Girl Waits with Gun (17 page)

Norma raised an eyebrow, waiting for me to explain it.

“‘A girl of your talents,'” she read. “What do they mean by that? They don't know me. Do they mean my dancing, or singing, or . . .”

I took a deep breath, looking to Norma for help. Finding none, I blurted it out. “This is a kidnapping threat. They're not talking about putting you on the stage in Chicago. They're talking about taking you to Chicago and selling you.”

She scrunched her face up in that childish way she had. “Sell? What do you mean, sell? How would you—” and then she stopped. She sat up and wrapped her arms around her chest. We'd all read about white slavery in the papers, but I didn't know how much of it she understood.

“They drug you,” I said quietly. “They grab you and cover your nose with chloroform and take you somewhere. There are men who will pay . . . who, ah, will pay for . . . that. For you.”

Fleurette pulled away from me and stood with her fists tucked under her arms, looking down at her feet and the irregular pattern that the broken bits of Mother's mirror made on the floor. She was possessed of the kind of fine, pouty features that could be so easily shattered, and I watched the corners of her lips drop and tremble as the truth came to her. “But that's not what this is,” she said in a whisper. “They're not serious, are they?”

I shook my head. “I don't know. I think Henry Kaufman is very dangerous. I think our buggy collided with the wrong man.”

For a minute we just stood where we were and considered that. In the dark Mother's old room was quite beautiful. The chrysanthemums on the wallpaper glowed like distant jellyfish in the sea. Near the window was a lamp fringed in glass beads that she'd brought with her from Vienna. A breeze came in and pushed them against each other, making the faintly musical sound of bells ringing someplace far away. Her filmy dressing gown still hung on the closet door and it lifted and swayed like a woman dancing. At that moment it looked like a stage set, not a home where ordinary people lived. I could imagine stagehands wheeling it all away, leaving us with nothing but a black floor and a backdrop.

“Well,” I said at last. “You can't sleep alone tonight. I've got the biggest bed. You'll sleep with me.”

“What about Norma?” Fleurette said.

Norma hadn't said a word since she read the letter. I wasn't sure she'd taken a breath. Her voice came out in a croak.

“I suppose we have no choice but to hunker down like soldiers in a trench. I'll make a bed for myself on the floor.”

And that's what we did. Fleurette climbed straight into my bed. Norma went to get some blankets and while she was gone, I went looking for Francis's old hunting rifle. It had been years since I'd fired it, and I'd been aiming at rabbits, not at strange men in automobiles.

“What do you intend to do with that?” Norma asked when she returned.

“It does us no good in the back of a closet,” I said. I leaned it against the window.

Norma settled down on her pile of blankets. “Why don't you put yourself in front of Fleurette so she doesn't catch the next round of flying glass?”

She was already half asleep in the middle of my bed. I rolled her to the side away from the window. She moaned and kicked but moved over.

I settled in next to her. Fleurette was so small that my body made a wall around her. Her rib cage rose and fell against me.

Norma nodded in the darkness. “You'll be the one they hit. That seems fair.”

This time I had to agree with Norma. She turned to look again at the rifle, and then she put her head down, but I don't think she slept. I didn't either.

IT WAS NORMA
who decided that we should live in Wyckoff. Mother was unable to make a plan of any kind. She was so astonished to learn that Francis and Norma had not only found me, but had made a commitment on her behalf to raise her newly discovered granddaughter as her own child, that she was rendered speechless and nearly paralyzed. Upon arriving in Wyckoff she stood on the porch at Mrs. Florence's, with Norma next to her (while Francis waited in the carriage at the end of the drive, as they were all unsure as to whether a man should even approach the house), but she could not raise her hand to knock. It fell again to Norma to take charge of the situation, gaining entrance to the house and asking to see her sisters.

Already Fleurette was her sister. There would not be a single moment in Fleurette's life in which she was to be treated as my daughter. Norma had arranged for Mother to sign adoption papers making Fleurette hers, and great care was taken to make sure that my name would never be found in Mrs. Florence's files—only the false name I'd given when I arrived. The letter Norma had written was returned to her. Only a few nurses knew our secret, and they were accustomed to forgetting any details not written in the files, to best protect the interests of the child. An illegitimate girl might never marry, might never have a family of her own, might be cast out of any social circle she attempted to enter. The nurses understood this better than the families did. They assured Norma that no one would ever be told the circumstances of the child's birth, not even Fleurette herself.

Once my mother signed the papers, Fleurette was taken directly from the nursery and handed to her. A few minutes later a nurse came for me, and that's how I found her: seated in an armchair in Mrs. Florence's office, baby in her arms, Norma looking over her shoulder. When I walked in, they both looked up at me with identical expressions of curiosity and shock, but then Fleurette made some sound and their eyes went back to her. I perched on a high-backed chair and watched while they fussed over her.

I'd been so relieved when I learned that Norma had found me and that I'd be keeping my child, but now a stone sank to the bottom of my stomach. I wasn't really keeping her. They were keeping me, that was all.

We couldn't go back to Brooklyn. Girls of eighteen could not disappear for months and return at the same time that a baby was brought into the family without attracting suspicion and gossip. Francis rented a suite of rooms for us in Paterson and planned to return to Brooklyn for our things as soon as we settled on a place to live. Philadelphia was under consideration, as was Boston, with the idea that Francis could easily find work and Norma could finish school. Mother had her inheritance, so we were not without resources.

I believe we would have gone to Philadelphia or Boston had Norma not overheard, as we were leaving, a conversation between two of the nurses about a farm nearby. The man had moved out west and was eager to complete a sale. Norma made a note of the location and as we rode past Sicomac Road, asked Francis to turn and take a look at it.

There it was: the wide and gabled farmhouse, the barn, the pen for animals, the meadow that led to a creek lined in willows. Across the road the neighbor's cows moaned amiably. The drive was overgrown in weeds and the paint had flaked off the house, but Norma saw something there. She got out and took a walk around the barn and then around the house, and stood looking over the fields at the trees in the distance. When she returned to us—Mother, cradling Fleurette, with me sitting alongside, and Francis at the reins—she had already made up her mind.

“No one would know us here,” she said to Mother. “And we'd be away from that filthy, crowded city.” She glanced meaningfully at me, as if to suggest that filthy cities themselves were to blame for what had happened.

Mother nodded slowly. “When you children were small, I always wanted to bring you to the country. Your father would never agree to it.”

Before Francis could object, she added, “Francis, you could fix up the farmhouse, and once that was done, I'm sure you could find work in Paterson.”

“And what would you do?” I asked Norma. Everyone turned to look at me as if they'd forgotten I was there.

Norma smiled and looked back at the barn. “I'd get a goat and maybe some pigs. And I believe I might like to keep birds of some sort.”

I MUST HAVE DOZED OFF
around sunrise. I had been dreaming about a flock of messenger pigeons circling the roof in the early gray light before dawn, carrying slips of paper in their beaks and dropping them down on us. “Chicken Thieves Send Kidnapping Threat” arrived first, then “Police on Lookout for Brother's Hunting Rifle.” Fleurette caught one in the air and held it out to me. “Sisters on War Footing,” it read.

By the time I awoke the morning was half over. I sat up in bed and wondered if it had all been a nightmare—the brick shattering the window, the note threatening to take Fleurette from us. Then I saw the rifle leaning against the wall and knew I hadn't dreamed it.

A door opened downstairs and I followed the sound into our kitchen. Sheriff Heath had apparently just arrived and was holding his hat in his hand in the manner of a man about to deliver a speech. Norma and Fleurette were standing next to the kitchen table, each with a hand on the back of her chair. No one was saying a word. They were holding their postures as models do in a tableau. “Sisters Awaiting Rescue,” it could have been called.

I leaned around the tableau in hopes that someone had left some coffee on the stove for me. They hadn't.

The sheriff's eyes were even darker and more deeply sunk into their sockets. His hair was matted to the side of his head and, as far as I could tell, he was wearing the same brown suit I'd last seen him in.

“You look like you've had even less sleep than we have,” I said.

He grimaced and reached up to smooth his hair. “I suppose so,” he said. “I was called out in the middle of the night to pull Henry Kaufman's automobile out of a ditch just up the road.”

“I don't know why you didn't just leave it there,” Norma said.

“Where was Mr. Kaufman?” Fleurette asked.

“He must have run off. We counted four men's footprints in the mud. I sent one of my men to watch your house, but we never saw him.”

“That's because he visited us first,” Norma said, “and treated us to his latest literary efforts.”

“I was afraid of that. How was it delivered?”

“Again by brick,” I said, “but this time he aimed for our mother's old room.”

Sheriff Heath looked disappointed. “Smart man,” he said. Then he saw our surprised expressions and apologized. “I mean that he's avoided using the post. If he mailed them we'd be able to charge him with a federal crime. He knows what he's doing. Could I see the letter?”

“There were two of them,” I said. I thought I'd left them upstairs, but Norma pulled the letters out of her pocket. He gestured for her to set them on the table, then he sat down. We took our seats around him as he bent over the crumpled papers.

“Ladies, I'm going to teach you a little detective work.” Fleurette sat straighter in her chair. This was precisely the wrong sort of excitement for a girl of her temperament. Without taking his eyes off the letters, he continued. “The first rule of crime scene investigation is to keep your hands off the evidence. If we're lucky we can take up a fingerprint, but not if yours are on top of it.”

Norma was not a woman who appreciated having her mistakes pointed out to her. “You wished us to leave the letter on the floor and go peacefully back to bed, having no idea of its contents?” she said stiffly.

“Not at all,” he answered, still scrutinizing the letters. “Just use a pair of gloves, a handkerchief, a corner of your skirt to pick it up. Anything will do.”

After he finished reading, he slid a finger underneath and lifted both of the letters with calm and steady hands to make sure nothing was written on the back.

“I don't like it,” he said, looking up at us at last. “It's got all the marks of a Black Hand letter.”

“Black Hand?” Norma and I said at once.

“This is what they do,” he said. “They start small, with vague threats. Maybe they break a window or fire a shot in the air, to let their victims know they're serious. Then the threats get more specific as to kidnapping and arson. There's always a warning not to go to the police.”

“How clever we were to ignore their advice,” Norma declared.

“Your sister was right to call for me and to stand up for herself,” he said. “Most people wouldn't. That's why we don't see many of these early letters. But then comes a demand for money, and by that time the victims are too scared to do anything but pay.”

“Are you saying that Henry Kaufman is a Black Hander?” I asked. “He's not even Italian.”

“Not necessarily,” the sheriff said. “These letters have been in the papers so much that anyone can copy their style. They're just imitating what they read. When did this happen?”

I shook my head. “I'm so sorry, Mr. Heath, but I don't think any of us thought to look at a clock. It was the dark of night and we were all so deeply asleep when it happened. There was a bit of confusion because—”

“It was a quarter past two,” Norma said.

We all looked at her in surprise.

“I checked the clock when I went to get my blankets. Constance was too busy messing around with that rifle to notice what time it was.”

Sheriff Heath sat back in his chair to regard Norma from a distance. “A rifle? What were you girls planning to do with a rifle?”

Norma sniffed. “She was planning to protect her sisters. What were you doing?”

He looked at me and back at Norma, perhaps trying to figure out where he stood with each of us. Then he pushed his chair back and asked if he could go upstairs to view the crime scene. Norma told him he could not, and I told him he could. She shoved her chair away from the table and went out the kitchen door without a word. I took the sheriff upstairs and Fleurette followed.

Norma had knocked the glass out of the windows in our mother's room, swept up the broken mirror and the pins, and wedged boards into the empty panes. The bricks sat carefully in the center of the dresser, like trinkets put on display, the way one might exhibit a starfish taken from the beach.