The Tenth Girl

by Sara Faring

  I am yours. You are mine. The color cannot be stripped out of us.

  How enraged I was, too, that she spoke of color being stripped from us by them, when she had allowed the color to be stripped from herself and her countrymen long ago, deciding what was black and what was white. All in an effort to be strong.

  I waited for a long time in the cupboard, shivering and crying some minutes, incandescent with rage others, as silently as I could bear. This required the repetitive slamming and mashing of my good-for-nothing face with my obedient, soldierly hands. She hadn’t turned off the stove, oddly, and the oil bubbled and burned, adding to my panic. I could smell the scorching from the cupboard. It was a wonder it didn’t burn the apartment building down. When I was about to leave the cupboard—certain that hours had passed, my bladder full to bursting—I heard footsteps and tensed up.

  “Margarita Victoria,” called the woman. Crisp and unapologetic, unruffled and fully justified. “Margarita Victoria, you shouldn’t be here,” she said. “Come out. We’re here to help you. We’re here to protect you.” I didn’t say anything. I was raised to have faith in strangers but never the government. I can’t know what they would’ve done to me. Hopefully, I will never know. “Your mother was not who she said she was. She was a spy against the state. A guerrilla agent.”

  At the time, I clamped my teeth down on my tongue, despite recognizing the truth in her words. My mother was no spy, but she did resist oppression in the ways a professor could. She stuck fast to her principles.

  All I wanted was to step out of the cupboard and beg her to reconsider. I would have told her that my mother was a teacher. Too passionate, surely, and a single mother, which might have been a shameful stain on a Catholic society, but she managed the role of two parents well enough for me. I noticed that I didn’t have a father far less than I should have. She was the best cook of milanesas and best inventor of bedtime stories, a distinction quite separate from reader. She smelled of backyard honeysuckle and milk and tried to treat others with kindness. She believed she could bring out the best in every soul, even if it wasn’t that soul’s impression of its best, and she would do so even for this woman’s blackened and hardened one. But I bit my tongue, too sane to believe she was telling the truth, too afraid to disobey my mother, and waited until the woman left. I relieved myself in the corner, terrified the trickling sound would call them back out, and swallowed my own saliva until my mouth felt as dry as cotton. I crept out of the cupboard a good day later. I saw the charred pan on the stove, no longer burning. Even a monster had its limits, I wanted to believe, and that woman had spared me and my neighbors by shutting off the gas flame. I gathered a few possessions. Too few, in retrospect. And then I climbed aboard the bus to my godmother’s house.

  * * *

  When she finishes, her face is as pale as snow.

  I’m speechless. I tell myself what I feel is sympathy. Pity. But it hits me all at once, in a brain-melting surge, that what I am is awestruck. By her confidence in her vulnerability. By her truthfulness and directness. By her kindness, even now, in a universe where kindness is too often a footnote in a forgotten book in an abandoned library. By her ancientness and her freshness, all at once. It doesn’t make sense that I should find a person like this now. Here.

  “I know it’s a lot to take in. But I’m tired of following rules that don’t make sense, and I couldn’t conceal my past from you anymore,” she says. “Do you—do you think hiding here makes me a coward?”

  My palms are slick with sweat. How can I possibly answer that question? If she faced certain kidnapping and likely death by staying in the city, how could I tell her she had been wrong to flee, even if fleeing meant abandoning her mother’s fight?

  “No. You have so much courage. You made it here alone.” My heart aches. “And you’re so young. The young, the curious, we … we need to stay alive and learn everything we can. So when we’re older, we can fight smarter, together.”

  I realize how much of a hypocrite this statement makes me: We need to stay alive? Really, Angel? But speaking the words to her makes me believe them. Fun fact: The heart can pump us full of mind-altering poisons forever. Even when we’ve done absolutely everything in our power to kill it.

  She looks at me strangely, then, her eyes glowing with sadness.

  “Thank you,” she whispers.

  “And I’ll be by your side tonight,” I say, because no other words will do.

  She reaches for my hand, her fingers brushing the veins pulsing on top of the bones. “You’re one of the good ones, Dom.”

  Sometimes I wonder if she felt she knew Dom at all before me. If she did, she must have noticed a difference. She must have noticed more than just snatches of my influence, more than the edges of my soul. She must wonder what happened to him. Because I’m not as good an actor as I’d like to believe.

  But I don’t ask her if she wonders any of this. I just smile, eyes wrinkling.

  You’re not special, I hear Charon say. She’s not connecting with you because you’re different. She thinks you’re someone you’re not. She’ll never meet the real you. She’ll never know the real you.

  But even if that’s true, I can’t ignore this new desire in me, a desire rooted deep, deep down in my spongy rotten core. A desire I can’t identify at first. It’s a cousin of that searing curiosity—of that unquenchable thirst to learn more about her.

  It’s a desire never to betray this person, and recognizing it sends a tremor of acid-edged fear through me. Because I already have, time and time again.

  17

  MAVI: ARGENTINA, JUNE 1978

  I confess: In the royal-purple room, I bare myself, weaving for Dom the gloomy tale that roots me. Somehow—somehow—I leave feeling as if I, the impoverished orphan Mavi Quercia, could carry and reshape the entire broken world, when perhaps a wiser woman would feel vulnerable and more than a touch afraid. But the truth holds: Though I may wonder why Dom changed, I no longer question who he is now, not at all. This Dom is good, no matter what secrets the hidden nooks in him contain.

  Even so: I can’t reconcile the confidence I feel around Dom, his oversize hands warm gloves around mine, with the inexplicable helplessness I feel when thinking about these unknowable spirits haunting the girls. How can I kill worry without also murdering that precious tenderness I feel? I think they stem from the same part of my overactive brain. I need a noble distraction until the late evening. So before I return to my room, I deviate from the prescribed and lawful path to check on poor old Lamb.

  I knock on his door once, hearing a muffled noise from the inside. Come in, it might’ve been. I push inside and find him wearing a voluminous taupe sweater and pants, seated in a plush cloth chair. His forest-green room is blessed by two of these chairs, plus a narrow bookshelf, as well as a cocktail-size table crowned by a few glasses. He reads a mathematics journal by the look of the boring, numeral-filled cover, and he perks up when he sees me.

  “Miss Mavi?” he asks, setting down the journal. All-white eyelashes fringe his eyes like snowflakes. “You’ve caught me up when I should be resting in bed. Dr. Molina will be none too pleased. Oh, but it is a pleasure to see you!”

  I can’t help but smile. He looks well—full-faced, only a shade greener than usual.

  “How are you feeling, Lamby?” I ask.

  He smiles warmly. “Much better, my dear. It’s so kind of you to visit—and the girls, the girls, too. They brought me sweet alfajores with dulce de leche and warm tea!” He motions at an empty mug, eyes bright. “I had a bit of a scare, that’s all. You know the elderly and their health—nothing to be done about it but keep a good attitude. And I am much improved.” He gestures to the matching tufted chair opposite his. “Please make yourself comfortable, won’t you? I must be a good host. Ah—wait. I’ve just the thing.” He stands, his back cracking, and pulls a book from the shelf titled The Blind Widow Weeps. “I have a delicious treat for you.”

  I sit, settling into the cushioning.
“A novel?”

  “Not quite,” he says, chuckling. With quivering fingers, he wiggles a yellow-labeled bottle of brandy out from behind the book: a secret stash. His eyes sparkle when he faces me. “Have a tipple for me? A bit of sobremesa. It will calm my own nerves to smell the stuff. But Dr. Molina’s strictly prohibited me from drinking it, naturally.”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” It would take the edge off the evening, but I glance at the door, wary, and he notices, chuckling again.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Miss Mavi. But I’ve never been caught before, and we shan’t be caught now. If anything were to happen, anyway, we would blame my influence.”

  He pours me an amber glass on the antique, dusted-over table in the corner, and I sip the brandy, out of curiosity more than anything else. It’s punchier than I would’ve thought, tasting of dried apricot, lip-smacking plum, and cinnamon. Delicious indeed.

  Sitting once more, he clears his throat and moves his long fingers along the journal edge. “Now. I must ask, while I have you here—how are Michelle and Gisella? Dr. Molina suggested there was a bug going around. I’m concerned they haven’t had her full attention on account of me.”

  I run a fingertip along the glass’s edge. My head feels heavier after my second sip—a pleasant weight. “Oh, Lamby. Don’t even think of it. The girls will be fine. They have to be,” I say, sounding hollow as ever—and possibly tipsy, which is near impossible. He watches me intently, urging me along in silence. And I speak, explaining the girls’ conditions as I run my hands across the chair’s seams. It doesn’t make sense to unload on poor Lamb, but something spins inside my weighted head already—perhaps it’s the root of my tongue, feeling light as air.

  He closes his journal. “This is serious indeed. Do you have any theories as to what is causing the disturbance?”

  I look toward the door and drop my voice to a whisper. “Spirits?” Could it be the first time I’ve spoken the word aloud as a serious possibility? A blush creeps across my cheeks.

  “Oh dear. Ghosts,” he whispers. “Victims of the virus, you mean?”

  I want to take him by the shoulders and shake him. It’s not a virus, I want to shout. “Not really, no.”

  He smiles. “Yes, I, too, believe that Madame De Vaccaro likes to whitewash history,” he says unexpectedly. “She knows more about this school than you might think. I overheard her telling Sara odd details about the Vaccaro School’s sordid history when the girl was ill, and I was surprised, to say the least.” I look up, surprise of my own cutting through my tipsiness. But he doesn’t catch my eye. “Should we make contact with these ghosts? Ask if they’re incensed Zapuche or irate De Vaccaros?”

  I fail to read his expression. “You’re teasing me, Lamb.”

  “Oh, Mavi, dear, I am no godlike figure who understands why one being should exist and not another,” he says, watching me carefully. I must shiver, because sympathy floods his eyes, and he moves to tap my hand. “Ghosts or not, you mustn’t be afraid of what’s to come, my dear. We mustn’t try to kill fear in its bed. We must shake its hand, as it is a noble adversary, and inform it that we have a long list of tasks to accomplish, and it may try its best to stop us, but we plan on accomplishing them all.”

  I exhale, willing myself to take his words to heart and calm down. I swirl the brandy in the glass. It coats the edges and melts beautifully along the curved sides. “You’re truly enlightened, Lamb. An underfed, overfurred Buddha.”

  He chuckles to himself and tops off my brandy, only to regale me with one story, then another, then another, culled from some strange part of his memory, interspersed with the occasional math-related joke, as no evening with Lamb would be complete without that oddity; my worries dissolve, and I myself melt into his chair, the glass of brandy nestled in my lap. He nudges me awake some time later, and all I remember is stumbling to my feet, but I arrive at my room without being detected, sleepy and warm, dipped into that misleading, milky limbo between reality and dreams, where nothing truly seems to matter to us, yet we are closest to the black abyss running parallel to our world.

  * * *

  When I wake, parched and gasping for water, it’s after midnight. I’m late to meet Dom, still dressed in my day clothes. I tug on my coat and slip out the door, shivering. The hallway is so deathly silent, the sort of quiet that makes your pulse throb in your ears. Not a sliver of gray moonlight ekes past the autumn grime on the skylights, and dust chokes the air, so that my breaths come in ragged. My mouth feels lined in soot. I tiptoe down the hallway, past Morency’s room, down the broken staff staircase, expertly navigating around the missing steps. I turn right into the stone corridor leading to the family’s quarters, down a long stretch, hearing the discordant and melancholic grinding of an appliance somewhere, and I climb up to the door of Domenico’s blue room, noiseless as a mouse. I knock once. I wait, breathless. My blood cools in my veins.

  Footsteps patter against the floorboards in another area of the family branch—perhaps Carmela returning from seeing Michelle. I wait, hunching against the wall unconsciously to make myself smaller. The creaking of a door somewhere. Shallow breaths—my own? I rub at my arms as furiously as the silence allows, fighting a building chill. I knock a second time.

  Are the spirits here right now, watching me? I find myself thinking about snippets from my conversation with Lamb: Who are these ghosts, exactly, and where do they come from? Does everyone pass through this forsaken place as they cross over? I think of the many who have disappeared in the past few years. I place one palm against the wall beside Dom’s door—if the walls could only talk.

  I’m about to try the doorknob when it rattles. I fall back on my heels, and the door opens, exposing a slender, looming shadow.

  Thank the Lord. It’s him. Dom. Smiling, his blue eyes sharp when hit by a patch of rare moonlight. Every time I am with him I am surprised by how concrete and alive he feels next to me—so much more than anyone else in this strange place.

  “Ready?” he asks, his voice more of a tired croak. He holds a hand to his throat. The skin there is raw. “Let’s go.”

  I fight the impulse to take him by the arm, as I do Yesi. He leads the way down the dark hallway, past his room, loose-limbed. I’m shivering, and even with him in front of me, the panic threatens to return, nestling itself into my throat. The hallway narrows, curves. I thought the sickroom was next door to his. I thought we were steps away, but I must have been mistaken. The carpet is wet here, squelching beneath my shoes, but soaked through by what? There are no windows, no skylights. The air asphyxiates with its noxious thickness.

  But at last, we arrive in front of the sickroom, and I struggle for breath before pressing open the door. Everything is still. The room, lit by a bay window overlooking the ice, glows. When the clouds part, the ice takes on a phosphorescent quality at night. I spot one familiar lump in bed, rising and falling. It’s ominous how rhythmic the movement is. I sweep back the sheet, arm unfeeling: Michelle’s sleeping, sandwiched beneath the covers. She smiles in her sleep, cheeks the color of iced-over greenery in the moonlight.

  “She looks fine,” I whisper, shaking my head. “She looks absolutely fine.” And if Gisella isn’t here, it means she was well enough to sleep in her own room after her brief reappearance at dessert.

  “You’re right to worry, though,” Dom whispers back, rubbing his hands together.

  In the moonlight, Dom’s face looks ghostly and melancholy, the skin nearly transparent. Squinting, I think I can see the veins carrying life through him. I’m struck by how strange bodies are as shells for souls. How peculiar it is that memory funnels your love for someone in the quirks of their body. I feel I love my mother in the wide and proud smile her flat face made, in her solid hands and delicate, overlong fingernails. But these features mean nothing at all at the end of days, besides being private totems of that love. I sit beside Michelle, who doesn’t stir. I see the Falcone girl’s face on her, recriminating me, and I wonder again what kind of manip
ulation this is on the part of the universe.

  My hand hovers by her cheek, as if I can gather some clue about the quality of her sleep—is it healing? I’ll feel terrible if I wake her during her first hours of good sleep in days, if not weeks. We wait, and we wait, but nothing changes in the room, nothing changes for her, her wide and catlike smile. I feel a bit dumb in the head, a bit disappointed, if that word can be used to describe missing something you fear seeing so much. I’d expected a confrontation. I’d expected evidence … I’d expected my own fear to surge up.

  Dom comes up behind me. “Maybe they’re leaving her alone tonight,” he says, breaking off. We ignore the implication—that they have moved on to someone else.

  We wait there longer than we should. Michelle doesn’t stir once, her breathing soft and steady. I sit beside Dom on the floorboards by the door. His fingers brush mine, and they’re warmer than average, febrile. Closing my eyes, it’s as if I can see a warm and golden light emerge from the pores of Domenico’s transparent skin. I shudder as it suffuses my fingers through Domenico’s, seeking, hoping, healing.

  * * *

  After I adjust Michelle’s blankets, we leave the room. Outside the door, I look down the shaded and damp hall. It’s a long way to the girls’ rooms.

  “Should we check on the others?” I ask, struggling to swallow. “We better check on the others.”

  Dom looks at me, eyes dark and unreadable. I hear the creaking sound once more—emanating from somewhere in the walls. It’s the sound of someone unwelcome opening a splintered screen door.

  “Better not,” Dom says, head following the noises. “Wait here.” He turns a corner, and I’m left alone.

  “Wait,” I whisper, pulling down my sleeves to cover my bare hands. “Wait!”