The Many Reflections of Miss Jane Deming

by J. Anderson Coats

  I blink hard. I wish I were Nell. Her brother doesn’t make her knit socks all day. He wouldn’t care a jot if she wanted to come to school. She could quit invigilating the moment it became clear how badly she was doing. I’d take knuckles to the jaw now and then if that was the price.

  “Since you’re all struggling, I will demonstrate a problem for you.” Miss Gower goes through each step, and when she gets to the carrying part, I flinch because I completely forgot to tell the boys to do that. “Now try again. Miss Deming, please sit down and contribute.”

  “But . . . but I’m not really . . .” Helping. Useful. Ever-ever-ever going to get this.

  Miss Gower adjusts her spectacles. “You are not dismissed till your tasks for the day are completed. Your task for today is to practice longhand division with these boys until each of you presents a correct answer.”

  So I sit. I take the slate back. A dollar a week is money we’re going to need badly.

  Alf Wakeman gets the problem right first. Then John Henry, then Tudor, then Milner. At least I’m not last. Poor Charlie Pettys is, and he only manages at all because Alf kicks him twice in the shin to tell him the remainder.

  Miss Gower nods briskly. “Acceptable, all around. Class is dismissed.”

  Acceptable. Miss Gower is never going to want me back tomorrow. I sit on the edge of the lifeboat and put my head in my hands.

  “Your tasks are complete,” Miss Gower says, too loudly. “I will see you tomorrow at eight bells.”

  “Good, you’re finally finished.” Mrs. D is storming up the promenade deck, Jer fussing on her arm. “Honestly, I don’t know what the matter is with him!”

  Miss Gower said she’d see me tomorrow at eight bells. I can come back.

  “Daney!” Jer reaches for me and Mrs. D gives him a little push when she hands him over. He grabs two handfuls of my hair and gives me a big, sticky kiss. “I pay Daney out.”

  “You want to play outside?” I repeat. “Didn’t you tell your mama?”

  Mrs. D groans. “Jane, you can’t just let children do whatever they please. They must learn to sit still and do as they’re told.”

  She must have tried to perch him next to her like a little doll all morning while she knitted. No wonder he’s so happy to see me.

  “Out! Pay Daney out.”

  I take Jer’s hand. There are lots of things to look at on the promenade deck—girls flirting with officers, deckhands hauling lines, Nell and Flora in an alcove, giggling over something—but Mrs. D fixes me with a Look.

  “There’ll be time for everyone to enjoy themselves once we’ve landed,” she says firmly. “Now, come along, both of you. Those socks won’t make themselves.”

  7

  RIO DE JANEIRO IS SOMETHING out of a storybook.

  Huge round stones bump out of the harbor like the back of a half-hidden sea serpent. Beyond, sheer brown-green cliffs jag against a stretch of busy, teeming buildings. It’s damp-hot here, just like Lowell in the worst part of August, and I’m glad for my calico dress when the girls must all be sweltering in their wool and corsets.

  Seattle probably has twice as many palm trees and even bluer water. Thank goodness I’ll get to see Rio first, so I can do my gawking here and step off the boat in Washington Territory as if endless sandy beaches are old hand.

  We anchor within easy sight of town. The captain and the first mate go to the customs house by rowboat to announce our arrival. They haven’t been back for a single turn of the glass before a crowd of girls starts gathering near the boat winch. Seeing the girls all together is a little frightening. Every last one looks like she stepped out of Godey’s Lady’s Book and sounds like she spent fifty years at finishing school.

  If these girls are going to Washington Territory, though, we have to be more alike than we’re not. There are no mills there, or town houses. We’ll all start out the same.

  Flora and I are sitting on a coil of rope while Jer plays with Hoss inside it. We’re waiting for Nell and her brother. She promised he’d take us to see Rio’s many sights. Mrs. D and Mrs. Pearson both said we were too young to go with the officers, but they agreed we could go with a responsible adult like Thad.

  Who is now nowhere to be found.

  “I hope she’s all right,” Flora murmurs.

  Maybe we should go look for Nell. Only I don’t want to find Thad before we find her.

  “Stop! Stop this at once!” Mr. Mercer storms past us toward the boat winch, the wind blowing his hair everywhichway in stiff, oiled spines. “Just where do you think you’re going?”

  “Rio,” Libbie Peebles replies in a voice that dares him to challenge her. “The captain gave the officers leave to escort us around town. We’re deciding who should go in which boat.”

  “I forbid it,” Mr. Mercer says. “It’s unseemly. Besides, this town is full of disease and ruffians. For your own safety, I must insist you all return to your rooms at once.” He dusts his hands together like the matter is settled.

  Libbie laughs and accepts Mr. Vane’s hand. She swings up and over the side, and down the rope ladder toward the boat waiting below.

  “Not your place to forbid, sir,” Mr. Vane says with a smile, offering his hand to Ida May Barlow next.

  Mr. Mercer storms away, muttering that the captain will hear of this. The girls and officers laugh rather unkindly. They do have a point. Surely, there can be nothing wrong with us taking in some fanciful sights we’ll likely never see again.

  Nell appears at the top of the portside ladder. Her jaw is clenched and she’s hissing like a cat. “He’s gone to Rio already. The engineers told me. He promised. The dirty blackguard.”

  Flora leaps up and hugs Nell. “It’s all right, Nellie. It’s not your fault.”

  “Yes it is! Now neither of you will get to see Rio, and it’s on my head!”

  I hug Nell too, and so does Jer, right around her legs. “Forget him. We’ll get to Rio. Somehow.”

  One of the deckhands tells us that Mr. Conant, the newspaper reporter, plans to go to Rio in the next rowboat that returns to the Continental. “Hoping to catch up to the misses, he is,” the deckhand adds with a sly grin.

  Mr. Conant looks offended. “Certainly not. Merely recording details to prepare a dispatch for the Times.”

  “Then you wouldn’t mind if we go with you?” I ask. “Me and Nell and Flora and Jer?”

  Mr. Conant glances at the grinning deckhand, then smiles like he just lost a footrace. “I’d be delighted. As long as your parents all agree.”

  “Yes, sir,” I reply. “They said we could go with a responsible adult.”

  On the ride across the harbor, Nell wipes her eyes. “I’m going to forget about that rascal. I’m going to have a good time in spite of him!”

  Rio has the tiniest streets, and they are crowded with men and women and children, all different shades of brown and shiny as bronze. At the market, there are bowls made from clay and pretty rugs and strange flowers and fruits that are colors I can’t name because I’ve never seen them. They’re akin to colors I know—green, blue, pink—but nowhere near the same.

  If Rio has so many new colors, I can’t begin to imagine what awaits us in Washington Territory.

  While we’re waiting for the Continental’s oarsmen to row us back, I pick up a shell from the quayside. This was once a creature’s home. Sturdy and smooth and colorful, now abandoned.

  I press it into Flora’s hands, then find one for Nell. They can think me childish if they want, but soon enough Flora will be standing by a beacon far from Seattle and surrounded by her family, and she’ll have little enough to remember me by.

  If we all have shells from Rio, it’ll be a home we share.

  Mrs. D returns to the Continental just after we do. She talked Mr. Mercer into taking her and several other widows to see the town, so she’s in a bright mood. They’re all a-chatter about climbing the huge mountain called Corcovado and seeing the lakes there, and even Mr. Mercer is smiling for a change.


  I have high hopes for the rest of our week in Rio. The American consul and his wife have invited the girls to take tea, and there’s a public fountain Mr. Conant says is quite educational if we want to see what Brazilians are like in their everyday lives.

  Best of all, Mrs. Pearson says Flora might go with the girls on their next excursion as long as Nell goes with her. She says she’ll speak with Mrs. D about maybe letting me go too.

  Only that’s the night the officers from the other two American ships in Rio’s harbor start arriving by the rowboatload. The captain stands by the winch and welcomes each with a hearty handshake while Mr. Mercer keeps repeating, “I forbid it. It’s beyond unseemly. Girls, return to your rooms at once.”

  The girls all walk past him in their ribbons and lace, and there is laughter and chattering and plenty of strolling along the promenade deck.

  Mr. Mercer finally gives up and grumbles his way below.

  I don’t have any ribbons or lace. Mostly I’m wandering around with Flora and Nell, and we’re helping ourselves to the dainties put out for our guests. It doesn’t hurt that Mr. Vane taught Jer to salute, and now he whips his little hand to his eyes every time he sees an officer’s uniform, which everyone thinks is darling.

  Mrs. D sweeps onto the promenade deck in her best and moves to join a circle of girls and officers chatting, but the girls keep a tight circle and give her only shoulders.

  I elbow Flora, and we giggle at Mrs. D trying to pretend she’s one of the misses instead of one of the missuses. Nell mutters something saucy I don’t quite catch. Several nearby officers must overhear, because they grin.

  When an officer from the Shamokin tries to include Mrs. D in the conversation, Julia Hood points to me stealing crackers with liver paste and Jer covered in sticky juice stains from earlier, and the men turn away without another look at Mrs. D.

  For the rest of the evening.

  Mrs. D spends what’s left of our week in Rio in the ladies’ cabin sullenly knitting socks and noticing every one of my dropped stitches and sighing over my color choices. I’m barely let out to invigilate or to use the necessary.

  Mercifully, Mrs. D’s black mood lifts the moment the last fawning officer steps into a rowboat back to his ship. That doesn’t happen till our last night in Rio, though, and Nell and Flora both got to spend every evening on deck with them and all the tasty tidbits.

  Just the two of them. Without me.

  On the morning we’re to leave Rio, the captain calls Nell into a corner of the saloon right before breakfast. She nods as he talks, but the color absolutely drains from her face. When he’s done, she wobbles out of the room, all but falling against the wall.

  By the time the porridge appears, the whole ship’s company knows Nell’s brother has abandoned her. Thad disappeared into the tiny streets of Rio and left behind a terse message with an oarsmen.

  More trouble than she’s worth.

  I push my half-eaten breakfast away and go after her. Across the room Flora does the same. Mrs. D doesn’t say a word. She even distracts Jer with an extra dollop of molasses so he doesn’t see me leave.

  We find Nell in Ladies, leaning heavily against a washtub. She slumps head-in-hands like her backbone went up in smoke.

  “Oh, Nellie,” Flora whispers.

  Nell looks up. Her eyes are red, and she’s trying to smile. “No, I’m all right. Really. I’m better off without that wretched brute. My passage is paid, and I hid some money from him. Seattle’s the best place I can be. Really.”

  “You poor, poor dear,” Flora murmurs.

  “You want a cup of coffee?” I ask. “We have real coffee now. They grow it near Rio, did you know?”

  Nell nods, so I go back to the saloon for a mug. The widows are all concern, wanting the gossip, but it’s not mine to tell.

  Libbie Peebles and Ida May Barlow sidle up to me while I’m pouring, and Libbie murmurs, “Mr. Mercer wants to appoint himself her guardian. As far as the girls are concerned, though, Nell is one of us now.”

  “Old Pap will find it hard to keep her under his thumb,” Ida puts in cheerfully. “We’ll see that she makes her own way in Seattle. Not his. So as far as you know, she’s eighteen. Got that?”

  Ida winks, and even though Nell has just gotten possibly the second-worst news of her life, she’s no one’s poor dear. Not with the family she’s been fortunate enough to happen into.

  8

  LIBBIE PEEBLES AND IDA MAY Barlow really do make Nell one of their own. Despite Mr. Mercer’s vocal protests, Nell moves to their table in the saloon for meals, and every morning she and Flora disappear into the girls’ secret room to play cards. In the evenings, they all appear from below in a big giggling crowd, chatting merrily in the music room before supper and sharing inside jokes in the corridors and taking turns playing Annie Miller’s beloved piano that she paid a fortune to have brought on board. The one that made an empty room our music room.

  Only now there is no we. There are friends-who-are-like-sisters and that girl with all the knitting calluses. There’s them and there’s me.

  Just like Lowell.

  One evening after supper I’m up on the hurricane deck watching the freezing, fog-strewn coast glide past when Nell appears at my elbow. She’s bundled in a stylish cape that I’ve seen Ida wearing, and before I can ask how she’s faring, she says, “Just tell the harpy it’s part of your invigilating.”

  I frown. “What do you mean?”

  “We want you to come play cards,” Nell explains. “Flora and me. We’ve been talking. What if the harpy thinks the girls are teaching you to be a better invigilator when you’re really learning the finer points of whist and eating gingerbread we’re smuggling from the galley?” She says it offhand, like I wouldn’t get in the worst kind of trouble if Mrs. D found out.

  I’ve been knitting and feeling sorry for myself. Nell’s been thinking up a way for me to join them.

  “Tell her Miss Gower insists. Then the harpy can’t say no.” Nell winks. “Lots of girls down there are planning to teach. They can give you big teacher words to prove to the harpy you’re really getting something out of it.”

  Nell leans against the rail, grinning and pink-cheeked from the wind. If she’s still upset about her brother leaving, she’s hiding it well. Or maybe she really is better off without him. She was saucy before; now she’s all but glowing. Or perhaps she doesn’t want anyone to treat her differently, so she’s playacting like nothing has changed.

  It’s a hard playact to carry off when everything has changed.

  “My stepmother would never credit such a thing,” I reply, but already I want to believe she would, and that’s a dangerous thing to want.

  “Oh, come now, how often does the harpy talk to Miss Gower?” Nell raises her eyebrows. “Never, right?”

  “Not if she doesn’t have to,” I admit. “Not even when Miss Gower pays my wages.”

  “There it is, then!” Nell slaps the rail as if that settles everything. “I’ll meet you outside your stateroom tomorrow after you’re done with school, and we’ll go together. You won’t know the secret knock.”

  “I should tell Miss Gower what I’m doing and ask her to go along with the story,” I say. “She might understand. She considers my stepmother quite ridiculous.”

  “What if she won’t? Miss Gower is awfully proper. She might not look kindly on you lying to an adult, even one she considers ridiculous.”

  Miss Gower does like things to be just so. She’s also unfailingly truthful, even if it means saying things that aren’t exactly polite. It was kind of her to give me an invigilator job, but if she truly wanted to help, she’d be giving me lessons in secret despite Mrs. D’s mean-spiritedness.

  Nell’s the one who’s really trying to help me. She doesn’t have to either. She could just disappear into that secret card room with Flora and leave me penned up in Mrs. D’s sock mill.

  That means it’s happening already. I’m only halfway to Washington Territory and already I�
�m someone a girl like Nell Stewart won’t turn her back on.

  So I straighten and tell her I’ll be there. If I’m leaving Lowell behind, I have to shed every last bit of it.

  Mrs. D frowns at me over her knitting needles. She’s a little confused and a little suspicious, but she’s not refusing out of hand.

  “I’ll be interviewing the girls who plan to teach in Washington Territory,” I repeat, “so I can improve my invigilating. There’s much I can learn from them.”

  Jer tromps past holding a length of ratline. His small friend, Jimmie Lincoln Pollard, is holding the other end, mooing and giggling and stomping small bare feet. Mrs. Pollard told me they’ve been playing farmer since midmorning and haven’t needed so much as a sharp word.

  “Hmmm.” Mrs. D’s fingers never stop. “I don’t suppose there’s a pay rise.”

  I bite my lip. “No, ma’am.”

  “That Adelaide Gower.” Mrs. D harrumphs. “I have half a mind to tell her she can find a new invegetabler.”

  I figured Mrs. D would say something like that, so I open my carpetbag and show her the half-made sock and wad of yarn skewered with two needles nestled inside. “I plan to knit while I interview them. I don’t need my fingers to listen.”

  Mrs. D squints at her pile of socks, then at Jer and Jimmie Lincoln absorbed in their game. “Very well. If there’s nothing to be done for it.”

  I avoid giving a direct answer by making a show of packing a second hank of yarn, then I muss Jer’s hair and hustle out of the ladies’ cabin before Mrs. D can change her mind.

  The room the girls have taken over is a disused storage berth, so it’s large enough to hold twelve of us comfortably. They’re sitting on the floor on army-looking blankets, with one girl per side like they’re at proper tables. There are kerosene lanterns around the room and a row of portholes that let in daylight. I recognize everyone from the saloon and the promenade deck, but I let Flora introduce me.

  They all seem as grown-up as Mrs. D, even though I know none is older than she is and many are not yet twenty. They all look like sturdy, bright-eyed future seamstresses and teachers, the toast of Rio and by now half of America, too, after Mr. Conant’s dispatches of their adventures and demeanor.