Children of Liberty

“I completely ignored it. Ben, you do understand, don’t you, that these people don’t speak English? They don’t understand when you say, ‘Study, advantages, Panama, canal, American, trade.’ You say the word ‘economy,’ they hear gibberish, gibberish, gibberish.”

“You’re giving up already?”

“Aren’t engineers required to do rudimentary math? If it took us nearly an hour to get five signatures …”

“Six with you.”

“How long will it take us to walk back and catch the 3:20 back to Boston?”

“Harry? Ben?”

The female voice came from behind them. When they turned around, Gina stood before them smiling broadly. To say she looked unreservedly pleased would be to under-define her expression. Ben smiled broadly back. She was dressed in a green skirt and a white high-necked lace blouse, and she carried a basket on her forearm. Her hair was properly tied up. Next to her stood a skinny homely girl.

“Hello, Miss Attaviano.” Ben was beaming. “And is this your cousin Angela?”

“No, this is Angela’s friend Verity. Verity, Ben, Harry. Harry, Ben, Verity. I’m sorry, but I can’t remember your family names.” Gina smiled apologetically. “What are you two gentlemen doing here?”

“We are collecting signatures to open research on the construction of the Panama Canal,” Ben said. “What about you?”

Gina pointed. “I live just down the street on Canal,” she said.

“Oh, is that where you live?” said Ben. “So close. We had no idea.”

“We are doing a bit of shopping. Negotiating for some cheap fruit. Verity runs the mission bazaar table on Sundays and I’m helping her collect some things to sell to raise money for the poor.” She smiled. “Like me.” She cleared her throat. “I mean, poor like me, not sell like me.”

Ben laughed. Harry took a step back. Ben took a step forward. “How is your family?”

“Very good. Thank you.”

“Are you working?”

“More or less.” She nodded. “We’re doing okay. I’d invite you to the house, but it’s so small, you wouldn’t fit in our living room. We’re hoping to get a bigger place soon.”

“Are you going to go to school?” That was Harry. It was the first time he had spoken.

Verity nodded her head. “I tell her she should. They are trying to encourage more children to attend school and improve reading and writing.”

“I’m literal,” said Gina. “I can read. Even in English.”

For some reason this amused Harry, who smiled from behind Ben, looked at his fine black shoes, fiddled with the hat in his hands, and said, “Going to school is good.”

“Yes, but it doesn’t pay me money,” Gina said, squinting at him in the sun. Her shoulders were covered with a shawl, but her teeth sparkled, particularly white against her dark skin, her vivid lips. “I need to work,” she said. “Make money, be independent.”

“Education is so important,” said Harry.

“So is paying your rent,” said Gina. “And buying gloves.”

“Let your mother and brother worry about that,” Harry said.

“That’s what I keep trying to tell her,” Verity said. “Come to school with me.” She was offputtingly skinny. She looked like a boy.

Ben just stood smiling. He paid attention to nothing but the Sicilian girl. “So what are you selling at the bazaar, Gina?”

“A little bit of this, a little bit of that.” She smiled back.

They moved to the side of the street to let rushing pedestrians pass and stood under an awning of a cigar shop. Verity eyed the two men curiously but suspiciously, especially Harry.

Foolish girl, Harry wanted to say to her, it’s not me you need to watch out for. Meanwhile Ben and Gina stood next to each other, chatting.

“Gina, we should go,” Verity said. “We promised the sisters we’d be back soon with the fruit.”

“Soon is so vague, Ver,” Gina returned.

“Yes, but we don’t have any fruit yet.”

Gina turned away from her friend. “How long are you gentlemen in town for?”

“For the afternoon,” said Ben. “We need to get a thousand signatures, but unfortunately we’re not having much luck. I’m afraid we’ll have to return to Boston soon if we don’t do better.”

“A thousand signatures is a lot,” Gina said. “How many do you have?”

“Six,” Ben replied.

“Eight if you two girls sign,” Harry said. “Oh, wait. You have to be over sixteen to sign.”

“I am over sixteen!” Verity exclaimed. “I’m eighteen.”

Ben cast Harry a look that said, you’re just pure evil, aren’t you? You had to go and bring up age.

“Though I can’t sign, Ben,” Gina said quickly, “perhaps I can help you? What do you say, Verity?”

“We said we’d be back.”

“Look what a lovely afternoon it is. We’re just out and about.”

“Gina …”

“It’s fine.”

“Let’s just go, G.”

“Well, you go ahead, then. I’ll stay and help.”

Harry and Ben exchanged stunned looks. It was rare indeed in the circles in which they were born and raised to have a young girl remain even on a public street alone with two men. By rare, Harry meant unheard of. And Verity was obviously torn. Though she was really too young to be entrusted with such a responsibility, she was nonetheless entrusted with looking after her young charge, and yet couldn’t budge her from the street.

Verity stayed. Harry watched her timidly trying by turns to rein in and to mimic Gina, telling her not to stand so close, watching her every move, trying to fling her own hair about, adjusting her tiny bun, fixing the bows on her dowdy blouse.

Gina had no imitators though. She turned out to be uncannily good at getting people to stop, much better than Ben and Harry. The green peasant skirt made her look untailored, yet fresh and young. She was tanned, looked happy, and walked up and down Essex Street, shouting at the passersby both in Italian and English. In three hours she collected seven hundred signatures. The boys and Verity collected eighty-four—combined.