by Leslie Parry
The baby, she remembered now. The baby had cried that night, hungry and wet, while she and Orchard Broome turned down the bedsheets and emptied the jar of blood. It wailed even louder—an animal shriek—as Alphie lay half-conscious among the teeth, a sharp pain in her groin, an echo in her ears. She struggled to open her eyes. She saw the Signora bend over the basket and lift the baby in her arms. She tried to say something, to lift her head, but the Signora just cradled the baby and turned away, shushing. Alphie felt her body tremble, her face go numb. Her eyes were still open but everything was dark. All she could hear was the creak of a chair and the Signora’s voice—a lullaby, it seemed—quieter and quieter, a sound like water, singing like the sea.
TWENTY-TWO
ALL MRS. BLOODWORTH SAID WAS: “ODILE.”
Odile stood up, stumbled back. “How do you know my name?”
Mrs. Bloodworth reached for her again, but Odile turned and ran, knocking over the pots and tool jars on the table, ripping through the fronds, slamming the hothouse door with such force she thought the glass would shatter. She rushed across the roof, back inside, locking the rickety door behind her—a latch and a chain. She was shaking and faint, but still she hurried, half-slipping, down the stairs.
On the bottom floor she heard noises coming from the kitchen. The clank of pans on a griddle, water glugging hollowly in a cup. She moved slowly down the hall, drawing the veil from her face, her nose filled with the smells of orange spice and boiled milk. She checked the dagger at her ankle, then peered around the doorway. The scrub-girl, Mouse, stood at the counter, peeling raw onions with her fingers, scowling and sniffling. There was no knife in her boot, Odile saw—it was out on the chopping block, a cheap toy thing made of wood. A whirligig lay beside it, at rest in a puddle of onion juice. As Mouse turned to drop the skins in the bin, Odile grabbed her.
“You know who I am!” she said, drawing the girl close and twisting her arm. “And so does Mrs. Bloodworth, so don’t try and fool me.”
Mouse grunted and pushed back, her nostrils flaring. “What did you tell her?”
“Where’s my sister?”
“She—she can’t know! I’ll be in trouble!”
“Know about what? What did you do?”
Mouse wriggled and kicked, tried to pull away. Odile reached out and dragged her hand through the puddle of onion juice, then slicked the girl’s face, down from her brows to her downy lip, smearing it into her eyes.
“What happened to my sister!”
Mouse hollered and threw back her head. “I was scared you knew!” She blinked frantically, eyes popping and red. “I thought that’s why you was here!”
“Knew what?” Odile grabbed both of her wrists and gave her a shake. “Why did you put that bunko in my coffee? What happened?”
Tears chased down Mouse’s cheeks. She pushed her face into her sleeve and moaned. “It was my fault.”
“What was?” Odile squeezed her wrists, brought her closer. “What was your fault?”
Mouse rolled her head back and forth, her dark hair shaking loose, the water running faster from her mouth and her nose. “It was my job, you see—it’s always my job. I’m the Hood.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was supposed to take the baby that night.” She sniffed. “I didn’t think anything bad would happen. How could it? Everything was planned. It’s always planned!”
“My sister’s baby? Take her where?”
“To—to the new mother.”
Odile thought of the privy behind the butcher shop; Belle’s letter written in the night, despondent. “Something went wrong, do you understand? Tell me what you’ve done, and hurry.”
“Mrs. B. can’t know—she’ll murder me!”
“Tell me now or I’ll murder you myself.”
“You’re as mean as she is,” Mouse growled, but went on. “Belle made me a deal—if I let her go in my place, she would find something out for me.”
“All right, she took the baby to the mother herself. Then what happened?”
“I wish I knew. I wish she hadn’t muddled the whole thing! I’ve been on pins! I didn’t think anything bad would happen. I just wanted to know!”
“Know what? What was she going to find out for you?”
“The—the names of my parents.”
“Your parents?” Odile let her go, stood back.
Mouse rubbed sulkily at her wrists, dragged the corner of her apron over her eyes, blew her nose. “Don’t you understand?” she whispered. “I was one of those babies—the babies given up.”
Odile looked at her standing there, hissing back tears, pulling and knotting the apron in her hand.
“She said she would look in Mrs. Bloodworth’s ledger for me,” Mouse went on, “the one with all the names, but she never did. She just left. She took the baby, and she never came home! I didn’t know how to explain it to Mrs. B. when she was still gone in the morning. So I lied—I told her I’d done it and everything had gone fine. But that was two days ago now, and Belle still isn’t home, and Mrs. B. is worried sick. She thinks maybe Belle just got sad and left us with no word, but before long she’ll know something’s wrong. And she’ll know it’s my fault. You can’t tell her!”
“The ledger”—Odile’s skin started to prickle—“where is it?”
Mouse stared at her now, eyes clearing. She licked at her teeth. “I’ll show you,” she said slowly, “but only if you promise you’ll look in it for me.”
“And it has all the names in it, everyone who ever came through here?”
She nodded. “But you can’t tell Mrs. B.”
“I won’t if you won’t. So show it to me—now.”
Mouse led her through a pantry, past a tub-sink and a drying-horse and a rack of black cloaks. They moved down the hall, over a floor with a dingy runner. Odile peered into each room as they passed. In one she saw a small bed, neatly made, and magazine drawings pasted to the walls—cherubs and roses, holiday seascapes, Gibson girls in candy-pink dresses. A table was littered with handkerchiefs, combs, bobbins, and yarn. There was a sewing machine, an older model, with a baby’s gown abandoned beneath the needle.
“That’s where she stayed,” Mouse said. “It’s the best room. I always wanted it. But—” she frowned, then lowered her voice. “What if the parents come here and say she never made it? What if she took the baby herself and ran away? Mrs. Bloodworth will know I’m a liar. And then what—she’ll send me down to the Frog and Toe, and I can’t live there, I would perish.”
She took a ring of keys from her pocket, shook one loose, then hesitated. “You’ll really find it for me?”
“Of course,” Odile said. “But you have to show me first.”
At the end of the hall Mouse unlocked the door to Mrs. Bloodworth’s office. Inside she fumbled with a candle—Odile heard the drag and hiss of a match. Then the wick caught, and the room seemed to open and glow. She saw a simple desk and wingback chair, bookshelves lined with old atlases and medical encyclopedias and what looked like a dusty flint of bone in a jar. Behind the desk stood a Chinese screen, inlaid with golden tigers.
Mouse jimmied open a drawer and pulled out a book—heavy and clothbound, frayed from years of thumbing. Odile lifted the cover. The whole thing fell open in the middle, where the spine had cracked. She leafed through, studying the snarl of penmanship in the candlelight, the columns of blotted burgundy ink. She couldn’t decipher how it was organized—everything was annotated, abbreviated, cross-referenced—and the handwriting was so small it was almost impossible to read. She turned through the pages, hurriedly and damp-fingered, looking for her sister’s name.
“Why would you make Belle do this for you?” she asked Mouse, who hovered by her side, leaning over the book and breathing loudly through her mouth. Odile’s eyes began to water at the smell of the onion. “Why couldn’t you just look for the names yourself, if you already knew it was here?”
“Oh.” The girl whispered, then sniffed. “I can’t read
.”
There was a knock and a bang from a floor above—Mrs. Bloodworth’s voice, calling for Mouse. The sound of rattling, pounding; a loud thump.
“Hurry!” Mouse said.
Odile turned the pages, back and forth, looking for something, anything at all—a word, a name.
Then she saw it.
CHURCH.
She pressed her finger down and ran it, trembling, across the page. But it wasn’t Belle’s name that followed.
CHURCH, Friendship W.
She stared at the words, faded and blurred beneath the white of her fingertip. How could their mother have been there? She’d never given up a baby. Had she?
She scanned back and looked at the date: September 30, 1875. Almost twenty years ago.
ACQUIRED THEREIN:
CHILD 14
Sex: Boy/androgyne
Spec: Brown eyes, hair; abnormal sex organs
CHILD 21
Sex: Girl
Spec: Brown eyes, hair; multiple appendages
PAID
She put her hand to her throat. Aldovar and Georgette. Her mother had purchased them here, from Mrs. Bloodworth. Perhaps Belle had known about it.
Above she heard the door break open, footsteps fast on the stairs, Mrs. Bloodworth’s voice, calling out.
“Am I there?” Mouse leaned over. “Hurry, tell me! Is it that one?”
Odile rummaged in her pocket for the envelope, then held it out to the girl. She could see it now: the stout frame and storky legs, the puckered mouth, the wobbly chin. “Your mother’s name is Miss Lillian Edgar. She’s a very kind woman and she plays at the Garden Theater in Greenwich Village.”
Mouse reached for it, but Odile drew it back. “First tell me. Where was Belle taking the baby?”
Mouse looked quickly over her shoulder, then lowered her voice. “To the undertaker’s wife,” she said. “On Orchard and Broome.”
TWENTY-THREE
SYLVAN STARED AT THE HOUSE ON BROOME STREET. IT WAS one of the few that still stood between the tenements, two stories of brick with a poorly shingled roof. The black curtains were drawn against the sun, and a wreath of flowers hung on the door, already limp in the noonday heat. The sight of it made him shiver. Even on this steamy summer day, no one was leaning from an open window or gathering on the stoop. The whole place was quiet, as if it were holding its breath.
A carriage waited at the curbside. It was polished so black he saw his own reflection in it, glowing like an apparition. It wasn’t like the morgue wagons from last summer, with shrouded bodies piled on top of each other. He recognized the wedded stinks of flesh and medicine, the black gleam of the chassis in the fractured light. A funeral carriage.
Beside him another man, a neighbor carrying a bucket of eggshells and coffee grounds, paused on his way to the ash-barrels. He lingered next to Sylvan, sucking on a messily rolled cigarette, then barked at one of his children, who was playing around the wheels of the carriage. “Smettila, ragazzo! Subito!”
The boy had found something on the ground—an artichoke, thorny and stiff. He was so slight and bony, and the vegetable so majestically rotund, that at first he was overcome with excitement. He turned it around and around in his hands, quickly at first, then slower as his elation gave way to bewilderment. He tried to bite into it like an apple, then gnawed helplessly at the stem. When he started to cry—great, gasping, frustrated sobs—his father called him back again, and he came running. The artichoke tumbled away under the carriage and came to a rest in the dust.
Sylvan stared at it for a moment, round and gray as a lopped-off head. He thought of William on the Widows’ Walk, brushing out the matted wigs—the ravenous fury in his eyes when he talked about hot cocoa and oranges.
Then he saw mourners passing around the carriage, ascending the steps to the door, murmuring to each other in Italian. One man carried a violin case, another a plate of melting chocolate. They would spend the day holding a vigil for the dead, he supposed—bringing food, taking turns comforting the bereaved, playing music to chase away the ghosts. There hadn’t been as many wakes during the winter—there were too many dying, and too quickly. For a moment Sylvan felt a ripple of jealousy—this family could mourn the dead the way they wanted to, instead of watching two strangers drag a body away down the stairs.
Sylvan turned and asked the man in Italian, “What’s happened next door?”
The man looked at him—curious at first, then disconcerted—a reaction Sylvan had come to expect, but which now only made him feel nervous.
“Parto,” the man replied. He flicked his cigarette into the dirt and grabbed his son by the shoulder, then steered him away down the street.
Childbirth.
TWENTY-FOUR
ODILE WENT AROUND THROUGH THE ALLEY, JUST AS MOUSE had said, and pushed open the gate. The yard was empty, the garden overgrown. The small carriage house was rambling and pitched, with a bank of peep-eyed windows that shone muddily in the sun. On the ground floor the doors stood open in the heat. She took a step forward and peered inside. It was the undertaker’s shop, cluttered with tools—she could smell the sponge-burn of alcohol, the raw cedar of the caskets. On the cooling-board a cat looked up from its bath, bemused.
She found a door around the side and banged it open with her hip—there, a crooked flight of stairs, stretching up into darkness. She paused for a moment, then quietly reached down to her boot and drew the dagger from its sheath. It trembled in her outstretched hand, loosening the still, humid air around her. One step at a time she made her way up the stairs, the blade glinting in the murky light, bands of iridescence a-shiver on the walls. On the last stair she paused, the dagger pointed at the door. She strained to hear a voice, a sound, anything at all, but there was only the melody of a washday song drifting in from a tenement next door. She pushed on the door with the tip of the blade. It swung open, whining on its hinges.
Beyond were two small rooms. The first thing she saw was a cradle, empty. A big, sagging bed, the sheets stormy and tossed, a dented kettle on the floor and an upturned jar beside it. At her feet lay a pillow, sliced and gutted, the feathers blown across the room. The hooked rug was stained, littered with something that looked like rice.
She tucked the dagger back in her boot and started hunting through the rooms, looking for anything that might have been her sister’s, any clue to tell her what might have happened when Belle had arrived that night with the baby. She threw open the armoire and sorted through the clothes—a beaded moiré blouse with leg-o’-mutton sleeves, custard-yellow poplin, a ratty old dressing gown—but nothing looked familiar. Everything was too dirty, too gamy-smelling and sad. She turned to the vanity, which was crowded with pots of color and cream. A paper valentine was tucked into the mirror frame. On the front, two rosy, disembodied hands held up a sentimental banner: Faithful friends forever be. Odile turned it around. The back was signed, To my own “Violetta”: Always Free.
She sat down on the stool and started turning out the drawers. It reminded her of the dressing room at their old theater. Perhaps this woman, like Belle, had been on the stage, too. Was that their bond? Was that why Belle had brought the baby here herself? She rummaged through brushes and paints, tubes of ointment and blemish cream. Wart-remover, hand balms, powder. A bar of shaving soap. A tin of razors, empty. And then, something she recognized from Aldovar’s dressing room, rolled up in the very back: a padded corset, with a leather cup at the groin. She studied it for a moment, disconcerted, then closed it away again.
Somewhere across the way people shouted and wailed. The tenement song blended with the clatter of traffic, and then—from farther away—the dirge of an old violin. Her eyes fell on a handkerchief, folded over like a dumpling on the vanity. She reached over. There was a weight to it, she felt—a shape. She unwrapped it and squinted into her palm. Twisted inside was something soft and blue, no bigger than a mouse.
She turned to the light. There, perched in her hand, offered up like a sweet. A tongue.
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br /> TWENTY-FIVE
ALPHIE ARRIVED AT THE STEPS OF THE SIGNORA’S HOUSE. There was a mourning wreath, she saw, on the door. The parlor windows were open in the heat, and she smelled the familiar, rancid musk of carnations carried out on the breeze.
She looked over her shoulder, but no one had followed her—not yet. A few of the neighbors passed by, and she fell back into the street, quick to hide her face. She worried they would stop and gape, their brows wrinkled in disbelief, but they didn’t even notice her. They moved briskly ahead, murmuring to themselves, their Italian too quiet and quick for her to make out. Three phlegmatic, fat-rumped women from the tenement next door—clad in black and linked together, drifting up the steps to the Signora’s front door. Then she understood: even though she felt obscene and exposed, here on the street—in the body of a teenaged boy—she was simply invisible. Anonymous. Just another summertime laborer, standing shirtless and breathless in the sun, waiting to join up with friends for a cold beer and a rowdy jump in the river.
Shaking, she lifted her face to the house. The wreath, the flowers, the women in black in the dead summer heat, a violin playing a funeral song beyond. What had happened, and so quickly?
She remembered the blood spilled on the floor of her bedroom, and the doctor’s words as she retched up the asylum swill: Did you do harm to another? Had she? Was it more than just a panicked nip as the Signora wrenched her up from the rug? (And why, of all things, would she have bitten the Signora right there on her hand, knowing what she’d suffered in the past?) She heard the wailing through the windows, and her skin went numb.
