More Than I should

By: Alyssa DiTota

Johnathan

It was a gloomy morning as Johnathan made his way down to the docks on Fulton Street in New York City. The blue sky was smothered with gray rain clouds, teasing the people below, beckoning them to prepare for rain. Johnathan hated the rain. It ruined his clothes, and he didn’t have many. The damp weight of his hair constantly required that he blow it out of his eyes, with two hands busy carrying whatever cargo he was loading or unloading off of the ships that arrived that morning.

He had gotten a late start, just approaching the chaos that is the pier on a Monday morning in 1919. It was already 6 a.m. making him one of the last to come wandering down the soulless streets looking for work. Luckily for him there were more shipments than expected that day.  Textiles, automobile parts, imported foods and an assortment of expensive goods from all over the country were making their ways to the hands of poor and hungry men who monotonously moved the boxes from the loading dock to the streets lined with trucks and carriages.

Due to the extreme amount of bustling and yelling that was custom to this type of labor, Johnathan always found a way to pocket merchandise, small things that could easily fit into his pockets. He was a talented thief. When he was a child he did it for fun, taking things for no other reason than to see if he could get away with it. Now he stole out of necessity. This time around he was able to pocket some sort of metal cup that had fallen out of a box held by a fellow worker who had clumsily dropped several items while eagerly shouldering the load. Playing the part of a helpful chap Johnathan quickly assisted his cohort in re-packaging the fallen goods. As his comrade thanked him for the assistance Johnathan offered a kind smile while simultaneously plunging the small cup into the depths of his trousers.  Surely, he could get a couple cents off of it, enough to purchase some bread and coffee after his work was done.

The Foreman yelled to the pair of them, “Hurry along! Don’t waste time or I’ll dock your pay. And any damage to this merchandise is coming out of your pockets as well!” John facetiously smiled to himself.  No matter the cruelty of the overseers in these operations, he appreciated this kind of physical work. It made sense to him. The simple process of diminishing a large pile of heavy crates to their respective places, using no thoughts, just strength, was comforting.

He was a tall man, about 6 foot. He wasn’t particularly muscular, but he wasn’t scrawny like many of the other starving men his age. His size always helped him to be selected for work, and for that he was thankful. He looked respectable enough, disguising his poverty with proper work shoes and an unstained shirt held up with suspenders. The Foreman at the dock had become accustomed to him and knew his work ethic was decent. Many of the men that stumbled down for work were still drunk from the night before, utterly beaten by the misfortune of their lives.

He earned just a few cents a day which helped him to pay for the small room he and his childhood friend Daniel rented together. The room was an old storage space the landlord previously kept lost or forgotten items in. Times being what they were, he offered it to the both of them for a bit of extra income and charged them a small fee of $20 a month. Daniel was studying law and made a measly living doing clerical work for his professor. Daniel came from a nice family, but the guilt of living off of his mother who was already paying for his tuition provided his reason to move out. He also wanted to support Johnathan in any way he could as John had nowhere to go after leaving his mother’s home, fleeing from his step-father who had made his childhood torturous.

Lilly

 

Lilly woke earlier than usual. She had spent the night tossing back and forth anxiously thinking about her presentation due to be delivered that morning at 8 o’clock. At 4 am she was awake and washing the sleep from her eyes in her bathroom sink, the cool clear water bringing the reality of the day into focus. She patted her face dry with her white cotton rag that hung from a golden hook beside her marble sink. She stole a glance at herself in the silver trimmed mirror that hung above the sink. She looked dreadful. Her green eyes were tinged with a look of absolute craze. Dark sleep circles highlighted the strained redness in the whites of her eyes. Her hair had madly escaped her sloppy braid.

The night before, she had been trapped in an all too familiar loop of writing and rewriting her presentation in her mind. Hyper-fixated on each individual sentence and how it would sound coming out of her mouth in front of a roomful of other students, she was kept awake by stress and anxiety.

She needed to leave her apartment by 5 am to make it to The New York University in time to be the first person there. She took a deep breath and slowly and precisely re-braided her hair, making sure each individual strand was in its correct location. Her waist-length light brown hair was stubborn and thick, but she knew with enough work the shine might catch the eyes of her male cohorts, causing them to look kindly on her presentation. As one of three women in the Biology program at NYU, her femininity was called to everyone’s attention every day, but to none more so than herself. Her peers and professors either loved or hated her for it. But most were just indifferent. Lilly made it a point to be the very first to take her seat in all of her classes, desperately hoping that she would be noticed just by conditioning her professors to expect her to be there. She didn’t know how effective this tactic was, but once she was the third to arrive and her professor said, “Ahh Miss Lillith, I’d imagine you are quite disappointed in yourself this morning.” She responded with an embarrassed nod and quickly took her seat. But once the class began, she couldn’t help but smile.

Lilly’s father would insist that she didn’t need to work as hard as she did, being a wealthy girl from a well-respected family, she could easily find a husband and settle down into a life of luxury. He wanted a well-mannered daughter who only used her hands to delicately decorate a home, not to dissect frogs and other dead creatures in the name of science. But Lilly wanted so much more. Lilly had a dream beyond the life her body and “good behavior” could give her. She wanted to be a nurse. In doing so she would be the first working woman in the long history of her family. Her father was back in England doing work for his business firm, leaving her and her mother alone for most of the year. She was an only child and therefore the legacy of her family fell upon her shoulders. It was uncommon for women to take on this responsibility and so it wasn’t expected of her, but she expected it of herself.

She had grown accustomed to watching her mother sit in the parlor chair, next to the front window which let the most light into their brownstone in West Harlem. Her mother was always deeply beautiful and sad. Her expression was that of longing and loneliness, but once she would catch sight of Lilly in the doorway she would smile with her sad eyes and exhale as if her breath could shake away the years of idle waiting that plagued her. Lilly loved her mother, but she would rather die than find herself sitting in a chair with nothing to do besides await her husband’s return and dote after her only child.

Lilly walked to the bus to make her way downtown. Her palms were sweaty with anticipation, but she found strength by tightly clutching the messenger bag which was slung across her body. Her fighting stance.

 

That Afternoon

It was 2 pm, the last of the outgoing cargo had been packed and the ships were preparing to take off. The sun had peaked from behind the clouds and proudly presented it’s might. Johnathan was exhausted, but there were just a few more things to be done before he went over to the foreman to ask for his pay for the day. He bent down to pick up another crate, this one was exceptionally heavy. It had been sloppily nailed shut, with a plethora of jagged screws pointing this way and that. As this was the last load of the day, Johnathan was eager to get it onto the now disembarking ship so that he could use his pay to buy himself a meal. As he bent down to lift the crate, the blood rushed to his head and he felt a whirl of nausea. He pushed through this sensation, imagining that its cause was from a lack of nutrition that morning. He remembered that he had neglected to drink water all afternoon and was working on an empty stomach. Regardless he trudged on, not a stranger to these types of hunger symptoms. As he rushed through to place the cargo in the docking area, he tripped over a large rope that was lying on the ground and came crashing forward. As he hit the ground the weight of the heavy box he was holding fell onto his right hand. He yelled in pain and slid his hand from under the box. In doing so, one of the nails that had been mindlessly hammered in, scraped his palm. As soon as the sound of the crash was heard by those around him, the foreman came charging at him, “You drunken fool! Useless idiot!” he grabbed the box off the ground leaving Johnathan there to assess the damage. As the foreman charged angrily away, John turned himself over, sitting on the ground he examined his injury. A large gash slowly grew red with blood on his hand. He went into his trousers and pulled out a dirty rag and began tightly wrapping it around the wound. He was fearful that this injury would get in the way of the ease of his work. If it was the same foreman overseeing the docks tomorrow morning, he might remember the incident and disallow him from participating in the days work.

The foreman approached Jon as he sat there on the ground and tossed his day’s pay to him, 20 cents which was 8 cents less than the minimum pay he expected. Before John could protest the foreman charged away. John was filled with rage, his face flushed and he felt that he couldn’t be in a fouler mood. He continued tying the knot on the rag he used to stop his hand from bleeding.

As he did this, silently cursing to himself he heard a woman’s voice ask, “Are you alright?” He was about to tell this stranger to bugger off and leave him alone when he looked up and saw a young woman standing above him, the afternoon sun producing rays behind her golden-brown hair.

Lilly knelt down at eye level with the man, she had come to the Seaport to treat herself to a lunch after her presentation proved successful, but stopped first to observe the activity along the pier. She always found comfort in standing still amongst chaos and would visit on days when her mind was especially active.  While sitting on a bench across from the port she watched the young man fall and hurt himself. She felt compelled to help him, and this would of course be good practice In applying her knowledge of medicine.

As the young man looked up at her, her breath caught in her chest. She found herself looking into the most beautiful eyes she had ever seen. A deep blue that reminded her of the sea at nightfall. Eyes that could tell a story with a million words in just one glance. He had a strand of the darkest hair, black as night falling just perfectly over his distinguished face. His shirt was old, clearly what used to be a bright white had faded to a dull gray from years of wear and hand washing. Just then, she imagined her father walking by and seeing her knelt beside this boy, her skirt brushing against the dirty cobblestone that men had been dragging their feet across all day. She felt a twinge of shame for her indecency.

She caught sight of the rag he had been using to wrap what looked to be a gash on his right hind. Instinctively she grabbed his hand and unwrapped the rag, shocked at her boldness and self-conscious that he would be offended. She heard herself, as if from some far-off place, say “You’re asking for an infection with this.”

John was liquid in her hand, he couldn’t bring himself to utter a word of protest as she pulled out a white handkerchief from the messenger bag slung across her shoulders. And he shuddered as she began to re-wrap his hand with it. He felt ashamed that her fine cloth would be used on his dirty hand, now covered with blood and dust from the street. He took a quick account of her. She was dressed in a fine silk blouse, embroidered along the shoulders in pink string was a never-ending pattern of loops and swirls. Her skirt was brown wool, pristinely clean. Her skin glowed, the kind of glow which can only be bought with the ease of a wealthy life. He pictured her family. Likely some well-educated rich folk who would look at him with the same expressions he had received his entire life. Looks of pity and of fear from those who were determined to decipher if he was worthy of pity or a danger to them. He amused himself with this notion, imagining how their pity would turn to scorn if they could read his thoughts in this moment. This girl seemed to emerge through the sun, a single ray of strength and light.

She made a knot with the handkerchief and pulled tight to secure it muttering, “sorry”, but the pain he felt was a welcomed sensation, affirming that this moment in time was real.

As Lilly dropped his hand from hers, the world slowly came into focus around her. She was aware of the stares they received from passersby, some had actively stopped to catch a glimpse of their faces, to see which lady had stooped to the eye level of a poor man. Focusing back in on the man’s face she saw that he too was observing the onlookers. She saw a sadness In her eyes which she desired to relieve him of.

Shaking these thoughts from her mind, she sighed and looked at him with a puzzled expression, “What is your name?” she asked. “Johnathan” he responded, almost in a whisper. “You’ll want to keep that clean. I don’t have any proper tools with me. The wrapping won’t be enough”, she said. Together they stood and Johnathan watched as she brushed the dirt from her skirt. He looked into her eyes and offered her the most earnest thanks he could. “If you’d walk with me, perhaps we can head to the University. So long as I have proper tools and medicine’s I could clean it to prevent an infection”, she offered. “A walk would be nice”, John responded. “Very well then”, despite her feelings she was slowly coming back to reality and was handling the situation as respectfully and professionally as she could. John sensed the coldness in her tone and couldn’t help but feel amused. He decided he would match this energy, whatever it would take to spend more time together. “What is your name, if I may be privy to it?” John asked. “Lilith.. well, Lilly is what I’m called by most.” As they walked along the river to the school, they were mostly quiet. Their heads raced with the consequences of giving into such a friendship and found excitement in the stares they received from the strangers they passed. Not many words were exchanged, but in their heads, underlying all of their thoughts echoed with the names, “Lilly” for one and “Johnathan” the other.