Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All

by Laura Ruby

  Their father nodded.

  Frankie pointed at the kids surrounding Ada, kids she’d never seen before, kids she’d never wanted to see. “And they’re going with you?”

  He nodded again. “Vito too.”

  Vito’s mouth dropped open, but nothing came out. Frankie didn’t want to say it, she wasn’t supposed to say it, but she couldn’t help it. “What about us? What about Toni and me?”

  Her father stood and pulled on his coat. “I send for you.”

  “When?”

  “I make new shop in Colorado. Hard work. Not for girls.”

  Again Frankie pointed at Ada. “She has girls.”

  He didn’t answer, but he didn’t have to. They were Ada’s girls. Frankie and Toni were some other woman’s girls. A dead woman’s girls. They were nobody to Ada.

  A sister arrived to drop a bag at Vito’s feet, an old bag Frankie didn’t remember. It had his name on it. The nuns had packed up his things. Good riddance to the boy with the handkerchiefs. Frankie stared at Vito and he stared back. He knew it was unfair, he knew she hated him for it. She wanted to be a boy. She wanted to be someone somebody wanted.

  Frankie thought she’d been prepared for anything, but who is? She sat stunned as the rest chattered about Colorado for another half hour. She made herself kiss her father goodbye when he left, and she made him promise to write. She hugged Vito as hard as she hated him, and then squeezed him even harder to show him one day she might not mean it. Then she and her little sister Toni watched them—their father, their brother, Ada and her terrible kids—walk away, fading into the bobbing sea of heads and faces, just a few more ghosts.

  Frankie sat back down at the table where they’d eaten. Toni had the paper dolls in her hands again, but now she was ripping off Sonja Henie’s arms. Frankie still had the sketch in her pocket; she’d never shown it to her father. She pulled it out and opened it. It was a drawing of her mother, just the way Frankie had always imagined she looked. It was good, the best she’d ever done. She crumpled it in her fist.

  She didn’t need anyone thundering at her in church. The ground had already opened up and swallowed her whole.

  Next to Frankie, Toni tore off Sonja’s head. Bye, Sonja. Nice knowing you. Loretta was still slumped on the bench where the crying lady had been. Her hands went from the table to her face, back to the table. Loretta didn’t know what to do with her hands, she didn’t know what to do next. The nuns had forgotten about Frankie and Toni, and they had forgotten about Loretta. And that seemed to be the worst thing of all. That the nuns could forget too.

  “Hey!” Frankie said. “Loretta!”

  Loretta turned. Frankie pointed at the seat across from her. Loretta came over, but she didn’t sit.

  “Was that lady your mother?” Frankie said. “The one who was crying?”

  Loretta nodded slowly, as if she didn’t want to admit it. Frankie didn’t blame her. She pushed the wrapped sandwich across the table. Loretta frowned as if she was afraid Frankie was trying to pull a fast one, but she let out a little “Oh!” when she saw what was in there. “Are you sure?”

  Frankie’s turn to nod. Loretta picked up the sandwich and took a bite, her eyes closing as she chewed. She swallowed hard, then opened her eyes again, strange eyes, like new pennies. “I never had anything so good.”

  Loretta took another bite, and another. Frankie watched that odd girl eat the last sandwich her father would ever give her right down to the crumbs on the greasy paper. One of the stains on that paper looked like Jesus in profile. I waited for Frankie and Loretta to notice, but they didn’t.

  Loretta folded up the greasy paper with its picture of Jesus and sighed in contentment.

  Well, I said. At least someone is grateful.

  Haunts of the Haunt

  I WASN’T CONTENT, I wasn’t grateful.

  After her father swept out of the orphanage bound for the coast of the moon, Frankie went hard and quiet. For weeks, her quiet was a wall that no one could get through, not even Toni, who raged and cried and trashed what was left of her paper dolls as if all her dreams had been dashed, because they had. But Frankie drew the quiet deep down inside herself, honing her bones against it, her eyes flinty with a resigned sort of wisdom. I followed her around the orphanage yelling, Hello, you baby, good morning, cupcake! But if the living couldn’t get through to her, what hope did I have?

  I wandered Chicago, antsy and ghostful. Before 1871, the city was made of wood: the buildings, the homes, even the sidewalks. And then came the Great Chicago Fire that killed three hundred people, destroyed eighteen thousand buildings, and left a third of the city’s residents homeless. After that, Chicago remade itself into a city of brick and stone. It was hard to find a frame house among all that masonry, but there were some. My favorite was a tiny blue house in a sea of brick, the paint peeling, the windows smudged.

  That was what first drew me to it—the wood it was made of, how different it was from the other buildings that surrounded it, how easily it could catch fire, how quickly it would be consumed. What kind of people lived in such a house? What kind of people welcomed that kind of danger? I thought they’d be kindred spirits . . . so to speak.

  They were, but not in the way I thought.

  Now, as always, I could have walked straight into the house, through the door or the wall, but I didn’t. I might have been a revenant, but I wasn’t a creep. I floated around the back of the house and peeked inside. A pale young woman, fine boned and lovely, dressed only in a slip, stood in front of a mirror. She smoothed her waterfall of glossy black hair, rubbed her berry lips, pinched at her high cheekbones to pinken them. She slid one strap of the slip from her shoulder and turned left and right, posing like a starlet. A noise behind her startled her, and she pulled the strap up and jumped back into the rumpled bed. She closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep when the bedroom door opened, and a young man limped in bearing a tray. Despite the limp, the young man had a boxer’s broad shoulders, and light brown hair brushed from a clear, fair brow. He was already dressed for the day, his loose white shirt clean but worn at the cuffs and collar, gray trousers thin at the knees. They didn’t have much, it was clear. But they did have a tray with eggs, toast, and coffee, sleepy morning smiles, each other.

  Berry pretended to wake, murmuring something I’d have to burst through the wall to hear. I could have done that, burst through the wall, I could have listened in on her thoughts, or his.

  But I stayed on the outside where I belonged. The dark-haired, berry-lipped girl sat up in bed, and the young man arranged the tray on her lap. He pulled a napkin from the tray, flicked it open, and laid it across her chest. She laughed. Shyly, she pulled him down for a kiss, a kiss that started out soft, then lingered, and deepened. I closed my eyes, closed whatever sense allowed me to perceive this impossible world and all the impossible people in it.

  I might be doomed to watch, but I could choose what to witness.

  I turned from the window. In the scruff of trees surrounding the tiny, weed-choked garden, a red fox sat, staring. I glanced all around, but I was the only one in the yard.

  What are you gaping at? I said.

  The fox kept staring. Many animals could see what people could not. Cats could, dogs, birds, squirrels—those oak croissants—and foxes, I supposed. I wished, just for a second, it was a wolf pup. I would have liked to meet a wolf pup.

  What? I said to the fox. What do you want?

  The fox panted. It was probably hungry. Everybody and everything was hungry.

  You never think anything is too much to ask, you never think of anyone but yourself.

  If I’d had a body—skin that could flush, muscles that could tense, a jaw that could ache—I would have flushed, tensed, ached. I told that fox: Do I look like I have food? Because I don’t. I have nothing for you, do you understand?

  The fox suddenly turned to go. Maybe it wanted to choose what it witnessed as well, and I was embarrassing both of us.

  Right, I s
aid. Go back to the woods. You’re going to get yourself shot if you lurk around backyards.

  The fox smiled at me, a knowing smile that said I had no secrets from it, it knew why I was here, it knew why I’d come back, it knew me better than I knew myself. Which it didn’t. It didn’t.

  But before I could yell again, it vanished in the brush.

  Dear Frankie,

  Hello to you out in Chicago! I bet it’s cold. But I bet it’s even colder here. And a whole lot quieter. It’s the snow. I know you think Chicago gets plenty, but usually not in November! Denver has so much snow already you wouldn’t believe it. It looks like God threw a big white blanket over the whole world just to tidy up his view, or shut everyone up. Sometimes I stand outside and listen to the quiet. It’s a little hard to get used to, but I expect I will, eventually.

  You might be surprised to hear that I haven’t been doing much to help Dad open the new shoe shop. He says that he’s got enough help with Ada’s boys, and that they need more looking after than I do. But I guess the orphanage was good for something, because I was able to get a job working at a print shop on account of the training I got at the Guardians. The pay’s okay, even though I have to give most of it to Dad. I do have a little bit left over for some smokes and a show every once in a while, so it works out. I’m at work six days a week and sometimes Sundays, but I try to get out to the shows as much as I can. It’s not so quiet in the apartment. It’s not quiet at all. Too crowded with Dad and Ada and all Ada’s kids. The girls don’t bother me much, they’re just sort of spoiled. (Hard to imagine them in the orphanage. I don’t know how they lived without new hats every week!) But Thomas and Dale, the oldest boys, are pretty bad, the way they carry on; and Dewey’s the worst. Dad’s always trying to get them in line and prove to them he means business. But I really don’t want to write about them, and you sure don’t want to hear about it.

  I got your last letter, and I’m glad they finally moved you to the senior girls’ cottage. Took them long enough! That Sister Bert sounds nice (as sisters go). So do your friends—Loretta, and that other one with the funny nickname. Huckle, was it? Strange name for a gal, if you ask me, but what do I know? Oh, and you can’t forget that Stella, either. She sounds like a pistol. Tell her that she can write me whenever she wants to. (Just kidding.)

  I’m glad too that you’ll be working in the kitchen soon. It will take your mind off things, keep you from getting too gloomy. And maybe you’ll be able to get some better food than what they serve in the slop house. You have to be thankful for whatever you can get. (I try to remember that when Dale steals the loose change from my coat pockets or eats the last meatball in the pot.)

  Toni never answered my last letter. Have you seen her? I hope she hasn’t run off to any more soda shops. Tell her I said hello, and tell her I said to stay put. She’s already gotten herself in enough trouble for two little sisters.

  Dad says to tell you that he misses you both, and that he’s sorry he’s not so good at writing letters. He asked me to write to Aunt Marion, which I did. She wrote back and said she’s going to come see you and Toni on the next visiting day. Or maybe the one after that, she wasn’t sure. Maybe she’ll remember to bring you something special.

  Anyway, it snowed again and I have to get out and shovel the walk in front of the shop. I don’t like shoveling, but at least I can look at the mountains while I do it. There’s no place like Chicago, but the mountains here are all right. You can see them from almost anywhere. Sometimes I think about trying to climb one. Can you imagine that? A city boy on a mountaintop? Maybe I should take up yodeling.

  Your crazy brother,

  Vito

  Frankie sat at a table in the slop house with Loretta and another girl named Huckle. The other girls had their forks hanging in the air, waiting for Frankie’s report, as if Vito wasn’t just Frankie’s brother but somebody famous and important. A bandleader. A general in the war everyone was preparing for, or avoiding.

  Frankie folded the letter into neat squares and placed it next to her bowl. The stony quiet that had kept her walled off for weeks had broken like a spell. She’d emerged both more careful and more reckless. The kind of girl who would fold a letter into neat squares. The kind of girl who refused to be surprised again by anyone else, the kind of girl who would only surprise herself.

  “So what’s it say?” Loretta asked.

  “Nothing much.”

  “Oh, come on,” said Huckle. Her real name was Dolores Huckleberry.

  “He said there’s lots of snow in Denver. He said that you can see the mountains from everywhere, and that he thinks about climbing them.”

  “Wow,” said Huckle. She’d never seen Frankie’s brother before, never heard of him before she met Frankie, but she acted as if she was half in love with him. And she couldn’t hear enough about Denver. To Huckle, Denver might as well be Paris.

  “Vito won’t be climbing any mountains,” Frankie said. “He works seven days a week.”

  “Well, what else is he going to do?” said Loretta. “I’d work seven days a week too, if I had to live with my wicked stepmother.”

  “He never says anything bad about her.”

  “Just because he doesn’t say anything bad doesn’t mean there’s isn’t anything bad to say,” said Loretta.

  “What could be bad about getting out of this hole and living in Denver?” said Huckle.

  Loretta whacked Huckle’s arm. The spoonful of porridge flipped from the spoon and hit Huckle in the face. “Hey! What did you do that for?” Huckle said, wiping at it.

  Frankie poked at her porridge. It lurched in the bowl as if it were alive. Ever since her father had left and taken her brother with him, she tried to eat what she could of the lumpy puddings, squashy parsnips, and half-cooked stews, even though it was so much harder without the visiting day treats to look forward to. Today, with Toni snickering with Stella Zaffaro at the next table as if she didn’t have a care in the world, with Vito’s letter sitting like an open mouth on the table, ready to go on and on about the snow and the quiet and the mountains, Frankie couldn’t do it.

  Huckle scooped another spoonful from the bowl. “When you start working in the kitchen, Frankie, why don’t you make sure they give us better food than this, okay?”

  Every girl placed in the senior girls’ cottage got a job somewhere in the orphanage. Most of them were looking forward to it. But it was hard for Frankie to look forward to anything now.

  “What’s wrong with the food?” said Loretta. “I thought it was all right.”

  “You’d eat the bottom of a shoe,” Frankie said.

  “When you’re hungry, you do what you have to,” Loretta said. “If you don’t want it, I’ll take it.”

  Frankie pushed the bowl over to her.

  Huckle said, “Ain’t you gonna need your strength?”

  “It tastes like warm spit.”

  Loretta had been spooning up the porridge as fast as she could, but now she dropped her spoon. “Thanks a lot for that.”

  “Well, it does,” Frankie said.

  “Warm spit or not, I’m going to need my strength,” said Huckle.

  “For the sewing room?” said Loretta. “You think the spools of thread are going to be too heavy for you?”

  “I don’t know what you’re griping about, Huckle,” Frankie said. “You love to sew.”

  “Sheets and pillowcases, that’s all they do over there,” Huckle said. “Nobody loves to sew sheets and pillowcases!”

  “How do you know that?” Loretta asked her. “You haven’t even started your job yet. Besides, how would you like to work in the laundry with me? Remember that girl a couple of years ago who got her arm caught in the mangle?”

  Huckle shuddered. “I heard it split like a sausage.”

  “Well then. Stop complaining. Worst that could happen to you is that you prick yourself with a pin. Frankie here could cut off her whole hand with a cleaver!”

  “Thanks for that,” Frankie said.<
br />
  Loretta held up the bowl of warm-spit porridge, as if she were some rich lady making a toast. “You’re welcome.”

  Loretta wasn’t wrong. The kitchen was huge and packed with cleavers the size of axes. The pots were like bathtubs and the iceboxes like cottages, as if the place had been built for a family of very hungry giants. About a dozen girls scrubbed pans, chopped vegetables, peeled potatoes, and stirred stews. There was even a bakery crowded with enormous barrels of flour, sugar, and pudding powders, and racks for breads and cakes. Just thinking about the racks packed with freshly baked cakes made Frankie’s mouth water.

  The whole place, explained the roly-poly nun in charge, was separated into sections: babies’ section, nuns’ section, boys’ section, and girls’ section. “Because of dietary restrictions and recommendations, each section prepares and serves different foods,” Sister Vincenze said, her soft chins squishing out of her wimple like rising bread dough as she talked.

  Sister paired Frankie up with an older girl she called Rosalie. Rosalie was the perfect girl to work in the kitchen, because she was nearly as huge as everything in it. Her face was wide and pink, her hands were the size of hams, and she was a head taller than everyone else in the room, including Sister Vincenze. She was as big and beautiful as one of those goddesses you see in paintings, Frankie thought, except Rosalie had all her clothes on.

  “Folks call me Choppy,” Rosalie said, after Sister walked away.

  “What for?” Frankie asked.

  Rosalie/Choppy held up her left hand; her middle finger was shorter than the rest by a knuckle. “Chopped it clean off,” she said. “Blood all over the meat I was cutting.”

  “I guess they had to throw the meat out.”

  “Are you nuts? Rinsed it off, good as new.” She grinned. “They never did find the tip of my finger, though. I expect it ended up in the stew.”

  “So that’s why it tastes so terrible,” Frankie said. “Too many fingers.”

  Choppy smacked Frankie upside the head in a friendly sort of way. “You’re all right, Fran-ces-ca.”