All for a Sister (11 page)

The girl’s face dawned with realization, and she nodded for all she was worth. “Yes, yes, of course, Mr. Ostermann.”

He leaned closer. “And tell her within earshot of Mr. Newton.”

This seemed a terrifying notion to the girl, but Werner simply laughed and sent her back to her spot.

“Now,” he said and started walking, leaving Dana little choice but to follow.

If she’d had it in her mind to disappear within the busy studio again, nothing but disappointment awaited. Werner couldn’t take more than a dozen steps without somebody stopping him to ask a question or hand him a business card. On two occasions he was invited to dinner—or
something
—by some beautiful woman, and these were the only of their interruptions to give Dana more than a passing glance. She withered under their scrutiny, acutely aware of the plainness of her face and the silly mending basket still clutched in her hand. Werner entered each conversation without introduction and left without comment. Because of his height, she was forced to take three steps to his every one and was nearly breathless by the time they emerged through the door and out into the blinding sunlight.

Immediately she stopped, cupping one hand across her eyes, the pain ringing across the top of her head.

“Are you all right, Dana?” She sensed that he was several steps away.

“It still takes me by surprise,” she said, waiting for the dancing orbs to allow her the confidence to proceed.

“I know what you mean.” He was beside her now, and touching her again at the same place on the back of her arm, but this time she never thought to pull away. Instead, she gave herself
over to be guided, blind at first, but eventually acclimating, and by silent, tacit agreement, he took his hand away, walking slowly beside her, matching her step.

Eventually he opened a door and ushered her across a threshold into yet another cloud of noise—hundreds of conversations underscored by the clatter of cutlery. The scent was indefinable, yet familiar. Food and coffee.

She followed Werner in a serpentine path to a table against the far wall with a tented board that said
Reserved
.

“It’s reserved for me,” he said almost shyly, pulling out her chair.

Before he himself sat down, a lanky youth sporting a crisp, white apron was at the table, pencil poised to notepad. After a brief consultation, he took down an order for an egg salad sandwich and tea for the both of them.

“I’ve never actually had egg salad before,” Dana said, feeling childish the minute the words came out of her mouth.

“I can imagine there is a lot in the world that is new to you.” He reached into his pocket for a cigarette, and given that everyone around them was smoking, she didn’t feel she had the right to ask him not to. Mistaking her interest, he held the slim box out to her in invitation.

“No, thank you. I feel like I am breathing in enough just from the air around me.”

Werner chuckled but made no move to stub it out. “Tell me, then, what else is new to you? What has taken you by surprise?”

Initially, it was the bluntness of his question that took her by surprise, and she took a long look around the room, searching for the answer.

“The noise, I suppose. And it seems like everything moves so fast. Cars . . . and people.”

“And you had no idea what to expect?”

She leaned forward to whisper, “Like I told you, I’d never even seen a motion picture. So when I see all of that—in there—it’s hard for me to understand.”

He’d just taken a drag of his cigarette, and the smoke curled up from his half smile. “They are just stories. Certainly when you were a very little girl, you had storybooks. With pictures?”

“Yes,” she said. One about kittens—a family of them—who got lost in the garden. But she didn’t go into any such detail here, feeling foolish enough as it was.

“A movie is nothing more than such a thing. But thousands upon thousands of pictures come to life to tell the story. Some of them silly, like what we just saw with Celeste. Nothing more than a series of jokes strung together to make people laugh. Or sometimes romance, because everybody loves a lover.”

Just then the young man came with two steaming cups of tea and the sandwiches, all of which was set on the table with precision. He was about to leave when Werner beckoned him to stay. “In case the lady wishes to change her mind,” he said, instructing Dana to taste her sandwich. She obliged, having taken a moment to observe the pastel-yellow paste between the bread, thinking it was the prettiest bit of food she’d ever seen. With the first bite, she immediately appreciated the softness of the white bread, but with the second, the fresh, somewhat-tart taste of the egg spread delighted her, and she said so through an indelicate mouthful.

“Very good,” Werner said, handing a folded bill to the waiter with instructions to keep the change and bring another sandwich wrapped in waxed paper. “Next time I will remember to ask for a slice of tomato.”

“I’ve never had a tomato,” Dana said, chewing thoughtfully.

“Ghastly.” His sandwich remained untouched as he finished his
cigarette, and with her own half-gone, Dana was tempted to snatch it off his plate. “That will have to be a priority for our next meal.”

The last bite lodged in her throat at his words, and she took a sip of the scalding tea to wash it down.

“It seems a small price to pay for your story. After all, some writers get paid hundreds of dollars for such things, even the genius whose muse led him to pen the very scene that has Miss DuFrane currently making love to a camera while surrounded by cheap prop underwear. We can write a tomato into your contract, if you like, and let that shifty little agent of hers take a look at it.”

“I think it would be a waste of your time,” Dana said, trying to resurrect the pleasure she’d felt at the beginning of the meal.

“And why is that?”

“You said people like stories that make them laugh. Or have romance. I’m afraid there’s none of that in mine.”

Finally he stubbed out his cigarette in a small tin dish. “They also love a good hero. A survivor. Someone who overcomes injustice and lives to face the world. Out of the grave. Back from the dead. Risen from the ashes. However you tell it.”

She listened intently, picturing herself as being worthy of those words. Yes, she had survived, but what other choice did she have? And the only grave she knew of was the one where baby Mary lay, and her mother, for all she knew. There would be no laughter, no romance mixed in with these ashes. As to injustice—well, that would need more than a thousand pictures to capture.

Still, for the first time since their initial interview, her curiosity was piqued. “What would it look like?”

She’d caught him midbite, and he looked at her questioningly.

“I saw all of those different little stages, and I’m just wondering, what would my story look like?”

“I’m counting on you to tell me.”

TITLE CARD:
Far from the night of hearth and home, peaceful slumber brings comfort to the souls of the innocent, for such is the heart of children in the eyes of God.

CLOSE-UP:
Neat, white letters above the barred window of an interior door:
Children’s Dormitory
.

INTERIOR—CHILDREN’S DORMITORY:
It is a long, dark room, its contents barely discernible by the pale light coming through a barred door. There are twelve beds aligned in neat rows, a narrow aisle between them. Small, sleeping forms—some peaceful, some restless—under thin, worn blankets.

CLOSE-UP:
A small, freckled girl, her face scrunched tight in sleep.

CLOSE-UP:
A little girl clutching a ragged cloth doll.

CLOSE-UP:
A little girl with shorn hair, sleeping with her thumb in her mouth.

CLOSE-UP:
Dana, lying on her back, hands folded, staring up into the darkness.

INTERIOR:
A long, dark hallway. The wide, shadowed figure of an imposing, heavyset woman, walking, dragging the end of a short baton along the wall. Her wide, utilitarian face is set in a menacing scowl; her hair secured in a knot squarely atop her head. Mrs. Karistin—children’s matron. Stern, unyielding, relentlessly cruel.

1906

DANA NEVER KNEW
for sure if she awoke before the footsteps or if they drew her from her sleep. In either case, their strident cadence engaged her first sense every morning, before she opened her eyes to the thin, amber light streaming from the hallway.

“Awake and alive, girls. Awake and alive.” The familiar morning command of Mrs. Karistin echoed at the edge of the darkness. Dana opened her eyes but kept her body perfectly still, as the slightest movement threatened to bring the chill of the morning into the cocoon of warmth she’d spun during her sleep.

“Stupid old hag.”

The whisper came from the next bed and forced Dana to pull her thin, gray blanket below her chin in order to respond. “Hush.” The word was not much louder than the sound of Mrs. Karistin’s skirt brushing along the brick wall, and it was not intended to defend the woman’s honor.

“Well, she is,” the girl insisted. She’d arrived only two days before, brought in thin and dark with dirt.

“Awake and alive, girls. Let me see you.” For a moment, the silhouette of Mrs. Karistin filled the narrow door, creating a solid shape behind its metal bars. She was as tall as any man, with a figure like a block of cheese—her shoulders, waist, and hips the same intimidating width. Even her profile yielded no disruption to the straight planes of her body. What a relief it must have been for her to take on the job of a prison matron, to wear the formless, gray woolen dress with its long, straight sleeves and sensible belt, sparing herself the false accommodations of corsets and bustles and wide mutton sleeves. For all the children knew, she wore this uniform to church on Sundays and to the theater with Mr. Karistin, if such a man existed.

Dana knew enough of Mrs. Karistin’s routine to close her eyes tight, because the minute she said, “Let me see you,” the room flooded with light as she flipped the switch on the wall outside, followed by the disgruntled sound of waking girls.

“Up and dressed, girls. Ten minutes. Up and dressed.” Mrs. Karistin punctuated this command with a clack of her leather-clad baton over the bars of the door. A gesture she would repeat when there were six minutes left. Then four. Then two, until finally to the back of the head of any girl not dressed, with her hair combed and braided neat, standing squarely at the foot of her crisply made bed. It wasn’t a hard blow to the head, not enough to knock a girl to her knees, or even be felt much by the end of the day. But enough to make her elbow her way to the washbasin and be the first in line to splash her face with stinging cold water, or maybe sleep with her shoes on.

Having awoken in this place for nearly a year, Dana had mastered the routine. She swung her stockinged feet over the side of the bed, where her shoes were waiting to be filled and laced. While the other girls lined up at the washbasins, she got out of bed, pulling her blanket up with her and smoothing it in long, sure strokes. Her dress lay at its foot, spread out like something a little girl would fold over the form of a paper doll. It was a trick she’d learned from an older girl during her first weeks here. It not only kept the dress from wrinkling, but it also provided an extra layer of warmth during the winter nights.

She could use that warmth right now, as she shivered in her thin cotton shift. But then she’d run the danger of getting her sleeves wet while she washed, which would mean red, chapped skin for days after. So, half-dressed, she went to the washbasins, which, by now, were vacated by the younger girls, and pumped fresh water into the waiting bowl. She’d learned it was coldest right
from the spigot, so she let it sit while she removed her nightcap and ran a damp hand over the hair she’d carefully brushed and braided the night before.

“You look like a granny with that thing.” The new girl—Carrie, she remembered—stood behind Dana, hugging her arms around her own thin frame. Her skin was dark, close to the color of the gingerbread cake Mama used to make at Christmastime. Two small bruises, suspiciously the size of a man’s thumbprints, were making their last stand just below the girl’s bony clavicles.

“It keeps your hair nice.” Dana tried not to look at the matted nest that created a dark cloud around the girl’s sharp face. “So you don’t have to take time to brush it in the morning. And then, when it’s warmer and there’s bugs in the bed, it keeps them out.”

Carrie swiped her arm—wrist to elbow—under her nose and lunged for the vacated spigot next to Dana. “I don’t know about you,” she said, pumping vigorously, “but I for one don’t plan on being here this summer.”

Dana pretended not to hear as she cupped her hands beneath the surface of the icy water and brought her face low to splash it clean. Just what kind of dirt had accumulated there throughout the night she couldn’t imagine, but that was the rule. Face washing, three times a day: in the morning, after the noon meal, and before bed. It was best in the summer mornings, after a long, sticky night in the airless room, and agreeable after lunch, because it meant another day was half-over. And while frigid winter mornings made the washup nearly intolerable, it was far, far worse at night, because after the cleaning came the darkness.