by Laura Ruby
Frankie moved to the end of the row and watered some daffodils. “So you water the plants in here. What else do you do?”
“Well, we grow the seedlings that we’ll plant out in the garden later.” He hooked a thumb at rows and rows of pots in the middle of the greenhouse, many spiky with green shoots. “And we have to clean up all the garden beds outside. Clear them of leaves and sticks and rocks. We already planted the first crops of the season.”
“What did you plant?”
“Cabbage and beets mostly. Some broccoli too.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Father likes cabbage, but he’s the only one.”
“I like cabbage.”
“You do?”
“Red cabbage. With apples.”
“Cabbage and fruit? That sounds kinda strange.”
“My mother used to make it.”
“Oh,” Frankie said. “When was that?”
“A long time ago.”
Frankie nodded. She wanted to hear more about Sam’s family, but didn’t know how to ask. Whatever had happened to his mother was bound to be sad. She was poor, she was lost, she was dead, she left and never came back. Frankie had heard these stories from other orphans over and over, and they were never happy ones.
If Frankie had asked, though, Sam might have confessed that his mother hadn’t gone anywhere and was perfectly happy, that she’d been happy ever since she’d handed him over to the nuns when he was seven. Having children was his father’s idea, she said, and once that son of a bitch had taken off, why would she keep the boy, especially since Sam would probably turn out just like his daddy?
And maybe, if Frankie had asked some more questions, different questions, Sam might have confessed that he’d noticed Frankie because of all the ways she was unlike his tall and pale and angry mother, no matter how delicious her cabbage and apples. Frankie was tiny, with dark hair and darker eyes slanted up at the outer corners like a cat. And no matter how she was feeling inside, she always looked as if she was about to laugh.
But Frankie didn’t laugh, and she didn’t ask any other questions about Sam’s mother. She said, “What kind of food do you like besides cabbage?”
“Oh, I’ll eat almost anything. But my favorite food is cake.”
“What kind?”
“Any kind! Chocolate, strawberry, lemon. Not much cake anymore.”
“Not enough sugar. We have to use honey,” said Frankie.
“We should probably get some beehives for the orphanage so we can have more cake.”
“Would you take care of the bees?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“They sting.”
“So do the nuns,” said Sam. “And the nuns hurt worse.”
Frankie laughed. She watered a pot full of perfect tulips, the blooms a bright pink-red.
“You know, tulip bulbs used to be worth more than gold,” Sam said, nodding at the blooms. “A long time ago. In Europe. People traded them like money.”
“They traded flowers like money?”
“People believed they symbolized love and immortality. Kind of funny, because the blooms only last a few days.”
Frankie didn’t say anything, because the word “love” was shuttling around her brain, knocking on the sides of her skull.
“And these,” Sam said, pointing to a row of green bushes with buds that had not yet bloomed, “are roses. Roses are related to fruit like raspberries, cherries, peaches.”
They got quieter and quieter as they got closer. Sam was in a swirl of emotions too. He wanted to tell Frankie what he was going to do when he got out of the orphanage. He wanted to say that he would buy his own plot of land and grow things like fruit and flowers, that he would have beehives and a little house all his own. He wanted to say that he would play his trumpet in a band on the weekends, and walk home when the sun was rising. He wanted to tell her that the war encroached on his visions like a nightmare, and sometimes he woke up panting in a tangle of blankets. He wanted to say that sometimes he dreamed of tulips and wondered if that was a bad omen, or a good one.
Frankie wanted to say something, anything, but “love” sounded too small and “immortality” sounded too long and she didn’t know what word could capture all the moments in between.
They watered the flowers in silence until they finally met in the middle of the row, standing side by side. Sam went still, his eyes darting to her and darting away, like bees that refused to be kept by anyone, even well-meaning young men. Frankie put her can on the ground. Then she took the watering can from Sam’s hands and set that down too. When they had met before, wherever they had met, Frankie usually stopped a few feet away from him, waiting for him to approach her, but it was spring inside and outside and in all her wheres, so she didn’t stop. She laid a hand on his elbow, turned him toward her, stepped so close the buttons on their coats touched. He was so surprised his arms spread like the angels in the stained windows of the church. Her nose filled with the scents of good earth and wool and a salty, woodsy note underneath, sweat and strong soap.
When they kissed it was like riding the gig, and even in the moment Frankie understood what Sister Bert had meant about joy, a way of saying no and yes at the very same time.
So lost were they, so intent on each other, they didn’t see the white and twisted face pressed to the glass behind them.
1943
Wolves
The Song of Solomon
DAYS, WEEKS, MONTHS, BLURRED. The girls in the senior cottage bloomed liked so many flowers, closer to the women they would become than the children they used to be. Frankie stole food and stole kisses in the back of the greenhouse, in stairwells, behind buildings. Loretta did too, but was far better at hiding it. Toni burst like a kernel of corn, and hid as little as possible.
I wandered the Chicago streets, I sat through film after film at the picture show. I went to the library and read fairy tales and novels and The Hobbit. Bilbo, still invisible because of his ring, travels the tunnels through the Misty Mountains and makes it to the other side of the range. He stumbles upon Gandalf and the dwarves, takes off the ring, and surprises them. The group journeys on, but as night falls, they hear the howling of wolves. They barely have time to climb some trees before the wolves, called Wargs, find them, along with the goblins, who light fires under the trees. Before Gandalf can attack, the eagles come swooping down, carrying the company to safety.
I did not hear the howling of wolves, but I could hear the voice of the girl in gold: You lie to yourself. Or maybe it was just the voice in my head. Or the voice of the angel, who had taken to telling me things about the spasms of the world, things I didn’t want to hear, things I couldn’t bear to know. She told me about the Japanese Americans rounded up and sent to camps for the duration of the war, though they had done nothing wrong. She told me that the United States surrendered the Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines and thousands of troops were forced to march sixty-five miles to prison camps, and that many died in the process.
She told me that the Jews in the Netherlands were ordered to wear the Star of David, that they couldn’t ride bicycles or trains, that a girl named Anne Frank went into hiding with her family. Anne wrote in her diary that she’d packed curlers, schoolbooks, a comb, and some old letters instead of clothes, because memories meant more to her than dresses.
The angel told me that scientists were working on a secret scheme to build a powerful bomb, and that soon some of those same scientists would have nightmares every night, and wake up in a sweat, eyes cranked wide.
The world keeps many secrets from itself, the angel said. But it can’t keep secrets from you without your permission.
I liked knowing everyone’s secrets, but it seemed as if the angel wanted me to do something with them, something about them, that they were supposed to mean more to me. I’d been resting my head on her feet, but I sat up and stared at her. What’s the point of my knowing anyone’s secrets? I’m dead.
That’s not an excuse, the angel said.
Go back to the library. Find the girl in yellow. Or better yet, go back to the blue house in the sea of brick, remind yourself why you’re there.
I didn’t go back to the library, not then. I didn’t go to the lake, I refused to visit the blue house.
The bar I found was the type of place that opened in the morning for those who planned to be drunk by noon. I drifted through the door into the dark, dank space inside. The wood paneling was stained a dark brown from cigarette smoke, red leather jacketed the barstools and booths, a dusty piano sat in the corner. You couldn’t have called it crowded, but you wouldn’t have called it empty, either. I found a seat between two men perched at the long, scuffed counter, shot glasses already piling up in front of them. The bartender, a tall, stooped man with an unfashionably bushy beard, poured them two more. He snatched up the coins they threw on the bar, then turned and walked right through the woman behind him. She was also tall, white arms thin and wiry, with brown hair and blue eyes so bright they burned with a strange energy. As the bartender passed through her, she stiffened, yelled, Kiss me where I sat on Saturday, you loping ape! Of course, the man paid her no mind.
At first I thought she wore some sort of printed blouse and stockings underneath her short black dress, but as she moved toward me, I realized they were tattoos, and that they danced and shifted across her skin—a flower into a dragon, a dragon into a fish, a fish back into a flower, words and symbols twining and unwinding and twining again.
What will you have? she said to me.
What do you mean?
What are you drinking, dear?
Drinking?
This is a bar, love.
Are you playing with me?
She leaned her elbows on the bar top, said, You want a drink or not?
I shrugged. Wine?
The wine we serve at this place isn’t worth scrubbing the pots with. You’ll have some bourbon if you know what’s good for you, she said. She set a glass in front of me, poured it full of a rich amber liquid.
I can’t pick up a glass.
You can pick up that one, she said. Try it.
She was right. Tentatively, I took a sip of the bourbon. I could swear I tasted the fire of the liquor hitting the back of my throat, scorching me all the way down.
There’s a good girl, she said.
I set the glass back on the bar. Said, My brother Frederick would be proud of me.
Yeah? Where’s ole Freddy now?
Not here, I said.
And why are you here?
I don’t know.
It’s all right if you want to tell me, love, the woman said. And it’s all right if you don’t. It’s just that we don’t see many of your kind around here.
My kind?
Rich girls in fancy gowns usually drink at home.
This is not a gown. And I’m not a rich girl.
Whatever you say, she told me. The fish on her chest snapped its tail at me before diving into what Mother would have referred to as her “décolletage.”
I said, He delivered a package to my door.
The tattooed woman did not ask who “he” was. She said, Package. Delivered. Never heard it put that way.
No, I meant he was a delivery boy.
She winked, and the fish peeked its head up from the neckline of her dress and winked too.
Stop that, I said. He brought a delivery for my father. A parcel wrapped in brown paper, tied with string. Normally our maid answered the door, but—
I thought you said you weren’t rich, she said.
What?
You think poor people have maids?
We had to let the maid go a few months before that. Mother said it was because we were perfectly capable of opening our own doors. But it was because Father’s business was failing. But I didn’t find that out until later.
Business, schmisiness. Why don’t you get back to the boyo at the door?
I’m trying, I said. I felt a little lightheaded, a little woozy, though there was no reason I should have felt that. The alcohol wasn’t real. The bartender wasn’t real. I wasn’t.
I tried to center myself. I asked her, What’s your name? Do you know it?
She took a step back and bowed. Mad Maureen Kelly at your service.
Mad Maureen?
I have a bit of a temper, she said. Snakes shivered up and down her legs. The words “Credo quia absurdum” wound themselves around her biceps. The tattoo of an eye that had been sitting on her shoulder migrated to her forehead and peered at me. I couldn’t decide which of her eyes to focus on, which just made me even more dizzy.
She said, It’s normal to introduce yourself, you know, and rude to stare.
I wasn’t . . . , I began, but of course I had been staring. Pearl, I told her. Miss Pearl Brownlow.
Pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Pearl Brownlow of the Not-Rich-Enough-to-Keep-a-Maid Brownlows, she said. Now, are you going to tell me about this boyo or not? If not, I’m going to start drinking myself.
I was home alone, I began. Well, not alone exactly. Cook was in the kitchen, baking a pie. I was bored and tried to help, but I wasn’t really helping as much as stealing little bits of pie dough to eat, spoonfuls of blueberries and sugar. Cook grew tired of me and sent me outside where she said I could do less damage. But I could always find a way to do damage, especially to myself.
Mmmm, murmured Mad Maureen, making a twirling motion with her hand to hurry me along.
So I tucked a copy of Detective Story given to me by my friend Harriet into the bodice of my day dress and took myself to the woods. I found a sunny place in a clearing and read “The Yellow Claw” for a while. My mother would have burned that magazine for trash had she caught me with it, but I found it only mildly diverting. Soon I got bored. I went exploring in the woods instead, looking for a glimpse of a deer or a bear or a fox or a wolf, gathering flowers and leaves I might press in between the pages of my Bible, the only book my mother wanted me to read. Which is funny, considering all the killing and the blood in the Bible. Considering the Song of Solomon. Especially the Song of Solomon: I am sick of love. Which confuses me: Who is sick of love?
You’d be surprised, said Mad Maureen.
I don’t know how long I spent gathering flowers and looking for wolves—I had myself convinced that if I found a wolf pup I could raise it to be my pet; I would name it Tarzan and it would adore me, protect me. But I didn’t find any wolf pups. I never did. And I got as scratched up and dirty as always happened when I went where I wasn’t supposed to. So I decided to clean up a bit before going home. I walked from the woods to the edge of the lake. There weren’t so many houses back then. Most of the place was a vast stretch of woods and grass and rocky shore. It all belonged to Father and, I thought, to my brothers and me. I left my magazine and my shoes and dress on the beach and waded into the water. It was shockingly cold, but the cold numbed my cuts and the scrapes, and the gentle lapping of the water lulled and cradled me. I stopped feeling the cold. I started to swim, remembering how much I’d loved it as a child. I swam as far as I could go, until the shore was just a memory and I was alone and adrift in a deep, dark sea.
I forgot myself, lost in every stroke of my arms, every kick. And then when I had swum so far out that I might be too tired to get back, I panicked. I flailed and screamed at the birds overhead. They screamed right back, but I couldn’t understand them, and they couldn’t help me. No one could help me. I imagined sinking, choking, drowning, my own mother at my funeral saying that I never thought about anyone but myself, I never thought before I acted, I was a wild thing that came to a wild end and that was God’s own will, God’s own judgment, and that made me so angry that I got back to swimming, following the paths of the gulls back to shore. When I pulled myself up on the rocky beach, I was so exhausted that my arms and legs were as liquid as the pie filling I’d sucked through my teeth. I barely managed to pull my dress over my head, put the shoes on my feet. I left the magazine where it was—Harriet wouldn’t miss it an
d neither would I—and walked home. Though the trees would have concealed me, though I should have, I didn’t walk through the woods. I walked straight up our drive to our door, bold as anyone. I was still mad at my mother, you see, the mother in my head. I didn’t care who saw me.
And that’s when I saw him standing on our porch, his hand on the lion’s-head knocker. I had a few seconds to watch him before he heard my shoes slapping against the stones. Do you know how long a few seconds can be? So long. So long. He wasn’t that tall, though everyone was tall compared to me. Hair so black it looked blue in the bright sunlight. He had broad shoulders and a narrow waist emphasized by a crisp white shirt tucked neatly in his linen trousers. A small parcel was tucked under one arm. He knocked again—once, twice, three times. No answer. He must have heard my footsteps, because he turned to look at me. And I . . .
You? said Mad Maureen.
I had forgotten I was in a bar. I had forgotten Mad Maureen was there too. Her fish had turned into a mermaid, and they both waited for an answer.
I said, I got dizzy and had to stop walking.
Dizzy, like you had a few shots of bourbon?
Yes. And hot too, like settling into a fresh bath. Bible verses tingled on my tongue: His eyes are as the eyes of doves by the rivers of waters, washed with milk, and fitly set. His cheeks are as a bed of spices, as sweet flowers: his lips like lilies. Except his eyes weren’t like doves at all, not pale like that, not soft. They were as black as his hair, black as the wings of crows wet with rain. And didn’t smile the way that other boys, other men had smiled at me, the way they would have smiled at a girl so damp and disheveled, wrecked and wretched. He didn’t smile at all. He was almost . . . frowning. As if I had disturbed him somehow. As if I were threatening. When I reached him, when I said hello, all he did was nod to acknowledge it. I asked him if the package was for Mr. Brownlow, he nodded again, holding the parcel out to me with one hand, but the way you’d hold out a scrap of meat to an animal, perhaps wanting to feed it but still afraid it will bite. I thought, Please don’t be scared of me, why are you scared of me, you’ve never met me before, you don’t even know me, and, at the same time, That’s right, be scared of me, be terrified.
