Sister Noon (13 page)

Their mother was a drunk, but had never tried to kill
anyone, they said. Teresa went to live with Wessel Harris and his wife, Elmina, when she was fostered off the county farm. He was no blood relation and he never did adopt her. Any land he might have owned was certainly not left to her.

*
Opening to Teresa Bell’s Last Will and Testament.

a
ccording to official policy, abandoned girls could remain as wards at the Ladies’ Relief and Protection Society Home until they were sixteen or, in special cases, even older, but boys weren’t kept much past their twelfth birthdays. After this age, the danger of hoodlumism was seen to increase sharply.

In the winter of 1890, truancy was all the fashion; the boys had to be continually hunted down and punished. Lizzie had never seen such a season for starvation and isolation and paddlings, but no penalty proved a deterrent. The draw was the Presidio and the sight of soldiers marching back and forth on Van Ness.

“It’s worth the licking any lady can hand out,” twelve-year-old Tom Branan told Lizzie confidentially, just
before he left the Home to work on a farm south of San Jose. “You all don’t hit hard enough to stop us.” He was standing in Lizzie’s entryway on the Monday after the séance, with a red runny nose and a thickly inked note from Nell.

“Your friend Mammy Pleasant has just sent over a basket of food,” Nell had written, pressing hard enough to tear the paper. “Including several chickens it will take a whole morning to pluck. Please join us for lunch.” And to make the prospect as uninviting as possible—“Boxty will also be served.”

Lizzie ate only rarely at the Ark, and only when invited. She would have liked to dine there more often, as food tasted so much better when taken with conversation. She fully enjoyed the company of the teachers—warm, impassioned Mrs. Lake, who taught the middles, and tiny, practical Miss Stevens, who taught the littles.

Miss Stevens had red hair, freckled skin thin as paper, and eyes the same green as Chinese tea. Her particular enthusiasm was nature studies. She was a woman who took the world as she found it, and did so with great interest if not actual approval. She had no problem showing small children a praying mantis devouring its mate, a rabbit eating its young, a large crab ripping the leg off another, smaller crab. She delighted in pulling the petals from flowers and, in this context, could talk about pistils and stamens, could even say the word “ovary” to an entire class with a great loud “O” to begin it and no sign of hesitation. In her spare time, for dissipation, she dissected.

She ran the littles with an organizational genius that bordered on military, but was actually, she told Lizzie, adapted from the habits of migratory geese. When she took
the children out, they walked behind her in a V formation, only somewhat narrowed so they all stayed out of the street.

She’d recently joined a ladies’ debating society. Mrs. Lake had complained to Lizzie that the discourse at table was increasingly competitive as a result. Lizzie sometimes wondered about the educational progression that sent children from the strict empiricism of Miss Stevens into the classroom of the sentimental Mrs. Lake. Fortunately, educational policy was not her concern.

But Lizzie liked picking over issues: the morality of hunting as sport, voting rights for women, the Hawaii question, separate schools for the city’s Chinese children. She guessed she would enjoy those dinner-table debates.

Yet she could not impose. The staff would suspect her of suspecting them; they would think her a spy. “We take the same meals as the wards,” Nell told Lizzie often when they were discussing expenditures, and of course, Lizzie had never thought otherwise. Nell periodically asked board members to lunch just to show there was nothing to hide, and she was already plenty offended to be doing so.

Apparently it was Lizzie’s turn to enjoy this hospitality again. She arrived early at the Ark and found the children huddled in the yard. The cause was a stray dog—some sort of terrier, with coarse gray fur and a white belly, ludicrous white tufts like fishing lures at its cheeks, and a lively, intelligent face. The children told her the dog had belonged to a little boy who’d lived on Nob Hill until he died of influenza.

Lizzie couldn’t imagine how they could know this unless the dog himself had talked, but before she could say so,
Mrs. Lake supplied even more details. The dog collapsed on the boy’s grave, she reported to Lizzie tremulously, refusing all food and consolation and howling until the neighbors threatened to shoot it as a mercy to everyone involved. By the time it arrived at the Home it was half starved, and covered with fleas. Mrs. Lake’s eyes ran with sympathetic tears. She went to give it another pat.

“Essence of Lake,” Nell said sniffily to Lizzie. “Don’t look half starved to me. Don’t look one-quarter starved. But I’ll grant you the fleas.”

Lizzie nodded, as she was too distraught now to speak. She averted her eyes so Nell wouldn’t see them. Dogs were just too good for this wicked world!

But she had to concede she saw no signs of noble grief. She watched the dog provoking the orange cat into stiff, furious poses, tangling among the children’s legs as they played in the cold, nosing in their pockets for scraps from breakfast. Lizzie didn’t want some stray eating the bread that the Swain bakery donated for the children. Yet as treasurer she made no objection to its remaining, even said it could come inside, sandy and germy as it was, whenever the pound man was sighted in the neighborhood. How could she do otherwise? Weren’t the children all strays themselves?

She noted the coincidence of a dog’s showing up when Mrs. Pleasant had predicted a dog. She didn’t really believe in omens, but she couldn’t help looking for them. This dog struck her as mostly gray, but there were those bits of white. “What color do you think it is?” she asked Nell, who answered that it was so grimy even the white was gray.

Lizzie saw little Jenny standing alone in the sand, but
they didn’t speak and Lizzie was relieved to see Jenny ignore her. The secret of their nighttime excursion seemed to be safe. Lizzie was also the tiniest bit hurt. This was a preposterous feeling, and she disregarded it.

She was not currently inclined to credit the medieval festival kidnapping attempt. It was too overheated, too much like something Lizzie herself would make up, springing into her head from the pages of a book. Such things didn’t happen, not in modern-day San Francisco.

She was also less and less sure of the wealthy father. No secretly wealthy child had sheltered with them yet. How could sullen little Jenny be the first? In short, there was really no reason to think much more upon her, and Lizzie didn’t plan to do so. “Come with me,” Nell said, and Lizzie followed her inside.

On the way downstairs Lizzie raised the question of hiring a devout, hardworking Christian boy from Chinatown. Nell said it was not to be thought of, Lizzie knew their budget as well as Nell did. Better! Did he even speak English? Nell asked, and was annoyed when Lizzie did not know. Nell did not have the time to be forever pointing and gesturing when she needed a thing done.

O
n the kitchen counter, surrounded by baskets of onions, lemons, jars of jelly, and an extravagant amount of spilt flour, a note had been caught under a teacup. Nell stood with her round fists on her round hips while Lizzie read it. “For Miss Hayes, to distribute as she sees fit,” Mrs. Pleasant had written in her twisty hand, and also a recipe for the chicken.

Lizzie was both pleased and discomfited to have been so singled out. Mostly she was surprised. “How kind,” she said uncertainly. Don’t eat or drink anything, Mrs. Bell had told her.

Nell’s eyes were sharp as pins. “The two of you are such chums now,” she said. “Had such a gay time together.
She’s also sent you rose-hip wine. Now there’s all we need, to see poor blind Mrs. Wright in her cups.”

The unspoken point here, the message in Nell’s careless tone and rigid mouth and pinprick eyes, was Lizzie’s drunken return from the House of Mystery. Lizzie refused to defend herself. Instead, as demonstration of her own clear conscience, she took the wine and two glasses and went immediately up to Mrs. Wright’s first-floor apartment. I can be anyone I like, she thought to herself. I care nothing for appearances. If it all results in generous donations of food to orphans, where’s the harm?

Mrs. Wright was more than eighty years old, a lonely soul who had survived most of her friends and the whole of her family. She’d lost her money in the rigged market of 1879, was one of those women who’d clustered each morning on Leidesdorff Street, hoping to see her shares of Sierra Nevada Mining turn to silver again. Such women were known in San Francisco as mud hens. On each new day, as the stock market opened, they were a little muddier, mothier, and more insane.

The Ladies’ Relief and Protection Society Home had gathered Mrs. Wright in when she went blind as well as broke. Although she now kept herself clean as could be, the room smelled of camphor and the insides of old shoes. There was another smell, too, which Lizzie identified simply as age.

“We have Mrs. Mary E. Pleasant to thank for the wine,” Lizzie told her. She turned her glass and watched the liquid in it spin. “It’s a lovely color, a pale gold. Did you ever meet Mrs. Pleasant?”

“I recollect her calling on the Barclays once when I was there.” Mrs. Wright’s dentures were too large; they filled her
s
’s with spit. She’d chosen them deliberately, since the larger were the same price as the smaller. Value for money. “Their girl had just married and they must have invited her, people always used to, never expecting her to come, you understand. But she did, and she knew her mistake right away. So she just took a tray from one of the servants and began to pass it. I remember thinking that was clever. She was quick as they make ’em. Avoided the awkwardness, and half the guests didn’t even guess. Nobody looks at the servants, don’t you know.”

This didn’t match up with the woman who was so proud Lizzie’s apron had insulted her. Lizzie couldn’t imagine
that
woman passing a tray. “Did you ever see her as a white woman?”

“I know some people say so, but I don’t recollect it,” said Mrs. Wright. “I don’t see how it could be true. She was a famous cook before she even arrived. Men met her at the docks to bid for her services. ‘No washing up!’ she said. She drove a bargain.

“And she was always proud of how far she’d come. She fought the Fugitive Slave Act, and she sued the trolleys for refusing her a ride. You wouldn’t do that if you were passing.”

“Did she win?”

“My word, it was so long ago. I don’t remember, dear. But she was all for the colored in those early days. When they took John Brown, he had a letter from our Mrs. Pleasant right in his pocket. She was a big part of all that.”

Mrs. Wright was giddy with wine and conversation.
Lizzie poured her a second glass, because she could see Mrs. Wright wanted one but wouldn’t ask. Lizzie reproached herself for not visiting more often. She then suffered through a long story, which floated in and out of the past, a story in which many people Mrs. Wright had once known came to no good. There were mine cave-ins and ships lost at sea and deaths attributed to disease but so unexpected they might easily have been poisonings, and there were people who profited from these deaths. Even Lizzie, who could fill in the blanks in someone’s story like nobody’s business, was having trouble following.

She was rescued by Minna Graham. Come to fetch them to lunch, Lizzie assumed, but no, Minna said, the chickens weren’t cooked yet, still running blood from the joints, but there was a man in the parlor Matron wanted her to deal with.

Only, Matron wanted specifically to see Lizzie first; she had something most urgent to say. “She does think he’s here to adopt,” Minna added, and Lizzie thought that, whatever his business, Minna should not have been informed of it. So when Lizzie returned to the kitchen, she also had things to say to Nell.

a
lthough Nell had taken an instant dislike to the man— “A Mr. Finney, or so it suits him to have us believe. I couldn’t see one of our girls going home with him,” she had said—Lizzie’s own first impression was most approving. He rose eagerly at her entrance. He should have been relieved of his coat and hat, yet like Mrs. Pleasant, he still had them. Lizzie wished Mrs. Pleasant could see this. It was nothing personal. The wards were just ill mannered. Abetted by Nell, who never wanted company anyway.

The coat was stained and the hat needed blocking. Mr. Finney’s shirt was worn clear through at the cuffs. But his hair, face, and hands were clean. Lizzie appreciated the effort he had made. He was a young man, fine-looking, with a trim moustache and gold-edged spectacles. One of his
teeth, the right incisor, was thin as a nail. His eyes were blue, but gray enough for argument.

He stood beneath the embroidery that read, “Never too late to mend.” “Miss Hayes,” he said. “It’s good of you to see me.” His accent was Irish, his voice melodious. “Isn’t it a grand morning? Auspicious.” There was a nervousness about him that appealed to Lizzie. She liked the way he met her gaze, as if this was difficult but he was determined to do it. She imagined him as naturally shy. He’d spread a handkerchief over the old, bald chair before seating himself, and she thought it was gracious of him to pretend the furniture was worth such care. He set his hat on his knee.

With some prompting, he told Lizzie that he owned his own hack and drove it for hire, though his real job was speculations. Investments. Futures. “I’m a man who takes the long view,” he said, which Lizzie supposed meant he’d no ready cash in the here and now. “I’m a man who thinks several steps ahead.”