Secret in St. Something

by Barbara Brooks Wallace

  “I do remember!” Robin had replied earnestly. For how could he ever forget what, until that time, had been the worst memory of his life?

  “Well, then,” she continued, “you must also think of how it was for me to lose him, and at the same time to realize I was left alone to take care of not only you, but of the infant I had just learned was to come. I knew I could never earn enough from the sewing I take in, so I would have had to go into the factories. The baby would have to be farmed out, and you would be left on your own all day.”

  “I could have worked,” Robin had said. “I could have given up school.”

  “Never! Your papa was never more than a dock worker, in London as well as here. We took what little we had to cross the ocean, hoping to find a better life someday. But when your papa was a lad, he had his schooling,” Mama had said proudly. “And when I was a lass, so did I. Never would I let you give that up. So going into the factories was what it was to be for me. And then Hawker asked me to marry him. Right away, he said, so all would believe the baby was his when it came.

  “I think he feared he might lose me to someone else, if you can believe it,” she added with a sad smile. “But he seemed a good man, Robin. I had no call to think otherwise. Then soon after, I didn’t look as good to him as when I belonged to someone else, and he turned into what I believe he always had been, a cruel and hard man. And now do you understand it all?”

  “Yes, Mama,” Robin had said. “But he never cared for me, even when he came visiting you and Papa. I knew from his eyes. And you know how when I tried calling him ‘Pa,’ as you asked me to do, he hit me across the mouth. And you see how he hits me all the time.”

  “I know,” she replied. “I’ve been afraid to say anything for fear he would treat you even worse. He has threatened me as well, and some day I know he will make good his threats. The very thought of him frightens me, Robin, especially now.”

  “Why especially now?” Robin had asked, scared by the look on her face.

  “Because of something I must tell you,” she replied. “I’ve put it off, but I fear I can put it off no longer.”

  And what Robin learned was that, even though he already knew she had been ailing even before the baby came, the doctor had now told her she had little time left in this world. It was why, she said, she had been showing Robin how to care for the baby. She had pleaded with Hawker to let Robin continue in school and help her when he came home, though Hawker had wanted to send him to work. She had thought so far ahead as to hide for him the few coins she could save, carefully laying them flat under the linoleum that lined the kitchen cupboard. That, in truth, was where he had found the fifty cents.

  “Robin,” Mama had said at last, “you are young to have this burden, but you must promise me to do all you can do to protect the baby from Hawker. But oh, Robin, I fear for you both!”

  Mama soon to be no more! It could not be! But it was. For very soon afterward, she was gone, and the worst memory of Robin’s life had now been replaced with one even worse. Hawker, as he had told his friends at The Whole Hog had, out of the kindness of his heart, allowed Robin a whole week to do “all the snivelin” he wanted.

  But that week was over, and Robin no longer went to school. Yet what could he do about it?

  Nothing!

  He would no doubt have to lie about his age and be sent to work in a factory. And what could he do about that?

  Nothing!

  And what of his baby brother? Poor little Danny! Not quite four months old with a terrible future already mapped out for him. And if, after being farmed out to such a place as that run by Mrs. Jiggs, he even grew up at all, would he be like Hawker, the only papa he was ever to know? It was an unbearable thought.

  Robin had promised Mama he would do everything in his power to keep his little brother safe. But deep in her heart, she must have known there was nothing he could do to save Danny, or himself, from Hawker Doak.

  Nothing!

  Chapter IV

  ESCAPE!

  Robin woke with a start, only to have his blood instantly turn to ice. For what had awakened him was the sound of Danny crying, and Hawker yelling.

  “Shut up! Shut up, you little brat!”

  Robin leaped from his cot. By the light of an oil lamp making its feeble way from the kitchen, he saw Hawker’s huge, threatening form leaning over Danny’s little crib. His hand was raised as if to strike.

  If Robin had hesitated a moment to think, he might have been too paralzyed with fear to move. Instead, he ducked under Hawker’s arm and grabbed Danny up.

  “I’ll take care of him, Hawker. I’ll make him stop crying.”

  Hawker, instead of lowering his arm, must have felt it necessary to make the raising of it worthwhile. He laid a bruising clout on Robin’s back. If the crib had not been there to catch him, Robin would have hit the floor, taking Danny with him.

  “That’s for remindin’ you you should o’ taken care o’ the job before I got home,” Hawker snarled. “I don’t like comin’ in to find a bawlin’ brat waitin’ for me. Now you get him quiet in a hurry, or you get him out o’ here and keep him out ’til he shuts up.You got that, boy?”

  “Y-yes, Hawker,” Robin said, knowing as he bounced Danny his arms to quiet him that it was probably Hawker himself who had awakened Danny when he came crashing into the apartment in his usual manner.

  Hawker started to leave, then hesitated and turned back. “And you might as well know I’m takin’ back collectin’ the rents. You’re not to do newspapers neither. A little weasel like you wouldn’t last thirty minutes on the streets, nor bring in enough to pay Mrs. Jiggs to keep the brat while you’re there. So tomorrow, boy, you ain’t eleven any more. You turn fourteen, and we visit a factory or two, and see who pays the best, or who’ll even take you. Now, I’m hittin’ my bed and you see I don’t get woke again, boy!”

  He stumped noisily to his room, and in a few moments, Robin heard the springs squeal as he fell into bed. In no time, snores were rumbling through the apartment.

  Robin, in the meantime, quickly pulled Danny’s half-full bottle of milk from where it sat in the window box outside to keep it cold and then warmed it at the sink. The milk soon put Danny back to sleep.

  Robin climbed wearily back into his cot. But he had no sooner laid down and closed his eyes than they flew open again, and he lay staring into the darkness, filled with dread. He had been so frightened when standing by Hawker and praying that Danny would quiet down, he had barely heard all that Hawker had to say. Now the crushing words came back to him. “Tomorrow you ain’t eleven any more.You turn fourteen, and we visit a factory.”

  Robin knew that a child who could read and write need only be fourteen to be allowed to work in a factory. That a puny eleven-year-old could pass for fourteen was laughable. But Robin also knew that many children lied, or their parents lied for them, to get into the factories. And many factory owners or foremen accepted the lies. Hawker would lie, and expect Robin to lie. He knew that if he confessed to his true age, he could start numbering the days he had remaining in this world.

  And what of Danny? Poor helpless little Danny. He would be spending his days in that pigsty run by Mrs. Jiggs. No, worse than a pigsty, for a pigsty was probably better kept than her baby farm. Robin could not bear the thought of what he had seen when he went to pick up Danny that evening.

  He could not at one glance count the number of babies crawling around, dirty diapers dangling about their legs, faces filthy with caked cereal and milk, most of them sobbing piteously. Mrs. Jiggs herself, a slatternly woman of mountainous proportions, sat squeezed into a rocking chair, raising to her lips a tin cup giving off fumes bespeaking the same kind of liquid refreshment that perfumed such places as The Whole Hog. Unable, or simply too lazy, to get to the door when Robin had knocked, she had yelled at him to come in.

  “You can look for him over there, dearie,” she had said to his request for Danny. She waved her arm in the direction of a pile of dirty rags in
a corner of the room.

  And there Robin had found Danny, his face scarlet from screaming away unattended, along with the other screaming babies. Robin could hardly get him away from Mrs. Jiggs’ establishment fast enough. And that, of course, was where Danny would be doomed to spend the better part of whatever growing years might be left him.

  But a more horrifying memory than that was of Hawker’s big, beefy hand raised threateningly over Danny s crib, with little mistaking where it was destined to come down. Robin had felt that hand on various parts of himself, and knew the strength and anger behind it. If he had not snatched Danny up, would the hand have come down on him in the same manner? How many times could a tiny baby survive such blows as that?

  Robin stared into the darkness, seeing again and again the picture of Hawker’s hand coming down over Danny s crib. And then slowly, as if he were a wind-up toy unable to stop moving once its key had been turned, Robin pulled aside his blanket, put one leg, and then the other onto the floor. Finding his clothes in the dark, he dressed himself, but was careful to leave off his shoes. In his stockinged feet, he padded softly into the kitchen and lit a candle, setting it on the windowsill in the farthest corner. Lifting down from a peg in the wall the cloth shopping bag his mama had made for herself, he set it on the kitchen table.

  Then he crept back into his and Danny’s room, where he gathered all the diapers he could find, Danny’s shirts and two little worn sweaters, once Robin’s. Back in the kitchen, he carefully wrapped Danny’s four clean baby bottles in the diapers, as well as two he filled with milk and teaspoonfuls of sugar syrup, a tiny tin spoon and a tin bowl, a paper sack of cereal, and a bottle of sugar syrup. All of these, together with the shirts and sweaters, Robin packed in the shopping bag.

  This done, he cautiously slid a chair over to the cupboard and climbed onto it. Pushing aside a small stack of dishes, he lifted up the linoleum liner, and one by one picked up the coins under it, laying them on the counter. Then he replaced the linoleum and pushed back the dishes.

  The next thing he did was put on his patched jacket, and put the coins into the inside pocket where he had carried the rent money. Then what he did was enter the dark room where Hawker lay snoring. Crossing over to the chest of drawers, he reached behind the mirror for a key, and with it unlocked and opened one top drawer. It was a drawer Hawker allowed no one to open except himself. But Robin’s mama had had a very good idea of what was in it. And so did Robin.

  For Hawker, part-time dock worker, part-time rent collector for landlords, was also a part-time dealer in stolen goods, jewelry not excepted. But it almost seemed as if he kept little or no accounting of what he had in that department. For often when he entered the apartment on unsteady legs, he would simply toss one thing or another carelessly into the drawer. On several occasions, he had even left a pin or two, several rings, or a string of beads on a table for anyone to see.

  Now, in the dark, Robin dipped a hand into the drawer. But even in his curiously dreamlike state, he knew that he should not raise Hawker’s suspicion that the drawer has been raided. So he took only the two things his fingers encountered, a pin and something small, flat, and round attached to a chain. Thrusting both of these into his jacket pocket, he closed and locked the drawer, hung the key back behind the mirror, and padded from the room.

  Next, he gathered up the shopping bag and his shoes, then quietly opened the front door and laid the bag and shoes on the floor just outside it. Now, at last, after stuffing two candles and a box of matches into his pocket, he pulled on his cap, which hung on a kitchen peg, and went to fetch Danny.

  It was then Robin realized he could not risk waking Danny by trying to put on his bonnet and cape, so he stuffed the bonnet into his own pocket and threw the cape over his own shoulder. Then, praying as hard as he had ever prayed in his life, he wrapped Danny s blanket around him, leaving only a small space for his face to peek through, and gently lifted him from the crib. Danny, now pleasantly filled with milk, stayed sound asleep.

  After snuffing the candle burning in the kitchen, Robin was guided to the front door by the dim light of a wall lamp that flickered all night in the hallway of the building. After closing the door, he carefully laid Danny on the floor while he packed the cape into the shopping bag and kneeled to pull on and tie his shoes. Then he picked up Danny, snugly wrapped in his blanket cocoon, and the shopping bag, and crept from the building.

  Until then, Robin had been moving as if he were in a trance, as if he were, in truth, a wind-up toy, as if someone else inside him were giving him orders that he was simply obeying. Was he only dreaming? None of what he had just done even seemed real to him.

  But when the cold night air struck his face, the spell was broken. He was shocked into realizing that he had been so intent on the escape from Hawker, he had given no thought as to what to do after the escape. Now here he was in the street with his tiny baby brother, and he had no idea where to go, or what to do next. Not a single idea in the whole world!

  Chapter V

  A Desperate Measure

  Pressing Danny more closely to himself to guard against a chilling wind, Robin huddled in the doorway of the building, beginning to wonder if he had gone mad. What had he been thinking, doing this? Should he not turn right around and go back, and take his chances that things might not be as bad as he thought?

  Oh yes, why not wait and see if Danny could survive the tender care of Mrs. Jiggs? Why not see if he could survive one or two blows from Hawker’s gentle hand? Finally, why not wait and see if Robin himself could survive that same hand, or a factory, and stay alive long enough to protect his little brother, as he had promised he would do?

  No! No! No! He really would be mad, raging mad, to go back into that building. How could he and Danny end up anything but dead, and have to suffer torture into the bargain? Better if they died on the streets, quickly—and together.

  But Robin was not ready to die. Not just yet. Not now, when he had taken the daring first step in rescuing Danny and himself from Hawker Doak. But the second step would be far more difficult, and more perilous, as he now realized. For, though packing himself and Danny up to leave was perilous enough, what with Hawker asleep in the very next room, it had been done in a place Robin had known from the time he was a small boy. Now what he must do did not include a candle shedding its friendly little light on a familiar kitchen. This second step was to be more like stepping off a cliff into total darkness, not knowing where he and Danny would land or, if they survived the fall, what they would do when they landed. But it was a risk he was now determined to take.

  The wind seemed to bite right through Robin’s jacket. Goosebumps rose on his arms. He was cold. He was tired. And now he wished he had finished his supper of stale bread, or at least packed the tag end of the loaf into his pocket. He had been so intent on preparing Danny for the flight that he had managed to forget all about himself. Danny, however, well-wrapped in his warm blanket, was still happily fast asleep.

  Robin knew he could not stand there forever, trying to stay protected from the wind. What if the unthinkable happened and Hawker awoke to discover them gone? He might actually be glad to be rid of them, yet more than likely he would be enraged at being made a fool of. That would be quite enough to send him after them.

  But there was something else—that pin and the object on a chain now residing in Robin’s jacket pocket. Why, Robin asked himself, had he taken those things? And what kind of harebrained idea was it anyway to go right into Hawker’s room where he lay snoring? Robin decided he must truly have been in a trance, and it was only his mama and papa looking down from heaven that had protected him. Further, the things he had taken were of absolutely no use to him, for it was money he would need, and not a pin and a—a—what was that other—a locket? Robin’s heart skipped a beat.

  Mama had breathed a word that sounded like “locket” to him in the faintest whisper just before she died. But she had been too weak and too close to leaving this world to say more. W
as this the locket she meant? Did it contain pictures of Mama and Papa? Thinking it was probably hidden from Hawker, Robin had searched desperately for it during the week he had been allowed to “snivel” over his mama. But he had found nothing.

  Was it possible the locket he had accidentally pulled from Hawker’s forbidden drawer was the one? Could Hawker have found it himself and tossed it in along with all his other stolen jewelry? No, it was probably too much to hope. Taking the pin and locket had simply turned Robin into a thief, and would so infuriate Hawker if he found out about it, he would do all in his power to find and punish the culprit. So no, indeed, Robin could not remain standing where he was if he valued his and Danny’s lives.

  The side street outside the building was deserted, silent but for an empty tin can caught by sudden gusts of wind that sent it clanking off down the sidewalk. The wind sent scraps of dirty paper fruitlessly chasing after it. As the moon was hidden behind scudding clouds, the only light now came from a solitary streetlamp flickering half a block away. Accompanied by the lonely, forlorn sound of the empty tin can, and only the blinking light ahead, Robin set out with his baby brother.

  But Robin’s bold spirits soon gave way to terror. For though the tenement streets were bad enough earlier—with their shoddy storefronts, their street booths and peddlers’ carts and wagons selling rags and rotten fruits and vegetables, their street brawls and loud, noisy voices—at night they produced different kinds of horrors.

  From countless establishments akin to The Whole Hog there poured streams of brutish men and frowzy women whose coarse laughter could turn to frightening shouts and curses at a moment’s notice. Dark entries to alleys became darker and more sinister. Stairwells were gaping black holes where who knew what kind of tramps and thieves roosted, sharing night quarters with rats that came up from the sewers. Even the boarded-up windows of crumbling buildings were ominous, for who knew what terrible secrets they hid that might be unleashed on the unwary passerby. About the only horrors not present were the gangs of street boys. It was too late at night even for them, and they must have been already holed up in their dens under a pier by the river, in the back of a wagon parked for the night, or in a large, abandoned iron pipe. Some might even be in the stairwells, if they had been lucky enough to lay claim to them before any other night life moved in.