My Notorious Life (7 page)

—If it ain’t the orphan girl with the mother, he said with a sneer.

—Talk about my mother I’ll scratch you.

—Try it, your claws will break.

—So, you got a last name now? I heard you was Charlie Booth.

—Don’t never mention the name Booth to me. It’s the name of a thumb-sucking liver-hearted puke.

I hid my thumbsucked red hand behind my back as he sat down next to me on the steps. He broke a long thin branch into fractions.

—How is your placement then? I asked, frightened by how he snapped the twig.

—Finished. I nearly ripped the beard off Booth’s face. Give me a chance I’ll cut the lids off both his eyes.

He rubbed his right thumb across the hard calluses of his left palm, as if preparing to strangle something. —I worked Booth’s plow every day till the sun went down. Yet still the b*ll*cks called me a lazy Irish b*****d. Fed me pig scraps. Woke me before sunrise to slave some more, without stop. Wake up Mick, he said, ya dirty Fenian Arab, muck the stall. Well I’d muck HIM if I had half a chance.

He threw the smithereens of twigs into the air and they fell on the dusty road. —And you, here, Miss Half Orphan. What about you?

—They make me write out psalms, I said, nervous of him.

—Psalms? Is it psalms you’re complaining of? he scoffed. —Look here. Then he pulled up the back of his shirt and showed me wheals of a whip on his back, red and raw.

The sight was mortifying. Charlie didn’t look at me, but only picked up a stone and threw it hard and wild at the road.

—You want a chicken sandwich? I asked after a bad minute.

He shrugged, so I brung him around to the kitchen door. Mrs. Temple was not at home. Charlie sat down at the table in his black mood and ate a sandwich without stopping. —You’ll make yourself sick, the way you eat, I said.

—Not me. Who I’d make sick is Booth. I’d go after him right now. Cut out his tongue and cook his liver and mail his organs to New York.

—There’s a train back there Mrs. Temple says. Paid with a ticket.

—You’re joking.

—Just before Christmas.

—Then I’m on it. What about you?

—Not me. My brother and sister’s here, and I’ve swore to look after them.

—Your sister lives in a big house outside town, he said. —Two stories and a big porch with a swing and a barn and servants. Those Ambrose set up here with their railroad swag. Plenty a room there.

—They wouldn’t take three of us.

—That’s ’cuz they’re snoots, he said, and flipped his thumb off his nose, stood up from his chair. —Thanks for the grub, Ax. Now I’m off again. On the way out the door he cast me back a terrible wink full of fury. The screen slapped shut and he was gone.

*  *  *

At last in December, there was the New York train huffing steam in the hard air of Rockford. Down from the steps of the passenger car disembarked the would-be authors of my future, those two Dix. There by the depot stood me and orphan Charlie, with my champion Mrs. Reverend Henrietta Temple to see us off. She was our solitary farewell party. No last minute trumpet blast announced the appearance of my sister and brother, crying for me to stay. Nobody came to beg, Don’t go. God did not scoop me up in the palm of His hand. The train huffed and snorted.

—Goodbye child, said Mrs. Temple, and pressed my head to her bosom.

There was not no home in Rockford for me, she had explained, and promised she would write me news of my siblings care of the Aid Society as soon as she could. She kissed me goodbye and I climbed onto the train. Just as I gazed my last on that dingy cowpat town, I seen a carriage stop alongside the tracks by the depot. A woman dismounted with a small girl. As the train pulled out I seen it was Mrs. Ambrose, and the girl was my sister trotting along beside her. —Dutchie, I cried.

As the train gathered speed, the two figures lifted their gloved hands to wave goodbye. My sister appeared to be smiling, her hand patting the air. Goodbye, goodbye.

—Dutchie! I ran down the aisle for the door, ready to leap.

Mrs. Dix was too fast for me, and caught my arm. —Stop now! They just wanted to wave farewell. They will write you letters, you can be sure.

Confined to my seat, I watched out the window with red eyes while the land flew backwards in waves of carpet unrolling.

T
en minutes out of Rockford, Charlie the nameless orphan slid into the empty seat next to me. He punched me in the arm, just softly.

—Squeak squeak, he said. —City mice again.

—I’m not no mouse.

—We’ll see about that. Why the red eyes, little missus?

I did not answer.

—Cheer up ya grannymush why don’t you? We’re heading back to glory, out of this godforsaken blot on the map. Ain’t you glad to see the last of it?

—I’ll be back, said I.

—Can’t keep away from the excitements of the prairie, eh? He flicked his thumbnail off his front teeth at me, then went lurching back down the aisle of the train, cracking his spruce gum.

—Sit down there now mister, said Dix.

—No thanks, he called back. —I drather not.

Charlie was never still the whole train ride. He strolled up and down the aisles and rode between cars. He whistled and hummed. He chewed pine gum. No matter that the Dix said Sit down, please, sit down, he only leaned his seventeen years old self against the doorframe and took a piece of rope from his pocket. He began to tie knots in it, bowlines and hitches. Nooses. We were well into the next day and Ohio before he spoke to me again. He came from the back of the car, so I didn’t see him till he plunked down next
to me, breathless, his hair a wreck. He was windburned. Streams of tears watered the corners of his eyes.

—Where’ve you been?

—On the train roof, he said, his grin enormous.

—You was not.

—Was. Rode up there half an hour. It’s better than flying.

—You’re lyin. If you was you’d be in trouble.

—Them Dix don’t give a parson’s n*pple what I do. If I fell off and died they would cheer.

I tried not to laugh at the word n*pple but only failed.

—So, Charlie said, sideways at me. —Wanta? He wagged his eyebrows and pointed upwards at the roof. —You wouldn’t never.

—I would so.

—You won’t do it. You’d cry. You’re a chicken-livered type.

I ignored him, stuck my chin out like his, even as I wished to ride the rooftops, brave as him and carefree.

—Suit yourself, says he, and made chicken noises. He swayed down the aisle, and at the end of the car, he beckoned to me. When I did not follow, he slid the door open. A blast of noise and cold came in, but none of the other passengers paid attention. The Dix were snoring.

What the H., I thought, and went after Charlie.

The platform between the cars was narrow and open to the sky. The racket of the wheels matched the churning fear in my system. Charlie grinned when he saw me, and pointed. A ladder led up to the roof. He grabbed a rung and climbed up.

—C’mon. It’s easy.

At the top he threw his leg on the roof and hauled the rest of himself after. He looked down and waved me up. I grabbed the low rung and put one foot, then one hand, on the ladder. Through my knit mitten the metal bit cold into the skin. The ground underneath us raced away, a bed of blackened snow below, hard gravel and ash, the sparks off the wheels. My mouth was dry as paper. Nobody would care if I fell. I climbed till at the top rung I pushed my head above the roof line. Knives of wind cut at me, pushed back the flesh of my face.

Charlie lay on his stomach, reaching for me. —Atta girl. Grab on.

—F. yourself.

—The dirty mouth on you. I thought you was a girl but now I seen you’re a hoodlum. He seemed glad of it, or even proud.

—F. and S., I said, and felt his praise as good as a pat on the back.

—Get your leg over.

I was up. I was on the roof. The train hurtled and fear froze me in the wind so I was staked there, fused to the metal, eyes streaming in the cold. Charlie grinned and called me Fraidy Cat. I could not rise farther than my knees. There was no hand hold. No foot hold. We was on all fours. Crawling. My breath was gone, stolen by the wind and sky all around. Charlie’s hair stood up wild, in snakes. For a minute I believed he would push me. He laughed at me, grinning out one side of his mouth.

—It’s great, ain’t it? he whooped and we gazed out at the vastness passing, flat and white, glistening with snow. The glare was blinding.

—What? he says. —Are you petrified?

I was. Also thrilled. We sat up there and watched the country pass us by. It was empty of humans, not a building, not a line of smoke or sign of a crop for miles, only white with the long black track behind and ahead, the rails a silver thread.

—Ain’t it swell? Charlie spit, his eyes rueful over the wasteland. —All that green fresh air. The mushmelons and the prairie sod.

—The pie and the pony. My voice was flat as his.

—All you can eat. Fresh milk and brown bread.

We watched it pass, flat and white. The train was slowing, then slowed still more. Something was wrong. Now a tomato-faced head popped up over the roof line of the train, scrags of hair whipped up in the wind. It was Dix, in a red apoplexy.

—What the devil do you two think you are doing? he cried.

—Havin’ forty winks, Charlie said. —A snooze.

—Get down here this instant, Dix ordered us, and as we climbed down he lectured. —What devilment were you up to? We feared you were dead! Heathens!

Mr. Dix dragged Charlie off for a tongue-lashing, and Mrs. Dix took me by the arm and brought me to her seat. I sat red-cheeked and winded, gazing at my lap.

—Miss Muldoon, Mrs. Dix sighed, so mournful, —do you not realize that all the circumstances of life are against a friendless girl like you? You
are under the worst sort of influences with a renegade boy like that. To take you on the roof of a train! This behavior can lead nowhere but to vice and degradation.

—I’m sorry, missus, I said, tracing patterns in the fog on the window glass.

She fanned herself. Little worried curls of frizz had sprang up around her hairline. —Our intention is to bring the influences of discipline and religion to bear on your wild and ungoverned heart. Will you or will you not reform your ways?

—If at all possible, I will.

—Well, if you cannot, you will be left with no choice but the streets. I must warn you there is no class in all our metropolis that combines so many elements of human misfortune as the women of the pavement. We see them in our shelters and they have no appreciation of what neatness is, or virtue. They have no discipline. If they receive a few shillings they spend it on some foolish geegaw.

Geegaw. I wished for one, whatever it was. It sounded edible, or like a jewel.

—These are cunning females who steal! or take to drinking! Worst, they become . . . Magdalenes, and live on the wages of . . . of . . . lust! I must be frank, Miss Muldoon. Half the orphans we try so desperately to rescue are the result of, ahem, sin and ruination. Is this your fate? To create more orphans?

—I would do anything to prevent an orphan, said I, ignorant of what my promise foretold but meaning every word.

—You must guard against the, ahem, chemical . . . influences of charming orphans like that one there, Charlie. What powers do you have to resist the temptations of wicked boys like him?

—I know how to write a psalm of David, I said in my defense.

—Do you? she said, softening toward me. —Do you know it by heart? Now she prompted me, quoting, —My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? She waited, expecting me to go on.

—But I am a worm, I said, —scorned by men, and despised by the people. All who see me mock at me.

Her face was livid with pity. —Oh dear. Poor little girl. You are not a worm.

I was relieved to hear it.

—You are not forsaken! she cried, embracing me. —Not by me, nor by our Lord, either. But you must not succumb to the influence of wild unruly boys like Charles, fathered in sin and mothered by the streets. No good will come of it.

I gave her a dutiful smile and busied myself fingering the upholstery of the seat.

—We will arrive in New York in two days’ time and have made splendid arrangements for you! A lawyer and his wife are looking for a housemaid!

—I will go find my Mam.

Mrs. Dix was sorrowful. —But we have no word of her. She has left Charity Hospital. Like many of the poor, your mother was stubborn and could not see what was best for her. Last we heard, she went off with a man of her acquaintance.

With a kiss on the top of my head, and a swipe of her finger down my nose, my protector returned to her husband, who had dismissed Charlie after a long sermon. Those Dix chatted away all night about our ignorant vices and terrible lack of neatness, while I burrowed into my corner of the seat and brooded out the window hollow as a gourd.

*  *  *

On the morning of the last day on the train, with the fearsome Gomorrah of our city drawing near and the Dix snoring in their dreams, Bulldog Charlie slid in the seat next to me once more. My stomach tightened with nerves and danger and something else I could not name. He was wild and unruly and a man of seventeen. I was thirteen years of age only. He jigged his leg. I tucked stray pieces of hair behind my ears and tucked my childish red knuckles under my skirts. If he did anything wicked or lured me with temptations I was to scream out, as Mrs. Dix had instructed me.