by Amy Stewart
“That’s all right, Miss Kopp,” Sheriff Heath said, ushering his deputy out the door before he could say another word. “We’ve met the youngest Miss Kopp already.”
“What? When was that?”
He opened the door and turned to smile at me. “We attended a matinee here in your living room recently. I believe it was the day you went to New York.” He closed the door very gently in my face.
DINNER THAT NIGHT consisted of my mother’s ragoût de grenouilles, the one dish Fleurette ever bothered to learn how to make, and only because she so loved to eat her prey. It was accompanied by a watercress salad and a lengthy scolding from me about the dangers of letting strange men into the house.
“They weren’t strange men,” Fleurette said between loud slurps of the sauce. “They weren’t strange at all. They sat very quietly in the third row and applauded at all the right moments. I only wish they hadn’t left before my encore.”
I looked to Norma for reinforcement, but she’d been silent all evening. “What goes on around here when I’m away?” I said at last. “Do you just leave the front door open and let anyone walk in?”
“They aren’t just anyone,” said Fleurette. She pushed a strand of hair under a hat of blackish-green ravens’ feathers she’d taken from Mother’s closet and fixed in place with her old amber pins. I tried not to imagine what the frogs must have thought when they saw her coming in that hat. “They are sworn public officers. And apparently they are friends of yours. If you can invite them in, I don’t see why I can’t. Besides, they spend so much time sitting out there along the road in that stuffy automobile. They deserve to be entertained.”
“You don’t mean to say you saw them on our road?” Norma said, breaking her silence at last. “Right outside our house?”
Fleurette shrugged. “I thought Constance invited them,” she said.
Norma stood up and dropped her bowl into the sink. “One doesn’t invite the sheriff to sit outside with a man and a gun. If he’s here, it can only mean that we are in more danger than we realized, and it’s all because Constance persists in bothering Henry Kaufman.”
“I haven’t bothered him in some time,” I said.
“You’ve sent the sheriff over to bother him, and that’s the same thing.”
“The sheriff seems to feel the danger has passed,” I said. “Mr. Kaufman will be made to pay a fine and that should settle him down. We haven’t seen him once since the sheriff took up the case, isn’t that true?”
“You’re very trusting of him,” Norma said, putting on water for coffee, which she always drank after dinner. “I’ve said that I take a dim view of the police, and I think I’ll extend that line of thinking to the sheriff, who seems not to know the most rudimentary fact about a carrier pigeon, suggesting an incurious mind. I don’t think he has much to offer us, do you?”
Without waiting for an answer, she brushed her hands briskly on her skirt and went out the kitchen door to lock up the chickens. I scraped my spoon around the bottom of the bowl. Fleurette stood up, adjusting her ridiculous hat. “I’ve been working on a new dancing frock,” she said. “Would you help me pin up the hem?”
I looked up at her, this little girl who started twirling as soon as she could walk. “Yes, of course. Go and try it on.”
19
I DIDN’T KNOW I’d had a girl at first. All I saw was a head of black hair and the white apron of the nurse carrying her away. I had agreed to give up the child, but at that moment the wildest craving came over me. In my delirium I dreamt of mother cats biting and licking their kittens, and I imagine I would have nearly devoured that infant if only they would have given her back to me.
The doctor attending to me suspected a hemorrhage and was about to go after me with a curette. The ether cone descended but I kicked and fought it. There was a clatter of metal across the floor and a man shouting and then nothing but whiteness all around me.
I awoke hours later in the most fantastic purple darkness. It could have been the effects of the ether, but I felt weightless and clear-headed, and rose from my bed in the recovery room as lightly as steam lifting out of water. Somewhere under that roof was a child who belonged to me. The only thing in the world for me to do was to go and get it.
The night nurse dozed in her chair and didn’t stir as I glided past. Not a single lamp had been left burning in the hall, but I knew the way to the nursery as if I’d walked it all my life. No squeak of the floorboard, no shuffle across the rug, no groan of the hinges alerted the nurses to my presence. I was inside the nursery with the door closed behind me, and the black-haired baby was in my arms, and the other babies—there were three more of them—wriggled and sighed and chortled up at me as if they knew exactly what I was doing.
And what did I do? I walked right out the front door with her. I took her down the long drive, which was dense with the overgrowth of climbing roses, and down the road into the cool October night, wearing only my nightgown and a pair of knitted slippers. The baby was wrapped in flannel and didn’t seem to mind at all. She had a tiny pinched face like a flower that hadn’t yet bloomed and lips that worked back and forth even though her eyes weren’t open. Along that road I gave her a name. Fleurette Eugenie Kopp.
Eugenie for her father, Eugene. The Singer man.
In the months of my confinement, I had felt only shame when I thought of him and of what I’d allowed him to do to me. But now I was walking under a velvet-dark sky so filled with stars that I couldn’t pick them apart, and the air was alive with the scent of grass and wood smoke and the sweet yeasty baby. Adding his name to hers seemed at that moment like putting a period at the end of a sentence. It was where he ended and she began.
The nurses found us in a hay barn the next morning. Of course they did. I was not the first girl to disappear in the night, and none of us, in our condition, could get far. Perhaps that’s why they didn’t take better precautions against us running away.
Fleurette was well and fed. She was a hungry girl, and although I’d had no instruction, there were enough natural forces at work on both of us to bring it about. The nurses sent for the wagon and brought us back to Mrs. Florence’s, where Fleurette surely would have been taken from me again were it not for a letter that had arrived from Brooklyn that very morning.
October 9, 1897
Miss Norma Kopp
92 South 8th Street
Brooklyn, New York
Dear Mrs. Florence,
I write to inquire after the whereabouts of my sister, whose name is Constance Amélie Kopp, although she may not have given that name to you, who left a loving family on the 17 of July to seek the care of a home such as yours. Her mother wishes every day for her safe return and is prepared to adopt the child, if there is one, and raise it as the youngest member of a respectable family. Any expenses incurred by her care will be gladly repaid. She is a tall girl of nearly six feet in height and eighteen years, with hair more auburn than brown, eyes a light hazel, a firm and decisive mouth and a tongue that speaks French and German as well as her native English.
With a word from you that such a girl is under your care, we will come promptly to collect her and express to you our endless and abiding gratitude for offering refuge to someone who must have been rendered so insensible with fright over her condition that she forgot that the most suitable home for a child of hers was the one in which she already lived.
Hoping for a joyful outcome to this most difficult trial, I am
Yours very truly,
Norma Charlotte Kopp
20
September 15, 1914
BY MY OATH I, Constance Amélie Kopp of Wyckoff, New Jersey, swear that one Henry Kaufman, of Paterson, New Jersey, was the owner and driver of a certain automobile which negligently collided with a buggy in which I was seated along with my sisters Norma Charlotte Kopp and Fleurette Eugenie Kopp, resulting in damages to said buggy in the amount of fifty dollars, which Mr. Henry Kaufman has refused to pay in spite of numerous attempts to c
ollect the amount owed.
Sworn before the Honorable Court of
Passaic County, New Jersey,
Constance Amélie Kopp
IT HAD RAINED that morning and there were steaming brown puddles on the sidewalk. I lifted my skirt, which left me without a hand to put over my nose. Paterson had never smelled so foul after a rain. I didn’t want to imagine what must have overflowed and leaked out into the gutters.
If I hadn’t looked up before we began climbing the courthouse steps, I would have run right into Henry Kaufman. He had his feet planted on the top step, and he stood with his hands in his pockets and his hat pushed back on his forehead, with all the lazy confidence of the idle rich. With him were two of his men: the one with the glass eye, and the enormous one with shoulders as broad as snowplows. A third man stood nearby, puffing desperately on a pipe. He was tall and thin, with curly hair that tended toward red, and gold spectacles.
Sheriff Heath saw them just after I did. He took my arm and steered me away from them.
“John,” he said to the curly-haired man as we passed.
“Sheriff,” the man said.
Those two words were enough to catch Henry Kaufman’s attention. “Is she under arrest, Sheriff?” he called after us. “Because she’s been harassing me at my place of business. Let the record show . . .”
Sheriff Heath pushed me through the courthouse door amid the laughter and back-slapping of Mr. Kaufman and his friends. I was relieved to feel the door close behind me. Inside, the courthouse lobby was cool and quiet.
“I thought he wouldn’t be here,” I said.
“I didn’t think he would. He’s up to something. I don’t know how he roped a lawyer into this.”
“That was his lawyer?” I asked.
The sheriff nodded and led me down a corridor lined on both sides with men in shabby worsted suits or overalls. There was hardly enough room for us to get past.
Someone bumped into me and I nearly fell against the sheriff. “What is this?”
“It’s the last of the charges against the silk strikers.”
“A year later?”
“They were charged with unlawful assemblage and sentenced to hard labor, but never served their sentences,” he said in a low voice. “Now there are rumors of another strike, and the police chief issued new warrants for all of them, just to discourage them from striking again. Today they had to appear or be arrested. Fortunately for them, they’re going before one of the only judges who is at all sympathetic to their cause.”
“You mean that he’s not a friend of the silk men. Which is why we’re going to see him.”
He smiled. “That’s the general idea.” He took me down a side corridor away from the crowd. At an unmarked door he stopped and said, “Remember, this isn’t a trial. Just swear to your statement and sign when the judge asks you to. That’s all we’re here to do.”
I nodded and he held the door open. Just inside was a row of men, their backs to us. The sheriff cleared his throat and they turned and parted. The courtroom was as noisy as a carnival, with a clerk barking orders and spectators shouting and grumbling. Every seat in the gallery was taken, and there was hardly a spot around the edge of the room that wasn’t occupied by a mill worker leaning against a wall and waiting his turn.
“I didn’t know I’d have to do this in front of anyone,” I whispered to the sheriff.
“It’s a full docket,” he said. “You’ll be next.” He gave a salute to the clerk, who nodded and whispered to the judge. The judge—a jowly, watery-eyed old man with white whiskers sprouting from his cheeks and ears—called out, “All right, Bob, bring her here.”
The sheriff took my arm and led me to the front of the room. He handed the paper to the judge, who fumbled with his spectacles and read it to himself in a low mumble. Then he looked up at me.
“Is this all true?”
I looked at Sheriff Heath, who just nodded. “Yes, Your Honor,” I said.
“And this man—Henry Kaufman—he’s been given ample opportunity to pay the charges?”
“He has,” said the sheriff.
“And is he here today?” The judge looked around the courtroom.
There was a shuffling sound from across the room and the curly-headed man stepped out of the crowd. He pulled a pipe out of his mouth to speak.
“Your Honor.”
The judge looked around and found him. “John? You’re not involved in this mess, are you?”
“I’m afraid I am.” He seemed sad to admit it. “I have represented the Kaufman family’s business interests for many years, and recently Mr. Henry Kaufman has engaged me to handle his personal affairs as well.”
Sheriff Heath sighed and shook his head. The attorney stepped forward and the two of them exchanged polite nods.
“If Your Honor will permit it, my client begs the court to hear his statement.”
“Where is your client?” the judge said.
The attorney cleared his throat. “My client prefers to wait outside due to the—ah—due to the interests of the parties—ah—other proceedings taking place today in Your Honor’s court that might—”
“Never mind,” said the judge. “Quickly. I was promised this was a simple matter.”
“May it please the court,” the lawyer said, pulling a piece of paper from his coat pocket and unfolding it. “The statement”—and here he glanced meaningfully at Sheriff Heath—“which I am obligated to read on my client’s behalf in spite of counsel to the contrary offered as a matter of—”
The judge groaned. “Read it.”
The lawyer rattled the paper, adjusted his stance, and began. “Mr. Henry Kaufman, of Kaufman Silk Dyeing Company of Paterson, New Jersey—”
The chatter in the room got louder as the mill workers realized that the man in question was a factory owner. No wonder Henry Kaufman didn’t want to show his face.
“That’s enough!” shouted the judge. The room quieted. “Go on, John.”
The lawyer looked nervously around and repeated the opening line to himself before continuing in a monotone. “Hereby refutes all charges leveled against him pertaining to an incident on the fourteenth day of July, in the year 1914, in which a buggy under the control of the three Kopp sisters did willfully collide with Mr. Kaufman’s automobile, inflicting substantial damage on said automobile, and, further, Mr. Kaufman alleges that Miss Constance Kopp is a unionist and anarchist sympathizer who has harassed him at his place of business and spoken to his workers with the intention of inciting strikes and riots among a peaceable workforce, and that said harassment has disrupted production at his factory and inflicted—”
At the mention of strikes and disruption of peaceable workplaces, another rumble went through the crowd, with several men standing to get a better look at me.
The judge rapped his gavel and a bailiff walked among the rows of benches, urging the men back to their seats.
“That’s enough, John,” the judge said. “Bring it here.”
The lawyer handed it over and leapt quickly back as if he were afraid of getting hit with the gavel himself. After reading it, the judge looked up at me. “Miss Kopp. Are you a unionist?”
I was too surprised to say anything. He leaned closer and squinted at me.
“Are you one of those Wobblies? An anarchist sympathizer? A Bolshevik? That’s what it says here.”
This brought a round of laughter from the crowd. When it died down, I said, “No, sir. I only went to see Mr. Kaufman to collect on the amount owed. And we did not willfully collide—”
“That’s fine, thank you,” the judge said. He turned to the lawyer. “She doesn’t look like much of an anarchist sympathizer to me, John.”
“No, Your Honor.”
“Is the statement made up entirely of fabricated nonsense, or just that bit?”
The lawyer opened his mouth to answer but then seemed to think better of it and closed it again.
“I thought as much. Now, Miss Kopp. Come here and sign
your statement.” He passed the paper across to me. I climbed the steps into the witness stand. He handed me his pen and I signed my name. His hand trembled and his fingers had a bluish cast to them. I wondered how a man his age withstood the chaos and tumult of the courtroom every day.
“Thank you,” I said quietly, sliding the paper back across his desk.
“Don’t thank me for any of this,” the judge said. “Looks like a whole lot of trouble to me.” Then he leaned over again to address the sheriff.
“I’m ordering a fifty-dollar fine. It’s up to you to collect it, Bob. And keep Miss Kopp and Mr. Kaufman away from each other. It appears they don’t get along.”
Sheriff Heath nodded grimly. “Yes, Your Honor.”
“And next time, take your routine matters to another courtroom.”
The mill workers laughed and some of them applauded. The judge pounded his gavel until they stopped.
WE STEPPED OUT into the bright noonday light and confronted the usual lunchtime rush on Main Street. “I’m sorry about that nonsense,” the sheriff shouted above the rumble of traffic. “Mr. Kaufman might not know better, but his attorney should have. He’s probably wishing he’d never heard of the Kaufman family.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “I’m just glad it’s over.”
An automobile had stalled at the corner and its driver was standing over it, using his hat to fan the smoke billowing from the engine. No one could get around him, and the other drivers were honking and yelling. A large wagon pulled by two draft horses was trapped in the middle of the street, and the horses were trying without success to back away from the noise.
“What a mess,” the sheriff said. “Wait here, Miss Kopp. I’ll just go find a constable.”