The Light of Luna Park

by Addison Armstrong

  Dread sits heavy in my belly. I can’t imagine my life without Stella. But her parents need her, and I must take her home.

  Today.

  * * *

  —

  I claim a medical emergency involving a cousin, and Mrs. Wallace gives me permission to take the afternoon off. With my heart in my throat, I contemplate returning without Stella. I’ll tell Mrs. Wallace we have to move in to help said cousin, and that I’ve left Stella napping there until I can get back. That is, if my grief doesn’t fell me before I make it back to Mrs. Wallace’s. I feel remorse that I won’t be giving the kind woman two weeks’ notice, but there’s nothing that can be done.

  Because it’s a Thursday, I pray that Hattie is at home and her husband at work.

  For the first half of Stella’s and my ride to the Perkinses’, I force myself to point out the buildings and parks we pass. These are my last moments with my darling and I make the most of them, holding her close and taking in her scent. Kissing her downy cheek. A subdued panic beats in my chest, mixed with heavy sadness that weights my limbs. I am the only one who has been with her from the moment she was born. I am the only one who knows her true story.

  After a time, I can no longer summon the energy to feign excitement over the landmarks that signify Stella’s exit from my life. “Sorry, Stell,” I breathe.

  Margaret, I remind myself. Her name is Margaret. How silly, that the name seems to me to change her very being. When she is Stella, she is vibrant. She is a fighter. She is mine. But as Margaret, she is another woman’s baby—one that, like a fragile object, I must handle with care. One that, like a package, I must deliver to her rightful home.

  I shift away from the window and rest against the back of the bench, clutching Stella—Margaret—the baby—to my chest. Dizzy, I breathe in her milky scent, let it flood my body with calm. In, out. In, out.

  If only I could make the inhale last forever.

  * * *

  —

  The most notable feature of Michael and Hattie’s row house is its four large windows. Stella will like those, I imagine. She’s a curious baby. The curtains on the ground floor are pulled back to let in the last fading rays of autumn’s light, and I cannot help but peer through them as Stella and I approach the building. I have lied to my employers and the Luna Park nurses, stolen from the hospital, deceived an innocent old woman, and kidnapped a baby. What is snooping compared to the rest of my crimes?

  My sins, when listed, seem so much greater outside the context in which they have been committed. All I’ve meant to do is protect the baby.

  Stella squeaks, and I squeeze her in response. Michael is home. The figures of Stella’s—Margaret’s—parents move quickly behind the glass panes that separate us. Though Hattie is gesticulating wildly, Michael stands still and erect. I had hoped to see Hattie alone, but I can’t prolong this any longer.

  Still, my feet don’t move. Stella and I stand back, watching the scene through the window play out like a silent film. Michael’s nostrils flare, and I just have time to wonder whether they are fighting before his hand lifts. But he doesn’t slap her. Instead, he holds his hand up, fingers spread. Stop, it says.

  Hattie doesn’t. She takes a step closer, face contorting to hold back tears. It is Stella who first senses what is about to happen. Stella cries out as Michael grits his teeth and shoots his hands around his wife’s neck. Circling both palms around his wife—ten fingers spread like flowers on a grave—the man shakes her violently before releasing her, pushing her hard enough that she stumbles back. “Oh,” I cry out, instinctively shooting my own hand over Stella’s eyes. “Oh!”

  Hattie is on the floor now. I search her face for signs of shock and find none. Pain, yes. Hurt, undeniably. But no surprise. Hattie’s husband has nearly strangled her, shoved her to the floor—but she doesn’t widen her eyes or bring a fluttering hand to her mouth.

  She’s accustomed to this. That time in the hospital on September 2 may have been the first time Michael hit his wife, but it wasn’t the last. And this is more than just the second.

  I can’t help but wonder what role I’ve played in this violence. Should I have left well enough alone? Would the two parents have retreated together into their grief had I not prodded it, poked it, reminded them of the daughter they believe is lost?

  Tears leak from my eyes even as Michael returns to the room and hands Hattie ice for her neck. His expression does not change; his mouth does not move.

  Holding Stella, I fight the urge to retch. I’ve seen women battered nearly to death in the hospital, but I’ve never watched it happen before my eyes. And oh, God, the act is far more horrible than the injuries resulting from it.

  I back away, shaking. I can’t risk Michael looking out the window and recognizing me—or, God forbid, his daughter. Who knows what he would do? Kill Hattie? Unleash his violence on the infant?

  “We’re leaving, Stella.” I look down at the innocent little girl and say it again. There’s no other choice, is there? Not when Hattie herself told me how grateful she was that her baby didn’t ever have to witness this. Not when I don’t know what further harm my waltzing in may cause. Not when Stella deserves better.

  And off I walk, clutching Stella to my chest and hating myself nearly as much as I hate Michael Perkins. Because under the layers of fear and revulsion and grief, I am relieved.

  I don’t have to give her up.

  * * *

  —

  We walk, Stella still cradled to my chest. What else is there to do? We walk until Stella is fussy, and I find a patch of sun-mottled grass to stop. I sit beside Stella, who is captivated by the feel of the grass and dirt. “You haven’t been outside much, have you?” I laugh. I am awed I can laugh under the circumstances, but Stella’s face is the picture of wonder. Her eyes open and shut rapidly as the sunlight bounces off her pupils, her expression somewhere between that of an irate elderly man and a puppy. I resolve to take Stella to Bryant Park more often.

  A shiver runs through me. A whole new world is opening before my eyes: a world in which Stella and I can go to as many parks as we want, spend the rest of our days lying in the sun-dappled grass.

  The weight of the decision to keep Stella settles upon me. This is a whole different crime—not just medical malpractice or insubordination or deception but kidnapping. Pulling Stella from certain death and promising to return her was one thing. But taking another woman’s child and raising her as my own is an entirely different one. Now I really could end up in jail, me and my dark plaited hair and nurse’s pinafore among the drunks and the murderers and the thieves.

  But I would rather be put in jail than condemn Stella to life with a father who belongs in one.

  I refuse to subject Stella to the violence of a man who never wanted her.

  Especially when mothering Stella these past three months has been as natural as if she were mine alone. Loving Stella is like breathing. I couldn’t stop if I tried.

  But as I walk through the streets of the city, I recall the myth of Althea, the legendary Greek woman for whom I was unwittingly named. Althea, a woman warned by a prophet that she would kill her own son by fire. Althea, who locked away a burning log to save her son and then, years later, knew exactly where it was when the time came to kill him.

  Is that what I am doing for Stella, saving her from a violent home and then plunging her into one built on secrets and lies? Merely prolonging the girl’s suffering rather than alleviating it?

  You are being absurd, I tell myself. I have based my life on logic and science, and I know that a name is nothing more than a string of symbols and sounds.

  But I still can’t help but wonder. Am I truly saving Stella, or am I saving myself?

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Stella Wright, January 1951

  Nurse Recht cuts me off. Her face has closed at the mention of my birth and the timing of my mo
ther bringing Margaret home. She suddenly appears cold and emotionless. “I’m so sorry, dear, but we simply cannot remember that far back. Especially at my age. I am eighty-seven years old, you know.” She’s a terrible actor; she was as sharp as I just a moment ago. “And actually,” she suggests, as if it has just occurred to her, “I do need to get my rest.”

  Hildegarde stands. “I will help you upstairs, Aunt Louise.” She looks to me. “You can see yourself out.”

  I sit in Hildegarde Couney and Nurse Recht’s sad, deflated living room alone and grit my teeth. I can’t face the idea of sitting still in a taxicab, new discoveries clamoring for air in my brain all the way back to Manhattan. I refuse to look straight on at the truth that has taken shape.

  Instead, I pick up the album the nurses left downstairs. I flip through the pages again, scrutinizing each baby’s face for something familiar. It’s hard to differentiate their features in the old, grainy photographs. Most of them are girls, their tiny faces prunelike and pinched. But I can’t see their eye colors in black and white or tell whether their heads are topped with blond or black. And I’m fooling myself if I think I would recognize my own smile or my mother’s thin face in any infant.

  I thump the album down and sigh. The ground is shifting beneath my feet; more than anything, I need certainty. And there is only one more person to whom I can think to reach out if I want to find it.

  I stand, intent upon leaving and finding a pay phone. As I pass through the kitchen on my way to the door, I spot an old-fashioned telephone half-hidden behind a bowl of softening fruit. I glance behind me. The women are nowhere to be seen.

  I dial 411 and ask for Mr. and Mrs. Michael Perkinses’ number in Manhattan.

  “Please stay on the line.” The clipped voice of an operator crackles through the earpiece. I chew my lip in impatience as I wait. The woman returns briefly with a number, its exchange WA-7. So, the Perkinses live in Washington Heights. Their daughter’s death certificate already confirmed they are white like my own family, and their residence adds that they are likely middle- or lower middle-class.

  Burr, burr. I wait anxiously as the telephone rings and suddenly feel this was an idiotic thing to do. What will I say to whoever picks up? That I have a twenty-four-year-old thumbprint suggesting their dead infant may not have died after all?

  I don’t have time to deliberate. A quiet “Hello?” on the other end of the line shocks me nearly into dropping the telephone. I wasn’t prepared to face a real voice, a real woman.

  “Mrs. Perkins?”

  “This is she. May I ask who is calling?” The woman’s voice is soft like my mother’s was, but something in it sounds different. Perhaps it is the timbre of their voices: My mother’s was like the old corset I found in the attic yesterday, delicate but laced with steel. This woman speaks as if she is treading across the frozen surface of a pond, as if speaking too loudly will send her crashing into its icy depths.

  I shiver. “My name is Stella Wright. I believe you knew my mother, Althea Anderson.”

  “Oh!” Hattie’s voice is high-pitched in surprise. “Oh!” She repeats.

  “Who are you talking to?” A deeper voice in the background, harder to make out. Michael?

  “Oh,” Hattie says for the third time, her voice muffled now. “A—a magazine publisher.” The woman’s voice is clear again as, I assume, she transfers the receiver back to her lips. “No, thank you,” she tells me. “We won’t be purchasing a subscription today.”

  Click.

  “Mrs. Perkins?” I am met with the low hum of the dial tone and flap my arms in frustration. She’d recognized my mother’s name; that much was clear.

  I resist the urge to immediately call the Perkinses again. Obviously, they aren’t going to talk to me right now—and I’ve trespassed long enough.

  I hear a foot on the stairs and jump. Slamming the telephone down, I run outside and walk, fighting tears. I feel woozy, like my head’s going to float away from me and disappear into the foggy winter sky. I almost wish it would, so everything I’ve learned wouldn’t clamor so loudly within it. The pink ribbon, which means I was a Luna Park baby. The fingerprinted note, which means Margaret was.

  My mother, skinny as a rail. Hattie, whose daughter never came home.

  Light-headed, I almost think I’m imagining the words on the sign as I approach a dilapidated bus station: To Luna Park. I know the park burned nearly to the ground in ’44, and then again in ’46 and ’48. But past and present are colliding in strange and frightening ways today, and the sign almost convinces me that I’ve found myself in the twenties. That Luna Park is in its heyday.

  I collapse onto the bench and wait for the bus to come. It’s nearly empty when it does, but I take a spot in the back. I’m not in any condition to talk to the driver.

  Instead, I lean back and grapple with what I’ve learned. Here I am at Coney Island, twenty-three years after I was apparently here as a newborn. But I wasn’t here as Althea’s daughter.

  I was here as Hattie’s.

  I suddenly feel nauseated and place my head between my knees, breathing deeply.

  I feel the woman across the aisle look at me, then reach across to gently touch my shoulder. “I was the same way with my first. Congratulations.”

  Congratulations?

  Oh. I cringe as I realize her mistake. Jack would be thrilled were the woman correct, but no. I am not with child, merely sick with uncertainty. I lack the energy to explain the real source of my nausea, so I smile weakly. “Thank you.”

  In awkward silence, we drive a mile or two down Mermaid Avenue before the bus stops with a sigh. I step out, thanking the driver, and follow the signs that send me a block south to Luna Park. I know better than to expect grandeur, but the ruins of the place take my breath away. The ground is the same gray as the wintry sky, rubble and ashes still littering the landscape. Here at the entrance, only a stone wall remains, its painted heart faded almost to nothing. In the distance, a minaret still stands, and there are remains of a wooden roller coaster that looks like the curved skeleton of a dinosaur.

  A cat appears from underneath a metal scrap and scurries off silently. I can see its ribs, and I press a fist to my mouth. We fought for those babies day and night, the nurses said. And now look at the place. The place that saved me, a field of ashes and debris.

  This time, I can’t stop the tears. My mom is gone, and I don’t know what to believe about who she was. And now, even this—this place that made my life possible, this place that the nurses hailed as a bastion of strength and healing—even this is in ruins.

  I can’t help but see it as a cruel allegory for my life. I’ve lost my parents and no longer know who they were, I’m jobless, I’m on rocky footing with Jack.

  Was it just yesterday morning that I took the train into the city? It feels like a lifetime ago, and suddenly I’m desperate to talk to my husband—the man who’s always been willing to serve as a listening ear or a shoulder to cry on. The only person left in this world who knows me and loves me.

  I recall seeing a pay phone at the bus stop and I practically fly back, then dial Jack at work.

  “Jack!” I cry out when I hear his voice on the other end of the line. “Oh, Jack.” I hadn’t anticipated the rush of gratefulness I’d feel just hearing his voice.

  “Stella? What’s the matter?” His voice is urgent with worry, not distant like I feared.

  I attempt a laugh, but it sounds more like a sob. “Is it that obvious?”

  “Stella, honey, what is it?”

  “Everything.” I hardly even know where to start, but once I do, the words don’t stop. Funneling more and more coins into the machine as the operator interrupts us, I tell Jack everything: about the letter from Hattie and the fingerprint note, my mother’s signature on the birth certificate, discovering the year of my parents’ marriage, the conversation with Louise and Hildega
rde and what I learned about the pink bow. “And now I’m here at Coney Island, Jack, and I don’t know who I am anymore. I mean, who was my mother? Did I really almost die at birth? There’s so much I don’t know about. I lived here, Jack, at Luna Park. My life started here, and I didn’t know I’d ever set foot south of the parkway!” I pause, trying to explain why I’m in tears. “It’s just that I don’t know who I am all of a sudden. And I have no idea who my mom was, anymore. She wasn’t even my real mom.” My voice breaks, and I know I’d fall to the ground if I weren’t leaning against the phone booth. “It’s like everything was a lie, Jack, my whole life. And I can’t ask my mom about it.” Another sob. “I just feel so . . . alone.”

  “Honey, you’re not alone. You’re never alone.”

  I take a deep breath to calm myself down. “I know,” I whisper. “I guess I just forgot.”

  “Forgot?”

  “The way we left things. I didn’t know what it meant.” I’d felt so far away from Jack, been so afraid that our disagreement when I left had festered in my absence. My obstinacy has burned bridges before.

  “Oh, Stella, no. I love you no matter what. You know that. We will work through this”—he pauses—“through all of it.”

  I grip the phone. “Promise?”

  “Promise. I’m just worried about you, Stella. I need to hold you, see that you’re safe. I can’t wait to see you tomorrow.”

  I hesitate.

  Jack’s tone shifts slightly. “Aren’t you coming home?”

  “I—I think I need to stay another day. I need to visit Hattie.”

  “Stella, honey, do you really think that’s a good idea? Just wait a bit. You called me in tears after making all of these crazy discoveries. I’m not sure now is the best time to go see this stranger when you have no idea what she’s like. Stella, please, come home.”