The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender(3)

To the Roux children, the dock where the ship was moored was a melody of interesting sights, smells, and sounds, an unsettling concoction of the exotic and the mundane: the oceanic air, the sharp bite of coffee beans mixed with the acidic tang of fish blood, mounds of exotic fruits and burlap bags of cotton from the surrounding cargo ships, stray cats and dogs scratching their ribs for mange, and heavy trunks and suitcases marked with American addresses.

Among the crowd of news reporters, a photographer stood documenting the ship’s maiden voyage with his imposing folding camera. As the first-class passengers made their way to their private cabins, the Roux family waited with the rest of steerage to be inspected for lice. Beauregard lifted Emilienne onto his tall shoulders. From her perch, the cheering onlookers looked like a sea of broad-brimmed boater hats. A photograph printed in the Paris newspaper Le Figaro showed the grand ship at this moment — by squinting, a reader could just make out the shadowy shape of a girl balanced eerily above the crowd.

Embarking only one week after the implausible sinking of Britain’s Unsinkable Ship, the Titanic, the passengers aboard the SS France were keenly aware of the cold waters below as they gravely waved good-bye to the crowd on the distant dock. Only Beauregard Roux ran to the other side of the ship, wanting to be the first to greet the land of opportunities, bronze streets, and indoor plumbing.

The Roux family’s quarters contained two tiny bunk beds built into the cabin walls and a washbasin in the center. If Beauregard inhaled too deeply, he could suck all the air out of the room. Maman claimed that the ship’s ceaseless vibrations gave her palpitations. The children, however, loved the tiny cabin, even when Beauregard’s snoring left them with little oxygen some nights.

The SS France opened up a world they’d never imagined. They spent their evenings waiting for the sound of a lone fiddle or set of bagpipes that announced the start of that night’s impromptu celebration in steerage. Later still, they waited in hushed anticipation for the sounds of their neighbors making their own entertainment. The children spent hours listening to the noises resounding through the walls, stifling their wild laughter into scratchy pillows. Days were spent exploring the lower decks and trying to sneak their way into the first-class sections of the boat, which were strictly off-limits to third-class passengers.

When American soil could be seen from the ship, the passengers breathed a collective sigh of relief so strong, it caused a change of direction in the winds, which added a day to their trip, but no matter. They had made it — forever squelching the fear that the Titanic’s fatal end was a harbinger of their own disastrous fate.

As the SS France approached the dock in west Manhattan, my grandmother received her first glimpse of the United States. Emilienne, who had no idea that La liberté éclairant le monde — the Statue of Liberty — was as French as she was, thought, Well, if this is America, then it is certainly very ugly indeed.

The Roux family was quickly declared lice-free and so set off to begin their new lives of prosperity and delight — the likes of which only America could provide. By the time Germany declared war on France, they were finally settled in a squalid two-room apartment in Manhatine. At night Emilienne and Margaux slept in one bed, Beauregard and Maman in the other, René under the kitchen table, and tiny Pierette in a bureau drawer.

It didn’t take long for Beauregard to learn how difficult it would be to sell himself as a skillful phrenologist — especially since the phrenology craze in America had died with the Victorian period. How was a French immigrant with a thick rolling accent and no skill but reading skulls expected to support his family? It’s hard enough for the Irish micks down at the docks to get a decent pay, my great-grandfather confided to no one, and they speak perfect English. Or so they claim.

Beauregard’s own neighbors had no use for his talents. They already knew their own dismal futures. So instead he took to the streets in Yorkville and Carnegie Hill, where many prominent German immigrants lived in country estates and lush town houses. Toting his rolled-up charts, metal calipers, and his china phrenology head, Beauregard was soon invited into the parlors of these villas to run his fingertips and palms over the skulls of the Frauen und Fr?ulein of the house, proving yet again that Beauregard Roux was destined to serve women, regardless of what country he was in.

New York, in all of its fast-paced glory, did nothing to dissuade Beauregard from his belief that it was the most magnificent place in the world. Maman, however, found her husband’s beloved Manhatine most disagreeable. The tenement where they lived was small and cramped; it smelled distinctly of cat urine regardless of how many washings of lye soap she applied to the floors and walls. The streets were a slew of slaughterhouses and sweatshops, and were not paved in bronze but lined with garbage and piles of horse dung awaiting the unsuspecting foot. She thought the English language harsh and ugly, and the American women shameless, marching through the streets in their white dresses and sashes, demanding the ridiculous right to vote. To Maman, America was hardly the land of opportunities. Rather, it seemed to be the place where children were brought to die. Maman watched in horror as her neighbors lost their children, one after the other. They died with the pallor and fever of consumption, the coughing fits of pertussis. They died from mild bouts of the flu, a singular encounter with a cup of sour milk. They died from low birth weight, often taking their mothers along with them. They died with empty bellies, their eyes vacant of both dreams and expression.