Gwen guessed, “Forty-six seconds.”
We all lost. Lucy wailed herself out in one minute, ten seconds. Exhausted, she curled up next to her mother and fell asleep. Later, when she woke up, she was the most cheerful child. Even the older Mrs. Duggan complimented her, saying, “Your eyes are beautiful.”
Lucy reached up with her little hand, touched Mrs. Duggan’s baggy neck, and said most sincerely, “Your chins are beautiful, too.”
A Riddle
As Lucy napped, I thought about the boy at the cemetery and how the very next Sunday, bright yellow daffodils crowned a small jar at my parents’ grave.
Inside the jar, standing among the green pipe stems, was a rolled piece of white paper. I fished it out. In a clear hand with sharp, angular lines and no curve, someone had written:
Dear Alice,
Why is a raven like a writing desk?
Rabbit
It felt as if sunshine had burst inside me.
Grinning, I wrote back:
Dear Rabbit,
Ask the Hatter or the March Hare.
Alice
P.S. You should have something better to do with your time than waste it asking riddles that have no answers.
Then I rolled the paper and tucked it back in the jar, feeling terribly mischievous and guilty. I knew what Mother would say, if she saw me writing a note to a boy.
But it felt delicious to have a secret. That night I wrote to Merricat, telling her about Alice’s rescuer. I counted the days till Sunday, hoping to find another note.
Forever Rabbit and Forever Alice
Near the end of May, the strike ended and the miners straggled back to work. The very next Saturday, Mrs. Robson rushed home from marketing, terribly agitated. There had been an explosion in a West Pittston coal mine. Thirty-eight men and boys were trapped.
All of Scranton held its breath, praying for the trapped mine workers, but by the time rescuers reached the men, twenty had died. I prayed that Rabbit wasn’t among the dead. If he were, how would I ever know? I didn’t even know his real name.
The next two Sundays, I found no notes and no fresh flowers. I poured out my heart to Merricat, telling her I felt more lonesome than any person can bear.
The second Sunday in June, Rabbit was waiting for me. Oh, his pride! “Happy to see me?” he said, falling into step as I walked down the gravel path.
A girl should never admit that she is happy to see a boy, but I admitted that the West Pittston coal mine disaster weighed on me. “The newspapers call it a second Avondale.”
A shadow crossed his face and lingered there for a second. I looked at his hands. His fingernails bore the black lines of coal dust impossible to scrub away. Had he returned to work with the miners? Did he labor long hours underground, missing the sunlight, the scent of lilacs, the flight of a sparrow?
“Who are you?” I asked. “What is your name?”
The shadow had disappeared and his eyes were teasing again. “I might ask the same question,” he said.
It would be a lie if he said he didn’t know my name. I had seen him studying me, searching my face, the flicker of recognition. I’m sure he saw my father’s stubbornness in my chin and my mother’s willful spirit in my wide eyes.
“‘I knew who I was when I got up this morning,’” I said, “‘but I’ve changed several times since then.’”
He laughed and took off his cap and slapped the dust from it. “Fair enough,” he said. “Then you are forever Alice and I am forever Rabbit.”
He looked at me intently. Under his gaze, something about him emerged into plainer view and lingered there for a second. There was something about him that felt dangerous and yet thrilled me at the same time. I tried to put my finger on it, but couldn’t.
I looked away, toward the street where Jenkins waited patiently in the carriage, the horse flicking flies away with her tail. My legs felt a sudden urge to run to the safety of the carriage.
A Taste of Licorice
Each Sunday night, I wrote to Merricat, filling pages about Rabbit. How we met each Sunday at the cemetery. How a jar full of fresh flowers — violets, daisies, whatever bloomed — marked my parents’ graves. How we strolled the gravel path, past picnickers, some dressed in black, some in their Sunday best. How I was full of words, and happy to let them out. What did we talk about? Everything. Nothing.
Merricat asked if Rabbit was handsome. I wouldn’t call him handsome, but there was something striking that made me catch my breath and chilled me even though the sun was warm. But never for long. At night, thoughts of Rabbit warmed me.
I told Merricat how one Sunday, when Rabbit leaned closer to me, my face grew hot and my heart quickened and I couldn’t breathe. My hands turned clammy.
Will he, won’t he, will he, won’t he, will he kiss me?
I hoped so, I hoped not. Frightened, I pulled away.
For a brief second, something flashed like lightning in his eyes. What was it? Hurt, I think. Hurt that we came from different neighborhoods, lived in different worlds, had no business being together, and could never be together, except where grief had melded our worlds. What grief did he suffer? What sorrow did he bear? I don’t know. He would never say.
Rabbit didn’t understand, or perhaps he understood too well. He walked away, as if he hadn’t a care. I wanted to cry after him to wait. I wanted to fly to him, but I didn’t.
All the ride home, I felt as though I had folded into myself. I longed for Mother. I needed my mother. Would she understand? She and Father came from the same world, but it wasn’t always that way, not for their parents and grandparents.
A girl must confide in someone, and so I wrote to Merricat that night, telling her how betrayed and hurt I felt. How could Rabbit leave me? How could he walk away? Why didn’t he understand the risk I took to meet him?
I argued with myself! I was never going to the cemetery again. I was going. I didn’t want to see him. I wanted to see him. I hated him. I longed for him.
Then came the next day — the 14th of August — and another terrible explosion that killed seventeen mine workers in the Eagle Shaft in Pittston. Day in and day out, I paced the floors with worry. How would I know if Rabbit was safe, if I didn’t even know his name? I longed to talk with someone but had no one.
The next Sunday, the violets limped over the side of the jar. Loneliness and hurt and anger and self-pity and grief rolled together in my stomach in one hard lump.
Suddenly, Rabbit stepped out from behind a tall monument. His strong fingers gripped my arm. He had come. He pulled me behind the tall monument and my feet obeyed. Crying, I struck his chest with my fists. “You left me.”
He didn’t apologize. He ran his hand through my hair. The pins dropped and my hair fell loose about my shoulders. I leaned into him, despite myself. He cupped my face between his hands, and kissed me.
That night, with the gaslight turned low, I wrote to Merricat and told her that Rabbit’s kisses taste like licorice.
I Know It’s a Sin
Every few weeks, Uncle Edward traveled to Philadelphia on business. How I dreaded those days!
At tea one afternoon, Ellen said, “Mother, may I have a diary like Pringle’s?”
I dropped my teaspoon. “You’ve been prying through my things! Have you no decency?”
Ellen’s lower lip quivered. She started to cry, big sopping tears that rolled down to her chin. She had a talent for turning tears on and off. “I wasn’t prying. I saw you writing in your diary.”
Aunt Adeline glared at me. “Now look what you’ve done.” Then to Ellen, she said, “Of course, I’ll buy you a diary, my sweet. When I was your age, I kept a diary.” My aunt’s eyes brimmed with tears as she recalled her mother. “Each night, my mother read my diary and wrote notes to me. If I couldn’t think of something to write abou
t, she provided suggestions. I promise to do the same for you.”
My aunt went on to say that girls should write about the weather, visits with friends, and the books they’ve read. Girls should never indulge in fantasy or gossip.
“My mother said that the purpose of a diary is to record events,” I said. “She believed that every woman’s life is important and that we should write to make meaning out of our daily lives and our experiences.”
“Nonsense,” said Aunt Adeline. “A young lady should shine in the art of conversation, but not too brightly or no man will be interested in her.”
I disagreed. “A young woman should be comfortable in the world of ideas. She should express herself in a thoughtful and logical manner.”
My aunt’s lips twitched, but before she could respond, Gideon belched. Loudly.
Aunt Adeline’s eyes snapped! “Apologize,” she said.
But Gideon didn’t because he couldn’t. He stared at his plate.
“I said, ‘Apologize.’”
“He can’t,” I said. “He’s mute.”
“It’s not that he can’t,” said Aunt Adeline. “He won’t. He’s a willful, spoiled child and he’s refusing to talk to spite me. I will not abide a willful, spiteful child.”
She threw her napkin on the table. Her chair grated against the floor as she stood. She circled around to Gideon and grabbed his arm. She yanked him from the table and upstairs.
A door slammed shut. “Apologize,” yelled my aunt. A loud thwack followed. Again she yelled, “Apologize,” and then came another sickening thwack.
I cried out and pushed away from the table so hard my chair toppled.
“Don’t!” said Ellen. “You’ll catch it next.”
My only care was Gideon. The third blow came as I reached the stairs. I bounded up the steps, two at a time. The sound came again as I reached Gideon’s door. It was locked.
I shouted and threw myself against the door. “Don’t hit him! He doesn’t understand!”
Mercifully, I didn’t hear another blow. My aunt emerged, her eyes bright and her face flushed. In her hand, she held a leather strap. “Perhaps he understands now.”
Gideon was curled in a ball on his bed, facing the wall. Four bright red welts crisscrossed his naked back. I lunged for the strap.
She whipped the strap out of my reach and struck me, hard, telling me never to interfere with her discipline and that she was teaching Gideon and me a lesson for our own good.
After three more blows, she stopped. “That was just half the lesson. If you speak one word to your uncle, I’ll give both of you the other half.”
Would she do it? Surely she would, the next time business took Uncle Edward out of town. I didn’t care about myself, but I wouldn’t chance hurting Gideon for fear he might disappear inside himself forever.
That night, I stayed with Gideon. The welts burned like fire. I couldn’t sleep. I turned up the gas lamp, opened my diary, and listed every hateful thought that came to mind. I wrote the ugliest things I could about Aunt Adeline and Uncle Edward and Ellen. I wrote until my hand cramped and I couldn’t write any more.
I had closed the diary and turned down the gas lamp when someone rapped on Gideon’s door. It was Ellen.
“What do you want?” I said.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “About Mama.” And then, “I know it’s a sin, but sometimes I hate my mother.”
A Taste of Lye
After the whipping, Gideon vanished far inside himself, and I didn’t know if he’d ever return. Sometimes he sat and stared, looking lonesome and sad. I tried wishing and praying and even whistled two high and one low to coax him out of hiding, but he didn’t.
Somehow we needed to rebuild our lives so that we could learn to live without our parents. But how? I prayed for an answer, and one day the answer came to me. Gideon needed a routine, the sort of school routine he had with Mother.
Each morning, we sat in the nursery and pored over his lessons, just as he and Mother had done. By and by, as I read stories to him, he came back a little bit.
Presently, Ellen joined us, too. At first I felt wary, but soon I reveled in the change I saw in her. She was kind and helpful to Gideon.
As we worked on lessons, I realized how much I missed Merrywood and my studies and my teachers and classmates. I longed to see them. I longed to return to them. Would I ever have a normal life again?
One morning as Gideon sat with a book in his lap, he began to trail his finger across the sentences. Tears ran off my face sideways! Gideon remembered everything Mother had taught him. I hugged him and kissed him and said how happy I was that he came back and would he please, please come back just a little bit more and say something?
I thought for sure he would talk, now that he was back. There were times when his mouth opened as if he were about to speak, but then he clamped it shut as if he suddenly remembered he mustn’t. If I pushed, he disappeared inside himself, and then I’d have to work hard to reach him there and pull him back from behind whatever door closed in his mind.
One morning, Aunt Adeline stood in the doorway, watching Gideon glide his finger across a sentence. “Look at Gideon pretending to read,” she said.
“Gideon isn’t pretending,” said Ellen emphatically. “He reads.”
Aunt Adeline looked as if she had witnessed the Eighth Wonder of the World.
I gritted my teeth. My insides seethed with disgust, but I explained as politely as I could how Mother had taught Gideon to read. I told her Gideon was eight when he learned his first word, “cat.” I described the explosion of understanding on his face as he looked from the word “cat” to Mozie and then back again. I told her how Mother and I hugged him and wept with joy.
“She taught him herself?” asked Aunt Adeline, as if Mother teaching Gideon herself was somehow beneath her. “There are schools where —”
“Mother said anyone who suggested that Gideon belonged in one of those schools could go to blazes.”
Aunt Adeline’s eyes narrowed. “I will not tolerate language unbecoming to a young lady.” She grabbed my arm, hauled me to the washroom, and washed my mouth out with soap.
Later, Ellen said sorrowfully, “I can’t do lessons with Gideon anymore. Mama says he’ll hold me back in my development. She’s going to hire a governess for me.”
Our Tormentor
Mozie is the best cat in the world, just like Alice’s cat, Dinah. He’s a capital one for catching mice. He would eat a bird as soon as look at it.
But Aunt Adeline despised Mozie, and Mozie despised Aunt Adeline. He hid under furniture and swiped at her. If she disturbed his nap, he hissed and growled at her. If he climbed to the top of the porch roof, he had no trouble getting down. He aimed for Aunt Adeline. If Aunt Adeline could, she would have gotten him executed.
When the deep mourning period expired for my aunt and uncle and cousin and no longer required that they wear solid black, Aunt Adeline ordered new dresses for herself and Ellen, sewn from fine purple silk with a bonnet and matching shoes.
I was to be trapped in black for three more months.
One Sunday, as we sat in church, Aunt Adeline sniffed. “What is that stench?” she whispered to Uncle Edward.
He sniffed all around and then bent over. When he straightened up, he made a face. “My dear, it’s your new shoes.”
Mozie had used her shoes for a toilet.
Her face grew so red, I feared for her blood vessels. As soon as the service ended, she wheeled us out the door and into the carriage.
At home, she charged through the kitchen, grabbing a flour sack. She snatched Mozie from his afternoon nap on a parlor chair, dropped him in the sack, and held out the twisting, growling sack to Jenkins. “Drown him.”
“No!” screamed Ellen, lunging after the sack.
“Have you no mercy!” I said.
Aunt Adeline handed the sack to Jenkins and flounced from the room.
Oh, how Mozie fought for his life! He battled that sack, pummeling it, ripping at it with his teeth and claws.
Jenkins held the sack at an arm’s length. “Sir?”
“Give it to me,” said Uncle Edward. He spilled the cat outside.
Mozie lit across the garden as if his tail were on fire.
From then on, Mozie slept and took his meals in the carriage house. One morning, I saw Gideon pacing up and down the alley, clearly agitated, tapping at the carriage house door and pressing his ear to the door. He wouldn’t go inside.
I didn’t understand until I heaved open the carriage house door and saw something that shook me from head to toe: Father’s broken buggy with its splintered axle and missing wheel.
Gideon stood stone still in the doorway, his pants drenched. Gideon had peed his pants.
A Do Not Disturb Mama Day
During one of Uncle Edward’s trips to Philadelphia, Aunt Adeline grew as twitchy as a cat by the afternoon. She sent Mrs. Goodwin to the druggist, with an order written on a piece of paper and sealed in an envelope, and then paced about the parlor.
A little while later, Mrs. Goodwin returned with the mail and a package wrapped in brown paper. Aunt Adeline pounced on the package. She tore it open, took out a small container, and tapped two pills — for her nerves, she said — into the palm of her hand. She gulped the pills with water. Then she took the letters and climbed the stairs. Her bedroom door clicked shut behind her.
“It’s best we stay out of your aunt’s way today,” said Mrs. Goodwin.
Ellen called it a “Do Not Disturb Mama Day.”
I was sitting quietly in my room, daydreaming about Rabbit and wishing for a letter from Merricat, when my bedroom door flew open.
Down the Rabbit Hole Page 5
