Annie (2 page)

A
nnie's ea
rliest memory, from a time when she was perhaps two or three years old, was of the shadowy figure of Miss Hannigan looming menacingly above her as she played with a tattered rag doll on the floor of the dormitory. “Get up from there, you wretched little orphan—you've got that clean dress all filthy,” shrieked Miss Hannigan, a skinny, hatchet-faced woman with short, jet-black hair. She reminded the orphans of a particularly unpleasant-looking—and all too real—Halloween witch. Miss Hannigan had yanked Annie to her feet and given her a dozen whacks across the backside with a heavy oaken paddle. But Annie hadn't cried. Even as a tiny tot, Annie had never cried when Miss Hannigan beat her, a show of spirit that infuriated Miss Hannigan.

Because Annie was at once the spunkiest and the most intelligent of the girls in the orphanage, Miss Hannigan hated her more than any child she'd had under her charge in all her twenty-three years as headmistress of the orphanage. “I'll break that little brat yet,” muttered Miss Hannigan to herself, and she constantly gave Annie extra chores to do—greasy pots and pans to wash in the orphanage's steamy basement kitchen, grimy windows to wash, floors to scrub on her hands and knees. But Annie never let her spirits flag and made Miss Hannigan all the angrier by taking on each new task with a cheery smile—the worse the chore, the broader Annie's smile. “You see, it's me against Miss Hannigan, like a war,” Annie told the other orphans, “and I'm not gonna give in to her, ever.”

As the years passed, Annie grew accustomed to the routine of life in the orphanage. Each morning, at six a.m., the piercing whistle woke the slumbering orphans. “All right, get up, get up, all of you, you rotten orphans!” shouted Miss Hannigan. A cold shower, and then the girls dressed themselves in hand-me-downs that came twice a year in large bundles from the Salvation Army. Their beds made and the dormitory swept, the orphans were marched downstairs to the first-floor dining room for breakfast. “No talking!” snapped Miss Hannigan. The girls sat silently on hard wooden benches at a long trestle table as Miss Hannigan served up breakfast. For as far back as Annie could remember, breakfast in the orphanage had always been the same—a glass of bluish skim milk and a bowl of hot mush. The mush, which was prepared by Miss Hannigan herself, was mouse-gray in color and lumpy in texture, and it tasted the way that white school paste smelled. When they'd first come to the orphanage, many of the girls had gagged on Miss Hannigan's mush and hadn't been able to swallow so much as a spoonful. But, after a time, they'd grown used to it. Because for breakfast, in the orphanage, it was mush or nothing.

After breakfast, the schedule in the orphanage varied according to whether or not it was a school day. If there was school, Miss Hannigan marched the orphans down the block to P.S. 62, a turreted Victorian redbrick public school at the corner of St. Mark's Place and Third Avenue. The orphans stayed in school until four o'clock, when Miss Hannigan picked them up and herded them back to the orphanage. If there was no school, the orphans went downstairs immediately after breakfast to their basement workroom, where they sat at rows of sewing machines making little girls' dresses. On their working days, the orphans sewed for eight hours, with twenty minutes out for lunch (another glass of skim milk and a sandwich of fatty ham or bologna). Each girl was expected by the end of the day to have finished at least one dress. Or else she got the paddle from Miss Hannigan. The dresses that they made—frilly party frocks of organdy and chiffon in bright colors, like canary yellow and magenta—were in marked contrast to the drab and patched hand-me-downs that they wore. Miss Hannigan had arranged for a children's clothing manufacturer in Brooklyn to provide the sewing machines and the raw fabrics in exchange for being able to buy the finished dresses at fifty cents apiece. Most weeks Miss Hannigan made as much as thirty dollars for herself from the orphans' labors. The orphans weren't supposed to work, of course, and if the director of the New York City Board of Orphans, Mr. Joseph Donatelli, had known what Miss Hannigan was up to, he would quickly have fired her. But no one had come from the Board of Orphans to inspect the girls' annex on St. Mark's Place for more than a dozen years. And Miss Hannigan justified what she was doing by telling herself that she was teaching the orphans a useful trade. “You oughta be grateful to me, you little brats—you'll be able to get a job sewin' when you grow up and gotta leave here,” Miss Hannigan told the orphans as they bent hour after hour over their sewing machines in the dank basement workshop.

Miss Hannigan spent most of the money she made from selling the dresses on bottles of bootleg whiskey. For Miss Hannigan was a heavy drinker who was slightly drunk from morning until night. While the orphans were either working at their sewing machines or off at school, Miss Hannigan idled away most of her days in her high-ceilinged office sipping rye whiskey, smoking Lucky Strike cigarettes, and listening to soap operas like
Ma Perkins
and
The Romance of Helen Trent
on her table-model Philco radio.

At six o'clock each evening, the orphans filed into the dining room for supper, a meal that most often consisted of boiled chicken wings, grayish boiled potatoes, and some such soggy vegetable as boiled cabbage or broccoli. There was spongy white bread and margarine to fill up on, but dessert was served only on special occasions like Thanksgiving or Christmas, when each orphan got a bowl of gummy rice pudding. After supper, the orphans were sent upstairs to their dormitory for a period of study until bedtime. Lights out at eight o'clock, and another day in the orphanage was done.

Sunday was the only day of rest for the orphans. But, in a way, Sunday was the worst day of all for them. Miss Hannigan led the girls to St. Mark's in the Bowery each Sunday morning at eight o'clock, and they sat for more than an hour in the musty church listening to long-winded sermons about the ultimate fate of all who sinned—the eternal fires of hell. And, of course, as Miss Hannigan explained to them, an orphaned girl was by nature a sinner. Or why else would her mother and father have died on her? Racked by confused feelings of guilt, fear, and boredom, the orphans were paraded from the church back to the orphanage, where Miss Hannigan made them spend the day praying and reflecting on the evil they had done in the past week. “Cleanse your filthy souls with remorse and beg God for forgiveness for your multitude of sins!” thundered Miss Hannigan at the frightened orphans. No talking. No reading. Only sitting silently with bowed heads and folded hands for endless hours at the trestle table in the airless dining room. There were Sunday afternoons in the orphanage, Annie remembered now as she stood at the window looking out on the falling snow, that had seemed to last forever.

School days were happier for Annie than the days spent at her sewing machine. But not much happier. Still, at school she had a chance to read, which was her favorite pastime. Annie eagerly read her way through scores of books each year. The books she loved best, like the Five Little Peppers series, were about poor but happy children and cheerful families. And she also loved adventure books that were set in romantic, faraway places, like the South Sea islands. Annie did well in school, getting good marks in every subject and ranking near the top of her class. But the orphans, including Annie, were constantly teased and ridiculed by the other schoolchildren, because of their raggedy clothes and because they didn't have mothers, fathers, or homes of their own. As they were herded to and from school by Miss Hannigan, the orphans were mocked by the other children, who taunted them with a crude rhyme they'd invented:

 

Orphan, orphan, ha, ha, ha,

Ain't got a mama, ain't got a pa,

Orphan, orphan, dumb, dumb, dumb,

Lookin' like a pig, dressed like a bum!

 

In winter, the other children sometimes made a game out of seeing how many orphans they could hit with snowballs. And Miss Hannigan didn't allow the orphans to step out of line to throw snowballs back. Teeth clenched, eyes forward, the orphans trudged two by two along the slushy city sidewalk through a gauntlet of cruelly laughing children and flying snowballs.

The teachers at P.S. 62 weren't at all kind to the orphans, either. In each class, the orphans were assigned to a special section of desks at the back of the room and treated by their teachers as pesky nuisances who didn't really belong in school. Annie remembered having overheard her fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Conklin, talking one day to another teacher. “Damn orphans, cluttering up our classrooms,” Mrs. Conklin had complained. “Without them this job would be easy.”

At lunchtime, as though they had some terrible disease that the other children might catch, the orphans were put in a special corner section of the school cafeteria. They ate some such sodden glop as baked macaroni and cheese that was provided free to needy students by the New York City Board of Education, while the rest of the children, who'd brought their lunches in shiny metal lunchboxes, had meals that their mothers had fixed for them—mysterious and wonderful things that the orphans yearningly dreamed of tasting, like peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, bananas, chocolate brownies, and hot cocoa poured from thermos bottles.

During the half-hour morning and afternoon recess periods, on the fenced-in concrete playground behind the school, the orphans, left out of the other children's games, banded together to play games of their own. And to protect themselves against the playground bullies, who from time to time decided that it would be fun to beat up an orphan. Against these bullies, the orphans, led by Annie and Pepper, put up a united front. “You touch any one of us,” said Annie fiercely, “and all of us will jump you!” At home, in the orphanage, the orphans often fought and bickered with one another, but at school they stuck loyally together. And the bullies at P.S. 62 soon learned that it didn't pay to take on the orphans, unless they were looking for a couple of black eyes. They particularly learned not to get mixed up in a fight with Annie, who could flatten even the biggest and the toughest-looking of the boys with a single punch. So, after a while, the orphans were left alone during recess to play their own games of tag or hopscotch.

After reading, Annie's favorite subject was geography. She loved learning about parts of the world that were as totally different and as far distant as possible from P.S. 62, the orphanage, and St. Mark's Place. The country that she loved studying about most of all was Switzerland, with its sparkling-clear lakes and green meadows, and towering snow-capped mountains. She often daydreamed that her father and mother would turn out to be living in Switzerland, and that she'd soon be going to stay with them, forever, in a mountainside Swiss chalet, like a little girl named Heidi whom she'd read about in a book. But as she thought now at the window about geography, Annie remembered something that had happened the previous year at school, when she'd been in the fifth grade. It was one of the most painful memories of her life.

O
ne Monday morning in early May, her teacher, Mrs. Conklin, had arrived in class with a beautifully illustrated 375-page Rand McNally atlas. The book, Mrs. Conklin announced, would be awarded on the final day of school, June 23rd, to the fifth-grade pupil who won a special geography spelling bee to be held on the morning of that day. The students, said Mrs. Conklin, would be expected to name and to spell correctly all forty-eight states of the United States as well as their capital cities. “For example,” said Mrs. Conklin, a gray-haired, stern-faced woman who wore steel-rimmed spectacles, “The first state of the union, in alphabetical order, is Alabama, capital A-l-a-b-a-m-a, Alabama, and its capital is Montgomery, capital M-o-n-t-g-o-m-e-r-y, Montgomery. One spelling mistake and a pupil will be eliminated from the spelling bee. We will continue until only one pupil is left, and he or she will be the winner of the atlas.”

Suddenly, Annie wanted more than anything else in the world to win the Rand McNally atlas. For it struck her that if her mother and father didn't come for her soon, she might have to go out into the world to look for them. And she could use the atlas, with its colored maps of all the states and every country on earth, to help her find them. Annie didn't know exactly how the atlas could help her find her parents, but it would surely, she felt, in some magical way, lead her to them. And so, in the weeks that followed, Annie spent every moment she could spare learning the names of the states and their capitals and memorizing their spellings. At the orphanage, in the period each evening between supper and bedtime, she'd have her best pal, Kate, who was nine, sit with a geography book and read off the states to her. “Mississippi,” Kate would say. “Mississippi, capital M-i-double-s-i-double-s-i-double-p-i, Mississippi,” Annie would reply. “And the capital of Mississippi is Jackson, capital J-a-c-k-s-o-n, Jackson.” On and on Annie and Kate would go until they'd gotten through all forty-eight states. All the orphans were rooting for Annie to win the atlas. Except Pepper. “For crumb's sake, Annie, you're drivin' us nuts with all of that spellin' every night,” Pepper grumbled. “Who cares whether you win any dumb atlas or not?” But Annie ignored Pepper. After lights-out, lying in her narrow bed, she kept on spelling to herself, finally dozing off at around ten o'clock while she tried to remember, for example, how to spell the capital of Florida, Talahasee, or was it Tallahasee? Tallahassee?

The day of the spelling bee at last arrived. Annie marched off to P.S. 62 with the other orphans that morning, confident that there wasn't a state or a capital city in the United States that she didn't know how to spell. As Annie figured it, her main competitors in the spelling contest would be Philip Bissell, a pale, puny bookworm and the smartest boy in the class, and Myrtle Vandenmeer. Green-eyed and blonde, with an upturned nose and glittery braces on her teeth, Myrtle was the richest and smartest girl in Annie's class. Her father was a dentist who everybody said made twelve thousand dollars a year! Myrtle lived with her parents on St. Mark's Place, in a four-story brownstone house that they had all to themselves. Myrtle had her own bedroom in the house, as well as a top-floor playroom filled with dolls and dollhouses and a stuffed life-size lamb from France. She wore expensive dresses, which her mother bought for her at Bergdorf Goodman's, on Fifth Avenue, and she went on vacations with her parents each summer to someplace called Cape Cod. Myrtle was the leader of a pack of fifth-grade girls whose favorite sport was making fun of the orphans. Making fun especially of Annie.

The greatest source of humiliation for Annie at school was the fact that she was the only child who didn't have a last name. Even the other orphans, like Pepper and Molly and Duffy, had arrived at the orphanage with last names of their own, but there had been no mention of a last name in Annie's note. So, to her vast embarrassment, Annie was known both at the orphanage and at school simply as Annie Orphan. From their earliest days in school together, when they'd had Miss Kniss for kindergarten, Myrtle had made fun of Annie for having no last name. “Oh, look who's here—Annie Orphan, Little Orphan Annie, hasn't got no Mammy!” If Annie ran after her, Myrtle would go crying to Miss Kniss, saying, “Teacher, teacher, Annie Orphan tried to hit me again!” And as often as not, it was Annie who would end up in trouble, sent to the principal's office and made to do hours of extra homework because she'd “bullied” Myrtle. Meanwhile, Myrtle, who behaved like a perfect little blonde angel whenever any of the teachers were around, reigned each year as teacher's pet. If I'm going to lose the spelling bee to anybody, thought Annie that morning, please, God, don't let it be to Myrtle Vandenmeer.

The spelling bee went just about the way that Annie had figured it would. The dimmer-witted children in the class were quickly eliminated, stumbling on the spelling of states like Missouri or capital cities like Sacramento, and within a few minutes only five students were left in the spelling bee—Tommy Warbrick, Margaret McManiss, Philip Bissell, Myrtle, and Annie. In the third round, Tommy lost out when he misspelled Frankfort, Kentucky, and Margaret soon followed him by forgetting that the capital of New Hampshire is Concord. For a long time, as Annie dug her nails into her palms to contain her nervousness and excitement, each of the three remaining contestants—Philip, Myrtle, and Annie—went on without making a mistake, correctly spelling such tough states as Mississippi and capitals as Annapolis. But then Philip misspelled Montpelier, Vermont, and suddenly only Myrtle and Annie were left in the contest.

The two girls stood alone at the front of the classroom as Mrs. Conklin, with a geography book open before her, sat at her desk calling out names in a false, ringing voice. It seemed to Annie that she was given the more difficult states to spell, like Minnesota and Massachusetts, while Myrtle was given states like Texas and Ohio. But neither girl made a mistake as state after state went by, and it began to look as if the spelling bee might end in a two-way tie. But then Myrtle was given Florida. “Florida, capital F-l-o-r-i-d-a, Florida,” enunciated Myrtle in her singsong, stuck-up voice, clearly confident that she was going to win the contest. “And the capital of Florida is Tallahassee, capital T-a-l-l-a-h-a-s-e-e, Tallahassee.”

Mrs. Conklin's pale face suddenly turned red with fury, for she now had to face the inarguable fact that Myrtle—the brilliant, rich Myrtle Vandenmeer—had misspelled Tallahassee. “I'm sorry, Myrtle, but that is incorrect,” said Mrs. Conklin through gritted teeth. “You may return to your seat.” Myrtle stared at the teacher with utter disbelief, and then rage took over. “It isn't fair, it isn't fair, Annie cheated!” snarled Myrtle, stomping angrily back to her seat and kicking her chair with her expensive little Mary Jane shoes before sitting down.

Now, her heart pounding with unaccustomed joy, Annie stood alone at the front of the class. “Does this mean I win?” she asked Mrs. Conklin. “No, you do not win unless you can correctly spell the capital city that Myrtle was unable to spell,” said Mrs. Conklin after a moment of hesitation. She'd quickly changed the rules in the hope that the contest might at least end up in a tie between Myrtle and Annie. “Spell Tallahassee.”

Annie closed her eyes and tried to remember how the city had been spelled in her geography book. It had always been the most difficult one of all for her to remember. “Tallahassee,” said Annie, “capital T-a-l-l-a-h-a”—she paused for a moment and took a deep breath— “s-s-e-e, Tallahassee.” Mrs. Conklin glared at Annie with undisguised hatred in her cold, slate-blue eyes. “Correct,” she said with difficulty. Annie broke out in an enormous grin—this was the best she'd ever felt under the roof of P.S. 62—as her fellow orphans in the class, including even Pepper and Duffy, let out whoops of delight. “Silence!” snapped Mrs. Conklin.

“Do I get my atlas now?” Annie asked.

“No, the atlas will be awarded during the All-School Assembly,” said Mrs. Conklin. “Now return to your place.” Annie walked in a daze of triumph to her seat at the back of the room, passing Myrtle, who hissed, “Dumb orphan, you were just lucky.” But Annie didn't care now what mean things Myrtle had to say to her—she'd won the Rand McNally atlas!

Every year, on the last day of school at P.S. 62, parents were invited to an All-School Assembly in the auditorium, where awards were handed out to pupils who'd won special honors. This year every seat in the auditorium was taken, and in the first row, haughtily arranging themselves in their seats, sat Myrtle's father and mother, Dr. and Mrs. Vandenmeer. Up on the stage, the school's principal, Mr. Drennen, led everyone in the Pledge of Allegiance; the sixth-grade chorus sweetly sang “America the Beautiful,” off-key; and then the passing out of the awards began. Her heart racing a million miles a second, Annie could hardly wait for her turn to go up on the stage to receive her award. More than a dozen books and certificates and medals were handed out before Mr. Drennen called on Mrs. Conklin to present the fifth-grade geography spelling bee award. Mrs. Conklin bustled onto the stage and stepped to the speakers' podium, carrying the Rand McNally atlas, its glossy cover seeming to Annie almost to shine. “The winner of the fifth-grade geography spelling bee,” called out Mrs. Conklin in a loud, official voice, “who receives this handsome Rand McNally atlas for her achievement, is . . . Myrtle Vandenmeer.”

Annie sat stunned with disbelief—she felt as if she'd been hit very hard in the stomach—as the parents loudly applauded and Myrtle marched mincingly up onto the stage from her seat to get the award. Suddenly, Pepper was standing on her feet in the middle of the auditorium. “Hey, that ain't fair. Myrtle didn't win the spelling bee, Annie did!” shouted Pepper. “Silence that child!” called out Mr. Drennen, and a pair of teachers quickly collared Pepper and dragged her out of the auditorium as she still shouted, “It ain't fair, it ain't fair!” Annie herself sat quietly, swallowing, gritting her teeth, looking upward but not crying—she wouldn't give Myrtle or Mrs. Conklin the satisfaction of seeing her burst into tears. But inside she thought her heart would break as she watched Myrtle come down from the stage with the atlas and go to her beaming parents to be kissed and hugged.

When the assembly was over, Annie walked up to Mrs. Conklin by the water fountain in the hallway. “Mrs. Conklin, that wasn't fair—you know that I won the spelling bee and should've gotten the atlas,” said Annie. She knew that if she got angry it would be easier not to cry. Mrs. Conklin looked icily down at her. “Orphans are not eligible to receive awards on occasions when parents are in attendance,” declared Mrs. Conklin, turning on her heel and walking away. And then Myrtle Vandenmeer strolled by, between her parents, with the Rand McNally atlas clutched in her arms. “Nah, nah, nah, dumb orphan,” said Myrtle, sticking out her tongue at Annie. Annie said nothing.

Later, Annie remembered the day that she didn't get the atlas as maybe the saddest and most bitter of her entire life up to then. But most of her other memories were sad, too. At the window, she thought now about the Christmas that had just passed. A few days before Christmas, little Molly had stepped up to Miss Hannigan and asked, “Miss Hannigan, is there a Santa Claus?” Miss Hannigan had glowered at Molly for a moment, and then she'd smiled and gently replied, “Yes, dear, of course there's a Santa Claus.” Molly's face broke into a happy smile. “But,” added Miss Hannigan with a cruel, cackling laugh, “he don't come to rotten little orphans like you!” “Oh,” said Molly, “then what are we gonna get for Christmas?” “What did you get last year,” asked Miss Hannigan. “Nothin',” said Molly. “Well, you're gettin' it again,” cackled Miss Hannigan.

And indeed the girls in the orphanage had once again this year received no Christmas presents other than what they'd given to one another. On Christmas morning, for example, Annie had given Kate a wire hanger that she'd bent into the outline of a Christmas angel, and Pepper had given Molly a pocket comb. “Gee, thanks, Pepper, an Ace comb—that's the best kind, with only two teeth missing,” Molly said gratefully. “Hey, let me see that comb, that's mine!” screamed Duffy. “You dirty rat, Pepper, you swiped it from me!”

“Ah, shut your trap, Duffy,” snarled Pepper, and the two girls had gotten into a hair-pulling fight. Later, Molly had offered to give back the stolen comb, but Duffy had shrugged and told her to keep it. “That's okay, kid, it's your Christmas present—from me . . . and Pepper,” said Duffy. And so another Christmas had passed at the orphanage without a tree, store-bought presents, or a visit from Santa Claus.

• • •

Annie suddenly realized that she'd been standing all night at the window. As the snow continued to fall, a faint light was beginning to show in the sky above St. Mark's Place. It was the first day of the new year, 1933, a time when most people were looking ahead with hope to the coming months. But Annie had nothing to look ahead to but a continued life of drudgery under the iron fist of Miss Hannigan. When she reached the age of sixteen, Annie would be released from the orphanage to go out into the world on her own. But she wouldn't be sixteen for another five years. Five more years in the orphanage. Annie thought about something Pepper had said a few days earlier when she'd been talking about how her parents would soon be coming to take her home. “You dumb cluck,” said Pepper, “your parents are never comin' for you.” And Annie knew now that Pepper had been right. If her father and mother hadn't turned up at the orphanage after all these years, she had to face the fact that they weren't ever coming for her. Not ever. And so she'd have to go find
them
. “That's it,” whispered Annie determinedly to herself. “I've got to go find them, get out of here—run away.” Yes, she decided, I'm going to run away! When? Right now!