The Girls with No Names

by Serena Burdick

  I turned to face one of the sisters who was no longer reading in her chair.

  Edna smiled. “The glorious moon, Sister Agnes.”

  Sister Agnes was short and plump, her jowls wobbling when she spoke. “I find that hard to believe, coming from you two.”

  “Are we not allowed to take in the miracle of God’s work in nature?” Mable mocked.

  “Don’t.” Sister Agnes pointed a finger at her. “Just don’t. I’m in no mood. Go mingle and stop scheming. And you,” she said, as her finger moved to me. “You’ve just arrived and from what I hear from Sister Gertrude, you’re as bad as these two. Go on now and find something useful to do.”

  “Useful?” Edna mumbled as Sister Agnes went back to her chair. “Useful would be to kick her teeth in.”

  “Are you in?” Mable curled her hand around my wrist. I didn’t stop to think why they were including me. Escaping out that window looked like the easiest thing in the world. Drop to the ground and run, just like Mable had said.

  I nodded. “I’m in.”

  “You see, Edna, I told you she had spunk.”

  Spunk I had, along with gullibility. For some reason I believed what Mable said about loyalty.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Mable

  All right, I still feel bad about fooling Effie. I never said I was any kind of saint. Far from it. And maybe our escape’s partly why I’m telling you all this. Seems I have to make amends everywhere I turn.

  I’m to blame for a lot, but in that cabin with Mama and Papa, I only tried to do right.

  Normally, after a baby died, there was a period of time when Mama went cold and silent, taking a solid month or two before she allowed Papa to put his arm around her again. He’d nuzzle her neck while she stood over the stove and she’d soften and lean against him, and we all knew her mourning was over.

  I used to think that no amount of sorrow could keep them from each other, but after that last baby Mama never softened. She kept her small, compact body tight and unrelenting, flicking away Papa’s touch with a look of dark determination. Every night she’d latch the bedroom door, and Papa would shake his head and grin at me shamefaced, like I was the one who needed an explanation. “She’ll come around,” he’d say, continuing to make his bed on the floor.

  Even though Papa had a job in a furniture store we only had one rocking chair and the four wicker chairs he’d built for the table. I hated that fourth, empty chair. By the end of September, when it was clear Mama intended to keep Papa locked out of the bedroom forever, I said, “Papa, it’s time we get rid of that chair.”

  Papa was kneeling on the hearth raking the ashes into a tin bucket. Running a soot-covered hand through his hair, he looked up at me with a glint in his blue-green eyes. I’d never seen the sea, but I imagined the water looked just like Papa’s eyes. “We might have a guest one day.”

  “No one ever comes out this far.”

  He nodded at the violin leaning against the wall. “A hunter might hear you playing and fall in love with you. Where would he sit, now, if we got rid of that chair?” He shook his head as if I was the biggest fool he’d ever seen, hooked the bucket of ash over his forearm and ducked out the door.

  Despite this absurdity, I smiled. Our violin was the one thing that kept us from total misery. Papa had taught me to play when I was five. Neither one of us could read music, but I memorized the songs he knew by heart. When Papa played that violin, it healed our wounds and melted the sorrow from our bones. Even Mama relaxed, a hum escaping her lips, her shoulders letting go.

  But when the music stopped everything froze back up.

  By the time the leaves fell, and Papa had a pile of wood stacked against the house for winter, nothing had changed between them. Those babies had shredded my parents’ hearts to pieces and it didn’t look like there’d be any recovery.

  I spent the last winter I had with them trying to mend things with the foolish intention of a child who believes she can make a difference. I’d keep them sitting together at the table while I read scripture, hoping their hands might touch, or one might look up and realize how sorry they were. I’d call Papa to the barn to help Mama with something just to have him near her, or I’d ask Mama to stay up and sit by the fire to give Papa a little more time before the bedroom door shut on him.

  At some point through all of this, I realized that my birth hadn’t been enough to fulfill them, and my existence wasn’t enough to keep them going.

  I wonder if that’s why, when I was forced to change my name, it wasn’t too hard a thing to do. Since I’m outing all my lies anyway, I might as well admit Mable’s not my real name. It’s Signe Hagen, a name my father was proud of. A name I haven’t used for a very long time.

  It still makes me think of my papa on that early morning in April, standing on the ladder shaking my shoulder, the loft creaking under his weight. It was dark, but a lamp had been lit below and his eyes hovered like small moons over me.

  “What’s wrong?” I sat up. I could hear ice melting off the roof and dropping from the eaves. He was crying and it frightened me. I reached out and wiped the wetness along his scratchy cheek.

  “Do you remember why I gave you your grandmother’s name, Signe?” he asked.

  “Because she lived to be one hundred years old?”

  “No.” He smiled. “Because it means victorious.”

  He’d told me this before and I’d always thought it silly. He should have given me a practical name. One I had a chance of living up to.

  With a hand on my cheek and a sorry shake of his head, he said, “I need your help, Signe. Your mama seems strong, but she’s not. You’re a brave girl, stronger than the rest of us. I need you to take care of your mama for me now, okay?”

  The truth of what he was saying came over me with the waiting breath of a storm. “No!” I clung to his arm.

  “You must, Signe.” His voice brimmed with agony and I squeezed his arm harder. “I can’t stay. It’s for your mama’s own good. Every time she looks at me she sees those babies. All I’ve become is a reminder of what she’s lost. You...” He put his hand under my chin. “You, my beautiful girl, remind her of the one thing she didn’t. All you have to do is keep on reminding her.”

  “No. I won’t. You can’t go.”

  “I love her too much to stay, Signe. I love you too much. It’s better this way, you’ll see, in time.” He pressed his fingers over my lips to stifle my sob. “I won’t be gone forever.”

  “What does that mean? When will you be back?”

  He shook his head. “I can’t say, but I will see you again, my girl.”

  “Don’t go!” I tried to hold on, but he slipped from my grasp, the ladder groaning with each descending step. I wanted to lunge for him, to scream for Mama, but the face of the nameless baby swam in front of me and I did nothing but picture the day we buried her, the rain and sadness and Mama screaming. If Papa left, maybe he could find happiness where Mama and I couldn’t. He’d stow it in a bag, come back and pull it out to throw over us like sunshine.

  From the slats in my loft, I watched him hoist his bag over one shoulder, lift the glass housing of the lamp and blow it out. The room went dark. The door opened and the shape of Papa, tall and broad-shouldered, was silhouetted against a moonlit sky. The curtains lifted and fell, rustling into place as the door shut and the house stilled, the silence immense.

  I clamped my jaw and balled my fists, summoning up all of my indifference. If I squeezed everything tight enough, I could shut off tears and stop up my heart.

  It wasn’t long before dawn crept in through the windows. As reluctant as I was to start the day, I climbed from my loft, lit the fire in the stove, shoved my feet into my boots and stomped outside, my breath visible in the air as I made my way to the barn and pulled a stool up to Mandy, our one cow who gave a sorry amount of milk. She cast her mournful, brown eye
s at me as if she too was sad to see this day begin.

  When I returned with the milk bucket and a handful of eggs, Mama was seated at the table in her brown muslin, her hands clasped and her head bent in prayer. Mama had lustrous hair that reached past her hips and when she twisted it up on her small head, as she had this morning, it took on a life of its own, moving and spilling every which way since she never used enough hairpins.

  I couldn’t hear what her prayers said, but her mumbled words soothed me as I went about heating milk, cracking eggs and grinding coffee. By the time I set breakfast on the table, the fog had burnt off and a strip of sunlight warmed Mama’s face through the window, her skin smooth and tight over her cheekbones, her lips moving silently around the hard lines of her mouth. Even in early spring there was a dark tint to her skin that she told me I was lucky to be born without.

  She finished her prayers and opened her eyes, blinking and squinting as if startled to see the sun shining. “I hope your papa had the decency to say goodbye to you,” she said, emotion threatening to crack her steady voice.

  I hooked an egg on the end of my fork. “He did.”

  Mama was as tough as she was compact, and I knew she wouldn’t cry in front of me. “Good.” She poured warm milk into her coffee. In the deepest place in my heart, I hoped she was going to tell me her plan to get him back. Instead, she said, “The ground’s thawing. We should get the peas planted.”

  It was hard to eat, but I forced my eggs down for Mama’s sake, keeping my eyes on Papa’s violin case resting against the wall. The only pure happiness he knew was in that violin, and he’d left it behind for us.

  After breakfast, Mama shut herself in her room and I went out to dig up a row of dirt in the garden. I hadn’t gotten a single pea in the ground before Mama came out and thrust a letter at me.

  “You can finish the planting later. I need you to walk into town and post this letter for me.” She held out two pennies. “For postage.”

  “Who you sendin’ a letter to?” I asked, brushing dirt from my hands and slipping the pennies in my skirt pocket.

  “My sister, Marie, in New York City.” I’d never heard mention of a sister in New York City. Mama and Papa said their families were too far away to bother with. “Go on now.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I slipped the thin envelope into my coat pocket, tightened my bootlaces and headed down the path.

  The road to town was still frozen in the shady spots so I managed to keep my boots out of the mud. It took over an hour to reach the wide, main street of Katonah where the houses bumped up next to each other, like folks couldn’t stand the idea of being alone. I couldn’t stand the thought of being that close to anyone. I didn’t have much interaction with strangers and it made me nervous being in the post office. The postman wore round spectacles and a funny hat. He smiled and said what a fine day it had turned out to be as I wordlessly slid the letter and coins across the counter. Maybe fine for you, I thought, hurrying out.

  After Mama went to bed that night, I put out the fire and set Daddy’s violin case by the door before going to the mantel and opening the little glass door to the front of the clock. I watched the pendulum swing for a minute before holding it still, stopping the hands at 8:32. When Papa came back I wanted him to see that the clock didn’t just stop for dead babies, it stopped for real living people who left too.

  Once a week Mama sent me to town to check for a return letter from her sister. She warned me there was no telling how her letter would be received. “You’re old enough to know the truth of my family,” she said. Turns out Mama grew up in New York City and fell in love with Papa when he came to sell apples from his papa’s farm. I couldn’t imagine Mama anywhere but this cabin. “I was quite the city girl, at one time.” She smiled.

  When the fall apples ended, Papa came down with Christmas trees piled in his wagon. Mama said he made any excuse he could to see her, and when she turned fifteen he offered to marry her, but her parents didn’t want her leaving the city. Her mother wailed in protest and her father beat the daylights out of her. When Mama said she was going anyway, they threw her clothes in the street and turned their backs. After that, she told me she never dared write them. The only family member she’d heard from in the seventeen years she’d been gone was her sister, Marie, the eldest who’d cared for Mama when she was little. If anyone would help us, Mama said, she would.

  Sure enough, we got a letter—it was mid-August by then—crinkled, Marie wrote, from her soaked tears. My grandparents were no longer alive and Marie said we were to come to her as soon as possible, that she’d been waiting her whole life for the return of her baby sister.

  A week later, I stood in the shade of the crabapple tree, watching Mama lead Mandy down the road. The cow’s thoughtful, sad eyes seemed to know she was going to be sold off and replaced with a shiny leather bag and a lumpy package wrapped in butcher paper. When Mama came home, she held the package out for me like she’d won a prize, her unruly hair scattered around her face. Since the letter from her sister came, she’d been happy in a way I only remembered when Papa would press his hands over her swelling stomach.

  As I peeled the paper back, it crackled with newness, revealing a square of cream-colored fabric sprigged with yellow flowers. The heavy material tumbled to my feet as I held up a tailor-made dress. The waist was cinched, the sleeves and collar edged in yellow satin. I’d never owned anything so beautiful. Mama’s eyes leapt with excitement and I hoped she would think the tears in mine were from happiness, when what I was wondering was if every good moment in my life would be filled with sorrow since Papa wasn’t there to share it with me.

  “You need a proper dress for the city.” Mama flicked the hem of the one I wore. “Can’t let your ankles show. You’re a woman now.”

  Our last morning at home, Mama and I washed the breakfast dishes, put out the fire and left the house as it was. Marie wrote that there was little room and we weren’t to bring anything but a change of clothes, clothes Mama had packed carefully in the newly purchased bag that she now lifted over one shoulder as she shut the door behind us.

  I thought of the clock I’d never rewound, and Papa’s violin case resting against the wall. “How will Papa know where to find us?” I said.

  From the look on her face, I knew she thought it was a silly notion he’d come for us. To appease me, she said, “He knows my family name. He’ll find us if he wants to.”

  I didn’t look back as we walked past the crabapple tree and the stump where Papa and I had sat in the moonlight waiting to shoot coyotes. I was glad to focus my attention on the wonders of an unknown city and an aunt who cried for you, but I was still afraid. Afraid we’d never come back and I’d never see Papa again. Afraid I wouldn’t be able to take care of Mama like he asked.

  I should have paid more attention to that fear. Fear, I’ve learned, can be a very useful thing. If I could have seen what was in store, I would have endured that quiet, lonely cabin for the rest of my days. But life’s a blind business, none of us can see up ahead, and none of us would move forward if we could. So, there you have it: Mama and me walking straight into our damnation while I took care to lift my new dress out of the dirt.

  “You look lovely,” Mama said, and I smiled.

  There was so much hope in that dress. Maybe a little hope is all it takes to blind us.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Jeanne

  Every year since Effie’s birth, Emory and I had been told that it was only a matter of time before we lost her, and yet she kept growing. Doctors said we were lucky, blessed, but even though her survival was exceptional, her condition was incurable. It was unlikely she’d see her thirteenth birthday. And yet she had. The fact of Effie’s inevitable death had become a way of life, moving from a fear at the front of my mind, to a nagging dread in the back. It was a feeling I was used to and as often happens with things we become used to, I stopped paying atten
tion.

  The day my daughter Effie went missing, October 16, 1913, was now seared into my memory, a physical pain in my temples that persisted long after the police stopped looking for her. Luella’s loss was at least explainable, whereas Effie vanished into thin air.

  Everything about that day was vivid and clear, the pictures in my mind vibrating with urgency as I dug into the depths of my memory, convinced I could uncover that one, overlooked detail that would lead to the whereabouts of my little girl.

  I was in the garden digging up my calla lilies for winter when I felt the first drops of rain. Tucking the last bulb into the tray of dirt, I hoisted myself from my knees and called for Velma. She emerged from the back door of the kitchen, looking austere even with a bloody chicken gizzard dangling from one hand. She moved like a tornado in the kitchen and could get anything done in a small amount of time.

  “Yes, Mrs. Tildon?”

  The gizzard swung in the air and I watched a drop of blood hit the stones at Velma’s feet—afterward, this particular memory would shimmer, a single splat of red blood on the stones next to the clear, pinging drops of rain.

  “What time is it?” I untied my gardening apron and pulled it from my shoulders.

  “Going on about four, I believe.” Velma jutted her chin toward the excavation in the garden bed. “It’s awful cold to be doing that. You ought to get Neala. She knows a thing or two about gardening.”

  “Oh, no, that’s quite all right. I prefer to do it myself.” I never let anyone touch my lilies. “If you’d be so good as to bring the tray into the basement for me. And Emory won’t be joining us for dinner, so you need only set the table for two.”

  “Very well, ma’am. He working late again, is he?”

  “Not tonight. He’ll be gone for a few days. Until then,” I forced a smile, “you’ll have a lighter load with only Effie and me to feed.”