The Girls with No Names

by Serena Burdick

  I hurried down the stairs, worried that I was too late and they’d left me behind. But Edna and Mable were still fiddling with the lock on the door to the room above the chapel. The keys clanked and I froze as the metallic sound ricocheted off the walls. It was an eternity before Edna found the right key and the lock finally gave way with a small click.

  The room was eerie and unfamiliar in the dark as we slipped over to the window where Mable dropped the sheets to the floor. “Tie them tightly. If a knot lets go, we’re pancakes.”

  We shook them out, double knotted the ends and yanked the fabric as tight as we could, the sheets piling up like cording. Slowly, Edna eased the window up as far as it would go. The frigid air curled around us and it occurred to me that we had no coats. The sisters never permitted us out of doors in the winter, so there was no need for them; unless, of course, one was trying to escape into a bone-chilling night. Making a run for it would keep Edna and Mable warm enough, but I wouldn’t have that luxury. Once I’d dropped to the ground, I’d have to go at a steady walk or else risk a blue fit.

  Edna’s full rump rounded in front of me as she leaned out, pushing the loose bars from the siding while Mable held onto one end of the sheet and dropped the rest onto the sharp, rising peak of the chapel roof below.

  “You go first.” Edna directed this to Mable. To me she said, “I’ll go next while you hold the bars. You can slip out after. You’re thin enough.”

  A leg of Mable’s was already out the window, her dress hiked to her thigh, her bloomers exposed like a circus performer’s pantaloons as she climbed with startling agility over the sill and dropped from view.

  Edna nudged me and I leaned out and took hold of the frosty, wrought iron bars, resting my elbow on the windowsill, the wood cracked and splintering with age. The cold snaked up my sleeve and sent a chill down my side. Directly below, Mable sat on the ridgeline lowering the sheets into a crevice between two peaked roofs sloping away at frightening angles.

  Edna was not as graceful as her partner. She lumbered one leg up, hauled over the other and then pushed herself out, her chest scraping the siding as she clutched the window casing and lowered herself down. There was more bulk to her than comfortably fit between the bars and she had to shove her shoulder against the side of the building to get out from under them. Mable, with one hand held tightly to the end of the sheets, tried to guide Edna’s foot to the ridge, but Edna quickly lost her balance and dropped with a thud onto the ridge. There was a moan, followed by a stifled giggle as the two of them eased their way over the slates.

  Neither looked up to see if I was following. I climbed onto the sill, dangling both legs out as I watched Mable slither down until she reached the crack where the two roofs met and propped herself with the bundle of sheets in her arms. Goose bumps rode up my legs and the bottom of my feet tingled. I clutched the bars with both hands and closed my eyes, paralyzed with fear. I thought of the Death card, that skeleton in armor. Tray had said it didn’t mean Death. It was the unexpected, loss, misdeeds, lies. I was all those things. If I survived, maybe my outcome, The World, would be waiting for me.

  It seemed, then, that I heard the far-off tune of a fiddle and I opened my eyes and looked up. Cold, bright stars punctured the black sky. The hard light of the moon cast shadows over the field, and the wide swath of the Hudson yawned beyond the trees like a dark blanket tossed carelessly into the night. I was not mistaken. It was music I heard coming faintly over the hillside. The gypsies were here, and they were playing for me.

  Easing onto my stomach, I looked toward the door, imagining Sister Gertrude storming through as I slipped over the edge. I lowered myself down, holding on for dear life as a shard of splintered wood jabbed into the center of my palm, a pain I wouldn’t feel until later. The bars moved easily away from the crumbling holes in the siding as I pushed my back into them, my arms stretched like taffy, pulling from their sockets as my feet dangled precariously above the ridgeline. Craning my neck, I saw Edna scooting toward Mable on the lower roof. She hadn’t waited to help me, and my fingers suddenly slipped. There was a terrifying whoosh of air as I crashed onto my stomach and slid down the shingles. Edna shot out an arm and caught me before I bumped into Mable and sent her flying off the roof with me.

  “Blast it, you’ll get us all killed!” she spat. “Smaller and clumsier than the both of us. Now hold still and go down slowly.”

  My heart beat wildly against my bruised ribs. Bracing my feet against the slick shingles, I eased next to Mable who had her dress hiked up and her feet propped against the gutter. Reaching between her knees, she double knotted the end of the sheet to the gutter. “That should hold, as long as the gutter doesn’t give way. Edna, you go first. You’re the heaviest. If it holds you, it will hold the two of us.”

  “And if it doesn’t?” Our heart-pounding escape was not diminishing the scorn in Edna’s voice.

  “It’s a clean drop to the bottom. You’ll be fine. We’ll be the ones stuck up here with the sheet come loose. Now hurry up!” Mable brushed a piece of hair from her eyes as she hurled the bed linen off the roof.

  Edna gripped the sheet. “Here goes,” she said, and pitched over the edge. The gutter groaned under her weight, but held. Mable and I leaned out, watching her swing into the air, then slam into the side of the house and slide down the sheets at a frightening speed until she let go and sprawled on the grass with her arms outstretched. A peal of laughter echoed up to us.

  “Shhh,” Mable hissed down, but Edna either didn’t hear, or care, her laughter crackling into the night. “Hurry down and shut her up.” Mable held the sheet out to me. “If you fall and hurt yourself, you’re left behind, got it? I’m not stopping for anyone.”

  I took the sheet in both hands and wriggled over the edge of the roof on my stomach, my shoulder hitting the side of the building as I dropped over. I thought I’d ease down, clasping hand under hand like a dexterous rope climber, but the weight of my body was more than I’d anticipated and I found the cotton bedding skinning my palms as I slid to the bottom and hit the ground so hard I knocked the wind out of myself. I lay in a heap next to Edna whose laughter had subsided into hiccups. Despite my jarred body, a buoyant feeling bubbled up in my chest as I looked into the expansive sky, the grass cool and damp beneath my chafed hands. The stars looked like flickering Christmas lights. I remembered walking home from school with Luella in the early darkening days of December and seeing our tree glinting through the window. Maybe my sister was out here, right now, dancing with the gypsies in the moonlight. I’d forgive her leaving me. I’d forgive her anything to be near her again. We had so much to tell each other.

  Catching my breath, I rolled to my knees and stood up, watching Mable leap to the ground and land on her feet as if she had spent her whole life scaling the sides of buildings. She pulled Edna to her feet and without a look in my direction they sprang forward as if a starting pistol had gone off. Their arms flapped from their sides and their skirts ballooned as they tore off into the field. For a split second, I was right behind them, my strength deceiving me until my heart surged and forced me into a fast walk.

  It was then I heard the dogs. Not a distant, far-off braying, but a chorus of sharp, biting barks that started up out of nowhere and sounded frighteningly close. Not once had I thought of them until now and the sound sent terror up my spine. The ferocious barking grew nearer and fiercer and I sprinted forward, my heart throbbing, the air chiseling away at my breath. I slammed my fist into my chest, enraged at my heart, at my worthless body, at my gullibility.

  I was smaller, weaker, slower. I was their bait.

  As the dogs closed in, I watched Edna and Mable’s silhouettes disappear into the trees at the bottom of the hill. There was a snapping at my heels and the sound of ripping fabric as a dog tore into the back of my skirt. I collapsed prostrate on the ground, gasping. There was a growl near my ear, and then a man’s voice shouting, calling t
hem off with a bark all his own. Here was my chance, I thought, to tell this man my real name, to reclaim my story.

  But my words were lost, my intention betrayed by the simple effort of pulling air into my lungs. As I looked up, the edge of the sky dropped down like the lid of an eye closing over me.

  The last thing I remember was the tip of a dog’s tail slapping my cheek and the sound of a heavy voice praising him.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Jeanne

  It was the turn of weather that finally broke me, the bitter winter laying claim over the cool of autumn. For the last month my daily telephone calls to the police department, walks through Penn Station and hospital visits were tearless. My quick, staccato steps down platforms and white-walled hallways, the endless, tight-lipped questions I asked nurses and porters, all measured.

  I kept myself tightly stitched together until one morning in December, when I woke to see that the wind had ripped every last leaf from the tree in our yard. The bare branches of the oak spanned the white sky like stretch marks, and the frailty of those leafless branches, the permanence of the dead leaves on the frosty ground, filled me with immutable despair. Everything had fallen. Winter was coming, and my girls were lost in the cold. My love for them, my inability to hold them and keep them safe, surged through me, blew me wide open like they’d done once as small, helpless infants. I collapsed on my knees with my head to the floor, screaming. I didn’t hear Emory leap from the bed, or feel his hands shaking me. All I felt were the cries lacerating my lungs, the air, the walls, until my voice went hoarse and I rolled onto my side in a heap of inconsolable sobs.

  When I finally caught my breath, I saw the startled faces of Margot and Emory hovering over me. My husband tried to lift me, but I pushed him away. “I’m fine.” My throat was sore, that was all. I held on to the windowsill and pulled myself up, looking at Margot who stood with her shoulders thrust forward, ready to leap at me. Evenly, I said, “It’s surprisingly cold this morning. I think I’ll wear my wool Tricotine today. If you’d be so kind as to fetch it from my wardrobe.”

  Margot hesitated, her eyes tracking me as she moved to the wardrobe to retrieve my black dress, severe and somber, a dress of mourning. Emory stood shivering in his thin nightshirt, speechless, staring at me as if I’d lost my mind. I wondered if losing one’s children, and losing one’s mind, looked the same in a mother.

  “Madam...are you sure you’re all right?” Margot approached me gingerly, as if I’d crack.

  “Yes, thank you, I’m fine. You can go. I’ll dress myself.” I slid the dress from Margot’s arms. “You know, Margot, I can’t remember the last time I ate anything substantial. Tell Velma I’d like two eggs, fried, with a piece of toast and cup of strong, black coffee.”

  Margot nodded, retreating out the door with a fleeting look at Emory who kept his eyes fixed on me.

  I dressed in front of the full-length mirror under the confused gaze of my husband. With each fastened button and settled hairpin, I pinched shut the sensation of being torn open. Securing the last hook on my collar, I turned to Emory. I was done with pretense. I was sure of the truth, however hard it was to face. “Effie is dead,” I said.

  Emory came and put his hands on my shoulders, his touch tender and vulnerable. “We’ll find her, Jeanne. She’s a smart girl, and she’s strong. Wherever she is, she’ll get through it like she always has and we’ll bring her home.”

  I shook my head, tears coming again. “We asked too much of her. We didn’t see how much the loss of her sister was weakening her. She had a terrible blue fit after Luella left. She was in the yard, doubled over. She convinced me otherwise, but I’m sure of it now. Remember, as a baby when she’d cry and we’d be in hysterics? It was the most frightening thing to watch her tiny fingers and toes turn that ghastly blue. I remember wishing she would die just so I wouldn’t have to go through it over and over again. Isn’t that wretched?”

  “No.” Emory looked as lost as I’d ever seen him. “It doesn’t matter what you wished, you were always there for her. Yours was the hand she held. I never watched her cry as an infant. I couldn’t. I let you worry for both of us. I’m sorry for that.” Emory dropped his hands from my shoulders and moved to the wardrobe.

  I’d never seen him this defenseless, and I tried to will myself to feel some kind of forgiveness, but I couldn’t. I watched him toss off his nightshirt, the hairs on his chest curled into little loops, and thought how absurd it was that we still went about our days performing menial tasks, like dressing and discussing our children in even-tempered tones, as if they were in the next room.

  Since Effie’s disappearance, we’d spoken of little else. We moved forward, did what was expected, but we were treading water, tiring out. I smoked constantly and ate little. I’d thinned to a wire, from which my shapeless dresses hung. Emory’s good looks had slipped into drawn cheeks and puffy eyes. I watched him stuff his feet in his shoes, bending over to lace them into submission, and wondered which of us would drop first.

  Emory righted himself, yanking his waistcoat straight, regaining control. “She’s not dead, Jeanne. If she collapsed and was taken to a hospital someone would have identified her body from the story in the papers.”

  I tapped a finger against my ribs. “I can feel it right here. God is punishing me, carving a hole in my heart to match hers.”

  “Punishing you for what, Jeanne?”

  “For not helping her. For not seeing the truth.”

  Coming over, softening to me in a way he hadn’t in years, Emory reached out and slowly drew the gloves from my hands, his fingers on my bare skin startling. “It’s not your fault,” he whispered.

  It was the touch I craved, but it was too late. His desperate attempt in this moment to try and regain what we’d lost long ago disgusted me. I looked down, imagining him holding the smooth, perfect hands of another woman. “God is punishing both of us for your sins.”

  Emory jerked back, dropping my hands. He looked betrayed, as if the removal of my gloves was a secret weapon that had failed him. “Are you blaming me? Do you think this is my fault?”

  “I blame both of us. Effie should have been our priority. We got distracted, and we didn’t do right by her. I won’t stop looking, I’ll just look in the right places this time. I’ll seek the medical records from every hospital in New York City and Boston. I won’t let our daughter die unidentified, without a proper burial.”

  “She’s not dead,” he said, his voice bone hard as he dropped my gloves he still held on the nightstand and headed for the door.

  I did not try and stop him.

  Sitting on the bed, I shoved my gloves back on feeling unapologetic at the lost moment between us. I didn’t care where he was going, or who he gave his attention to. I just wanted my girls back.

  Pressing my hands into my thighs, my spine straight, my feet flat on the floor, I wondered who I had in this world to protect me if not Emory. My brother, maybe. I had still not written to him. The guilt over failing my children bled right into the guilt I had for failing to protect Georges when I had the chance, leaving him that drizzly day at the Port in Calais. I’d had to pry his eleven-year-old fingers from the sleeve of my coat while he’d cried, “Jeanne, Jeanne, don’t go. You’ll never come back and I won’t be able to find you.”

  “Don’t be foolish,” I’d said. “I’ll write.”

  On the top deck of the ship, the salt air lifting my dress, Emory’s arm secured around my waist, I’d watched my mother on the platform below reach out and smack Georges on the side of his head before sinking to her knees, weeping—not for the blow she’d inflicted, but because she was losing me. I was her favored one, cherished and applauded for reasons equally as elusive as her hatred for Georges. By the time the ship pulled away, Georges had stopped crying, and I watched him wipe his nose and give a courageous wave.

  In my room, the morning light came through th
e window and settled over my lap like burnished powder. I thought I had a solid hold, as a parent, on what it was to love and be loved. I’d tried not to love my girls too much, not to smother them as my mother had smothered me, but maybe I hadn’t loved them enough.

  As I lay down in the heavy sunlight, I heard a small voice, my brother’s, as clear as day, calling to me. It was coming from down the hall. I rose, drawn to follow it, to fold Georges in my arms and tell him how sorry I was. Then it was Luella’s voice in the lisping high pitch of a child. “Mama, the baby’s sick,” and then the gasping sobs of baby Effie. A wave washed over me and I held on to the bedpost as if it were the mast of a ship and shook the voices from my ears. I was not insane. There were no children in the hallway. My brother was a twenty-eight-year-old man living in Paris, Luella, a young woman old enough to run away, and Effie...maybe the voices were Effie’s? Maybe her spirit was trying to reach me?

  I stepped into the hall. The feeling of death I’d woken with hung in the oppressive air. I knew a woman, Mrs. Fitch, who held séances to communicate with spirits. I thought it a lot of tomfoolery, but if you needed to speak with the dead what other way was there? I traced my finger along the wall, listening. I needed a medium, someone who had known Effie, and would know how to call her in.

  A sudden thought crossed my mind and I hurried downstairs, snatched up my coat and left the house, baring my teeth against the cold as I plunged into the field, heedless of the frost ruining my leather boots. The sun had climbed into the clear, bright sky, but it offered no warmth and my breath fogged in front of me as I crossed the hill toward the gypsy camp. Black tendrils of smoke snaked from the chimney pipes sticking out of the wagon roofs. Children raced around shouting in a game of tag, a band of dogs barking madly at them. A girl in a dull brown coat with red buttons spotted me with a whoop and the game came to an abrupt halt as the children dashed behind wagons, their tousled heads peeking out to watch my approach. The yapping dogs, thank goodness, were tied up. As I neared a wagon, a skinny, wild-eyed boy shot from behind the wheel and flew up the steps, alerting a woman who appeared in the wagon doorway in a brown apron and headscarf, a plump baby on her hip. Her face looked windblown, rough and red, and a small, purplish bruise colored her jawbone on one side.