Earthly Astonishments (4 page)

“Josephine, Miss.”

“Please don’t call me Miss.” Emmy suddenly fell to her knees so that her blue eyes could look directly into Josephine’s green ones. “Don’t call me Miss at all. I’m just a girl, like you. I hate when they tease you, I just never have said, because then…”

She turned away and squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. Josephine thought of her in the classroom, always looking at the floor while the others were acting up.

“I have to go now, Miss, I really do.” Josephine’s fingers were numb, wrapped around her dollars.

“My name is Emmy.”

“Emmy.”

“Couldn’t we, could we, have a little midnight party?” Emmy sounded almost forlorn.

“Oh, Miss.” It was a new feeling, being wanted for something. But Josephine couldn’t stay here, especially to play, now that she’d made up her mind.

“I got walloped something dreadful today—”

Emmy gasped. “But that was all my fault!”

“I have to leave,” Josephine explained quietly, making it real. “I’m running away.”

“But where will you go? This is horrible. It’s all my fault. Where will you go?”

Josephine avoided the question. “I’m leaving tonight.” Her fists tightened around the coins. “So, if you don’t mind, Miss, I have a few things to do first.”

Emmy stood up.

“We can’t go to the dormitory to talk,” said Emmy. “We’d wake the other girls. Where’s your room?”

Josephine looked at her with suspicion. Could she really not know?

“I don’t have a room. I sleep on a straw mat behind the stove.”

Emmy gaped. “But that’s terrible!” She spoke out loud and then shushed herself with flapping fingers.

“It’s quiet,” said Josephine. “It’s warm in winter.” It’s better than the flagstone floor. Or a room full of nasty girls, come to think of it.

Emmy turned around abruptly and headed off down the corridor. Josephine leaned over in a flash and slipped
the coins down the inside of each boot. They pressed into her ankles, but they made no noise when she walked. Gently she shook the kinks out of her fingers as she followed Emmy to the kitchen.

“How do you see in here?” whispered Emmy. “It’s black as black.”

“When it’s black, I’m asleep.” She reached under her mat for a precious stub of candle.

“That’s better,” said Emmy when the candle was lit.

She poked Josephine’s pallet before sitting down.

“There’s no crawlers,” said Josephine. “I shake it out every day.” She had never had a guest before. Emmy’s house probably had whole extra sofas for guests to sit down on.

They huddled close to the tiny flame—as if it could warm them.

“I promise I won’t tell anyone that you’re leaving, Josephine,” said Emmy, after a minute of quiet. Her voice was soft and almost admiring. “To make up for the trouble I caused. I wish I could go too. Nobody talks to me. If it weren’t for you, I’d be the one to torment. No, no, I know it’s true. I’m not very clever and my toes turn in, though I wear my shoes on the wrong feet to straighten them out.” Emmy sighed with the weight of truth.

“Sometimes, I’ve even—I’ve even said thanks in my prayers that you were here.” In the candlelight, it seemed that her blue eyes had filled up with the chance of tears. “I’m sorry.”

Josephine felt a prickling high up in her nose. Emmy was the first person who had ever apologized to her, for anything. She sat next to her, close but not touching.

“Where will you go?” Emmy repeated.

“I don’t know yet.”

“Oh, my goodness!” Emmy gushed suddenly, wiping her eyes and laughing.

“I’ve just had the best idea. You could go to my sister!” She clapped her hands, making the candle flame waver. “My sister, her name is Margaret. She’s eighteen. She got married in October to a man named Robert, but she calls him ‘My Bob.’ He’s the nicest man, with lots of gingery whiskers. I feel a bit sorry for Margaret, having to kiss all those whiskers, but I guess she likes him enough to overcome it. My father hates him. He’s a piano player. He plays what my father calls the ‘devil’s tunes’ at a tavern on Ludlow Street called the Half-Dollar Saloon. Remember that name, Josephine. My father said that a half-dollar was more money than he’d ever give Margaret if she threw away her life to marry Robert. Margaret put her hand on her heart and said, ‘My Bob is my life!’ My mother sobbed and collapsed. She stained the cut-velvet chair with her tears. Jilly, our maid, was crying too. Margaret fastened her best bonnet and said, ‘Good-bye, Mama.’ My father just looked into the fireplace with his back all stiff, and Margaret walked out the door, but she winked at me first.

“I’ve not seen her since, but she writes me letters at school. She has to work now, for money. Every day, in a
sewing factory. You could work there too, Josephine. Your sewing is beautiful. Margaret says there are lots of children who work there. It makes her want to weep, she says. She says I’m lucky to be at a good school and that I must study hard at my lessons.” Emmy paused to think about that. “It’s hopeless. I study so hard, I think my brain will burst, but I don’t remember anything.”

Above their heads in the visitor’s parlor, the grandfather clock bonged the eleventh hour. The candle’s wick sank into a puddle of wax, and the flame died.

“You must go to bed, Miss,” whispered Josephine. “I mean, Emmy, Miss.” The coins were digging holes in her ankles. “You’ve been real kind tonight, but you’re risking awful trouble.”

“Let’s pack you a lunch,” suggested Emmy “We’re in the kitchen. You must know where everything is, even in the dark.”

“Cook is very handy at keeping most food locked away,” said Josephine, “but I’ll take what there is.”

Groping in the blackness of the pantry, Josephine collected the heels of the day’s loaves of bread and opened the tin box where Cook hid the cheese. She was disappointed to find only a small wedge left.

“Look!” cried Emmy. “I tripped over the apple barrel.” The skirt of her nightdress was full of fruit.

“I don’t need so many!” laughed Josephine. “I intend to find Margaret and have a stitching job before I eat even three apples!”

She tucked everything into her apron pockets and reached under her mat to find her needle case.

“Why don’t you just go home?” asked Emmy. “To your own house and your mama?”

It was hard to say the words aloud. “It’s my parents who sold me here, to Miss MacLaren. They’ll have none of me now.”

“Sold you?” Emmy squawked like a frightened bird.

A creak sounded on the floor outside the room. The kitchen door swung open with a moan. Cook’s scowling face, illuminated by a candle lantern, looked like the mask of a ghoul.

Emmy screamed a scream to be proud of, giving Josephine time to duck into the shadow of the stove.

“Oh, Cook!” burbled Emmy. “You gave me such a scare!”

“What the devil are you doing in my kitchen?”

“Oh, Cook, I was just as hungry as could be. See? I’ve got myself an apple and I’m going back to bed!”

Josephine was astonished. This was the girl who claimed not to be clever?

Emmy marched past the old witch with the nerve of a soldier.

Cook followed her out, muttering curses.

Josephine leaned against the still-warm side of the stove until her heart stopped thumping.

he kitchen door was locked at night, but the key was hung on a string next to it. Getting in might be a problem, but getting out was not.

Josephine dragged over Cook’s stool to reach the key. Then she dragged it back beside the table so nothing would be amiss at first sight. Except the fire in the stove would be unlit. Josephine grinned. Breakfast would be late tomorrow.

She used the key and left it on the floor beneath its nail. She opened the door, stepped outside, shut the door behind her, and finally took a breath.

She paused just inside the gates, looking back at the looming shape of the school. She was usually asleep on her straw at this time of night. She had never been outside to see the tall house with black windows under the moon. It had never felt to her like a home. Josephine knew that a home was a place you wanted to go back to.

Suddenly, in the top window, all the way to the left, a curtain shifted. Josephine saw a pale face and two hands press against the darkened glass. She stepped backward as her heart jumped into her throat. The building looked as if it could indeed be haunted, but this waving figure was no ghost. Josephine’s breath rushed out in a whimper
of relief as she waved back. It was Emmy, saying good-bye.

Josephine stood on tippy toes to reach the iron latch of the gate. She stepped onto Broadway and pulled it closed behind her, with a determined clang.

Clouds floated in front of the moon, so the only light came from a hundred yards down the road, where lanterns hung from poles around the entrance to a bustling establishment. Miss MacLaren had warned her girls many a time about the evils that lurked beneath the sloped roof and cheery sign of The Philosophers’ Inn.

Josephine knew that Ludlow Street and Margaret were somewhere downtown. Emmy had said so. Where exactly she could only find out by talking to a stranger. That seemed impossible. She would worry about that later. First she had to get closer.

Perhaps she could walk there, but she didn’t know how long it would take. She certainly couldn’t walk any distance with five gold dollars making blisters on her ankles.

The fence turned a corner at the edge of the MacLaren property. Josephine crouched next to it, just off the street. The coins fell out as she tugged off her boots. She pulled her boots back on and rummaged in her pocket for the sewing case. The moon obliged her by escaping its cloud for a few minutes.

Carefully she set to work, unpicking the row of stitches that held up the hem of her skirt. Beyond her
own steady breathing, Josephine became aware of the sounds of night around her: a cricket somewhere nearby, distant cart wheels, and the mournful howling of a dog.

When she had made a dollar-sized gap, Josephine slid her riches into the fold at the bottom of her skirt and then set about sewing a circle around each coin, to hold it safely in place. Stitch by tiny stitch, breath by quiet breath, she completed her task.

Now she was ready. The apples in her pockets bumped gently against her legs as she set off. A wagon clattered by, pulled by an old horse. Josephine stood rigid, afraid to be seen, and then shrank into the shadows. A scraping noise above made her jump. She shook herself. Probably only a squirrel. She mustn’t let the night scare her!

She headed toward The Philosophers’ Inn, meaning to cross the road before she came too near the abundance of light at its entrance. There was a rowdy cry and a rejoining laugh just before the barking started. She heard more than one dog, suddenly and angrily sprinting in her direction. The doorman at the inn shouted after them, trying to call them back.

Josephine spun around and jumped into the road, feeling the sharp yapping closing in. She knew the beasts were likely bigger than she was. Then, thundering out of the darkness before her, appeared a horse bus, kicking up grit in all directions.

For an instant, Josephine froze, trapped between
attacking dogs and the fast-approaching horses. Then she hurtled toward the darkness and safety on the other side of the road, straight across the path of the oncoming hooves.

The shriek in her head came out as a hiccup. The horses reared back in confusion, snorting foam. The carriage teetered dangerously before coming to a standstill. The dogs howled and raced back to the shelter of the inn.

“What the devil was that?” hollered the driver, jumping to the ground in a fury. Passengers were emerging from the sides of the horse bus, examining themselves for bruises.

“Biggest rat I ever saw!” proclaimed a round man with huge gray whiskers. “Those mutts are lucky it got away instead of staying to fight!”

Josephine, trembling in the shadows, smiled faintly.

“All aboard!”

“Where are you headed, my man?” called someone from the entrance of the inn.

“Straight down Broadway. All the way to the bottom. Last ride of the night.”

“Would you hold up an extra minute? I’ve left my hat.”

The driver cursed and spat, but he waited.