Maggie & Oliver or a Bone of One's Own

by Valerie Hobbs

  “Oh, Duchess!” said Maggie, unable to stop herself. “You have the most beautiful dress!”

  Madame whipped around so fast that her ruffles nearly tripped her. “Who said that?”

  Maggie’s face turned bright red.

  Madame’s lips trembled, her eyes blazed with angry fire.

  * * *

  “I told you! What did I tell you? Now you’ve done it!”

  In the kitchen, Hannah bustled from plate to plate, wiping away a drip of gravy, adding a sprig of parsley. “You just watch that door. Madame will be coming through it with a switch any minute!”

  But it was not until the duchess and her party had left for the evening that Madame finally appeared.

  She did not look angry. She smiled at Maggie, but the smile was laced with vinegar.

  “The help find me—what shall I say?—unkind at times, I’m afraid,” said Madame. “But I am not an uncharitable woman. I took you in, little snippet, when others might have sent you to an orphanage. Do you know what life is like there?”

  Maggie slowly shook her head.

  Madame’s black eyes snapped and sparked. “No, of course you don’t. I took you in. Fed you, clothed you, gave you a bed to sleep in. And how have you repaid me for my kindness? With insolence! With disobedience! Well, I will not have it.”

  “I am sorry, Madame,” said Maggie, whose tongue felt as heavy as meat pudding. “I will never speak again, I promise.”

  “No,” said Madame, coldly, “I do not believe you will. Not under this roof.”

  Turning to Hannah, she said, “I wish never to lay eyes on this girl again. I trust you know what that means.”

  Hannah wrung her hands together. “Madame, I … Madame, please. She has no one—”

  “Nor do you, as I remember.” Madame pushed a long, skinny finger into Hannah’s chest. “Shall you leave together?”

  Hannah’s eyes widened in fear. “Oh, no, ma’am. Please, ma’am!”

  “Then do as I say.” With a final swirl of her taffeta skirts, Madame departed the kitchen.

  A Shadow on the Snow

  As darkness settled over the city, snow began to fall. Oliver lifted his nose and caught some snowflakes on his tongue, then more. It had been a long day of searching, and he was thirsty.

  He had found nothing. Not Bertie, not food, nothing. Maybe he was not part bloodhound after all. Maybe he was mostly spaniel or—he shuddered—poodle.

  He put his nose to the street for one last try, but the snow was beginning to pile there. This was truly a cold trail.

  It was time to find shelter. In the morning, after a good night’s sleep, he would start again.

  Shivering in his thin coat, Oliver padded through the snow. Yellow light from windows high above poured out onto the snow, but he was just a small, dark shadow that no one saw.

  A fancy carriage passed, drawn by four black horses. The horses snuffed and snorted and blew white clouds into the air. The bells on their harnesses jingled like Christmas. In the carriage sat an old woman so small she could barely look out into the street. On her head was a blue hat the color of a summer sky. When she saw Oliver, she smiled and waved a tiny hand.

  It was not Bertie, but Oliver wagged his tail just the same. And, for a little while, he felt warm inside.

  He tried not to think about his rug. As far back as he could remember, when evening came, Bertie would sit by the hearth while the fire blazed and Oliver snoozed on his rug. He had thought warmth would always be his. He had taken it for granted. He had taken everything for granted: his rug, his bowl filled with food, his baths, the soft hand that rested lightly on his head.

  Bertie had told him how special he was. Did he not deserve special things? Did he not, at least, deserve to be warm?

  So deep in memory was Oliver that the figure on one knee before him made him leap away.

  “Hey, old chum,” said the man who had eyes like Gerd, but who wasn’t Gerd. He reached out and Oliver sniffed his fingers, which had traces of meat juice on them. Then he could not help himself. He licked the stranger’s hand.

  “Where’s home, fella? Your folks must be looking for you. Get along home now, before the weather turns nasty.” The stranger stood, walked to the curb, stepped up into an automobile, and, in a cloud of smoke, disappeared.

  Oliver looked up into the night sky as flakes of snow swirled around him. The stranger was right about one thing: the storm was getting worse. But he was wrong about the other thing. No one was looking for Oliver, no one at all.

  Just a Pile of Rags

  Maggie stood on the stone stoop of Madame’s fine house and looked out into the snow. The whole world was beautiful, so clean and white that she forgot for just one moment to be afraid.

  Madame’s door was shut and locked behind her. She had heard the bolt go through, a scary sound when you are on the other side of it. Hannah had locked the door. But Madame had ordered it. What else could Hannah do?

  Did Madame see the small bundle Hannah had quickly pushed into Maggie’s hands along with her coat and scarf? Maggie did not think so. No food left Madame’s house without her orders.

  Maggie did not like orders. She did not like orders, and she asked too many questions. It was her own fault that she was standing on a cold stoop in her threadbare coat on a winter’s night. She was ten years old, and she ought to have known better. Now she would have to make her own way in the world. She did not know how a ten-year-old girl went about doing that, but she was determined to find out.

  She would have to find employment, that was certain. It should not take long. After all, she could dust and polish as well as any housekeeper twice her age. She made the neatest bed without a bit of help.

  Other things she did less well. But that was only because she could not keep her mind on them. Who wanted to shovel ashes from the hearth when the sun was shining, or when a kitten needed to be held and stroked under the chin?

  Maggie gazed wide-eyed at the grand houses as she passed them, each more elegant than the one before. As the cold crept through the thin scarf tied under her chin, she turned up the walkway of the next-to-last house on the block. Its door was so tall that Maggie nearly toppled over backward trying to see where it ended.

  In the middle of the door, higher than she could reach, was a polished brass knocker in the shape of a lion’s head. With stiff fingers curled into a fist, Maggie knocked at the door.

  And knocked.

  And knocked.

  No one answered.

  At the last house, a short, fat butler appeared at once. “Yeeees?” he said, and Maggie was heartened by the twinkle in his eye.

  But when she asked for work, he said there was none. She should take herself home at once, he said. A storm was coming. A person her size could be covered in snow in a matter of hours and disappear altogether.

  “Altogether!” he said, his eyes wide, as if he could see her disappearing already.

  Maggie hurried across the street and up a long drive to a house all covered in ivy, but there, too, no one was needed. She began to feel afraid.

  Where would she sleep if she had no work? Where would she find food? Hugging her warmth in, she hurried up the street.

  A brown dog with hair like a scrub brush came loping up behind her. Maggie nearly leapt out of her skin, but the dog went on its way, making a wet, clean line through the snow with its nose.

  Fine homes gave way to small houses, and then ramshackle houses, and Maggie walked on.

  Night was beginning to fall. A lamplighter reached up with his long stick to light the streetlamps. The pools of light that lay on the snow all down the street seemed to be leading her somewhere.

  Shivering, Maggie stopped at the door of a bar and grill. The door opened, and out came noise along with two men. They were laughing heartily and patting their large stomachs. Before the door could close behind them, Maggie dashed in.

  The place was filled with people. Smoke hung in a cloud. A man was beating notes out of a piano.
A lady with a big red hat was singing at the top of her lungs. A serving girl, holding a tray full of foaming glasses high above her head, went through the crowd.

  The big, smoke-filled room was warm, that was the best thing. Maggie found a corner to sit in and opened the sack Hannah had given her.

  Inside was a piece of bread spread with a thin layer of goose fat. Taking the stingiest nibble to make the bread last, Maggie felt her first stab of homesickness. She had always considered Hannah family, her only bit of family in the world.

  What did one do without family?

  But what was this beneath the bread? A bit of gold? A coin? No. A heart. A tiny golden heart on a chain, a locket that opened to reveal a picture of a dark-haired lady.

  Maggie almost dropped it. The locket did not belong to her. What was it doing in her sack? Hannah wouldn’t have put it there. Hannah owned nothing this fine. As she often said, she was “as poor as a church mouse.”

  Had the locket slipped from Madame’s dresser and somehow fallen into the little sack? It did not seem possible, but neither did the fact that Maggie had it in her hand. She glanced quickly around the room to see if anyone was watching. She could be arrested for stealing something as fine as this locket. She dropped it into her sack and felt within her the anxious beating of her heart.

  But she couldn’t stop thinking about it. Maybe Hannah meant her to have the golden locket. Maybe Hannah had stolen it from Madame! Would she have done that? Maggie didn’t think so. Hannah was terrified of Madame, as was everyone else in the house.

  So maybe the locket did not belong to Madame, but to someone else. But whom? The dark-haired lady?

  Maggie’s nimble mind hatched another thought: Hannah was saying with this locket something she could not tell Maggie while Madame watched. “Sell this!” she might have said. Or something else. But what?

  Besides Madame, only Hannah remembered the day that Maggie was taken in. “Poor, unfortunate thing” was all she’d say whenever Maggie asked about her beginnings. Maggie had thought Hannah meant that the poor, unfortunate thing was herself, but what if it was someone else?

  The dark-haired lady.

  Maggie reached into the sack, took out the locket, and opened it once again.

  Could it be? Could the lady in the locket be—Maggie almost couldn’t ask it—her own mother?

  But how could this beautiful lady be Maggie’s mother? As Hannah reminded her often enough, Maggie was nothing more than a pudding-faced imp. God gave her brains, but not much else.

  With her fingers curled tightly around the locket and her mind buzzing with unanswerable questions, Maggie curled into a corner of a warm booth. Maybe her dreams would deliver the answer she so desperately hoped for.

  * * *

  Clang! Clang!

  “Last call!” yelled a fat man in a white shirt standing behind the bar. People began to leave, calling good night to friends. Head down, eyes closed, Maggie tried to make herself invisible.

  “What’s this? A pile of rags, is it?”

  Maggie felt herself being lifted by the back of her coat. Then she was staring straight into the round red face of the man in the white shirt.

  “Not rags, no, sir,” said Maggie.

  “And where is your family, child? Did they go and leave you behind?”

  “No, sir. I’ve got no family. Well, there’s Hannah, but Madame’s door is locked and—”

  “And you’ve got no place to go.” The red-faced man set Maggie on the floor and shook his head. He sighed through his nose. “Well, I can’t very well throw you out into the cold,” he said. “You wouldn’t survive the night, the bit of a thing that you are. Come on, then.” He turned his back to Maggie and bent over so that she could climb on. “The missus will be waiting up.”

  Maggie laid her head against the man’s warm back and barely felt the snow gathering on her neck as they crossed the street.

  * * *

  “Oh, Walter, not another one!”

  The man let Maggie slide from his back. The missus looked her over like a dog sniffing.

  “For the one night, my darling, that’s all,” said Walter.

  “It had better be,” said his wife. “We have nothing more to share. This child will steal the food from the mouths of your own children.”

  “But I wouldn’t!” cried Maggie, horrified. “I would never!”

  “For the one night,” Walter repeated, looking down at Maggie’s little face with sorrow drawn on his own. “For the one night, that’s all. I promise.”

  A Bone of One’s Own

  In his cave of snow-covered bushes, Oliver awoke, frozen from nose to tail. Had he turned overnight into one of Gerd’s ice blocks? If he waited, would Gerd come and snatch him up? Would he be delivered to Bertie’s so he could thaw out by Bertie’s fireplace, sleeping warmly at Bertie’s slippered feet?

  But Oliver knew, even in his half-awake frozen state, that there was something a bit off in his thinking. A dog could not be turned into a block of ice, no matter how cold he felt. And Bertie was not sitting by her fireplace waiting for him to come home.

  Sometime during the night, Oliver had dreamed about a bird. It was a strange dream for a dog to have, especially for a dog who would rather eat a bird than dream of one. The bird was huge and white, the color of newly fallen snow, and as it hopped along, it waved a wing for Oliver to follow. Oliver followed, first walking, then loping, then racing as the bird ran faster and faster.

  “Wait!” the dreaming Oliver cried, he didn’t know why. What did he want with a silly old bird anyway? Faster and faster Oliver ran until the bird, without seeming to try, lifted its giant wings and took to the air.

  It was Bertie! The giant white bird was his Bertie!

  “Come back! Come back!” he cried, but Bertie kept flying up and up until at last she disappeared into the white sky.

  He thought about his dream now. He did not know the meaning of it, only that he must keep looking for his best-in-all-the-world friend.

  Groaning like an old dog, which he was not, he got slowly to his feet and gave himself an all-over shake. A good shake always made things better. Made his blood wake up, for one thing. For another, a good shake always set you up to do whatever you had in mind to do. It said, “Go to it, boy.”

  Why humans hadn’t figured that out was a mystery to him.

  But he was still hungry, dizzy hungry, and the air had no food smells in it, no trail to follow. He put his nose to the ground and at once sneezed out snow.

  Eat first, search later. Bertie would understand. She would have to wait just a little longer.

  The city had begun to awaken from its cold sleep. Windows opened, water splashed onto the street and into the gutter. One human called a greeting to another. An arm reached out to pull from a clothesline a pair of frozen long johns. A child began to howl. Wagon wheels creaked, and a horse nickered.

  Gerd’s wagon? Oliver’s ears lifted, and a little cry escaped his throat. He ran to sniff the wagon. It was not Gerd’s. This wagon was piled high with rags that smelled of many lives and the many things that had happened in those lives.

  To a dog of Oliver’s sensitivities, the odor was foul, and he turned his nose away.

  “Hey, doggie!”

  A young boy fat in his winter clothes threw a red ball at Oliver. The ball bounced once and rolled down the street.

  “Get it, doggie!” yelled the boy, pointing.

  But Oliver ran on, stopping only to sniff the ball as he went.

  He ran more quickly now, more desperately, as the ache in his empty belly began talking to him: Feed me! Get to it, boy!

  Back he went, into the square where the stalls were filling with every imaginable thing—pastries and breads, fruits and vegetables, trussed chickens being pushed onto sticks and set over flames.

  Oliver knew better than to try that stall again.

  He wound his way through the people crowding into the square and moving slowly from one stall to the next. They poked at
the food, sometimes staying to buy.

  A man with huge red hands, wearing a white apron streaked with blood, passed Oliver with great long strides. He was chewing on a meaty bone, grease dripping from his chin and down his neck.

  Oliver walked in the man’s wide shadow. He was trying to feed his stomach with the rich smell of that meat when, to his astonishment, the bone landed at his feet.

  Oliver snatched it up and ran, ready to guard his prize to the death.

  Food! His own bone!

  He loped along until he came to the wide-open water where the fishing boats were docked and great steamships bellowed. He took his precious bone to the place where an immense bridge touched the shore and happily, gratefully, began to chew.

  Life got no better than this.

  Well, it did. But that would mean that he had found Bertie, which he surely would before this day was done.

  If Only

  As she did every morning, Maggie pinched herself awake. It was still dark, so dark she did not at first remember where she was or how she’d come to be there. She had thought that she lay in her bed at Madame’s house and that the breathing, the little snuffles and snorts in the room, came from her fellow maids.

  Which was of course the reason for the pinch. She could not get herself up otherwise. Instead, she would lie abed and listen to the hoo-hooing of her owl. She would daydream of her someday life, a life not of luxury but of certain simple pleasures, comfortable ladylike shoes, a hair ribbon or two, a best friend, time to herself.

  Perhaps even a book.

  Yes. How wondrous it would be to own a book. Hannah, who had gone to school as a child, taught Maggie to read, but their only book was the Holy Bible. Maggie thought she might like a book about animals—animals and birds.

  But this was not a time for daydreaming about books, or anything else.

  Quietly she rose from her pallet, folded the blanket, and, as the sun sent in its first rays, got into her clothes.

  The door creaked as she opened it. Maggie froze, but no one stirred. Casting a backward glance at the five small sleeping figures, Maggie, step by careful step, made her way down the worn wooden stairs. No stealer of food from other children’s mouths was she. She would starve first.