The Appearance of Annie Van Sinderen

by Katherine Howe

  I’m awake.

  I’m in my bed. My own bed, at home. The horsehair mattress rustles under my weight. My face is pressed to my favorite pillow, the lumpy feather one that’s been flattened ’til it’s just right for my cheek. I feel soft breathing next to me, and the hand on my cheek coils itself into my hair, getting caught on the rags I use to tie my curls into place at bedtime. Slowly my eyes trace to the left, to the owner of the hand.

  My sister’s sleeping face rests on her own pillow in the bed next to me. The rag doll I sewed for her when she was a baby is nestled under her chin. One of its button eyes is missing, the empty socket erupting in frayed thread. She’s too old for a doll, and Mother has tried to hide it from her more than once, but Lottie or I generally find it and smuggle it back to her. My sister’s mouth opens and emits a soft snore.

  Without moving, I let my eyes roam around the details of the room, suspicious.

  I’m at home. I’m in the room I share with my sister, upstairs from Mother’s room. This is puzzling, as I don’t remember coming back from my aunt’s. Did we come back here after the flotilla and the parties last night? But I would remember that, surely. I’d remember being loaded into a carriage in lamp-lit streets littered with castoff bunting, laughing and heady with wine and our journey on the barge, and the carriage jouncing over the rutted streets uptown, tossing my sister and brother into me and Mother and Papa. I’d remember pulling up to our house, because I’d be relieved it was safe for us to come back.

  Wouldn’t I?

  Anyway all our clothes are at Aunt Mehitable’s house. I’d expected to awaken in Hudson Square.

  I try to raise myself on my elbows, but my sister tightens her grip around my neck with a contented sigh and I’m trapped. I resign myself to waiting.

  The light is thin, so it must be early yet. I hear the last tittering birds of the season in the elms outside the window, and someone’s moving about downstairs. Mother is awake. Papa would be, too, much earlier, as he’s in the Canal Corporation on top of his job at the bank downtown, and has been beyond busy. We barely see him. A knot of worry twists in my gut. Why would Papa let us come back again, without first . . .

  But I can’t argue with the fact that I’m in my bed. At home.

  Everything looks completely the same.

  The room that Beatrice and I share is on the third floor, with two tall windows looking over the kitchen garden and privy at the rear of the house, windows dressed in dark wool hangings now that the weather’s turned cool. Mother is still choosing the furniture for the drawing and dining rooms, but she’s already appointed her and Papa’s rooms. Their beds are as heavily carved and draped as old Spanish galleons, topped with plumes of ostrich feather. Beattie and I share her old bed, which sags in the middle and has hangings that are kind of mothy, but still warm. A soft pop tells me that Lottie’s already come in while we were sleeping and stoked up the fire.

  Everything in our room is just as we left it. My own childhood sampler, complete with its crooked S and lopsided laurel leaves, is framed over the mantel. Beattie’s sewing basket sits abandoned on the floor by the rocking chair. The washstand that always wobbles is in the corner. A shelf with my books, Pilgrim’s Progress and A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, together with a few others, is pushed against the far wall. The dead fern that I forgot to water is curling in a piece of cracked chinaware on the mantel. A faint, but sharpish, smell suggests that Beattie used the chamber pot in the night, and it’s marinating under the bed. Even the shawl Beattie started knitting in August and finally abandoned in a heap, rests untouched on top of our dressing table.

  “Beattie,” I whisper, nudging her with an elbow.

  She grunts in her sleep and presses her nose into my neck.

  There’s a clang in the room next door, and I hear a woman’s voice mutter in annoyance. Sounds of something scraping against the wood floor, and then the door to the narrow hallway between our brother’s room and ours swings open and Lottie appears, rolling a large, shallow metal tub into our room.

  “All right, gals,” Lottie barks. “Up and at ’em.”

  She’s not supposed to roll the tub in on its edge like that, because Mother’s concerned it will ruin the floors. I watch, my eyes widening in bafflement as Lottie maneuvers the tub to the foot of the bed, then tips it to its bottom with a metallic spang. She drops a cake of Pears soap into the pan and wipes her hands on her apron.

  Beattie rolls over, her eyelids fluttering.

  Freed from her arm around my neck, I sit bolt upright in bed.

  “Lottie?” I ask.

  “Water’s on to boil,” she continues in her brusque manner, paying me no attention. “I don’t much care who’s first.”

  I don’t much care who’s first.

  I mouth the words as she says them, as she does every morning.

  She trudges back out the door she came in, down the four flights of rear stairs to the kitchen in the basement where the kettle will be whistling with hot water for our washing.

  “Beattie, wake up,” I hiss, shaking my sister’s shoulder with urgency.

  “Huh?” She stretches her arms overhead, yawning. She smiles sleepily at me and cuddles her doll, her curls spread over the pillow.

  “Beattie.” I take her hands in mine. “Are you awake?”

  “I’m awake,” she says, rubbing her nose on her shoulder. “Morning, Annie.”

  “What day is it?” I demand.

  “What day?” she echoes. Another yawn.

  Before she can answer me the door to our room flies open and it’s Edward, the youngest, skidding in on his stocking feet.

  “Get up get up get up get up get up!” Edward bellows. He vaults across the room like a rabbit. Just last week he broke the bed and Mother was beside herself.

  With a squeal of pleasure at being alive, my brother launches himself into the air just as I cry, “Eddie, wait! Not again!”

  But it’s too late, and my brother lands on us in a tangle of sheets and elbows and feet. My sister lets out a squeal of anger, diving to whack my brother upside his head, and for a long minute I’m pinned between their two struggling bodies.

  In the midst of the struggle, I feel more than hear a dull snap, and our mattress lurches partway to the floor. My siblings pause in their struggle to register the destruction, and then resume their battle with renewed vigor.

  Eddie broke the bed, again.

  This all feels so . . . normal.

  Slowly, deliberately, I hold my hands out in front of me, to look at them, just like I did in my nightmare.

  They are perfectly clean. No smoke stains or dirt. My nails are pearly with health.

  But Herschel’s ring still isn’t there. I hunt around in the sheets, but it’s not there, either.

  “I don’t understand,” I whisper, staring hard into space.

  I have to think. I have to figure this out.

  “Ow!” Edward whines as Beattie digs a knee between his shoulder blades and grinds his face into her pillow.

  “I told you not to jump on us like that!” Beattie screams in his ear. “I told you and told you!” She said the same thing when he broke the rope last week.

  “Annie! Help!” My brother’s cries are muffled in the bedclothes, but I’m not paying attention. I’m staring at my hands, flexing my fingers in the dull morning light.

  Why isn’t Herschel’s cameo on my finger?

  “Annie!” Edward squirms out from under Beattie’s grip and looks to me to adjudicate.

  Ignoring him, I get slowly to my feet, still staring at my hands. I rub my fingertips against my thumbs, and the shiver of reality travels through my skin. Everything feels completely real. Completely normal. Everything is exactly as it was.

  “But this isn’t right,” I say aloud, looking around. “This ca
n’t be right!”

  The side door to Edward’s room swings open again and Lottie grunts in under the weight of two hot kettles with wooden handles. Her face is red from the effort of hauling the water up the stairs from the kitchen, and she’s out of breath. She drops them by the tub with a thunk at the very moment that the main door to our room swings open to reveal our mother. She’s in a crisp day dress, and her skin is as smooth and flawless as cream, except for a smattering of tiny pox scars on her cheeks. Her hair is perfectly plaited over her ears and her expression is grim. We freeze. What’s all this, then?

  “What’s all this, then?” she asks.

  She watches Lottie, who is hunched next to the washtub and stacking a couple of towels by the rocking chair. The servant doesn’t look up. She excels at evading Mother’s active management. Then Mother’s gaze passes over me, where I’m standing like a lost waif in my nightdress, stained with sweat and staring at my own hands like a madwoman. She comes to rest on my siblings in the collapsed bed.

  Edward?

  “Edward?” she prods.

  My brother scrambles to climb out of the wreckage and straighten his clothes.

  “He started it!” Beattie insists, struggling to stand up on the sloping mattress. “I told him not to jump on us, but he always does!”

  “Beatrice,” my mother says.

  It’s all she has to say.

  She stares at them both for a long, cold moment, and then says, “Lottie, ask the boy to see to that when we’re away this afternoon.”

  She doesn’t remember. She doesn’t mention last week.

  Lottie grumbles, “Yes’m.” She hates to speak to Mother. The “boy” is the Negro man Winston who does for us what Lottie can’t. A man of all work. Mother hates to speak to him as much as Lottie hates to speak to Mother.

  I’m observing this minor domestic scene, but I’m apart from it. I can’t understand what’s happened. This morning is unfolding just like the morning of the day Herschel gave me the ring. That day, last week, before the . . .

  The day we fled to Hudson Square. I got up, and Ed broke the bed rope, and I dressed and breakfasted with Mother, and then he was waiting for me outside the theater, and we . . .

  “Edward. Beatrice. Annatje. Breakfast will be served in half an hour,” Mother informs the room full of reprobates, and closes the door to underscore her point.

  “Annie,” I whisper the correction out of habit. I hate that they gave me a Dutch name; it’s so old-fashioned. I’ve been trying to get them to call me Annie for over a year, and everyone but Mother goes along with it. Even Papa. And Papa’s mother was a Stuyvestant, as Mother never tires of reminding me.

  Lottie starts pouring water into the tub, and says, “I don’t care who’s first. Ed?”

  With a squeal of disgust my brother flees our bedroom. There’s no getting him to bathe if he can possibly help it, and he usually can. Sometimes he goes so long without washing that his neck turns gray from grime.

  “I’ll go,” I say, and my voice sounds strange and hollow in my ears.

  Seeing that she needn’t rouse herself ’til I’m done, Beattie flops contentedly back into the bed, resting her doll on her belly and making faces at it.

  With a shrug Lottie stomps over and starts helping me out of my sweat-stained nightdress. The bedroom is cold, not winter cold, but there’s an uneasy autumn chill in the air, and my skin crawls with gooseflesh when the nightdress is lifted away. I wrap my arms around my nakedness with a shiver.

  I perch on the edge of the shallow tub, dipping the washrag into the warm water that Lottie pours around my feet, and I soap myself as quickly as I can. I hang my head. Lottie wrings a towel out, pouring tepid water over my head, and it drips down my cheeks and runs off the tip of my nose. A few tears make their way into the rivulets of water, trickling off my face, but Lottie affects not to see them. She mutters, in identical tones that I remember her saying last week, “That Edward’ll be the death of me.”

  “What’s going on?” I whisper softly under the sound of the water plashing over my shoulders and into the tub.

  “Where’s my cameo?”

  CHAPTER 3

  I have to find Herschel.

  He’ll understand what’s happening.

  Well, maybe he won’t, but even if he doesn’t, I mind less the things I don’t understand when I’m with him. And this doesn’t make any sense. False retrospection only lasts a moment. Mornings don’t just repeat themselves exactly. Not like this.

  I dress myself hurriedly, annoyed that the bodice on my day dress is too tight. I have to rearrange my breasts with a scoop here and there so that they don’t feel painfully squashed. I need new clothes, but Mother doesn’t see it. Or doesn’t want to see it. I should just ask Papa, now that the celebration is over. Papa won’t be as distracted as he was.

  “It’s cold!” Beattie whines as she eases her feet into the bathwater.

  “Then you should’ve gone first,” Lottie points out. “I don’t care who goes.”

  Beattie whimpers under the scrubbing of the washrag, but I can’t worry about her right now.

  Rushing, I hop as I cram one foot into a slipper and nearly topple over onto the wrecked bed. I don’t know what day it is. If it’s Saturday, I won’t be able to see him. And if it’s Friday, I won’t be able to see him at night. In fact, I can almost never see him Fridays, as that’s the day they have to get ready for Saturday. And on Sundays, he generally can’t see me. But it’s not Sunday.

  Of course, he’s not supposed to see me at all.

  He’s usually at his uncle’s shop on Pearl Street, not far from the Brooklyn ferry landing. He calls it a schmatte shop, which I guess is supposed to be sarcastic, but it’s just dry goods as far as I can tell. There’re a hundred shops like that one. Maybe more than a hundred.

  When I go there, I buy thread.

  I’ve bought so much thread in the past few months that I couldn’t hide it in the house anymore. I filled Beattie’s overlooked sewing basket. I bribed Lottie with it until she started getting suspicious. I gave it to Winston to carry home for the freedwomen in Seneca. I even started secreting it under the stockings and bloomers in my drawer, but then I worried Mother would find it and so I threw it in the privy. That made me feel guilty, though. Now I give it to beggar women that I pass in the street on my way home. They’re always shocked and grateful. I try to choose the ones with sucking babies or small children. Sometimes they remember me from the last time. One even argued with me once about the color, and followed me cursing down James Street for two blocks, and tried to throw a brick at my head.

  I don’t walk down James Street anymore.

  I’m excited to see Herschel, and tell him about the flotilla last night. So many fireworks! I’d never seen so many. And the music playing! And the military salutes, and . . . and . . .

  I frown.

  Anyway, I can’t wait to see him, and tell him we’re back home. I’m sure that the minute I see him everything will click back into place and I’ll feel like myself again. The thought of seeing Herschel sends a shiver of pleasure through me, and I close my eyes, recalling his particular smell, and the tickling texture of his young beard against my cheek.

  No one can see into me the way Herschel can.

  Behind me, Lottie is struggling to scrub behind Beattie’s ears and Beattie is whining that the water’s too cold. If I slip out now, they’ll think I’m just going down to breakfast, and no one will notice me leave.

  I hurry over to look at myself in the glass on the dressing table, to pinch my cheeks and fluff the curls over my ears before rushing out of the house.

  I step in front of the mirror, fingertips at my cheeks.

  But instead of my reflection, the mirror reflects a hideous apparition back at me, with bony fingers on its cheeks. Before I can stop myself, I scream in horror and clap my hand
s over my eyes.

  In the glass, this horrible thing leered at me, a desiccated creature of teeth and skin and bones. Hair like seaweeds sprouting from its head. Eyes empty and bottomless, just pits where the eyes should be. The thing was like the specter of a witch, or a demon out of Cotton Mather. Something evil and wretched and unthinkable.

  “Annie?” Beattie calls from the washtub. I hear water slosh as she stands up.

  My hands are still over my eyes, and I’m trembling.

  Horrible. Too horrible. A nightmare thing that somehow crawled out of my dream with me when I awoke.

  “Annie?” I hear my sister’s bare feet pad over to stand behind me. A gentle hand comes to rest on my shoulder.

  “I . . . I . . . ,” I stammer.

  I don’t know what’s happening.

  I don’t understand.

  “It’s all right,” Beattie says.

  I’m hiding behind my hands, unable to look, and so instead Beattie pulls me to her in an embrace. She’s damp and cold from the bath, and the sweet smell of Pears soap fills my nostrils as I breathe in my sister. I crush my face into her hair and shudder. Beattie’s only twelve, but she has a reassuring wisdom at times. I’ve even thought of telling her about Herschel. I can’t tell anyone, but I yearned to show her the cameo when he gave it to me.

  But I can’t.

  I can’t tell anyone.

  No one can know.

  “Here now,” Lottie chides us from the other side of the room. “You’ll catch your death.”

  Beattie releases me and I screw open my eyes. I see the concerned look of my sister, who’s wrapped in a damp towel and staring at me curiously. Over her head, in the oval dressing table glass, I spy our twin reflections. My face is paler than usual, almost sallow, but the monster has vanished. I wipe my eyes with my wrists and suck the tears out of my nose and down my throat.