The Red Garden

by Alice Hoffman

  Now people said that Topsy was difficult, spooky. She had trampled three of her trainers, at least one of them known to be cruel and abusive. People in the know whispered that he had burned her with cigarettes just for the fun of it, and that there were marks all over her flesh, but none of those reports were in the papers. My father was excited all that week. He was the one in charge. The event would prove that Edison knew more about the dangers of electricity than Westinghouse, whom my father called an upstart. It was a battle of the greats, and in the end a single creature who didn’t even belong among us would be proof that Edison’s method of electrifying the world was safe, while Westinghouse was a crackpot with liquid lightning that could fry us alive.

  Thousands of people came to see Topsy die. My mother thought the desire to view such anguish was a sign of the innate cruelty of human beings. My mother and I weren’t like other people. For one thing, we preferred the dark. In the root cellar we saw by candlelight. We had no desire to be part of the audience, clamoring to see the poor creature die. We went because my father insisted. We were among the crush of onlookers who applauded, eager for the show to start, but we didn’t holler or clap our hands. It was a horrible sight. The elephant was tied up in ropes, hooked to a platform and a post. Wooden sandals with copper electrodes were attached to her feet. We were in the back of the crowd, but for an instant the elephant looked at me. Her look went right through me. I had to turn away. Later, my mother told me the elephant’s last keeper had been sitting on a bench nearby, weeping. She said she wanted a man like that, someone who understood sorrow, not someone who caused it.

  After that, things got worse. My mother’s true feelings were there in her face. She didn’t have to say anything to show how she felt about my father. He reacted as you might imagine he would. Hateful was too small a word. I wondered if the electricity at Luna Park had seeped into his skin, and that was why his meanness grew, like a charge, burning brighter throughout the spring. Fine weather seemed to affect him adversely. But in all honesty he drank whenever there was rain or snow or wind or falling leaves. He drank and burned, and we paid the price. We often kept the lights turned off, though ours had been one of the first houses in Brooklyn to be wired. We kept a lantern beneath my bed.

  MY MOTHER KILLED him on the Tuesday after I turned ten. I had come between them when he was beating her, and then he’d suddenly turned on me. He was slapping me and ripping at my clothes. He said words I didn’t understand. I knew from the look on my mother’s face as she tore me away that something was over and something was begun. My mother and I began to pray, but we prayed for a bad thing, and I wondered if God would welcome us when we stood before him, or if he would turn us out when the time came to face up to who we had been in our lifetimes and what we deserved in the hereafter.

  One morning we went out to the fish market. We passed by stands of flounder and piles of mussels dredged from the bay. My mother wasn’t there to buy fish. She was thinking about another dish entirely. She turned down an alley where there were factories. The air was acrid. She was so beautiful that men were drawn to her, despite the plain way she dressed. They spoke to my mother and made offers I didn’t understand. She didn’t answer. She sat me down on a bench and told me not to move. Even if it became night, even if the morning broke through the sky, I was to stay exactly where I was. She gave me a bundle of my clothes and a satchel with some cheese and bread. She said I was to give my name as Sara Book if anyone asked, and to say I was from Manchester, England. That was where her grandmother had been from, and Book had been her grandmother’s maiden name. It was still the truth even though the facts were stretched out like the muslin we used for our needlepoint samplers. She said that whatever happened next she would come back for me. She would always be there when I needed her. I believed her. But I was afraid she might be the one who would need me. How would I know if I stayed on the bench? How could I come to her aid?

  When she turned to go I followed her.

  The streets in Brooklyn were funny and curved. Some of the sidewalks were made of wooden planks that were slippery when it rained. I kept thinking about the elephant. How she had looked at me, begging for something. I should have run to her and cut the ropes that held her, but I stayed and did nothing. Now I saw the elephant whenever I closed my eyes. Her image had been imprinted inside me when the first burst of electricity went through the wires. I couldn’t think the word Topsy without getting a shiver.

  It was beginning to rain, a light spring shower. The air shimmered and the sidewalks were slick. My mother stopped at a shop, then slipped inside. It was a tannery. When I peered in the window, I saw my mother speaking with one of the women who worked there. She took off the pearl brooch my father had given her in their courting days and handed it over. The woman took it between her teeth and bit down to tell if it was real gold. It was. There were boiling vats everywhere, all containing different colors of mixture. The stench of leather was terrible. I covered my mouth and nose with my hand and huffed and puffed in order to breathe. It smelled like death in there and that’s what it was.

  My mother came out with the packet she had paid dearly for. It was poison. She had on her black coat even though it was a warm evening. She wore it as if it were armor, her shield and her sword. The rain washed away the horrid smell of leather. On my birthday, my mother had made me a chocolate cake with sugar frosting. She told me ten was a special year in a girl’s growing up, the year when the direction for all the rest of her life would be set. This is what ten meant to me: I would never sit on a bench and wait for what happened next. I would never look into the crowd, searching for someone to save me.

  I FOLLOWED HER, but stayed in the yard when she went into our house. I peeked through the window and watched as she opened the packet and poured it into a glass. My father liked a stiff drink when he came home, to follow the ones he’d already had at whatever tavern he’d chosen that day. I sat under the mustard plant. I liked the bitter scent of mustard leaves. I looked at my legs and wondered if they looked like a woman’s legs. It was possible that my father was confused and that was why he had looked at me that way when I’d tried to stop him from hurting my mother. Maybe that was why he’d said the things I knew were bad. My mother had vowed that he couldn’t stay away from women, and perhaps he’d forgotten my true age.

  I crouched there in the fading twilight. I was in the shadows and I felt safe. For a few moments I forgot about our situation. I watched an anthill where the ants were busy working away, building their house taller and stronger. Some of the first of the season’s crickets were calling when he came home. From a distance he looked like a rich man after a day’s work. My mother was sitting in a kitchen chair. She didn’t run for the root cellar or the closet. She looked calm and beautiful and quiet. That was when I knew she was going to kill him. She’d always run from him before. He went inside. He was a tornado. He did things to my mother I will not speak about, right there in the kitchen. She didn’t cry or try to protect herself. He hit her with his belt, which is why she has a line down her face. It’s the mark of that day.

  When he was done, she offered him the drink.

  I sat under the mustard bush until he was finished drinking. I thought there must be another way for men and women to be with each other if people fell in love. I knew I must do as she’d told me. I ran back to the bench where she had left me. She didn’t come for me that night. I ate the bread and cheese she’d given me. I didn’t answer when men passing by made comments. Early the next morning my mother appeared. She looked tired and she had a suitcase with her. Some people stared because of the mark of the belt on my mother’s face, but she said she didn’t mind if people stared, as long as they stayed away. We took the ferry to Manhattan, under the shadow of the Williamsburg Bridge, which I had hoped to walk across when it was finished. We walked to the train station. We went to Albany because it was the next train scheduled. That was how we chose our fate, quickly, ready for whatever happened next. We sat in our s
eats and didn’t speak as we watched the city fade away. I took my mother’s hand, and she laced her fingers through mine. We saw green fields, forests, blue skies. We got off in Albany, which wasn’t much of a city compared with Brooklyn. We stayed one night in a house where rooms were rented out. We could hear people talking all night in the room right next to ours. I heard a woman laugh, and the sound shone through the darkness, brighter than any light. I was glad we had gotten on that train.

  WHEN WE SET out the next day, we did so on foot. The roads were empty and long. Sometimes we went where there were no roads at all. Days passed. Everything in bloom. Birds startled as we went through the grass. I began to like being out in the country, hiking for miles through the fields and on the winding roads. We reached a pretty town called Lenox where everyone was friendly. A woman let us stay in her garden shed. My mother said she was a schoolteacher in search of a job and the woman suggested she try Blackwell, where they were looking for a teacher. My mother told me to stay in Lenox. It was easier for a woman alone to find a position. She would come back for me when everything was settled.

  I couldn’t help but wonder what might happen if she needed me. When she left, I followed her again. She walked all day and so did I. I ate little berries that grew along the path. My skirt tore on thorn plants, but the air was fresh and warm and bees were everywhere. I was quiet as I went along. No one knew I was there. Even the meadowlarks that slept in their nests among the thistles didn’t wake when I ran past.

  When we came to a river, my mother took off all her clothes. She washed her hair, then combed it with the tortoiseshell comb she used to pile it atop her head. She walked more slowly now. Soon the town of Blackwell came into view. It was on the other side of a huge apple orchard. The pink and white blooms had not yet unfurled, but the leaves were green. I thought the sea of apple trees was a good sign, there to replace the waters of Sheepshead Bay. I stood outside the meetinghouse while my mother went inside, then traipsed after at a distance when a man took her to see the cottage where the schoolteacher would live. It was right behind the oldest house in the village, the Brady estate, a rambling place with rooms added on, white with black shutters. The owner had donated the cottage for the use of the schoolteacher for the good of the town. Maybe that was why my mother’s scar didn’t bother the school committee. They thought she’d never find a husband because of it, and that was fine with them. I heard the man who had interviewed my mother say that the town council always hired a single woman to be the teacher because a married woman would think of her own children before she would the children of Blackwell. I imagined the root cellar at home and I missed it for a moment. I missed my mother saying Don’t listen. Close your eyes.

  That night there was heavy rain. I slept in the barn, where there were two horses. The horses were surprised to see me, but when I offered them some hay they quieted down. I wished I had a dog to keep me company. I’d seen several collies in town; a few had gazed at me, but none had barked, and I started to think maybe I was lucky if the dogs took a fancy to me. Maybe I was in the right place at last. I slept beneath a blanket that smelled like grass. In the morning, a man came in and fed the horses and told them they were good boys. He laughed gently when they butted their heads against him, straining to get close to him. He was older than my father, but he wasn’t like a tornado. He was more like the horses. Quiet. He was one of the tall men in Blackwell whose families had known hardship and sorrow, a descendant of the town founders, people who’d lived through blizzards and famine and faced their hardships with the same sure demeanor. It didn’t surprise me that after he’d left, the horses whinnied for him to return.

  When my mother went to the schoolhouse, I followed her there. My stomach was growling, but I refused to think about my hunger. Twelve children were waiting for her, all dressed in clean clothes, their hands folded in front of them. They all had brought their lunches, and a few had books. At noon, I went back the way I had come. The side door of the big house was open, so I crept inside when I smelled food. I was so hungry I couldn’t stop myself when I saw a pie on the counter. I took it, the whole thing. I went out behind the house and sat in the tall grass and ate it all. Afterward I was sick, but I didn’t care. I fell asleep right there in the grass until the rain woke me. When I ran into the barn, I felt as though someone was watching me, but when I turned, no one was there.

  That night I looked in my mother’s window. She was eating supper. The housemaid who worked for Mr. Partridge had brought some stew and a loaf of bread, then she stopped at the barn and left another loaf. That was when I understood that the man who owned the horses knew I was in his barn.

  Late that night my mother went into her yard when the citizens of Blackwell were all in their beds. She wept for all she had lost and all she had done. Gooseflesh rose on my body as I was roused from sleep. The horses became panicky in their stalls when they heard her cries. The man came out of his house. He stopped when he saw my mother. I could see him fall in love with her right then and there in spite of the mark on her face that my father had left. I hadn’t understood that love could be visible, as real as the grass or the river. But I understood it now. I saw the man’s yearning just as clearly as I saw the horses’ desire for hay.

  In the morning, after my mother left for the schoolhouse, I went to knock on the door of the big house. The tall man who lived there introduced himself as Isaac Partridge. He wasn’t surprised to see me. He invited me in and gave me tea and toast. He told me he was sorry he had no more apple pie to serve me. He said he himself had always preferred pie to cake and could eat one in its entirety at one sitting, just as I had done.

  I told him there were three things he had to do to make her love him if that was what he wanted. He seemed interested and amused. He said, “Go on.” The first was that he had to give up all drink. He said that was easy enough. He wasn’t much of a drinker. The second was that he had to give her his house and take the cottage for his own. That was easy as well. His house was too big for a single man. The third was that he had to give her a daughter. He looked at me then. “I don’t know how easy that is,” he said. “Easy enough,” I assured him.

  That night Isaac knocked on my mother’s door and said she needed to move into the big house. The cottage was infested with beetles and she had to leave until the infestation was over. He would live there instead since bugs were no bother to him. My mother looked at him carefully, then agreed. Every night for the next week they had dinner together because the cottage had no kitchen and Isaac had no way to make his meals there. Instead he would knock on the door of the house that he owned—where he was now a visitor—and my mother would welcome him inside. They would sit at the table and eat the meal the housemaid prepared. My mother wore her plain brown dress and her hair pulled up. The mark that separated her face into two halves was red in the candlelight, like a flower. Every morning Mr. Partridge would report to me on the progress of their conversation. I would then tell him more about what my mother liked and what she despised. She hated cruelty, people who made judgments, hash for supper, cigar smoke. She loved roses, fresh fish and mussels, trips by boat, books, children. Mr. Partridge listened carefully and wrote it all down in a notebook.

  One evening he invited my mother to the meetinghouse for the council meeting exactly as I suggested. That night he proposed that no liquor be served in the village of Blackwell. Alcohol, he said, was the downfall of many good men and there was no reason for Blackwell to aid in mankind’s depravity. My mother gazed at him with surprise as he made this suggestion in his quiet, firm voice. I knew she would be impressed. Since Jack Straw ran the only tavern on his family’s land, and it was well outside the town limits, no one disagreed. The bylaw was passed unanimously. My mother walked home beside Mr. Partridge in the dark. She looked at him for a long time as he crossed the yard to the cottage.

  We waited until a clear night for the third step. It was the middle of May by then. I knew my mother sat up at nights crying over me. I had
seen her writing letters to the address in Lenox where I was supposed to have waited. On the eve of our plan, Mr. and Mrs. Kelly, a well-liked couple in town, went out for a walk along the river as they did every night after their supper. I knew their schedule and had been watching them. They would be our witnesses. Isaac Partridge made certain to be walking there too. When I heard him approach and greet the Kellys, I slipped into the river. I was careful to submerge myself in the exact spot Mr. Partridge had shown me, a pool where the current wouldn’t catch me up and carry me downstream. I hung onto a branch and screamed. I thought about Brooklyn and my birthday and the elephant, and soon enough the screams became real in my mouth.

  The Kellys watched from the steep bank as Mr. Partridge threw himself in to rescue me, and they helped to revive me. When I came round, I said I couldn’t remember what had happened. Only that my parents had drowned and that my name was Sara. I seemed slow-witted, perhaps from my time in the river, but I soon turned out to be a fast learner. People in Blackwell were amazed by how bright I was. Mr. Partridge adopted me and gave me his name that very week. We both signed papers in the meetinghouse and afterward there was a party where mussels and fish that had been brought all the way from Boston were served. Mr. Partridge gave me the two horses in the barn for my very own and, as a special surprise, bought me a pug dog to keep me company. I loved that dog and called him Topsy, allowing him to sleep in my bed atop the feather quilt. In return for all Mr. Partridge had done for me, I gave him the only thing I had. He married my mother on the first of June. As far as he was concerned, she came from Manchester, England, and had been educated in Boston. Just as her contract with the town had stated, she’d never had children of her own, though anyone could see she was partial to me. She was the town schoolteacher and the love of his life. I was the girl who had nearly drowned, but had managed to save myself instead, in the year I turned ten.