At last my hands have stopped shaking and I can write. I must write everything down, as best I can.
If anything happens to me, I entreat the finder of this diary to send these pages to Miss Mary Catherine Fisher at Merrywood School for Girls in Philadelphia.
Merricat is my favorite friend and she wants to be an authoress. In these pages she will find a good, sad story to tell. If the worst comes to me, I authorize Merricat to release my story to the world.
At 9:00 A.M. sharp this morning, the train whistled and snorted a great puff of smoke. Gideon clapped his hands over his ears and grinned at me. He loves whistles and bells.
I forced a smile. I didn’t tell Gideon that my stomach was twisting into one very hard knot. As the great wheels turned beneath us, a sour taste rose in my mouth. I worried that I might need a polite place to vomit.
To settle my stomach, I concentrated on our journey. With each chuff of the mighty Lackawanna’s engine, Scranton slid farther into the distance and the hard knot loosened. Soon the train’s steady rhythm comforted me. I told myself that the train was galloping Gideon and me toward safety and a new life.
I squeezed Gideon’s hand and turned my head so that he wouldn’t see the hot, salty tears streaming down my face.
Dear, sweet Gideon! He always senses when something is wrong, and because he’s a gentleman, he tries to fix it. He took out his white handkerchief and offered it to me.
I dabbed my eyes and cheeks and chin. “It’s nothing but a cinder,” I told him. “All better now, see?”
He folded the handkerchief four times into a neat square and tucked it into his shirt pocket.
From his vest pocket, Gideon took out his gold pocket watch, a gift from Father when Gideon learned to tell time. He pressed the clasp, springing open the lid.
I settled back against the car’s seat and let my thoughts fly forward. “We’ll reach Chicago Wednesday morning,” I told him.
Gideon moved his fingers and held up three.
“That’s right,” I told him. “Three days. You count very well.”
Gideon leaned against me. He smelled like spice and bergamot and orange blossoms. “Are you wearing Father’s cologne?” I asked him.
He nodded.
Last night, when the last sliver of gaslight dimmed beneath each bedroom door, I rose from bed.
There’s an art to walking soundlessly. It’s something Merricat and I learned to do exceedingly well on our night escapes from the dormitory. To move soundlessly, you shuffle. You distribute your weight evenly in small flat steps. You move lightly but with great purpose.
With great purpose, I moved down the dark hallway and downstairs. Neither a bump nor stir nor rustle did anyone hear.
I groped my way to Father’s library and turned the brass doorknob. The door whispered against the thick rug.
Moonlight spilled through Father’s office window. The dark shapes shifted into Father’s high-backed chair, his green lamp, and his coat rack. On his rows of books, the gilt lettering glinted.
A hunched form rose from Father’s chair, its eyes glowing, its tail flagpole straight. “Me-owrch,” said Mozie.
He leaped to the floor with a soft thump and rubbed against my legs. “Shhh,” I said, picking him up. “You’re not supposed to be here. You’ve been banished, remember? You’ll lose all nine lives if you get caught.”
With my lap full of cat, I tugged open the middle desk drawer, groped for the false divider, and lifted it out. I patted inside the hidden compartment until I found the drawstring sack of gold and silver coins.
My heart pounded so hard against my chest, I felt it in my ears. There were fifty dollars in all. Heavy! I swaddled the coins in my nightdress. Then I carried Mozie and the coins upstairs.
On my bed, Mozie kneaded me with his paws, purring. I lay there, staring at the full moon over the trees.
Did I sleep? I must have, for the next thing I heard was the tread of feet passing my bedroom, so heavy they sounded as if they carried the weight of the world.
Nervous! I could hardly breathe! I retraced my steps. Did I remember to close Father’s office? Yes.
Return the hidden panel? Yes.
Close the desk drawer? Yes.
Had I left anything out of place? No.
Had anyone heard me? Seen me? Suspected me?
I prayed not.
I counted the morning sounds, ticking each off. Muffled voices. The slam of the back door. The jingle of a horse in its traces. The clatter of a carriage down the alley.
Next, a serving tray rattled up the back stairway. Two sharp raps on a bedroom door. Another door opened and closed. Then footsteps back to the kitchen.
I slipped from bed and pulled a plain blue dress over my head, and then yanked a black dress over the blue. I carried Mozie across the hall into Gideon’s room and plunked the cat on top of him.
“Get dressed,” I told him.
Gideon’s eyes popped open. He shook his head no and pulled the covers to his chin. He remembered he was being punished.
“We’re going on an adventure,” I said. “Just like Alice. We mustn’t be late.”
Excitement flooded his face. He rolled out of bed and dressed quickly.
I packed our carpetbags: two changes of clothing and other necessities, Mother’s scarlet cloak and Bible, my worn copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and the letter from Mother’s favorite friend, Beatrice Ringwald.
Gideon and I bade good morning to our cook, Mrs. Robson, who trilled back, “Good morrrning” in her Scottish burr.
We ate hotcakes and sausages. We stacked our dishes by the sink. I set a saucer of milk on the kitchen floor for Mozie.
Mozie purred as he lapped up the milk. As soon as Mrs. Robson went outside to tend her kitchen garden, I wrapped a chunk of bread, a wedge of cheese, four sausages, four apples, and the best paring knife in a plain white cloth.
Our housekeeper, Mrs. Goodwin, caught me. She opened the cloth. “A picnic, eh?”
My heart raced.
“That lunch will never do you.” She added six hard-boiled eggs, six boiled potatoes in their jackets, two cucumbers, and the last of the sausages, and wrapped everything back up. “God be with you,” she said.
Did Mrs. Goodwin know? Did I hear a sniffle? I kissed her cheek — it was wet — and thanked her for the picnic.
We left no note.
We let ourselves out the front door.
It was a perfectly lovely morning, the cicadas already humming, the birds calling to one another, squirrels arguing. In plain sight, we strolled down Olive Street.
Suddenly, wheels clattered around the corner. Hooves struck the brick street. My heart pounded against my ribs. I sucked in my breath. Had we been found out? Should we run?
The driver shouted, “Hallo, Miss Pringle! Hallo, Master Gideon! Where are you off to this fine morning? Would you like a lift?”
It was Mr. York, our huckster. “No, thank you!” I shouted back, and waved him on. The horse snorted and swished her tail. The cart rattled by, loaded with cabbages, turnips, potatoes, and apples. I could breathe again.
We passed the streets named after our presidents and made our way downhill to Wyoming Avenue. Busy! Carriages raced up and down the street. Men wearing frock coats and tall hats and watches on gold chains rushed importantly from one building to another. Here and there, women in ruffled walking dresses wore hats perched jauntily at an angle and carried bright parasols.
I clutched Gideon’s hand, so we wouldn’t get separated. We followed Lackawanna Avenue to the train station. He stood outside the washroom. I slipped inside and yanked off my black mourning weeds, exposing the plain blue dress underneath.
In the looking glass, a strange girl stared back at me. Her black hair was loose and wild. She had a delicate face with intense green eyes and a stubborn chin. She was a thief, absconding with a sack of gold and silver coins stolen from her father’s desk and food stolen from the family kitchen and a brother stolen from his bed.
I repinned my hair. I didn’t want to think about the girl in the looking glass.
Outside, I stuffed the black dress in a barrel. I grabbed Gideon’s hand and led him to the ticket counter, where I purchased the tickets. The ticket agent yawned and barely glanced at us as he slid the tickets across the counter.
We found our car and I let Gideon sit by the window. Before long, the train hissed and snorted its great breath. The conductor called out, “All aboard!”
At the very last moment, a harried-looking woman in a pink dress with two chattering children and a baby in tow climbed aboard and filled the seat behind us.
As the train pulled away from the station, Gideon’s carpetbag swelled and growled.
I gasped. “You didn’t!” I unsnapped his carpetbag, and oh, my paws and whiskers! A white paw shot out and swiped at the air.
Gideon grinned.
“Oh, you! What are we going to do with Mozie?” I pretended to be annoyed, but secretly I was happy that Mozie was safe with us, because he didn’t have many lives left. Besides, Alice’s cat, Dinah, never did get to Wonderland, did she?
Now Mozie sleeps in the carpetbag at our feet and the train puffs north like a great racehorse through the prettiest oaks and maples and pines. The little girl behind me keeps kicking my seat. She makes my teeth rattle.
Ten thirty A.M. We’ve been underway for over an hour. Gideon stares out the window as if he hopes train robbers will burst out. A few minutes ago, he nudged me and pointed to a large buck with a full rack of antlers standing at the fringe of the woods.
Behind us, a red-haired boy with a freckled face stuck his right arm straight out and pointed his fingers like a rifle at the buck. “Pow,” he said. Then he wheeled his arm around and pointed his finger at Gideon. “Powpowpow!”
The boy ducked. He poked his head over the seat. “Got you.”
“Adam,” said his mother. “You mustn’t pester.”
Adam’s mother looks tired, no doubt from minding three children. Beside her sits a small girl with large brown eyes and a cupid face and feet that use my seat for a drum. On her lap, the mother holds a chubby baby girl who doesn’t talk but points and says, “Ah ah ah.”
I want Gideon to stick up for himself. I lifted his arm and folded down his thumb and three fingers and aimed his pointy finger back at the boy. “Pow,” I whispered. “Say it. Pow.”
Gideon wiggled free. But his face glowed with keen interest and wistfulness. He longs to play. He longs for a true friend.
A favorite friend is worth waiting for. I never had one until I found Merricat, or as Merricat says, she found me. Someday, Gideon will find a true friend. It’s just a matter of time. I know it. Just as I know a new life awaits us in Chicago.
It’s hard to write with a dip pen on a train, but I must write everything down. I’ll begin at the beginning and go on from there, just as the King of Hearts tells Alice in Wonderland.
Our nightmare began last April. It was just before afternoon vespers, and Miss Westcott handed me two letters, one from Mother and one from Father.
How glad I felt to see Father’s strong, angular hand and Mother’s crisp, curling strokes. I missed my parents more than words can say.
Miss Westcott handed Merricat a thick envelope from her mother.
“Godey’s Lady’s Book,” whispered Merricat, and we grinned.
I stuck the letters in my uniform pocket. Later, Merricat and I would lie across her bed and pore over Godey’s Lady’s Book, studying the latest fashions and styles, and longing for them. We would read our letters aloud, as we always did, just as we shared our diaries.
That day — the 13th of April — is the last time I remember feeling truly happy and carefree. Merricat and I linked arms, and since Miss Westcott wasn’t looking, we skipped arm in arm to chapel. We didn’t give one whit what the other girls thought.
We slid into our pew. It was raining, and the rain sounded like pebbles against the chapel roof and windows. I shivered and drew my shawl closer around me.
Two candles burned brightly on the altar. As the Reverend Porter droned on, I fingered the embossed letters on Mother’s envelope. A breeze brushed against the nape of my neck, turning my skin to gooseflesh. On the altar table, the candles flamed brighter, and the faintest, most delicate scent of jasmine and violet floated in the air. It was Mother’s exact perfume, one designed especially for her.
I sniffed, drawing it in, and turned my head. I was shocked to see Mother, her scarlet cloak draped around her shoulders. She smiled lovingly and held out her arms.
“Mother!” I said, popping to my feet. I threw my arms around her.
The Reverend Porter halted mid-sentence. Over half-glasses that reflected orange and yellow and white candlelight, he scolded me with his eyes.
Someone snickered.
Mother disappeared. I had thrown my arms around empty air.
“Miss Rose,” said Miss Westcott. “That’s enough of your antics. Sit down.”
A heavy, dark feeling pulled me down into the pew.
All that day I carried that dark weight. I tried to lose myself in the parsing of sentences and the declension of Latin verbs and Trigonometry and Botany and French and German classes. Not my classmates’ chirping nor Merricat’s bright gossip nor Godey’s Lady’s Book could lift the heavy cloud.
That night, I comforted myself with the letters from Mother and Father. Father wrote about the coal miners’ strike, now entering its fifth month. Father called the Workmen’s Benevolent Society “evil” and said that the labor group was hurting the miners. He said it was turning them into criminals who burned breakers and destroyed the personal property of colliery operators. He vowed never to capitulate to the workers’ demands for higher wages.
Mother asked about my studies. She hoped I was meeting the right people. She reminded me that whom one meets is important in shaping a girl’s future. Mother often included her favorite Bible quotes and wrote little instructions in her letters, asking if I was reading my Bible and reminding me to pray.
The answer was yes and yes. I was reading my Bible and I was praying. That night, while my classmates slumbered around me, I lifted the door latch and escaped into the hallway. As the moonlight spilled through the window, I knelt and clasped my hands together and closed my eyes and prayed as Jabez had prayed in 1 Chronicles 4:10: I prayed for God to bless me and to enlarge my coast and to guide me with His hand and to keep evil from me.
There was so much I wanted. I wanted a larger life. I wanted to travel and to study and to do all sorts of things. Was it wrong? Was it selfish and greedy for a girl to want more than she has?
When I opened my eyes, the hallway brightened for a second. In that glowing second I believed that my prayer was answered, too. Then a cloud passed over the moon, darkening the window.
The next morning, Miss Westcott came to the doorway of our German class. “Come,” she said, beckoning me with her finger.
Merricat reached across the aisle, her eyes wide and worrying. She squeezed my trembling hand and mouthed, “What did you do?”
I mouthed back, “I don’t know.”
I followed Miss Westcott’s swishing crinoline skirts. Oh, the thoughts that tumbled through my head! The last girl summoned to Miss Westcott’s office was dismissed for breaking the school’s honor code.
Did Miss Westcott know I had climbed the bluff overlooking the chapel?
That Merricat and I had hung unladylike from the tree outside the dormitory? Our skirts parasol-like over our faces? Our pantaloons showing?
That we stayed up past curfew, gossiping about our classmates and poring over Godey’s Lady’s Book by the light of a candle stub?
That we had perfected the art of walking soundlessly through the dormitory corridors?
Alas, how I wish it were one — or all! — of these things, for there, standing in Miss Westcott’s office, was my father’s only brother, Edward. The two rarely spoke and never agreed on anything.
I didn’t need to read my uncle’s face with my eyes. I read his face with my insides. Something was terribly, dreadfully wrong.
I remember the rain pelted Miss Westcott’s window.
I remember the rivulets of water streamed down the glass, making the trees, the outbuildings, the grass appear wavy.
I remember Uncle Edward’s wet shoes squeaked against the wooden floor as he shifted his weight.
I remember his trousers were soaked from the knees down.
I remember he reeked of Hoyt’s Cologne, a scent that Mother described as an attempt at a garden or a harvest or pickling. (A gentleman should be seen and not smelled.)
I remember his voice crackled like static air before a storm. “Pringle, I have terrible news.”
Yet I plunged ahead, unafraid. I was Alice, chasing the White Rabbit. “It’s Gideon,” I said.
I have been prepared to lose my brother ever since he was a baby. Doctors say children like Gideon don’t live to adulthood.
That’s why my first thought was Gideon.
That’s why my second thought was, Please, let it be Gideon.
Uncle Edward’s words crashed like thunder. “It’s not Gideon. I’m so sorry, Pringle. It’s your parents.”
My heart! I gripped the back of an upholstered chair to steady myself. “Are they sick?”
I knew the answer from his stricken look.
He circled my shoulders clumsily with his arm and steered me toward the divan. “There’s no delicate way to put this. Come. Sit.”
I rooted my feet to the carpet. “Then don’t put it delicately.”
“My dear niece,” said Uncle Edward, taking my hand. “There’s been a terrible accident. A carriage accident. Your mother and father are dead.”
Dead! The word surged through me like lightning. I yanked my hand from my uncle’s lest his hand singe mine.
“When?”
“Yesterday. I came as quickly as I could.”
“Impossible!” I laughed as I reached in my uniform pocket for my parents’ letters. The joke was on my uncle. “How can they be dead? See? Here are their letters. They arrived yesterday.” I knew the illogic even as I said it. My laugh sounded somewhere outside myself.
“I’m so sorry for your loss, my dear child,” said Miss Westcott, drawing near.
How can I explain the feeling? Imagine your mind closing. The blood draining from your head and neck. Your mouth opens, but your throat closes around your words. Your arms, your legs, they go numb.
I was Alice, tumbling headlong down a deep, dark rabbit hole. The walls in Miss Westcott’s office with their portraits of dour-faced headmistresses, the leather-bound books with gilt lettering, the tall pendulum clock, the gold-rimmed teacup and saucer, all these things spiraled so slowly it felt as though I could have reached out and sipped a cup of tea, just as Alice did.
Words wound about me, too. Words like home and funeral and arrangements sounded near and then from someplace deep and far away.
“Gideon?” I managed to squeak out.
“A few scrapes and bruises.”
And this was my third thought, which I said out loud: “Why isn’t it Gideon? God took the wrong ones!”
“Priscilla Rose! You don’t mean that,” said Miss Westcott.
Why do adults tell you what you mean and don’t mean? I did mean every word, and I would have said so, except the floor rushed at me with a roar and swallowed me. The next thing I knew, my nostrils felt as though they had exploded. I was lying on the divan, sputtering and snorting and gasping for air.
Miss Westcott capped the smelling salts. “Priscilla, God has a plan. You must believe that.”
I struggled to sit up, and when I did, I looked at my uncle, heaved, and threw up in Miss Westcott’s lap.
Not long after the train crossed the wide Susquehanna River, a blue-uniformed conductor moved through our car, shouting, “Bing-ham-ton!” Gideon loves uniforms and anybody who wears a uniform. He followed the conductor with admiring eyes.
We gathered our belongings and piled off the train and found our way to the Erie station next door. Behind us, the Lackawanna train pulled away with a great snort and hiss and cloud of black smoke. We hadn’t a very long wait, just enough time to gobble our lunch and stretch our legs. The Erie train was scheduled for 1:20.
I opened the carpetbag, and Mozie leaped out, a tumble of legs and swishing tail and elongated meow. He stretched, groomed himself, and then slinked off to do his business. Mozie is a tame and proper cat.
Near us, Adam’s mother has her hands full. The bigger little girl is named Lucy, and she is four years old. She is kicking up pebbles and dirt with her shoes, and whatever she does, her baby sister, Sallie, does, too. Her mother has scolded Lucy and told her “no” three times, which is two more chances than my mother would have given me.
Guess who helped that mother? I did. With a sharp rock, I scratched out a hopscotch court in the dirt, and soon Lucy, Adam, and Gideon were taking turns. Gideon is good at sharing and taking turns, but not hopping. He hops with both feet, barely clearing the ground. In his mind’s eye, he hops like a frog.
The hopscotch game gave me time to get acquainted with the children’s mother. Her name is Gwyneth Pritchard. She has a becoming face and gray eyes and wears her hair curled and pulled back from her face. It’s puffed at her crown but knotted full and loose and three short ringlets fall at the nape of her neck. When I called her “Mrs. Pritchard,” she said, “Please, my friends call me Gwen.”
“My friends call me Pringle,” I told her. “Pringle Duncan.” (It’s not a lie. My full name is Priscilla Duncan Rose, after my mother’s side of the family.)
“Pringle Duncan it is,” said Gwen.
Oh! The Erie train whistle! Must catch Gideon and Mozie.
Gwen and I are sitting together in the ladies’ compartment. Mozie is safely tucked inside the carpetbag, purring contentedly. Lucy is petting Mozie.
Two more women boarded at Binghamton. They began to sit across from us, then looked at Gideon and moved two rows back. The older woman has white, white hair pulled elegantly into a low knot at the nape of her neck. She is draped in a solid black dress made of fine silk. Her younger companion is wearing a rose-colored dress with a ruffled skirt headed with two bands of black velvet and trimmed with black Spanish lace. She has great twists of dark hair that circle her head, top and back.
On the train home from Merrywood, Uncle Edward sat next to me. How I wished I could shut up like a telescope! My uncle pretended to read, but in the window glass, I could see him studying me. His mouth twitched, as if he were practicing the words to console me.
In Scranton, the train wheels screamed to a stop, metal on metal. The conductor rushed to set the steps in place. I scanned the crowd for Father, who always greeted me when I returned home. I caught myself and felt a fresh stab of pain. Why does grief trick the heart so?
Uncle Edward brushed off the sleeves of his black waistcoat. “The coming days will not be easy, Pringle. We’ll do the best we can.” He took my hand and helped me step down to the platform. His hand felt fat and fleshy and did not convey the strength and assuredness that Father’s always did.
A scrawny boy offered to drag my trunk to a cab, but my uncle waved him off, not even offering a single copper penny, and dragged the trunk himself. Hire someone who can do a job as well as you can. That’s what Father always said.
Somehow I forced my legs to work, to set one numb foot in front of the other. Each step felt like a dream. Why did Scranton look the same? My whole world had turned upside down. Shouldn’t the city have changed? Draped itself in black?
As I reached the cab, someone called, “Miss! Miss!”
A young man was calling to me. He was wearing a plug hat and yellow duster. His dark hair was parted in the middle and combed smoothly away from his face. He had a long, bright red cut on his cheek and eyes the color of a storm.
Why did I notice these things? I don’t know.
“You dropped this,” he said, handing me a red bound book with gilt lettering.
My heart swelled with gratitude. It was Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
I clutched the book to my heart. I could barely speak. How close I had come to losing Mother’s gift, which she had inscribed, “To my darling Pringle, everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it.”
“Thank you,” I murmured.
Alice’s rescuer lifted his hat, and walking backward, said, “Pardon me, miss. I’m in a hurry and my watch is two days slow.”
He spun on his heel and took off, coattails flying.
Two days slow. What a curious thing to say! Uncle Edward helped me into the hired carriage and rapped on the hood, signaling the livery driver. It wasn’t until the carriage lurched forward that I looked at the book in my lap and remembered the White Rabbit had said the very same thing to Alice.
The closer the horse trotted toward home, the bigger and darker the hollow feeling grew inside me. I wanted the carriage ride to stretch an eternity. The longer the ride, the more possible that Mother and Father were still alive and I’d never land at the bottom of that deep well.
On street corners, soldiers milled about. “The city’s under martial law,” said my uncle.
I knew. Father had written about the strike in his letters. One week ago, Good Friday, the striking miners had rioted, setting fire to a breaker. As if they had the right to destroy personal property!
And that wasn’t all. The miners attacked and terrorized scab workers who quit the strike and returned to work. They shot off their guns at all hours. Our governor sent soldiers to protect the city and its citizens and their personal property.
The carriage halted in front of my house, where a large black wreath draped the front door. As I climbed the stone steps, our manservant waited in the open door. Jenkins has worked for our family as long as I can remember. Swallowing hard, he said, “I’m sorry for your loss, Miss Pringle.”
Our housekeeper stood behind him. Mrs. Goodwin is a mighty barrel of a woman. I threw my arms around her and sobbed. She wrapped her meaty arms around me and said, “There, there.”
“That will be all, Mrs. Goodwin,” said a voice so crisp the edges crumbled off the words. “Priscilla needs her family now.”
It was Aunt Adeline. She looked like a famished blackbird in her mourning garb. She held out her arms to me. “My dear niece,” she said, “life has dealt you a terrible blow.”
Standing next to her was my cousin Ellen, who is nine and despicable. Her pale eyes roved over my face, as if plumbing the depth of my sorrow. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
I ignored my aunt’s open arms. “Where’s Gideon?” I said.
“Upstairs,” said Ellen.
Ellen skipped after me, but I spun around, saying, “I wish to be alone with my brother.”
“Mama?” said Ellen.
“Let Pringle be,” said Uncle Edward.
“Honestly, Edward,” my aunt said, “there’s no harm if Ellen wants to —”
“Let her be,” repeated my uncle, which was unusual because Aunt Adeline is not a woman to oppose.
I gulped back a sob as I gripped the banister. The last time I’d seen Mother on those stairs, she was dressed for a holiday party. Her black hair was piled on her head. Soft ringlets framed her face. Her green crinoline gown made her eyes shine like green glass. Father had stood at the bottom of the staircase, looking up at her with keen admiration.
When I reached the carpeted hall, I whistled for Gideon, two high notes and one low. It’s a game we invented when we played hide-and-seek in our garden.
I listened for his whistle — two low and one high — and the flat-footed way he slaps his feet when he runs.
Silence.
I started down the hall and paused outside Mother’s bedroom. I whistled again. This time I heard a soft sound, as if someone were blowing through a straw.
I opened the bedroom door. Mother’s room was dark, its long damask curtains drawn. My mouth went dry at the lingering scent of her jasmine and violet perfume. I wet my lips and whistled again.
From inside her dressing room came Gideon’s almost whistle. I pulled open the double doors, and there sat Gideon, cross-legged. Mother’s gowns were whorled like a nest around him. He clutched Mozie and wouldn’t look at me.
“I’m here.” I cupped his chin in my hand, forcing him to look at me. “Did you hear me?”
He pressed his lips together tightly.
“Gideon, say something, please.”
“That’s the way he’s been.” It was Mrs. Goodwin. “Master Gideon hasn’t spoken one word since the accident. Something’s wrong, terribly wrong.”
“What is that creature doing in there?” It was Aunt Adeline.
I popped to my feet, ready to light into my aunt, who often referred to my brother by horrible names as if he weren’t even a person with feelings. Then I realized she was talking about Mozie.
“Gideon was hiding the cat in Aunt Eliza’s closet,” said Ellen.
“You lie,” I said.
Ellen’s lower lip trembled. Anger flashed over Aunt Adeline, but she smoothed her features. “I know you’re grieving, Pringle, but sorrow is no excuse for incivility.”
I scooped up the cat. From the way he furled and unfurled his claws, I could tell Mozie was thinking terrible things about my aunt.
This is what you need to know about Mozie. He never forgets a slight, no matter how small.
I led Gideon to his room and told him to get washed and dressed for bed. No sooner had I finished dressing for bed, than Aunt Adeline came to my room. “You might find this helpful,” she said, setting a book on my dresser. “Now get your dresses ready for the dye pot.”
Once her footsteps tapped down the hall and her bedroom door clicked shut, I snatched up the book. It was an etiquette book. A black ribbon marked the chapter on mourning. With shaking hands, I opened to the marked page.
The mourning period for a mother or father lasts one year, it said. Six months of first or deep mourning, and six months of second mourning.
My thoughts became stinging arrows.
How long for a mother and a father? Two years? Should I mourn two parents concurrently or each in tandem, and if so, whom do I mourn first?
Or perhaps I should alternate the days, one day for Mother and the next for Father, or divide the days, the morning for Mother and the evening for Father.
I flipped through the pages. For the first six months, I was restricted to the simplest dress of solid black wool trimmed with crepe, a black crepe bonnet with black crepe facings and black strings — absolutely no hat — and a black crepe veil. No kid leather gloves, only those cut from black cloth, silk, or thread. No embroidery, jet trimmings, puffs, plaits, or trimming of any kind, and for the first month, no jewelry.
The next three months, I could wear black silk with crepe trimming, white or black lace collar and cuffs, a tulle veil and white bonnet-facings. The last three months, I may wear gray, purple, and violet.
I snapped the book shut and heaved open my trunk. I pulled out my dresses and petticoats and stockings for the dye pot. I hid my favorite blue dress in the back of my closet.
Lucy is an ornery child. Each time her mother took a nibble of corn bread or bite of apple or closed her eyes for a moment’s rest, Lucy tormented Adam, poking him or kicking him or making faces.
Nearby, Mrs. Duggan and her daughter-in-law sniffed and looked down their noses at Gwen. They nodded smugly and looked at one another, telegraphing a secret message between them.
By the by, the Duggans asked Gwen where she was traveling, and when she said, “Chicago,” they exclaimed and raised their hands to their mouths and twittered like birds, because they lived in Chicago.
They are the sort of women who pretend to be interested and pepper you with questions so that they have an excuse to talk about themselves.
The older Mrs. Duggan told about her family and her late husband’s family and her ever-so-intelligent son and how both sides of her family were from a long line of important So-and-Sos and all the fine things they do and all the fine parties they attend and all the fine things they own in their fine houses.
I pretended to admire all the things they said, but in my head, I rattled off things about my own family that would make them stop winking their eyes and smiling at each other and thinking they are the finest women in the car.
Then the older Mrs. Duggan said, “My grandson attends Harvard. Top of his class, he is. Do you know what Harvard is, dear?”
Gwen said, “That’s nice” and “How proud you must be!” Then she began to say something about her own husband, but the older Mrs. Duggan interrupted her, saying, “It was nice talking with you, dear,” which was funny because she and her daughter-in-law had done all the talking. It was clear that the Mrs. Duggans had grown bored with us because they had nothing more to say to impress us.
The younger Mrs. Duggan wagged her head and clucked sympathetically at Gideon. “There but for the grace of God go I. That’s what it says in the Bible, you know.”
“The Bible says no such thing,” I retorted.
“Oh, my,” said Mrs. Duggan. “Is that what they teach in colliery schools?”
A colliery school! Merrywood is no colliery school, and it’s in Philadelphia, not Scranton. I bit my tongue. The Duggans are the sort of women my mother called foolish.
This is what I want the Mrs. Duggans and everyone else to know about my brother: Gideon is ten years old and a good boy and doesn’t have a mean bone in his body, but some people are mean to him because he is different.
Some people are afraid of Gideon, as if he has a contagious disease or might hurt them. Some people feel sorry for Gideon because they think he has had misfortune to be born the way he is. That’s why people like Mrs. Duggan say foolish things like, “There but for the grace of God go I,” as if God has favored her or has been watching over her and taken care of her and not Gideon.
Well, God watches over Gideon, too.
It’s true that Gideon isn’t like other children his age. He doesn’t look like other children, either. He is shorter than most boys his age and has a moon face and almond eyes that are slightly crossed and a flat nose and stubby fingers.
The doctors have theories about children like Gideon. They say children like him cannot live normal lives. That they cannot contribute to society and be responsible. That they will grow up to be criminals. That they should live in special places.
That’s why you don’t see children like Gideon. Most mothers don’t keep babies like Gideon. The babies are whisked off to orphanages and never spoken about again.
Mother said those doctors and their theories could go to thunder. She believed the work of God is displayed through children like Gideon and that they have great potential.
Little by little, Mother taught Gideon his numbers and the alphabet and now he can read simple words and sentences and do simple math. He loves to count! Schoolwise, he is just a few years behind other children his age.
In most ways, Gideon is just like other children. He is happy-go-lucky. He can be as talkative — and argumentative — as a blue jay. He loves to run and romp and play.
Gideon has two moods: thunderstorm and sunshine. When he smiles, he smiles with his whole face, and when he laughs, his whole body laughs. He has feelings and they get hurt, just as mine do.
Gideon has very clean habits. He is obedient and well mannered and has a puffed-up sense of self-importance, which shows when he walks or learns something new, such as telling time or tying his shoes. He is unbearable when he learns something I don’t know. If there’s a bird nest or a litter of kittens or puppies or a nest of baby bunnies, Gideon will find it.
That brings me to his one bad habit: bringing home stray dogs. The last dog he brought home was a collie. The dog was neatly brushed and knew how to sit and shake hands, and when its master knocked on our door, Father said, “Gideon, this must stop.”
Gideon wanted to walk by himself to the men’s washroom. I forbade it because he must cross to the men’s compartment. Angry! Gideon folded his arms over his chest and tucked his hands in his armpits and glowered at me. He doesn’t like to be treated like a baby.
I would not give in. I ignored the looks from the men passengers and stood outside the men’s washroom door. Inside I heard splashing and then a man said, “Hey, kid, are you taking a bath?”
That Gideon! When he washes, he scrubs his hands, front and back, all the way to his elbows, and his neck and ears, with soap and water, just as Mother taught him. When Gideon emerged, he was shiny pink and his hair was slicked to the side and his shirt was soaked.
We returned to the ladies’ compartment, where I waited my turn. The toilet room is a cramped, airless closet. The toilet is a wooden box with a round hole, nothing more than an outhouse on wheels. It’s frightening to look down the toilet hole and see the iron rails and wooden tracks moving beneath. But the rumbling of the wheels means we’re moving forward.
Father always said there’s no turning back in life, no matter how hard you wish it. There is only moving forward, and you must not settle for the past or the present but must always look to tomorrow. “Look what happened to Lot’s wife,” Father would say. “Who wants to be a pillar of salt?”
Why do I look back, then? Our bodies are composed of skin and bones and muscle and sinew, but our minds are composed of pieces of the people we love. That’s why I look back, to put the pieces — the thoughts and feelings and memories — together in order to make sense out of everything.
For days after the funeral, nothing felt real. Each crack of the floorboard, each creak of the stair tricked my heart into thinking Father or Mother was walking down the hall. Then I’d remember and a dark feeling would spread through me and I’d feel the loss all over again.
Now I can see that I was still falling and my world was still spinning. I could only think, “Why me?” and “Why did God answer Jabez’s prayer and not mine?” And to tell the truth, I still wonder these things.
I don’t remember what people said at the funeral. I only remember that they came.
Over the days that followed the funeral, I couldn’t make the simplest decisions and felt grateful that I didn’t have to choose which dress or shoes to wear. I only had to pull a black dress from my closet.
Father quoted the Scottish poet Robert Burns when his plans went awry. “ ‘The best-laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men,’ ” he’d say. “ ‘Gang aft agley, An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain, For promis’d joy!’ ”
But no matter how many plans went awry, Father was never despondent or sad. Nor did he give up.
One day, as I passed Father’s library, his chair exhaled a familiar sigh. My heart sang out, for there was Father sitting at his gleaming walnut desk.
The figure shifted. Father disappeared, and in his place sat Uncle Edward. His hair, the shape of his head, his eyes and nose — they were similar to Father’s.
My heart had tricked me again. My heart saw what it wanted to see, not what was true and real.
Know this: Edward Rose is no Franklin Rose. The two men are as different as night and day. Father was strong and a man of conviction and principle who never wavered; he was either hot or cold. Edward was lukewarm and always saw the gray middle of a problem. That’s why they never got along.
Ellen was perched on her father’s lap, her arms twined around his neck as she chattered about a new doll.
“Of course, dear,” said Uncle Edward. “I’ll see what I can do.”
He picked up Father’s brass letter opener and sliced open an envelope. He slid out the letter and his brow furrowed as he looked over its contents.
“Who’s Dr. van Lavender, Papa?”
“A family friend of your mother’s.” He folded the letter and dropped it into his satchel.
Ellen pointed a pudgy finger at me. “Pringle’s spying on us.”
“What an imagination you have! Pringle’s not spying,” said Uncle Edward. He kissed the top of her head and shooed her off his lap. “Run along, precious, so that I may talk with Pringle.”
Ellen pouted, sticking out her lower lip, a habit she thinks makes her look adorable. It makes her look like a baboon.
She tightened her grip around her father’s neck, but he pried her loose and scooted her toward the door.
“Off with your head,” I whispered.
She stuck out her tongue.
Uncle Edward gestured to me, bidding me to enter — as if I needed permission to enter my father’s office!
“Such a dramatic child,” he said about Ellen. “Her mother worries she’ll want a life in theater.”
It was maddening the way he excused Ellen’s spoiled behavior.
The chair squeaked as Uncle Edward leaned back. “These days have been a strain,” he said.
He gestured to a stack of paperwork. “Nearly every day brings another arson, more rocks hurled at men who quit the strike, and more men attacked on their way home from work.”
The dark, puffy circles beneath his eyes aged him. He looked ready to give up.
“Father would never capitulate to the miners,” I said. “If they want higher wages, they should seek work elsewhere.”
My uncle suppressed a smile. “You have your father’s head for business.”
He laced his fingers together and studied his folded hands. “Pringle, it’s no secret that your father and I didn’t get along. We disagreed on many things. I always thought we’d have a lifetime to set things right between us, but we didn’t. But there’s one thing we did agree on.” His eyes met mine. “I have some good news that will ease your mind.”
My heart lifted. Were my uncle and aunt and cousin leaving? Good riddance. I would help them pack myself. I envisioned myself standing on the front porch, waving a handkerchief as their carriage rattled down the street. At last my life could return to normal, whatever normal was.
“I’ve been appointed guardian,” said Uncle Edward.
“Whose guardian?” I asked.
Uncle Edward gave me the most curious look. “Why, your guardian. Yours and Gideon’s.”
A nail driven through my heart!
“Your aunt and I have always wanted more children,” he said. “She’s never gotten over losing little Eddie, you know.”
My hands began to jump involuntarily. I clasped them to keep them still. “I don’t need a guardian. I’m fourteen. I’m at the top of my class. I can manage a household and take care of Gideon.”
“The law says otherwise.”
“The law! The property law gives women the right to inherit property. I have the right to inherit my father’s estate.”
“That’s true,” said my uncle, pressing his fingertips together. “But you cannot manage it until you become of age.”
A second nail!
“You needn’t worry,” said my uncle. “Your inheritance is held in a trust, for when you turn twenty-one. In the meantime, you can have faith that I’ll do what’s best for you and your brother.”
Tears blurred my eyes. Not tears of sadness. Tears of hot anger. How dare Uncle Edward think he knew what was best for Gideon and me. He scarcely knew us.
I stormed out of Father’s office and whorled around my bedroom like a tornado. I threw open my closet door. Everything was black. Black dresses, black petticoats, black stockings and slippers.
Nothing was blacker than my thoughts. I wanted someone to blame. I blamed my uncle and aunt and cousin as I tore each black dress from its hanger. I blamed Mother and Father as I bunched the dresses together. I blamed God as I pressed them to my face and screamed into the pile.
I know Aunt Adeline suffered terribly when little Eddie drowned, only three years old. She has never recovered. None of us have. Little Eddie was a sweet, loving, adorable child. But Gideon and I would never belong to Uncle Edward and Aunt Adeline.
My bedroom door creaked open. There stood Ellen. “Why are you crying?” Then her eyes widened as she looked at the dresses strewn over the floor. “Mama doesn’t like an untidy house.”
I knuckled the tears from my eyes. “Get out. It’s my house. Mine and Gideon’s.”
I leaped at her and pinched her, hard.
Tears sprang to her eyes. Her mouth puckered. I expected Ellen to bawl to her mother, but she didn’t.
Our train stopped in Corning at six forty-five. I hungered for a proper meal with cloth-covered tables and a menu at the Dickinson Hotel, just two doors down from the station, but Gideon and I shared our cheese and bread and sausages.
At Merrywood, whenever I felt overwhelmed with studies and examinations, I sneaked away and hiked to the top of the bluff behind the chapel. The path was windy and steep and narrow. Everyone needs a private place to cry, and the bluff was mine.
I had no safe place now. Not my house. Not my bedroom. My parents weren’t even buried one month, and each day Aunt Adeline packed up more of Mother’s and Father’s belongings and instructed Jenkins to carry the boxes to the attic.
Little by little, Aunt Adeline filled our house with her belongings, shipped up from their house in Wilkes Barre. Every table and bureau and windowsill was covered with tasteless knickknacks and potted plants and framed photographs of people I didn’t know. The walls were covered with even more tasteless ornamental plates.
Aunt Adeline’s prized possession was a clay-and-plaster sculpture called The Foundling, designed by a man named John Rogers. The statuette depicts a young woman handing over her baby to a man standing behind the door to an orphanage.
Mother and I had seen the brown or gray plaster statues in every art and bookstore window, whether we visited Scranton, Philadelphia, or New York City. Women seem determined to collect as many as they could. As soon as a new Rogers group becomes available, newspaper reporters herald it as a major event and women rush out to buy it.
Once, I asked Mother why we didn’t own a Rogers group. She scoffed and called them sentimental decorations, not true art.
I’m glad Mother didn’t see Aunt Adeline’s statuary, and not because it’s one more tasteless decoration. The Foundling makes me think about children like Gideon who are whisked off to orphanages, where they never see their families again.
The next weeks brought more riots by the striking miners. Scarcely a day passed in April and May that didn’t bear news of another beating or attack on a man who dared to return to work in order to feed his family.
After nearly a month of confinement, I feared that I’d lose my mind if I didn’t get out of the house. I told Jenkins, “I wish to ride along Ridge Row.”
He faltered. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Miss Pringle.”
But I insisted, and so he did. As the carriage clattered along the road that ran like a spiny backbone high above Roaring Brook, I mettled myself, for it was the road that Mother and Father had ridden that warm spring morning.
What drew me there? Why do we torture ourselves by visiting and revisiting sites of painful remembrances? I don’t know.
I imagined Father driving fast, the reins in his hand. Mother laughing and calling, “Faster, Franklin! We want to feel the wind against our faces.” I imagined Father snapping the reins, urging the horse; Gideon laughing, yelling, “Go go go!” He loved a fast ride as much as Mother.
And then what?
Father was an expert driver and horseman. What caused the carriage to tip?
I rapped on the carriage hood. “Stop,” I told Jenkins. I stepped from the carriage and stared down the steep drop to the brook. Water tumbled over great jutting rocks. My stomach turned over. Something sour inched its way up my throat. How many times had the carriage flipped before it landed upside down in the water?
The man who had discovered the accident came to the funeral. He wore the soft, worn clothing of a workingman, and he clutched his cap between his hands. Perhaps the buggy hit a rut, he said. Perhaps the wheel fell off. Perhaps the horse spooked and bolted, making my father lose control.
No one knew for sure. The only certainty was that the buggy had plunged over the steep embankment, taking my parents with them. Miraculously, Gideon had fallen out near the top.
Thoughts, feelings, memories, questions — they all lumped together in my throat. I swallowed hard to loosen them. I rapped again on the carriage hood, saying, “Jenkins, please take me to the cemetery.”
From Ridge Row, we crossed Jefferson Avenue and drove up the broad Lackawanna Avenue. As we crossed the river, I spotted Father’s breaker, a gloomy structure that rose a short distance down the river. No clouds of coal dust plumed the air. It sat idle, its workers on strike.
At the top of the hill, the carriage turned onto Main Street. Hyde Park was just a short ride from my house, but it might have been another country. The houses were tiny and cramped and run-down. They sat one after the other, like a row of broken teeth. It was Sunday, and the streets were filled with children, running, playing, chasing each other and screaming happily.
The carriage pulled up to the iron cemetery gate on Washburn Street. Jenkins offered to accompany me, but I said no, that I wished to be alone.
I followed the winding gravel path, past the graves of the Welsh miners killed in the Avondale accident two years ago, all the way to the small rise where my parents lay.
There was no headstone or monument. It would be placed on the first anniversary of their death. I pressed my cheek against the ground and sobbed.
As I cried a pool of tears deep enough to drown in, a shadow fell over me. “Are you all right, miss?” asked someone.
I looked up, blinking in the sunlight. It was a young man, a few years older than I, perhaps sixteen or seventeen. I bristled at his poor manners! How dare he intrude upon a mourner paying her respects. “I’m fine,” I said.
He reached out to help me stand, but I ignored his hand. As I stood, my foot caught my petticoat, ripping its hem and pitching me forward. I landed on my knees.
In a single, flowing movement, he shot out a hand and caught me. His hand was rough and had a quiet strength.
“After a fall such as that,” he said, “you shall think nothing of tumbling down stairs. How brave they’ll all think you at home!”
It was the very thing Alice had said, after her fall down the rabbit hole! Oh, this boy’s laughing gray eyes and grinning face! Didn’t he think he was clever! Of all the bad manners! To poke fun at someone wearing a mourning dress!
“‘Why, I wouldn’t say anything about it,’” I retorted, “‘even if I fell off the top of the house!’” Which is very true and the very thing that Alice had said after her great fall.
Was he ashamed? No. He had no shame. He laughed.
Was there no end to his coarseness? The familiar way he looked at me! As if he knew me!
I glared at him, taking in his medium height, his slight build, his dark hair, and thin, pink scar on his cheek. His striped shirt and its heavy collar were fresh and clean but his trousers and cap were the common clothing of a worker.
But, of course he knew me. He worked in the mines. Every mineworker knew my father and knew about the accident.
That realization made his bad manners inexcusable. I have no patience for coarse boys. I swished off toward the waiting carriage.
“I wish you wouldn’t be so easily offended!” he called after me. “Come back! I’ve something important to say.” And then, as I hurried through the cemetery gate, “‘Well, be off, then!’”
It didn’t matter how many lines from Alice he tossed after me. I climbed into the carriage and pulled the door shut. “Home, Jenkins,” I said.
With each lurch of the carriage, something ticked like a clock in my head, except, instead of ticking forward, it tocked back to where I’d seen that grinning, impertinent face before. He was the same young man who had rescued Alice at the train station and returned her to me. That day, he wore a yellow duster and the cut on his cheek was red and raw. That day he had said his watch was two days late, just like the White Rabbit.
And now, here he was again.
My mouth twitched and spread into a grin for the first time in a very long time, and it felt good. Of course, I scolded myself soundly.
This train is stingy with its lighting — just six candles for our car. It’s growing too dark to write. I’ll close here and try to sleep, though sleep is impossible when I recall that grinning face.
The train arrived in Buffalo at 7:20 this morning. Tired! My legs had turned to sea legs. At a clean-looking inn, we filled ourselves with eggs and ham and thick toast slathered with strawberry jam. Lucy spit out the pits from her stewed prunes onto Adam’s plate. Then Gideon showed Adam and Lucy how to hang a spoon from the ends of their noses. (It was a trick that Father taught Gideon.)
We walked to the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern station on Exchange Street, where we must wait until noon for the Lake Shore train. Gideon keeps taking out his pocket watch and checking the time. I told him it won’t make the train come faster and to put the watch away or I’ll take it from him until we reach Miss Ringwald’s.
At Miss Ringwald’s name, Gideon brightened. He dug through my carpetbag until he found her letter. How could a plain piece of rose-colored stationery mean so much? It’s our ticket to a new life.
With his elbow, Gideon nudged me again until I agreed to read the letter once more. What a pest he can be!
This is what Miss Ringwald wrote:
My darlings,
I was crushed — crushed! — when I learned of the loss of your mother and father! How difficult this time must be for you and Gideon!
When I think of your mother, I think of our days together at Merrywood. We were young and as happy as larks! Trouble comes soon enough, my dear child. Enjoy life whenever you can!
Your mother and I enjoyed our school days. Did you know the switching our headmistress gave us when we climbed the bluff behind the chapel? (Of course, that didn’t stop us!)
How proud your mother was of you and Gideon! In each letter, she told me of your many accomplishments and your great potential!
Remember this: No matter how much pain you feel, there is something inside you that’s stronger than the pain. In the coming days ahead, you must draw on your mother’s courage and strength! (There was never a braver woman than your mother!)
How I wish I could be with you! If only so many miles did not separate us!
May God bless you and Gideon during this time and always!
Beatrice Ringwald
I like Miss Ringwald’s large, loopy handwriting and the great flourishing strokes of her capital letters. This is what my name would look like in her handwriting:
I like Miss Ringwald’s exclamation marks! too! because they make everything! she! writes! look! so! passionate! and! exciting!!!!
I tucked the letter away. From the bottom of the carpetbag, I pulled out Mother’s red cloak and draped it over Gideon and me.
As we huddled, I told Gideon the story of our great-grandmother Annabella Duncan, and how she spun the wool from the fleece of Lord Duncan Abbot’s finest sheep. Its stitches, so tiny and perfect, look as though a fairy sewed them with a silver needle.
When I wear the cloak, I am as strong and brave as my mother and grandmother and great-grandmother. That’s what I told Gideon.
Miss Ringwald is Mother’s favorite friend from their school days. She is a tiny woman, as bright as a firefly, who sleeps late every morning and refuses to wear a corset or hoop skirt. She wears drawers tied with ribbons around her ankles and often dresses in a robe de chambre in the afternoon.
“Beatrice,” Mother would beg when she visited us, “this is Scranton, not Chicago,” and “Please don’t stand on the porch dressed like that.”
Some women would say things like “Little pitchers have big ears,” which was a secret code that meant adults should be mindful of what they say around children.
But not Miss Ringwald! She never told if I eavesdropped, never let on when I hid under the dining room table.
One night I spied from between the staircase spindles. Miss Ringwald was sitting in our parlor, one arm draped over the back of the divan, and talking to my mother, saying, “And so, Eliza, at a party a gentleman said to me, ‘Madam, if I were to walk into your chamber and find you undressed, what part would you cover first?’”
My mother gasped. “Beatrice! He’s no gentleman! Surely you didn’t answer!”
Beatrice’s laugh was one hundred silver thimbles. “Of course, I did. I said, ‘Your eyes, sir! That’s the part I’d cover first.’”
My mother and Beatrice collapsed into giggling fits on the divan.
Mother sat up and dabbed at her eyes. “Do you think you’ll ever marry, Beatrice?”
“Pshaw!” said Miss Ringwald, dismissing the idea with a wave of her hand. “I see no need for marriage, unless I find a man who deems me equal in all things and who likes cats.”
The rest of the weekend, all my mother or Beatrice had to say was, “Your eyes, sir,” and they would giggle like schoolgirls. Father said, “What’s wrong with my eyes?” And then, hearing them laugh, he would stare and them and ask, “Have you ladies been nipping the sherry?”
Father liked to say, “God helps those who help themselves,” but Miss Ringwald said, “God helps those who can’t help themselves.”
Miss Ringwald’s mission was the humane society. She wrote letters to newspapers and state legislators, urging them to enact laws to protect animals from cruel owners. She led boycotts against horse companies that neglected or abused their animals. She lectured on the evils of blood sports such as dog and rooster fighting and animal baiting.
She formed a patrol to prevent and punish animal abuse. Once, she performed a citizen’s arrest of two men who were dragging a frightened, squealing pig through the streets to the slaughterhouse.
“Each time my name is printed in the newspaper, it embarrasses my father,” she confessed to Mother.
“There was that pistol incident,” said Mother.
“It was a warning shot!” said Miss Ringwald. “And well over his head! Honestly, Eliza, if you saw the way that driver flogged his horse! The dray was too heavy for the poor thing.”
She sniffled. “Father took away my pistol. He says as long as I live in his house, I must abide by his rules and I must do something about the cats.”
“Twenty-six is quite a few,” said Mother.
Miss Ringwald sniffled again. “It boils down to a difference of religion.”
Mother looked shocked. “Are you no longer a Presbyterian?”
“I’ve converted,” said Miss Ringwald brightly. “I’m a Saint Bernard.”
At long last we have boarded the Pacific Express, the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern train that will carry us to Miss Ringwald’s Chicago!
The sun is shining brightly and the sky is the clearest blue with piles of white clouds, reminding me how far we’ve traveled from Scranton’s clouds of black coal dust.
Our carriage is crowded with women dressed in steel-plate fashion, as Godey’s Lady’s Book would say. The women look as fine and finer than the two Mrs. Duggans.
One woman is wearing violet silk and a skirt trimmed with six narrow ruffles. She has a kind face and yellow hair. She bumped into Gideon as she boarded. She apologized profusely and patted his head and gave him a lemon drop.
Just as the conductor passed through our carriage to punch our tickets, the woman in the violet dress slid from her seat and headed toward the washroom. The conductor scowled at her empty seat and wrote a note to himself.
She took a very long time in the washroom, and when she seated herself again, the conductor had already passed through. Lucy is standing on her seat, watching the woman intently. “Your eyebrow is missing,” said Lucy.
She hurried back to the washroom. The woman’s eyebrows are painted on!
I don’t know what’s gotten into Adam and Sallie. Usually it’s Lucy who misbehaves, but Adam assailed the seat cushions, punching them, sending up clouds of dust.
Then, without provocation, Sallie sank her teeth into Adam’s shoulder. Adam screamed but Sallie had latched on and wouldn’t let go, not when Gwen shook her (Adam screamed louder) and not when Gwen swatted her behind (Adam screamed even louder). Sallie sank her teeth deeper.
The woman in the violet dress tossed a tumbler of water into Sallie’s face. The shock broke her hold. Sallie wasn’t hurt, just surprised. Her wet little face puckered up and she cried.
Gwen smiled at the woman, embarrassed, but inside that smile was a set of clenched teeth. “Two days ago, she turned into a cannibal,” said Gwen, mopping Sallie’s face with a handkerchief.
“Bite her back,” said the younger Mrs. Duggan.
“What kind of mother would do that?” said the woman in the violet silk. “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”
Young Mrs. Duggan huffed and went back to minding her own business.
Meanwhile, Gideon tugged frantically on my sleeve. His pocket watch is missing. Adam and Lucy and I have searched everywhere, high and low. I fear he dropped it down the toilet hole and it’s lying somewhere on the tracks.
I feel terrible. Why didn’t I take the watch from him while I had the chance?
The conductor returned for the violet lady’s ticket. As soon as she spotted him, she closed her eyes and pretended to be napping, but he leaned over and said, “Excuse me, madam. Your ticket, please?”
She awoke with a dramatic start. “My ticket? You frightened me half to death for a ticket?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Meanwhile, Lucy hugged the back of her seat, watching the woman fumble through her carpetbag. “It’s here someplace,” said the woman. “You needn’t lord over me. You must have other tickets to collect.”
“Just yours, madam,” said the conductor. “I don’t mind waiting.”
The further the woman dug through her bag, the farther Lucy tipped herself for a better look. Suddenly, Lucy piped, “There’s Gideon’s pocket watch!”
All kindness evaporated from the woman’s face. She snapped the carpetbag shut. “Shut your trap, kid.”
The conductor hurried from the car and returned with a man wearing a uniform and a badge. He pawed through the woman’s carpetbag. He found no ticket, but he did find Gideon’s pocket watch. The woman was a stowaway and a thief! He arrested her immediately, and at the very next stop, he will escort her from the train.
Lucy beamed and puffed up with importance when the conductor praised her and called her a heroine. There will be no living with that child now.
Lucy is the most exasperating and contrary child I have ever met! Just after we left Dunkirk, she began speaking in opposites. If her mother says yes, she says no. If her mother says up, she says down. If her mother says “Lucy,” she says, “My name is Sallie.” If her mother calls her “Sallie,” Lucy changes the rules and says, “I’m not Sallie, I’m Adam.”
One minute Lucy is happy and laughing. The next minute she is throwing herself against the seat cushions, whining, “I hate this train! I want to get off!”
To think we have nearly twenty more hours to go!
“I’ll tell you a story,” I said.
“Stories are stupid,” she said as she climbed into my lap.
“Once upon a time,” I began, “there were three little children and their names were Adam, Sallie, and Lucy —”
“No!” said Lucy. “I’m not last. Sallie’s the baby. She goes last.”
Lucy had a point. I started over. “Once upon a time there were three little children and their names were Adam, Lucy, and Sallie, and they lived at the bottom of a rabbit hole.”
Lucy clapped her hands. “A rabbit hole! I should like to live in a rabbit hole.” Then a worried look crossed her face. “Except that a rabbit hole would be damp and dark because it’s in the ground.”
“Oh, but this rabbit hole is dry and snug,” I told her.
Lucy furrowed her brow, thinking it over. “Dry and snug are good. But it’s still dark.”
“Rabbits have excellent eyesight,” I said.
“How do you know?” said Lucy.
That was a good question. “Have you ever seen a rabbit wearing spectacles?”
Lucy chewed on that.
“This rabbit hole was dug beneath a garden,” I told her. “All the rabbits have to do is reach up to the ceiling and pull out a carrot. Morning, noon, and night they eat carrots.”
“I don’t like carrots very much,” said Lucy.
“Then you can’t be a rabbit,” said Adam.
“But I want to be a rabbit!” wailed Lucy.
“You can’t be a rabbit,” said Adam. “Rabbits like carrots.”
Lucy slid off my lap and threw herself into the aisle and rolled around, kicking her legs and flailing her arms and crying because she couldn’t be a rabbit because she didn’t like carrots.
The stares from the other lady passengers! I heard words like “spanking” and “over my knee” and “my children never.” The younger Mrs. Duggan sniffed and said something about giving that child something to cry about. Gwen shot her a scalding look that could singe eyebrows.
I wanted to pick Lucy up, but Gwen stopped me. “Ignore her. She’s overtired. When she has a tantrum like this, Peter and I wager how long it lasts.”
Adam guessed two days.
I guessed an hour.
Gwen guessed, “Forty-six seconds.”
We all lost. Lucy wailed herself out in one minute, ten seconds. Exhausted, she curled up next to her mother and fell asleep. Later, when she woke up, she was the most cheerful child. Even the older Mrs. Duggan complimented her, saying, “Your eyes are beautiful.”
Lucy reached up with her little hand, touched Mrs. Duggan’s baggy neck, and said most sincerely, “Your chins are beautiful, too.”
As Lucy napped, I thought about the boy at the cemetery and how the very next Sunday, bright yellow daffodils crowned a small jar at my parents’ grave.
Inside the jar, standing among the green pipe stems, was a rolled piece of white paper. I fished it out. In a clear hand with sharp, angular lines and no curve, someone had written:
Dear Alice,
Why is a raven like a writing desk?
Rabbit
It felt as if sunshine had burst inside me.
Grinning, I wrote back:
Dear Rabbit,
Ask the Hatter or the March Hare.
Alice
P.S. You should have something better to do with your time than waste it asking riddles that have no answers.
Then I rolled the paper and tucked it back in the jar, feeling terribly mischievous and guilty. I knew what Mother would say, if she saw me writing a note to a boy.
But it felt delicious to have a secret. That night I wrote to Merricat, telling her about Alice’s rescuer. I counted the days till Sunday, hoping to find another note.
Near the end of May, the strike ended and the miners straggled back to work. The very next Saturday, Mrs. Robson rushed home from marketing, terribly agitated. There had been an explosion in a West Pittston coal mine. Thirty-eight men and boys were trapped.
All of Scranton held its breath, praying for the trapped mine workers, but by the time rescuers reached the men, twenty had died. I prayed that Rabbit wasn’t among the dead. If he were, how would I ever know? I didn’t even know his real name.
The next two Sundays, I found no notes and no fresh flowers. I poured out my heart to Merricat, telling her I felt more lonesome than any person can bear.
The second Sunday in June, Rabbit was waiting for me. Oh, his pride! “Happy to see me?” he said, falling into step as I walked down the gravel path.
A girl should never admit that she is happy to see a boy, but I admitted that the West Pittston coal mine disaster weighed on me. “The newspapers call it a second Avondale.”
A shadow crossed his face and lingered there for a second. I looked at his hands. His fingernails bore the black lines of coal dust impossible to scrub away. Had he returned to work with the miners? Did he labor long hours underground, missing the sunlight, the scent of lilacs, the flight of a sparrow?
“Who are you?” I asked. “What is your name?”
The shadow had disappeared and his eyes were teasing again. “I might ask the same question,” he said.
It would be a lie if he said he didn’t know my name. I had seen him studying me, searching my face, the flicker of recognition. I’m sure he saw my father’s stubbornness in my chin and my mother’s willful spirit in my wide eyes.
“‘I knew who I was when I got up this morning,’” I said, “‘but I’ve changed several times since then.’”
He laughed and took off his cap and slapped the dust from it. “Fair enough,” he said. “Then you are forever Alice and I am forever Rabbit.”
He looked at me intently. Under his gaze, something about him emerged into plainer view and lingered there for a second. There was something about him that felt dangerous and yet thrilled me at the same time. I tried to put my finger on it, but couldn’t.
I looked away, toward the street where Jenkins waited patiently in the carriage, the horse flicking flies away with her tail. My legs felt a sudden urge to run to the safety of the carriage.
Each Sunday night, I wrote to Merricat, filling pages about Rabbit. How we met each Sunday at the cemetery. How a jar full of fresh flowers — violets, daisies, whatever bloomed — marked my parents’ graves. How we strolled the gravel path, past picnickers, some dressed in black, some in their Sunday best. How I was full of words, and happy to let them out. What did we talk about? Everything. Nothing.
Merricat asked if Rabbit was handsome. I wouldn’t call him handsome, but there was something striking that made me catch my breath and chilled me even though the sun was warm. But never for long. At night, thoughts of Rabbit warmed me.
I told Merricat how one Sunday, when Rabbit leaned closer to me, my face grew hot and my heart quickened and I couldn’t breathe. My hands turned clammy.
Will he, won’t he, will he, won’t he, will he kiss me?
I hoped so, I hoped not. Frightened, I pulled away.
For a brief second, something flashed like lightning in his eyes. What was it? Hurt, I think. Hurt that we came from different neighborhoods, lived in different worlds, had no business being together, and could never be together, except where grief had melded our worlds. What grief did he suffer? What sorrow did he bear? I don’t know. He would never say.
Rabbit didn’t understand, or perhaps he understood too well. He walked away, as if he hadn’t a care. I wanted to cry after him to wait. I wanted to fly to him, but I didn’t.
All the ride home, I felt as though I had folded into myself. I longed for Mother. I needed my mother. Would she understand? She and Father came from the same world, but it wasn’t always that way, not for their parents and grandparents.
A girl must confide in someone, and so I wrote to Merricat that night, telling her how betrayed and hurt I felt. How could Rabbit leave me? How could he walk away? Why didn’t he understand the risk I took to meet him?
I argued with myself! I was never going to the cemetery again. I was going. I didn’t want to see him. I wanted to see him. I hated him. I longed for him.
Then came the next day — the 14th of August — and another terrible explosion that killed seventeen mine workers in the Eagle Shaft in Pittston. Day in and day out, I paced the floors with worry. How would I know if Rabbit was safe, if I didn’t even know his name? I longed to talk with someone but had no one.
The next Sunday, the violets limped over the side of the jar. Loneliness and hurt and anger and self-pity and grief rolled together in my stomach in one hard lump.
Suddenly, Rabbit stepped out from behind a tall monument. His strong fingers gripped my arm. He had come. He pulled me behind the tall monument and my feet obeyed. Crying, I struck his chest with my fists. “You left me.”
He didn’t apologize. He ran his hand through my hair. The pins dropped and my hair fell loose about my shoulders. I leaned into him, despite myself. He cupped my face between his hands, and kissed me.
That night, with the gaslight turned low, I wrote to Merricat and told her that Rabbit’s kisses taste like licorice.
Every few weeks, Uncle Edward traveled to Philadelphia on business. How I dreaded those days!
At tea one afternoon, Ellen said, “Mother, may I have a diary like Pringle’s?”
I dropped my teaspoon. “You’ve been prying through my things! Have you no decency?”
Ellen’s lower lip quivered. She started to cry, big sopping tears that rolled down to her chin. She had a talent for turning tears on and off. “I wasn’t prying. I saw you writing in your diary.”
Aunt Adeline glared at me. “Now look what you’ve done.” Then to Ellen, she said, “Of course, I’ll buy you a diary, my sweet. When I was your age, I kept a diary.” My aunt’s eyes brimmed with tears as she recalled her mother. “Each night, my mother read my diary and wrote notes to me. If I couldn’t think of something to write about, she provided suggestions. I promise to do the same for you.”
My aunt went on to say that girls should write about the weather, visits with friends, and the books they’ve read. Girls should never indulge in fantasy or gossip.
“My mother said that the purpose of a diary is to record events,” I said. “She believed that every woman’s life is important and that we should write to make meaning out of our daily lives and our experiences.”
“Nonsense,” said Aunt Adeline. “A young lady should shine in the art of conversation, but not too brightly or no man will be interested in her.”
I disagreed. “A young woman should be comfortable in the world of ideas. She should express herself in a thoughtful and logical manner.”
My aunt’s lips twitched, but before she could respond, Gideon belched. Loudly.
Aunt Adeline’s eyes snapped! “Apologize,” she said.
But Gideon didn’t because he couldn’t. He stared at his plate.
“I said, ‘Apologize.’”
“He can’t,” I said. “He’s mute.”
“It’s not that he can’t,” said Aunt Adeline. “He won’t. He’s a willful, spoiled child and he’s refusing to talk to spite me. I will not abide a willful, spiteful child.”
She threw her napkin on the table. Her chair grated against the floor as she stood. She circled around to Gideon and grabbed his arm. She yanked him from the table and upstairs.
A door slammed shut. “Apologize,” yelled my aunt. A loud thwack followed. Again she yelled, “Apologize,” and then came another sickening thwack.
I cried out and pushed away from the table so hard my chair toppled.
“Don’t!” said Ellen. “You’ll catch it next.”
My only care was Gideon. The third blow came as I reached the stairs. I bounded up the steps, two at a time. The sound came again as I reached Gideon’s door. It was locked.
I shouted and threw myself against the door. “Don’t hit him! He doesn’t understand!”
Mercifully, I didn’t hear another blow. My aunt emerged, her eyes bright and her face flushed. In her hand, she held a leather strap. “Perhaps he understands now.”
Gideon was curled in a ball on his bed, facing the wall. Four bright red welts crisscrossed his naked back. I lunged for the strap.
She whipped the strap out of my reach and struck me, hard, telling me never to interfere with her discipline and that she was teaching Gideon and me a lesson for our own good.
After three more blows, she stopped. “That was just half the lesson. If you speak one word to your uncle, I’ll give both of you the other half.”
Would she do it? Surely she would, the next time business took Uncle Edward out of town. I didn’t care about myself, but I wouldn’t chance hurting Gideon for fear he might disappear inside himself forever.
That night, I stayed with Gideon. The welts burned like fire. I couldn’t sleep. I turned up the gas lamp, opened my diary, and listed every hateful thought that came to mind. I wrote the ugliest things I could about Aunt Adeline and Uncle Edward and Ellen. I wrote until my hand cramped and I couldn’t write any more.
I had closed the diary and turned down the gas lamp when someone rapped on Gideon’s door. It was Ellen.
“What do you want?” I said.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “About Mama.” And then, “I know it’s a sin, but sometimes I hate my mother.”
After the whipping, Gideon vanished far inside himself, and I didn’t know if he’d ever return. Sometimes he sat and stared, looking lonesome and sad. I tried wishing and praying and even whistled two high and one low to coax him out of hiding, but he didn’t.
Somehow we needed to rebuild our lives so that we could learn to live without our parents. But how? I prayed for an answer, and one day the answer came to me. Gideon needed a routine, the sort of school routine he had with Mother.
Each morning, we sat in the nursery and pored over his lessons, just as he and Mother had done. By and by, as I read stories to him, he came back a little bit.
Presently, Ellen joined us, too. At first I felt wary, but soon I reveled in the change I saw in her. She was kind and helpful to Gideon.
As we worked on lessons, I realized how much I missed Merrywood and my studies and my teachers and classmates. I longed to see them. I longed to return to them. Would I ever have a normal life again?
One morning as Gideon sat with a book in his lap, he began to trail his finger across the sentences. Tears ran off my face sideways! Gideon remembered everything Mother had taught him. I hugged him and kissed him and said how happy I was that he came back and would he please, please come back just a little bit more and say something?
I thought for sure he would talk, now that he was back. There were times when his mouth opened as if he were about to speak, but then he clamped it shut as if he suddenly remembered he mustn’t. If I pushed, he disappeared inside himself, and then I’d have to work hard to reach him there and pull him back from behind whatever door closed in his mind.
One morning, Aunt Adeline stood in the doorway, watching Gideon glide his finger across a sentence. “Look at Gideon pretending to read,” she said.
“Gideon isn’t pretending,” said Ellen emphatically. “He reads.”
Aunt Adeline looked as if she had witnessed the Eighth Wonder of the World.
I gritted my teeth. My insides seethed with disgust, but I explained as politely as I could how Mother had taught Gideon to read. I told her Gideon was eight when he learned his first word, “cat.” I described the explosion of understanding on his face as he looked from the word “cat” to Mozie and then back again. I told her how Mother and I hugged him and wept with joy.
“She taught him herself?” asked Aunt Adeline, as if Mother teaching Gideon herself was somehow beneath her. “There are schools where —”
“Mother said anyone who suggested that Gideon belonged in one of those schools could go to blazes.”
Aunt Adeline’s eyes narrowed. “I will not tolerate language unbecoming to a young lady.” She grabbed my arm, hauled me to the washroom, and washed my mouth out with soap.
Later, Ellen said sorrowfully, “I can’t do lessons with Gideon anymore. Mama says he’ll hold me back in my development. She’s going to hire a governess for me.”
Mozie is the best cat in the world, just like Alice’s cat, Dinah. He’s a capital one for catching mice. He would eat a bird as soon as look at it.
But Aunt Adeline despised Mozie, and Mozie despised Aunt Adeline. He hid under furniture and swiped at her. If she disturbed his nap, he hissed and growled at her. If he climbed to the top of the porch roof, he had no trouble getting down. He aimed for Aunt Adeline. If Aunt Adeline could, she would have gotten him executed.
When the deep mourning period expired for my aunt and uncle and cousin and no longer required that they wear solid black, Aunt Adeline ordered new dresses for herself and Ellen, sewn from fine purple silk with a bonnet and matching shoes.
I was to be trapped in black for three more months.
One Sunday, as we sat in church, Aunt Adeline sniffed. “What is that stench?” she whispered to Uncle Edward.
He sniffed all around and then bent over. When he straightened up, he made a face. “My dear, it’s your new shoes.”
Mozie had used her shoes for a toilet.
Her face grew so red, I feared for her blood vessels. As soon as the service ended, she wheeled us out the door and into the carriage.
At home, she charged through the kitchen, grabbing a flour sack. She snatched Mozie from his afternoon nap on a parlor chair, dropped him in the sack, and held out the twisting, growling sack to Jenkins. “Drown him.”
“No!” screamed Ellen, lunging after the sack.
“Have you no mercy!” I said.
Aunt Adeline handed the sack to Jenkins and flounced from the room.
Oh, how Mozie fought for his life! He battled that sack, pummeling it, ripping at it with his teeth and claws.
Jenkins held the sack at an arm’s length. “Sir?”
“Give it to me,” said Uncle Edward. He spilled the cat outside.
Mozie lit across the garden as if his tail were on fire.
From then on, Mozie slept and took his meals in the carriage house. One morning, I saw Gideon pacing up and down the alley, clearly agitated, tapping at the carriage house door and pressing his ear to the door. He wouldn’t go inside.
I didn’t understand until I heaved open the carriage house door and saw something that shook me from head to toe: Father’s broken buggy with its splintered axle and missing wheel.
Gideon stood stone still in the doorway, his pants drenched. Gideon had peed his pants.
During one of Uncle Edward’s trips to Philadelphia, Aunt Adeline grew as twitchy as a cat by the afternoon. She sent Mrs. Goodwin to the druggist, with an order written on a piece of paper and sealed in an envelope, and then paced about the parlor.
A little while later, Mrs. Goodwin returned with the mail and a package wrapped in brown paper. Aunt Adeline pounced on the package. She tore it open, took out a small container, and tapped two pills — for her nerves, she said — into the palm of her hand. She gulped the pills with water. Then she took the letters and climbed the stairs. Her bedroom door clicked shut behind her.
“It’s best we stay out of your aunt’s way today,” said Mrs. Goodwin.
Ellen called it a “Do Not Disturb Mama Day.”
I was sitting quietly in my room, daydreaming about Rabbit and wishing for a letter from Merricat, when my bedroom door flew open.
Aunt Adeline charged in, her face purple with rage. She brandished a leather strop in her hand. “Do you know how I have sacrificed to make a home for you and to care for you and your brother?”
For a moment, I was stupefied. I couldn’t speak. I felt glued to my chair. I didn’t know where her rage came from.
Then my wits returned. “Aunt Adeline, you’re not feeling well,” I said, talking as I moved, trying to wend my way around her. “Let me call Mrs. Goodwin. She’ll bring you some tea.”
Before I could reach the safety of the hall, Aunt Adeline grabbed my arm, digging her nails into my skin. “I am responsible for your moral development, to make sure you are a good, obedient girl, one who doesn’t shame her family and sully her family’s name.”
My aunt withdrew a stack of letters from her pocket. All addressed to Merricat.
My heart sank. “How did you get those?”
“Merricat’s mother is a good, decent woman,” said Aunt Adeline. “She has forbidden you to write to her daughter again. I’ll teach you not to make a fool out of yourself and out of this family.”
She raised the leather strap and brought it down on me, flogging me as one would flog a horse.
Mother always said that we must give words to terrible experiences because words release the power that the experiences have over us, but even as I write the words, I cannot release the shame and humiliation of that beating. I’m going to close this diary for now.
Four thirty. Our train stopped in Erie, Pennsylvania. It felt good to walk on the platform and stretch our legs, even if only for fifteen minutes. After we boarded again and the train started off, I began a game with Lucy and Adam and Gideon that Father and I had played.
“I see something yellow,” I said.
Adam and Lucy took turns guessing, squealing when they spotted the yellow slippers on a lady passenger. Gideon played with his eyes, searching out each color. After several rounds, Gideon tapped me, motioning that he needed the toilet.
I let him go alone. Several minutes later, he returned, his face shiny pink and his forearms wet from scrubbing. His hands were cupped and his eyes twinkled mischievously.
“Mouse,” he said, uncupping his hands.
Out popped a mouse! The poor thing trembled down to its tail!
Lucy screamed and Adam screamed and Sallie screamed just because they screamed. The frightened little creature leaped from Gideon’s hands and darted down the aisle, causing the women to scream and lift their feet.
On the floor, the carpetbag swelled and twisted. In a flash, Mozie clawed his way out and bounded after the mouse.
“No!” screamed Lucy, and she leaped after the cat.
Gideon bounded after Lucy.
Adam chased Gideon.
Sallie toddled after Adam, screaming happily, waving her arms in the air.
I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t move a muscle. I just stood there, my heart bursting and tears squirting from my eyes. Gideon spoke!
The conductor caught Mozie and carried the squirming cat back to us. “Is this your stowaway?” he said.
“No,” said Gideon. “That’s my cat!”
“Does he have a ticket?”
“No,” said Gideon. “He’s a cat.”
“Any more trouble, and I’ll have him arrested,” said the conductor.
Gideon took Mozie from the conductor. “Don’t arrest my cat! No more trouble. I promise.”
Once Gideon makes a promise, he means it. “Be a good cat,” said Gideon as he tucked Mozie into the carpetbag. “Or you’ll go straight to jail.”
Lucy cried because she wanted a pet mouse. To quiet her, I read her the “Mouse’s Tail” from Alice.
Gideon’s first word in nearly five months has worn everybody out and now
Seven fifteen. We stopped in Cleveland for supper. We slurped down mussels and thin broth with Gwen and the children.
All during supper, Gideon talked a blue streak. It seems as though all the words that he had stored up over the months poured out. He told Adam how he found Mozie, a tiny kitten that fit into his hand, beneath a neighbor’s porch; how Mozie’s fur looks like an M on his forehead; how Mozie is short for the composer Mozart; and how Mozie is the best cat in the world.
Gwen remarked that she saw me writing in my diary and declared that no girl ever wrote more. That made something grow and grow inside me, and that was my desire to spill everything out, from my parents’ accident to Aunt Adeline to Cousin Ellen and the terrible thing that had made us run away.
But I didn’t tell Gwen any of those things. It’s too soon. I told her that my parents had died recently, and that we’re going to live with a friend of my mother’s.
“It’s hard to lose someone you love,” said Gwen.
I felt myself well up, but I didn’t want to cry in front of Gwen and everyone else in the dining car. There are times I have an overwhelming need to talk about my mother and father. I looked at Gwen and knew she would listen lovingly, but something inside held me back.
I dabbed my eyes on the back of my wrists and excused myself to use the washroom. Sallie reached her chubby arms toward me. “May I take her?” I asked.
Gwen said, “Of course.”
Sallie leaned into my arms and dug into my sides with her little legs as if she were riding a horse. I pushed my grief aside and we whinnied past the uppity Mrs. Duggans.
Gwen is staring sorrowfully out the window. I am glad I didn’t add to her sorrows, whatever they may be, by telling her mine. Her mind seems to be working on something deep.
One day, after a heavy August rain had scattered the petals from Mother’s favorite rosebush, I was sitting in our garden, mourning the roses, when a visitor from Philadelphia called on us. Aunt Adeline introduced Dr. van Lavender as an old family friend.
His name sounded familiar, and then I recalled the letter Uncle Edward had received long ago. Dr. van Lavender was a tiny man with a pointy gray beard and clear blue eyes.
Mostly, he asked questions about Gideon. He said, “I see” a lot and scribbled my answers in a tiny notebook. His handwriting looked like a secret code.
He wanted to know about Mother’s side of the family and if I had known my grandmother and aunts and girl cousins.
I said no, that I’d never met my grandmother, that she died when I was a baby and that I was the only daughter of an only daughter who was also an only daughter.
Dr. van Lavender marveled at that and wrote that down, too.
He asked me about Gideon and the sort of boy he was. I said, “Do you mean before the accident?” and he said, “Yes.”
I answered Dr. van Lavender as honestly as I could. There was something about his demeanor that made me want to answer him. I told him that Gideon was backward in learning to walk and to talk and that it took him longer to learn some things, but that Mother always said there are a time and a season for everything, especially children, who are God’s greatest creation.
The doctor nodded. “Your mother was a wise woman.”
“Yes, she was!” I said. It felt so good to talk about Mother. I told him how Mother taught Gideon to read and to write and to do simple math and to tell time.
I told him how Gideon loved to play, just like other boys his age, even though he is clumsy and can’t do everything as well they do, but he wants to keep up.
The doctor nodded and wrote down everything and wanted to know about Gideon’s daily habits.
“Gideon has nice habits,” I assured the doctor. “He’s clean and takes care of all his personal needs. He washes himself exceedingly well and is very particular about his clothing, especially his shoes. He doesn’t like to be dirty or to wear scuffed shoes. He makes his own bed and tidies up after himself.”
“Can you describe the changes since the accident?”
A lump rose in my throat. I wiped my eyes with the back of my wrist. I told the doctor about Gideon’s refusal to talk and the faraway place his mind goes during our lessons and his great fear of the carriage house.
“It sounds as if life with Gideon is both surprising and heartbreaking,” said the doctor as he closed his notebook.
How well the doctor understood!
“Children like Gideon have a special claim on us,” said the doctor. “In addition to that special claim, Gideon has suffered a deep trauma. You both have.” He tapped his notebook thoughtfully with his pencil. “But I can help the both of you, if you’re willing.”
I grabbed his sleeve. “How?”
“Children like Gideon are born into all kinds of families, from the humblest cottage to even the greatest mansion. A child like Gideon weighs heavily upon family members who love them very much and want what’s best for them.”
Something inside shriveled. I shrank away from the doctor. “Gideon never weighed heavily on my parents! He doesn’t weigh heavily on me!”
His eyes seemed to penetrate my brain so that he knew what I was thinking. “Are you being honest with yourself, Pringle? Don’t you wish you could return to school? Continue your studies? See your friends again? Have you considered your future?” And then, he said, “Certainly, your mother and father considered your future, or they would not have sent you to boarding school.”
Dr. van Lavender extracted a slim leaflet from his vest pocket. The leaflet had the same engraving as the letter that Uncle Edward had read in Father’s library, so many weeks before. “I am the director of a school near Philadelphia,” said the doctor. “It’s a boarding school for children like Gideon.”
“No!” I leaped to my feet. “Mother would never —”
The doctor smiled kindly. “Think of it this way. You attend boarding school for the best possible education, one that’s suited to you, with your needs and interests at heart. Don’t you want Gideon to have the same opportunity? One that’s designed for children like him? One where there will be other children his age? Where he will study music and crafts and receive training in a trade? Doesn’t he deserve that?” And then he added, “Don’t you want a larger life for yourself? Don’t you deserve that?”
I took the leaflet and turned over the doctor’s words in my mind. My thoughts flew in every direction. I felt confused. I remembered the prayer I had prayed so long ago. I did want a larger life. The doctor offered the answer I’d yearned for.
A few nights later, Father’s attorney, Mr. Royce, was our dinner guest. I always liked Mr. Royce and considered him a trusted family friend.
After the dishes were cleared, Uncle Edward called upon Ellen to sing.
My cousin has one of the clearest, prettiest singing voices I’ve ever heard. I could see she loved the attention. Then she recited, “How Doth the Little Busy Bee” by Isaac Watts. My uncle’s eyes glowed with pride.
“She belongs in the theater,” said Mr. Royce.
Ellen’s eyes shimmered at the praise. She clapped her hands together as if she couldn’t believe that people were paid to sing and to dance and to show off.
“The theater is no place for our daughter,” said Aunt Adeline.
Ellen’s face burned with shame, the shimmer snuffed from her eyes.
In Ellen, I recognized a yearning so deep that I pitied her and envied her at the same time. I thought about how badly I wanted to return to Merrywood and a normal life. I understood what it’s like to want something so badly it fills you up.
Right now I want sleep.
The last thing I heard last night was the conductor calling out Toledo, Ohio, at a quarter to midnight. Around me, passengers are stirring. I’ve nudged Gideon awake so that he can take his turn at the toilet and wash basin.
Gideon snapped open his pocket watch. “Six thirty,” he said.
The train has picked up speed, rushing us toward our new life. Outside, Lake Michigan glitters, stretching from horizon to horizon, as large as a sea.
I have one last story to tell, and then I’ll close this diary and that part of my life. No more looking back! Only forward! In Chicago, everything will be different.
It seems like a lifetime ago but it was just five days ago. Aunt Adeline had a terrible row with Uncle Edward over her allowance. My aunt thinks a woman of her station should have more money to spend.
The next day was a “Do Not Disturb Mama Day.” We all stayed home from church and the curtains were drawn all day. We were relieved when Aunt Adeline took her afternoon tea in her room. Ellen sat in a chair, braiding the hair on a new doll, looking forlorn.
“Would you sing for me?” I asked.
Her eyes brightened and she scooted off the chair. “Want me to show you a dance?” She lifted the hem to her dress around her calves. “You won’t tell Mama?”
I promised.
Ellen began to move her feet as she sang. “Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me —”
Upstairs, Aunt Adeline berated Mrs. Goodwin over something trivial. As her mother’s voice rose, Ellen missed a step. She waited until her mother’s tirade ended, and when the bedroom door slammed shut, she started over.
“Starlight and dewdrops are waiting for thee —”
As she sang, she clasped her hands together against her cheek. She bent at the knees and then arced both arms over her head and tiptoed in a circle.
I pulled Gideon from his chair. We copied Ellen’s steps. It took several tries, but Gideon caught on. At last we had the steps and the words.
We sang and danced again, and when we finished, Ellen let go of our hands. She twirled on one foot, kicking out her leg as she turned. As she spun, she neared the table that held her mother’s Rogers statue.
“Watch out!” I said.
Too late. Ellen kicked the table. The table wobbled and the statue sailed off. I dove toward the falling statue, but missed. It crashed to the floor and shattered. Clay pieces flew all over.
Horrified, Ellen leaped away.
“What was that?” shrieked Aunt Adeline. Her feet sounded like gunshots as she rushed down the stairs and into the parlor.
Aunt Adeline spotted the fragments, and then her eyes flew to the empty spot on the table. “Who did this?” she said, her eyes blue ice as she looked first to me and then to Gideon and then to Ellen. “Answer me.”
“Mama,” said Ellen as she raised her hand.
My legs quaked. I prepared to step between her and her mother, to shield my cousin. I knew what her mother was capable of.
Ellen’s raised hand turned into a pointing finger. “He did it, Mama. It’s Gideon’s fault.”
Gideon stared blankly, not understanding.
Aunt Adeline’s face contorted with fury. She slapped Gideon across the face, hard. She called him a terrible name and ordered him upstairs.
I glared at Ellen. “You lie!”
Ellen buried her face in her mother’s dressing gown and sobbed.
“You’ve done nothing wrong, precious,” said her mother.
I moved in front of Gideon. I didn’t care what she did to me. I wasn’t going to allow her to hurt my brother again.
At that moment, the front doorknob rattled. In walked Uncle Edward. He looked at Ellen clinging to her mother and sobbing. “What happened?”
Ellen sobbed louder and cleaved to her mother for protection. She knew I wanted to wring the truth from her!
“Oh, Edward,” said Aunt Adeline, holding up a piece of the shattered statue. “Look what Gideon did.”
Uncle Edward drew her to him. “I’ll buy you another.”
“Don’t you see?” said Aunt Adeline. “It’s not the statue. It’s Gideon. He’s not making any progress. No matter how hard I try. And now he’s destructive. It’s only a matter of time until he hurts someone. You’ve got to do something before Ellen gets hurt. If anything ever happened —”
Uncle Edward wiped Aunt Adeline’s tears with his handkerchief, telling her, “I’ll notify Dr. van Lavender first thing tomorrow morning.”
That night, I wandered through Mother’s room. I longed for a sense of Mother, but the scent of jasmine and violet had faded from the room, disappearing along with most of her things.
I sat at Mother’s writing desk, a pretty desk with turned legs that Father had bought her from France. I imagined her sitting there, writing letters to me. “What am I supposed to do, Mother?” I asked. “Shouldn’t I be happy that Gideon will go to a special school? One for children like him?”
I opened the middle drawer of her desk. There lay Mother’s Bible. Mother had a habit of copying her favorite verses in the front of her Bible. She had marked 1 Chronicles 4:10. It was Jabez’s prayer.
“Oh, Mother,” I cried. “Are you telling me that I deserve a larger life? Is that what you want for me? Weren’t those your very words when I left for boarding school?”
The floorboards creaked. A hand touched on my shoulder. “Mother, I knew you would come!” I said, crying.
But it wasn’t Mother. It was Mrs. Goodwin. I broke down in huge heaving sobs. “I miss my mother. I can’t bear to feel this sad anymore.”
“There, there,” said Mrs. Goodwin, stroking my head. “You’re grieving, dear. You’re supposed to feel sad. It’s something we do to heal.”
She let me cry myself out, and then she said, “Pringle, there’s something I must tell you. You mustn’t let them send Gideon away. It isn’t right. He belongs with family.”
“But Dr. van Lavender said —”
“What the doctor thinks and what he knows are two different things.”
Mrs. Goodwin told me how her niece had a little girl just like Gideon. “The poor thing was two years old when her mother gave her up. When she died, no one could explain the black-and-blue marks on her little body.”
“This school isn’t that kind of place,” I said.
“Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t,” said Mrs. Goodwin. “Are you willing to risk it? Can this doctor prove how many of his students turn out well in life?”