A Drowned Maiden's Hair

by Laura Amy Schlitz

  You might want to examine her and see if she knows any hymns. “In the Sweet Bye and Bye,” I think, and “Blest Be the Tie That Binds.” We probably won’t need them for Burckhardt, when I shall assume the role of the depressing Agnes —

  “Maud!”

  Maud almost jumped out of her skin. Victoria stood in the doorway, dressed in her shawl and street clothes. Her face was so forbidding that Maud backed up, crumbling the letter behind her back.

  “Maud, how could you? Reading my letter! Creeping into my bedroom behind my back!”

  “I didn’t,” said Maud. It was the feeblest lie she had ever told, but her wits were so rattled she could think of nothing better.

  “You did.” Victoria’s eyes were flashing behind her spectacles. “You’re holding my letter behind your back — I can see it in the glass.”

  Maud switched tactics. “Why didn’t you tell me Hyacinth was coming home?” she demanded.

  For a second, Victoria simply stared. Then she stretched out her hand, palm upward. “Give me my letter.”

  Meekly, Maud put it into her hand.

  “Has no one told you that it is wrong to read other people’s letters?”

  Maud wondered if she could get away with saying no. She opened her eyes wide, trying to look innocent and hurt. “I never got any letters at the Asylum.” She had noticed that Victoria often looked sorry for her when she talked about the Asylum. She added, pleadingly, “Ma’am.”

  Neither the excuse nor the “ma’am” succeeded in softening Victoria’s wrath. “It was very wrong of you. To read other people’s letters is vulgar. Dishonest — and vulgar — and wrong. And what were you doing in my room?”

  Maud’s eyes darted back and forth, looking for an answer. She caught sight of the bookcase door, which was still ajar. She spoke breathlessly. “Please, Aunt Victoria, I didn’t have anything to read.”

  This was a watertight lie. Both the Hawthorne sisters understood that Maud had a hunger for books that could not be satisfied.

  “You ought to have waited and asked me for a book. You had no right to enter my room, and still less right to read my letter.”

  “Why don’t Hyacinth write to me?”

  The question surprised them both. Maud had not expected to ask, and Victoria was not prepared to answer. The old woman sidestepped the issue. “Why doesn’t, not Why don’t.”

  “Why doesn’t she, then?” persisted Maud. “I’ve written her. I’ve written her three times, and she doesn’t write back.”

  “That is beside the point.” Victoria swept aside Maud’s argument with the wave of a hand. “Don’t try to distract me, Maud. You have done wrong, and you are going to be punished.”

  Maud had to choose between looking pleading and looking proud. She calculated the choice. Victoria was too indignant to be softened by pleading. Maud lifted her chin bravely: the child martyr.

  “Go upstairs,” said Victoria slowly, and Maud realized that Victoria hadn’t yet figured out what the punishment ought to be. “Go upstairs and — take out your arithmetic book. You will do problems in long division for the next two hours. I will inspect your work tomorrow, and if you haven’t done enough, you will work during playtime.”

  Privately Maud decided this was not too bad. If she had to do the arithmetic, she would miss her walk in the dreary garden.

  “You will not come downstairs for the rest of the day,” Victoria continued, “and none of us will speak to you until tomorrow morning. Muffet will bring your supper on a tray.”

  Cheered to learn there would be supper, Maud started to leave the room.

  “Wait!” Victoria’s voice was commanding. “Haven’t you something to say to me?”

  “What?” stammered Maud.

  “Don’t say what!” snapped Victoria. “It’s rude! Oughtn’t you apologize to me?”

  Maud put her hands behind her back. During her years at the Asylum, she had mastered the art of the insincere apology. “I’m sorry I read your letter, ma’am,” she said in a tone of voice that was grave and polite but didn’t sound sorry in the least.

  “I accept your apology,” said Victoria. Her forgiveness was as frosty as Maud’s apology was false.

  When the clock struck six, Muffet brought the supper tray, putting an end to Maud’s struggles with long division. Maud was surprised how glad she was to see the hired woman. She was used to being alone on the third floor, but the knowledge that she was being punished made her solitude irksome. She threw down her pencil and shoved her books to the floor, making room for the supper tray.

  The plates were generously full: fried pork, corn bread, and apple fritters. Maud had anticipated that there would be no dessert, but there was a large bowl of Muffet’s bread pudding, with a thick crust of cinnamon and sugar on top. Maud looked at Muffet’s swarthy, unjudging face, and felt an urge to throw her arms around her. She pointed to the bowl and nodded. “Thank you,” she said, pronouncing the words very clearly, as if that would enable the deaf woman to hear.

  Muffet stepped closer. She took her forefinger and drew a line on Maud’s face, starting from the eye and descending down the cheek. Maud pulled back, and then understood. “Oh!” she said. “You think I’ve been crying!” She imitated Muffet’s gesture and shook her head. “Not crying,” she said firmly.

  Muffet shrugged. It might have meant anything, Maud knew, but it didn’t. Muffet’s shrug meant that Maud was lying, which she was.

  “Well, maybe a little,” Maud admitted. It went against the grain to admit that Victoria had made her cry, but Muffet wasn’t going to tell anyone.

  Muffet continued to gaze at her doubtfully. Maud understood why the hired girl was puzzled. Usually, Maud set the table and helped prepare supper. Tonight, she was confined to her room.

  Muffet pressed her fingers against her forehead and assumed a look of anguish. Then she crossed her arms over her belly and doubled over. She straightened up, threw out her palms, and gazed inquiringly at Maud.

  Maud giggled and shook her head. “No, I’m not sick.” She thought for a moment, picked up a spare sheet of paper, and began to draw.

  She drew two stick figures, one half the size of the other. The larger stick figure was Victoria — recognizable by her spectacles and the way she dressed her hair. In the drawing, the stick Victoria stood scowling down at a stick child. “See?” Maud pointed to the drawing. “Victoria’s angry with me. I’m being punished.”

  Muffet reached for the pencil. She corrected Maud’s drawing with a few masterful lines. A real Victoria emerged from the stick Victoria — a woman of soft curves and voluminous skirts, with a wide brow and an anxious expression. Maud had never seen a skillful artist draw, and the process fascinated her. She leaned closer. “How do you do that?”

  Muffet understood Maud’s excitement, if not the words. A gleam of pride came into her eyes.

  “Draw me,” begged Maud. She pointed to the paper, then to her own face.

  Muffet studied her for perhaps ten seconds. Then her pencil began to move. Maud gazed, entranced, as her likeness appeared: a little girl with cropped hair and skeptical eyes. It was not a pretty portrait, but Maud was flattered. The girl in the drawing looked clever and resolute. She even had a certain panache. It struck Maud that Muffet must have observed her very carefully. For the first time, Maud wondered if the hired woman understood her life as a secret child. Did Muffet know the secret that was hidden from Maud?

  An idea sprang into Maud’s head. She thrust out her hand, palm up, and waggled her fingers imperiously. Muffet surrendered the pencil.

  Maud printed her name underneath her portrait. MAUD. She said, “Maud,” and tapped the paper. She repeated the name, thumping her breast. “Maud. See? Those letters make my name.”

  To Maud’s delight, Muffet took back the pencil and copied the word. MAUD, she wrote, copying Maud’s crooked A, which leaned to the right. The inscription was as exact as a forgery.

  Maud nodded vigorously. “That’s right, Muffet! S
ee, these letters make a word! If you could learn to write letters —” Her voice died away. It dawned on her that Muffet would never be able to understand letters. She had no sounds with which to connect them. Even if the hired woman knew the secrets of the house, she would never be able to write them to Maud.

  Muffet was tapping her breast. Maud realized with a twinge of pity that the woman wanted her own name. She pointed to Muffet and wrote MUFFET on the page.

  Muffet shook her head. She took back the pencil and wrote a single word in a child’s handwriting. The letters were rounder and softer than Maud’s: ANNA.

  Anna. At some point — perhaps when she was a little girl — someone had taught Muffet to write her name. Maud raised her eyebrows to signify a question. She pointed to Muffet. “Your name?”

  Muffet struck her chest and then the word. ANNA. Then she reached over and struck the bed. She drew the briefest of sketches on the page — a four-poster like Maud’s own. She extended the paper to Maud.

  Maud wrote BED and passed it back.

  Muffet moved around the room. She drew the chair, the table, the washstand. After each sketch, she passed the paper to Maud, who wrote CHAIR. TABLE. WASHSTAND. WINDOW. CURTAIN. COMB. BOOK.

  Muffet copied each word. When there were a dozen words on the sheet of paper, she folded it and slipped it under the bib of her apron. Then she tapped her fingers against Maud’s supper tray. Maud understood the gesture. She was being told to eat her supper while it was still hot.

  On the day when Hyacinth was due to return, Maud waited on the third floor, eyes glued to the hole in the shutter.

  She saw the hired carriage approach. Hyacinth descended, and the cabby lifted her trunks from the back of the carriage. Hyacinth’s face was hidden by the brim of her hat. Maud wanted to rush headlong down the stairs and fling herself into Hyacinth’s arms. Instead she waited, listening in vain for voices two floors below.

  A bell jangled. The bells in the Hawthorne house, once used to summon the servants, had fallen into disuse when Muffet became the hired girl. Now the sisters rang to summon Maud.

  Maud dashed from the room and clattered down the back steps. She flew to the parlor and hurled herself at Hyacinth, who put out her hands to catch her, holding her at arm’s length.

  “Maudy!” Hyacinth’s face was so radiant that Maud scarcely felt the sting of the lost embrace. “My darling girl! Let me look at you!”

  Maud lifted her chin, holding herself so straight that she quivered.

  “I’ve brought you presents!” Hyacinth gestured toward the trunk and valises on the floor. “A string of green beads — Venetian glass, such trumpery, but so pretty! And a box of White Rose soap and a whole pound of saltwater taffy — there’s another box for Judith and Victoria, so you don’t have to share.”

  Maud beamed. Once again, Hyacinth had understood. At the Asylum, every treat that fell to an orphan’s lot had to be shared. A box of peppermints or a bucket of ice cream was divided into microscopic parts and served with a reminder to be grateful. Maud always felt that her portion was particularly small. She was sick of sharing.

  Victoria warned her sister, “You’re encouraging her to be selfish,” but Hyacinth only laughed.

  “Oh hush, Victoria, you don’t want Maud’s saltwater taffy. Last time I brought it home, you complained it made your jaw sore.” Hyacinth cupped her fingers around Maud’s chin. “Your hair is much better cropped, do you know that? Not so ramshackle. Really, you are quite respectable.” She turned to her sisters. “Shall we tell her?” she asked gaily. “Shall we tell her?”

  Maud felt her fears dissolve. All at once, she knew that the secret that Hyacinth was going to tell was a delightful thing. She had been foolish to feel anxious about it, and still more foolish to try to puzzle it out for herself.

  “Perhaps later,” Judith answered. “Let the child settle. She’s off her head with excitement.”

  “She missed you.” Victoria’s voice was reproachful. Maud understood that Victoria was speaking on her behalf, but she disapproved. She felt that she would have died before reproaching Hyacinth. “Let her get used to you being home —”

  “Burckhardt is coming next week,” Hyacinth pointed out.

  “Very well,” conceded Judith. “Tonight. After supper.”

  It was a glorious day. Maud helped Hyacinth unpack her trunk, putting away clean garments and relaying soiled ones downstairs to Muffet. To Maud’s dismay, Muffet tried to waylay her whenever she appeared in the kitchen, brandishing a pencil and paper. Maud knew what she wanted; Muffet had developed a passion for nouns. Since the day of Maud’s punishment, she had learned over a hundred, committing to memory the exact shape and order of Maud’s letters. Maud was impressed by her quickness, but she had no time to waste. Hyacinth needed her. She dodged the hired woman, dropped Hyacinth’s laundry in the basket beside the sink, and galloped upstairs to Hyacinth’s bedroom.

  In her absence, Hyacinth had unearthed more presents: a child-sized fan painted with poppies, a handful of hair ribbons, and a rock-candy goldfish too pretty to eat. Maud crowed over these and accepted the invitation to try on Hyacinth’s new hat.

  “It’s ess-quisite,” breathed Maud as the crown came down over her eyebrows, robbing her of half her vision.

  “It’s stylish, isn’t it?” agreed Hyacinth. “Judith does croak so — and over the tiniest sums of money! — but it’s only economical to buy a good hat. You get so much more wear out of them when they’re becoming. How are you doing with Little Lord Fauntleroy?”

  Maud looked blank.

  “I mean,” explained Hyacinth, “do you know it well? Did you really read it?”

  “I read it twice,” Maud said pertly. “Didn’t you read my letter?”

  Hyacinth clapped her hands together. “Go and get it,” she ordered, “and we’ll read it together. Like a play. You can be Lord Fauntleroy and I’ll be all the other characters.”

  Maud stopped halfway to the door. “Shouldn’t you be Lord Fauntleroy?” she said anxiously. “He’s the best part.”

  “No, you must be Fauntleroy,” Hyacinth assured her. “I want to hear you be him.”

  Maud gave her a look of shining admiration. Not only was Hyacinth willing to play, but Maud was to have the starring role.

  “Don’t stand there mooning,” Hyacinth said merrily. “Run and get it. Don’t keep me waiting a second longer, you tiresome girl!”

  Maud charged up the stairs.

  After so heady and joyful an afternoon, supper was curiously subdued. Victoria and Judith had little to say. As the meal progressed and the evening wore on, the sisters spoke less and less.

  Maud was also silent — not because she had nothing to say, but because she had resumed being perfectly good. In fact, she was showing off. Judith had told her that children should not speak at the table unless a grown-up spoke to them. Maud felt that this was as unjust as it was idiotic, but for one night only, she was willing to obey. From time to time, she stole a sideways glance at Hyacinth, checking to see if her good manners were making the proper impression. Hyacinth rewarded her with a smile that made her glow with happiness.

  Maud was altogether blissful. For the first time, she was wearing the white muslin dress that was her best, and she was drunk with the glory of so much lace. Hyacinth had tied the bow of her sash and encouraged her to adorn herself with her new glass beads. Maud felt almost too fine to breathe. She sat dagger straight, cut her food into minuscule portions, and ate with impeccable daintiness.

  Dessert was blancmange. Maud remembered not to suck her spoon, or even to turn it upside down against her tongue, though this was a very pleasant thing to do and only the most evil-minded adult would consider it rude. She didn’t scrape the bowl; when most of the pudding was gone, she folded her napkin and cupped her hands in her lap. After Muffet had cleared the plates away, Judith turned to Hyacinth. “You wanted to be the one to tell her.”

  “Yes,” agreed Hyacinth. She looked at Maud, who gave a litt
le bounce of excitement.

  But it seemed that Hyacinth was not quite sure where to begin. Victoria rose and began to draw the curtains. Maud turned to watch. Afterward, it was that moment her eye remembered: the gathering dark outside the glass, the windows reflecting the candle flames and the four females in the room: Hyacinth in silver, Judith in gray, Victoria in dull green, herself in white. The clock in the hall struck seven.

  “Maud,” Hyacinth said softly, “what do you think happens when people die?”

  This was not what Maud had been expecting, but she answered readily enough. “They go to heaven,” she said primly. “Or they don’t.”

  Silence repossessed the room. Hyacinth leaned closer to the candle flames, her eyes searching Maud’s.

  “Have you ever heard that there are spirits who come back from the grave in order to speak to the people who loved them?”

  “You mean ghosts?” Maud’s gaze strayed to the shadows of the room, checking the places where a ghost might materialize. “Miss Clarke said there was no such thing as ghosts.”

  “Not ghosts.” Hyacinth’s face crinkled with amusement. “We never say ‘ghost,’ child. Spirits. Good spirits who come back from the dead.”

  Maud shook her head.

  “Jesus of Nazareth,” Victoria said unexpectedly. “Jesus Christ rose from the dead.”

  Maud gave her a skeptical glance. “Jesus was different.”

  “What Victoria means,” Hyacinth explained, “is that part of our Christian faith is the belief that the spirit cannot die. The body dies, but the spirit lives on after death.”

  “In heaven,” Maud stipulated.

  “Ye-es . . .” agreed Hyacinth, but she drew the word out, as if she didn’t quite agree. “Do you know what spiritualism is, Maud?”