Alias Dragonfly (4 page)

“Ain’t got no biscuits, missus; they won’t be none ’til morning,” Nellie said. With that, she plucked a slab of beef from the serving plate, slathered it with juices, and peered hard at me. “Eat, Miss,” she said, holding out the same to my father. Her eyes were grave, a mellow golden-brown, with a broad, flared-nostril African nose. She carried herself proudly, in spite of her station.

“Thank you, ma’am,” my father said.

“All right then, suh,” Nellie answered, backing away, as though his respectful tone scorched her. “Thank you, suh.” She reached into the chicken’s cage, stroked his head once, and twisted its neck really fast. The dying chicken flopped and flapped around until it landed on my foot. I started sobbing, and heading for the door. Sure I’d seen chickens killed before, but that night, the sight of the poor bird made all my sadness burst out.

My father followed me, trying to wipe away my tears with his hand.

But as though my tears were just a passing rain shower and with no words of comfort at all, my aunt showed us to our room.

“I’ll leave you to your rest,” she said, handing me a handkerchief. “Put it in the laundry pile after you’ve used it. I’ve got to go pick up all the cushions in the parlor. Seems I’ve lost my wedding band, and Lord knows my departed husband paid a good sum for it.”

“It’s by the hat stand, just to the left of the big plant,” I said, blowing my nose really loudly . . . on purpose.

“What? Where is it, and how . . .?” My aunt’s mouth hung open.

“I saw a glint of gold as we were coming upstairs, ma’am. If you look, you’ll find it there.”

My father stared straight ahead. Maybe he was waiting for me to say just how many flowers there were on my aunt’s faded rose wallpaper, or have another burst of crying. I didn’t say anything more. I knew better.

“Thank you,” my aunt said stiffly. “I hope you are right. I was going to look for the ring in Nellie’s room, just off the kitchen. I thought maybe she filched it, not that she’s tried anything crafty like that before, but you know how they can be.”

“We
don’t
know,” my father said. “Nellie seems a fine woman. Goodnight, Salome.”

“I do declare,” my aunt muttered over and over as she bustled off.

“There are forty-six roses on each wall,” I said. “Now let’s get out of here, Papa.”

He just sighed and I silently unpacked my things; the buttercup yellow chemise Mama made me, a linsey-woolsey day dress, my favorite coveralls I wore most every day, two woolen work-shirts, a straw hat, and a handkerchief that belonged to Mama, her sweet scent; lilacs and summer rain, still on it. I held it to my face, inhaling the last of her.

“We have to let her go, Maddie.” Papa said softly as he traced his finger across a sampler Mama finished on one of her better days. On it, a little girl with brown braids stood waist high in tall summer grass, nubbins of thread making freckles on her face. She was pointing at the sky. On the bottom Mama had written
My
Madeline
, and the year,
1857
. Papa put it on the dresser and closed the trunk containing his belongings with a thud and a snap of the latch. “Jenny,” he whispered.

Papa had tears in his eyes. I’d cried so hard earlier mine were nearly swollen shut.

“We’ll make it through, Maddie. Somehow. Find your strength.” Papa curled up in a big, overstuffed chair, and I fell exhausted into a small spindle bed. My feet hung over the end.

The last thing I remember before sleep finally came was Nellie’s chicken, struggling to right itself and run away.

Raucous cries of “Knives for the lady! Pots fine! Rags and bones, ashes too!” jolted me awake. I peeked through the window over my bed and saw a crush of carts and carriages, mules and soldiers all massed in the street below. I thought about our tiny, quiet cabin on the riverbank and Mama dancing like a fairy princess in a patch of sunlight on the grass.

I splashed water on my face and tried to run a comb through my tangles of hair. I saw two dresses lying across the chair in my room. One was a pale, yellow homespun with a high white collar and a wide skirt. The other was a lightweight spring frock, faded brownish, sewn by a careless hand, uneven stitches up the bodice and down the front. A stiff petticoat and a small hoop with metal scaffolding sat like a collapsed pumpkin beside it. A corset with cotton laces, a pair of scratched leather high button boots, a tan porkpie hat and green bonnet completed my new wardrobe. My black dress and stockings were jammed into the drawer of an old wooden wardrobe. That was okay. I never wanted to see them again. I hated wearing black for Mama. She was all brightness, like my own sun.

But I guessed—rightly, I might add—that even though it sounded like I’d be a mere scullery maid in that house, Aunt Salome wanted me to look like something resembling a lady.

My father was still sleeping. I gave him a quick kiss on the forehead and went behind a tattered dressing screen to change out of my high-necked sleeping gown into my clothes.

I put on the yellow dress, the petticoat and hoop skirt, that was too short for me. I’d never worn such garb back in Portsmouth. Mama said hoops made folks look like they might tip over in a light wind.

“Besides, darling,” she’d say, in her lilting Irish brogue, “the mark of a fine lady lies not in her hoops, but in her manner and mind.”

I peeked at myself in a looking glass that hung on the wall. The color made my face pale, and my freckles looked like deep brown dots rampaging across my nose. The boots pinched my feet worse than my black, scuffed up ones. I sighed, and like a sailing craft pitching on a rough sea, I went to find my aunt.

Her boardinghouse had three stories and ten rooms: an entrance parlor, six bedrooms and a sewing room. Of course, Nellie’s room was the tiniest, just off the kitchen. There was a small door I’d seen when Papa and I were there I imagined led to a cellar.

The furnishings were a hodge-podge of white, wooden chairs and tables, two old mahogany buffets, and an assortment of over-stuffed divans backed with tattered lace. Paintings of plump cows hung next to biblical scenes of Jesus on the cross, and devils wielding pitchforks at frightened children.

I went back upstairs and found my aunt having a cup of tea in the parlor. A hat stand with carved lions’ heads loomed over her.

“Thank you for the clothes, Aunt Salome.” I said, not meaning a word of it.

“We dress respectable here,” she said, watching as I tipped forward in the stupid skirt nearly upending a table full of knickknacks.

“And try not to topple over, Madeline.”

My aunt held out a blue-veined, long-fingered hand. “See, I did find my ring. It was just where you said. My dear departed husband would offer a thank-you. But I thought it was mighty peculiar that you noticed it at all. By the way, I lock my money in a safe.”

Did she mean she was suspicious of me because I found her darn ring? I should have kept that to myself!

“Now, give Nellie a hand with the wood for the dining room hearth.”

While I was helping drag logs from the alley to the kitchen, and I sure didn’t need to wear that awful yellow dress to do that, I spotted a newspaper lying on the ground. It was the
New York Tribune
. After I’d cracked eggs and put bacon on the iron skillet, I laid the paper on the chopping block and read. Aunt Salome came up behind me, yanking most of the paper from my hand.

“Those Yankee papers burn well,” she muttered, crumpling them up and throwing them on the floor. She rang a rusty bell by the door.

“Nellie! Come clean up. Can’t have folks think we live in a slave cabin, all littered and filthy.”

When she’d gone, I grabbed up a page of the newspaper and began to read quickly. There were headlines about all the troops arriving in the city to repel a Confederate invasion, if necessary. Down the page was a particular column that caught my eye. It seemed to be written like someone was talking, not the usual reporting of numbers of soldiers or the puffed-up talk of politicians. It was the voice of a stranger in a strange place, just like me.

I’ve copied out all of these special dispatches throughout my story. You’ll see why. Here is the first one I read:

New York Tribune

Special dispatch from Washington City

I am alone here in a city like no other, in a time like no other, where an Illinois justice seeker named Lincoln leads our nation in a war like no other. I’m a young stranger in a capitol brimming with chaos.

Where I settle must remain anonymous, as must I. Even though
On to Richmond!
is the call heard all around, and though many, including this reporter, think it is premature to urge unseasoned troops forward, I am here to swear the South must be defeated, for the slaver still auctions and the slave is still sold. That is what Mr. Greeley, the publisher of this fine paper, believes as well. But many here do not.

As it is a time when supposed traitors, scoundrels, and plotters are locked tight in prison, I ask this: What is loyalty? Is one man’s patriot another man’s traitor? Will brother face brother, each willing to die for a cause they believe in?

I am here to find out.

So I will roam and use the wondrous new telegraph machine known as “The Lightning” to send my dispatches back to my paper.

I sign herein, and forever after as

PAN

I slipped the page into my bodice,
feeling pity for the writer who called himself PAN—a name I remembered from Greek mythology, a god of shepherds and wind. Or was it pity for myself, knowing my father would be leaving that very day?

“Mrs. Salome don’t take kindly to reading business from the outside, Miss,” Nellie said. “Except her holy scriptures, the
Washington Intelligencer
where she puts in her ads for boarders, and the paper that favors the Rebels: the New York Herald. You got that?”

“Yes,” I answered, somehow knowing I would find and read those
Tribune
dispatches whenever they appeared.

I clutched my father’s hand at the breakfast table. The thought of his departure was making it hard to swallow. The johnnycakes and bacon stuck in my throat as Aunt Salome introduced us to her one boarder, a very old man called The Colonel, who had long, wispy white hair. He held his fork with a trembling hand. Clutched in his other was a small revolver. He pointed it at my father in his uniform and whispered, “traitor.”

“We’re not enemies at this table, sir,” my father said, reaching over and gently removing the gun from the old man’s hand. I noticed a tiny Confederate flag on the Colonel’s lapel.

The Colonel opened his mouth but only hissing sounds came from his throat. All his teeth but one were missing. He grabbed my hand and pressed it to his dry lips.

Then, the poor man’s head fell forward and crashed into a china tureen that held the remaining eggs. His hands were limp.

“Oh, Lord, my good china!” Aunt Salome picked up the cracked tureen, cradling the pieces in her hands. The Colonel lay still.

“Nellie!” my aunt shouted. “Come get the Colonel.”

Nellie bustled in and, lifting the old man in her arms like he weighed nothing, carried him upstairs.

“Usually he faints away
after
the table is cleared,” my aunt said, shaking her head disapprovingly and mopping up the spilled eggs with a napkin.

The meal went on as though nothing had happened. I felt like I was going to scream. I stood up.

“Remain at table, Madeline,” my aunt ordered. My father pulled me back down to my seat.

Nellie came to the table, a pitcher of milk in her hand. “I’m afeered the Colonel has passed on, Missus Salome,” she said.

My father got up from the table.

“Shall I help with the body?”

“No, sir, I got hold of it,” Nellie said. “I’ll wash him up so when the cemetery cart come, he’ll be fit to meet Jesus sure.”

Just as I was saying a silent prayer for the Colonel, the door to the dining room opened. A young man walked, or rather limped, to the table at a tilt, as though blown sideways. He was tall and burly, with a shock of black hair that curled about his starched collar.