The Girls with No Names

by Serena Burdick

  Licking crumbs from my fingers, I noticed Papa sitting perfectly still in the rocker with his hands on his knees staring into the cradle at his feet. Blazes, I thought, they’ve gone and swaddled that baby and put it to bed again. The fire in the hearth had gone cold. I looked out the window at the rain washing our panes clean. Careful not to look into the cradle, I moved to the bedroom door where Mama lay, so fragile and wasted, all twisted up in the sheets, mounds of dark hair knotted around her head, a stain of watery blood at her feet. Her face was buried in the pillows and I couldn’t tell if she was asleep or not.

  Instead of crawling in next to her as I usually did, I went and stood by Papa. I was only twelve years old, but already came up to his shoulder when we stood side by side. Papa said I’d inherited his mother’s Norwegian height. “If you keep growing, you’ll break through the roof and we’ll have to feed you through the chimney,” he said.

  “Then you’ll have to take care of me forever,” I replied, hopeful.

  “Nah, you’d soon learn to snatch birds from the sky and not need us at all.”

  I put my hand on his shoulder and leaned against him, looking down on his full head of hair, pale and thick as milkweed. He didn’t say anything, the quiet made worse by the fact that he insisted on stopping the clock when a baby died so there wasn’t even the tick to distract us. I was the only one who ever started it up again. My parents kept trying to stop time, but being twelve years old, time was all I had.

  Pulling my hand away, I leaned to kiss Papa’s cheek before going outside into the warm rain. I took the shovel from the barn. Rain droplets trickled down my neck and soaked the shoulders of my dress while I dug the deepest hole I could manage. Maybe if this baby was buried far enough down, she couldn’t haunt us like the others.

  When the shovel no longer touched bottom, I threw it to the ground and went back inside. Papa was hunched over the cradle praying on his knees. I didn’t know what time it was—that blasted, stopped clock—but guessed, by the light coming in, that it was getting on around four. Moving the leftover spoon bread to the warming oven, I struck a match and lit the paper in the firebox, grateful Papa had prepared it this morning as I was no good at getting the right amount of air between the sticks. When the flames were hot enough, I closed the damper and pressed my lips together, hard, steeling myself against the urge to climb back into the loft and pull the pillow over my head.

  Going to the cradle, I lifted the baby. Papa didn’t move. The poor thing was as light as air, and I couldn’t help looking into the baby’s tiny face as I moved toward the door. Her skin was pearly and translucent, her closed lids like drops of milky water. From the looks of her, she’d stayed a spirit all along.

  When I reached the hole, I dropped to my knees and lifted that baby girl to Heaven, holding her up in the rain. There seemed a rightness to God washing her clean of this world. As I lowered her, I felt Papa’s big hand on my shoulder. I hadn’t heard him come up behind me, but I knew he would be there. He never made me put the dirt over them. Kneeling down, he took the baby from my hands and cupped her in his palm. She was so tiny it was like she’d been tucked into a mitten. Very slowly, whispering words of salvation, Papa leaned over and placed her gently into the earth, the rain already turning my hole to mud. This was the saddest part, separating that tiny creature from our bodies and leaving her alone in the ground. There was no other way, but it seemed cruel regardless. Closing my eyes, I lifted my face to the sky as I’d lifted the baby, the raindrops making it safe to cry without worrying Papa none. I stayed like that, listening to the hush in the trees and the soft thud of dirt as Papa filled the ground back in, the warm air heavy with the smell of wet soil.

  A scream startled me. I leapt up to see Mama rushing from the house, her white nightgown billowing behind her like a reluctant cloud. Her bare feet slipped in the mud and she sank to the ground, clawing at tufts of weeds as she groped toward us. Papa didn’t even turn around. He carefully patted the flat of the shovel over the filled-in hole, then moved out of Mama’s way as she sank over it, bowed on her knees, crying and cursin’ under her breath. My dress was soaked with rain and I felt chilled even in the warm air. I wanted to go back inside, but it wasn’t right leaving my parents out here alone, Mama weeping and Papa kneeling beside her caressing her back. When they’d sobbed and prayed themselves clean, Papa lifted Mama up and I trailed them back to the house, Mama’s frame so tiny in Papa’s hulking arms she might as well have been his baby.

  Inside, she shook herself down and stumbled to her feet. Mud plastered her nightgown against her swollen breasts and lumpy middle like a layer of dark skin. My mama was small and fierce, with deep brown eyes and a voice that ripped clear through anything. “No more!” she cried, shaking her clenched fist at him. “I will give you no more.” With a swift kick she sent the cradle skidding across the floor. It hit the stone fireplace and split neatly in two, the ends falling away as softly as sliced butter.

  Seemed that cradle had been waiting to let go.

  I stared at the broken wood, stunned and uncomfortably relieved, water dripping from my dress and pooling at my feet. I’d be the last baby—alive, at least—to rock in that meaningful piece of furniture. It had come over with my great-grandmother from Sicily and cradled every one of her thirteen children. Mama didn’t even glance at it as she stumbled into her bedroom, slammed and latched the door.

  The finality of that latch clicking into place stayed with me as I set the pendulum swinging on the clock, and went into the kitchen to see if the spoon bread had warmed up. Papa was holding the broken cradle and was apologetically caressing the two split pieces. It wasn’t even his grandma’s, but I imagined his heart had split in two with it.

  It made no difference how deep I’d dug that hole, I thought, moving around the kitchen. The delicate, papery face of that dead baby was going to haunt us anyway.

  If my parents bothered to name her, no one ever told me.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Effie

  A resounding bell woke me. It was dark and the rain was still coming down as girls moaned and tumbled from their beds. Not until I stood up did I remember my chopped hair, light and swinging freely around my ears.

  Mable knelt on her bed licking her hand and smoothing her hair into a knot at the nape of her neck. Neither she nor Edna looked at me as we dragged ourselves to chapel for morning prayer, and then to our porridge breakfast. I learned quickly that our meals had no variety: pasty porridge for breakfast, thin stew for lunch, stringy, dry meat and potato for dinner. There was rarely butter, and only once in a while an extra pinch of salt.

  After breakfast, we trudged to the laundry room where irons stood like ready soldiers over the huge, black stoves. I was ordered to a washboard and given a pile of shirts to scrub. Within the hour, my fingers were wrinkled and blistered raw from the scalding water, and my rolled-up sleeves and apron soaked.

  In a moment of dazed exhaustion, I lifted my head and spotted Suzie Trainer folding a sheet with another girl, their movements rapid and seamless. I’d forgotten all about her. I had hardly known her at school, and yet the familiarity of her robust face and curly brown hair gave my heart a leap. When I caught her eye, I gave a small wave, but she stared through me without a flicker of recognition.

  The girl next to me nudged my arm and whispered, “Mable’s eyeing you, you’d better get back to work.”

  From behind the ironing table, Mable watched with her cool, sharp eyes, one hand rhythmically moving the iron as she managed to find the exact edge of cloth without even looking at it. I arched over my vat and resumed scrubbing, the steam making my newly shorn hair spring into curls around my face. The blouse in my hands was of a fine silk, shrunk into a wad of blue from the hot water. Whose laundry was this, one of the Chapin girls’? A neighbor’s? My mother’s? She must be frantic with worry, I thought, twisting the blouse into a thin, wet rope.

  In the lig
ht of day, I felt more rational than I had last night. I would not be in here long. Daddy would never abandon me. He hadn’t locked Luella away, the worst he’d done was threaten to send her to Paris, only she’d refused.

  I thought of the last day I saw my sister, her humiliation onstage, her defiance against Mama as she threw her slippers into the street, her frantically braiding my hair in the middle of the night. Our parents hadn’t been acting wild and irrational, Luella had. It was Daddy who came to my room the next night and promised Luella would be back. I remembered how sad he’d looked, not angry. He didn’t want to be rid of her, he was as sorry to lose her as I was. Why hadn’t I seen that then?

  Dropping the blouse into the clean pile to be squeezed through the wringer, I picked up another dirty shirt and shoved it into the hot water. The bump and hiss of the irons, the creak of the wringer and the splash of water were a constant rhythm of duty, an orchestra of work. I found it almost soothing, despite the exhaustion. I liked that no one talked, or expected me to. It gave me room to think.

  I didn’t know where Luella was, but Daddy and Mama did, which made her absence tolerable. I, on the other hand, had actually disappeared on them. They’d never stand for it. They would contact the police, hire a detective. Maybe I’d even be in the paper, and Sister Gertrude would be publicly humiliated for her mistake. I remembered a story I read in The Times about a wealthy heiress who went missing from Fifth Avenue. A story delicious enough to be fiction. She had charged half a pound of chocolates to her account at Park & Tilford’s, purchased a book of essays at Brentano’s and was on her way to meet her mother for lunch at the Waldorf Astoria when she disappeared. The police searched for weeks, the Pinkerton detectives were called in, but they never found her.

  * * *

  Under her heavy coat, the woman feels her thin blouse catch and tear on the pin of her brooch. The crudeness of this makes her smile as she slips in and out of the crowd, the brim of her wide hat grazing her shoulder as she tilts her head, her chocolates tucked into her muff, her book under her arm. A sound catches her attention and she stops to watch a street musician play his fiddle. The music drowns out the trolley bells and carriage wheels and the woman soars on the notes, lifted from all things detestable—brooches and fine blouses amongst them. There is a monkey on the man’s arm, and this reminds her of the time her father took her to the circus and she wished to become a trapeze artist.

  It is an easy decision to take the man’s arm when it’s offered and walk to the water’s edge, the monkey on the man’s shoulder between them. She likes the idea of secrecy, of disappearing, of leaving her story behind. When the boat pulls away she knows her family will miss her, but not enough.

  * * *

  I scrubbed the blouse hard over the rippled board, water splashing. My family would miss me. I’d be found. I had to be. I was just over the hill from my own home. Tears sprung to my eyes and I batted them away, reminding myself to breathe slowly and not scrub too fast. I couldn’t afford a blue fit, not here, not now.

  A hand landed on my shoulder and I looked up into Mable’s eyes, struck by how much force there was in their washed-out blue. “Leave that.” She took the blouse from my hand and tossed it into the bucket. “Come on.”

  Nervous, I followed her to the back of the laundry where we were completely alone. She faced me, arms crossed. Behind her the shelves were stacked with bars of soap wrapped in white paper, Sunlight Soap stenciled in tiny red letters on them. There were boxes of starch, soap powder, borax and Watson’s Matchless Cleanser. I tried not to look into Mable’s eyes. Facing her was more nerve-racking than facing Sister Gertrude. Her intentions did not come from any sense of devout righteousness. There were no rules. She could do anything she wanted to me.

  Standing on tiptoes, Mable reached inside a basket on a high shelf and retrieved a pair of scissors. I pulled back and she grinned in such a way that even her small, crooked teeth became attractive. “They’re dull. I couldn’t slit your throat with them if I wanted to. What I can do is even up that dastardly hair of yours.”

  Suspicious of her kindness, I kept a foot between us and stared her down. She was not coming at me with those scissors.

  Mable laughed. “You see, that right there,” she said and pointed the end of the scissors at me, “there’s a fighting spirit in you most girls don’t have when they come in here because it’s already been beaten out of them. We pull that stunt with the rouge on every new girl. Not many have kicked me in the shins, and none ever pulled that trick you pulled. How’d you do it? You turned the deadliest color. Edna thought for sure we’d killed you. Scared the dickens out of us. I was so out of my wits, I dropped the rouge on the bed instead of hiding it. A shame, since there won’t be no gettin’ it back now. I bet Sister Gertrude paints her face when she’s all alone. Wicked woman.”

  Mable twirled me around with a brusque shove of my shoulder. She was like a rougher version of Luella without the grooming. I heard the careful, slow snipping of scissors, and felt the brush of Mable’s hand near my ear. “Then there’s the thing about you not ratting us out. I’m gathering from this cropped head, and since no punishment’s come down from the almighty sisters, you took the blame. Girls don’t do that unless there’s loyalty between them.” Mable turned me around to scrutinize her work. “Well, you were no Lillian Gish to begin with, but it’s the best I can do.”

  I reached up and felt the short curls at the back of my neck. Mable stood on tiptoe once more to return the scissors to the basket.

  “We’d better get back before the hand of God strikes us down.” She dropped on her heels and yanked her apron into place. “Tomorrow’s Saturday, which means we’re allowed an hour of leisure time between dinner and bed. You come find Edna and me.”

  I still didn’t trust her, but her confidence in me was reassuring. It made me feel less alone.

  The next night, after dinner and evening prayer, there was a hubbub of excitement amongst the girls as we were led into a room on the second floor. Here was a lived-in space, filled with fine furnishings and religious art framed in bronze, castoffs from the Ladies Aid Society, I was told. The room had a look of worn opulence, as if it once held grand parties long forgotten. Overhead, a gas chandelier flickered, giving everything a bright, gauzy glow. There were heavy velvet curtains at the windows, a dust-covered piano and peeling wallpaper in repeating clusters of roses. Lace, yellowed with age, covered round tables where girls sat embroidering or stitching, watched over by two sisters seated in tufted armchairs with squares of lace over the back, bibles open in their laps. Every now and then they’d lean over and speak in low voices to each other.

  It was the first time I’d been in a room with the younger children. They sat on the rug facing each other in twos, playing hand games, their movements listless, as if tired puppeteers moved their arms. I could hear the slap, slap of their palms and the chanting rhymes. I wondered how little children came to be in a place like this. These girls weren’t old enough to have done anything wrong.

  Seated at a table embroidering obediently with two other girls was Suzie Trainer. The house was run on such a tight schedule I hadn’t found a moment to approach her. About to go over, I saw Mable and Edna beckoning to me from across the room and hesitated, shifting direction. It might not do to make friends with them, but it wouldn’t do to make enemies either.

  With disquieting intimacy, Mable embraced me around the waist and drew me toward the window. “Can you keep a secret?” she whispered, glancing over my shoulder at the sisters.

  I nodded, wishing she wouldn’t stand so close.

  “How do we know we can trust her?” Edna leaned against the wall with crossed arms, her dark hair piled in fashionable waves on top of her head. I couldn’t imagine how she managed it after a hot day in the laundry, and without a mirror.

  “Hasn’t she proven it?” Mable flicked a piece of my shorn hair as evidence.

  �
�I suppose.”

  “All right then.” Mable faced us toward the window, our backs to the watchful sisters. Through the panes of glass, past the bars, there was a sliver of moon with a single bright star beneath it. I thought of the stream running at the bottom of the hill and felt a stab of longing for Luella.

  “You see those bars?” Mable whispered. I nodded. “They’ve come loose on the bottom. If you lean out you can pull them right out of the siding.”

  “So?” I was instantly suspicious, imagining they had another prank in store for me. “And how do you know that anyway?”

  “Edna discovered it last week when Sister Agnes told her to close the window. She was mad about something and slammed her hand into the bars. It’s the one time Edna’s anger’s served her. Isn’t that right, Edna?”

  Edna grinned and bit the air with her teeth like a wild animal. “Won’t be the last.”

  “We’re only on the second floor. It’s not a far drop. Once we’re on the ground, we’ll find a tree we can climb to reach the top of the wall. From the wall we jump to the other side and find ourselves free as birds, so long as no one breaks an ankle.”

  Escape? This hadn’t occurred to me. I could run straight home, I thought, my heart quickening.

  “Girls?” A voice behind us made me jump. “What are we finding so engrossing out this window?”