Secure The Shadow
"Secure the shadow, ere the substance fade." - Victorian saying
She was only a little ways from it, so close she could taste it in her mouth like the Challah Mama made for Shabbat, the statue so small across the water it seemed she could take it in her hand and pull it to her.
She curled her toes around the edge, spread her arms, wide and outstretched like eagle's wings. Her eyes closed, face tilting upward to capture the imprint of the sunlight and wind against her skin, the breath of a new world and the hope it might have held.
And then she jumped, a flutter of fabric against a blue canvas of sky that went on forever, the waves catching her with waiting arms, closing over her head.
There was an odd sort of caress in the water as it reached out with a sympathetic hand and gently brushed away the chalk marks from her coat.
oooOOOooo
"They put a chalk 'X' on the back of her coat. The Xs were put aside to see whether they had to be reexamined or deported. If they deported my sister we couldn't let her go. Where would she go if they deported her? Some kind man, I don't know who he was, told my sister to turn her coat around. She had a nice plush coat with a silk lining, and they turned her coat around." - Victoria Saifatti Fernández, 1916, Macedonian immigrant
He gasped by reflex as he slammed into the river, water pouring into his lungs.
"Tony!"
He couldn't breathe, struggling against the water. He wasn't even sure which way was up.
"Give me your hand!"
He pushed his arms above his head with all his strength, thrusting his hands above the water desperately. A set of strong hands folded around one wrist, yanking him upwards. The hands slid to his sweater, grabbing the fabric and hauling him over the side of the boat to safety.
He gasped in air, coughed, doubled over, and returned half of the bay to it's proper location.
Doug stripped off his suit jacket and draped it around Tony's shoulders, laying a hand on his back.
"Are you hurt?"
He gagged out more water and shook his head, sending droplets flying, shivering violently.
"Here." A tall man with hair peeking from beneath his cap and a trunk by his side, pulled off his own coat and held it out. "Wrap yourself in this, man. You're soaked to the bone."
"Thank you." Doug spread it around Tony and looked up at the stranger. "Where is this?"
The man gave him an odd look. "Why, it's Ellis Island, sir. The Island of Tears between the Old World and the New. Hadn't you knowledge of where you were going?"
"Not enough, I'm afraid." He helped Tony to his feet and extended his hand. "I'm Doug Phillips and this is my friend Tony Newman. We're...travelers."
The man shook his hand with a warm smile. "Gus Sherman, mourning photographer."
"Mourning?" Tony's teeth chattered as he pulled the coat closed.
"Photographs of the deceased." He opened his trunk, selected two daguerreotypes and held them out. The first was an infant, tiny mouth and cheeks gently painted to give them color, looking almost asleep against the white pillow. The second a living boy, hand on his twin's shoulder, the dead child propped up against him.
A muscle jumped in Tony's jaw and Doug glanced away.
"You find it morbid." Gus said quietly.
"I suppose it's a little...unsettling."
A faint smile touched his face as he took the photographs back.
"At times I think as you. I look at the boy and I wonder, when he looks at this image will he remember his brother as one who laughed and played with him? Or will he only think how cold and stiff he was, how he hated being forced to touch him and feel his death as if he shared it?" He tenderly rubbed a thumb across the dead child's face. "You have heard it said 'secure the shadow ere the substance fade'. Their memories will fade as years pass. But this, the face of the child will not be forgotten. It will remain inside this image."
He touched the infant, fingers brushing the fabric of the gown as if feeling the softness of the material against his skin.
"There must be some reason why this brief life was placed here. As long as we wonder the reason this photograph should remain to give some testimony to her, so others may look at how carefully they dressed and washed her, how gently she was laid although she could not feel, all these things bearing witness to the love they gave her. It does not matter that she was only six months old when she died. Some may live sixty years and never know love. To know it for six months is a precious gift, and others, I hope, may realize it when they look at this photograph. After I am gone it will still be here so that others do not forget how fragile life and love are."
His face brightened. "Ah, but now is not the time for deep and sad thoughts. We are in America! It is a day for joy. Isaac, Marta, come."
A man with a child of three by the hand came forward. The little girl gave Tony a shy smile, hopping toward him, left leg dragging slightly as she stepped.
"My friends and two of my fellow passengers. Isaac Beychok and his little daughter Marta. And these somewhat wet travelers are Doug and Tony."
The older man smiled warmly and Marta looked curiously up at them, peeking from behind her fingers. Tony smiled down at her and she took a cautious step forward, carefully poking the hem of Tony's sweater.
"You like green?"
She giggled, fingers returning to hide her eyes. He flipped one of her blonde curls and winked at her.
There was a frenzy of noise behind them and Gus turned. "Come, my friends. It is time we saw more of this wonderful new land."
oooOOOooo
They walked up the Grand Staircase beneath the spread American flags, moving among a sea of faces and a cacophony of voices, each speaking in a strange language. Everywhere they turned the people were different, every color of skin from dark to fair, every form of dress, every station in life from wealthy to steerage, the healthy and strong to the sickly and fragile. Some wore crosses around their necks, other crucifixes, others stars of David. All walked together as one body toward the line of doctors at the top of the stairs.
They reached the top, Doug first in line.
The doctor looked down through his glasses and started firing the questions, waiting only long enough for a short answer.
"Is there anyone who came to meet you at Ellis Island? Do you have a job waiting for you in America?"
Doug only shook his head.
The doctor glanced up at Tony. "Italian?"
"On my mother's side."
He gave an uncaring nod and printed the nationality on the paper.
Another turned to Isaac as he read through a Bible passage in his own language.
"Do you have money?"
"No money." Isaac held his hands outward. "But I work hard. I find work."
The doctor pushed his glasses up on his nose and scribbled a note on the paper.
A nurse combed through Gus's hair, checking for lice, then pulled out a buttonhook to look beneath his eyelids for trachoma.
"Do you have a destination in America?"
"Not yet. But I have money and I will work."
Another scratch on his paper and the doctor waved him to one line.
Finally a doctor reached for Marta.
Marta's eyes went wide with utter horror, screaming as she flung herself at her father.
"Uniforms make her think of soldiers." Isaac held her against him, face set in a mask of pain. "Soldiers that kill her mother, my wife."
Tony's jaw clenched.
The doctor glanced at her bad leg and drew a circled L on her coat with a quick sweep of his hand. "Send them all to be detained."
oooOOOooo
"Most immigrants stayed here five days to a week." Tony crossed his arms, leaning against the wall of the infirmary. "Some recovered enough to go on, others didn't. Some were deported without illness, simply for being Italian, Slavic, or Jewish."
"And the crippled?" Doug cast a pointed glance at Marta, watching the child sitting on the ground, playing with a rag doll and happily chattering away in her native language.
Tony looked away. "Usually deported."
"To keep a child out of the country for being crippled.." He shook his head.
"It's the rule in case the cause is a tubercular hip." Marta darted forward, throwing her arms around Tony's legs. He tossed her up in the air and caught her as she laughed. "In her case it's only a birth defect. One leg is shorter than the other." He set her down and she ran back to her doll.
"Then why on earth would they deport her?"
"The Commissoner of Immigration believed in Eugenics." Tony's voice was quiet, something strange in his eyes that Doug recognized. He remembers Pearl Harbor and his father's death, killed in the bombings by the Japanese who practiced that very thought, that races and weaker members of the human race are inferior and therefore not fit to live, a concept transferred from the slaughter of the Sino-Japanese War into the hands of the Third Reich.
His eyes shifted to Marta, vibrant and full of life. "Sometimes I don't understand people."
"Neither do I."
oooOOOooo
It started with Marta running a slight fever that quickly turned into chills. It wasn't a warm room, with few covers, and they only thought she'd caught a cold. But within hours she was shaking, whole body jerking with convulsions.
Tony went for a doctor but he only looked at her, shook his head, and left a pile of blankets and a bucket of water beside the bed.
Tony and Doug traded off sponge-bathing Marta while Isaac held her as she convulsed.
Two hours later three more children and an adult were down with the fever, four others on the verge.
"It's an epidemic." Gus said, half under his breath. "They've locked the doors on us."
Marta went rigid in a convulsion and Tony crawled up on the bed beside her, helping her father hold her. Her tiny hands tangled in his sweater, knuckles white. He wiped a hand across his forehead.
Somewhere across the room a mother started weeping, rocking a dead infant against her.
Marta twitched once, hand spasming, before going still. Doug felt for a pulse, then bent his head over the child's mouth before laying his ear against her chest.
"Doug?" Tony whispered hoarsely. There was silence for a long moment as Doug slowly lifted his head from the child's chest, staring out into space before answering.
"It's no use, Tony. She's gone."
There was a blinding rush of heat that exploded behind Tony's eyes, a kaleidoscope of colors swirling inside a black void, with no time to speak or even reach out a hand.
Doug caught him the instant before he crumpled to the floor.
oooOOOooo
He drowned in the darkness, the water closing over his head. His chest pounded, heart slamming like the jolt of electricity running through it, every nerve shaking with it.
He was burning hot and icy cold, hands reaching for someone in the darkness, weeping, crying out, but no one answered.
There were children, lifeless and cold, standing all around him, sepiatone faces sobbing, hands reaching to him in a plea for help, for mercy.
"Doug, help me! Doug!"
He was lost, turning down corridor after corridor, stumbling over the dead children, feeling them snatch at his clothes. Marta was among them, plucking at the green fabric, crying for her father. He tried to pick her up but she crumbled, fragile paper turning into dust.
And then he was on fire, mouth paralyzed, unable to scream as the flame licked at his clothes, consuming the green and turning it black as night.
oooOOOooo
"How is he?"
He laid a hand against Tony's forehead. "Burning up."
"The fever?"
"Yes."
Gus spit out a curse. "They keep us in here like rats, waiting for us to die, the healthy and sick together. That child would not have died if only they had let her through. And now Tony, too. He will die just like her."
Doug stripped off his shirt and dipped it in the water bucket, using it to sponge Tony's forehead.
"He's not going to die, Gus. He's a fighter. He'll make it."
"I have seen this sickness before." Gus tucked the covers in around him. "The fever goes higher and higher until they convulse, even the strongest of their bones breaking with the force. They shake until they die."
"We'll keep the fever down." He tugged the sweater over Tony's head, lowering the limp body back against the pillow, sponging water across his chest and arms. "Gus, get me more water. As cool as you can find. And more blankets for when the fever breaks. Pound on the door until they answer, break it down if you have to. But get cold water."
Gus took the bucket and looked down at Tony's drawn face, features wan with exhaustion. "Pray, Doug." He says quietly. "Pray that no more fall ill. Pray that some of us survive and we might save his life. But if not...pray for a quick and merciful death for him and that he does not linger. No one should suffer like that." His face pinched. "No one."
oooOOOooo
Two more died in the night. Isaac fell ill somewhere in the midst of it, and the few still strong and well went from bed to bed, bathing as the fevers spiked, supporting the dying as they shook their lives away.
Isaac was gone by afternoon, only a single convulsion quickly ending his life. A merciful death as Gus had prayed for as the man worsened.
Broth was sent down from the kitchen, and Gus and Doug worked to spoon any they could down the sick. Few could take more than a few sips.
Despite the constant bathing Tony's fever continued to climb. By the next evening he was beginning to shake with the early tremors of the convulsions. Doug held him against them, bracing him with all his strength to keep the bones from shattering. Tony whimpered, curling against him as he called for his father, to spectral memories Doug couldn't summon.
Somewhere in the room, Gus prayed as another man died. A toddler, newly orphaned and unattended, wandered over to the trunk and opened it, tugging at the photographs and strewing them across the floor, the faces of the dead spread across the ground like a carpet for the dying.
No one went to pick them up.
oooOOOooo
The first cracks of dawn were filtering through the window when Doug opened his eyes and discovered that the room was quiet, not echoing with rattled breathing.
Around him, some slept, turning their heads in dreams, fevers broken. Others lay still, having passed away in the night. Through the open door he saw Gus sleeping upright in a chair.
He didn't want to cross to the bed but he did so anyway, lifting the limp wrist and pressing two fingers to the vein.
The answering pulse was still weak, but steady, and the hand in his cool. He tucked it back under the blanket and Tony's eyes blinked open.
"Welcome back." He gave a full and rare smile, so wide his skin hurt. Tony managed a frail one.
"What happened?" His voice was hoarse.
"The fever. You've been sick but you're going to be fine."
"Isaac?" He whispered.
A shadow passed through Doug's eyes. "He didn't make it, Tony." He doesn't say how close Tony came, of the hours spent waiting, listening to each painful breath. Pain creased Tony's face.
"Gus?"
"The next room, sleeping. He never came down with it."
Tony's eyes blinked and he fought against sleep.
"You all right?" It was just above a whisper but Doug heard it.
"I'm fine."
His eyes fell closed as he drifted off. Doug reached out and brushed back a limp and sweat-soaked strand of hair.
"We both are."
oooOOOooo
It was three days later when they were released, Tony pale and frail but alive, leaning against Doug as they left the infirmary and stepped out into the sunlight.
Across the harbor the Statue of Liberty stood, lamp lifted high above the suffering, shining across the water.
"Where will you go, Gus?"
He tilted his head, watching a family of four walk past. "I think I will take photographs of the people here, the immigrants, to capture their faith and spirit. To secure their shadows so others may remember."
Gus lifted his trunk and looked over at the travelers.
"You will be well, my friends?"
Doug extended his hand. "Fine. Best of luck to you, Gus."
The man gave him a smile, clasped the hand firmly and shook it. "God go with you both." He pulled the blanket up on Tony's shoulders. "And you keep warm until you are strong."
He whistled a tune as he started away, a spring in his steps, head held high.
"More than 3,500 people died over the years at Ellis Island, Doug." Tony said quietly, voice stronger but still weak, infused with sorrow. "Hundreds more were deported back to their country. And yet they kept on coming here. I've always wondered what gave them that courage."
Doug's eyes searched across the water, to the lamp lighting the path, the distant horizon that beckoned. When he spoke, his voice was quiet.
"Hope." He said.
oooOOOooo
Augustus "Gus" Sherman was a photographer who came through Ellis Island and later photographed Immigrant families arriving. Almost nothing is known about his life other than this.
Marta was a composite of two children, Katherine Beychok who was terrified of the doctor's "uniforms" as they reminded her of the soldiers in her homeland, and Andreas Steinbach who was detained for observation and died of typhus as a result of being put with the sick.
The Girl is in memory of the three immigrants at Ellis Island who committed suicide rather than be deported, and in memory of a young Jewish girl. Speaking little English, she misunderstood a question during the mental exam, laughed, and was marked an X "mentally deficient", and separated from her family despite all their efforts. Returned to her native country, she was later murdered in the Holocaust.
