Magruder's Curiosity Cabinet (2 page)

Thanks, but No

Kitty prefers the little birds. She sits on her park bench and watches them work as the sun rises over the ocean. Fat seagulls swoop effortlessly overhead, riding the sky like kites set free from their strings. Meanwhile, tiny birds flap furiously just to stay a few feet above the waves. For the little birds, nothing is effortless. One little bird spots something in the water and drops into the sea like a stone, only to force its way back up a moment later with a fish in its mouth. The others follow, one at a time—
flap-flap-flap-drop
,
flap-flap-flap-drop
. Exhausting.

The gulls seem amused by their tiny, hardworking cousins. They remind Kitty of her older brother, Nathan. How he'd laughed at her as she'd struggled ungracefully across their grandparents' frozen pond last winter, all flopping limbs and tearing petticoats. Meanwhile, he glided past as though he'd been born with skates on his feet. “Go ahead and laugh,” she'd called to him from the ice where she'd fallen yet again. “You don't have to skate in this foolish dress.”

But it had never been about the dress—not really. Nathan was a gull, always had been. He was handsome and graceful and fine, and life seemed to open itself to greet him, as if the world had waited thousands of years for his arrival. Kitty was one of those tiny birds—
flap-flap-flap-dropping
with all her might against forces far beyond her control.

“So, Nate,” she says aloud. “How is it I'm here and you're not? Why'd you fly off without me?”

She shivers. It's so cold here by the water.
Leave it to me
, she thinks,
to get myself stuck someplace with worse weather than home in London.
And it's even colder this morning, somehow, than it had been at night. Or perhaps Kitty just hadn't noticed. She'd been too busy gawping at the Coney Island skyline, which was unlike anything she'd ever seen. Towers and spires and minarets assaulted the clouds, lighting up the sky with electric bulbs uncountable in number. Thousands upon thousands of fireflies caught in tiny glass jars. There is electric light back in London too, of course, but nothing as lavish as this, nothing so theatrically unnecessary. Nothing so American.

How Nate would have loved this
, she'd thought. How unfair that I should be here and not him.

Now daylight has come, and the firefly army has marched on. There's not much to distract Kitty from her predicament or from an early-morning wind rolling off the sea. The moistness cuts through Kitty's overcoat, the bodice of her dress, her corset, all of it. All her armor, nothing but a soggy cage now.

Not that it matters.

But truly, how can it be so cold? Isn't this May? And isn't this meant to be a resort? How can one do any manner of resorting in this weather?

She smiles a bit at the thought, despite her circumstances. Kitty sits alone on a bench at the edge of the world. She's been here for two days. She knows no one in this city. She has no luggage, passport, or money. No family or friends. No one waiting for her. No one to care if she remains on this bench for another two days, or two weeks, or two years.

If ever there was a last resort, this is surely it.

Against her will, Kitty's gaze travels toward the west, in the direction of the majestic hotel she'd called home for all of ten hours and thirty-six minutes. She knows she shouldn't keep looking, shouldn't give that blasted hotel the satisfaction. But she can't stop hoping Mother will suddenly appear, robust and smiling, and turn the past two days of misery into a joke. She can practically hear her mother's voice. “Bless us,” she'd say. “You simply will not believe what nonsense our Kitty got up to in New York!”

Imagining her mother causes Kitty's eyes to sting, and she forces herself to stop.

Instead, looking out at the tide, she imagines herself lying facedown, rocking lifelessly with the current, her petticoats blossoming on the surface of the sea. The gulls would squawk in confusion, but the little birds would understand. It takes a lot of energy to keep flap-flap-flap-dropping. Sometimes energy runs out.

Kitty stands with the indignant air of someone who's waited too long for a tardy friend and has decided to give up and go home. She takes a few steps closer to the shore.
And why not?
she thinks.
Why shouldn't I chuck myself into the sea? What do I have to live for? Father long dead, Nate gone, and Mother…Mother apparently lost as well. I'm only seventeen
, Kitty reminds herself.
I've no skills, no way to get by, no way to get home. Anything, even drowning, has got to be better than just sitting here, day after day, waiting and waiting for exactly no one to come and precisely nothing to happen. No one back home is fretting over me anyway. No one here knows me, and no one there wants me. Wouldn't it be more convenient if I floated away?

She takes another step closer to the water.

But Kitty has never been convenient. Not from her first breath—the infamous moment when her mother took to her bed, expecting to deliver another baby Nathan. She hadn't even bought any new baby clothes, so certain was she that she'd produce a second agreeable, easygoing son. But she'd ended up with baby Katherine instead. A colicky daughter, red-faced and squalling.

Convenient? No
, Kitty thinks,
I've never been convenient to anyone.

Coney Island would be a right silly place to start.

• • •

Morning turns to afternoon, and the sun saunters indifferently across the sky. Bathers come and go; children laugh and cry and laugh again; couples hold hands and fight and make up and hold hands some more. Kitty sees it all, but no one sees her.

Although she sits quietly, there's a squelching, sickening fear inside, turning her limbs to water. What will she do? Where will she go? Will she die on this bench, unseen and unmourned?

Battling with her fear is fury. At the hotel, for tossing her out on the street. At her mother, for somehow allowing it to happen. At the children, for frolicking in the waves without a care. How dare they? She knows the thought is irrational, but it comes anyway. How dare they be so happy?

As intense as her fear and anger is her hunger. It's been two days since she's eaten. There had been a splendid breakfast on the steamship delivering her family into New York Harbor. But she'd been sullen, pushing the eggs around on her plate and rejecting the fruit course.
Lesson learned
, she thinks to herself now.
Never, ever refuse breakfast.

There's a screeching sound just behind her bench. She turns to see two squirrels tumbling over one another like playful children. Even the rodents, it seems, are having a better day than she. But suddenly things turn serious. The squirrels square off like a couple of boxers, both up and dancing on their hind legs, chittering at each other, mad-eyed and desperate. One lunges for the other and sinks in its teeth. The other squirrel shrieks, wrenching itself back and forth, but the first squirrel just digs in, tearing his enemy's throat. They are a tangle of limbs and tails and blood, wailing and screeching. Then it ends as suddenly as it started—the dominant squirrel stands triumphant over his lifeless foe. He glares up at Kitty, daring her judgment.

Kitty shudders and turns back to the sea.
I don't think I care for New York.

• • •

The afternoon slips away, as summer afternoons are inclined to do. Tired and sunburned, the bathers pack up and depart for dinner at home, hotel, wherever they belong. Even the little birds have somewhere to go. Not Kitty.

From the street behind, a strange sound. A conversation—no, multiple conversations—in mysterious, clicking tongues. Five women approach, with young children orbiting like hyperactive satellites. Four appear to be Africans, with dark skin and ample, rounded bodies swathed in colorful, patterned materials. The upper lip of each woman is stretched outward four or five inches by a ceramic plate inserted in the skin. The plates look painful, and how the women can speak at all is a mystery to Kitty. But they do, and they seem perfectly happy. Their children run down the beach and splash into the water, while the mothers laugh and chitchat, always with one eye on their young ones in the waves.

The fifth woman hangs back from the group. She is lighter skinned and very tall. Her stretched-out neck is decorated with dozens of brass rings. The other women give her friendly glances but do not speak to her; she is with them but not of them. The tall woman has two young children with her—a girl and a boy—and they stay close to their mother, clinging to her long, embroidered skirt. She leans down and urges them, in yet another language Kitty doesn't understand, to go play with the others. Before long, the children forget their shyness and race down to the water's edge.

Satisfied, the tall woman approaches Kitty and smiles. She points questioningly at the empty space on the bench.

“Oh yes, please,” Kitty says. “Please, sit.”

The woman nods. She reaches into her yellow bag and removes a leather canteen. Noticing Kitty's naked envy at the sight of fresh water, she holds out the canteen.

“No, I couldn't,” Kitty says out of ritual politeness. The woman offers the canteen again, and this time, Kitty can't resist. She seizes it like a life raft and takes a long drink of the fresh, miraculously still-cool water. Although she knows she shouldn't, she takes another drink. And a third.

She wipes her mouth, embarrassed. “Thank you.” Kitty tries to return the canteen, but the woman refuses it. She puts up her hand.
Thank you, but no.

“Thank you, ma'am. That's so…” Kitty takes another sip, blinking back a few grateful tears.

The woman's daughter runs to the bench, her brother close behind. The girl cries and points at her brother, babbling a list of offenses. The woman puts her arms around her daughter, kisses her on the forehead, and smacks her playfully on the bottom, sending her back toward the beach. She addresses her son, firmly but kindly. He nods begrudgingly and follows his sister to the water. The woman smiles at Kitty and shakes her head.

“Oh, I know,” Kitty says. “I have an older brother too.” She bites her lip. “Had. I had an older brother.”

The woman tilts her head thoughtfully. She pats Kitty on the knee and says something incomprehensible yet comforting. She reaches into her bag, and as she does, a handful of postcards spill out.

Kneeling to pick them up, Kitty sees that the cards are not true postcards at all. They are multiple copies of the same photograph, a portrait of the woman sitting beside her on the bench. Garish text sits at the top of each photo: CONGRESS OF CURIOUS PEOPLE PRESENTS… And at the bottom: OOWANA SUMBA, SAVAGE HEADHUNTRESS OF BORNEO! In the photos, the woman is topless, wearing only a tangled grass skirt. She wields a machete in one hand, and with the other, she grasps a still-dripping severed head by its long, black hair. Startled, Kitty can only laugh at the contrast between the courtly lady before her and the primitive person in the photograph—from her hair (wild in the picture but neat in real life) to her clothing (minimal in the picture, modest in person) to her expression (crazed in the portrait, kind in reality).

The woman snatches the cards from Kitty, embarrassed.

“That's you?”

The woman nods, then shakes her head no, then reconsiders and nods again. Finally, she gives up and shrugs, her neck rings tinkling a friendly little song. From her bag, she retrieves an oblong package in silver foil and hands it to Kitty.

Kitty gasps. Nate had told her about these—invented in Coney Island not long ago, they have become world famous in a few short years.

Hot dogs.

“I couldn't!” Kitty exclaims. She hands the treasure back. “No, really… It's your dinner!”

They debate the frankfurter in informal sign language. Finally, the woman snatches the package, unwraps the hot dog, and tears it in half. She holds out Kitty's half and glares at her, unblinking. This is a woman skilled in making children eat.

Kitty eats.

It's wonderful.

• • •

Too soon, the sun sets, and the African women fold up their blanket. Amid the children's howls of protest, the women begin the trek back up to the street.

The woman with the neck rings stands up and studies Kitty. She points at the bench, then up the street. She shrugs and says something apologetic.

“I'm all right,” Kitty says. “Thank you for the food. Really, I'm fine.”

The woman's children approach the bench. Their mother speaks to them, and they curtsy to Kitty, politely whispering something that sounds like good-bye.

Kitty waves to them as they walk away. The little boy drops to one knee, and his sister climbs onto his back. She rests her head on his shoulder. Although he is only a few inches taller than his sister, the boy manages to stand back up. He takes his mother's hand and carries his exhausted sister toward home.

Big brother
, Kitty thinks.
What a lovely big brother he is.

Kitty makes a decision. “This is silly,” she says aloud. “All this sitting about, moping. I should go find Nate.”

• • •

Kitty walks along Surf Avenue, the street lit so brightly it looks like noon rather than night. The street is dotted with private bathhouses, restaurants, and the entrances to the three major amusement parks—Steeplechase, Luna Park, and the newly opened Dreamland. Roller coasters whoosh by overhead, and steam-powered calliopes toot in the distance, while barkers call out for suckers to take their chances on unwinnable carnival games. Kitty barely registers any of it. Her mind has only one focus—finding the magic words that will get her on board the ferry to Manhattan, back to her steamship to find her brother…all without so much as a penny for a ticket.

The ferry terminal is crowded with cranky, sunburned Manhattanites. Children whine, and couples snipe at each other, and Kitty wonders if this was a good idea.