The Robber Girl

by Franny Billingsley

  “He’s perfect,” said the mother doll. “He’s especially perfect because he’s made of wood.”

  “Instead of china,” said the father doll.

  “China can easily break,” said the mother doll.

  “Wood cannot easily break,” said the father doll.

  Of course the dog would come to life in the dollhouse. Nothing was as alive as the dollhouse. The dollhouse had breathed spirit into the dog.

  “He’s made of oak,” I said. “Oak is stronger than indigo. He’s made of white oak, which is stronger than red.”

  “He’ll need a strong name,” said the mother doll.

  The dog made funny little pounces onto his front legs. Nilsson had given him wonderful joints. Look at him, wagging his tail! He bounded off to the library and sniffed all around. His barks were sharp as needles.

  “Barks aren’t needles,” said the dagger.

  “Oakheart,” said the mother doll. “Wouldn’t that be a good name for him?”

  Oakheart was a good strong name. And then I remembered the rhyme that helped me remember the tasks.

  One’s for a dog,

  Two’s for a collar—

  But now the dog had a name:

  One is for Oakheart,

  Two’s for a collar.

  Three’s for a baby—

  Now the first line had one extra sound, which made it better.

  I sat in the rocking chair. It was just the right size for a child who was ten years old, or maybe eleven.

  “That’s Magda’s old rocking chair,” said the father doll.

  “It’s made of willow,” said the mother doll. “Willow’s not as strong as oak.”

  “But willow is supple,” said the father doll. “That’s good for a rocking chair, which is made of bendy strips of wood.”

  A rocking chair was the exact opposite of a dagger.

  “A rocking chair doesn’t need a heart made of oak,” said the mother doll.

  I watched Oakheart run around the house, sniffing in all the corners. He ran to the back of the dollhouse, where I couldn’t see him without swinging the house around on the giant plate. I imagined him sniffing at drawers full of sweetness. I imagined him sniffing at the cellar door. Maybe he could smell the butter waiting in the dreaming dark.

  I thought how funny it was that I was sitting in a chair that had once been a willow. I thought of how things could be transformed—a willow tree into a chair, a white oak tree into a dog. I thought of Nilsson, a live man transformed into a dead man just because of a hat with a scarlet feather.

  But I wouldn’t think about that now. I was inside the cottage, with knobs that closed and bolts that locked, and I had brought a dog to the dollhouse, and the dollhouse had breathed spirit into the dog.

  Later, though, Mrs. del Salto made me click open the door and go to Magda’s room. I slipped the dagger into one of my boots. That way, I could avoid the endless fuss about wearing britches, but still bring the dagger.

  I needed the dagger to explain things to me.

  I’d seen Magda’s room in the dollhouse, but that was the concentrated version. Here, in the human-size version, the shades were closed. I knew sunlight made paint and curtains fade. That must be why the shades were closed, to protect the colors of Magda’s room. There was no ten-year-old girl living in the room who needed sunlight.

  Magda’s room was mostly green, with dabs of yellow. I didn’t like Magda, but I liked her room. Green and yellow are restful on the eyes.

  A wardrobe took up one of the walls. It was painted a beautiful sharpish yellow, like the taste of a dandelion. Mrs. del Salto opened it. There came the smell of sweet and spicy trees. They smelled of memories.

  “You can’t smell memories,” said the dagger.

  Inside was a burst of whiteness—

  “Hardly anything’s white!”

  “It’s just the idea of whiteness,” I said. It was because the wardrobe was filled with waterfalls of fabric, pale and sheer, and heaps of light lacy things, and soft woolen things, and the whole of it left an overall impression of whiteness, like a sliced almond.

  “I’ll alter some of Magda’s dresses for you,” said Mrs. del Salto. She didn’t want to, though. You could tell by the way she knelt, looking into the wardrobe. “Two will be enough for now.” She was probably thinking that I’d make them dirty. That I’d make them savage.

  “She’s right,” said the dagger.

  It was a wardrobe of memories, memories of Magda. It was a shrine to Magda, bursting with almond whiteness. The layers of fabric were folded around the memories of Magda.

  Mrs. del Salto took out one dress, then another, shaking her head, putting them back. Her ring stood out against the whiteness—beautiful and lively and filled with possibilities. It was hard to believe she’d been frantic.

  She reached for a dress with stitching on the chest that made a pattern—

  “Smocking,” said Mrs. del Salto.

  There was a dress with a pink sash—

  “Silk,” said Mrs. del Salto.

  Silk? I wouldn’t touch it. I only wanted to know the feeling of silk by touching Grandmother’s hands. And then I had a big thought: of course! Grandmother would have made a shrine to Gentleman Jack. She’d have made sure his lace was beautifully clean, she’d have folded it just so and laid it on a special shelf, overflowing with whiteness. Maybe she’d have pinned a little ruby brooch onto his neck ruffles, as a bright surprise. She’d have made sure he had a dozen pairs of gloves, all soft and buttery—the best leather was buttery—and maybe she’d have slipped a pair of peach-colored gloves in among the primrose, just in case Gentleman Jack might like a change.

  Mrs. del Salto fished out a dress with lace pockets. Lace pockets? The pockets on the dress of a human-size girl would be about the size of a dining-room table in a dollhouse world. The dining-room table in the dollhouse needed a tablecloth, and the dolls had said the tablecloth should be made of lace.

  I remembered how I’d thought the dollhouse table was so bare that it was gritting its teeth. It needed a tablecloth. I’d come back later and cut off one of the pockets.

  “This one, I think.” Mrs. del Salto held up a dress from the almond shrine. “It never suited Magda. She was too pink for it.” But the dress was red—red!—and except for Gentleman Jack’s gloves and frills, the Gentlemen wore only black and brown.

  “Not red,” said the dagger. “Garnet.”

  Garnet. The background was pale; that might be all right. But the vines and leaves that decorated the fabric were scarlet. I never wore bright things.

  I put the dress on over the nightgown. Mrs. del Salto stuck some pins in the dress. “You’re not pinkish,” she said. “You’re ivory and blue. Once it’s altered, it will suit you very well.” She stuck the pins in her mouth for safekeeping.

  I filled up my eyes with Magda’s room. A book sat on a table beside Magda’s bed. Books are for opening, but this book was fastened with a strap, and the end of the strap went into a lock. In the lock was a keyhole, and in the keyhole was the tiniest key in the world. Later I would come get that key.

  First Magda’s lace pocket, then the key.

  “The key’s only tin,” said the dagger. “Tin is weak.”

  It was valuable to me.

  I filled up my eyes with Mrs. del Salto. Her mouth was a hedgehog of pins. She knelt beside the wardrobe with its almond-white memories. It must be a kind of Affliction to have memories that made you sad. Memories that made you want everything to go back to the way it had been before. At least I didn’t have that kind of Affliction.

  “Because you have no memories,” said the dagger.

  Because I had no memories.

  I HAD TO EAT BREAKFAST EVERY MORNING. I’d been to school eight times, but I’d eaten breakfast more than eight times, because you didn’t go to school on Saturdays and Sundays.

  Breakfast wasn’t as complicated as dinner, but it was still full of perils. It was all right to eat cornbread w
ith your fingers, which might make you think it was all right to eat bacon with your fingers, until you saw Mrs. del Salto chipping at it with the edge of her fork. You might think it was all right to use your own spoon to pour gravy over your biscuits, but you had to use a big spoon, called a ladle. You had to dip the ladle into a thing called a gravy boat.

  “It’s not even a boat!” said the dagger.

  Today was the ninth day. After school, I’d see Gentleman Jack.

  “Sharpen me!” said the dagger.

  “I already sharpened you.”

  “Polish me!” said the dagger, which as always wanted to look sharp and bright for Gentleman Jack.

  I looked sharp and bright, too, but only on the outside—only because I wore a dress with scarlet flowers and a collar with a frill. I wished the inside of my head could also be bright for Gentleman Jack. That’s what he really wanted.

  My hair was still savage. I still carried the dagger in the sheath, which I wore beneath my skirts. I looked tame but I was secretly wild.

  I’d look at the dollhouse before school. School was a bad thing and the dollhouse was a good thing. I wanted to fill up on the good thing before I got to the bad thing. I peered into the dollhouse dining room. I’d awakened the table with beeswax and lavender. I’d dressed it with a lace tablecloth, which had once been a pocket on Magda’s dress.

  Now the table wasn’t gritting its teeth.

  I looked at the little table in the foyer. I licked my fingertip, tapping it onto the drawer and popping it open. It was hardly heavier than paper. In it lay a softness of green fabric. On the fabric lay the key.

  “The key to Magda’s book,” said the dagger.

  But it didn’t belong to the book anymore. “The key to the dollhouse.” Magda’s book had turned out to be filled with writing that slanted all over the place. I couldn’t even read the letters. It wasn’t like the neat up-and-down writing in the newspaper the Judge read every day. But that wasn’t what mattered. All that mattered was the key.

  The father and mother dolls sat at the dining-room table. I pushed the plate around.

  “My, how fast the world spins,” said the mother doll.

  I dragged my finger along the edge of the plate. It slowed, it stopped.

  A good thing I liked to think about was how Gentleman Jack would beat his no-account brother. Gentleman Jack would bring five bricks of gold to Grandmother, and then he’d inherit her empire.

  “Five bricks of gold, plus a Songbird,” said the dagger.

  “Plus a Songbird,” I said. Today I’d tell Gentleman Jack I’d found a Songbird. Today I’d shine like a star.

  Mrs. del Salto called me. I had to turn away from the dollhouse. The Judge had already pocketed his key, so he didn’t open the drawer and I didn’t get to see the keys lying on their comfortable green felt.

  But why did I care about seeing them? I had no key. The Judge and Mrs. del Salto kept them for themselves.

  “Sharpen me!” The dagger was thinking only of Gentleman Jack. “Polish me!”

  The Chinook had melted Main Street into a swamp of mud and manure. A couple of pigs were splashing around in the muck. A rat scuttled by; the pigs snorted and took off after it. The Judge and I kept to the boardwalk.

  School had to be before Gentleman Jack. The walk to school had become horribly familiar. The left turn onto Main Street, the remains of the burnt house, which I never looked at but couldn’t help seeing. The sight had tattooed itself on the back of my eyeballs: the blackened rib cage; the rags and tags of its heart; the stairs, like a half-eaten licorice twist, leading to the second floor.

  “You don’t like it,” said the Judge. It wasn’t a question.

  “It bulges out my eyes.” I wondered if Rough Ricky had made it burn. It was the kind of thing Rough Ricky would do; it was burnt with a Rough Ricky sort of thoroughness. I guessed some people must have died in the fire. Why else would there be three gravestones behind the house, and the single white wooden star?

  “It was charming, before the fire,” said the Judge. “A cottage, a bit larger than ours, with colored glass in the windows. Blue and amber, very pretty.”

  This stretch of road was the longest in the world. It took forever to pass the house, which was all curled into itself, breathing its gray breath. If you could see my breath, that’s what it would look like. Coarse gray breath, belonging to a coarse, gray voice.

  “Gentleman Jack tried to smoke them out,” said the Judge. “You couldn’t pass the house for days, for fear of breathing in corrosive fumes.”

  I knew what smoking out meant. It’s what you do when you want to get into a place that has too many good locks. Smoke makes people open their doors and run out. But it wasn’t Gentleman Jack who did the smoking. It was Rough Ricky.

  “But he used a lye bomb, which turned to fire. The Starlings perished in the blaze—”

  “Starling?” I said. “Like Marshal Starling?”

  “He lost his whole family. You might say he was lucky to have been away at the time—”

  I’d never say that!

  “But he wouldn’t have agreed.”

  The school lay just ahead. The children played in the yard. The girls stood in their circle, singing; the boys flew about in all directions. I was glad I hadn’t learned the rules about boys and girls, about blue and pink. I’d rather run and climb trees and throw the dagger. Mrs. Elton rang the bell. Her skirts trembled. I looked at the school; I looked at its Rough Ricky face. I climbed up its mouth-steps and went through its nose-door. Mrs. Elton looked around the schoolroom, and first thing, she called on me. But she knew I never knew anything.

  “What is today?” said Mrs. Elton.

  “Thursday,” I said.

  “What is the date?” she said.

  “February fourteenth,” I said.

  “What do we celebrate on February fourteenth?” she said.

  What did she mean? There wasn’t a new moon. There wasn’t a full moon. The Rosati were crazy about the moon. “The middle of February?”

  The class broke into laughter. I made my face into a mask. The mask would hide how much I wanted to kill them—kill them! And then came the voice of the person I’d kill most of all, which was Betsy, who explained that February fourteenth was Valentine’s Day, which was when people said “I love you” and gave out Valentine’s Day cards, which Betsy did. She passed out one to every child.

  The others opened theirs. I stuffed mine in my pocket.

  I was a little worried about seeing Gentleman Jack. I had good news about the Songbird, but I had no butterscotch for him. I should have asked the Judge for some, even though I knew he’d say no. That was because he disapproved of Gentleman Jack.

  Today we talked about punctuation. It was all boring, except for something called an exclamation mark. Molly drew it on her slate, an up-and-down line with an eye beneath. I didn’t draw it, but I thought it.

  I want to see Gentleman Jack!

  I want to see Gentleman Jack!

  I want to see Gentleman Jack!

  The drawing of Gentleman Jack still hung on the wall of the Sheriff’s office. The Sheriff should have taken it down; he didn’t need it anymore. There were newspapers everywhere and half-drunk cups of coffee with gray skins. Everything was tired and out of date. The air was stale and half chewed, but I had to breathe it.

  It reminded me of the Judge talking about how the Starlings’ house breathed out poisonous fumes and how you weren’t able to pass the house for days. It reminded me of Mrs. del Salto warning me not to drink lye because it would burn my throat and lungs. I stared at Gentleman Jack’s face lying flat against the wall. Five Thousand Dollars. No one else was worth that much, not Rough Ricky, not Doubtful Mittie.

  “Doubtful Mittie’s not worth anything anymore,” said the dagger. “Being dead and all.”

  They looked just like themselves. The person who drew them knew that Rough Ricky’s lips were burnt into a smile. He knew Gentleman Jack’s best smile showed o
nly his lips.

  A cup of cold coffee sat on a windowsill; beside it lay three squares of paper. The coffee was discouraging, but the paper was encouraging. It was the color of stars.

  “Foil,” said the dagger. “To wrap around chocolates.”

  I turned to face the window, folded my fingers around the foil. I felt Gentleman Jack’s picture staring at me, watching me steal from the Sheriff.

  “Chocolates are for Valentine’s Day,” said the dagger.

  “But Gentleman Jack likes butterscotch best.” I wished I had some to give him. I hadn’t been exercising judgment not even to try!

  The Deputy Sheriff asked if I wanted a cup of coffee. The Judge said it would stunt my growth.

  “Not with sugar,” I said. “Sugar helps you grow.” But I knew it was the wrong kind of growing. It wasn’t the slow chicken-pie-ish growing Mrs. del Salto approved of. It was a fast, sugary growing that wasn’t good for you.

  “Speaking of sugar—” The Judge handed me a small brown bag.

  “Butterscotch!” I said.

  “Butterscotch,” he said.

  “For Gentleman Jack,” I said.

  “For Gentleman Jack,” he said.

  “Thank you.” That was probably the first time since coming to the Indigo Heart that I’d said Thank You and meant it.

  At last the Sheriff came to get me. I showed him the bag of butterscotch, which he shook, then handed back without a word. Now to the puckered-ghost-mouth door.

  A cell block really was a block. Three cells in a row, with a path in front. The bars were too hard. The cell block was not alive, not like the dollhouse and the attic. In the cell block you could turn around and around like a bird in a nest, but you couldn’t make it fit your shape.

  Gentleman Jack was still in the middle cell, but he didn’t look like himself. They’d let his hair grow, even though in the hideout he kept it short. He said long hair was a disadvantage in a fight. Someone could grab your hair, he said. They could jerk your head back and cut your throat.

  Gentleman Jack came to the front. I drew closer, tasted sweat and rust. I gripped the bars, they were cold. Would today be the day he’d say, “This is my girl, returned from the road!