“In a way,” she said. “I guess so. Yes. I’m helping him so he can help others.”
“You must be very important,” said Davis.
Miss Daisy wanted to laugh, but didn’t. The repetitive work of attending to the men who needed a bedding grew boring. And the women of the Red Swan weren’t welcome in town among other women and honorable townspeople. So Miss Daisy grew lonely and eager for excitement. She felt giddy when she heard that another “guest” was coming, and she believed this work at the Red Swan was important. For the help that they rendered to the occasional escapees in the form of protection and lodging and transportation and silence, she and the other women at the Red Swan received much in return, she thought. She felt useful. She felt needed. She felt righteous, even. And, with his money and protection, Barton Hatterby made their little operation possible. “I guess so,” she said. “Let’s go now. Downstairs with you.” Davis was getting so big that she wondered about taking him to the school Father Paul had told about, where the nun taught the Indian children and the orphans. Surely she wouldn’t mind a black child too, especially one as smart and light-skinned as Davis.
26
Nanny and Angel
WHEN MR. HATTERBY AGREED to calm his wife’s fretting nerves by bringing her along on a month-long trip to Chicago, Angel’s brain hopped with glee and scheming. The Hatterbys would leave Angel in Nanny’s care, and Angel was careful not to react with too much eagerness. She played the part. She cried. She pouted her lips and asked her mother not to go. She hung on to her mother’s waist and wept. But beneath the pretense, she couldn’t wait for Mother to go and Nanny to come.
When Nanny arrived, Angel stomped her foot, shouted, “You’re not my mother!” and ran upstairs to her room. She slammed the door for good measure, knowing how pleased her mother would be. As a good mother would, Mrs. Hatterby raced up the stairs to comfort Angel one last time and bid her farewell.
“Mother will bring you a nice new gown and a pretty new dolly,” she cooed.
Angel was silent. Just go, she thought. Go away. When she determined that she’d pouted the appropriate amount of time, she turned over and pecked her mother on the cheek. “I’ll miss you very much,” she said.
“Of course, my darling Angel,” she said. “And I you.”
Once they were gone, Angel scrambled downstairs and ran to the kitchen, where Nanny was already pulling down tins of flour and sugar from the shelves.
“I didn’t mean it!” Angel said.
Nanny turned and gave the girl a wry smile. “Well, yah,” said Nanny. “I know tat already witout you telling me.” She clomped a tin of alum onto the tabletop and then put on her apron. “You should be one of tem actresses on stage.” Nanny took Angel’s face in her hands and turned it this way and that. “So pale! Have you been sick again wit the stomach ailments? I just don’t understand it.” She dropped her hand. “Well, I better get to work making you healty again. You never get sick on my foodt.”
“Do you think I’ll find a husband if I’m so pale?” said Angel. “I want a good one. Like Father.”
“Yah,” said Nanny. She sighed and put her hand to her heart. “Tat’s all I ever wantedt too. Until my childrent came. Then chiltrent are ta most important thing. They are a credit to all ta good work teir motters put into tem. Now let’s make kringles.”
Angel chewed the inside of her cheek.
Nanny’s fish soups and beef stews and braided breads and tart pies steamed the windows of the house and infused a lively aroma through every room. For Angel, whatever Nanny did breathed life into the big house. Corners that once looked dark now showcased a watering can of spring wildflowers or grasses. Formerly quiet rooms now filled with Nanny’s humming. Nanny took Angel on walks into town where she had seen other children, which was against the rules, but Angel had promised not to tell. One morning a few days after her parents had been gone, Nanny entered Angel’s bedroom early and pulled back the heavy curtains, though it was only barely daylight.
Angel startled from a dream, rolled over, and moaned.
“Today we are going to visit all ta little childrent who don’t have a motter to take care of tem,” said Nanny. She pulled open drawers, grabbing fresh underthings for Angel.
“Mother says to keep the curtains closed while I’m dressing.” Angel stretched her limbs. “Where are their mothers?”
“Most of tem diedt,” said Nanny. She tossed a few silky things onto Angel’s bed. “And now ta goodt sister and Big Waters take care of tem all. How’s your tummy today? Your color is pink and rosy.”
Angel sat up. “I feel wonderful.” Her dark hair cascaded like a glossy mudslide. “That’s nice of tem to take care of all tose children.” She flopped back down in the blankets. “Are tay your friendts?”
Nanny came to the bed and smacked the tops of Angel’s feet. “Ton’t talk like me or your motter will not let me take care of you anymore. Say them, not tem. But yes. Tay are my friendts.” She pulled Angel up by the arms. “You are getting too big to have me dress you, young lady.”
“I like having you dress me,” Angel said. “Am I wearing something beautiful today? I want to.”
“All your gowns are beautiful,” said Nanny. “You are a spoilt little girl, you know. Some girls only have one dress for ta week and one dress for Sunday.” She pulled a brown silk dress out of the drawer and snapped the wrinkles out.
“I didn’t know tat,” said Angel. She looked out the window and wondered if anyone could see her.
Nanny smacked her feet again.
Angel giggled. “I like to talk like you do,” Angel said. “I like the way it sounds. How do you know these women?”
Nanny pulled the nightgown over Angel’s head. “When my husband and children diedt, I got very sad. My mind was not right. I heard ta voices of my childrent all night. I tought I saw tem aroundt ta house. Finally my neighbors took me to ta sister and she took goodt care of me. Andt now I repay her kindnesses and bring her food for all her orphans.”
Nanny pulled Angel’s arms to stand her up and slip on her dress. “You heard voices?” Angel asked.
Nanny thought for a minute. “I tought I was. But I was just mourning. Sometimes I tink I can still here my little Olga. She was ta baby. But. It’s my mind playing tricks.”
“They aren’t real?”
“No, my childrent are deadt andt in heaven with their fotter.”
“I don’t hear dead voices either,” Angel said. She lifted her arms.
“Well, I wouldt hope not,” Nanny said. She slipped the dress over Angel’s head.
Angel scooped her hair out of the dress’s neckline. “Does the sister have any of her own children?” She put a strand of her hair in her mouth and sucked.
“No. Her heart is reservedt for ta orphans.” Nanny worked at the buttons on the back of the gown.
Angel looked out the window, across the way, where she could see the top of the infirmary in the distance. “My mother says to stay away from those orphans because they are filthy and naughty and will get lice in my hair.”
Nanny exhaled. “Goodt Lordt,” she whispered. She pulled the strand of hair out of Angel’s mouth. “Let’s brush tis mop.”
“Make it like yours,” said Angel. “With the coiled braids on either side, like breakfast bread.”
“Whatever you say, your highness.” She brushed and then parted Angel’s hair, lovingly, Angel thought. Nothing felt so good as Nanny’s fingers in her hair.
“Do you miss your children, Nanny?” said Angel.
Nanny rested her hands on Angel’s head for a bit. Angel could feel the weight of them, heavy and grave. “Yes,” she said. “Very much.”
“What happened to them?”
Nanny’s fingers moved again. “Two summers ago.” Nanny took three sections of hair and began twisting. “My husbandt andt I had just finishedt our woodt house. It was very nice. Very clean. Very straight andt bright. We movedt all of our tings andt our girls, Hannah andt Olga, from ta
dugout to ta house. Tay were so happy!” She held on to the end of Angel’s braid with one hand, pulled a tie from her apron pocket, and secured the braid end. “We were in ta house but a week when a big storm came in ta night. My husbandt said to take Olga andt he grabbedt Hannah. We opened ta front door. Hail. Rain. A terrible, noisy windt.” She spun the braid around its base andt secured it with pins. “We ran for the oldt dugout. But we didn’t make it. The windt was too strong. The roof of our house blew apart. It hit my Jan andt Hannah. I was hit in the back of the headt wit—I don’t know what. Olga was torn from my arms andt up into ta sky. I foundt her the next day in ta prairie. She looked as if she were only sleeping.” Nanny turned Angel and began braiding the other side. “But her neck was brokedt.”
Angel’s face felt hot. “I’m sorry, Nanny,” she said.
“Oh Angel.” She tied the end of her braid. “Tank you. All we all can do is go forwardt. Forever and ever, forwardt.” She coiled up the braid and secured it tight. “Go forwardt or die. Remember tat, Angel, when hardt times trouble you.”
27
Angel and Clement
CLEMENT’S LIMBS TWITTERED. He couldn’t sit still. He thought about taking a stroll in the woods. He liked to walk, to wander, to see new sights, meet new people, but only if someone came with him. Mother St. John was always too busy. Big Waters was willing, but too slow. Big Waters said he was like a tree, always wanting to climb higher and spread outward and sway on the wind, but only when secured safely to the earth. Clement liked that comparison and thought it a right one.
Clement sat in the window, wiggling a loose tooth. He stared up at the big house, hoping the girl would come to the window. Each time he saw a movement behind the glass, his heart would thump, and he’d strain his eyes to see if it was her, but he hadn’t seen her in nearly a week.
“You need to find something to do,” said Mother St. John. “It’s not healthy for a boy to sit and gawk out the window all day.” Then she came and put her hand on Clement’s head. “Open up. Is your tooth loose?”
Clement clamped his mouth shut.
“Open up, I said,” said Mother.
“Don’t pull it out!” said Clement.
“Well, I won’t, but you’ve got to keep your fingers out of your mouth. It’s filthy.”
“All right.” Clement pointed out the window. “Mother, do you know the people who live in the big house?”
Mother St. Johns looked out. “Yes, dear. I do.” But she offered no more details, and Clement didn’t ask. She had the look of a woman with a lot on her mind and a lot of work to do. She often had lines of worry around her eyes and mouth and two wrinkles of concentration between her eyes. Often lack of sleep left dark circles beneath her eyes, particularly after nights of whispering, coffee making, shuffling across the floorboards, and moving in weary travelers, many of whom spoke emphatically of their gratitude in deep voices heavy with the accent of folks from the South, until Mother St. John shushed them and told them of the dreaming children in the orphanage.
Clement knew he should not be curious, that it was a sin to be nosy, but these nights thrilled him out of his bed and to the door of the room in which he slept. He’d watch through the crack to see Mother St. John leading Negro men first to the kitchen, where she’d feed them, and then out the front door into the night without a lantern. Then Clement would sneak to the window and try to see. He’d press his ear to the glass and try to listen. He’d see nothing and hear little but the rustling of branches and leaves and the scrape of a door being opened and then closed.
“Mother, who was that who came into the orphanage last night?” Clement said.
“Why are you restless today?” Mother St. John said. “Sit still and say your rosary if you can’t think of anything better to do than bother me.”
Clement longed for the day when he’d be privy to all the knowledge he wanted, the day when if he asked a question, he’d get an answer. Childhood seemed like one unanswered question after another, met by various ploys to distract him. He told himself that he’d ask Big Waters later. Her answers were intolerably long and slow and encrypted in stories of animals and weather, but after he thought on them some, they usually revealed morsels of truth. “Yes, Mother,” said Clement. “Our Father—”
“That’s a good boy,” said Mother St. John. Then she walked away.
Clement mindlessly chanted his prayers, but he was thinking about the girl in the big house, and he was thinking about the voice. A soft, high, but serious voice, one that at first felt like a moth flutter in his ear and sounded as light as bat wings in the night. He didn’t know for sure whether the voice came from a ghost or a trickster or a saint. He had no proof that the voice belonged to the girl in the window, but he felt that it might, and that hope made him less afraid of it. He was determined to be bold and ask the voice the next time he heard it. He would be courageous and demand an answer. He feared that the voice might ignore him or distract him, the way the adults did, and that again he’d have to wait to know.
Waiting too was another thing he longed to grow out of. When I’m an adult, he thought, I won’t have to wait.
Mother St. John appeared with a pot of oatmeal. Clement articulated another Hail Mary.
“Say them like you mean them or they don’t count,” Mother St. John warned. Then she whispered, “I’m doing my best.” Clement knew that she herself was talking to the Virgin.
Clement prayed louder. “Holy Mary, Mother of God . . .”
“The Virgin Mary’s not deaf,” said Mother St. John. She shifted the pot from one hip to the other. “Your words must come from within, from your inner spirit.”
“But why do I have to say so many?” Clement whined.
“It’s our tradition, child,” said Mother St. John. “It’s the way we’ve always done it and the way we’ll always do it.”
“It’s boring,” he said.
“If it’s boring, you’re not praying hard enough,” she said, her voice rising.
“Can I do them outside at least?” Clement said. “Under the trees, where it’s interesting?”
Mother St. John paused, sighing. “I suppose,” she said. “I can’t see the Virgin Mary having any objection to a boy saying his rosary outdoors under the protection of the world God created. Go ahead.”
Clement ran toward the door.
“On your knees, please!” Mother St. John shouted after him.
Outside, Clement picked a tree and knelt. In this tree lived a particularly interesting pair of squirrels who were thieves. He’d seen them climb into other trees, enter other squirrels’ knots, steal nuts, and scurry back to their own knot in this tree. He started his prayers while looking around, hoping to spot them doing something worth watching. Clement was nine prayers into a decade when he heard the voice trilling through the rustling of pine branches and over the warbling of spring birds, cardinals, sparrows, and chickadees. His heart quickened. He recognized the voice. He stopped chanting his prayers and listened.
“Do you think the other children will like me?” the voice said.
He wondered if the voice was real or in his head.
Another voice, a different and older one, said, “Yah. If you’re nice andt not naughty or spoilt.”
“Do you think they’ll think I’m pretty?” The familiar voice again.
Clement’s waiting was over. It was her. He sucked in his breath and tried to calm his heart, which was beating like thunder. He sat very still as the voices approached the Home for Orphans and Infirmed.
“Well yah, but that’s not the most important ting in the worldt, you know.”
“It is to Mother.”
“Goodt Lordt,” said the older voice. “You shouldt go to ta school here andt learnt to readt,” said the tall woman. “Readting is important.”
“This place is a school too?” asked the girl. “And a place for orphans?”
“Yah, it is,” said the tall woman. “You shouldt be here every day filling your mindt with sens
e.”
“I don’t think Mother would allow me around the dirty children.”
And then he saw the pair through a break in the tree trunks. A tall blond woman holding the hand of a girl, his own age, his own height, gliding through the trees, their skirts waving and boots crunching. His skin rippled like the surface of a lake in a shower. Speak, he thought. Speak again.
“I feel strange,” said the girl. She put her hand to her waist.
Clement felt strange too. The voice was hers, the ghost voice he sometimes heard. The glassy sound was gone, but the voice was certainly the one that haunted him.
The tall woman slowed down and then stopped.
“Oh no,” she said. She took the girl’s face in her hands. “Your tummy feeling sick again?”
Clement watched and listened, mesmerized. He thought he should call out to them, to let them know he was there, but he couldn’t. He hoped they were real but searched the figures up and down to be sure. Were they walking or floating? Were they solid or see-through? Did they have eyes or dark holes? Was that hair or the cloak of a spirit? He didn’t move but felt a strong urge to urinate. He held it back.
The girl shook her head. “No,” she said. “Not like that. Something else.” She grabbed her own arm. “I feel like something’s pulling on me.” Then she scratched the bun above her ear. “And this one feels too tight. Like my hair’s being grabbed out of my head.”
“Well, I can loosen tat,” said the tall woman. She pulled the girl close to her. “Let me see.”
The girl scratched some more. “No. Leave it. It’s fine.” She stepped back and looked around. “I think it’s just the air.”
“Oh,” said the tall woman. She put her hand to her shoulders and looked at her feet. “I droppedt my shawl.” They both turned and looked behind them. “There it is,” said the tall woman, pointing back from where they came. “You go on up to the door andt knock. I’ll catch up.” The woman ran back and the girl stood alone. The girl started again down the path, toward the building, toward Clement.
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