Sister Noon

by Karen Joy Fowler

  Next, the charity bug bit young Maud Curry, who decided to devote herself to helping Jenny get adopted. Maud had reached a pious age and was bothered, for religious reasons, by Jenny’s continual good fortune. She remembered Jenny’s stories—lemon sticks, ponies, parents—but had honestly forgotten that she herself was the author. The result of this combination of remembering and forgetting was that Maud thought of Jenny as a dreadful, unrepentant liar.

  Why would God dress a dreadful, unrepentant liar like a princess? Maud decided to be an instrument of the Lord. She picked a group of girls—Melody Miller, Tilly Beacon, Ella May Howard, Coral Campbell—and charged them with informing Jenny whenever her manners were wanting, or her appearance, or her attitude. They called themselves the Good Manners Club. Two of these girls had the special status of being diphtheria survivors.

  The staff was touched by this display of selfless concern. “I was afraid the other children would be jealous,” Mrs. Lake said. “Instead they’ve made quite a project of her.” And from Nell: “She’s certainly lucky to have such friends.”

  Jenny ate her dinner one evening surrounded by well-wishers. “She shouldn’t be taking such big bites, should she, Maud?” Tilly Beacon asked.

  “No, indeed.”

  “Don’t cut your bread, Jenny. You should break it with your hands,” Melody said, when Jenny hadn’t even touched her bread yet.

  “And everything after the soup is eaten with a fork.”

  “I know,” Jenny said. She wasn’t hungry. The chicken she’d just eaten wedged in her throat until she was afraid it was stuck there forever. She took a gulp of milk to try to force it down.

  “I’m just making sure.” Maud took a prim bite of cheese. Her angel-colored hair was growing out. It curled in lovely rings around her shoulders. Soon Mrs. Lake would cut it back to dandelion fluff, weeping as she did so. “You sound a little conceited. Good manners are spoiled if you’re stuck-up about having them.”

  “We shouldn’t be able to hear you drinking,” Coral said.

  At bedtime the girls gathered around Jenny’s bed to discuss her classroom performance. “Your hair was untidy,” Melody began. “And you should thank Miss Stevens when she corrects your sums.”

  “No one else does,” Jenny said.

  “No one else makes so many mistakes.”

  “Let me see your hands,” Maud instructed. She flipped them from one side to the other. Her own were hot and sticky. “Go wash them again. All the pretty dresses in the world won’t help if you don’t keep yourself clean.”

  Jenny went back to the basin. Her feet were bare. She could feel grains of sand beneath them on the wood floor, and there was a sound like buzzing flies in her ears. She poured some water, dipped her hands in. As she rubbed them together she looked out the window. She could see the barn, the wood just turning to silver in the moonlight. Across it lay the long, pointed shadow of the Ark’s tower. She took as much time as she could, but whenever she looked back down the row of beds, there was the group of girls on hers, still waiting for her. Jenny had a loose tooth and it was disgusting, they were agreeing, the way she kept poking at it with her tongue. She would have to be made to stop.

  The piano teacher was named Miss Viola Bell. She had the largest, darkest eyes Jenny had ever seen, and also a twisted leg. She needed a crutch to lower herself onto the piano bench and to rise. When Jenny sat beside her, Viola’s skirts brushed Jenny’s legs. They were cold and damp. Matron didn’t like her much. Jenny was still deciding.

  “I’m forced to wonder about the character of any young woman from that house,” Jenny overheard Matron telling Miss Stevens. Jenny could see that Viola was hearing, too, although she pretended not to.

  “We always start with middle C.” Viola tapped the key quietly, and then louder—pim, pim, pim, PIM. They were using the piano in the basement schoolroom while the rest of the children played outside. Matron was in the hall, but the door was open.

  “I’m forced to wonder how she’ll have the time to practice and still do her chores and her schooling, too,” said Matron. “Of course, there’s no point if she doesn’t practice faithfully. You must tell me at once if she falls behind in her schoolwork.”

  “Curve your fingers,” Viola said. She took Jenny’s hand and made it into a claw. She shook it at the wrist. “Relax a little.” She showed Jenny how to play a scale.

  What she wanted first was even fingering. She wound a metronome to demonstrate. She and Jenny clapped along. “Don’t love any of the notes more than the others,” she said. “Every note needs just the same amount of time to breathe.”

  “I don’t love any of them.” Jenny didn’t mean to speak. It just came out.

  “I see,” said Viola. She gave Jenny an appraising look. “Don’t hate any of the notes more than the others, then.”

  Jenny had left her with the wrong impression. In fact, Jenny liked the way Viola’s hands felt, working her fingers into proper shapes. Viola told Jenny what to do, but not in a bossy way. “Like prancing horses,” she said of Jenny’s fingers. She pranced her own on the keys in a lively tune. “Two-minute waltz,” she said. “You could soft-cook an egg to it.”

  Jenny could see that, in order to practice, she’d have to come down every day and be by herself. She was happy that Mrs. Pleasant hadn’t forgotten her. She thought it was going to be nice, learning to play piano.

  THREE

  The board of the Ladies’ Relief and Protection Society threw a soirée to honor those of its members who’d lived at the Ark and worked so bravely throughout the epidemics. Lizzie’s depression had not lifted, but she could hardly refuse to be fêted. The party was at the home of two delightfully ready patrons, Ethel Crosby and Margaret Cole, whom she wouldn’t insult for the world. She wore her coin necklace and her apricot silk, but under her corset her heart felt pricked with pins.

  The Putnams lent her Roscoe so she could drive over and leave early if the evening proved too much. They continued very pleased with her, as if she’d chosen to stay away from everyone they disapproved of for all those weeks instead of having been put under quarantine. Still, Lizzie had had no plans to do otherwise; her conscience was clear.

  As she left her house, an evening fog was beginning to swirl into the streets. The city had a magical, underwater feeling. Horses’ hooves echoed in the wet air, and cold currents streamed past her, visible as ghosts.

  At Ethel Crosby and Margaret Cole’s she listened to any number of fine speeches. The tracheotomy in which she had assisted was repeatedly detailed; she was honored for her patience with Meredith Penny, for the grisly clothes she’d washed, the hands she’d held, the prayers she’d offered. Lizzie didn’t suppose she’d ever been the object of so much approval. She felt uncomfortably exposed, yet cautiously pleased. She would never like being noticed, but she had done well, so that was the part that pleased her. Everyone had done well.

  It was a nasty surprise, then, when she stepped outside for some air, for one moment of privacy, to have Mrs. Hallis follow merely to say something unkind. “I was astonished to learn,” Mrs. Hallis began, “that we’re sheltering a child for Mammy Pleasant. Your decision, I’m told.”

  “We had the space,” Lizzie said. “In my opinion. The little girl had nowhere to go. She’s a nice little girl.”

  “I’m sure that’s all true. I’m sure you were full of good intent. You always are.” Somehow Mrs. Hallis managed to make this uncomplimentary. “But none of this falls to your area of concern. And now you’ve created a situation. What is Mrs. Pleasant most known for? Baby-farming. What do we deal in? Babies. We can’t for a moment be seen as one of Mrs. Pleasant’s operations. We’d never recover from the scandal. The Ark would close forever.”

  Mrs. Hallis was a Methodist with the face of a Botticelli. She believed in culpability, which was not the philosophy of most people with such lips. “When we act,” Mrs. Hallis had asked the ladies during her installation as president, “why should we not hold ourselves responsib
le for remote consequences as well as immediate?” This was laudable, but hard.

  “I wouldn’t have brought it up tonight of all nights,” Mrs. Hallis said. “I did plan to wait. But Miss Cole asked about it. If word is already out to the donors, the circumstances are dire.”

  “The circumstances are imaginary!” Lizzie said. “Mrs. Pleasant came to the Ark only the one time when she brought the child. I don’t know her at all, if that’s what you’re implying.”

  “I’m relieved to hear you say so. Of course, I believe you, I know you wouldn’t lie. And yet, Miss Hayes, we run a charity based on public support. We must consider appearances as well as facts. And my cook, Hop Tung, says it’s common knowledge that you run her errands in Chinatown.”

  Lizzie was so shocked by this she didn’t immediately respond. The shock was followed by resentment. She was being watched and talked about. Her neck grew hot, and then her cheeks. Her hands were cold. The image of Mrs. Hallis questioning her Chinese cook about Lizzie’s affairs made her first frightened, then humiliated, and then angry. So they’d all only been pretending to admire her all evening, when really she was the object of a campaign of whispers that reached even into their kitchens.

  “Am I being dismissed?” she asked. Her voice cracked like ice across the last word.

  “Of course not. I only tell you as a friendly warning.”

  Lizzie couldn’t manage another sentence. She left the porch and then the party without a word to anyone, even her hostesses. She woke the next morning with a sickening silver headache on which all the tea in China could have no effect. It had been a great mistake to leave her bed, she decided. She wouldn’t make such an error again.

  Three days later Mrs. Putnam called. Lizzie roused herself sufficiently to dress, but there was no food in the house, nothing to offer by way of hospitality. The newspapers were piled unread on the parlor settee. There was dust.

  Mrs. Putnam took it all in. “How was the party?” she asked. Probably she’d already heard how hastily Lizzie had left. Probably the information was already circulating up in Sacramento through Erma. Soon the governor would know or, at the very least, his Chinese cook.

  Lizzie had this bitter succession of thoughts. But Mrs. Putnam’s face was too kind. Lizzie chose to confide. When she got to Hop Tung, Mrs. Putnam shook her head. All was unfolding just as Lizzie’s mother had feared. If her advice at the séance had only been instantly taken! How disheartening it must be to rouse oneself to Contact only to be ignored.

  Not that Mrs. Putnam was ever one to lose herself in regrets. “The past is only useful as a guide to the future,” she said briskly. She proposed that Lizzie immediately be seen with respectable people. She proposed the long-promised, long-delayed Saturday-night promenade.

  “You can invite that Mrs. Wright you’re so taken with,” she offered, which made it impossible for Lizzie to refuse. Though she’d lost the taste for it herself, it would be such a treat for poor Mrs. Wright. The Putnams would fetch them both.

  The usual Saturday-night route was a loop that could be walked in either direction—Market to Kearny to Bush to Powell or Powell to Bush to Kearny to Market. Whatever the weather, the streets were full of people. The Salvation Army band sang at one end of Market Street, while at the other, groups of young men gathered to smoke cigars and watch the wind lift the ladies’ skirts.

  You might see anyone in San Francisco on a Saturday night. You could buy stocks or snakes. You could buy a pig or a paste necklace or a paste guaranteed to dissolve warts. The Crockers might be walking in one direction and their servants, off duty, in the other. Fast Irish women passed slow Spanish men. There were sailors from the ships of every country in the world and soldiers from the Presidio. There were sweethearts and zealots and labor agitators and mesmerists; there were black Gilbert Islanders, huge Kanakas, turbaned lascars, tattooed Indians, Chinese with their long hair fiercely loose, Italians in fussy shirts with blue sashes. And the whole scene flooded with so much lamplight it was as if they were all onstage together. The very sidewalks seemed made of light.

  Lizzie held Mrs. Wright’s arm and tried to describe it aloud. She recognized Mrs. Hallis out promenading with her husband and two married daughters; they nodded briskly to each other. She saw Myrtle Rolphe freezing out a young man with a fast smile and a gold tooth.

  Mrs. Putnam began to talk about the phantom fire engine. The story was getting a good deal of press. A Mr. Tomkinson was suing the fire department for damages sustained on Third and Folsom when a recklessly speeding engine had chased his horses. His driver had lost the reins, smashing his buggy into splinters against a telegraph pole. Mr. Tomkinson was asking for one hundred nine dollars and seventy-five cents in compensation. There were more than a dozen credible witnesses.

  Only there’d been no fire on this occasion, and none of the city’s many engines had been at Third and Folsom. After an investigation so exhaustive that Chief Scannell was forced to retire to the country under a doctor’s care, acting Chief Sullivan concluded that Mr. Tomkinson would have to apply for compensation to a supernatural agency. Mrs. Putnam was both pleased and horrified to think there were whole engines of ghosts clattering down the stone pavement on Folsom, carelessly sounding gongs and spooking the horses.

  “When you think of all the men who’ve died fighting fires in San Francisco,” Mr. Putnam noted. “Really, the wonder is there aren’t more of these incidents.”

  Mrs. Putnam was forced to agree. “But what do you think it means?” she asked. “Is the manifestation a random occurrence or is it a warning we should heed? What a time for omens this has been! Can you ever remember another such, Mrs. Wright?”

  Mrs. Wright had been squeezing Lizzie’s arm for the past few moments. She answered loudly and quickly. “Stuff and nonsense. One of the engines was out and everyone is lying about it to avoid payment. These events can always be readily explained if you remember what liars people are. Especially when money is involved.

  “These witnesses you refer to—was there anything supernatural in what they observed? The baying of invisible hounds? The scent of unearthly roses?” Her voice was innocent, but Lizzie could tell Mrs. Wright was goading the Putnams.

  Lizzie found Mrs. Wright’s rock-solid disbelief extremely comforting. She might shift about from past to present, but Mrs. Wright kept her feet on the ground. It was also slightly rude. Mrs. Wright did not know the Putnams well enough to contradict them so loudly. Nor was her version appealing to them. “That would involve a massive conspiracy to conceal the truth,” Mr. Putnam pointed out. His posture was stiff, his tone formal.

  “Someone somewhere would be bound to talk.” Mrs. Putnam turned to Lizzie. “Don’t you think so?”

  Lizzie found that she had no opinion on the subject of supernatural fire engines. Naturally, this pleased no one.

  The Putnams began to walk faster, and the distance between the two couples increased. This gap was quickly filled with other people. It could not have been the Putnams’ intention to abandon her, but suddenly Lizzie couldn’t see them anywhere.

  A group of Italian sailors walking together, arm in arm, created a phalanx against which Lizzie was forced to give way. A gaunt and rheumy-eyed man staggered drunkenly toward her, only to find his path blocked by a bosomy, theatrical woman with a serious overbite. “Even today, the women of ancient Egypt are remembered for their beauty. What did they have that you don’t have?” she asked Lizzie. She extended her hand. In it was a small box, inlaid with an ivory ibis. “Something tiny enough to fit in this box. Would you like to open it?”

  Suddenly, inexplicably, the woman and the question filled Lizzie with dread. Why had the woman picked her? Did she look the sort to open a box with no idea as to its contents?

  Lizzie tried to walk past without answering, and the woman intercepted her again. “Go ahead. Open it.”

  Lizzie began to sweat in the cold night air. She moved to the left, pulling Mrs. Wright along so rapidly she careened into a man with a
huge black beard and a white top hat. There was the fleshy sound of collision, the smell of whiskey, a small reproachful noise from Mrs. Wright, a large irritated noise from the man.

  “What are you afraid of? Only yourself,” the woman with the box shouted after Lizzie.

  Lizzie saw the opening of a narrow alleyway and guided Mrs. Wright into it and out of the crush. Several moments were spent in apology and explanation. Mrs. Wright’s hat had been knocked askew and Lizzie straightened it. They began walking again, forward into the alley. Only then did Lizzie look up. The bright glow of streetlamps was gone, and she found herself in a place she’d never been. She was on Morton Street.

  The sounds of the Saturday-night promenade fell away, leaving only their own footsteps. On the left were a dozen small cottages, each with a shallow bay window. In every window a woman sat idly, a smile painted on her lips, and her eyes both staring and unseeing. Instead of dresses, these women wore simple wrappers that would fall away at a touch. Their hair was pinned up in a way that suggested its coming down. The wrappers were in different colors, but otherwise the women looked exactly the same—dark hair, white skin, red mouths.

  The dread Lizzie had been feeling doubled, but now she knew what she was afraid of. She feared recognizing a face, some girl they’d sheltered at the Brown Ark. The women were like dolls, waiting for someone to pick them up, move their arms and legs, animate them. She could not take her eyes off them; the women refused to look at her. She thought that what she was seeing was sex, but that it had been made to look like death.

  Lines of men drank from flasks and bottles as they waited their turns. In the presence of Lizzie and Mrs. Wright, they fell utterly, eerily silent. A man left one of the cottages, a very young man with barely a beard. When he spotted them he reversed direction and walked ahead so they would see only his back. “Get out of here!” a man who looked to be Lizzie’s age snapped at her. “What can you be thinking?”