by Ami McKay
To the rear of the house one of the pickets was missing, leaving a space in the fence just wide enough for me to slip through. It means she wants me here, I told myself when I first discovered it. It’s a sign.
Mama was always talking of signs to the women who came to our place to have their fortunes told. I’d watch from behind the curtains as she sat at her round-topped table with whichever woman had shown up at our door looking for answers. Putting a finger to the small, heart-shaped birthmark on her right cheek, she’d gaze into her witch’s ball or stare at the lady’s palms; then she’d give the woman the news. Sometimes good, sometimes bad.
I liked it best when a woman was willing to pay Mama enough to converse with the spirits. This called for both Mama and the lady to rest their fingertips on an upended glass. Then Mama would start humming and sighing, and soon the glass would go sliding over the wooden tabletop, dancing between the letters and numbers she’d painted there to help the spirits spell out fate. Even though the spirits said the same things time and again, it was still quite a thing to see. “You’re gonna die young,” Mama told every woman with fat wrists. “But that’s all right. There will be flowers at your funeral and nobody will say a bad thing about you.” Then she’d squeeze the woman’s hand, tears coming to her eyes, making them shine. “We should all be so lucky.”
The evening I decided to steal into Miss Keteltas’ yard and across her lawn, a light shone from a wide window into the garden. No one had ever come out to stop me from touching the fence, and I’d never seen so much as a hint of Miss Keteltas or her stick. All good signs, I thought, leading me to this very moment. I decided that if I got caught, I wouldn’t lie. I’d simply say, “There’s a hole in your fence, Miss Keteltas. You really should have someone fix it.”
When I reached the window, I could see into a parlour meant for the lady of the house. Miss Keteltas wasn’t there, but right next to the window was a pair of birds inside a cage. They were brilliant green, like the first leaves of spring, all except for the feathers on their faces, which were a deep pink, making them look as if they were blushing.
I watched as one of the birds took a single seed from a bowl and fed it to its mate. The second bird kindly bowed its head and returned the favour. They went on like that, their stubby beaks pinching and putting, gentle and fair, until all the food was gone. Then they took turns preening and nuzzling each other’s necks, stopping every so often to puff up their feathers in delight. Stout little things, they’d wobble apart and then together again, dancing along the length of their perch. Finally, the larger of the two seemed to tire of it all and closed his eyes. His mate tilted her head and stared at him while he slept, her wings folded tight behind her back. She looked just like Mrs. Riordan did whenever she was having a hard time hearing what I had to say.
Before long, a maid came into the room. As soon as I saw her, I went to my knees, crouching beneath the window and holding as still as I could. For a moment, I was certain I’d been caught, but then the light went out and the garden became dark enough for me to sneak away.
As I walked home, I didn’t think about how late I’d be getting back to Mama. I just kept thinking of how much I wanted to be inside Miss Keteltas’ parlour, with nothing to do but watch those lovely little birds. I wondered if any two people had ever cared for each other like that. Not my mother and father, I thought. Mrs. Riordan and her husband, perhaps.
Lovebirds mate for life. Thus, pains should be taken not to separate an established pair. A lonely bird will engage in destructive behaviours such as pining, biting and plucking out its feathers. If you are faced with a single bird, you must become what the bird longs for and lavish all your attentions upon it, lest it lash out at you.
Although Mr. Riordan died long before I was born, Mrs. Riordan still spoke of him often, her voice catching in her throat whenever she said his name. “Twenty years without my teeth or my husband and still it’s Johnny I miss most.”
Mama was on the front stoop when I got home, fanning herself with a folded newspaper. “It’s too dark for you to be out,” she said, glaring at me. “Go inside and get to sleep.”
When she came to bed she didn’t speak to me. Even though she didn’t ask where I’d been, her silence on the other side of the mattress we shared made me feel as if somehow she knew. Maybe her glass and the table had spelled it out for her. M-o-t-h w-a-n-t-s t-o r-u-n a-w-a-y.
The next morning, my boots were gone.
“Shoes in summer are nothing but a waste,” she said when I went crawling under the bed searching for them.
They weren’t the nicest pair of boots in the world. The leather had begun to crack across the toes and they were nearly too small for my feet, but they were mine. I’d paid Mrs. Riordan a nickel for them. She’d gotten them off the body of a girl she’d dressed out for burial. The girl had died of consumption and her mother had told Mrs. Riordan that she should have the boots, it was the least she could do to thank her.
A girl with shoes can hold her head a bit higher. She can run away.
“Where are they?” I asked Mama.
“Gone.”
“Where?”
“Mr. Piers … but don’t bother asking him about them, he took them apart for scraps right on the spot.”
A knife grinder by trade, Mr. Piers had a pushcart he wheeled up and down Chrystie Street. His hands were shiny—not greasy like a butcher’s after handling lard, but slick with the oil that made a blade sharp and exact. Mr. Piers wore his hair in two long braids and his eyes were almost black. All the women thought he was the handsomest man they’d ever seen. I felt that way about him too, until he had my shoes.
Mr. Piers also shaved people’s lousy heads, and sold bottles of Dr. Godfrey’s Cordial. He’d sit on the street at night, his feet pumping the grinding wheel, sparks flying, looking like the Devil’s man as he waited for women to come and ask him for his “best.”
Dr. Godfrey’s Cordial—“a soothing syrup, concocted from the purest ingredients!” (sassafras, caraway, molasses, tincture of opium, and brandy). “For all manner of pains in the bowels, fluxes, fevers, small pox, measles, rheumatism, coughs, colds, restlessness in men, women and children, and particularly for several ailments incident to child bearing women and relief of young children breeding their teeth.”
Mothers called the cordial “quietness,” because their teething babies would stop wailing as soon as they rubbed it on their raw, red gums. A few drops under the tongue and the child would fall into a deep sleep. Mama said it did much the same for her, so she’d drink half a bottle of the stuff whenever she felt weary from life. I didn’t see it quite like that. I thought it just turned her too tired to find her way around the room. I hated those square bottles, with their fancy, boastful labels.
With the heat of summer, Mama’s fortune-telling business had dropped off. “The hotter it is, the less people like taking a chance on getting bad news,” Mama would say for every day that went by with no customers. “Come September, it’ll pick up. You’ll see.”
When our cupboards got bare, anything we didn’t need got sold to Mr. Piers. By July, Mama was taking things to him every few days, in exchange for a bit of money, or more often in trade for a bottle of Dr. Godfrey’s. My boots had gone towards the cordial along with Mama’s tortoiseshell hair combs and the amulet she wore around her neck to protect her from the evil eye.
“I’ll get you a new pair,” she told me. “Come September.”
After that she started talking of other mothers who’d had great success in arranging positions for their daughters—as house maids or cooks’ helpers, as seamstresses and laundry girls. Lingering over the details, she made them sound more like saints than servants. “They were nearly at the end, you know—no food in the cupboard, no money to speak of.” Sighing with admiration, she’d go on, “It was the daughter that saved them. If she hadn’t stepped up, the whole family would be dead.”
Her stories were always the same. First, a sad, worn-out mother
would manage to save up enough pennies to place a help-for-hire ad in the Evening Star. Then, a week later (no more, no less), the woman’s daughter, “a bright and willing girl, mind you,” would be plucked from the slums and miraculously placed in a situation that paid more than enough to keep her family from starvation. “She’s living with a fine, well-bred lady, all the way up on Gramercy Park. Her mother says there are at least a dozen other maids in the woman’s employ, and the house has too many rooms to count. Can you imagine?”
I could not. At least not in the way Mama hoped I would.
Whenever I tried to imagine a place that grand, I always wound up picturing myself not as a maid or a cook, but as the lady of Miss Keteltas’ house, floating through ballroom and conservatory wearing a dress made from the finest silk. Sometimes the dress would be forget-me-not blue, sometimes it was a demure lilac. More often than not it was petal pink, with yards of black velvet ribbon looped around the hem. No matter the colour of the dress, the vision would end with me smiling and lying naked on a feather bed. The mattress was so deep I could hardly find my way out of it. Mama didn’t know that her uptown mansion with too many rooms to count only made an appearance in my head if the house and all that was in it were mine.
Thirteen, I’d tell myself, any time Mama started to go on about servants’ quarters and maid’s wages. I’ll stay with Mama until I’m thirteen. I hoped by then to find a way of becoming something on my own, something beyond Mama’s expectations.
She came to me, pushing at my shoulder while I was asleep. Ignoring her, I curled myself into a ball on my half of our sagging straw mattress.
“Wake up, Moth,” she nagged. “Get out of bed and get dressed.”
Her voice wasn’t right. It was thin and tight in the wrong places and all I could think was that there must be a fire.
Mama loved watching buildings go up in flames. We had a collection of sooty bric-a-brac on the front window-sill to prove it. She’d pulled things from the rubble of every fire she’d ever chased. A gentleman’s shaving mug cracked in two; a blackened doorstop shaped like a dog; countless bits of melted glass—brown, green, blue; even a tiny porcelain chamber bowl meant for a dollhouse. It had words painted around the rim: Piss or get off the pot. Mama had a scar on the palm of her right hand from where the thing had burned her.
“You go on without me,” I mumbled, my tongue feeling thick with sleep. “I don’t need to see it.”
“Get up,” she insisted, twisting the fine hairs at the back of my neck until the pain of it made me sit up and open my eyes.
The hoops she always wore in her ears were winking at me, shimmering in the light of a candle she’d just lit. Reaching to the post at the end of the bed, she grabbed my dress and tossed it at me. Then she began taking my things out of our dresser drawers and throwing them on the bed: a pair of stockings with the toes worn through, my old petticoat, the ragdoll I carried around as a child and called Miss Sweet. The doll’s arm came off in Mama’s hand and the rest of Miss Sweet fell to the floor. She picked up the thin, limp body and looked at me.
“You still want her?” she asked.
“Yes,” I mumbled, as I pulled my dress on over my head.
Mama took the doll and its arm and pushed them into an empty pillowcase. Then she held the case out to me and looked to the pile on the bed. “Put the rest of your things in this.”
“What’s happening?” I asked, as she reached around my middle to tie the sash of my dress. “Is there a fire? Are we in trouble?”
“There’s no fire and there’s nothing for you to worry about,” she said, working my hair into a loose braid down my back. I heard the slither of a length of ribbon being made into a bow, felt the ache of it being pulled tight. She turned me so I was facing her and brushed a stray hair away from my brow. “You’re going on a little trip, that’s all. I’ve found you an excellent position, but you have to leave tonight.” Putting the lumpy pillowcase in my hands, she took me by the arm and led me to the front room.
There was a woman sitting next to Mama’s fortune-telling table, resting in our velvet rocker, one of the few things of value that Mama hadn’t sold. She was wearing a fine, dark dress with a long matching cape that pooled around her in her seat. Her face was soft looking, her eyes moist and shining at the edges. The wide bow of her hat was tied under her chin, and the flesh of her neck folded against it as if she were made of butter and cream. Looking at me, she picked up the front of her skirts and shifted in her seat. I could see her shoes peeking out from her petticoats—black leather boots with scalloped trim around the buttons that reached far above her ankles.
“Say hello to Mrs. Wentworth,” Mama said, as she pushed me towards the woman.
Still staring at her boots, I stumbled, nearly falling into the lady’s lap.
Mama smiled at her apologetically. “It takes her a while to warm up to strangers. You understand.”
Mrs. Wentworth stood and held her hand out to me. “How do you do, Miss …?”
Speaking up before I could, Mama said, “Miss Fenwick will do.” Then she looked to me and nodded as if she’d just named a stray dog.
Fenwick wasn’t my father’s name or even my mother’s. It was the name on the label that was peeling off an old biscuit tin Mama kept with the rest of her fire souvenirs. The box had been painted to look like it was made of gold, and from a distance it seemed as if it were meant to hold some great treasure. Up close, the thing was a disappointment, with rusty holes eating away its underside, and a dented lid that wouldn’t stay shut. Fenwick Brothers Shortbread, a cut above the rest.
Mrs. Wentworth took my hand in hers. “A pleasure to meet you, Miss Fenwick,” she said. Looking me over with her large, watery eyes she added, “I’m sure we’ll be very happy together.”
Mama stared at me not with sadness, but with pleading. She was thinner than I’d ever allowed myself to notice, looking more like a child than a woman. I wanted to believe she knew what was best for me. I wanted to believe she was like every other mother and that she loved me more than I loved her. I hoped if I followed her wishes, I would finally make her happy.
There were no tears at our goodbye. I knew Mama wouldn’t stand for it. Tears offended her more than just about any other wrong a person could do. “That’s enough,” she’d say, scowling and stomping her heel on the floor whenever my eyes showed the slightest sign of being wet. “American girls never whimper.”
After Mrs. Wentworth led me out of the house, I heard Mama shut the door behind us, turning her key in the lock.
“Come now, Miss Fenwick,” Mrs. Wentworth said, taking my hand and urging me down the steps to the street.
Looking back, I saw Mama’s arm reaching to close the curtains on the front window, her figure changing to a silhouette. Led by the tired bend of her neck, she moved to turn the lamp down, making the room go dark.
Thirteen, I’d thought, would be my time to go.
Mama thought, twelve.
Mother, if you love her–
Mother, if you love her, keep her clean.
Mother, if you love her, keep her–
I’d always felt my future was waiting somewhere else, far across Manhattan. It called to me in the clip-clop of the streetcar horses, begging me to chase after it. Up on my back, off in a crack; Child, tell your mother that you won’t be back.
The notion that I was meant for something far beyond the slums had set up shop in my brain somewhere around the same time my heart started to beat. My life held great promise, I was sure of it, but finding my way there was another matter altogether.
The week before Mrs. Wentworth took me away, I’d dared to bring out Mama’s witch’s ball for a secret consultation. Cradling the thing in the palm of my hand while she was asleep, I’d stroked and flattered it, telling the bubble of blue glass that I believed in its magic more than I believed in my own mother. When I asked it to reveal what was in store for me, it just sat there, reflecting my questioning eyes—too scared to give anything
away for fear of upsetting Mama.
It knew as well as I did that if she were to catch me with it, she’d throw a fit. What questions could you possibly have? To be taken into the house of a true lady, that’s what you want—even if it’s only to wash her stockings and serve her tea. Now that would be a lucky fate, indeed.
As Mrs. Wentworth’s carriage took me away from Chrystie Street, I wondered what the witch’s ball might have shown me if it had been brave enough. Would I have seen Mrs. Wentworth sitting in our chair? Would I have noticed the great relief that came over Mama’s face as I was led away? I couldn’t help but long for answers. How many other girls were already in Mrs. Wentworth’s employ? Was she kind to them? Would they become friends, or enemies?
The velvet curtains in the cab of the carriage were tied shut, leaving me with little sense of where I was headed. I tried noting the turns, left or right, east or west, counting hoof-beats along the way, but I soon lost track. The farther I got from Chrystie Street, the more I struggled to decide which was worse—my fears of what lay ahead or my regret over having stayed with Mama too long.
In the end, I chose to push them both aside and wish myself into a pleasant dream. I closed my eyes and re-imagined everything that had happened, from Mama shaking me out of my sleep to sitting now across from the silent Mrs. Wentworth in the dark of the cab. I told myself it was simply fate’s way of playing a trick on me. In my musings, the woman sitting across from me wasn’t named Mrs. Wentworth at all. She was, instead, Miss Alice Keteltas, come to take me home at last. She’d even arranged to have a welcome party waiting, at this late hour, with ladies in evening gowns and men in coats with tails, all lined up to meet the girl who was named by a pear tree, the girl who knew how to make a house hum and sing.
