On the night following her visit to the House of Mystery, Lizzie awoke sometime after dark. It took her a moment to know where she was, since she was not in her bed, where she ought to be. She couldn’t imagine why she hadn’t told Sam to take her home. A fat moon floated just outside the tower window, one small, dark cloud patting its face like a powder puff. There was a tatted antimacassar under her cheek; when she raised her head, she could feel its web indented into her skin.
She was still dressed, even to her shoes. She still had Mrs. Pleasant’s slip of paper balled in her hand. The gaslights had been long ago put out. She took the paper to the window. She could see the halo of lights over the downtown, too far away to be useful. There was also Mrs. Pleasant’s elaborate script to contend with. Plus the ink had smeared from the heat of Lizzie’s fingers. But she thought the address was in Chinatown.
She’d not eaten since breakfast. She made her way, partly by sight, partly by touch, partly by memory to the basement and the kitchen. The Brown Ark groaned from her weight on the stairs. The parlor clock chimed a quarter-hour. She groped through the dark pantry for an apple. When she bit down, it became a potato instead. After her initial disappointment, she thought it tasty enough. She was very hungry!
What might Mrs. Pleasant and Mrs. Bell have eaten for dinner? Lizzie wondered whether Mr. Bell would have joined them; somehow she thought not. Lizzie pictured the two women at the table together, Teresa and Mary Ellen, both of them elegantly gowned, necklaces flickering in the candlelight, the murmur of their voices. Laughter. She herself might have been spoken of, though she couldn’t imagine what would be said. It was strangely exciting to think of being talked of by two women so often talked of. Ordinarily Lizzie hated the idea of being a topic for conversation.
She took another bite of potato, less pleased with the taste this time. Then she heard someone who shouldn’t have been there coming soft and halting down the stairs.
During this period, an eleven-year-old girl named Maud Curry also lived as a ward at the Brown Ark. Maud was a thin child, with white-blond hair that coiled down her neck so thickly it was kept cut short, to prevent the abundance from sapping her strength. Maud’s mother was consumptive and had been separated from her daughter for the child’s own health. Her father had owned a small dry-goods store, but it had been embezzled away by his bookkeeper. Unable to bear presenting his darling, ailing wife with bankruptcy and failure, he brought Maud one morning to the Ark, kissed her, told her he would return for her in a day or so, and disappeared. He was by nature a cheerful, hearty man, and he had never given any outward sign of distress.
It might have been easier on Maud if he hadn’t dissembled so persuasively. As she saw the days pass and his promises turn to lies, she began to suspect his every emotion: Had he ever been happy with her and her mother? Had he ever intended to stay? Had he ever loved them?
Her mother’s health was not improved by her father’s desertion. She sent Maud many tender letters, but often they were not even in her own hand and she did not pretend that Maud was coming home soon.
After the initial shock, Maud’s unhappiness settled so deep inside her she was rarely aware of it. She was her father’s daughter. She made a place for herself among the other wards as someone who was ready for anything. “Maud is a sport,” the boys said admiringly. “Maud will stop at nothing.”
At least she had a mother and a father. At the Brown Ark, that counted for something. It was the first question they asked when a new child arrived. They’d asked it of Jenny Ijub. Did she have a mother? A father? Anybody?
Jenny Ijub was not settling in. She was small, but without the ingratiating manner that might have turned this to her advantage. She refused to be dressed and carried about like a doll, though this would have vastly improved her popularity. Lizzie believed her to be four years old, but she was, in fact, five. She had told the other children that her friend, Mrs. Pleasant, was sending her a special gift, loved her dearly, would be coming to take her away soon. This was what she had made of Mrs. Pleasant’s promises.
Maud had once said something too much like this herself, had even believed it. She’d been made to look a fool. By the time of Jenny’s arrival, Maud had lived at the Ark for almost a year. Jenny’s assertions were preposterous. Jenny was trying to make fools of them all. Maud held Jenny’s nose and mouth closed until she confessed as much. She pinched Jenny’s nose hard enough to leave fingerprints.
“She sleepwalks,” Maud told the matron when questioned about the bruising. “And she’s such a liar! If there’s one thing I can’t bear, it’s a liar.”
She’d heard the matron say this herself often enough to know it would find its mark. “So a friend is coming to fetch you?” Nell asked Jenny. “And what friend would that be? You’ll find no friends here, missy, if you can’t learn to be truthful.”
The warning had no apparent effect. Maud told the other children that Jenny boasted she’d owned a pony, a parrot, a silver cup with her initials, dresses, and dolls. Her mother had allowed her lemon sticks whenever she liked, had kept a vase full of them on a low table within Jenny’s reach. Her lies grew more and more fanciful. Her father had been as rich as a sultan. She believed in fairies, because she had actually seen them. She’d seen ghosts and angels, too. She didn’t believe in God. Before a week had passed, everyone at the Brown Ark knew you couldn’t trust a thing Jenny said.
Even Jenny was persuaded. Her memories tangled into the things Maud reported. Jenny thought there had been a pony, dresses, and candies, but apparently these were lies. And more confusing, she didn’t remember telling Maud anything. She vowed to say nothing about herself to anyone—she already hated them all—but in the midst of her rigorous silence, her lies carried on without her.
Once her untruthfulness was known, she became an easy target for pranks. Cups of sand were poured into her shoes at night, followed by cups of water. Imogene Reed caught a fat black spider and saved it in a glass, to be dropped onto Jenny’s face as she slept. The cores of several apples were stuffed into her pillowcase.
The food at the Brown Ark was not what Jenny was used to. The discipline was also a hardship. She’d never before been expected to stay voluntarily in her chair, with its terrible spindled back, for hours at a time. She had never been asked to envision God’s disappointment in her. She had not been told to keep so clean. She reacted against confinement like a wild animal. She paced in her cage.
It was Jenny, then, whom Lizzie heard on the stairs. When Lizzie turned around, there she was, her eyes brooding, her hair wild as a nest of sticks. She had been unable to do up the laces at the back of her dress, but was otherwise fully clothed.
“Jenny Ijub,” Lizzie said. “Little Jenny. You frightened me. You should be in bed.”
“I know.” Jenny began to back upstairs, her legs so short each step was a difficulty. Lizzie caught her by the arm. What a twig it was! Lizzie’s fingers wrapped about it and squeezed, and she could feel right down to the bone.
“Where were you going?”
“Nowhere.”
“All dressed up to go nowhere? It won’t do, miss. I know you’re fond of deceits. I’ll have the truth from you now.”
“I wanted the cat,” Jenny said. “The stripe cat.”
“The cats don’t come inside.”
“I didn’t know.”
Jenny’s voice was unconvincing, but she met Lizzie’s eyes steadily. The look on her face surprised Lizzie. It was an altogether adult look. It was anger.
“You know this very well, Jenny. Someone let the orange cat in today and it killed a lovely little bird. Jesus hates to hear a child lie.”
“I can’t sleep,” Jenny said, her chin coming up and her mouth setting. “I want to go out.”
Lizzie turned Jenny away, intending to march her smartly upstairs. Instead she fastened up the back of Jenny’s dress. She smoothed her own hair with one hand. “Get your coat. I won’t have you catching a chill. Matron has enough to do without nursing you.”
She fetched her own coat, too. Complying with Jenny’s wishes made no sense, but this seemed to be exactly the part that appealed to Lizzie. You don’t have to be the same person your whole life, she told herself. She was excited to see that she could be impulsive, unpredictable. They don’t expect that from me, she thought. She would show them. She had no idea at all who they were.