My Reasons for Leaving Home

In 1882, there was nothing for me in Norway. The crops were dying, the prices were falling and our streets were congested with writhing masses of people. There were no jobs, and no hope. There was only the dream of safe passage across the sea.
My name is Pirkko Ericson. My family never had much money, but we got by. We had never been driven into the dirt. The upperclass still looked down on us, spit on us, but we never gave it much thought. However, one winter, when I was young, my father and his fishing boat were swallowed by the sea. That boat was out livelihood, we marketed fish for a living. Now that it and my father were gone, we had no income. We hadn't nearly enough money to buy a new boat, and no one could replace my father as head of the family. Or, so I thought.
When I was fourteen, two years after my father died, my mother married a man she thought would be able to provide for us. She was wrong, any money that came into his possession was spenton alcohol and gambling with sailors on the docks. Needless to say, he wasn't very good at it. He came home late at night, when i could only hear his labored breathing and heavy boots as he went up the stairs. He had an aura, like the stench of raw sewage, that repulsed and frightened me. I was horrified of him, and where at first I tried to fight back, I began to shrink every time he looked at me, until I became so small he no longer even acknowledged my existance. One day, after five years of this bad dream, he disappeared. He was gone, but so was all our money, and what little was left of my mother's spirit. She would never wash the stench of him out of her skin.
There were no available jobs in Norway. I tried. Being the oldest child, though I was a girl, I was chosen to go to America, to find a job and send back money to repair the damage, and to provide for my family.

My Image of America Before Leaving

Growing up in howling fjords and rivers of ice had hardened my features. Like most nords, my eyes are bright blue, my flesh is pale with a trace of freckles and my hair is a disaster of blonde and light brown. I have a split tooth, don't talk much and, frankly, look mean. I'm not soft or elegant, and look nothing like the young women that I imagine live in America. They have poise, beauty and many other redeeming qualities that I lack. I steel my nerve and tell myself that I'm strong and that it doesn't matter...but sometimes I catch myself wondering what it would be like to look like them.
It can't be overcrowded, like it is here. I hear they even give land away for free. I'm sure it's easy to get a job too, and the people must be friendly. Unlike here, they are equal, I am sure. Why else would tales of America travel so far? I will savor the moment I can look a rich man in the eye and not be spit upon.

My Voyage to America

We departed early in the morning. I was one in a swollen mass, bubbling and gushing aboard a great ship with broad sides and high masts, the tips of which disappeared in the gray fog coming off the sea. Our tickets were taken, and people began to gravitate towards walls, corners and other people, hoping for some measure of security. Some looked frightened and unsure, and though I did not look it I felt the same way. I strained my eyes as long as I could looking at the shore, watching as everything I knew and loved was slowly eaten by the fog.

Suddenly I felt very cold. I made my way below deck, and settled behind a stairwell with my back to a wall, pulling my legs to my chest and rubbing my hands together. We had sold everything that we had to earn me passage across the sea. My mother and my two younger brothers and sister were to stay with my grandmother in Oslo, while I departed from Stavanger. If we could afford it in the future, my mother said, they would send my oldest brother Halvard, fifteen, to join me in America. But in any case, we had sold most everything, leaving me with everything I owned in a medium sized leather satchel. I didn’t have much: one blanket, my father’s bone carved pipe, a cedar snuffbox, food for the fourteen days at sea (mostly bread and dried meat, some dried fruit), a canteen of water, a small pan, a pair of boots, a picture of my mother, father and brothers (before he was killed, and before my sister was born of my stepfather), a pocket knife and a gold watch that I would trade for money when I arrived. All the clothes I had I wore on myself in layers. I looked like a mess of coats, scarves and bandannas with two brooding eyes. No one spoke to me. Anyone who tried didn’t get very far anyway. I would carve bits of wood I found into figures of animals and fish.

Below deck, the air was oily and thick with the smell of sweat, stale water and disease. Sickness traveled quickly in such a confined place, and it didn’t help that we were delayed a week in the ice of winter. I could not imagine passage before the steam ships, trapped in this decaying wooden and steel organism without air for up to three months. One little girl was dead for hours before they realized she wasn’t sleeping. I guess it was too much for her fragile immune system to handle.

I would often go up on the deck late at night, when everyone else was asleep, so I could smell the salty sea, feel it spray on my face, and smoke in comfort. Somewhere in this ocean, my father’s bones lay in some deep trench. Each night I was lulled to sleep by the creaking of wood and the lapping of waves. Sometimes I would wake out of a nightmare, mistaking the moaning hull for his hushed voice, or the scream of steam for his desperate cries against the crushing waves.

Like I said, people didn’t talk to me much. I don’t blame them.

My Arrival in America

I was shocked by the sheer number of people, and how…disrespectful they all seemed to be. Just walking out of the port, someone shoved their elbow into my eye. Not being one to take that kind of guff, I promptly knocked him upside the head. Before I knew it, I tackled him to the floor and began punching him so fiercely that my knuckles began to raw. I was overwhelmed by pure animal instinct. With hindsight, the aggression I felt was probably a cheap tactic to guise my fear at this strange new world. His blood sprayed out of nose and onto the pier, and I managed to kick him in the jaw before the police dragged me off him.

Not a very good first impression.

I spent my first night in America in a holding cell. The man I’d started a fight with was on the top bunk of the adjacent bunk, glaring at me. I was on the bottom, sitting with my hands on my knees, staring back, two bloodshot blue eyes and a tuff of dirty blond hair poking out of a hat and layers of scarves.

“What you lookin’ at,” I said, in the best English I could muster. He raised his eyebrow.

“Bloody hell give me a good reason why I shouldn’t, you popped me in the back of the head for no reason,” he responded, shifting uncomfortably. He was British of something, tall guy with black hair, but darker skin. I heard that Brits had colonies in India, maybe he was a combination of the two.

“Hit me,” I answered shortly. “In the eye.”

“Well that’s not a good reason to wrestle me onto the street, boy,” He snapped.

Boy? I was ready to throw him against the concrete. I grunted, kicked off my boots and wriggled out of my many layers of clothes. I rolled over, now in just a shirt, smeared with grease and dried blood. I didn’t need to see his face to tell that he was shocked. Not that I was beautiful, far from it, but that a woman could hit so hard.

The next morning when the guard let us out onto the street, the young man was quiet. There was an awkward silence between us. As I began to walk into the city, I noticed he was following me. I tried to ignore him.

“Hey,” he said, “Look, I’m sorry…but listen if you keep acting like this, you won’t get anywhere. You need help.”

I kept walking.

“You need to find a ward boss, rent an apartment, get a job. I’ve been here awhile, I can help you. You can’t do this by your-.”

“Watch me,” I grunted.

I went into a jewelry store to sell my watch. It fetched much less that I thought it would, and the owner seemed in a hurry to get me out. I smiled at him, I tried to shake his hand and be a courteous as possible, I couldn’t understand why. He looked at my hand as if it were garbage, and when I looked into his eyes where I thought I would see equality and mutual respect I saw annoyance. Maybe even hatred. He slammed the door in my face, and I felt stunned. I felt foolish, standing in the middle of the walkway, stupefied in front of the door. There was that familiar sensation of being very small and insignificant. I looked back at the young man, still standing there, arms folded with a cocky smile. I sighed, and said

“As you were saying?”

My Neighborhood and Home

His name is Shaw Macrory, and he’s a mutt, some miserable mix of everything England has managed to preside over. He swears like a sailor and smells like scotch, and doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘subtle’. But he keeps his word, if not with a few hitches.

He set me up with a ward boss, a Scottish one. There is no Norwegian ghetto in New York, he said. He said that I was related to him in some way shape of form, and appears to be a very good liar. He also seems to talk with his hands a lot. However, being his sister, cousin, brother or whatever I was, the ward boss just as soon set me up to live with him.

“You’ll be fine,” he said, patting me on the shoulder, “Nothing to worry about”.

Seconds after he said this he kicked a rat the size of a small dog out of the walkway to his apartment. The neighborhood smelled foul, like booze and human waste. There were dogs running wild in the streets, and people huddled in dark corners. One of them tried to jump me on the way to Shaw’s, but Shaw, to my surprise, pulled out a small pistol from his pants pocket. The human mess of rags and filth slunk back into the dark corner from whence he came.

It was dark by the time we arrived. My new home was a pit of old bottles, bits of newspaper a couple of chairs, a stove and a broom closet with a loo inside. In the corner was a large mattress…ONE mattress. Shaw grinned sheepishly.

I yanked my blanket out of my bag and then threw it into a corner.

“I’d rather sleep on the floor.”

He shrugged and, looking a little disheartened, turned off the oil lamp on the table and shuffled off to bed. I heard the springs squeal in protest as he lay down. For a short while, there was silence as I drifted to sleep.

I felt something scratching at my ankle sometime during the night. At first I thought I was imaging it, but when I turned on the lamp by where I was sleeping, I was greeted by three large rats: one on my foot, one by the lamp, and one in my pack. I screamed, causing a chain reaction of a baby crying four doors down, a couple screaming from across the hall, and gunfire from across the street. I punted the creature across the room, threw my pack against the wall and scuttled across the room to where Shaw was sleeping, nearly falling on top of him, but still waking him up. I was panting. He looked slyly at me.

“Couldn’t resist, eh?”

“Shut up and move over.”

Things would get better. The weeks would pass, turn into months. I had never really trusted men outside my family, but where I once slept at the very edge of the mattress, I would begin to gravitate towards the center, eventually ending up against him for warmth and comfort. We came together in the safety of our home, held each other close, looked lovingly at each other, but outside we showed nothing. But still our company made this cold room and violent city bearable.

My Job/Career/Profession

I work in a fish cannery. It’s not a pleasant business, though better than being in a slaughterhouse, but it pays. Not well, mind you, but it does pay. Fishermen bring in the fish, we clean em, they go down on a long belt into the "cutting shed", the name speaks for itself. We in the shed wear aprons and strange bonnets, and chop and flay the fish into tiny pieces to be squashed into cans. I often cut my hands on the knife, and I come in after long shifts with lots of little bleeding sores all over by fingers, wrapped in gauze or bits of cloth. During the summer it gets brutally hot, and the smell of the fish is overwhelming. I can barely breath. Sometimes...it rots, and sometimes still we put it in anyway. But I just keep going. It’s the only thing I can do. I wish I was out there actually bringing in the fish, as a Nord should, as my father before me did. Even with my hands pruned by the juices from wish, bloodied from metal tins, my eyes burning, my muscles aching, I still feel connected to sea working here in a dark metal hull somewhere in the heart of this city.
The thing is, though, they don’t know I’m a woman. There are other women there, sure, but they don't acknowledge me. It’s not that I’m not developed or shapely, it’s that I wear so many layers of clothes, am so brooding and speak so gruffly that they can’t see it. The only one who sees it is Shaw. After a long day of work I come home, and he never ceases to be amazed by the transformation. And even though I smell like fish and hurt everywhere, and even though he smells just as bad from cutting sheets of metal in some god forsaken factory we still enjoy each other’s company and sleep soundly next to one another. We don’t have the money to get married, and I don’t really feel the need to anyway, not with the wages we make. The cost of living combined with the money I send home leaves us little for leisure.

The Problems and Hardships I Have Faced In America

I’ve lived here with Shaw almost four years. We still haven’t been able to move out, or marry. About a year ago, Shaw and his fellow workers tried to strike for better working conditions and wages. They were replaced the same week they started and he was out of a job for longer than he would’ve liked. He started the strike, and was blacklisted with several factories for doing so. He looked haggard during that time. We hardly had anything to eat. We became so desperate that at one point I went out and scraped mussels off the legs of the pier to boil and eat, and even smoked rat meat. I didn’t want him to see how thin I was, it would discourage him from eating. I kept a large work shirt on while I slept, and prayed that he didn’t feel my ribs through my skin. I’d grown soft, I admit, where I should’ve grown harder. This love was an inconvenience, I thought sometimes, for both of us. Yet I feel that if we parted, it would break us both. We were all that each other had. He runs his fingers through my hair, coos soothing words, says my name tenderly like no one ever has.

I wish more people could be like him.

When I began working it had been decided that it was for the best if my gender remain ambiguous. I heard stories of women being assaulted, taken advantage of. I cut my hair boyishly short so with all my layers of clothes on, I looked like a young boy. I overheard other men talking about women like pieces of meat. I even saw once, walking home, a young woman beaten down into the gutter by three large men, then raped and left for dead. I saw her pleading eyes, like my mothers when she followed my stepfather into their bedroom. They begged for my help. But I could only watch, I couldn’t move or make a sound. I only approached her when she was bleeding in the dirty water and concrete, her eyes rolled back into her head, barely alive. I called the police over, and then disappeared down an alleyway. I didn’t tell Shaw.

How I've Been Helped in America

Shaw has been my greatest comfort and my greatest resource. When I came to America, as I soon found out, my expectations were skewed. Everyone was NOT out to help me, some would even try to kill me or use me, and they certainly did not see me as an equal. I wonder what it would be like if I hadn't spent my first night in America in jail with him. He showed me the ropes, hooked me up with a job. I asked him why, later, he changed his mind about me because I was simply a woman.

"You're different," he said, "you have personality."

Some call it personality, some call it being abrasive.

The ward boss was a large man with heavy hands, a great woolly beard and stern eyes. He was arm wrestling when I first met him, and I watched as he snapped a man's arm like a dry twig. He then got up, punched me in the arm and we began to converse about where we would work. Well, Shaw actually did all the talking. He was the brains, I was the muscle, a peculiar role reversal. I don't know how I got out of doing most of the talking, and how he never figured out that I wasn't Scottish, or anything close to it. I suppose Shaw said that I was a mute.
The ward boss controlled what little political power we had, not that I particularly cared, and in return gave us shelter and means to find a job. Domestic stuff. A fair trade in my opinion. I just wanted to work. That doesn't mean that I didn't have aspirations.
Shaw told me that though there wasn't a Norwegian ghetto in New York, there was one in Seattle, Washington, in a place called Ballard. He said it was by the sea. I knew that was where I wanted to be, close to my people, where the tall trees and ocean meet. I hoped that someday, if I were to stay in America for the rest of my life, that I could somehow end up there. So Shaw holds me close, soothes me like one would a savage beast, and tells me of how someday we'll make it to a place where we can both be happy.