Outrun the Moon (13 page)

I CAN THINK OF A HUNDRED WORSE THINGS than early morning laundry, but you'd think Headmistress Crouch was sending these girls to the military prison at Alcatraz by the way they bellyache. The only other girl who doesn't seem fazed by the extra work is Francesca.

We trudge through the garden at three a.m. carrying lanterns. Unlike the others, I am not in uniform, preferring to do laundry in the more comfortable getup of my quilted pants and jacket.

Nobody speaks. Katie marches with grim determination, as if we were headed off to war. Harry is on her heels, and Ruby shepherds a sleepy Minnie Mae, who can barely stand straight. She has wrapped her yellow ribbon around her head to keep her hair out of her eyes. No one has bothered to wear a hat.

We crowd into the laundry room. A stove stands on the far end next to a door that must lead to the courtyard I saw the other night. Someone has lit the fire. A mountain of navy blue dresses hogs most of the concrete floor, which features a drain in the center like Ba's shop. The solitary window is doing its best to carry away the sour reek of soiled laundry, though it's a losing battle. The stench must have soaked into the walls, and it cannot be blown away.

Wood Face looks like she's coming undone. Her fingers paw at her neck, and her tiny feet carry her around the four washtubs, each containing a washboard. That pesky number won't leave me alone. “I need breakfast before I do anything or I'll faint.” She peers inside one tub as if she might find something to eat at the bottom.

The girls shift their gazes between the mountains of laundry and the small tubs, and I'm tempted to laugh out loud. They think those tubs are for washing, even though they are hardly big enough to hold a single dress. They don't know about the courtyard.

Elodie turns to me, eyes full of reproach. She opens her mouth, an accusation lodged like a sesame seed between her teeth. I meet her gaze, daring her to throw the first stone.
Her
prank got us in this stinky hovel to begin with.

“Let's not stand here like a bunch of stupid cows,” she says at last. “We have four dresses apiece. We should all do our own rather than have someone else mess them up.” She gives me a pointed look, then sweeps her hands at the mountain. “
Allez, pfft.
”

We sort the dresses, and Elodie tosses one of her own into each of the four small tubs. “Letty, you're in charge of this tub. India, Violet, and Mary, you take these others. I shall direct.”

It's amusing to watch Elodie get her friends to do her share of the work, especially knowing these aren't the tubs we're supposed to use. I decide to watch how things play out. Mrs. Lowry says silence is wisdom's best reply.

Wood Face wipes her nose on her sleeve. “Mother will pull
me out of this school when she hears about this. I'll never have the chance to give my handkerchief to a Wilksie.”

“Pull yourself together,” Elodie says crossly. “Your mother won't find out unless you tell her.”

A pair of kettles begins to whistle. Mary Stanford chews the end of her braid. “At least we can make tea.”

“Don't be daft,” snaps Elodie. “That boiling water is for washing. Minnie Mae, Ruby, pour the water into the tubs. The rest of you will have to wait until we finish.”

Ruby frowns at her sister, but they do as Elodie asks, using thick pads to move the kettles off the stove plates.

What was Headmistress Crouch thinking? She may as well have asked these girls to shoe a horse rather than wash their own dresses.

Katie puts her fists on her hips. “That's not fair. We'll never finish in time.”

“Well, the fact is, there are only four tubs, and eleven of us,” says Elodie. “It makes sense that the most eligible should do their laundry first.”

Francesca clicks her tongue disapprovingly and looks toward the back door. I wonder if she knows about the courtyard.

Minnie Mae crosses her doll-like arms. “Ruby's eligible.”

Elodie and her cronies laugh, and the hanging blade on Ruby's forehead unsheathes.

“My mother always says, ‘You can shine up a rock and call it a gemstone, but it's still a rock.'” Elodie twirls a finger around a curl. “It's going to take more than those dried weeds to get you a husband.”

Ruby's hand flies to her rosemary sprig, and her wounded expression makes me want to swab the smugness off Elodie's deck. The bow on Minnie Mae's head starts to quiver as she faces off with Fancy Boots, with fists clenched. I have never seen the babyish Minnie Mae look so fierce, but a dust-up is on the brew.

I clear my throat. “The sooner we let Elodie and her friends finish, the sooner
we
may finish. Let's take our laundry out to the courtyard to air while we wait.”

Francesca catches my eye and nods. “I agree. As Shakespeare wrote, ‘In a false quarrel, there is no true valor.'” She takes her wicker basket, and I do the same.

Elodie releases a prim smile. “I'm so glad that you see reason. We'll make sure to save some of the Wilksies for you.”

I'm pleased to see Katie, Harry, and the twins follow us to the exit. Once outside, Francesca and I switch on the lanterns.

The girls blink in surprise at all the equipment.

“What's this?” asks Katie.

“
This
is where the laundry is done,” I say quietly.

A surprised laugh bubbles from Minnie Mae's mouth, but Katie drops her basket. “Well, grasshoppers! I thought this was where they played croquet or something.”

“What are those tubs inside for?” Ruby glances back toward the laundry room.

“Probably for hand-washing the underthings.” Father always did the delicates separately.

“You know how to work these contraptions?” Minnie Mae peers into one of the copper boilers.

“We're not going to use those,” I tell her. “Hot water shrinks wool.”

Minnie Mae's mouth drops. “You mean those other girls are going to ruin their dresses?”

I give her a reassuring smile. “We'll tell them to lay off the custards.”

No one speaks for a moment, but then we're all giggling. Elodie and her cronies deserve a little soak in hot water for their nastiness.

I pick up one of my dresses and give it a shake. “I have seen my maids do the laundry. They use an assembly-line method to maximize efficiency.” I throw the dresses into one of the large aluminum tubs, then add water using the pump placed conveniently at the lip. “Katie, fill that one for the rinsing.” I nod toward the adjacent tub.

She hops to the task.

Francesca sprinkles a box of flaked soap into my tub, then fetches two dollies for agitating the water. Together, we work the dollies, causing froth to appear. The others watch with more interest than laundry warrants, and I try to put on a good show, churning with vigor. After that's done, we squeeze out the dresses and dump them into the rinse water.

I take a wooden stick and plunge the soap out of the dresses.

“May I do that?” Harry reaches for the plunger. For the first time, I notice she has dimples when she smiles, just like Katie. The realization rubs some of the damp from my bones.

“Thank you, Harry. Katie, after she finishes, you can put the dresses through the wringer.” I nod toward a contraption with a
crank handle attached to the rinse tub. “Just watch your fingers. Minnie Mae and Ruby, you can hang them when they're done. After two shifts, we'll switch places to keep things interesting.”

We go about our tasks. Katie enjoys cranking the wringer so much that we let her continue. “I used to play baseball with the boys.” She flexes a muscle. “I've still got it.”

By the time the night air loses its heaviness, probably sometime after four, Francesca and I are hanging the last of the dresses while Harry and Ruby drain the tubs. Minnie Mae has collapsed on the ground, her face glowing with sweat, and Katie stretches out beside her.

“We did it. I even have time to press my hair,” Minnie Mae says. She holds up her hands, which are red and wrinkled from the water. “Mama would bust a valve if she saw this. Hope it's not permanent.”

Katie scoffs. “A'course not. But if you're worried, you can use lard to soften your hands. That's what Gran does.”

Minnie Mae fans her legs with her skirts. “You always talk about your gran. Don't you have a mama?”

“My parents died in an accident when I was a baby. It's been Gran and me ever since I can remember.”

Francesca pulls a clothespin from her mouth and pins up the last dress. “What's it like in Texas?” It's the first time I've seen her speak to Katie.

Katie taps the toes of her boots together. “There's a ton of scenery, long as you don't mind heaps of dirt. And in summer, it gets so muggy you could drown yourself just by breathing. Gran got so sick of the heat, she cut her hair short as Mercy's,
and sold it for five dollars. She spent it on a cowboy hat with a turkey feather.”

Ruby wipes her hands on a rag and sits down next to her sister. “I'd like to know what it's like in China.”

For a moment, I forget that
I'm
the one from China. I shake free from my stupor. “Well, there are many rivers and mountains.”

Ruby frowns. I'll have to do better than that. “There's a mountain range called the Precipitous Pillars. The pillars stick up like fingers, seven hundred feet, and they grow trees with blossoms like perfumed handkerchiefs. You can hardly take a step without bumping into a giant salamander or a rhesus monkey.” Whenever Ba talked about the country of his youth, his voice would grow animated and the invisible yoke around his neck seemed to lift. I once asked him if he would rather live in China, and he tapped a square finger at my forehead. “A man may not return to his mother when he takes a new wife, but it does not mean he forgets about her.”

The girls are looking at me as if I just slipped them the key to infinite wisdom.

“That sounds amazing,” breathes Minnie Mae.

Ruby nods. “I'd like to visit China one day. Maybe you can be my guide.”

The fact that she would want to travel with me catches me off guard. “Certainly,” I murmur, though of course, I would be just as lost as she.

Harry shakes the water off a plunger, splattering Katie, who grabs it and puts on a look of disdain. “Infractions will be dealt
with harshly and quickly!” she delivers in perfect mimicry of Headmistress Crouch.

We all laugh.

“That old shoe,” says Minnie Mae, looking at her swollen hands again. “I wish she'd go find some other girls to step on.”

Francesca pats her forehead with the back of her hand. “Headmistress Crouch isn't so bad. She wasn't always an old shoe. She even had a suitor once.”

“
Our
Headmistress Crouch? How do you know?” exclaims Minnie Mae.

Francesca straightens out a wrinkle in one of the wet dresses. “I saw a picture of a young man in the drawer in her office once. It said, ‘To my beloved Annabel.'”

It's odd to think of Headmistress Crouch as having a first name, almost as odd as imagining her as a young woman. Maybe there was warmth in her blue eyes once.

The sky spreads her peacock fan, though the sunlight hasn't broken yet. A dog begins to bark, scaring up a chorus of answering barks.

The door to the laundry building bursts open, and Elodie and her cronies march out holding dripping baskets of laundry. Elodie takes in the courtyard and our finished laundry. The other girls gasp and blink in the increasing sunlight.

“Oh,
bonjour
,” I gush. “
On as très beau temps, n'est pas?
”
What nice weather we're having.
My French lessons have paid in spades.

Elodie looks like a dragon about to breathe fire.

‘‘WHY, YOU LITTLE SNEAK!'' ELODIE SHRIEKS. “You knew this was here all along.”

I place a finger on my chin. “If I had more time, I would show you how to work the wringer. But I was hoping for a nap before breakfast.
Au revoir.
”

The six of us who finished our laundry parade back to the house. I swear I smell sulfur steaming off Elodie as I pass her. “Don't worry, we'll save you a few Wilksies.”

Before I can take another step, I feel a sharp tug on my hair, and one astonished moment later, my back is on the hard concrete. I look up into Elodie's face above. She grabs ahold of my neck. “You are nothing but a filthy rat who crawled up from the sewer!”

I bring my knee up and try to push her off, but she has attached herself like a giant clam, a heavy man-eating clam. Rolling to one side, I manage to loosen her hold for a second, enough to push her face away. Her hands are still around my throat, but I don't let up, imagining I'm squashing her too-perky nose like a bug. The girls are screaming above us, a halo of navy blue.

“Get her, Mercy!” cries Katie.

“Good Lord, she's gone rabid!”

“Someone get Headmistress Crouch!”

“But she'll punish us all!”

Elodie and I are pried apart and hauled to our feet, and strangely, I feel myself resisting. It's as if fighting has awakened another, more bestial side to me, a side that wants her to suffer for her meanness.

Hands pull at me from all sides, restraining. “Let me go!” I choke out, lunging for her. My voice is drowned in all the yelling.

“Mongol!” Elodie snarls. Hands also restrain her, but to my gratification, not as many.

“Pigeon egg!”

“Gutter monkey!”

Gutter monkey?
That one bends my nose out of shape.

“Well,” I say imperiously, “I'm not the one whose father leaves her standing on her birthday.”

Elodie stops resisting, and instantly I know I've gone too far. She shakes off Francesca and points at me. “She has fooled you all. She is no heiress from China, but a slum rat from Pigtail Alley.”

A hush descends upon the crowd, heavy enough to stop my heart from beating.

Her mouth is as relentless as a train. “She bribed my father to let her in by promising him business in Chinatown. Why do you think she knows how to do laundry?” Her eyes look half-wild, and blood from her nose drips into her gasping mouth. “Her father washes clothes for a living.”

Elodie's words blow wind on my firebox, lighting up my face.
I'm not ashamed of Ba, yet I can barely meet Francesca's worried eyes. Katie and Harry look away, while Minnie Mae and Ruby search each other for the appropriate reaction.

“You mean, you're not from China?” asks Ruby in a quiet voice.

I sag into my heels. “I never bribed anybody.”

Someone clears their throat, and all heads turn to the doorway.

Headmistress Crouch steps into the courtyard. She takes in Elodie's bleeding nose with only mild interest. “Miss Foster, escort Miss Du Lac to the nurse. The rest of you will return to your rooms, except for Miss Wong.”

The girls flutter away. Francesca stops at the doorway to take one last look at me before ducking toward the exit.

I wilt under Headmistress Crouch's stony gaze. She didn't even need to wait for the correspondence to arrive. I hanged myself by being the rabble-rouser she expected me to be. There will be no taking the moral high ground out of here now that my dignity hangs in tatters.

I was supposed to be unsinkable. A businesswoman cannot wave her emotions around like dirty underthings.

“Who
are
you?” She looms close enough to stomp my toe with her cane.

I drop my Chinese accent. “Mercy Wong, as I told you. But, er, I am from Chinatown.”

“What exactly were you hoping to achieve by coming here, Miss Wong? It cannot be prospects, for someone like you would stand no chance of making a match here. There are laws against that kind of thing.” Her tone is unnervingly frank.

I nod, though the law prohibiting marriage between whites
and “Mongolians” brings a fresh flood of humiliation. “I just want an education, ma'am. Monsieur Du Lac and I had an arrangement . . . he was giving me a chance.”

“You have made a mockery of our school, and of me. If it were my choice, I would eject you this instant. But Monsieur Du Lac is listed as your guardian, and despite his questionable judgment, it is for him to decide how best to dispatch you. I would not expect clemency from him, mind you. You did give his only daughter a thrashing.” I swear a smile plays around her mouth. As if sensing it, too, she stamps her cane and calcifies again. “You will not attend classes and shall take your meals in the scullery, where you shall be put to work until he returns. Go report to Mrs. Tingle.”

Headmistress Crouch's gaze feels like a cattle prod as she watches me shuffle back to the main building. My shame licks flames around my collar, and the thought of facing my classmates makes me want to hightail it home. If it weren't for the double shame of facing my family, I might do it.

I stop before the entryway, reluctant to accept my demotion just yet. Headmistress Crouch has disappeared, and the girls are back in their rooms.

In the morning's first light, the garden feels tomb-like and cold, even more so than the cemetery. The blond bricks of St. Clare's look like a fortress; everything drawn in severe lines, from the unadorned columns to the razor-straight eaves, the pieces perfectly locked like a jigsaw puzzle.

Guess I was wrong, Tom. I couldn't do it after all.

A jangle of sharp cries directs my attention overhead.
Blackbirds fly in crazed circles, fracturing the sunlight. Ba says birds congregate before storms, but the sky looks perfectly blue.

Another sound catches my attention, a
blip, blip, shrr
that raises all the hairs on my arms. Slowly, I pivot toward the fountain, dreading what I will see, but compelled just the same.

The goldfish are jumping, like flames from a roasting pit. Some have landed on the ledge, and others have jumped clear over to the cement, where they lie, spastic bits of orange aspic.

My soles begin to tremble.

Dear God, what is happening?