nodded and moved on to what seemed of far more interest to them: the fact that she had run the food distribution section of the Henry Street Settlement on the Lower East Side. Had. Until Arnie came back from the war and put a stop to it. Thankfully, they hadn’t asked her reason for giving up her volunteer work. Nor had they inquired why, as a married woman, she was applying for a job overseas. To her amazement, she’d been offered the post of assistant director at a camp in southern Germany.
In another compartment of her handbag, concealed inside an empty powder compact, were the two red patches they’d handed her at the end of the interview. She rummaged around until her fingers found the cold metal edge of the compact. Snapping it open, she picked out the patches. Each bore the letters “UNRRA” stitched in white: United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. She’d been instructed to sew them onto the uniform she would be given when she arrived in Europe: on the cap and at the top of the left sleeve of the jacket.
As she tucked them back inside the compact, she caught her reflection in the mirror. In the bright sunlight her skin looked paler than usual. She hadn’t been able to get hold of face powder for months, but in the past few days it had reappeared in Walgreen’s. Only one shade was available—and she’d applied it a little too liberally to conceal the scar on her left cheek. Her lipstick was called Tea Rose—nothing too bright, she’d thought, for this first day. The only other makeup was a touch of mascara on her top lashes.
Arnie had once told her that the color of her eyes reminded him of Hershey Kisses. She snapped the compact shut, trying not to remember. In just a few hours’ time, she would be far away from him. Her insides flipped at the thought of flying across the Atlantic. She’d never been on a plane. Never traveled outside the USA. The longest journey she’d ever taken was the train from Mobile to New York in the summer of ’32. She’d been a different person then. Nineteen years old and brimming with fantasies of the new life Arnie had promised.
She fixed her gaze on a passing coal barge, counting the seconds before it slipped beneath the Williamsburg Bridge. A mindless exercise to block out the images jostling for space in her head: his eyes as they could look, as they used to look; his hands stroking her skin, in the days when she could let him touch her without tensing up at the thought of what might follow; her face in the mirror as she took off her jewelry on their wedding night, winking at her reflection—so elated, so certain, so hopelessly na?ve.
She made herself wait until three trains had thundered across the bridge. Then she got to her feet and picked up her suitcase. Clenching her fingers around the handle, she told herself that crossing thousands of miles of open ocean couldn’t possibly be worse than the fear she was leaving behind.