Mazie’s Diary, January 3, 1924
I found her in the ocean last night. The door was open when I came home from work. I walked the street calling her name like she was a lost dog. Then I saw her standing in the ocean, nearly waist high in it. Not close enough to drowning herself. I write this so that it will be true. That she does not want to drown herself.
The moonlight was all around her. The ghost of my sister. I waded my way in, pulled her back toward the sand. We stumbled a bit. The surf crashing around our ankles, both of us shivering. She was white and blue at the same time. I threw my whole self around her to warm her but she shook me off.
She said: It’s been a hard year, Mazie.
I said: I know.
She said: It’s been a hard life. Thirty-four, and I’ve nothing to show for it. A dead husband. No baby. What do I have left?
I said: You have me. I’m here. I’ll never leave you.
I’m not going to leave her. It’s not a lie.
I said: Come on, Rosie, it’s cold as a witch’s tit out here. You’ll catch your death. And if you die, I’ll murder you. I’ll do it with my own two hands.
I wanted her to be beautiful in the moonlight — everyone looks beautiful in the moonlight — but all of Rosie’s collapsed now. Been falling apart for years, Rosie has. More of her hair is gray now than not. It flew all about her, nearly purple in the moonlight. The lines around her eyes and lips jagged and deep in her skin. The chin, sunken and wobbling. Once it falls like that it never rises again. Those are the rules of life. Only the pale cream color of her skin remains. That reminds me of young Rosie.
Slow steps to the grave. I won’t be the one to bury her though.
I said: I’ll kill you if you die.
I put my arms around her throat. It was and wasn’t a joke. We just stood there like fools, our teeth clacking, our lips turning blue, two corpses in the ocean, only one of us more alive than the other.
Finally she fell on me, and held me for warmth. I don’t know if it was her body or mind that gave in first. I will take what I can get from her.
I said: At least you had a love.
Then we both started crying. I wept into my brokenhearted sister, and she wept into heartless me.
Mazie’s Diary, April 2, 1924
Postcard from the Captain. Niagara Falls. A place not so far away from New York City. A day trip, a train ride away. I can see it on a map in my head.
I read the back of it once and that was enough. But I liked the picture, so I put it up on my wall. I can hear the crash of the waves when I look at it. I can feel the spit from the falls on my face. I bet it’s cold up there near the water. I bet the air stings your skin red. Like a man slapped you hard and meant to leave a mark.
Mazie’s Diary, April 15, 1924
We’ll move again, is what I decided. Back to the city, where I can keep a better eye on her between work and home.
She said: But I can’t go through his things.
I said: We’ll leave them then. We don’t need any of it.
She said: This house is a mess.
I said: Leave it. Let the next person worry about it.
She said: Where will we live?
I said: Anywhere we want.
Finally I convinced her to agree to the move. Agree to living, that’s the most I’m asking from her right now.
Part Three. Knickerbocker Village
7. Excerpt from the unpublished autobiography of Mazie Phillips-Gordon
I think of all the misfortunes I’ve had through the years, but none of them landed me on the street — not unless I chose to walk it myself.
Pete Sorensen, owner, Diary of Mazie Phillips, Red Hook, Brooklyn
Do I have to? [Groans.] I have to. All right.
How did I find the diary? Well, I keep my head down a lot; I’m always looking at the ground, because I find things. Sometimes I find stuff I can sell, or I can use in the shop. For a long time the best thing I ever found was thirty-two Polaroids of this middle-aged Chinese lady stripping. They looked like they were taken in the eighties. They were all washed out, and there was something about her skirt that looked kind of eighties, maybe my mom had one like it? God, I don’t want to think about my mom stripping. [Laughs uncomfortably.]
Anyway, there was an order to the photos, like shirt on, shirt off, bra off, skirt off. There was definitely a little act to it, although I don’t know how sexy it was. I kept the pictures for a while. I couldn’t stop thinking about who she was undressing for. Whoever was taking the pictures, or if there was someone else in the room, too. For a year or so, I guess, she was on my mind. But then I stopped thinking about her. I just gave up trying to figure it out. I was never going to know, and then I stopped caring. I didn’t need to know how the story ended. It was sort of enough that I had seen the pictures in the first place, you know?
Now, the diary was a whole different game. I found it two years ago, give or take. It was in the fall. I was over near the Navy Yard walking to work. This was just a few months before I opened the shop, and I was still working at a studio there. I saw a big box over by where they used to have the used car auction. Most of the stuff in the box, I couldn’t use it or sell it. It was like, old lightbulbs and a roll of movie tickets and a flask. I opened the flask and it still smelled like booze. I mean old booze, but still.
But also in there was the diary with the postcards. Everything was pretty ratty. The diary was leather-bound once, but most of the cover was coming off in strips. The pages were loose — I had to be careful or they would slip out and blow away. All the paper was yellow, everything was crumbling in my hands. But all of it was like, chattering at me, asking to be read. I know that sounds kind of nuts. It looked like junk, but it was actually the exact opposite of that. So I stashed it all in my backpack and took it to work.
During my lunch break I started reading everything and then I was late getting back to work, and then after work I went to a bar and sat there and read them all the way through. Her handwriting wasn’t the greatest, you know that, but I made it through. I didn’t know anything about her, except that she sounded like a saint, the closest thing I’ve ever heard of anyway. I went to Catholic school, I studied them, but I never believed any of them were real people. She was definitely real. Because I saw the words in front of my own eyes.
There were parts of it that felt pretty personal to me. This person who felt like she had been bad but didn’t want to give in to it entirely. She thought maybe she had a shot at being a better person but she couldn’t shake who she had been. We all live with our pasts. I live with mine. You live with yours. I don’t even think she did anything wrong. She had just lived a big life, even though it was mostly in this confined space. And when you live big you fall big.
Near the end I started reading really slowly because I didn’t want it to be over, I just wanted it to go on and on. I wanted her to live forever. At the very end I cried. Then I put the flask in my pocket, close to my heart, which is where I still keep it. I fell in love with her a little bit, and I wanted a piece of her right next to me.
Mazie’s Diary, October 1, 1924
We’re back on Grand Street, six doors down from where we once lived, the home where I was raised. Now we’re in a two-bedroom flat, one room for Rosie, one for me. We’ve given up on Jeanie coming home. The only thing that feels familiar anymore is our table and our couch. Those things we brought with us. A table to eat on and a couch to faint on.
I’ve been walking to work again, through the throngs of the Lower East Side, the Jews, the Russians, the Italians, the Germans, the Chinese, the Gypsies, the cops, the children, the lads, the broads. The swirl of people, it’s heaven.