The Girls with No Names

by Serena Burdick

  “Weakness is a failure. Remember?”

  “You’re not weak, you’re hurt.”

  “Same thing. Now, hurry up. Run as fast as you can. I’ll tell them some nonsense to keep them confused for a while. You’ll have time if you run hard.”

  It was too dark to see the expression on Edna’s face as she grabbed me in a hug. I like to think it was a look pulled between sorrow and gratitude. “I’ll never forget you, Mable Winter. You promise to find me when you make it out of this hell house, you hear?”

  My false name soured in the air. “Without a doubt,” I said as she pulled away.

  Considering all I’d been through, it seems silly to say that Edna leaving me was one of the most painful. I knew I’d never find her in all that impossible space, and she’d never find me in my lies.

  With a final squeeze of my hand, she turned and the forest swallowed her, the snapping of twigs and her quick breath consumed by the quickening yaps of the dogs. Bits of starlight flickered through the trees, and in seconds the growling mongrels surrounded me. A man approached, yanking at their collars and ordering them down. In whining protest, the dogs backed off, sitting on their lean, gray haunches. They looked as smug as the flushed faces of the two uniformed men who held up their lamps, trapping me in a pool of light. One was short and squat, the other taller, an air of authority in his massive shoulders. The short one took hold of my arm, disgust on his face. “Where’s the other girl?” he asked, his foul breath forcing my head to the side. He yanked my arm and I wanted to spit at him. At least I was tall enough to look him in the eye.

  “She fell,” I said. “Jumped too close to the rocks near the river. She’s hurt.”

  The other policeman said, “That’s a forty-foot drop. We picked up a girl two years ago who jumped and broke nineteen bones. Never made it home from the hospital.”

  That was exactly the story I remembered reading in the paper, perched on a stool by the stove in the Cascilois’ tenement. I wondered how these idiot policemen didn’t see that I was recreating it. They probably didn’t think I could read.

  “You...come on and show us where.” The one who held my arm pushed me forward and I sank to my knees with a gasp of pain. He held up his lantern while the other officer lifted my dress, sticky with blood, and exposed my shredded bloomers. An open wound tore down my calf. “Where exactly did you think you were going on that? Serves you right.” He spit and it hit the ground with a soft hiss. “How far back’s your little friend?” He pulled me to my feet.

  “Back near the wall where the rocks start, I think.”

  From the shadows, a third voice broke in. “You two go. I’ll stay with this one until you get back.” When I looked up, all I saw was a man’s silhouette stroking one of the dog’s heads.

  “Not up for a gory sight?” The shorter policeman laughed.

  The man in the shadows remained silent. It was not a silence I trusted.

  The taller policeman gave a sharp whistle and the dogs sprang forward, their barks piercing the air. The two policemen followed with a stomp of heavy boots. The light faded and darkness dropped over me.

  I would have done anything for the use of my leg. I could sense that the man in the shadows was up to no good. Men who hide their faces never are. I moved. A twig snapped and he grabbed hold of my arms. My body went rigid with panic. I thought he meant to hold me still, but he pushed me to the ground, his boot on my chest. I prayed he’d keep his boot there. Better his boot, I thought. But he slid it off and kneeled over me, his black shape a vulture descending. This was not passion, or even a twisted desire. It was a cold power he knew he had over me.

  I squirmed, but he flipped me over and held my head down, a knotty twig cutting into my cheek. His breath was wet on my neck and smelled of tobacco. There wasn’t a sound other than his shallow, panting breath. A stone dug into my stomach as I focused on the throbbing in my lower leg instead of the hot pain shooting between them. Disgust and rage beat off the man with a fierceness that made me feel as if I was an enemy he’d been waiting to pummel for years.

  It was over quickly, his body pulling away as suddenly as he had thrust himself on me. I clawed my way to the nearest tree, remembering how Mama clawed her way to her baby’s grave. Steadying myself against the trunk, I pulled up my bloomers and shook my skirt over my legs, feeling sick and weak and dirty. I heard the man’s belt buckle slip into place with a soft click. The stickiness he’d left behind dripped down my inner thigh and I wanted to rip off my bloomers and scrub my skin raw. Then the tears came. Another weakness. Edna was right to leave me behind. I pictured her arriving at a safe door and being ushered into a room glittering with promise. She’d be given food and a bath. Maybe a maid would sit on the edge of the bathtub sponging off her back. This maid would help her from the water, wrap Edna’s untarnished body in a soft towel and lead her to a bed full of warmth and faultless dreams.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Jeanne

  It was Georges who arranged for my apartment since I had no control over my own money, and would have had no idea how to manage it if I had. Before Georges left with Luella for London, he paid a sum up front and opened a bank account in my name. I never told Emory.

  Despite this careful planning, I couldn’t bring myself to leave right away. Every object, every room, held memories of my children. Leaving Effie’s bedroom behind was going to be the hardest, since Luella’s absence now felt like a natural departure. She’d grown up and out of her room, but Effie still haunted hers.

  I’d followed Luella’s suggestion and gone to the homes for wayward girls, even though I didn’t see how it was possible for Effie to be in one. The Inwood House wouldn’t let me through the front door. A grim-looking sister had stuck her head out and told me, from where I stood on the massive porch, that they only admitted women over eighteen, and promptly shut the door in my face. The House of Mercy at least allowed me into the hallway where I was kept waiting for ages before a formidable sister came gliding toward me.

  “Apologies.” She smiled, her blue eyes reminding me of Emory’s. “The girls are just settling into chapel for their morning prayers. What may I help you with?”

  I gave a brief account of my missing daughter. “I don’t know how it’s possible she’d be here, but if a mistake was made somewhere...”

  “No.” The sister smiled sweetly. “There’s no one by the name of Effie Tildon under our care, and besides,” she placed her porcelain hand on my coat sleeve, speaking to me as if I were a child. “We don’t make mistakes, my dear. No one is admitted on their own. A magistrate or a legal guardian must sign them in.” Her voice dropped. “These girls are not innocents like your little one. They’ve all gone astray somewhere, and I assure you there aren’t many who come from a family like yours. We’d notice if they did. I’m very sorry we couldn’t be of more help to you.”

  From down the hall, I heard the drifting chatter of girls’ voices. “Thank you all the same,” I said as she showed me to the door. Outside, I made my way carefully down the steps and along the icy road to the gate where a large, bearded man wrestled with the massive lock on the gate. The feeling of being stuck behind it was nerve-racking, and I was glad when he finally let me through.

  * * *

  One tepid day in April, snow melting in the city streets, I said a final goodbye to Effie’s room and had Margot and Neala pack up my toiletries and clothing and send them to the address on 26th Street. For two months I’d carried the key secretly in my pocket. I considered making a scene, telling Emory I was leaving and confronting him about his mistress. Asking why he’d done this to us. In the end I couldn’t. I was too tired, and confronting him was pointless. As far as I was concerned, my marriage was over and I wanted to start thinking of a life away from my husband.

  When Emory came home from work that day in April, I was gone.

  My apartment was small, but comfortable and
well furnished. The first night, I removed my gloves and placed them in my handbag before eating dinner at a tea table by the window. The cool metal of the fork against my bare fingers was a startling sensation I would forever associate with independence.

  Within a day, Emory discovered my whereabouts from Neala and came demanding I return. But his anger was defused the moment he stepped into my apartment. Neither one of us had strength left to fight. Even his confession about Inez was listless. He admitted he was in love with her, but since Effie’s disappearance, he had little desire for anything.

  It was strange having Emory in a space that was all mine. It made me feel oddly calm. At any moment I could order him out. This swapping of places clearly baffled Emory as well. He stood in the middle of the rug twisting his hat in his hands, looking pleadingly at me.

  “How did everything go so badly?” he asked, as if genuinely expecting an answer.

  I told him what I’d told Luella, that he shouldn’t blame himself, which was generous of me. “We’ve exhausted ourselves trying to find the link in the chain of events leading up to Effie’s disappearance. Any one of those links are to blame. It’s useless to try and parse it out.”

  “What about the links leading up to us?” The desperation in his voice surprised me. For a moment I almost weakened, but I knew this wasn’t about me. It was about him losing all that he thought he was in control of.

  “Too many to count,” I said. “Would you like a cup of tea?”

  “Do you have coffee?”

  “I do.”

  I went to the kitchen at the back of the apartment, lit the stove and heated up a pot I’d made earlier. It was funny to think I’d never made my own coffee before, and here I was only a day on my own doing it easily. Margot had tried to do it for me but I’d insisted on doing it myself. “It’s only the two of us for the time being,” I’d said. “You can’t be doing everything for me.” I’d get a cook, eventually, just someone part-time, but for now, eating out and making my own coffee was sufficient.

  When I returned with two steaming cups, Emory was seated at my tea table looking out the window.

  “It’s a nice view from here.”

  “It is.” I set the cups down. “Two sugars, splash of cream.”

  “Thank you.” Emory took a sip. “You know Mother is going to lose her mind over our separation.”

  I sat across from him, wrapping my hands around my cup to warm them. “She is.”

  “This is temporary, though? Isn’t it? We’ll tell her it’s temporary. When Luella comes home, or Effie, you’ll come home then too.” It was not a question, but a statement. Emory glanced at my exposed hands. “I never asked you to wear those gloves, you know.”

  “You never asked me not to.”

  He looked into his cup as if contemplating this reality before swigging the rest of his coffee and standing up. He rounded the table, standing close enough for me to smell his cedarwood and pomade. Reaching out, he pulled me to my feet and leaned in to kiss me.

  “Emory.” I took a startled step backward. “It’s much too late for that.”

  He held on to me, and it was the first time in years I’d felt his bare hands over mine. For a moment, I wanted whatever he had to offer. But it dawned on me, as I looked at him, that his hair was perfectly styled over his forehead, his cuff links buttoned, his coat crisply pressed. Clearly, he had not rushed out of the house in any panic over my whereabouts.

  I pulled my hands out of his. “I think it’s time for you to go.”

  He shoved his hands into his pockets. “We’ll tell people you’re taking time away. They’ll understand, after all that’s happened.”

  “You tell them whatever you want.”

  I walked him to the door, closing it behind him and leaning my forehead against the cool wood. A part of me wanted to follow him, a part of me always would. Just like a part of me would never give up looking for Effie. I no longer had either of them, but I’d never entirely let them go.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Effie

  At the farm, we rose at 4:00 a.m., dressed in the dark, ate breakfast by lamplight and were sent to work. Our jobs rotated weekly. The first week I hauled water from the pump to the kitchen, each step splashing water over the rim of the bucket and soaking my shoes. I raked coals from the stove, my arms black with soot; scrubbed floors, collected eggs, fed livestock, shoveled dung from stalls, filled those stalls with hay that stuck in my hair and on my dress. At night, I’d collapse onto my stuffed mattress, my aching limbs heedless of the prickly straw poking through my bloomers and itching like mad.

  I was never alone with Mable. Even if I had been, I was too exhausted to convince her of anything, much less getting her name. At the farm, there were no mercury treatments. My legs were swelling again, and the increasing tightness in my chest was foreboding. The air was thick against my skin and I slept sporadically, the morning gong pulling me from dreams.

  We ate our meals on benches pulled up to a long table made from barn planks set over sawhorses. It was imperative that you didn’t drop your fork, or it would be lost between the wide gaps in the boards. There was no talking at mealtime; the slightest whisper raised Miss Juska’s owl eyes from her plate. And she always found the culprit. Punishment was a skipped meal, and no one wanted to miss meals. Unlike at the House of Mercy, the farm food was hearty and filling: eggs, corn cakes, meat stews, fresh bread, milk, cheese and fruit pie. “Underfed girls underperform,” Miss Juska said. “This way there’s no excuse for weakness.”

  There were two other matrons at the farm, Miss Carlisle and Miss Mason, each silent and stern and built like small workhorses, permanent frown lines grooved each side of their mouths. Miss Mason ran the kitchen, instructing the girls she favored in cheese and bread making. The ones she didn’t favor got to toss out endless, dirty dishwater. I wasn’t a favorite.

  This week I was on my knees between rows of potatoes pulling weeds that were nothing like the tender shoots I used to help Mama pluck from her flowerbeds. These were gnarled and thick and held on to the earth like I was tearing out their souls. Blisters bloomed, and split open on my palms.

  I had been at it for two days when I heard my name hissed under someone’s breath. Straightening, I saw Mable one row over, pitched forward, her pale dress yellowed and streaked with dirt. It was early afternoon. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the sun was blazing. Miss Carlisle had been stalking the rows before lunch. It appeared, now, as if we’d been left alone, but we knew better than to get comfortable. Someone always watched from the house. The moment one of us rested too long, or dared to stand up and stretch our backs, one of the matrons, or Joe, the farmhand who slept in the barn and wasn’t right in the head, would come stomping out and order us back to work.

  Inching closer to Mable, I dug up a weed, dirt scattering, the earthy smell reminding me of the stream and Luella. I wanted to take off my shoes and wiggle my toes in it.

  “I’m gonna make a run for it,” Mable whispered.

  This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. I had no intention of planning another runaway escape. My escape would be from getting her name, gaining her trust. “Right now?” Flecks of sunlight escaped through her hat and dotted her face like a double set of freckles.

  “No, dimwit, and don’t look at me.”

  She kept her eyes on the ground. I looked back at the spiny weed strangling a leafy potato top. Mable hadn’t fallen into Miss Juska’s calculated trap—plant fear in our hearts and fatigue in our bones so we thought of nothing more than meals and bedtime. I yanked the weed and a tiny purple potato came up with it. Quickly, I shoved the potato back in its hole and patted dirt over it, knowing it was only a matter of minutes before the green tops would wilt and give away my careless weeding.

  “When?” I asked.

  “Soon,” she said. “You want in?”

  “Why me?”


  “Safer in numbers. Wouldn’t do to be alone out there.” Her eyes moved to the trees.

  “Why not one of the other girls?”

  She shrugged. “Can’t trust um. Any one of these girls would rat me out. You’re not a snitch. I know that much.”

  The strips of fabric I’d ripped from my petticoat last night to bind my bleeding hands had come loose, and I rested on my knees and began rewrapping them, dried blood cracking on the linen. I was hot and thirsty and sweat trickled under the brim of my hat. “Why should I trust you after last time?”

  Mable yanked a weed, tossed it into her pile and inched forward. “You don’t really have a choice, now, do you?”

  The anger that had loosened its grip from exhaustion came reeling back. “I can’t trust someone who lies about their name,” I said, the duplicity of this not lost on me.

  Mable stopped weeding. She straightened her back, pressed her dirty hands into her thighs and scanned the horizon as if searching for a flaw in the landscape, hoping to find a green sky instead of blue, something to prove wrong. “Can’t trust anyone anyway,” she said. “You can come if you like, or not. Your choice.” She reached into my row and plucked up the potato I’d reburied, rubbed it clean with her skirt and bit into it, the white flesh pearling with moisture. “Haven’t you learned to get rid of your evidence yet?”

  I watched her consume my potato with impressive stealth. Behind her, the dark, dense woods shadowed the edge of the field. I could not bear the idea of returning to the House of Mercy. My tremors were gone and my mind clearer, but my skin had cooled to a dull, pasty white and my legs were so swollen I imagined if I stuck a pin in them they’d burst like a balloon. My blue fits had returned and I woke at night feeling that the walls were coming down on top of me.

  Finishing her potato, Mable moved down the row, pulling weeds as efficiently as she had worked an iron in the laundry. She’d led Edna to her damnation, and was most likely leading me to mine. But I couldn’t see any other way out and my time was running out.