Sister Noon (23 page)

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Transcript from Viola Bell’s suit for heirship in the estate of Teresa Bell.

W
hat with the plagues and the winter storms and the impending tidal wave, everyone’s mind was on charity these days. Mrs. Pleasant sent more baskets of food and also, just for Jenny Ijub, two used dresses and a piano teacher. The dresses were hand-me-downs from the Bell girls. Too fine, really; the staff disliked seeing Jenny dressed so, as if she were at a party instead of living an orphan’s life. It was bound to produce envy in the other wards.

But the piano teacher was conceded, however reluctantly, to be a good thing. Someday Jenny would have to support herself. The dental offices were always looking for pianists, and all they needed was someone able to play loudly enough to mask the sounds of screaming. Piano lessons were a very practical plan.

Next, the charity bug bit young Maud Curry, who decided to devote herself to helping Jenny get adopted. Maud had reached a pious age and was bothered, for religious reasons, by Jenny’s continual good fortune. She remembered Jenny’s stories—lemon sticks, ponies, parents—but had honestly forgotten that she herself was the author. The result of this combination of remembering and forgetting was that Maud thought of Jenny as a dreadful, unrepentant liar.

Why would God dress a dreadful, unrepentant liar like a princess? Maud decided to be an instrument of the Lord. She picked a group of girls—Melody Miller, Tilly Beacon, Ella May Howard, Coral Campbell—and charged them with informing Jenny whenever her manners were wanting, or her appearance, or her attitude. They called themselves the Good Manners Club. Two of these girls had the special status of being diphtheria survivors.

The staff was touched by this display of selfless concern. “I was afraid the other children would be jealous,” Mrs. Lake said. “Instead they’ve made quite a project of her.” And from Nell: “She’s certainly lucky to have such friends.”

Jenny ate her dinner one evening surrounded by well-wishers. “She shouldn’t be taking such big bites, should she, Maud?” Tilly Beacon asked.

“No, indeed.”

“Don’t cut your bread, Jenny. You should break it with your hands,” Melody said, when Jenny hadn’t even touched her bread yet.

“And everything after the soup is eaten with a fork.”

“I know,” Jenny said. She wasn’t hungry. The chicken she’d just eaten wedged in her throat until she was afraid it
was stuck there forever. She took a gulp of milk to try to force it down.

“I’m just making sure.” Maud took a prim bite of cheese. Her angel-colored hair was growing out. It curled in lovely rings around her shoulders. Soon Mrs. Lake would cut it back to dandelion fluff, weeping as she did so. “You sound a little conceited. Good manners are spoiled if you’re stuck-up about having them.”

“We shouldn’t be able to hear you drinking,” Coral said.

At bedtime the girls gathered around Jenny’s bed to discuss her classroom performance. “Your hair was untidy,” Melody began. “And you should thank Miss Stevens when she corrects your sums.”

“No one else does,” Jenny said.

“No one else makes so many mistakes.”

“Let me see your hands,” Maud instructed. She flipped them from one side to the other. Her own were hot and sticky. “Go wash them again. All the pretty dresses in the world won’t help if you don’t keep yourself clean.”

Jenny went back to the basin. Her feet were bare. She could feel grains of sand beneath them on the wood floor, and there was a sound like buzzing flies in her ears. She poured some water, dipped her hands in. As she rubbed them together she looked out the window. She could see the barn, the wood just turning to silver in the moonlight. Across it lay the long, pointed shadow of the Ark’s tower. She took as much time as she could, but whenever she looked back down the row of beds, there was the group of girls on hers, still waiting for her. Jenny had a
loose tooth and it was disgusting, they were agreeing, the way she kept poking at it with her tongue. She would have to be made to stop.

The piano teacher was named Miss Viola Bell. She had the largest, darkest eyes Jenny had ever seen, and also a twisted leg. She needed a crutch to lower herself onto the piano bench and to rise. When Jenny sat beside her, Viola’s skirts brushed Jenny’s legs. They were cold and damp. Matron didn’t like her much. Jenny was still deciding.

“I’m forced to wonder about the character of any young woman from that house,” Jenny overheard Matron telling Miss Stevens. Jenny could see that Viola was hearing, too, although she pretended not to.

“We always start with middle C.” Viola tapped the key quietly, and then louder—
pim, pim, pim, PIM
. They were using the piano in the basement schoolroom while the rest of the children played outside. Matron was in the hall, but the door was open.

“I’m forced to wonder how she’ll have the time to practice and still do her chores and her schooling, too,” said Matron. “Of course, there’s no point if she doesn’t practice faithfully. You must tell me at once if she falls behind in her schoolwork.”

“Curve your fingers,” Viola said. She took Jenny’s hand and made it into a claw. She shook it at the wrist. “Relax a little.” She showed Jenny how to play a scale.

What she wanted first was even fingering. She wound a metronome to demonstrate. She and Jenny clapped along.
“Don’t love any of the notes more than the others,” she said. “Every note needs just the same amount of time to breathe.”

“I don’t love any of them.” Jenny didn’t mean to speak. It just came out.

“I see,” said Viola. She gave Jenny an appraising look. “Don’t hate any of the notes more than the others, then.”

Jenny had left her with the wrong impression. In fact, Jenny liked the way Viola’s hands felt, working her fingers into proper shapes. Viola told Jenny what to do, but not in a bossy way. “Like prancing horses,” she said of Jenny’s fingers. She pranced her own on the keys in a lively tune. “Two-minute waltz,” she said. “You could soft-cook an egg to it.”

Jenny could see that, in order to practice, she’d have to come down every day and be by herself. She was happy that Mrs. Pleasant hadn’t forgotten her. She thought it was going to be nice, learning to play piano.

T
he board of the Ladies’ Relief and Protection Society threw a soirée to honor those of its members who’d lived at the Ark and worked so bravely throughout the epidemics. Lizzie’s depression had not lifted, but she could hardly refuse to be fêted. The party was at the home of two delightfully ready patrons, Ethel Crosby and Margaret Cole, whom she wouldn’t insult for the world. She wore her coin necklace and her apricot silk, but under her corset her heart felt pricked with pins.

The Putnams lent her Roscoe so she could drive over and leave early if the evening proved too much. They continued very pleased with her, as if she’d chosen to stay away from everyone they disapproved of for all those weeks
instead of having been put under quarantine. Still, Lizzie had had no plans to do otherwise; her conscience was clear.

As she left her house, an evening fog was beginning to swirl into the streets. The city had a magical, underwater feeling. Horses’ hooves echoed in the wet air, and cold currents streamed past her, visible as ghosts.

At Ethel Crosby and Margaret Cole’s she listened to any number of fine speeches. The tracheotomy in which she had assisted was repeatedly detailed; she was honored for her patience with Meredith Penny, for the grisly clothes she’d washed, the hands she’d held, the prayers she’d offered. Lizzie didn’t suppose she’d ever been the object of so much approval. She felt uncomfortably exposed, yet cautiously pleased. She would never like being noticed, but she
had
done well, so that was the part that pleased her. Everyone had done well.

It was a nasty surprise, then, when she stepped outside for some air, for one moment of privacy, to have Mrs. Hallis follow merely to say something unkind. “I was astonished to learn,” Mrs. Hallis began, “that we’re sheltering a child for Mammy Pleasant. Your decision, I’m told.”

“We had the space,” Lizzie said. “In my opinion. The little girl had nowhere to go. She’s a nice little girl.”

“I’m sure that’s all true. I’m sure you were full of good intent. You always are.” Somehow Mrs. Hallis managed to make this uncomplimentary. “But none of this falls to your area of concern. And now you’ve created a situation. What is Mrs. Pleasant most known for? Baby-farming. What do we deal in? Babies. We can’t for a moment be seen as one of Mrs. Pleasant’s operations. We’d never recover from the scandal. The Ark would close forever.”

Mrs. Hallis was a Methodist with the face of a Botticelli. She believed in culpability, which was not the philosophy of most people with such lips. “When we act,” Mrs. Hallis had asked the ladies during her installation as president, “why should we not hold ourselves responsible for remote consequences as well as immediate?” This was laudable, but hard.

“I wouldn’t have brought it up tonight of all nights,” Mrs. Hallis said. “I did plan to wait. But Miss Cole asked about it. If word is already out to the donors, the circumstances are dire.”

“The circumstances are imaginary!” Lizzie said. “Mrs. Pleasant came to the Ark only the one time when she brought the child. I don’t know her at all, if that’s what you’re implying.”

“I’m relieved to hear you say so. Of course, I believe you, I know you wouldn’t lie. And yet, Miss Hayes, we run a charity based on public support. We must consider appearances as well as facts. And my cook, Hop Tung, says it’s common knowledge that you run her errands in Chinatown.”

Lizzie was so shocked by this she didn’t immediately respond. The shock was followed by resentment. She was being watched and talked about. Her neck grew hot, and then her cheeks. Her hands were cold. The image of Mrs. Hallis questioning her Chinese cook about Lizzie’s affairs made her first frightened, then humiliated, and then angry. So they’d all only been pretending to admire her all evening, when really she was the object of a campaign of whispers that reached even into their kitchens.

“Am I being dismissed?” she asked. Her voice cracked like ice across the last word.

“Of course not. I only tell you as a friendly warning.”

Lizzie couldn’t manage another sentence. She left the porch and then the party without a word to anyone, even her hostesses. She woke the next morning with a sickening silver headache on which all the tea in China could have no effect. It had been a great mistake to leave her bed, she decided. She wouldn’t make such an error again.

Three days later Mrs. Putnam called. Lizzie roused herself sufficiently to dress, but there was no food in the house, nothing to offer by way of hospitality. The newspapers were piled unread on the parlor settee. There was dust.

Mrs. Putnam took it all in. “How was the party?” she asked. Probably she’d already heard how hastily Lizzie had left. Probably the information was already circulating up in Sacramento through Erma. Soon the governor would know or, at the very least, his Chinese cook.

Lizzie had this bitter succession of thoughts. But Mrs. Putnam’s face was too kind. Lizzie chose to confide. When she got to Hop Tung, Mrs. Putnam shook her head. All was unfolding just as Lizzie’s mother had feared. If her advice at the séance had only been instantly taken! How disheartening it must be to rouse oneself to Contact only to be ignored.