Sister Noon (30 page)

She thrust her feet back in the water and reclined on the bank. Suddenly she noticed an egg near her on the grass. Because she was still so hungry, she picked it up, thinking to crack it open and eat it. To her surprise the egg spoke. “Put me back in the nest,” the egg said, “and if I can ever do you a kindness, I will.”

“How can an egg do me a kindness?” the queen asked, but she saw the nest on a branch above her and placed the egg inside.

That night she had a dream. In the dream she saw her
daughter sleeping in a glass box at the bottom of a lake on top of a mountain. But the mountain was too high to climb and the lake was too deep to swim. The queen woke up weeping.

(Lizzie didn’t know why the queen was so certain the dream was true. She hurried on before Jenny could ask about this, in case she, too, found it odd.)

In the nest above the queen’s head was a bird. “Take my wings,” it said, and as soon as it spoke she felt wings growing from her shoulders. She flew to the top of the mountain and stood at the edge of the lake.

In the lake was the silver fish. “Take my tail,” it said, and as soon as it spoke she felt her wings turn to fins and her legs fuse to a tail. She dove into the lake and swam to the very deepest, darkest part and picked her sleeping baby up.

In that instant, she was transported to her own castle, dry, wingless, and tailless. When the ogre child saw her with the baby, it climbed from the cradle and ran into the night and was never heard of again.

“There now, dear,” said the king. “I told you it would all come right in the end.”

There probably should have been one more animal. Things in fairy tales always came in threes, but Lizzie hadn’t been able to think of another. She’d cobbled this story together from bits and pieces of other stories she remembered, but it wasn’t a bad effort for all that. She was rather pleased with herself. She’d mastered her intractable imagination and turned it to good use. No dead girls in this story. No dancing, no yellow dresses. Lizzie was having none of those thoughts!

In fact, Lizzie was feeling better about Malina Paillet.
When the headache receded, it took some of her suspicions with it. Maybe her father had attended a party or two, but he wouldn’t kill a girl for not liking him. What kind of a daughter would think he might? Yes, he’d had a terrible temper, but he was a good man. A good-hearted man. The only thing Lizzie couldn’t quite set aside was the fact that Mrs. Bell had told her about Malina. It was so indiscreet, it seemed the sort of thing that must have a motive.

Maud had awakened. She came and lay next to Jenny, taking her hand. “What happened to the ogre child?” Jenny asked.

Jenny didn’t like to be touched. Lizzie remembered that from when she’d fetched her at the House of Mystery; now she saw it with Maud. When Maud took her hand, Jenny jumped as if she’d been pinched. “I don’t know,” said Lizzie. “I guess she needs a mother, too, doesn’t she? She needs an ogre mother.”

“But not
that
ogre mother,” Jenny said.

Lizzie stood and looked down at the two girls, the blond head and the dark. She felt a sudden lump in her throat over the mother she’d created, the mother who walked so far and risked so much. It occurred to her that the story wasn’t really over. The child would grow up and leave. The mother would spend her life remembering the one brief hour when she could fly like a bird, swim like a fish.

O
n the subject of Viola Bell, Lizzie was utterly ashamed. What excuse could she make? She decided simply to give Viola the fifty dollars next time Jenny had a piano lesson, as recompense for her own appalling behavior. She couldn’t believe she’d hired a young girl to snoop for her; Lizzie wasn’t the sort to do such a thing.

About Jenny her thoughts were more tentative. If only Jenny seemed contented at the Ark, things could be left as they were. Above all, Lizzie must not pick her up only to set her down again. Viola had that quite right. Lizzie needed to be sure she could see it through before she even began.

And there was still the mother to consider. What if Lizzie adopted Jenny, grew to love her like a sister, and then her mother appeared and took her back? What if her
mother was colored? How could Jenny go from white to colored with no preparation? Lizzie remembered the story Mrs. Wright had told—how Mrs. Pleasant had passed a tray at a party to which she’d been invited, pretending to be a servant so that no one would feel awkward about her being there. Jenny was already such a proud little girl. She wouldn’t know to do this, and Lizzie didn’t want her learning.

Lizzie meant to look in next on Mrs. Wright, but before she could do so, Minna Graham appeared in the doorway, clapping her hands. “Sam is here, Miss Hayes!” she said. “He wants to say hello to you!”

Sam had become a great favorite with the girls in the kitchen. He delivered Mrs. Pleasant’s baskets with elegance, sweeping his top hat from his head and holding it at his heart. He had a gift for making orphans feel like princesses. It was kinder even than the food he brought. Lizzie excused herself to go see him.

Three of the older girls were still washing up from lunch. An obstinate landscape of creamed potatoes crusted the pots and pans, and the burnt-hair smell of cooked cabbage hung heavily. The kitchen steamed like a greenhouse. Sam stood amidst the dirty dishes, making a pyramid of strawberries. “This here’s for you,” he told the girls in turn, whenever he came upon a perfect one, passing it over. “This one’s a jewel.” On the counter, packed in ice, were five large silver fish with popping eyes.

“How are your headaches, Miss Hayes?” he asked, and sympathized over the recent siege. “I’ll tell Mrs. Pleasant. She’s smart with leaves and pastes. Maybe she’ll have something new to try.”

“Mrs. Pleasant is so good to remember us.” Lizzie said
the words around a duplicitous taste in her mouth. Such lovely fruit, such lovely fish. Just when Lizzie had thought to send a spy into the nest.

Sam said Mrs. Pleasant was right as right. Had one of her dizzy spells, her spasmodics as she called them, but bright as a penny now.

“And Mrs. Bell?”

Mrs. Bell was also fine. She didn’t always sleep so good, and sometimes she woke the household, screaming they were all being murdered in their beds, but this hadn’t happened for a couple of weeks and they were all enjoying the rest.

“And Miss Viola Bell?”

Sam flipped one of the sorrowful, pop-eyed fish over with a slap. He turned to Lizzie. “Now, there’s trouble,” he said. He shook his head slowly. “There’s a heap of trouble.”

Last night, he said, just last night, Miss Viola had been thrown from the house. She didn’t get on with Mrs. Bell, and Mrs. Bell was always suspecting Miss Viola snuck around in passageways and spied on people in their bedrooms, as if you couldn’t hear her coming a mile with that heavy foot of hers. But last night it was Mrs. Pleasant found her, snooping around in some papers where she’d no business being. The one thing Mrs. Pleasant couldn’t forgive was snooping.

Scarce an hour later Miss Viola was packed and gone, living at the home of the Boones now, colored friends of Mrs. Pleasant, since Mrs. Pleasant was not the sort to turn a girl out to the street no matter how angry she was. The servants had all been called together and everyone told she was never to be let back in and her name wasn’t Viola Bell anymore, but was Viola Smith, which it always had been, Mrs. Bell said, only they’d all been too nice about it.

Sam was sorrier than he could say, but there were those made better by suffering and those made worse. Miss Viola Bell, Miss Smith, that was, had always been the second, but maybe now she’d be the first. The Boones were nice folks and would be good to her.

In all the horrors of the past few days, this was the worst yet. It demanded an immediate price; Lizzie didn’t have to be a Methodist to see her duty, clear and terrible and unavoidable. She must go to the House of Mystery, where she’d sworn never to go again, and take the blame for Viola’s disgrace. She must do this at once. She could not allow Mrs. Pleasant to throw Viola out over something Lizzie had put her up to. She could not let Viola suffer through one more night in a strange bed.

She blamed her headache, for she wasn’t the sort to snoop and certainly wasn’t the sort to pay someone else to snoop when she was in her right mind. Maybe Mrs. Pleasant, who knew about her headaches, would understand. Maybe she wouldn’t forgive Lizzie, but would forgive Viola, which was all that mattered. Viola had never needed a mother more than she needed one now with Mr. Finney courting her, repenting day and night.

But Lizzie saw her duty more quickly than she did it. She sat in the parlor while working herself up, and by the time she’d finished, Sam was gone. She got her gloves and hat, and took the same walk she’d once made in the dark with little Jenny. She was glad it wasn’t dark. The sun was out, pale as a pearl. The air was damp, and the smell of eucalyptus leaves intense. Lizzie passed beneath, opened the gate, climbed the steps, and knocked with the roaring-lion knocker. She remembered how frightened she’d been the first time she’d
done this. Her mind had been a jumble of voodoo curses and headless dolls. She was much more frightened now.

No one came in response to the first knock. She knocked again, with her hand this time. And again. She took off her glove and knocked again.

The door was finally opened, by a blind man in a green butler’s uniform. His hair was wild with gray curls, his nose a drunkard’s blue. His eyes, pale and filmy, remained fixed on a spot just above Lizzie’s right shoulder. No warmth came out through the opened doorway.

“Miss Hayes to see Mrs. Pleasant.” The dark entryway yawned before her. There in the corner was the grandfather clock, ticking loudly, and there in the back, on the newel post at the base of the spiral stairs, the black statue of the naked woman. You couldn’t see that she was naked from this distance, of course. You had to know the family.

“Not in. Are you a reporter?” His words slid up against one another; his accent was Scottish. His “you” was halfway to “ye.”

“No. Of course not. I know Mrs. Pleasant. I’ve been a guest here. And I must speak to her urgently.”

“Not in,” the butler repeated. “And not often in to uninvited callers even when she is in.” He began to close the door.

“Might I see Mrs. Bell?” she asked.

“Not in.”

“Sam, then. Might I speak with Sam?”

“Not in,” the butler said, shutting the door.

Maybe Mrs. Pleasant and Sam
were
out. But Mrs. Bell
was always in. When Lizzie made up her mind to something, it was made up.

She went down the steps. She looked back to check that the butler wasn’t watching—instinct only; a moment later she remembered he was blind—and took the path that led around the enormous house to the back.

A white girl came in answer to her knock on the kitchen door. “I’m looking for Sam,” Lizzie said.

“He’s not here.”

“Or Mrs. Pleasant or Mrs. Bell. Mightn’t I speak with Mrs. Bell?”

The girl was uncertain. She stared at Lizzie, biting her lip. “I’m Miss Hayes,” Lizzie said encouragingly. “I’ve called here before. Mrs. Bell knows me. Just go ask her.”

“Try the front door.”

“No one answers.”

“Wait here,” the girl said finally.

She let Lizzie into the kitchen. Two men and a woman sat at the table. The men were colored, the woman was white. Someone had been smoking recently. Lizzie could smell it. The stove was out; the room was cold. No one looked at her. They leaned toward one another across the table, murmured a conversation she couldn’t hear. The woman laughed. The counters around the dry-sink were covered with dirty dishes, some so crusted Lizzie didn’t see how they could ever be scrubbed clean. Over the sink was a line hung with dishrags.

Disorder was meant to be a private thing. Lizzie pretended not to see it. She’d forced herself in here. There was no reason she should be made welcome.

The girl returned. “She’s in the drawing room. I’m to take you.”

The house was as dim as always, and as quiet. Muted sunlight came through the glass dome and landed on the coiling snake of a staircase; everything around it was dark. As they passed the library, Lizzie caught a glimpse of the blind butler sitting in a chair, helping himself to Mrs. Bell’s raspberry wine.

They reached the white-and-gold drawing room. “Miss Hayes,” the girl said, and then withdrew.

The curtains were pulled and one lamp lit. “Come, sit with me,” Mrs. Bell said, and Lizzie did so.

Mrs. Bell was in blue, her brown hair pinned into curls in the back, her skin dull with powder. She had an embroidery hoop in her lap, with a violet half-stitched into the cloth. Lizzie had seen and heard enough to know there was no point in pleading here on Viola’s behalf. Those apologies would have to wait for Mrs. Pleasant.

But she could ask about Malina Paillet—ask why Mrs. Bell had chosen to tell her that story; she could pin down the date as much as possible. Then she could go home and check her father’s business ledger. He didn’t enter personal information, but there might be something. More important, there might be nothing. This would help Lizzie set Malina completely aside as a sad story, but nothing to do with her. Lizzie turned her head so she wouldn’t see the stone statues of the begging women.