The Virgin Cure (3 page)

Quite particular about the house and the gardens that surrounded it, Miss Keteltas had placed several notices on the lawn to keep strangers at bay.

Miss Keteltas generously donated her peacocks to the Central Park Menagerie two months after she acquired them. This practice was quite common with ladies who mistakenly wished for peacocks, or forty-two white swans, or perhaps a bear cub, or three sweet-faced monkeys. Thus, a zoo was born, to save the fine ladies of New York from their misguided game keeping and guilt.

Be advised, I am not dead and this house is not for sale
. —signed, Miss Alice Keteltas.

All visitors without an appointment (good-intentioned clergy included) shall be turned away
. —signed, Miss Alice Keteltas.

Curiosity seekers shall be met with suspicion and a stick
. —signed, Miss Alice Keteltas.

Please, don’t feed the peacocks
. —signed, Miss Alice Keteltas.

Although the peacocks were long gone, the tall iron fence that had been erected around the gardens to keep the birds from escaping still remained. Menacing black spikes ran along the top and bottom of it, bayonets against the wild impulses of rioters, boys and dogs.

I liked to run my hand along the fence as I walked past, my fingers slapping the pickets just hard enough to make the metal hum. If I took hold of one of the posts while it was still singing, a delicious tickle would come between my lips, like paper over the teeth of a comb, or a whistle made from a blade of grass. I liked to think that this set the house to buzzing as well and that Miss Keteltas was somewhere inside, sitting at the dining room table or even reclining on her bed, suffering pleasant tremors of laughter without knowing why.

To the rear of the house one of the pickets was missing, leaving a space in the fence just wide enough for me to slip through.
It means she wants me here
, I told myself when I first discovered it.
It’s a sign
.

Mama was always talking of signs to the women who came to our place to have their fortunes told. I’d watch from behind the curtains as she sat at her round-topped table with whichever woman had shown up at our door looking for answers. Putting a finger to the small, heart-shaped birthmark on her right cheek, she’d gaze into her witch’s ball or stare at the lady’s palms; then she’d give the woman the news. Sometimes good, sometimes bad.

I liked it best when a woman was willing to pay Mama enough to converse with the spirits. This called for both Mama and the lady to rest their fingertips on an upended glass. Then Mama would start humming and sighing, and soon the glass would go sliding over the wooden tabletop, dancing between the letters and numbers she’d painted there to help the spirits spell out fate. Even though the spirits said the same things time and again, it was still quite a thing to see. “You’re gonna die young,” Mama told every woman with fat wrists. “But that’s all right. There will be flowers at your funeral and nobody will say a bad thing about you.” Then she’d squeeze the woman’s hand, tears coming to her eyes, making them shine. “We should all be so lucky.”

The evening I decided to steal into Miss Keteltas’ yard and across her lawn, a light shone from a wide window into the garden. No one had ever come out to stop me from touching the fence, and I’d never seen so much as a hint of Miss Keteltas or her stick.
All good signs
, I thought,
leading me to this very moment
. I decided that if I got caught, I wouldn’t lie. I’d simply say, “There’s a hole in your fence, Miss Keteltas. You really should have someone fix it.”

When I reached the window, I could see into a parlour meant for the lady of the house. Miss Keteltas wasn’t there, but right next to the window was a pair of birds inside a cage. They were brilliant green, like the first leaves of spring, all except for the feathers on their faces, which were a deep pink, making them look as if they were blushing.

I watched as one of the birds took a single seed from a bowl and fed it to its mate. The second bird kindly bowed its head and returned the favour. They went on like that, their stubby beaks pinching and putting, gentle and fair, until all the food was gone. Then they took turns preening and nuzzling each other’s necks, stopping every so often to puff up their feathers in delight. Stout little things, they’d wobble apart and then together again, dancing along the length of their perch. Finally, the larger of the two seemed to tire of it all and closed his eyes. His mate tilted her head and stared at him while he slept, her wings folded tight behind her back. She looked just like Mrs. Riordan did whenever she was having a hard time hearing what I had to say.

Before long, a maid came into the room. As soon as I saw her, I went to my knees, crouching beneath the window and holding as still as I could. For a moment, I was certain I’d been caught, but then the light went out and the garden became dark enough for me to sneak away.

As I walked home, I didn’t think about how late I’d be getting back to Mama. I just kept thinking of how much I wanted to be inside Miss Keteltas’ parlour, with nothing to do but watch those lovely little birds. I wondered if any two people had ever cared for each other like that.
Not my mother and father
, I thought.
Mrs. Riordan and her husband, perhaps
.

Lovebirds mate for life. Thus, pains should be taken not to separate an established pair. A lonely bird will engage in destructive behaviours such as pining, biting and plucking out its feathers. If you are faced with a single bird, you must become what the bird longs for and lavish all your attentions upon it, lest it lash out at you.

Although Mr. Riordan died long before I was born, Mrs. Riordan still spoke of him often, her voice catching in her throat whenever she said his name. “Twenty years without my teeth or my husband and still it’s Johnny I miss most.”

Mama was on the front stoop when I got home, fanning herself with a folded newspaper. “It’s too dark for you to be out,” she said, glaring at me. “Go inside and get to sleep.”

When she came to bed she didn’t speak to me. Even though she didn’t ask where I’d been, her silence on the other side of the mattress we shared made me feel as if somehow she knew. Maybe her glass and the table had spelled it out for her.
M-o-t-h w-a-n-t-s t-o r-u-n a-w-a-y
.

The next morning, my boots were gone.

“Shoes in summer are nothing but a waste,” she said when I went crawling under the bed searching for them.

They weren’t the nicest pair of boots in the world. The leather had begun to crack across the toes and they were nearly too small for my feet, but they were mine. I’d paid Mrs. Riordan a nickel for them. She’d gotten them off the body of a girl she’d dressed out for burial. The girl had died of consumption and her mother had told Mrs. Riordan that she should have the boots, it was the least she could do to thank her.

A girl with shoes can hold her head a bit higher. She can run away.

“Where are they?” I asked Mama.

“Gone.”

“Where?”

“Mr. Piers … but don’t bother asking him about them, he took them apart for scraps right on the spot.”

A knife grinder by trade, Mr. Piers had a pushcart he wheeled up and down Chrystie Street. His hands were shiny—not greasy like a butcher’s after handling lard, but slick with the oil that made a blade sharp and exact. Mr. Piers wore his hair in two long braids and his eyes were almost black. All the women thought he was the handsomest man they’d ever seen. I felt that way about him too, until he had my shoes.

Mr. Piers also shaved people’s lousy heads, and sold bottles of Dr. Godfrey’s Cordial. He’d sit on the street at night, his feet pumping the grinding wheel, sparks flying, looking like the Devil’s man as he waited for women to come and ask him for his “best.”

Dr. Godfrey’s Cordial—“a soothing syrup, concocted from the purest ingredients!” (
sassafras, caraway, molasses, tincture of opium, and brandy
). “For all manner of pains in the bowels, fluxes, fevers, small pox, measles, rheumatism, coughs, colds, restlessness in men, women and children, and particularly for several ailments incident to child bearing women and relief of young children breeding their teeth.”