The Girls with No Names

by Serena Burdick

  “Very,” I answered. “It’s something to do with her heart.”

  A quizzical look flickered across the woman’s face as she put a hand to Effie’s forehead and peered intently into her face. “What is her name?”

  “Effie Rothman.”

  The woman’s head snapped up. “Rothman, it is not.” She looked from me to Effie, and then to the girl who let us in, “Amelia, show this man upstairs to the yellow room and then ring immediately for the doctor. Are you responsible for the girl?” she said to the man, her voice calm and urgent.

  “No.” Mr. Idleman shifted Effie uncomfortably in his arms, his face sweating. “I only drove her here as a favor to that girl.” He jutted his chin at me.

  The woman moved quickly now, eyeing me suspiciously as she snatched her hat from the stand. “What’s your name?”

  “Mable Winter.”

  “Are you responsible for this girl?” She secured the hat on her head.

  “Sort of.”

  “Very well then. You’re to stay with her until I get back. If she wakes, she’ll want someone familiar. Amelia will bring you anything you need.” She addressed the man. “After you’ve put her on the bed, Amelia will show you to the kitchen for food and then you’re to be on your way.” Her voice trailed behind her as she hurried out the door.

  I stared after her, my palms sweaty. It was a gamble coming here. I had no idea what this woman intended. What if she had recognized me and was dashing to the authorities? I could still make a run for it. The door was wide open, the man already halfway up the stairs with Amelia leading the way.

  “You can come this way,” Amelia said, looking down from the top step. “I’ll bring you something to eat as soon as she’s settled.”

  Mr. Idleman grimaced at me, none too pleased to be roped into more than he’d bargained for.

  Through the open door, the air filled with the rumble of traffic and the sun looked dim and hazy through the exhaust. Truth was, I was too hot and tired to run. I hadn’t slept or eaten proper in days, and the thought of food and an inviting place to sit was all I wanted. I knew what I was risking by staying, but I receded into the cool of the hall and mounted the stairs anyway, wondering if this one, effortless decision was all it would take to undo all I’d fought for.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Jeanne

  On August 21st, 1914, when Inez Milholland knocked on the door of my apartment on 26th Street, I was sitting in the drawing room fanning myself with the newspaper. I’d given Margot the afternoon off, and the girl who cooked and cleaned for me had gone to the butcher’s even though I told her I’d be happy to eat cold meat from the icebox.

  As the maids were out, I was the one who opened the door to a flushed Inez. She was breathless, her cheeks dewy and her hat askew as if she’d run up the three flights of stairs to my door. We had never met face-to-face, and yet I knew her instantly. I’d seen her photograph in the Woman’s Journal and Suffrage News, and her rosewater perfume confirmed it. She was more ravishing in person, with big brown eyes and shocking red lips. Her beauty stung, but only for a moment, out of habit, I suppose. Her appearance, ultimately, didn’t fluster me, or the way she clasped a hand to her chest and apologized—a little too profusely—for disturbing me, asking that I come with her immediately. I took my hat from the hook and followed her into the heat without question.

  Inez walked at an uncomfortably fast clip, her hands moving in nervous little circles by her side, and people parted to let us pass. I assumed this errand of urgency had something to do with Emory, despite the fact that his mother, good old Etta, had told me he’d put a stop to his relations with Inez.

  Two weeks earlier, Etta had sat in my humble living room telling me, with the arrogance of someone who is used to being obeyed, that Emory still loved me and I was to end this ridiculous charade and return to my duties as a wife. I had just smiled and poured her another cup of tea. I didn’t have the energy to tell her that duty meant nothing to me anymore. The landscape of my life had been irreparably altered. It was clarity I sought, and her son wasn’t very good at that.

  In hindsight, Inez’s presence at my door that day should have been dismaying, and yet the real reason I hurried alongside her through the hot, dry streets never crossed my mind. I was worrying about Luella. Just that morning I’d read that the Germans had bombed a city in Belgium and killed nine civilians. The war was all anyone talked about. Georges assured me that Luella was safe, and yet I continued to read about bombs dropped on English Channel ports. Then there was my mother in Paris, who also assured me she was fine, in spite of the violence spreading to her city.

  I still visited the hospitals looking for my youngest daughter, but I’m ashamed to say that with the war and the passing of time, Effie’s absence had slipped into a dark corner of my mind that no longer believed she’d be found.

  When I entered Inez’s home and was led up the stairs to a room where a girl lay with her back to me, her short, dark hair cresting in little waves over the pillow, I was confused. I glanced questioningly at Inez who stood against a backdrop of lemon-yellow wallpaper, wringing her hands. There was a sudden ring at the door and she cried, “That’ll be the doctor,” and flew from the room.

  “She’s rather scattered, that one.”

  Startled, I turned to see another girl sitting in a chair, watching me with watery blue eyes. I assumed she meant Inez, who, moments later, swooped in with a portly man in a black jacket. I watched the man set his leather satchel on the side table, click it open and pluck out a stethoscope.

  The sight of that stethoscope made me catch my breath, all the times I’d stood beside Effie while that contraption was pressed to her chest. My eyes moved to the bed. That thin shoulder poking up could not possibly be my daughter’s. Inez doesn’t know her. She’s made a mistake, I thought, as the doctor rolled the girl onto her back and began to unbutton her blouse.

  There was a moment of stillness, a vapid emptying, a caving in and a draining of sounds. Then a cry escaped me and I stumbled to the bedside. Effie’s eyes were closed, her face a harrowing white. I thought she wasn’t breathing until I saw her chest rise and a raspy sound escape her throat. I took her hand, soft and warm and delicate as a bird’s wing. I couldn’t believe it was really her. After all the searching and waiting and believing she was dead and here she had appeared so instantaneously.

  The doctor tilted his head in silence, his eye gazing upward as he listened to her heart. I held on to her, refusing to give him her hand as he obligingly examined her clubbed fingernails on the other. He yanked back the covers and flipped up her filthy skirt and I stifled a cry, dropping to my knees. Effie’s stomach was distended, her legs puffed and swollen and colorless.

  The doctor drew his brows together and pulled the stethoscope from his ears. “Are you her mother?” he said, sharp and accusing. I nodded, unable to speak, hardly able to breathe. “How long has she been like this?”

  I stared, the room closing in on me.

  “She’s been bad for days, but got real bad last night,” I heard, and turned to see the strange girl rise from her chair and move toward the window. Freckles dotted her nose and her cropped, blond hair hung at an odd angle over her ears.

  The doctor drew Effie’s skirt back down and adjusted the sheet over her. He looked at Inez hovering in the doorway. “I don’t know what shenanigans are going on here, and I don’t care to.” He moved his eyes back to me. “The swelling is from the accumulation of uric acid. If she goes on like this she’ll slip into a coma, her kidneys will shut down, and she’ll be dead within a week.”

  Sick to my stomach, I pressed my daughter’s hand to my forehead and closed my eyes. I could not find her only to lose her again so quickly. God couldn’t be that cruel.

  “She told me they were giving her mercury treatments. Maybe that’ll work again,” the girl said, and I looked up to see her standing di
rectly in front of the open window, the curtains fluttering on either side of her.

  “They, who’s they?” The doctor glanced in her direction, dropped the stethoscope into his bag and snapped it shut. “Never mind. It’s no matter. Mercury reduces the swelling, but there are nasty side effects and her kidneys will shut down eventually anyway. The mercury just gives her more time, and in the end I’m not sure it’s worth it.”

  I touched my daughter’s forehead. She didn’t move. She looked so frail and small, her hand like a withered leaf in mine. I remembered her as an infant, her exquisite feet and tiny hands, her soft, tender head. At every age, I’d braced myself for her death. After her disappearance I’d been certain of it. A hundred times I’d imagined how this would go; only to discover, now, that it was not a moment I could have prepared for. I felt gutted, hollowed, turned inside out.

  “There is digitalis,” the doctor was saying. “Foxglove. I have some at the office. It’s known to help reduce the swelling without the side effects of mercury. It’s not a cure, but it will help. Would you like me to fetch it?”

  It was hard to take my eyes off of Effie. Somehow, I found the strength to shift my focus to the doctor’s words and try to collect myself into a parental form. I rose to my feet. “Whatever you think is best,” I managed to say.

  But the doctor was no longer listening. He was staring at the girl by the window, his detached expression shifting to astonishment. “I know you,” he sputtered, his mouth gaping open and then snapping shut.

  The girl stared back, boldly, her eyes narrowing. I saw her hand creep along the window frame. “Can you be sure?” She tossed her hair from her eyes and lifted her head, her face open and fearless.

  The doctor looked as if she’d struck him a blow. “Can I be sure?” Spit flew from his mouth and his face shot up in color. “That breech delivery haunts me nightly. I was made to visit your room and identify your photo, and if that wasn’t bad enough, the police took me to the morgue to identify that dead baby.” He spun around to a startled Inez. “I turn a blind eye when you bring me here to treat destitute girls with sprained ankles or syphilis, but this one I’m not overlooking. I imagine you don’t know half the evil you bring under your roof, and I don’t have the stomach to break the horror of this one to you. I’ll let the police do that.” Snatching up his bag, he made for the door.

  Inez stepped quickly in front of him, her curvaceous figure filling the doorway, her voice commanding. “At this precise moment, Doctor, what that girl has or has not done is not my concern. If there’s anyone you should recognize, it’s the girl in this bed. Remember the newspaper stories about her? I do believe there was a reward for her return. Isn’t that right, Mrs. Tildon?” She gazed steadily at me, an imposing air about her.

  “There was. There is,” I stammered, feeling that things were happening quickly, and out of my control. The girl glanced out the window, leaning over the sill as if she meant to jump from it. Inez raised her hand as if to steady her from across the room, a hand she then dropped flat on the doctor’s chest with a seductive smile.

  “I’m sure Mrs. Tildon will see fit to give you credit for finding her daughter, if you’re accommodating. Won’t you, Mrs. Tildon?”

  “Yes, of course,” I said quickly.

  The doctor was not to be swayed. “I don’t give one whit about a reward! That girl—” he pointed a stubby finger at her “—is going to prison and will hang for what she’s done if there’s justice in this world. Where’s your telephone?” he barked.

  “I’m afraid it’s broken,” Inez said woefully, withdrawing her hand and fingering the beads around her neck. “My dear Dr. Langer, I assure you I’m not above the law. I have no intention of letting this girl’s crime go unaccounted for. I’m just concerned with saving the sick child’s life first. If you go for the medicine, I promise we’ll all stay put until your return and then we can call up the authorities and sort this whole disagreeable business out properly.”

  “She’ll give you the slip the moment she gets the chance, and I’m not having her get away a second time. Her getting away the first has been the ruin of my conscience.”

  Inez looked at the girl. “You’re not going to give me the slip, now, are you?”

  “No, ma’am,” the girl replied, an exaggerated smile spreading across her face as she angled precariously out the window.

  I watched her rip a piece of skin from her cracked lips with her teeth, a string of blood beading on her mouth. Suddenly, she looked at me, and I saw her confidence falter. Her eyes seemed to be searching for help. I gripped Effie’s hand tighter.

  The doctor shook his fist at Inez. “Get out of my way!”

  Inez stepped aside and the doctor barreled out the door as Inez leapt at the girl and drew her from the window. “Falling dead on my stoop is no way to thank me. You have a lot of explaining to do, but there’s no time for it. Truth is, I don’t want to know. Whatever the crime, we’ll owe it to circumstance and disadvantage. You’ve risked your neck bringing Mrs. Tildon’s girl here, and I don’t intend to see it broken out that window.”

  The girl wrenched her arm free. “I’ve leapt from windows before and I’m not sticking around for the authorities. I’d break my neck before I let them put their slimy hands on me again.”

  “I’m not calling the authorities.” Inez sank into a chair and pressed her hand to her forehead. “But they’ll be here soon enough with that doctor on the hunt. Even if you run, they’ll find you.” She dropped her hand to the arm of the chair and looked at me with tears in her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Jeanne. I’m so terribly sorry. About Effie, about everything.” Her voice went soft. “I came to you first. It seemed a mother should be the first to know, but someone should fetch Emory.”

  Through the commotion, the ringing in my ears and the noise from the street, my daughter’s raspy breathing became my point of focus. It was not a sound I’d ever heard before. This time, her heart was truly failing. I’d lost the last year of her life, and this strange girl had brought her back to me at the risk of her own. I didn’t care what crime she’d committed. This girl and my daughter were somehow connected, and I had the sudden sense that if I saved one, I might save the other.

  The room came sharply into focus. I turned to Inez, finding the anguish on her face irritating, her intentions exaggerated for my benefit. “If you’d be so good as to send a maid to fetch Emory and stay with Effie for me, I’d be grateful.” The moment I said it I wasn’t sure I could leave my daughter. Effie hadn’t seen me yet. She didn’t know I was by her side. The last person I wanted her waking up to was Inez.

  Inez moved quickly to the bed with a reassuring hand on my arm. “Where are you going?”

  I looked at the girl edging back to the window. “I have an idea of where to bring you, if you’re willing?”

  She held suspicion in her eyes. “Why would you help me?”

  “I’m indebted to you.”

  “For what?”

  “For returning my daughter.”

  “Why didn’t you come for her yourself?”

  “I didn’t know where she was.”

  It took a moment for this to register. “Don’t seem likely,” she said. “But, I won’t ask for your story if you don’t ask me for mine.”

  “Agreed.” I looked back at Inez whose warm hand was still on my arm. “I have no idea how my daughter came to be here, but I don’t care. I’m indebted to you too. I’ll be as quick as I can, but you must promise not to leave her for a second.”

  “I promise.”

  “If she wakes up, tell her I’ll be right back and she’s not to worry.”

  “Of course.” Inez, earnest and obliging, stepped forward and took Effie’s hand. “I’ll be right here with her when you get back.”

  I moved reluctantly away from the bed. “Come, we must hurry,” I said to the girl.

  She hesit
ated, ripping another piece of skin from her cracked lips. “When she wakes up, will you tell her I said goodbye?”

  “Of course.”

  At the door she turned to Inez. “A girl named Edna Craig ever come here?”

  Inez shook her head. “I don’t think so. No, the name’s not familiar.”

  “Okay.” The girl glanced at Effie one last time before heading out.

  I glanced back too. Leaving Effie was agonizing, but what I’d seen in the girl’s eyes as she’d looked from the window compelled me forward. No matter how destitute this girl’s situation was, there was still hope in her.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Mable

  Turns out I got to ride in a second car that day. The cab wasn’t nearly as sleek as Mr. Idleman’s car, but I was grateful it had a roof and kept the sun and wind off my face. I still hadn’t had any food, and I’d begun to feel as if I’d slipped under water, things coming at me in a haze.

  I knew that doctor the moment he walked in the room. I could have run, hidden my face and ducked out the door, but felt lethargic, tired to my bones. Maybe it was tramping through the woods for days without food, or just the years of grief piling up on me, but the idea of jumping out a window as I’d planned to do once before and ending it all seemed easier than running.

  Now I was stuck crawling along in traffic. At any moment a police car could pull up and order me out. I didn’t trust this woman claiming to be Effie’s mother. Effie’s last name was Rothman, and I’d begun to wonder if this Mrs. Tildon intended to take me to the authorities after all. I was suspicious of her wealth and shine. Only...she wore no gloves and her hands were scarred and ugly. Only working folks had scarred hands.

  I pressed up against the door, easing my fingers around the handle thinking maybe I’d roll out into traffic. I might have done it too if that woman hadn’t suddenly removed her hat and placed it on my head, tilting it so my face was hidden from view.