Sister Noon

by Karen Joy Fowler

  In one corner was a small bed. Mrs. Bell stepped toward it and her light fell on Jenny Ijub, lying on her back under a tumbling-blocks quilt. The bedding had been pulled over her, but incompletely, so that Lizzie could see the brown shoulders of her dress, the dirty toes of one stocking. She had a finger in her mouth and there was a high flush on her cheeks.

  She was asleep. For the second time in as many hours, Lizzie felt relief shoot through her. She knelt on the floor and touched Jenny’s face, drawing a finger along the brow of one closed eye. Beneath the lid, the eye flickered, then stilled. Lizzie shook her shoulder gently and then less gently. “Jenny. Jenny Ijub. I’ve come for you.”

  The little girl didn’t move. “I gave her something to help her sleep,” Mrs. Bell said. “She was so agitated. It wasn’t healthy.” Dust spun about Mrs. Bell’s lamp, swirled across her powdered face.

  Lizzie leaned in and smelled camphor on Jenny’s breath. She shook Jenny harder. Was it possible to come into the House of Mystery and not go away drugged? Don’t eat or drink anything. She herself shouldn’t have had the cordial. She felt fine, but it had been incautious. She wedged her arms under Jenny and pulled her closer.

  Jenny came awake all at once, kicking and striking out till Lizzie released her. Her body relaxed then, but her features remained pinched and her voice was strung with tears. “I won’t go back,” she said. “You’re not the mother of me.”

  Lizzie didn’t want a quarrel in front of Mrs. Bell, with whom she was still angrier than she could say. She didn’t want to take the time to overcome Jenny with reason and gentleness. Neither did she want to carry her forcibly from the house. She had a happy inspiration. “I’ll take you to the ducks, then.”

  Jenny regarded her, suspicious but sleepy. Her pupils were black points in the brown eyes. Her hair was wild and blown about her head. One ear stuck out. Lizzie smoothed the hair to cover it.

  Jenny indicated Mrs. Bell. “Can she go, too?”

  “May she go,” said Lizzie. “No, we’ve taken too much of Mrs. Bell’s time already.”

  “All right,” Jenny said. She fell asleep again.

  Mrs. Bell stood above her, half lit by the lamp she held and half in shadow. She didn’t look at Lizzie and she didn’t say a word. On a shelf behind her, a row of expensive dolls stared into the middle distance of the room, seven painted skulls, seven tiny Cupid’s-bow mouths. This made Lizzie think, inevitably and guiltily, of Jenny’s broken doll.

  Lizzie couldn’t see that these dolls had ever been played with. She’d had three dolls herself as a child and never played with any of them, not liking their compulsive smiles, their lumpy bodies, the emptiness of their lives. Without her to pick them up, move their arms, and speak their voices, they were nothing. It was too much to ask. And then they had stared, of course, much like Baby Edward. Their eyes had never closed.

  “You lie there until you calm down,” she’d said to them sometimes, to justify her neglect. (“Lizzie keeps her dolls just like new,” her mother told people, with obvious approval.)

  Lizzie searched the floor for Jenny’s shoes. She took them in one hand and lifted Jenny into her arms. She recognized the smell of Jenny’s hair, sweet but spoiled, like stale cake or those candies in Chinatown that came in a thin wrapping of rice paper that you ate along with the sweet. “We’re most grateful for your kindness,” she told Mrs. Bell stiffly.

  “My pleasure.” Mrs. Bell’s voice matched Lizzie’s, note for impeccable note. Her face was as vacant and unused as the dolls’. “Do call again.”

  Jenny was an awkward load. The steps seemed steeper descending, the bottom of the well a terrifying distance away now that Lizzie had no hand free for the banister.

  There was a portrait on the wall next to Lizzie where she paused to rest. She assumed this was the likeness of Mr. Bell. If so, he was a balding, handsome man with a sharp nose and white side-whiskers. His eyes were very, very blue. Mrs. Bell’s portrait hung next to him, life-sized and wearing fewer clothes than you might expect of a mother of six. In her arms she held a tiny white dog with a smashed flat face. Its color was incontrovertible.

  Behind Mrs. Bell and the dog was the grandfather clock from the entryway. The time in the picture was just past two, an artful reference to Mrs. Bell’s age at the time of the sitting, or so Lizzie supposed. The longer hand was just past twelve. XII, in fact, but what difference did that make?

  If Lizzie had seen these things on the way up, her magical juncture might have begun in wandering lost and frightened in the dark. This would have been an awful way to start the rest of her life.

  Of course, if she’d seen her signs on the way up, they would have come in the wrong order.

  Lizzie shifted Jenny in her arms and continued down the stairs. At the bottom she paused to look up. Mrs. Bell stood with her lamp in the darkness of the floor above. The lamp lit her face from below, gave her a ghoulish tint. It occurred to Lizzie that she really should have asked Mrs. Bell to thank Mrs. Pleasant for the chickens, but it seemed unbearably awkward to do so now. She passed the real grandfather clock and went out the door.

  EIGHT

  The not-white terrier was delighted at the chance to ride in the buggy. Lizzie knew she should go straight back to the Brown Ark, where everyone was worried most to death. Jenny was asleep and could hardly appreciate an outing. But Lizzie had promised her one.

  Besides, Lizzie thought she could use a little time to compose herself before facing her magical juncture, not that she believed in such things, not that the appearance of the clues hadn’t been all too neatly arranged in the House of Mystery. It didn’t feel like the hand of fate; it felt like the hand of Mrs. Pleasant. Still, Lizzie was tense and nervy; the morning had been too much.

  So she turned right instead of left and drove out to Golden Gate Park, letting the mule pick the pace, giving the hacks for hire a wide berth, so as not to risk a meeting with Mr. Finney. A road to Ocean Beach was being constructed. South Drive swarmed with laborers. The fog was burning away, exposing a watery sun, reluctant and cold.

  If Jenny had been awake, Lizzie would have taken her to the new Children’s Quarters and maybe bought her a ride on the merry-go-round. She would have stood with the mothers, watching from the balcony of the Sharon building. Lizzie had not seen it yet herself, but the orphans at the Ark had been guests there twice and come back talking of painted horses and maypoles.

  The original plan for the William Sharon bequest had been a huge marble gate with the senator’s name cut into it. As if he’d donated the entire park instead of merely an unnecessary portal, the outraged papers had said. The park commissioner had persuaded the estate into the Children’s Quarters instead—croquet sets, tricycles, ice cream fountains, donkeys, and goat carts. A happy memorial, then, but a curious consequence, to turn Senator William Sharon into Saint Nicholas when his case hadn’t even been settled yet. Allie Hill had accused him of adultery, and his spirited public defense was that he’d paid her five hundred dollars a month to share his bed and never once considered marrying her.

  Lizzie stopped the buggy at Alvord Lake, where a tribe of mallards had settled the past autumn. She was sorry not to have bread. She’d noticed how children who themselves had nothing enjoyed the chance to be generous. She’d seen dreadful bullies who, when given a handful of stale biscuits and a mob of ducks, suddenly developed a fine sense of justice. It was wonderful to see them trying to feed every duck, no duck more than the others, taking special pains to see that the littlest got a share. That would have been worth waking Jenny. That would have been a treat. “We’re here,” Lizzie said, shaking Jenny until her eyes opened.

  She could not find one of Jenny’s shoes, so she carried her to a park bench and held her there in the pale sunlight, listening to the mild griping of the mallards. The dog dashed about on the lawn, where, when next Lizzie looked, it had found something nasty to roll in.

  It was not yet eleven in the morning and Lizzie was already exhausted. Each duck cut a
small wake in the water, V-shaped, spreading open like a wing. The sun struck these waves so that the surface of the water was crossed with brief veins of gold. At the lake edges, the reflections of trees floated and undulated. It was all so beautiful. She shook Jenny again. “Ducks,” she said.

  Jenny scarcely opened her eyes. “Not those ducks,” she answered. Even asleep, even drugged, she was not relaxed. She lay in Lizzie’s lap, curled up tightly, and one elbow dug into Lizzie’s thigh.

  Lizzie had so many things to think about. She tried to impose some order on the recurring images of fog and red wallpaper, the spiral staircase, black passageways, a murdered girl in a yellow dress. She’d had an adventure, no doubt about it, and it hadn’t been pleasant. Ever since her first visit to the House of Mystery she’d chafed at her usual life. She’d been impulsive, discontented. She’d drunk daytime wine and been rude to dead people. She’d been the object of occult concern, and honestly, it was time to admit she’d enjoyed it.

  But this morning she’d been frightened. She couldn’t think of Malina Paillet without distress and she couldn’t think of Mrs. Pleasant with pleasure. The party was over, and all Lizzie wanted was her same old corner in the cinders. You can be anyone you want, Mrs. Pleasant had said, and what luck! Lizzie wanted to be her old, unintrusive self. Her magical juncture must be made to take her right back home.

  She was done with Jenny. She was done with the House of Mystery. She had no curiosity over Mr. Finney. She was merely the treasurer, merely involved in donations, and these other matters would be well handled by other people.

  Jenny’s breath was fragrantly medicinal, wet and warm on Lizzie’s neck as they returned to the buggy. Lizzie had never said they wouldn’t be going back to the Brown Ark eventually. Obviously there was no choice for it. She’d honored her part of the bargain by producing ducks. As she clicked her tongue at the mule she told herself that it was cruel to keep the staff in suspense when Jenny had been safely found. Besides, she was tired of staggering about Golden Gate Park with a drugged child in her arms.

  Back at the Ark, their appearance was greeted with great relief, quickly mastered. Jenny was carried, still sleeping, to her bed. Dr. Kearney was sent for, to confirm that she’d taken no lasting harm from the adventure.

  Nell remained with Lizzie to ask many questions. In the face of Lizzie’s evasions, Nell was persistent. She couldn’t understand how Jenny would have known the way to the House of Mystery, or how Lizzie had known to look for her there. She couldn’t understand how Lizzie could have been so careless as to lose one of Jenny’s shoes. “It doesn’t matter that only one has been lost,” she pointed out. “Two will have to be purchased.” She took exception to the impulse to take Jenny to the park instead of bringing her back to begin her punishment. Truancy was not tolerated at the Brown Ark, and most runaways were not treated to outings. It wouldn’t help Jenny’s popularity when the other children heard. Lizzie had no children herself and no sense of how often a firm hand was required. It was easy to be too sympathetic; more mothers had ruined their children with indulgence than with neglect.

  And while Lizzie was out larking, the Chinese boy had arrived. He could not be run off. He responded to any attempt to dislodge him by falling to his knees and praying loudly. It appeared to be the Lord’s Prayer, Nell was able to pick out a word here and there, but aside from that he seemed to speak no English. She did allow that he was very clean, still he must be sent back at once, and they were all depending on Lizzie to manage this, since it was Lizzie who’d encouraged him to come in the first place.

  None of the scolding offended Lizzie; she imagined it was mostly on the mark. It made her miss her mother. She’d been far too hard on her mother recently. Lizzie was so lucky to have belonged somewhere and to someone. Sleeping in one’s own bed was one of the most agreeable sensations she knew. Sad to think how foreign it was to the wards.

  She imagined Jenny, waking up this afternoon, or this evening, or sometime in the night, to find herself back in the Ark, and resolutely erased the image. Would Jenny even remember having seen the ducks? “I won’t be going to the House of Mystery ever again,” she told Nell, who hadn’t asked and was, of course, made even more suspicious by the declaration.

  “Well, goodness, why should you?” Nell agreed. “Why would anyone?”

  NINE

  Jenny continued to sleep. In her dreams she heard Maud Curry’s voice. “They found her in a Chinese opium den,” Maud was explaining authoritatively. “Kidnapped and drugged. At least that’s what she says. But who’d want to kidnap her? Me, I don’t believe a word of it.”

  Jenny held very still. She kept her eyes closed. If she was going to wake up back at the Brown Ark, then she would just not wake up at all. She was curiously contented. She told herself she was still in the house with the woman so sad and so beautiful she was almost a princess. They were waiting there together for Mrs. Pleasant. You’ll see I don’t forget you, either, Mrs. Pleasant had promised.

  The day passed, and every time Jenny opened her eyes enough to see where she was, she shut them immediately. A bowl of potato soup was left for her, but she didn’t wake up to eat. Night came again and Maud was beside her on the bed, pinching her, shaking her hard. Her voice was so close Jenny could smell it, a boiled-egg and licorice smell. “You listen to me,” Maud whispered fiercely. “Little Jenny Ijub. Are you listening?”

  She shook Jenny again. “I know where you really went. You ran away to old Mrs. Pleasant. And she didn’t want you any more than we do. Do you hear me?” She took the lobe of Jenny’s ear between her fingers and squeezed. “Say it,” she told Jenny. “Say out loud that nobody loves you.”

  Jenny tried not to wake up, but Maud’s fingernails were cutting into her ear. At first it was an ache she could ignore, but it quickly grew sharper and more painful. The pain hooked Jenny like a fish, hauled her out of her secret contentment, gasping, into the open air.

  ONE

  Lizzie had looked in on Jenny that afternoon while Dr. Kearney was at her bedside. Dr. Kearney was a thin man, unusually tall, with almost no hair on his face. His shoulders were hunched, his spine permanently curved from years of leaning down to talk to people. He was considerably younger than Lizzie, but he was a man and a professional, so she never felt the advantage of it. Yet she was quite fond of him. For all his nervous energy and towering height, he was soft with the children. He read widely and with great enthusiasm, though never novels.

  “No damage,” he assured Lizzie. “All serene.” He spoke past her. “Let the child sleep as long as she likes.” Lizzie turned to see Nell behind her in the doorway.

  “The Chinese boy is in the kitchen,” Nell said. Dr. Kearney was still talking, so Lizzie could pretend not to have heard. “When she wakes, don’t be surprised if she has no memory of this adventure at all,” Dr. Kearney was saying. “Don’t be alarmed.”

  “This one has no memory of any adventure,” Nell said. “Or so she claims.”

  “And entirely plausibly.” Dr. Kearney began to put his instruments back into his bag. “A German doctor has published a series of investigations on memory. I was just reading about it. A Dr. Ebbinghaus. He set himself the task of learning four hundred and twenty sets of sixteen-syllable lines. Unrelated syllables. Völlig sinnloses Material. A fatiguing investigation. All marvelously scientific.”

  “I’m sure,” said Nell. She disappeared from the doorway. Conversations of this sort about studies of this sort were no doubt a very fine thing for those with nothing to do, she’d told Lizzie often enough on similar occasions. This was, of course, the category into which Lizzie fell.

  “How interesting,” Lizzie said. She accompanied Dr. Kearney out of the room, inviting him to continue. It did interest her, but mostly she was using him for cover. She wished to escape from Nell without confronting the Chinese boy, since she saw no reason he couldn’t stay if he wished to.

  And she certainly had no desire to communicate his unwelcomeness in some sort of e
xtended charade.

  Besides, Lillie Langtry had just adopted a small Chinese boy; they were all the rage in the more fashionable homes.

  Most important, Nell would not manage to send him away herself. She was more softhearted than she sounded, and better able to delegate unkindness than to deliver it. If Lizzie could avoid her now, then Nell would simply wait until the next time she saw her. If that didn’t happen for a week or two, if it could be delayed until Ti Wong was no longer making his first unfavorable impression, then Nell would be just as content to keep him. Lizzie had only to lie low, keep her head down and wait for this happy result. The first step was escaping the Brown Ark unnoticed.

  “Dr. Ebbinghaus found that he could impose a rhythm on his syllables as a memory aid,” Dr. Kearney was telling her. “Actors learn the words of many plays over the course of their careers. I’ve seen mention of monks in the Dark Ages who couldn’t read, but could recite the entire Bible. I don’t think it was uncommon. I myself could recite poetry by the bushelful when I was a boy. ‘In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree.’”

  “‘Where Alph, the sacred river, ran,’” said Lizzie encouragingly. They were approaching the front door. “‘Through caverns measureless to man.’”

  “‘Down to a sunless sea.’”

  It was her father’s favorite poem. Perhaps her father had also imagined himself inside Xanadu; perhaps he responded only to the music. He had a sentimental side, little as Lizzie had seen of it. But now the words reminded her of her own recent wander through the darkness. Less grand in the flesh. Less grand when it didn’t rhyme, didn’t sing that song with the vowels. Less grand when cut to fit her.