The Girls with No Names

by Serena Burdick

  Velma nodded, keeping quiet. I hadn’t told her any details about Luella’s vanishing, but I was sure she had her ideas.

  “If you’d be so kind as to send Margot up to my room, I’d like to change for dinner. You can give these to Neala for washing.” Steering clear of the chicken gizzard, I handed her my apron and gloves and went around to the front of the house, noticing that the abelia bush was crushed on one side, as if someone had fallen into it. I have to remind the gardener to trim it up properly, I thought, entering the front door and mounting the stairs to my room.

  Faithful Margot was already waiting for me, her gray eyes set in her hard face like silver coins, her dark hair in a coil at the back of her head. Margot had been with me since I was fourteen and I’d always confided in her. Consequently, she knew all about Luella.

  “I don’t know how you bear it, madam,” Margot said, helping me into my evening gown and fastening the hooks at the back.

  “Not very well, I’m afraid.” I smoothed the front of my dress. “Why am I even bothering to dress for dinner? I won’t be able to eat a thing until I hear from Emory.”

  “Well, you should try. Keep up your strength.” Margot took a comb from the vanity and fastened it in my hair.

  “I’m sure I’ll need all the strength I can get when Luella returns. I can’t imagine how I’ll handle her,” I said, even though my argument with Emory yesterday had planted a new seed of confidence in me. Despite his resistance, he’d listened to me and had gone to Maine to persuade Luella to come home after all.

  In the hallway, I stopped at Effie’s door and gave a gentle knock. “Effie, dear? I’m headed down to dinner.” There was no answer and I pushed the door open. “Effie?”

  The room was empty. My daughter’s satchel of schoolbooks had been dropped on the floor at the end of the bed, and her desk chair was yanked to one side with an uncapped pen on the edge of the desk threatening to roll off. How careless, I thought. It would leave an ink stain on the rug. Walking over, I capped the pen, slipped it into the drawer and turned to leave when I noticed a note on Effie’s pillow. Anxiety rose at the memory of the last note I’d found on her pillow. I snatched it up, telling myself it was nothing more than a silly poem or piece of writing.

  I’ve gone to get Luella. If you want me home, you have to bring her home too.

  I pressed a hand over my mouth, stifling my panic. What in Heaven’s name did Effie mean? How could she have gone to get Luella? This was absolute madness.

  Hurrying down the stairs to the telephone in the front hall, I lifted the brass receiver, abruptly setting it back down when the operator came on, frantic with confusion. Who was I going to call? Emory was unreachable. There was no chance I was calling my mother-in-law. I pitched forward, the runner beneath my feet blurring. I needed to calm down, to think.

  Rummaging in my purse for a cigarette, I realized with increasing shock that all of my money was gone. Not a single dollar remained, just Luella’s letter in the side pocket where I’d jammed it after my fight with Emory. Oh, dear god, Effie must have found the letter. Had she taken my money and gotten on a train all by herself? If she had a fit no one would be there for her. No one would know what to do.

  Dropping my purse, I snatched up the telephone. This time, when the operator came on I said, “Get me the police department straightaway.”

  Sergeant Price came right over—a thickset, authoritative-looking man, just what one hoped for in a sergeant, with soft eyes that indicated an understanding of a mother’s heart. I gave him Effie’s note, told him that she’d gone into my purse, seen Luella’s letter and taken money for the train, at which point I explained about Luella and asked directly that he keep the information out of the papers. Promising discretion, the sergeant asked if I had a photograph of Effie. I gave him the one on the bookshelf, taken last Christmas of both girls and me. I looked pinched and somber. Luella stood to one side bursting with youth. Effie was on the other side, a wisp of a figure, so pale and thin it hurt to look at her.

  The sergeant slipped the photograph into his breast pocket, promising to keep it safe. “We’ll get word to your husband just as fast as we can,” he said. “Now, I know you can’t help worrying, ma’am, but a young girl traveling alone on the train isn’t the worst thing that can happen. The porters are good at keeping an eye on them. I’m sure she’ll be just fine until we can bring her home.”

  It would have been useless to sleep that night. To be suddenly without both my daughters was paralyzing. All I could do was sit at the window pleading with the starless, godless night.

  How had I missed so much? The girls had been visiting the gypsy camp right under my nose. And now, Effie—my assumed innocent youngest—had snuck into my purse, stolen from me and gotten onto a train out of the city. Had she known where Luella was all along and been lying to us? Maybe she was lying about her blue fits too? Only a week ago, I saw her doubled over in the yard, but when I questioned her she told me she was searching for leaves to press into her botany notebook. I pictured the darkening circles under her eyes and how thin she’d grown. I thought it was because she missed her sister, but maybe her condition was worsening and I’d failed to notice?

  Out the window, the darkness became a chasm. I felt pulled toward it, sucked downward into a blackness I would never be able to claw my way out of. The night I caught fire came back to me, the sense that I was being devoured. I saw the flames rising up my skirt, felt the pulsing heat of their consumption. Only this time, there was nothing to beat out, no way to stop it. Sweat broke out on my forehead and I yanked off my gloves and gripped the windowsill. I was out of all reason. “Get ahold of yourself,” I said out loud, my voice dropping like a stone in the empty room as I stood up, tapping the back of my hand like I used to when counting the seconds of Effie’s blue fit.

  I’d compose a letter, I thought, something practical and tangible. It had been months since I’d written my brother. I never told him about Luella. I couldn’t bear to admit my failure. I’d planned to tell him when it was all over and mistakes had been rectified, but things were only getting worse. I scribbled a jumbled, incoherent letter, telling Georges everything, even Emory’s indiscretions. It was too much. I crumpled the paper and tossed it in the wastebasket.

  Pulling my chair back to the window, I wrapped a shawl over my shoulders and sat watching the rain gather speed and start battering the glass. Maybe I was being punished for leaving my brother in the hands of a mother who tormented him. Now I was being tormented.

  For hours I sat running my fingers over the pits and grooves on my hands, listening to the wind wail around the house. Where was Effie in this torrent?

  All that night I waited for the telephone to ring, fear traversing my body in small waves. The rain would ease up and then start in again, the wind howling like a rabid dog. Not until the wan light of dawn crept into the sky did the peal of the phone echo through the house.

  I tripped down the stairs and grabbed the receiver. “Yes?”

  The line crackled over a woman’s voice. “Mrs. Tildon? I have a Sergeant Price on the line. Would you like me to put him through?”

  “Yes, yes of course.”

  More crackling, and then the sergeant’s husky voice. “Good morning, ma’am, Sergeant Price here. I hope you got a bit of sleep. Can’t say I got any on this end.”

  “Not a wink, but it’s no matter. What news? Did you reach Emory? Is Effie with you?”

  There was an excruciating pause, and then, “A girl matching your daughter’s description was seen boarding a train to Boston, but no one on the other end recalls seeing her get off. I have an officer in Portland who’s waiting to see if anyone matching her description shows up. It’s a small station. She wouldn’t be missed. That same officer is on the lookout for your husband to make his return trip.”

  I closed my eyes, pressing my thumb and forefinger to the lids. I had to keep my head.
“Where would my daughter have spent the night?”

  “She had money. I imagine she was smart enough to get herself a room.”

  “A room? She’s a child! What hotelier in their right mind would give a child a room? Has no one in Boston reported a child wandering on her own?”

  “To be fair, ma’am, the girl is thirteen. It’s a shame, but many girls that age are on their own, circumstances not being so good at home, if you gather my meaning.”

  “Well, not my child!” I held on to the table, my nails clawing the wood.

  “I’m just saying it wouldn’t look that unusual, is all.”

  I could no longer hold the phone to my ear. “Have Emory call me the moment he arrives at the Portland station.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Static buzzed over the wire. “There’s one more thing.”

  I wasn’t sure I could handle one more thing. “What?”

  “Your daughter Luella is not in Portland.”

  “What do you mean? Of course she is. The detective brought us a letter from her.”

  “She was there, but it seems they moved on a few days ago. Packed up and drove out, as gypsy folks tend to do.”

  A surge of fury at my eldest daughter overshadowed my fear for my youngest. If anything happened to Effie...

  “We can track them down,” the sergeant was saying. “But it might take time. So far we haven’t found anyone who knows which direction they were headed.”

  “No,” I said, firmly. “I don’t care where they’ve gone. You put every bit of your resources into finding Effie.”

  “Yes, ma’am. We’re doing the best we can. She’s our top priority.”

  The following day, Sergeant Price escorted Emory home. When my husband walked through the door, I expected him to look willful and disbelieving, like all those times when we were told Effie wouldn’t live. Instead, he looked stricken, grasping me in his arms as if he’d feared I’d be gone too. “It’s going to be all right,” he breathed into my hair, trying to convince himself as much as me. “She’s going to be all right.” He squeezed so hard the air pinched in my lungs. I let him hold me, struggling to remember how we had once loved each other. His chest was as wide and taut as the first time he held me, the smell of his orange-scented hair oil and his hand on the back of my head the same, and yet I felt nothing of the light-headed intoxication that came from his affection. I felt suffocated.

  When he released me, I could see an apology forming on his lips.

  “Don’t.” I pressed my finger to his mouth. “Not now.”

  In the parlor, Emory sat beside me on the couch holding my hand. The sergeant stood before us, rigid, militaristic. The rain had stopped and the sun shone through the sheer curtains, collecting dust motes in its wavy streaks. As the sergeant spoke, I focused on the tiny particles floating in slow motion, glinting and dancing, this beautiful, mysterious world existing only in a beam of light.

  He told us that there was no news of Effie, other than a lone witness who reported seeing a girl matching her description boarding a train to Boston. “Many young girls fit Effie’s general description and witnesses might be easily confused. There is no way of knowing for certain if the girl that was seen was your daughter, or not. At this point, we have no real evidence of her whereabouts.”

  I pulled my hand from Emory’s and stood up, moving around the room, a sharp pain hammering at my temples.

  “What do we do now?” Emory cried, at a loss for the first time in his life. “There must be something we can do.”

  “We’ll keep searching, of course, but I advise you hold a press conference. Get as much publicity as possible. Offer a reward for any information leading to your daughter’s return. It’ll bring a lot of false sightings, but we’ll weed those out. All it takes is one good lead. I’d say it’s your best chance.”

  I steadied myself against the bookshelf, staring at the empty picture frame wondering what the sergeant had done with the photograph.

  “Jeanne?” I heard Emory’s voice, but didn’t answer. “Jeanne, did you hear the sergeant?”

  “Yes, yes of course I did.”

  “It will be all over the papers.”

  I felt a cool anger. “That’s never been my concern. It’s been your and your mother’s.” I moved to the window. It looked bright and cold outside. “And what of Luella? What do we say about her?”

  Sergeant Price cleared his throat. “There’s no need to bring her into it, at least not into the papers. I’ve no doubt we’ll find her soon enough.”

  “I appreciate your confidence, Sergeant, but you don’t know Luella.” I tugged at the curtain, wishing it would come crashing down. “Effie’s a sick child, did you know that? We don’t have time for all of this. Her heart is failing.” Flames were consuming me again, heat rising up my neck, setting my face on fire. I pressed the backs of my gloved hands to my burning cheeks. “There isn’t time.” I breathed heavily. “We don’t have enough time.”

  “Jeanne,” Emory spoke as if easing me away from the edge of a cliff. “Effie’s going to be fine. We have to stay reasonable if we’re going to get through this.” He was right behind me, loosening my fingers from the curtain and I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to sink into his touch or slap his hand away.

  The sergeant set his hat on his head. “Begging your pardon, I’ll be taking my leave. I’ll schedule that press conference for tomorrow, if you’ve no objection. Best to move quickly on these things.”

  “Yes, of course, first thing in the morning,” Emory said, wrapping his arms around me.

  The next morning, I stood in the back of Emory’s office on 22nd Street watching reporters from the Times, the Tribune, the Herald and even the Boston Sunday Herald scribble down the one-thousand-dollar reward being offered for any information leading to the whereabouts of Effie Tildon, a thirteen-year-old girl weighing ninety-eight pounds with dark brown hair and hazel eyes. The reporters were eager and hopeful.

  “It should only be a matter of days before she’s found,” one of them reassured me.

  I did my best to believe him.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Effie

  Escape, I mouthed into the dark as I ran my hand over the notches I’d engraved under my wooden bed frame with the tip of my hairpin. Thirty-eight notches for thirty-eight days, and no one had come for me. When Mable and Edna first proposed escaping out the window, it seemed simple enough, but as the weeks went by I realized it was nearly impossible. We were watched at all hours of the day, save for bedtime, but at that hour the door to the room was locked and the keys secured on a massive ring attached to a belt under Sister Gertrude’s habit. One would have to strip her naked to get at them, or leap out the window on a Saturday afternoon under the sisters’ watch, neither of which would get us anywhere.

  My only real hope was that my parents would come for me. For the past five weeks I’d anticipated one of the sisters appearing unexpectedly in the doorway of the laundry, or dorm, to tell me that they’d made a terrible mistake. “Your father is here,” they’d say, humble with regret. “He’s waiting in the front hall for you.”

  But, my father hadn’t come.

  In the bed next to me I could hear Edna’s heavy breathing and I closed my eyes and tried to imagine I was at home in my soft bed with Luella. But it was too cold to pretend the warmth of a body next to me and I sat up, taking in the bare room and rows of beds, letting the longing for home and my sister twist and knot inside me.

  It was a useful pain. My desire to get back to them motivated me out of bed each day. In the first few weeks it was solely because I yearned for them, but now a tinge of anger drove me forward. Not knowing the truth of what had happened to Luella, or why no one was coming for me, was infuriating. More and more, I felt convinced that my sister had left me for the gypsies, and that my parents kept it from me to hush up the scandal. Keeping secrets wa
s Daddy’s specialty after all. My parents lying to me was no surprise, but to think Luella hadn’t trusted me enough to tell me where she was going, and not being able to confront her or ask her why, was agonizing.

  The shadows of tree branches stretched over the ceiling, reflections of an outer world I could no longer reach. I thought of the simplicity of a tree branch, and of all the things I took for granted, pen and paper even more so. The House of Mercy was a world unto itself, a thing of cold entrapment, boredom, mindless physical labor, spiritual practice, redemption, cleansing of our souls and sins. And hard work, mostly just hard work.

  I had done my best to keep up, to blend in. It was clear that there were things I should know, but didn’t. Girls gave meaningful looks to each other that eluded me. They had phrases and a slang language all their own. Most of them came from the factories and tenements, places I’d only seen from the seat of my car—a matrix of laundry lines strung between skeletal buildings, underclothes flapping in the breeze, women leaning from windows to shout to one another, children in the street, everything dirty and raw and exposed. It struck me that I’d never once made up stories about those people. They were less real to me than my ghosts. Even the gypsies had been more familiar and approachable. The tenements were something you turned away from.

  I’d tried to approach Suzie Trainer, thinking she was the one girl I could confide in, but she’d leaned into my face and whispered aggressively, “You’ve already made an enemy of Sister Gertrude, don’t make one of me.” No one at the Chapin School spoke like that. She’d clearly found a way to blend in. “Go on.” She’d swatted her hand at me as if slapping away a bug, and I’d blurted out, “I need to get a message to my parents,” thinking, for some stupid reason, she’d know how.

  She laughed, as if I’d asked for something trivial, indulgent, like chocolate pudding. “How am I supposed to help you? I haven’t spoken to my parents since they locked me in here. If you don’t want trouble, you’ll keep where you came from to yourself. Fit in. That’s the only advice I’ll give you,” at which point she shoved me into the wall and walked away.