My Notorious Life (12 page)

Many years later, on the Day of our Fateful Encounter, I myself noticed his asthma and panting as he marched me, his trophy, to the courthouse. Even as we drove downtown, his wheeze was pronounced. It is still a question as to whether Mr. Comstock’s heavy breathing was the result of excitement at all the smut he rounded up (to burn, he claimed), or whether it was the strain on his heart that came from carrying around so much of his own flesh.

—Madame DeBeausacq, he said, as he escorted me to jail, —I do the work of God.

—What a coincidence! I cried. —So do I!

—Yours is the devil’s occupation, he said, prim as a doily. —Mine is the Lord’s.

—Perhaps your God is a two-faced employer, says I, —for many’s the time I have been thanked in the name of that same Lord for rescuing his poor lost lambs, which is more than you can say, I am quite sure.

—Your evil practice has come to an end, said he.

At this point, I offered him thirty thousand dollars. —Or more, I said, —if you wish.

He did not condescend to glance at me, but the bristles of his walrus mustache stood on end, while fire and brimstone came from his ears. —Madame DeBeausacq, as you call yourself, I will have you down for bribery.

I will have you down for a yellow-bellied sapsucker, you imbecile, I thought. I stared straight ahead at the liveried back of my coachman John Hatchet, listening to the hoof clop of my dappled team of grays, and adjusted the velvet cape around my shoulders with a laugh. My backbone was a ramrod, the diamonds in my earlobes sparkled in the winter sunlight, and the plumes of the ostrich feathers on my hat waved merrily in the breeze.

—The Tombs, John, and hurry, I said to my driver. —Mr. Comstock is eager to show off his prize.

It did not escape my attention that, as we traveled downtown together to meet my fate, we passed directly in front of Number 100 Chatham, the former Evans abode, with its dirty white paint and sagging roofline. It presented a dreary and unassuming façade, what our Mr. Brace might call a DREADFUL ROOKERY OF THE POOR. But I knew it once long ago as home, as the very place where I was apprenticed, and where I became the one the papers called the Notorious Madame X.

A
fter Mam died Mrs. Browder led me down to the kitchen. I sat at the table. It was nicked and gouged with hack marks of knives. I traced my finger along the grooves. Mrs. Browder put a kettle of water on the stove. I looked around blinking. Pots and pans and bunches of dried herbs hung from the low ceiling, and nailed up on walls grimed with soot was a string sack of onions, a ladle, a rug beater, a bone saw, a sieve. What would happen now? It was hard to breathe right. Mam. What would they do with her? I put my head on the table. Mrs. Browder boiled tea. I heard the clink of china and Mrs. Browder trundling down the corridor. When she came back she said, —There now, there’s the cloth laid for breakfast.

She put tea leaves in a pot and poured the kettle over them.

—Now you’ll see how we do here, she said. —Eight o’clock there’s the breakfast for the doctor and the missus. When the patients come, Dr. Evans takes the men. Mrs. Evans helps the females, if she’s in her right mind. They’re quiet people. He don’t say much. But her, now, you never would know to look at her what she’s capable of. I seen her turn to steel. She keeps her head. I seen her with the ladies. She doesn’t take too many these days but when she does you can’t flap her. But God bless her. Right here in this house she’s delivered mothers of four hundred babies and who knows what other afflictions. Her own two sons are grown and moved away but she had her little Celia. When she lost Celia half the life went out of her. You
will scarcely hear her laugh. No you won’t. And you won’t never speak to her about it. If it comes up you will only say: I am sorry for your loss. You remember to say that anytime there’s a loss and you don’t need to say more. That’s etiquette. That’s manners. If you ask me that’s why she took you. Why she took you in. Because you look like her. Celia.

—I am sorry for your loss, I said in a whisper.

—Bless your heart, love. Maybe she’ll take a shine to you. Because that woman likes the Sanative Serum a little too much, now, between you and me. So, if you’re up to it, you can be very useful. Me, I’m not up to it. My legs is bad. These stairs is too much for me. You’re small but I seen yesterday you’re strong. Not like the last girl. She was not up to it. She was hysterical herself, so she was. The sight of blood made her faint.

Mrs. Browder shook her head and put the tea in front of me with the boiled egg and bread and jam. —Drink that up now, sweetheart.

The smell of the egg made me faint. I put my head down on the boards of the table and closed my eyes.

—Poor lamb, said Mrs. Browder. She sat down and clasped me in. Her arms was soft and fleshy and her bosom was a pillow.

I stayed stiff with misery and mistrust.

—You lost your Mother. You’ve had a great blow. So it’ll be normal for you to lose your appetite. That’s grief, love. It’s grief. And only time will heal it. She uttered her nostrums and pushed the bread at me. —Try to eat now. You’re too scrawny. You need your strength. You’ll see. There’s no shortage of chores in this house.

I stayed with my head on the table. I did not cry. I was a plank of wood.

—Poor sparrow. Rest there and I’ll be back in two shakes. Mrs. Browder went out of the kitchen banging the door and down the corridor. Another door banged and there was noises of rummaging, a crash, Mrs. Browder grunting with effort. Upstairs there were footsteps, a doorbell ringing, voices. Was it Bernie come for me? Was it Duffy? No. Would they come? I didn’t care. I only wanted Muldoons, Mam with Joe and Dutchie, our Da back alive and Kathleen also, us all like a litter of cats in the bed as it was before.

Mrs. Browder returned after a long time with a bulky green canvas bag. —There we are, she said. —Your bed.

I did not see how it was a bed until she unpacked it and assembled the
pieces of wood into a frame and put the canvas on it. —It’s a camp cot. One of the ones the doctor uses for his patients. And it’ll do you fine.

My bed? What did that mean? I would stay, Mrs. B. said. Mam had asked for them to keep me. I would sleep on a cot. It was set up along the far wall next to the ash barrel. —Lay yourself down there, now, Mrs. Browder said, —and close your eyes. Don’t mind me. You must be tired, love. You’ve had a great loss. Lie down.

I wanted to stay in the dark harbor of my own arms.

—Poor girl. Poor orphan child. You’re all alone then, aren’t you? Your Mama said you’ve no one on the face of the earth.

I did not speak to say I had a brother and sister. How would I find them now? Despite my promise to Mam they was lost same as her, and it was only me left now, of all the Muldoons.

—Listen, Mrs. Browder said, —it’s some strange things go on in the house, and I don’t say it’s all the Lord’s work, but most of it is, and you’ll be all right. Go on and lie down there.

—I don’t want to.

—Don’t, then. She shrugged. —You could start today. I could use you. It’s a Monday and that means linen. On your feet, then.

She stood me up and handed me two metal pails with handles. I followed her through the door to a passage, past the front dining parlor, then through another door which led out under the stoop, up two steps to the street. The cold hit me and I shivered.

—We’ll have to find a proper coat for you, she said. —One that fits.

I didn’t talk, only followed along the packed sidewalk. I looked for Bernie in the crowd. Duffy. They didn’t know about Mam. Duffy’d be glad to be rid of us so he could find a wife who didn’t die. With two arms. One without no big lunk of a daughter eating all the bread. Nobody was familiar. The streets weren’t. Everything was dull. Flat. At the pump, Mrs. Browder worked the handle while I held the buckets.

—There, now, she said. —That’s better. Keep yourself busy. Make yourself useful. Takes your mind off trouble and sorrow. Isn’t that so?

No it was not so. I followed her along back the way we came. The wet pails were heavy and dragging my arms out of the sockets, banging my shins, slopping onto my legs and freezing the skirt. In the kitchen we emptied the water into pots that Mrs. Browder heated on the stove. —Thatta
girl, now, she said. She gave me her own enormous coat and sent me out and I fetched more buckets. While the linen stewed, Mrs. Browder took a lantern and showed me the dirt cellar, down seven wooden steps to a dank hole where her head touched the ceiling. A coal pile was in the back with the chute, and along the walls was a mountain of stores, barrels of beef and grain, potatoes and turnips. We filled two coal scuttles and took them upstairs to a room full of books where the doctor sat reading at a desk. He did not say a word while we raked out the ashes and put them in the scuttle and swept the hearth and laid the fire again.

—You’ll rake the hearth three times a day in all the rooms if it’s the cold weather, Mrs. Browder instructed very quiet, —and while you’re here you’ll trim the wicks and fill the lamps. You’ll have to stand on a step stool to do the sconces. You’re that small I’ll have to feed you biscuits and butter.

We went back down. I wanted to go up. Upstairs all those flights was Mam cold in the bed. Was she? She was gone. Mrs. B. now explained how when we was at the pump the knacker came and carried Mam through the kitchen and out the back door and took her away in the mortuary wagon. She was gone.

—She’s in her grave, child, Mrs. Browder said solemnly. But where that grave was, she didn’t say. She gave me a black ribbon. —Tie it on your arm and don’t take it off for a year.

We took the linen out from the soaking, long yellowed sheets with brown watermarks and spots of dark rusted blood set in shapes of blossoms, and scrubbed it with lye soap. The fumes burnt my eyes and my hands turned red with the sting of it. We rinsed everything and boiled it and fetched more water to rinse it then carried it out the back door to hang on the line in the yard by the lane. Later she showed me how to lay the cloth for dinner and had me pluck the feathers from a pair of chickens. —You’re a strong girl, she said, approving. —You know how to work.

I did not smile but I liked her.

The doctor and his wife ate their dinner in the dining room. Me and Mrs. Browder ate in the kitchen. —Now off to your bed, young Ann, she said, after we had done the dishes. I lay down. My protectress covered me with a blanket and squatted down on her haunches, groaning with pain in her knees. I looked up at her spongy face, the creases at the corners of her eyes.

—Your Mam is in heaven now, she said. —I’ll be off home to Pearl Street and back in the morning before the rooster crows.

She smoothed my hair, patted my arm, and went out into the cold. I turned over and faced the wall. A pattern of cracks made the shape of a dog’s head, with a long tongue and teeth.
Save me from the wrath of the lion, my life from the power of the dog,
I prayed, and talked to Joe and Dutchie in my head.
Mam is in heaven with our Da, and Kathleen too, and you both in Illinois, and here’s me with not a single Muldoon.
And I promised them,
I’ll come and get you.
The lamp guttered out. In the dark I sucked a calloused thumb for comfort and abandoned myself to sleep.

*  *  *

Mornings, I folded my cot, then put my apron on and began my chores according to Mrs. Browder’s instructions, carrying them out like I was made of pine. I did not ask for a thing, not a blanket nor a hard bun, or even no information like where was my Mother buried? How could I find my sister and brother? No one came for me, not Duffy or Bernice or any Aid Society. I did not hardly speak. In the dark of the kitchen at night I saw Mam’s face.
Dutch and Joe,
she said to me.
You’ll find them, Axie, won’t you?
I tossed on my cot and promised her again and wept when no one heard me.

I talked silent to my sister and brother from dawn in the morning while I laid the fires and done the washing, blacked the stove with lead blacking and went on errands. To the post office. The apothecary.
Don’t you worry,
I says to them,
I will find you if it takes all my born days. You are a Muldoon and don’t forget it
. Meanwhile people rang the bell to fetch Dr. Evans. More rarely they fetched his wife. Certain patients, mostly females, stayed overnight. When they pulled the cord upstairs we heard a bell in the kitchen and I brought them their soup and tea. I did not speak to them or they to me. I emptied the ash from the grates, and holding my nose I fetched the sloppers up and down and dumped them stinking in the pit out back and rinsed them in the deep lead tub cursing and gagging for the smell would choke a goat. I squirreled bits of bread and apple in my pockets, hoarded nuts in a crevice of my cot, stole cake in the dark when everyone was gone from the kitchen.

—You’re skin and bone, said Mrs. Browder. —Drink your milk. She fed me at every opportunity, food and information: You can tell the age
of a pigeon by looking at the legs. The rattle rand is the very best piece of beef for corning. Chalk wet with hartshorn is a remedy for the sting of bees. A bullock’s heart is very profitable to use as steak, and you broil it just like beef. There are usually five pounds in a heart, and it can be bought for twenty five cents.