Sister Noon Read online

  Lizzie Hayes was seriously considering walking from the Brown Ark to the House of Mystery. The distance between the two was not best measured in blocks; the Bell home was simply not a place one visited. Lizzie had never even passed by it. But she’d recently suffered a series of devastating headaches. Though she’d had headaches before, had them all her life, these were particularly rough going. The night after she dropped Jenny’s doll, she’d had a vivid dream in which both her hands were encased in a block of ice. She tried to free herself by raising the ice and dashing it against a stone. Her hands broke off at the wrists instead. She could see them dimly through the scarred surface, floating, with the fingers widely separated and streaming off like jellyfish tentacles. She woke terrified, and although the feeling subsided, it did not disappear. The next day, the headaches began in earnest.

  It occurred to her that nothing would be more natural than to go to Mrs. Pleasant and offer a report on Jenny’s settling in. Dress with care and behave with the same. It would be a courteous attention and would show Mrs. Pleasant that Lizzie was a good-hearted, respectable woman.

  Part of her recoiled from her own plan. She did not believe in voodoo and would not be governed by superstition. Good-hearted, respectable women did not visit Teresa Bell in the House of Mystery, much less Mrs. Pleasant. “How does Jenny like her doll?” Mrs. Pleasant was bound to ask, and then what would Lizzie say? Plus there was the matter of Lizzie’s card. This wouldn’t be a social call, but it would take place in Mrs. Pleasant’s home. Would Mrs. Pleasant expect her to leave her card? If she did, would Mrs. Pleasant feel compelled to return the visit? If she didn’t, mightn’t this merely compound the original rudeness?

  Besides, Lizzie didn’t really know how Jenny was settling in. With sixty-two children now in residence, she could scarcely be expected to keep track of them all.

  She rang the bell for Nell Harris. Nell took some time arriving and appeared impatient when she did so. “Yes?” she said.

  “Little Jenny. Jenny Ijub. How does she get on?”

  “Well enough.”

  “Has she settled? Does she eat heartily?”

  “She’s not much of an eater, I’m afraid. I believe I told you as much the first day.”

  “Does she get on with the other children?”

  “She’s not entirely truthful. The other children naturally resent it. And the dress she came in. It was turned. I don’t think she’s as wealthy as you hoped.”

  “Has she said anything about her home and family?”

  “Not a whisper. She claims to remember nothing about it. But then, she’s not a truthful child.”

  “But she seems content?”

  “She thrashes at night. Her bedclothes are a rat’s nest by morning. Miss Hayes, I’m dishing supper. If there’s nothing further…”

  Lizzie had a sudden memory of her own dining room table many years before. Her mother at one end. Her father at the other. And she between them, balanced unsteadily on two cushions, her legs dangling. No one was allowed to speak at meals, so she could hear her father swallowing his soup, her mother rustling a napkin under the table, out of sight.

  It must have been a special occasion—she was never permitted to eat with her parents. It might have been her birthday. Lemon ices were to be served. But then Effie had been summoned to carry her off. “I simply cannot have you thrashing about,” her mother told her. Lizzie could still feel the bewildered humiliation of it. She would have said she was sitting still as stone.

  “Thank you,” said Lizzie to Nell.

  It was not the report she had wanted. But was it, after all, such a bad one? An imaginative little sprite, Lizzie could still say to Mrs. Pleasant. She so entertains the other children with her fanciful tales. An active, spirited girl.

  FOUR

  Before she’d made up her mind about the visit, something occurred to necessitate it. Jenny was taken with several of the other children to Layman’s German castle on Telegraph Hill, as a treat for learning her Bible verses. The middle school children were reading Ivanhoe, and there was to be a special exhibition of armor and swordfighting. Mrs. Lake, a postman’s widow who taught the middles, had been assured that the thrusts and parries would be accurately medieval. There were rumors of actual tilting, and she assumed this meant horses. Tilting afoot would be a sad spectacle even for orphans.

  The children were sorted into pairs, an older child with each younger. Jenny Ijub was partnered with Minna Graham, a pretty ten-year-old with fat black braids, and front teeth that folded toward each other like an opened book. The two girls held hands on the cable car. Mrs. Lake was getting a cold, and she sneezed until her nose swelled.

  A large crowd had gathered at the castle, whose Gothic turrets and parapets had been decked from top to bottom with banners. At noon the copper time-ball fell through its glass shaft. A group of strolling musicians sang madrigals. Minna Graham was not musical, but she was entranced by the women’s costumes. She wished that she, too, wore dunce caps with feathers and veils, velvet bodices with brocade inserts, high waistlines and yards of skirt. She followed the singers a few steps only, fell behind the other children. When the first combat began, people pressed forward to see it.

  Mrs. Lake complained to Lizzie later that little chivalry was shown to her and her pupils. There were several moments of confusion in the crush. But they all heard Jenny scream.

  By the time Mrs. Lake got there, Jenny was being held and petted by a fat, handsome man in a yellow waistcoat. He said that Jenny had been frightened by the appearance of the black knight. The black knight wore a facemask that looked like the back of a shovel, with a row of stiff bristles over the top of his head. The bristles appeared to Mrs. Lake to be cut by machine and therefore not something that would have been available to Ivanhoe, although the metal part might well have been old enough.

  In any case, Jenny denied being frightened of the knight. She said instead that a man had tried to snatch her, a man in green trousers. It was the only description they were able to get. He had clutched her by the neck, one hand over her mouth. She bit him and screamed as he dropped her. Then he’d disappeared into the crowd. Mrs. Lake could find no one who had seen any of this.

  She lost control of the children. The older boys abandoned their partners and dashed off to look for green trousers. Mrs. Lake was unable to stop them. She used her energies to keep the little ones huddled together. This was not hard; many of them were frightened. Others, especially Minna Graham, were clearly envious. Minna was one of those children who liked to turn attention to herself whenever possible. She did so on this occasion by fainting.

  Minna’s head hit the pavement with a crack they could all hear. Blood seeped into her hair, and Mrs. Lake found a large lump on the scalp. The lump was as soft as a cooked carrot and gave slightly when poked. Minna was too dizzy to walk. Mrs. Lake, who was planning on confronting Minna with her failure to watch over Jenny, instead saw her carried from the castle to the cable car on the back of the black knight’s horse, the crowd cheering as she passed. “She actually waved to everyone,” Mrs. Lake told Lizzie and Nell, “as if she were Queen of the May.”

  All in all, the children were judged to be overexcited, and when Mrs. Lake collected them again, she brought them straight back. As a result, she couldn’t know about the tilting.

  She gave Lizzie and Nell an aggrieved report, blowing her nose into her handkerchief frequently but silently. She then went home to rest. Nell stayed with Lizzie a few moments more, to give her own version of events, events to which she was not a witness. Nell had no time for knights; it amazed her that anyone did. And she had three particular points to make. The first was that Mrs. Lake was the kind of woman who lived a life of high drama in which nothing ever actually happened. The second was that Ivanhoe was likely to overexcite, even when it wasn’t combined with unnecessary outings. It was a swoony sort of book, and she wondered at Mrs. Lake for encouraging the children to read it. The third was that it was time to know more abo
ut Jenny Ijub. Where had she come from? Had they put themselves and the other children in danger by taking her in? Someone needed to go to Mammy Pleasant and ask some hard questions.

  Lizzie guessed that Nell was right on all counts.

  Ivanhoe: Swoony indeed—why, Lizzie had only to think in the most glancing way about the licentiousness of Norman nobles to feel a flush coming up her neck and into her cheeks. How many nights she’d drifted to sleep imagining herself struggling futilely, imprisoned for love by the swarthy, ardent Bois-Gilbert!

  Mrs. Lake: Mrs. Lake was a neat, pretty, red-haired woman of thirty and could still carry on about knights and steeds and beheaded queens (how that woman loved the Stuarts!) without looking the fool, but her day was coming. Since Lizzie secretly shared all of Mrs. Lake’s shortcomings, she was quick to find Mrs. Lake silly and sentimental. It was a form of protective coloration. Nell’s veins ran with a heavier ore.

  Questions about Jenny: The staff was busy and Lizzie was the only member of the board at hand, so these were bound to fall to her. She fixed her hair with combs, fixed her hat with pins, fixed her face in a smile, and walked to Octavia Street. By the time she reached the Bells’ front porch, she had worked herself into such a state over occult rituals and blood sacrifices she could hardly knock on the door.

  FIVE

  Lizzie was not the sort to retreat, not when she’d made up her mind to call, and especially not with the elderly gardener watching her. He stood staring, scary in his very ordinariness, armed with a shining set of pruning shears and the thorny stems of a dozen dead roses. Lizzie picked up her skirts and climbed the steps to the front doors. These were of carved cherry wood, inset with a high pane of beveled glass. The knocker was a roaring lion with a ring in his mouth.

  A white girl, very pretty and dressed in a green uniform, answered Lizzie’s knock, took her hat and gloves, and showed her into a white-and-gold drawing room. She was told to sit, but went instead to examine a set of statues of women, white marble on black onyx bases. They held various poses of resignation and supplication. They were women who wanted something they would not get. And they were quite naked. There was a slight shadow of dust in the marble crevices. Lizzie could imagine a housemaid too embarrassed to clean more thoroughly. Lizzie herself did not much like them. She didn’t mind the lack of clothing; she knew about art. She was no prig. But a lady shouldn’t need to beg.

  A gold-and-white woman entered the room. She wore pearls in her ears and gold on her wrists. Her hair was brown with a little meander of gold; her eyes were like trout ponds. A complicated fragile white dress gathered and spilled over her. She seemed about Lizzie’s own age, though much more beautiful. “I’m Mrs. Bell,” she said. Lizzie had expected Mrs. Bell to be younger.

  “Miss Hayes. Of the Ladies’ Relief and Protection Society Home.”

  “I suppose Mr. Bell has made contributions.” Her tone was distant and uninterested.

  Lizzie had no recollection of this, and since she kept the books, she should know. But it would be an awkward thing to contradict.

  Mrs. Bell was already sweeping Lizzie back toward the door. “Perhaps we could do a mite more. I’m not the one to ask. I’m not the one to know when we have money and when we don’t.”

  “I didn’t come to ask for money. I’m here about a child.”

  “I love children,” said Mrs. Bell. “Mr. Bell and me have our six. The oldest grown. I think Fred might be in San Jose. Or maybe Mexico. Somewhere south.”

  “This is a girl. She’s only been with us a few weeks. Her mother passed away.”

  “I hardly knew my mother.” Mrs. Bell’s voice retained its formal-tea tone. “I had two older brothers who both died right after birth. When I was three months old my mother stripped me to the skin and set me on a windowsill in a thunderstorm. My father found me and he gave me to another family to raise.”

  “I’m very sorry,” Lizzie responded uneasily.

  “A three-month baby left soaking in the rain.” Still, Mrs. Bell’s composure was perfect; she might have been discussing the new fashion in women’s sleeves or expressing hopes for a mild winter. “A pretty little thing, too, with a head of silky hair. Before it was even born, she hated it. Wouldn’t nurse it. I refuse to think on her much. What might I do for your motherless girl?”

  “Mrs. Pleasant brought her to us. Actually, it was Mrs. Pleasant I was hoping to see.”

  Mrs. Bell’s poise proved as diaphanous as her dress. It slipped from her face like smoke. Lizzie watched this happen, and then looked away, since clearly it was something she shouldn’t have seen. “Don’t do that,” said Mrs. Bell. “Just go. I won’t say you been here. I won’t say anything.” There was the sound of brisk footsteps in the corridor. “See how fast she walks?” Mrs. Bell whispered. “She comes on you in a moment.”

  Mrs. Pleasant entered the room. “Teresa,” she said. She spoke as quickly as she moved. “You’ve met Miss Hayes, then. I’m delighted. She’s a woman of good works.” She didn’t look delighted. She didn’t look surprised. Her face was gracious, but this could have been an illusion created by age, by the texture of her skin, like a crumpled handkerchief. Her hair was white about her face, but still, even now, when she was in her seventies, mostly black. She’d gathered it into a knot with bits curled tightly around her temples. Her eyes were sharp; they seemed to take much in while giving nothing away.

  “Really?” said Mrs. Bell. “Now, she didn’t say. I’m rather a creature of ideals, myself.”

  “Would you take a cup of tea?”

  Lizzie did not want to stay long enough to drink a cup of tea. She didn’t wish to make a social call. She didn’t wish to conduct her business in front of the peculiar Mrs. Bell. She couldn’t think of a courteous way to send Mrs. Bell from her own drawing room. “Tea would be lovely,” she said. “Aren’t you kind.”

  She took a seat on the couch. Mrs. Pleasant vanished. Mrs. Bell sat beside her, sliding her hand into Lizzie’s, giving it the ghost of a squeeze. Her hand was cold, limp, corpselike. Lizzie could feel her own warmth draining out of her. Yet courtesy prevented her from withdrawing.

  “Don’t eat or drink nothing,” Mrs. Bell warned Lizzie. Her tone suggested they were old friends now, co-conspirators. There was an odd footstep in the hall. “I’m not talking to you, Miss Viola.” Mrs. Bell’s voice grew louder. “You just run along,” and a girl, dark-eyed and unnaturally pale, of perhaps sixteen or seventeen years, passed slowly by the doorway. She walked with some difficulty, her left foot twisted inward. “Not everything in this house is your business.” Mrs. Bell turned back to Lizzie. “Viola is queen of the keyhole.” She did not lower her voice, though Lizzie was sitting right there beside her.

  Something exploded in Lizzie’s peripheral vision. She turned to look out an arched window and saw a burst of silver light, as if a fairy were coming into the room. The fairy spun over the sill, darted into the corners and up to the vaulted ceiling, where it hung for a moment like a star. Then it dropped again, touched the roses, the statues, Teresa Bell’s brown hair. Everything it touched remained under a silvery film, as if seen by moonshine and through ruffled water. The sight filled Lizzie with dread.

  The first time Lizzie had seen such colors, she’d thought a Christmas angel was visiting. She’d cried, it was that beautiful. Later she imagined it was Baby Edward giving her the silver taste of his unhappiness, angry not to be the one alive when everybody would have preferred him.

  She heard a noise deep in her own throat without understanding that she had made it. She hardly noticed Mrs. Bell’s hand sliding away, Mrs. Bell herself leaving the room.

  “Are you all right, Miss Hayes?” Mrs. Pleasant asked. Her voice moved at the wrong speed and was pitched in the wrong key.

  “I must get home,” Lizzie said. She took a great, unladylike gulp of air, pressed her hands into her temples to try to block the pain before it arrived. “Please. I don’t believe I can walk so far. If I might have the loan of your buggy…”
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  “Your head aches?”

  “Not yet.” The blood was beginning to beat in her ears. She curled into her own lap, the corset cutting upward into the bottom of her breasts. “But I must go home.”

  There was no answer. She was alone in the room again, with the silent, pleading, naked silvery statues. She tried to rise, but her legs shook beneath her. She heard a clock sounding the hour with a slow, sobering tune. She heard a tapping in the hall, footsteps entering the room, each louder than the previous and all of them too loud.

  “I’ve made you something. Drink it up, but slow. You’ll feel better.”

  Lizzie raised her head. Mrs. Pleasant stood before her, and behind Mrs. Pleasant, Mrs. Bell. Mrs. Bell’s eyes flashed like silver coins.

  Mrs. Pleasant guided her fingers around a china cup in which Lizzie smelled a foul sort of tea. Bay leaves, wet moss, blackberries, and rum. She allowed Mrs. Pleasant to lift her hand, tip the cup into her mouth. She was sluggish from apprehension, too limp to resist. The drink was bitter enough to sting, dribbling down her throat in a thin stream, leaving behind a runnel of heat. She drank more. With every sip, she felt the impending headache recede, the warmth spreading until it reached even her frozen fingers.

  “There,” said Mrs. Pleasant. “See how that helps.” This might have been a question. It might have been a command. Followed by a command. “Keep drinking.”

  As she emptied the cup, Lizzie felt as if she were waking, finally, from a long dream. The dream was her whole life until now. The silver light leached from the room. The tables and flowers flattened into ordinariness and further, better even, to detachment.