“Leave the kid alone,” someone finally said in exasperation. “The fellow’s dead. Let her rest.”
But they wouldn’t let her rest, even though she felt that, if she closed her eyes, she’d fall asleep right there, surrounded by all of them, detectives and the commissioner and some other coppers who sometimes interrupted to ask her a question. Fatty Bacon wasn’t one of them, though she glimpsed him in the hall with her mother, who was not allowed in the hospital room while the policemen were there.
There were doctors, too, almost as many doctors as policemen, and they all seemed perplexed and concerned about one thing, though it took them a long time to bring it up. When they did, Pin refused to answer until yet another doctor was called in, along with her mother. The doctor was named Dr. Bergman. He was not very old and wore a suit, not a white doctor’s coat, though he did have a stethoscope around his neck and carried a black leather medical bag.
“We know from your mother what you’ve been doing all summer,” he said to Pin gently. “But the police would like to hear it from you.”
“Why?” She sat up straight in the hospital bed. “You haven’t even given us the reward! Why do you even have to know, it’s none of your damned business!”
A man came back into the room then, the police commissioner, Deneen. A big white man, older, with small, mean eyes like a sow’s. He pushed aside Dr. Bergman, placed his hands on the bed’s metal rails, and stared down at Pin.
“We’ve had enough of this nonsense, young lady.” He raised his voice loud enough for everyone in the hall to hear. “A great deal of effort has been put into making sure you’re safe. It’s time for you to cooperate. What is your Christian name?”
“Pin.”
His face reddened. She’d seen men who struck their children: Commissioner Deneen looked like one of them as he bellowed, “You’re not going to leave this room or see another person, not even your mother, until you tell me your Christian name.”
Pin glared at him but said nothing. She stared at the closed door to her hospital room. Through its window she could see her mother’s small face, gazing at her with mingled pity and fear and anger as she nodded and frantically mouthed the words Tell him, tell him!
Pin stared in disbelief until her mother turned away, her face in the window replaced by that of a policeman.
All of a sudden she understood everything. She was a fourteen-year-old girl in a hospital room—a prisoner, surrounded by men, policemen and doctors, none of whom would ever believe anything she told them about what had happened, even if it was the truth. No one would believe she and Henry had tricked a murderer. No one would believe she had stabbed a man to death with a knife. Not even her mother would defend her.
And Henry had forgotten her, or maybe they’d made him a prisoner, too.
There would be no reward. Everyone believed that Fatty Bacon and a reporter were the heroes: not her, not Henry. She looked up at the hospital wall and saw a crucifix there. She hated it, she hated God. She hated this world and those who made it.
She stared at Deneen, wanting to spit at him, to attack him as she had attacked Max, claw his tiny piggy eyes from his face and leave him bleeding on the floor.
Instead, she told him her real name. And then she collapsed on the bed, weeping inconsolably.
Chapter 101
THEY FINALLY ALLOWED her to leave early that evening. They brought her the clothes they’d found her in, the soiled sailor dress that Glory had loaned her. She almost cried again, thinking of Glory, who would surely never speak to her once she knew the truth. She begged her mother to bring in her own clothes, but Gina refused.
“That’s all over, Pin,” was all she said, and returned to the corridor.
Pin dressed in a silent fury, then went into the hall, where her mother and Fatty Bacon were waiting. Her mother tried to take her hand, but Pin pushed her away and walked on ahead of them without speaking.
Outside the hospital stood a dozen or so men, all holding notebooks. Several had cameras and took her picture. She glared at them, turning to where her mother and Fatty had halted behind her.
“Make them stop,” she ordered.
Fatty looked at her, then nodded. He walked over to the reporters and spoke to them. She could hear them arguing, but after a few minutes they all left, except for one dark-haired man who stepped over to a tree, where he lit a cigarette and watched her as he smoked. She recognized him from inside the hospital: he was the reporter who would share the reward with Fatty Bacon.
Pin walked out onto the street. She didn’t know where she’d go. She might run away, hop a freight car near Belmont and see where it took her.
“Pin! Pintail, Pinafore!”
She whirled to see a small figure running toward her. He wore his hospital work clothes, dirty overalls and a stained work shirt and work boots.
“Henry!” She ran to meet him, and he stopped, turning his head to avoid her delighted gaze. “Jesus, Henry, where were you?”
“I had to go to work.”
She glanced back and saw her mother and Fatty whispering to each other as they watched her. She turned to Henry again, lowering her voice. “Did you talk to the cops?”
He shrugged, not meeting her eyes. “Tried to. They think I’m crazy. That policeman, too. He said it wasn’t me, he said the second man was taller. He lied to them.”
“I hate him,” she spat.
“I think he didn’t want them to arrest me, maybe. Because I had a knife. Life.”
She stared at her feet. She could feel Henry’s gaze, but when she raised her head, he looked away.
“They told me that you’re really a girl,” he said. “Is that true?”
She bit her lip, after a moment nodded. When she spoke, she no longer sounded defiant, just defeated. “They made me tell them my real name.”
“What is your real name?”
She took a deep breath. “Vivian.”
“Vivian?” He frowned. “Vivian?”
He repeated it several times, as though trying to find a rhyme. At last he shrugged. “Vivian is a good name. Boy, girl: same.”
He fumbled through his pockets. Pin let her breath out, relieved he wasn’t going to mock her as everyone else was sure to.
“Pin,” her mother called. “We need to go.”
Pin ignored her. She watched as Henry pulled out a small crumpled card and a pencil stub. He crouched, smoothed the card on his knees, and painstakingly wrote on it, pressing down hard for each letter, as though to make sure the words wouldn’t blow away. When he was done, he stuck the pencil back in his pocket and stared at the card. At last, satisfied, he handed it to her. For a fraction of a second, his pale blue eyes gazed directly into hers and didn’t look away.
“I knew you weren’t really a boy,” he said.
“How?”
“Because only a girl would be so brave.”
“Miss Onofria! Miss Onofria!”
Pin turned to see someone walking toward her, the reporter who’d gone to smoke his cigarette beneath a tree.
“I’d like to have a word with you, Miss Onofria,” he said, stopping to remove his hat. “A few words, to be honest. I’m Mr. Hecht, a reporter with the Daily News. I’ve already spoken to your mother, but I’d like to hear your side of the story. I suspect it’s a very interesting one.”
Pin thought, then nodded grudgingly.
“Yeah, okay,” she said. “Just hold on a minute.” She turned to say goodbye to Henry, but he was already shuffling back toward Workingmen’s House.
Chapter 102
HE REACHED HIS room, elated, locked the door, and hurried to his desk. He hadn’t slept in nearly two days. Exhausted as he was, he felt wide awake, thrilled by the great events in which he’d taken part.
He had saved Pin before any of the others could reach his friend. General Dargero! they had all cried. We await your orders!
Stand by, I will kill him!
And so he had! He’d seen the man fall, but he’d
had to retreat as those other two men came racing toward him. One was dressed as a policeman, but they might have been evil generals. He knew they would take him back to the asylum if they could. So General Dargero had quietly slipped away under cover of darkness, until next he was called upon to defend all girls against the powerful and wicked forces who so relentlessly pursued them.
Pin had fought so bravely! It was she who had slain that evil man with her blade, even though they claimed the policeman had done it. Brave Pin, brave Vivian! Was there a better name? Why had it taken so long for him to think of it?
He got out his manuscript, his pencil and votive candles, his sheaf of creased newspaper clippings, last of all the faded newspaper photograph of Elsie Paroubek. He pulled out Saint Dymphna’s scapular and kissed it, sharpened the tip of his pencil with his knife. For a long time he sat and stared at the title page of his book. He reached into the drawer for a sheet of blank paper, smoothed it on top of the desk, and began to write:
THE TRUE ADVENTURES OF THE VIVIAN GIRLS,
WHO FOUGHT BESIDE THE GEMINI
IN THE TIME OF THE TERRIBLE WAR STORM,
CAUSED BY THE REBELLION OF THE CHILD SLAVES
By Henry Joseph Darger
The Author Of This Exciting Story
He turned to the first page, frowned, and crossed out a few words, then began to write.
It was dark and the Vivian Girls were still awaiting the return of
Violet.
Even as the light paled and he heard Sister Rose’s footsteps in the corridor outside the room, he continued writing. It would be a very, very long time before he stopped.
Chapter 103
PIN HATED SCHOOL. She hated everything. There had been no reward. Riverview’s owner, Mr. Baumgarten, had given Fatty Bacon and that reporter five hundred dollars apiece. They were the heroes: she was only the one who’d needed to be rescued.
And when Baumgarten learned she and her mother had been living in the shack behind the Kansas Cyclone, he’d evicted them, though he didn’t call it that. He gave her mother two hundred dollars and told her it was for new school clothes for her daughter, and any incidental expenses they might have. She and her mother now had rooms in a boardinghouse, the same one where Fatty Bacon lived, with a nosy landlady named Mrs. Dahl. Fatty was courting her mother, no doubt about that. Pin didn’t speak to him unless her mother ordered her to.
To her relief, Fatty mostly left her alone. Pin seemed to intimidate him, which was fine by her.
It was just as well they’d left Riverview. Once Mr. Hecht’s exclusive newspaper story ran in the Daily News, and everyone knew that the boy they’d known as Pin was actually a girl named Vivian, she’d been hounded by the boys in the park. Surprisingly, only Clyde was polite to her.
“I don’t blame you now,” he said a few days before she and her mother moved out. “You with your sister…it’s a bad old world for young girls. I don’t blame you one bit.”
Now, in her freshman English class, she sat staring at a blank page in her composition book and waited for the bell to ring, signaling the end of the school day. At first, the other high-school students had boiled with curiosity over the girl who’d dressed as a boy who’d dressed as a girl, and escaped from a murderer.
But Pin felt shy and tongue-tied in her stiff new sailor dresses and shirtwaists. The other girls bored her, and the boys showed little interest, once she rebuffed their feeble attempts at flirting. Her classmates didn’t taunt or torment her, as she’d feared. After the first few weeks of school, they simply ignored her.
She lifted her gaze from the page to the wall clock, watched as the second hand ticked along. The bell rang. The classroom erupted into a chorus of laughter and chatter, chairs being scraped back and people racing for the door. She gathered her textbooks, waiting till the room emptied before she stood.
“Vivian? Miss Onofria?”
Pin headed to the door, halting only when someone grasped her arm.
“Vivian Onofria, I’m speaking to you.”
She looked up to see the school principal, Miss Weiss. Miss Weiss always dressed in sensible clothing, a plain dark-blue street dress and brogues. She wore her brown hair in a boyish bob, a recent fashion for women.
“Sorry, miss,” Pin said, flushing. She still couldn’t get used to being addressed by her given name.
“Someone’s here to see you. In my office, come with me, please.”
Pin followed her down the hall, avoiding the eyes of students who stared as she passed. She’d stayed out of trouble since arriving here; she was a mediocre student, but only one among many. Now she wondered if her continual failure to remember she was Vivian Onofria, not Pin Maffucci, had earned her detention.
“I’ll be in my office,” Miss Weiss said as she waved Pin into the waiting room. The school secretary, Miss Kingsley, glanced up at her and smiled.
“Here she is! Vivian, you have a visitor.”
A tall, broad-shouldered man unfolded himself from a chair and stood, holding his hat.
“Pin,” he said, and grinned.
“Mr. Carrera!” She grinned back, for what felt like the first time in weeks.
Billy Carrera looked her up and down, shaking his head, and sank back into his chair. He wore a suit jacket over his usual shirt, a celluloid collar curling from the heat. “Well, you surprised us all, I’ll give you that, Pin. Vivian, I mean.”
“Pin,” she said under her breath. She glanced at Miss Kingsley, who had returned her attention to a stack of papers. “I prefer Pin.”
“Well, that was quite a story, whatever your name is.” Billy Carrera shook his head again, as though still not quite believing it. “Lionel helped me track you down. Almost got him in a lot of trouble, that notebook of his. He remembered the name of the policeman he talked to at the park, and when I told him I wanted to see you, he went to Riverview and spoke to Mr. Bacon and found out where you go to school. So here I am.”
Pin bunched up her skirt, then smoothed it out again. She smiled nervously, uncertain what to say. It was impossible to know how to act now, especially around grown-up men.
“We miss you hanging around the studio,” Carrera went on after a moment. “So I came to ask you, how would you like a job there?”
“A job?”
He nodded. “As a joiner—your pal Glory Swanson said she thought you’d be interested. What do you think?”
Pin bit her lip, trying to hide her disappointment. Why a joiner? Why not an assistant to Billy himself, or one of the other cameramen, out on the studio floor? When she said nothing, Carrera continued.
“That would be to start. We use a lot of girls, you know that. If you did it for a while, and you liked it—if you’re good at it—then maybe you could be a cutter. There’s some girls in the cutting room, along with the fellas. I’m thinking you could work maybe two, three days a week after school. Saturdays if you want. If it’s okay with your mother,” he added. “You’re fourteen?”
She nodded.
“Well, that’s young, most of the girls are sixteen. But I can vouch for you. I know you’re a quick study, I’ve seen that. So if you want to think about it—”
“No, I’ll do it,” she broke in. “I can start now.”
Carrera laughed. “Why don’t we wait till Monday? That way I can tell the girls in the office and we can get you all set up.”
He picked up his hat and stood, extending his hand. Pin took it and they shook. “Thanks,” she said, and smiled again gratefully.
“One more thing.” He dipped his hand into a pocket, withdrew an envelope, and handed it to her. “Glory asked me to give you this. She’s gone out to California with her mother, to the Niles studio. Her and Wally Beery seem to be an item.”
“Glory?”
“Yup. He’s going to teach her to drive for The Danger Girl at Keystone. She dresses as a fella in that one. You’ll have to see it,” he said, and winked.
“I will.” She clutched the envelope, resisting the u
rge to tear it open then and there.
“She’s making quite a splash, that gal. Okay, I better go. You ask your mother to come with you on Monday, let’s say four o’clock. How’s that?”
“That’s swell.” She smiled at him. “I’ll see you on Monday.”
He grinned and tipped his hat to her—something else she had to get used to. “See you Monday.”
She put a good five or six blocks between herself and the school before she opened Glory’s letter. The neighborhood where they lived was quiet: she heard distant laughter from other students as they walked home, and dogs barking eagerly as they raced to the sidewalk to greet them.
She halted at the end of the street that led to Mrs. Dahl’s boardinghouse. Pin’s mother had gone to work at a lunch counter. Fatty Bacon had told her she no longer needed to work if she didn’t want to. “But I do want to,” Gina had retorted.
Pin ducked behind a tree that shaded the sidewalk, dropped her school satchel, and sat cross-legged in the grass. The envelope was pale blue, as was the paper inside, which had scalloped edges and smelled of carnations. Glory’s small neat handwriting filled the page, black ink with a single blotch. Pin longed to think it had been left by a tear, though it was difficult to imagine Glory crying over anything.
Dear Pin,
I suppose I should call you Vivian but I can’t! How could you tease me like that? I should be so angry! But I’m not, I only wish you had told me, perhaps I might have helped. But probably not.
Mother and I have decided to go to California, where I will take more singing lessons. I may also do some motion picture work at the Niles Canyon studio. Charlie Chaplin is out there, you will remember that I’m sure. Wally is there too now. Maybe you can come visit me.
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