Orphan #8

by Kim van Alkemade

  “Too bad you don’t have eyebrows,” Tess said.

  “It won’t matter with the masks,” Sophie said. “No one will know you, Rachel.”

  When the girls of F5 entered the dining hall later that evening, it was transformed. The space, cleared of tables and benches, seemed to stretch on forever. Strings of colored electric lights were twisted around the poles and swagged between the beams. Platters were piled with buttery hamantaschen; fruit juice mixed with seltzer fizzed in punch bowls.

  At the door, members of the Dance Committee handed out masks—sashes of colored fabric decorated with feathers and sequins, oblong holes cut out for eyes. Girls and boys accepted the masks, wrapping them around their faces and tying them behind their heads. With everyone’s hair cut by the same barber, virtually all of them brunette and in similar clothes, the simple masks were amazingly effective at blurring identities. Even friends didn’t recognize each other until they were up close. They enjoyed the thrill of anonymity, the opportunity to imagine themselves for the night as something other than orphans.

  At the front of the room, a stage was set up for the members of the band who had rehearsed dance tunes. When the superintendent mounted the stage, the band director cued the trumpet player, who gave a flourish to catch everyone’s attention.

  “Welcome to the annual Purim Dance,” Mr. Grossman said. “I invite the committee to come forward to make a few announcements.”

  Five boys made their way onto the stage, Vic stepping up to speak for them. His mask hung untied over his shoulder, and all the girls knew who he was. Widely considered to be the most handsome sixteen-year-old in M6, his romantic attachment to one of the F6 girls had been chronicled in the gossip column of the last Home newsletter—but that didn’t stop every other girl from hoping for a dance with him. Sam had helped set up, but since he wasn’t on the committee, he stayed on the floor, his back against a wall.

  “On behalf of the Dance Committee, welcome!” Vic waited for the round of applause to dissipate. “We’re going to have a great time tonight. How do you like the decorations?” More applause and a few whistles. “Our kitchen staff is working late to keep us supplied with punch and pastries, so let’s show our appreciation.” Another round of applause. “And special thanks to the members of the band who have been rehearsing a great set of songs, and yes, there will be a Charleston!” Claps, whistles, and foot stomping. “Now, there are a few rules, and if we all follow them, we’ll have lots of fun and make all the work our committee has done worth it. No one leaves the dining hall, except to use the facilities. Counselors will be attending both the girls’ and boys’ bathrooms, so no funny business.” A wave of nervous laughter. “All other corridors are off limits. The dance will continue until Last Bell. When you hear it, F4 and M4 will exit first, followed by F5, M5, and F6. And remember, the younger kids are sleeping, so be quiet! M6 boys will stay to help take down the decorations and put all the tables and benches back in place for breakfast.”

  “Thank you, Victor,” Mr. Grossman said. “And thank you, members of the Dance Committee, for all of your hard work in planning this affair.” A final wave of applause as the boys stepped down from the stage. The band director lifted his hand, counted a quick four-four time, and the dance began.

  With her wig on and the mask around her face, Rachel felt transformed. She milled around with her friends for a while, then thought she recognized Sam from his tight jaw and the set of his shoulders. As she got closer, his gray eyes showed through the holes in his mask.

  “Aren’t you going to dance with me?” she asked. As he heard his sister’s voice, his scowl softened.

  “Rachel, is that really you? Vic, here’s Rachel. Can you believe it?”

  “If someone told me you could look prettier than usual, I wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t see it for myself,” Vic said. “You better come back and dance with me, Rachel.”

  Sam took Rachel out just as the band started a fast waltz. Neither of them knew how to dance to it, so they just held hands and twirled and laughed. Rachel enjoyed seeing Sam’s smile up close—usually, he was only this happy when the Home’s baseball team won a game. By the time the dance ended, Rachel was breathing fast. As the band started a tango, Vic came up and put his hand on Sam’s shoulder.

  “May I cut in?” he asked, mimicking a movie star.

  “Why, of course.” Sam gave Rachel’s hand to Vic and bowed.

  “Madame, may I have this dance?”

  “Certainly, sir.” Rachel curtsied. Vic lifted her hand up to his shoulder and placed his other hand at her waist, his fingertips pressing into the small of her back. The members of the Dance Committee had asked Millie Stember to give them lessons, and Vic led Rachel across the floor in measured steps. When he spun her in a twirl, she looked around to see who was watching. Amelia, her hair undisguisable, had her eyes on them. Vic kept turning Rachel so she caught only passing flashes of Amelia whispering to a tall boy and pointing in her direction. She knew the other girls must be watching her, too. Rachel smiled, imagining their jealousy. When the dance ended, Rachel’s face was flushed, her dark eyes shining through the mask.

  “You’re a fine dancer, Rachel,” Vic said. Bending, he planted a kiss on her cheek. Suddenly awkward, Rachel stumbled a little and let go of his hand.

  “See ya later!” Vic headed off toward the refreshment table. Rachel was at a loss for a moment until Tess and Sophie surrounded her.

  “He kissed you, we saw it!” Rachel was about to say it was just because Vic was Sam’s friend, that he was like a brother to her, but she swallowed the words. She let them think Vic liked her, enjoying, for the first time, their admiration and envy.

  Finally, the band started up a Charleston. “Let’s dance!” the girls shrieked. Forming a line, they kicked and wobbled their way around the dining hall. The faster they moved, the harder their hearts beat in their chests. Rachel’s smile lifted her cheeks until she could feel the fabric of the mask tighten around her face. Afterwards, the girls mobbed the refreshment table, gulping punch and brushing crumbs from their chins.

  When the band took a break, many of the girls, Rachel’s little group included, went to the bathroom. The din of their talking and laughing echoed from the tiled walls. Jostling in front of the mirror, they removed their masks to splash cool water on their faces. “Here, Rachel!” Tess touched a lipstick to Rachel’s mouth, brushing the red cream with her finger. “Take a look!” It was a moment before she found her reflection in the mirror. So this is what it feels like to be pretty, Rachel thought.

  Eager for another dance, she urged her friends to hurry up. She wanted to see her brother’s smile, hoped Vic would dance with her again. Impatient, she tied the mask around her face and left the girls behind. She took quick steps in the direction of the dining hall.

  “There you are.” A voice from the side corridor that led to the bakery startled her.

  “Me?” she asked. A tall boy stepped out of the shadows. He wasn’t wearing a mask. Rachel recognized Marc Grossman, the superintendent’s son. He reached for her arm, closing his hand over Rachel’s elbow.

  “Come with me.” He pulled her down the corridor.

  Rachel was so used to accepting the authority of teenagers barely older than herself, so trained to line up or be still or move faster, that her body followed pliantly even as her brain sparked with questions. She wanted to ask what was the matter, if she’d done something wrong, if maybe Sam needed her, but she’d been slapped often enough for talking out of turn that she swallowed her words. Past the bakery, an exterior door was tucked into a dark alcove. Rachel pulled back, afraid now that Marc was planning to take her outside. There was no worse trouble a Home child could get into than going out on their own. But he didn’t try to open the door. Instead, he shoved her against it so hard and sudden Rachel was stunned.

  Marc brought his face close to Rachel’s. She saw how his eyebrows met in a fan over the bridge of his nose. “Back at the dance, some of the bo
ys were saying that couldn’t be Egg, not with all that pretty hair, but one of the girls told me it was you, so I made a bet with the boys to prove it.”

  So this was who Amelia had been whispering to. Rachel thought of Naomi’s warm hand on her shoulder when she told her, I think you’re real pretty. Rachel knew now it must have been a lie. She squeezed her eyes shut and lowered her head. She expected Marc to pull off her wig and laugh at her. Instead he pressed his forearm across her collarbone and slid his free hand down Rachel’s ribs to her hip. Her bones recoiled from his touch. “To win the bet, I can’t take off your wig or your mask.” He pushed his knee between her thighs. A tingling sensation spread over Rachel. It made her feel sick. “But I heard your head’s not the only place you’re bald, isn’t that right, Egg? Aren’t you bald everywhere?” Marc’s hand reached under her dress, snaked under the garters of her stockings and tugged at her bloomers. Rachel gagged on the saliva that filled her mouth.

  She tried to push him away now, but he simply leaned in, his height and weight defeating her. Marc’s fingers stroked and probed until Rachel felt a pain that so shocked her she screamed.

  “Hey, no funny business!” Millie Stember’s voice echoed along the corridor.

  Marc backed away and shoved his hands into his pockets. Rachel’s trembling knees folded.

  “No funny business here,” Marc said, sauntering into the light and past the counselor.

  Millie ran up and pulled the mask down around the girl’s neck, knocking the wig askew. “Rachel, not you!” The surprise in Millie’s voice made Rachel wonder if she wasn’t pretty enough even for this. “Come on, sweetheart, I’ll take you up to see the nurse. Can you walk?”

  She put her arm around Rachel’s waist and lifted her up. It seemed to Rachel she could still feel Marc’s hand between her legs. A few girls had gathered at the bright end of the corridor. Seeing who it was emerging from the darkness, one of them ran to get Naomi.

  Rachel clung to her old counselor. “Did he get to you?” Millie whispered. Rachel nodded, though she had the feeling she was being asked something more than she knew.

  Naomi appeared. “What happened? Did she faint or something?”

  “Marc Grossman,” Millie began, then remembered herself. “Never mind, Naomi, Rachel will be fine, just go back to the dance. Maybe let her brother know she’ll be in the Infirmary.”

  Millie Stember guided Rachel up three flights of stairs and along a silent hallway. Rachel couldn’t seem to catch her breath; by the time they reached the Infirmary, she was pale and faint. Millie called out for the Home’s resident nurse, Gladys Dreyer. She came in from her adjoining apartment, hair in curlers, wiping cold cream from her face.

  “What’s happened?”

  “Marc Grossman got to her.”

  “How bad?”

  “I don’t know, but she’s so shaken up, I assumed the worst.”

  Nurse Dreyer led Rachel to a bed and sat beside her, close. Her sweet perfume, such an unusual extravagance in the Home, twitched Rachel’s nostrils. The nurse took both of Rachel’s hands. “Listen to me, dear,” Gladys said. “It’s very important that you tell me exactly what he did. Do you understand?”

  Rachel started shaking, tremors dissipating through her fingertips. Trembling, she faced the nurse. As if listening to someone else’s words, she said, “He pushed me against the wall. He put his hand under my dress. He . . . touched me.”

  “That’s all?”

  Rachel blinked. “It hurt. I screamed, and Miss Stember heard.”

  “And you’re sure it was just his hand under your dress? He didn’t open his pants?”

  It occurred to Rachel now what she was being asked, what worse thing could have happened. She felt nauseated. “I’m sure.”

  “Well, thank goodness for that.” Gladys Dreyer addressed herself to Millie. “I’ll take care of her from here, you can go on. It sounds like she’ll be all right.”

  Millie stood to leave. “Have you tested him for syphilis yet?”

  “Mr. Grossman won’t let us, even though I’ve sent three girls to the hospital for Salvarsan treatment who say it was him.”

  Millie Stember shook her head. “It’s fortunate I came along when I did, Rachel. Promise me you’ll stay out of dark corridors from now on.”

  Rachel tried to say she hadn’t wanted to go down that corridor, but Millie was gone. The nurse took Rachel into the adjoining bathroom and started a tub of hot water. From a high cabinet, she took a tin of sweet-smelling bath salts and sprinkled them into the rising steam. “Soak as long as you want, Rachel. I’ll have you sleep up here tonight.” Leaving a nightgown folded on a stool, she closed the door.

  Rachel untied the tear-stained mask from around her neck. Looking at it, she felt foolish for ever believing she was beautiful. Her clothes and the hated wig discarded on the floor, she lowered herself into the tub. At first she felt a sting where Marc had touched her, but it soon went away. Rachel closed her eyes and sank down until water filled her ears, trying to forget. She didn’t hear the commotion when Art Bernstein, the M6 counselor, burst into the Infirmary. “Nurse Dreyer, you’re wanted in the superintendent’s apartment. Marc Grossman has been beaten pretty badly. I think his nose is broken.”

  “About time.” Gladys tied a kerchief over her curlers before grabbing her bag. “All right, let’s go.”

  When Rachel emerged from her bath, the Infirmary was quiet. She found an empty bed and curled up under the blanket. Clasping her hands together, she surrendered herself to sleep.

  NAOMI APPEARED EARLY the next morning with a change of clothes. Draping an arm over Rachel’s shoulders, Naomi asked how she was feeling.

  Rachel shrugged her off. “Okay, I guess. He just. . . .” She hesitated, searching for words. She felt strangely disconnected from what had happened in the corridor. “It wasn’t so bad as it could have been. What did you tell Sam?”

  “I told him Marc Grossman got to you and you were going up to the Infirmary. He disappeared from the dance right after that. I figured he was coming to see you.”

  Nurse Dreyer put a tray on Rachel’s lap and insisted she eat the buttered rye and drink some tea before leaving. Rachel managed the tea but the bread felt thick and dry in her mouth. She pushed the plate toward Naomi, who ate it as a favor. Gladys, seeing the crumbs, nodded with satisfaction. “I think you’ll be just fine, Rachel. Go on now.”

  Naomi led Rachel to the synagogue for the Saturday morning service. Going down the stairs, Rachel felt light-headed. She held Naomi’s hand until they reached the ground floor. There, they joined the lines of children coming up from breakfast and through the synagogue doors. Rachel slid into a pew alongside other girls from F5. She spotted Amelia at the far end of the row and looked away. Naomi went up front with F6. Sam and Vic were also up front on the boys’ side; Rachel could see the backs of their heads. She wished she could tell Sam she was all right. That he didn’t have to defend her. That he hadn’t failed her.

  There were some opening words, a hymn, announcements. Then Mr. Grossman mounted the stage. His predecessors having been rabbis, it was tradition in the Home for the superintendent to deliver the sermon. But Lionel Grossman was trained in social work, not religious studies. He used these occasions to make rambling speeches about the virtues of hard work and the importance of following rules. The children settled in, their eyes drifting to the ceiling.

  “I’m going to talk to you today about violence.” There was an unusual quiver in his voice. “Violence cannot be tolerated in our Home. Here, we live like brothers and sisters. Here, we live in an institution dedicated to your health, your education, your future as productive American citizens. We cannot have this marred with violence. When violence breaks out among us, it must be met in no uncertain terms. An example needs to be made of those who tarnish our Home.” Rachel thought he was talking about what Marc had done to her, or the worse things he’d done to other girls. She wondered if the superintendent was going to sacrifice his own
son, like Abraham in the Old Testament.

  “Samuel Rabinowitz and Victor Berger, come forward.” All sound was swallowed up as a thousand children took in and held the same breath. Sam and Vic stepped into the aisle. “Come up here, boys.”

  Rachel started trembling as they mounted the stage. She could see Sam’s knuckles were raw, like he’d caught a ground ball on gravel. Vic looked back over his shoulder to their counselor, Bernstein, who nodded encouragement. Sam faced the audience, his back rigid.

  “These boys have brought violence into our Home,” Mr. Grossman pronounced, his voice shrill. “They assaulted my son.” The grown man faced the teenaged boys. He stiffened his open hand. Swiftly, he slapped each cheek so hard their heads swiveled. A thousand children gasped.

  Mr. Grossman pointed to a spot at the end of the front row. Rachel couldn’t see Marc seated there. She imagined him with black eyes and a bandaged nose. “Apologize to him.”

  Vic’s eyes followed the line of Mr. Grossman’s trembling arm. “I’m sorry,” he said. His voice was clear, but Rachel saw his lip curl.

  All eyes turned to Sam. He stood silent, his cheek blazing. He stared back at Mr. Grossman, mouth shut.

  The outstretched arm reached back and swung forward. This slap knocked Sam from his defiant stance. He stumbled, then righted himself. A whisper began to rise among the congregated children as a line of blood seeped from Sam’s nose.

  “Apologize!”

  Vic stood beside his friend. Rachel knew his thoughts were the same as hers. Just say the words. They don’t mean anything. Save yourself. But Sam wouldn’t speak. Rachel’s guilt and shame mounted. She imagined running onto the stage and throwing herself in front of brother. Her muscles tensed but her body didn’t budge.

  Mr. Grossman’s face burned as red as Sam’s. He reached back a third time, this time his fingers curled into a fist. Bernstein jumped up from his seat. In two strides, he was beside the superintendent, the fist caught in the middle of its arc.