Two boys sat beside each other on the long bench. Fannie was standing, having just set cups of milk and a sandwich in front of each of them. Both boys looked at her, one with bright blue eyes, the other with gray eyes fierce as storm clouds. The storm-cloud eyes swept over Rachel, lingering on her scalp, then slid away. The bright blue eyes looked right at her, lifting at the corners with a smile. Rachel slunk along the wall, gradually drawing closer, trying to decide which boy was her brother.
“Hello, Rachel,” said the bright blue boy. She shivered at the sound of his voice. She ran and circled her arms around him, squeezing him tight.
“Oh, Sam, she’s a strong one!” the blue-eyed boy said. Rachel looked up at Mrs. Berger, confused.
Her hand on the other boy’s shoulder, Fannie said, “This is your brother, Sam.” Two years in the orphanage had hardened his eyes from the lightness Rachel remembered. Sam held his little sister’s gaze now, his jaw tight, as if it hurt him to look at her. Vic unwrapped Rachel’s arms and handed her over to her brother. She slid down the bench and pressed against Sam.
“Come, Vic,” Fannie said. Her son followed her into the kitchen. The door swung out after them, then back in, out, in.
Sam lifted his hand to stroke the girl curled up against him, but he couldn’t bear to touch her naked scalp. Mrs. Berger had explained how his sister lost her hair from the X-ray treatments, but the sight of her so bald and pale, like a hatchling fallen to the sidewalk, rebuked him. Unlike Rachel, he remembered perfectly the last day they were together. He’d known as he made it that his promise to come for her was an empty one. As weeks, then months, disappeared without anyone reuniting them, he worried for her, knowing no one could calm her the way he could. Even as he learned to negotiate the rules and regulations of the Home, his nights were disturbed by dreams of his mother, his days consumed by anger at his father. The thread connecting him to his sister chafed until he came to resent its persistent burn.
It took all his courage for Sam to put his arms around Rachel and draw her onto his lap. He braced himself for her crying, but it never came, only the scratching of her nails as she clutched at his arms.
“It’s okay now, Rachel. I’ll watch out for you from now on.” He didn’t want it to be another empty promise. He frowned, puzzling out how to protect her when she’d be on the girls’ side of the Home, in a different class at school, at another table in the dining hall. He imagined her in the play yard, at the mercy of a thousand children who, Sam knew, sniffed out weakness like sharks scenting blood. As orphanage kids rose in rank from inmate to monitor to counselor, each promotion intensified their bullying as they gained the authority to subject others to what they had once endured. His fists clenched at the thought of his sister in their midst.
Sam kissed Rachel’s head, ashamed at the way his lip curled back from her clammy scalp. He pushed her off his lap, held her at arm’s length, looked her in the eye. “I’ll make sure no one ever hurts you again.” It was a promise that left no room for softness.
Rachel nodded, but something in his tone scared her. “Who’s going to hurt me?” she asked, lower lip trembling.
“No one, Rachel, don’t start that now. Here, eat Vic’s sandwich.” Rachel bit into the soft bread spread with mashed potato. “Listen, Mrs. Berger’s the nicest lady in this whole place. And me and Vic, we come by every day on the way back from school. We can’t stay long, just one bell. By Study Bell we gotta be back in the Castle or the monitor’ll give us standing lessons.” Sam finished his milk. “I’ll come by after school tomorrow, okay?”
“You’re leaving?” Rachel whispered.
“I have to go, but listen, in school they taught us already how to read and write. Me and Vic, we’ll teach you everything we learned from second grade so far. School year’s almost over, so that’s a lot!” He was gratified to see his sister smile.
Vic was in the doorway. They didn’t need Fannie to look at her watch for them to know it was time to leave. Like all the children in the Orphaned Hebrews Home, their bodies counted the intervals between bells in heartbeats. Rising Bell. Dressing Bell. Breakfast Bell. School Bell. Lunch Bell. School Bell again, then Yard Bell. Study Bell. Dinner Bell. Club Bell. Washing Bell. Last Bell.
“Bye, Rachel. See ya tomorrow, Ma,” Vic said, accepting a quick kiss from his mother.
The boys ran out. As they disappeared, Rachel dashed to the window, crawling onto the sill. She looked out over the yard, nearly empty now. Sam and Vic appeared below her, running across the gravel toward the back of the Castle, where fire escapes zigzagged across the building like shoelaces. They got there just as Rachel heard the sound of a bell. An older boy stood at the door, arms crossed over his chest. As Vic and Sam reached for the handle, the boy’s arm flew out. He slapped them each across the face. Vic covered his cheek with his hand and, head low, entered the building. Sam kept his chin up, stared at the boy, then followed his friend. Even though the sound of the slaps didn’t carry to the window, Rachel covered her ears with her hands.
That night, Rachel whimpered in her bed. Mrs. Berger came into the dorm, her braid unpinned and swishing down the back of her nightgown. She sat on the edge of Rachel’s bed, the little girl curled around the warmth of her body.
“Hush now, kitten,” Fannie Berger murmured, stroking Rachel’s back until she fell asleep.
LIFE IN THE Reception House fell into a comforting rhythm. Meals were taken in the dining room, Fannie Berger clucking over the meager portions sent from the Castle’s huge kitchens. Mable took the Reception children outside to play, but only when the Home children were at school and the yard was empty. In the afternoons, a counselor who was taking college classes came to give the older children lessons so they didn’t fall behind their grade. In the schoolroom, Rachel crept close as they read out loud or recited multiplication tables, attracted to the sound of learning. Most days, Sam and Vic stopped in after school. Rachel sat by Sam while he ate whatever Mrs. Berger had managed to set aside for the boys. Between them they practiced the alphabet and counting until Rachel could write the letters from A to Z and numbers up to a thousand.
Sundays, during visiting hours, Vic and Sam spent the whole afternoon in Reception. The boys took books from the schoolroom shelves and showed Rachel how the letters combined to form words. Vic always had a smile for Rachel, and she liked it when his bright blue eyes were on her. With Sam, she wanted to be pressed up against him, but the way he looked at her made her feel a little afraid, so she settled for the hug that ended each visit.
After a month, there was no evidence that any of the children from Dr. Solomon’s experiment were recovering from the alopecia. One by one, they disappeared from Reception, placed in foster homes. But Rachel had just been reunited with her brother, and Fannie was against separating them. Finding a foster home for both children, however—one of them a willful eight-year-old boy—would be next to impossible. Fannie knew there was a lot Sam hated about the Home, but he was like a brother to Vic now, and she didn’t want to see him go.
“Let her stay,” Mrs. Berger suggested to the superintendent. “She can spend the rest of the summer in Reception and go into the Home after Labor Day. If her hair doesn’t grow back by then, maybe the board could buy her a wig.” Mr. Grossman wasn’t a man to make exceptions, but it was difficult to find counselors willing to work for the wages the orphanage paid. To keep Fannie Berger happy, he agreed.
Summer settled over Manhattan. With school out and windows open, the children’s voices rose from the gravel yard on shimmers of heat. If they weren’t practicing with the marching band or deeply involved in a game of baseball, Sam and Vic spent long stretches of the day at Reception. Sam became easier around Rachel. He smiled when she showed how she could read words for herself, and when she held out her hands twisted with string, he cat’s cradled with her—as long as no boys were looking. One Sunday afternoon late in July, Mrs. Berger took the two boys and Rachel for a picnic in Riverside Park. When Rachel imitated Vic in callin
g her Ma, Fannie didn’t correct the girl.
Sam and Vic were having their turn at summer camp when a new girl was admitted to Reception. Rachel, who followed Mrs. Berger like a gosling, saw her brought in. “This is Amelia,” the agency lady said, her hand on the girl’s shoulder. “She just lost both of her parents in that ferry accident in the East River. All of her relatives are somewhere in Austria.” The lady’s hand moved from Amelia’s shoulder to her hair. “What a shame it will be to lose this, won’t it? I hardly think it’s ever been cut.” The girl’s hair cascaded down her back in thick swirls, little eddies around her temples. It was deeply red; where the light touched it, Rachel could see the strands sparkle with gold and garnet.
“Such a beauty,” Fannie said, lifting the girl’s delicate chin. Amelia’s face was a fine oval, her amber eyes rimmed with fluttering lashes. Rachel’s eyes followed the hand from Amelia’s chin up to Mrs. Berger’s face, which was soft with feeling. Rachel sensed the flow of Fannie’s affection shift to this new girl with her pretty face and beautiful hair. Mrs. Berger had never called Rachel a beauty—she was always “my poor kitten.” Rachel realized it was pity, not love, Mrs. Berger felt for her. Suddenly she understood why Sam’s eyes slid sideways when he looked at her. Compared to this new girl, Rachel was ugly, damaged, unlovable.
Rachel’s lungs tightened so she couldn’t breathe. Her lower lip trembled. She watched, helpless, as her hand, controlled by an impulse of its own, reached for Amelia’s hair. Grabbing, the hand pulled, hard. Amelia cried out.
“Rachel, I’m ashamed of you!” Mrs. Berger slapped Rachel’s fingers. “Go to the playroom, now.”
Rachel slunk away. In the playroom she sulked, rubbing the back of her hand. It didn’t matter, though. By dinner, Amelia’s beautiful hair would have been swept up from the floor, her scalp showing pale after the shave Mrs. Berger was giving her right now. The thought of a broom pushing that red hair across the floor made Rachel smile. She took her favorite puzzle from a shelf. By the time the children were called in for dinner, she’d solved it twice.
At dinner, Amelia was dressed in the same institutional clothes as the rest of the children. She’d been stripped and scrubbed, her teeth examined and a tonsillectomy scheduled. But, among the children whose heads had been recently shaved, Amelia’s hair remained, excessive and resplendent.
“I just couldn’t do it,” Fannie explained to Mable. “Such beautiful hair! I called up to the office and I told Mr. Grossman, I said I can’t cut off this girl’s hair. I promised I checked her head for lice, I didn’t see one nit. So I asked him please, don’t make me do it. Both parents dead in that terrible accident, and from a good family, but no relatives in America to take her. Enough already, I said, not her hair, too.”
Mable shook her head. “What you get away with, Fannie.”
Fannie looked at Amelia spooning soup into her mouth across the table. “Sometimes you gotta be a person, Mable.”
“Sometimes you do,” Mable muttered.
That night in the girl’s dorm, Rachel heard Amelia crying and the sound made her glad. Then Mrs. Berger came into the room and settled her weight on the edge of Amelia’s bed.
“It’s all right, my beautiful girl, don’t cry.” Amelia circled her arms around the woman’s waist and sobbed. Fannie ran her hands over the girl’s hair until she was calm and breathing quietly. Rachel watched, resentful. Even the blue moonlight sought out the ruby threads in Amelia’s hair. Rachel covered her scalp with the thin summer blanket and squeezed her hands together, pretending she wasn’t alone.
ON THE MORNING of Labor Day, Fannie Berger was exasperated. Mr. Grossman had decided that every child in Reception who’d had at least two weeks of quarantine and a doctor’s clearance would go over to the Castle that day to be ready for the start of school tomorrow. Fannie was run off her feet getting them all packed and prepared.
“Where’s your wig gotten to now, Rachel?” Fannie had been so pleased to present it to the girl, but Rachel refused to wear the thing. She hated how the coarse brown hair sprouted from the scratchy cap, how it made her scalp itch and sweat drip behind her ears. She kept taking it off and hiding it behind playroom shelves or in kitchen cabinets. Fannie finally found it under a radiator, dusty and tangled.
“I’m tired of putting this back on your head.” Fannie slapped the wig against her thigh to shake off the dust. “You want to go to the Home looking like a boiled egg? Fine. But wait until you’re out of Reception to lose it again.” She shoved the matted thing into Rachel’s hand. Amelia, on line behind her, snickered.
“Now, children, are we ready? Your cases are all labeled?” Fannie surveyed the line, four girls and half a dozen boys, a small cardboard suitcase containing a change of clothes beside each one. “I’m taking you out at playtime and giving the girls to Miss Stember, since you’re all going into F1. Boys, after I leave the girls in the yard, I’ll take you to your counselors. Your cases will be under your beds when you go up to your dormitories.”
“How will they get there?” Rachel asked.
“Enough with the questions. Just do as the monitors tell you. Now, are we ready? Follow me, children.” Rachel held back, stuffing the wig into the case on which were stenciled the letters of the alphabet that spelled her name. She caught up to the end of the line. Even without the wig, Rachel didn’t stand out so much from the rest of the group with their recently shaved heads. Compared to Amelia, though, Rachel couldn’t shake the idea that she did, indeed, look like a boiled egg. She kept as far from the luxuriant hair as possible.
The children trailed Fannie down the stairs and through the door to the gravel yard where they had previously played only when no one else was out. Now, the entire expanse was crawling with children and the air was thick with the dust they kicked up. The Orphaned Hebrews Home was at capacity, and it seemed that every one of its thousand inmates was playing outside.
Fannie led the children across the yard to the only adult woman in sight. Miss Stember was leaning against a brick wall in the striped shade of a fire escape, scuffed and dusty shoes peeking out from under the hem of her creased linen dress. To the youngest children she was known as “Ma,” though Fannie knew Millie Stember was just twenty-two.
“Are these the new girls for F1, then?” Miss Stember squinted as she stepped away from the wall and into the sunlight.
“Amelia, Sarah, Tess, and that one is Rachel.” Fannie gestured to each in turn.
“My, aren’t you a lovely girl.” Miss Stember lifted a hank of Amelia’s hair and looked questioningly at Fannie. “No baldy for her?”
“I got Mr. Grossman’s permission to leave it. I just couldn’t cut off such a beautiful head of hair.”
“And is that one of the X-ray children? I thought they were all fostered out.” Millie Stember gazed down at the top of Rachel’s head.
“The rest of them were, but this one has a brother here, my boy Vic’s friend, Sam. You remember him from last year?”
“Of course! I can’t believe they’re moving up to M2 already. I’ll take the girls over to their monitor. They can play until Lunch Bell.”
“Thank you, Millie, I have to find three different counselors for the boys. You’ll be good girls, won’t you, kittens? Now, boys, follow me.” Mrs. Berger turned and crossed the yard.
“Come along, girls,” Miss Stember said. They made their way across the graveled expanse, occasionally bumped by children chasing each other. They approached a girl with a wild tangle of black curls cut blunt across her neck.
“Naomi, you’re the new F1 monitor, aren’t you?”
“You bet, since the day I moved up to F2,” the girl said. Naomi was only eight years old, but she was tall for her age. Her blouse and skirt were the same as any other uniform in the yard, but little things made her unique: a turned-up collar, an open button at the neck, a belt buckled over the untucked blouse.
“These are some new girls from Reception for F1. Can you see they come in at Lunch Bell and fin
d their places?”
“Sure, Ma, you can leave ’em with me.” Naomi looked over the group while Miss Stember retreated to her slice of shade. Rachel waited for the cooing over Amelia’s hair that seemed to follow every introduction. Instead, Naomi said, “Which one of you is Sam’s sister?”
“I am,” Rachel said.
“All right, girls, go on and get a run in.” Amelia took the hands of Tess and Sarah and skipped off across the gravel. “You stick with me, Rachel.” Naomi dropped a hand onto the girl’s shoulder. It felt heavy and warm. “Sam and Vic came by, asked me to keep an eye on you. Are you a troublemaker or something?” Naomi turned down her mouth, acting stern, but her smiling eyes told Rachel she was joking.
“I won’t make any trouble.”
“Well, I hope you make some, or I won’t believe you’re Sam’s sister.” Naomi lifted her hand to Rachel’s scalp in the same gesture she’d have used to muss a kid’s hair. Rachel shrank down, then eased back up as she sensed Naomi’s intention. “Here, have a catch.” Naomi pulled a kind of ball from her pocket, made of crushed newspaper wrapped around a stone and tied with string. She tossed it to Rachel, who stumbled back to catch it. Back and forth it went, arcing through the space between them.
Across the play yard, a counselor’s voice, high and penetrating, called out two long syllables, the vowels stretched to breaking: “A-a-a-a-l Sti-i-i-i-l.” As the sound carried, the cry of All Still was taken up and repeated by the monitors. As the drawn-out words curled into eardrums, they seemed to have a magical effect on each listener, freezing the muscles. Naomi pushed the makeshift ball into her pocket and kept her hands there. Moving only her eyes and lips, she whispered urgently, “Don’t move.” Rachel did as she was told.
No one told Amelia what to do when she heard the cry of All Still. Over the din of the playing children, she’d barely distinguished the words. She was still skipping, the sound of gravel scuffed beneath her shoes suddenly audible, when an older girl stepped up and slapped her across the face. Amelia’s eyes spilled tears as a red mark bloomed on her cheek. Just then, a bell rang, breaking the spell. All the children turned, moving like a school of fish toward the Castle and funneling through its doors.
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