“I care very much about my daughter’s future,” Mother continued. “And in that future she deserves to have a father she can respect.”
“What about a mother she can respect? You’re earning a terrible reputation in this town with your shenanigans.”
“I’m trying to improve this town by closing down the multitude of saloons that have sprouted like weeds, and if some people don’t like that, it’s just too bad. Are you aware of the social problems caused by alcohol? You can read all about them in the Temperance Union’s newsletter. Or you can open your eyes and see what’s happening in your very own home.”
“I can’t talk to you anymore. You not only have no common sense, you’ve become some sort of religious fanatic.”
“You’re calling me a fanatic because I trust God and ask for His help? Or is it because I’ve chosen not to attend your church anymore?”
“That so-called church you attend is filled with religious fanatics just like yourself. There isn’t a respectable citizen among them.”
“Thank God for that! Thank God they’re not too respectable to offer help during a cholera epidemic or to give aid to families with drunken husbands and fathers. I won’t spend one more Sabbath in a church that ignores Christ’s command to help the poor. Maybe you’re comfortable in such a place, but I’m not.”
As soon as the topic switched to churches, Lucy began backing away from the door to run upstairs. When Mother had decided to join a different church than the one Grandmama always went to, Lucy had felt like a piece of taffy, stretched and pulled in two directions at once. The tug-of-war continued until the two women finally asked Lucy to choose which church she liked the best. She hadn’t known what to say. Of course, she wanted to please her mother, but she didn’t know any of the other girls at Mother’s church, and besides, they dressed so differently than she did. In the end, Lucy chose her grandmother’s elegant church because that was the one that Daddy used to go to when he was a little boy. The distance between Lucy and her mother seemed to grow wider each day.
In the spring of 1876, Grandmother began planning a lavish party for Lucy’s seventh birthday. Lucy decided to ask for a pony that year, along with her very own pony cart to ride around in. But when she followed the maid into her father’s bedroom one morning with his coffee and toast, she sensed right away that something had changed. For one thing, Mother was in his bedroom, too, and she was stuffing Daddy’s clothes and toiletries into a suitcase. Daddy sat on the edge of the bed with his shoulders slumped. He looked very sad. His blue eyes weren’t sparkling anymore, and he had dark circles beneath them.
“Are you going away on a trip, Daddy?” she asked.
Mother answered before he did. “We’re going to stay at Grandfather Garner’s fishing cabin for a few days.”
Lucy skirted around her mother and ran to him. “I want to come on the trip, too, Daddy.”
He tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. “You wouldn’t like it up at the cabin, sweetheart.”
“Yes I would. I want to go. Why can’t I go?” She stomped her foot and started to cry, certain that Daddy would give in, but her mother gripped her firmly by the shoulders and turned her around.
“Stop it, Lucy, and listen to me. Remember when Nanny took you upstairs to the attic and showed you where the servants sleep? Well, the cabin that we’re going to is even more rustic than the attic is. It has spiders living there. And mice.”
“You’re just saying that. It’s not true. I want to go!” Her tantrum didn’t do any good. Her mother finished packing and prepared to leave.
“I’m sorry, Lucy,” Daddy said as he kissed her good-bye. “I promise to buy you a very special present for your birthday when I get home.”
“A pony. I want my own pony.”
Daddy smiled faintly, but he didn’t promise. Lucy tried one last time to throw a tantrum to get her own way, but Nanny held her back until her parents’ runabout disappeared from sight.
She was playing with her dolls in the playroom a week later when Mother burst into the house shouting, “Lucy! Lucy, where are you?”
Lucy stood and went to the playroom door. “I’m up here, Mama.” Her mother bounded up the stairs in a very unladylike way, then hugged Lucy so tightly it made her ribs hurt.
“Thank God! Thank God!” Mother murmured. She wasn’t wearing a hat and the rain had soaked her clothing and hair. Her body shivered so badly it might have been snowing outside instead of raining. Daddy came inside, too, shouting something about the dam on Iroquois Lake. He rang the service bell to summon all the servants. Grandmama came out of her room and tried to get Daddy to close the front door and change out of his wet clothes, but he wouldn’t listen.
Lucy had no idea what was going on, but everyone was shouting, and the household had never been in such an uproar. It made her feel very frightened. She started down the stairs toward her father, calling, “Daddy, Daddy!” but her mother caught her instead, and wouldn’t let go of her until after her father left with the carriage driver. “Daddy! I want my daddy!” she wept, but it was too late. He was gone. Lucy fled into her grandmother’s arms, instead.
“There, there,” she soothed. “Come, my dearest. I’ll tell Cook to fix us some tea and cookies.”
Before Lucy had time to finish her cookies, Mother and Grandmama began to quarrel. The servants started moving all of Grandmama’s pretty things out of the parlor and upstairs to her bedroom. Then Daddy came back with a carriage load of strangers—horrible, dirty people who crowded into Lucy’s house, dripping water on the carpets and hardwood floors. Most of them were children, foul-smelling and dressed in rags, and elderly people with wrinkled faces, who spoke in languages she couldn’t understand.
“Lift me up, Daddy. Carry me.” She reached up to him but he only patted her head.
“Not now, sweetheart. I’m all wet. Your nice dress will get all wet.”
“I don’t care.” She wanted his arms around her and everything changed back to the way it used to be, so she could go into his bedroom and talk to him every day.
She blamed her mother for all of this chaos. Mother was giving everyone directions and inviting them into the house, saying, “Please, come inside and get warm. We have food and hot coffee prepared.” But when Mother suddenly said, “Come, Lucy. Let’s take these children upstairs and show them where your playroom is,” Lucy was too horrified to reply. She was desperate to stop the horrible children from going into her special room and was about to shout “No!” and throw a tantrum, but Grandmother Garner spoke up first.
“You can’t be serious, Beatrice. These people can’t be trusted. They’ll break all of Lucy’s nice things.”
Mother waved her away. “I don’t want Lucy to grow up to be selfish,” she said. Lucy couldn’t think what to do! Mother plunged ahead, saying, “Come, children. This way. Lucy, you go first and show them where your playroom is.” The raggedy children started moving up the stairs.
“Aren’t you going to stop her?” Grandmother asked Daddy. He shook his head. Lucy scrambled up the stairs as fast as she could go, racing toward the playroom to protect her toys. She would get the servants to help her move everything into Grandmama’s room the way they had moved all of the valuables out of the parlor and dining room.
Lucy reached the playroom first, ready to scream or cry or throw a tantrum, if need be, in order to keep the dirty children out. But a strange thing happened when the first few children reached the playroom behind her: Instead of running and grabbing and breaking her things, they stood huddled near the door, as unmoving as store mannequins, gazing around the huge room. The pause gave Lucy a few moments to calm down.
Then one little boy, the bravest one, took two halting steps inside. He had hair the color of wet sand and ragged clothing that hung from his slender body like a scarecrow’s. She couldn’t tell if all of the spots on his dirt-smudged his face were freckles or filth. He made a sweeping gesture with his scrawny arm, pointing to her shelves and toy boxes and to the pile of dolls in the middle of the floor that she had been playing with a few hours ago. “What are all these things?” he asked.
“They’re called toys. Haven’t you ever seen toys before?”
He lifted one bony shoulder in what might have been a shrug. “What do you do with them?”
Lucy had never met such a stupid boy. “What do you think you do? You play with them!” She watched as his gaze roamed the room, taking it all in. Then he spotted her wooden rocking horse and he took a few more steps inside, halting alongside it.
“What’s this for?” He reached out his hand to stroke the horsehair mane.
“You ride on it. Like this.” She pulled the horse out of his reach and climbed on, gripping the handles to rock back and forth. The horse was a baby’s toy, and Lucy had been bored with it for the past year, but when she saw the boy and all of the other children watching in amazement and admiration she decided that she liked the rocking horse again.
“Can I try it?” the boy asked.
“You mean, ‘
may
I?’ ” He looked at her as if she had spoken a foreign language. “You’re supposed to say ‘
may
’ I try it, not ‘
can’
I.”
“I want to ride it,” he said matter-of-factly, and Lucy recognized something in his gray eyes, a deep sadness that seemed very much like her own.
“Well . . . I suppose you may,” she told him. “But you’d better be careful and not break it.”
A huge smile spread across his face as he climbed on. She guessed that he was a little older than she was because his two front teeth were growing in and her baby teeth were just falling out. He had holes in his shirt and one button missing. The other three buttons didn’t match each other. His pants were too short, his shoes too large. He wasn’t wearing socks. But he laughed out loud as he rocked back and forth, and it was such a joyous sound that Lucy couldn’t help smiling.
The other children watched him from the doorway, and since the stampede she’d feared hadn’t happened, Lucy began walking around the room taking toys off the shelves, showing everyone how to play with them. She didn’t show them her newest doll or her very special things like the porcelain tea set, but she decided that the strangers could play with her older toys and the things she had outgrown. Slowly, tentatively, the children inched forward to watch. Their mothers stayed close beside them and seemed as awestruck as they were.
“This is my rubber ball,” Lucy said, showing two children how to roll it across the floor to each other. “And this is called a top.”
Three other children took turns spinning it. One little girl seemed content to rock Lucy’s empty wooden doll cradle. Another hugged her old, worn-out rag doll in her arms. “Watch this,” Lucy said as she taught two youngsters how to build a tower with her wooden blocks. They took turns building and toppling the blocks. She gave two small girls her chalkboard and some chalk to use. When everyone was occupied, she walked back to the first boy, who was still rocking on her horse, grinning as if it was the most fun he’d ever had.
“What’s your name?” she asked him.
“Danny Carver. What’s yours?”
“Lucretia Frances Garner. You may call me Lucy.”
“I like your horse.”
“It’s all right, I suppose. Daddy is going to buy me a real pony for my birthday.”
“I like this one.”
“Well, when is your birthday? Why don’t you ask your daddy to buy one for you?”
His smile faded. He lifted his shoulder in another shrug. “We got no room for one. Our house is too small. . . . Hey, can my brother have a turn?”
“I suppose so. If he’s careful.”
Danny helped a smaller boy climb on, and while he rocked, Lucy decided to show Danny her wooden train. He seemed more fascinated with the train than she had ever been, coupling and uncoupling each of the cars and imitating a train whistle as he pushed it across the floor.
A little while later, more children arrived. As the afternoon grew late, some of the youngest children fell asleep on their mothers’ laps. Everyone was behaving nicely until the servants came into the playroom with a tray of sandwiches and set it on Lucy’s table. Danny and the other children dropped their playthings and raced toward the food. They had no manners at all, snatching up the sandwiches in their filthy fingers and gobbling them down as if they hadn’t eaten in a very long time. They created such an uproar that Grandmother came into the playroom to see what the racket was all about.
“What’s going on in here, Lucy? Are you all right?” Her queenly face was no longer serene, and she looked angry and fearful. Lucy could tell that she didn’t like all the upheaval in their household. “Come, Lucy. Let’s take your nice things to another room.” She helped Lucy gather up her favorite dolls and her tea set and carry them into Grandmama’s bedroom suite. Lucy stayed there, eating from the tray of food the servants brought them, and later fell asleep in her grandmother’s arms.
Lucy lost track of how many days the ragged, dirty strangers lived in her house, but it seemed like a very long time. They occupied every room downstairs, sleeping on the floor and eating her food and playing with her toys. She made friends with Danny, but the other children were too shy to talk to her or even tell her their names. Danny took turns playing with each of her toys, but what fascinated him the most were her picture books. She sat on the floor beside him one afternoon and told him the stories from memory. He studied each page with such concentration that she often grew impatient and pulled the book from his hands to turn to the next page. She had never met anyone quite like him before.
Years later, Lucy saw photographs of the disaster and learned what the Great Flood of 1876 had done to her town while Danny and the other children had stayed at her house. The photos showed mountains of mud as high as the door lintels; piles of debris and downed trees; vast lakes of water that surrounded all of the buildings and flooded the city’s main street where she used to go shopping. The neighborhood where Danny and the other children had lived resembled a garbage heap.
Lucy waited and waited for her Daddy to return home, but he never did. When all of the dirty people were gone and the house was quiet once again, she asked, “When is Daddy coming home?”