“Yeah,” she said. “That’s factual.”
“Well. I’m happy to see you. I missed you.”
“That’s nice of you to say.”
“And I felt bad. I promised to buy you an overcoat. Purple. Just like the other one. I’ll still get one. I’ll get you one for winter.”
“Don’t,” Anna said. “They tossed out that ratty thing when I got here. Some ladies from the town make sure all the girls have coats. It’s nice of you. But don’t bother.”
Anna let herself get worked up for a moment. She breathed deep the attar of walnut bouquet and made herself sound bored talking to her brother. She didn’t know how she was supposed to respond to what Karel told her, his impossible promises. His trying to get her excited for what would turn out to be nothing. She didn’t know at all what to say to him. That he looked like a hoodlum? That hair. That she was embarrassed? That she didn’t approve of his habits? What she’d heard about him anyway.
She’d already accepted that he wasn’t going to visit. He shouldn’t have come.
And then Theresa put it to Anna at lunch. “What’d you say to him? I’ve never seen him so upset.” “There’s no reason to be rude,” Silke said. “He takes how you treat him so hard.”
But Karel didn’t look upset to Anna. He looked fine. Some girls wanted to sit by Karel. They grabbed his arm and bade him to their table. He shook them off and sat next to Anna instead. Anna didn’t think he was upset. He didn’t care about her. She knew this. How could he be mad? Anna didn’t need to counteract all that, not like Theresa said. She wasn’t being harsh to Karel, she didn’t think. They didn’t say much while eating, but it wasn’t being rude. They had nothing to say. Anna was polite. She passed the salt when asked. Buttered a slice of bread for Karel. If she was short with him she didn’t mean to be.
There was more sitting on the porch in silence after lunch. There was Dr. Emmett pulling his Ford behind the school, a new girl with him, the nurses rushing through the halls to find out what had brought him in on his day off. Emmett busy with the new girl all evening in the infirmary, which wasn’t all that uncommon, Anna explained. There were more snide comments from Silke and Theresa, until they were too bored sitting on the porch to even complain. There were more girls who came to talk to Karel, asking if he’d been for a stroll in the woods yet, twisting blond curls around their fingers, and would he like to stroll with them. Girls who tossed their heads and whinnied when they laughed. Silke and Theresa were tickled about the way those girls acted around Karel. Their train didn’t leave until dusk.
Maybe she shouldn’t have given Karel the cold shoulder. Anna considered that as she tried to fall asleep. All those iron beds in a row. The girls tossing because it was hot up there, even with the windows at each end propped open to catch a breeze, when there was a breeze. This attic was not much different from the attic at the Eigler house in that respect. A group of them lined up to sleep. She couldn’t help but listen to the others. Their sighing, the way some of them got upset at how they were still awake, like they could conquer wakefulness with more intense exertion. Karel was frustrated so easily as a little boy, and always preoccupied. He wasn’t much different now, Anna thought.
She didn’t need anything from him. They’d been trained to grow apart. Anna was preserved for posterity in a series of attics; Karel was set free in the city, a boy with wild oats to sow. Isn’t that how it goes? Things had changed so much from how they used to be, when Karel was still a precious little boy, when they were precious together. He used to climb into bed next to Anna and put his ear to her back to hear her breath, because their breathing in chorus allowed him to sleep. When he was four years old, five or six. Not when he was thirteen. More than halfway to being a man. They were born to grow apart, as all siblings were.
Anna chided herself to not worry about it. She’d made so much progress. Had become her own person. In two years she’d leave the state sanitarium, with a diploma to boot. She’d be healthy, Dr. Emmett promised her this, if she kept on with the treatments, if she ate enough and absorbed ample vitamin D and kept her spirits up. A sunken heart could ruin someone’s health as fast as any physical ailment. Anna didn’t need Dr. Emmett to tell her that.
It was then, after her family left, trying to sleep on a humid mid-September night, that Anna noticed the girl in the bunk across the aisle. The new girl, uneasy in her sleep.
She turned with a sigh, the girl, lifted her knees to lie prone. Her blankets fell. That was when Anna noticed the panties she wore, white cotton and lace, no cheap things, and certainly not wool ones like the home issued. This girl was different. She didn’t look sickly like the others. Neither skinny nor fat. But ruddy. A rumor had spread in the bathing room that this girl had been made pregnant by her cousin and that was why she was here. In protective custody.
Anna knew she should roll away and grant the new girl some privacy. The rumors should have been violation enough. But Anna inched her vision from the girl’s knee to a bulb of thigh. And then the white. She stared dead center at the white, at what was there, like she could tell if the girl really was pregnant.
The girl was young, maybe twelve. Anna bet she was pretty. Too bad she ended up here.
She moaned and rolled so one leg fell and the other rose. Anna should have told Methfessel about the new girl moaning, just to shut her up, if nothing else. And there might be something wrong. Anna should say something, but she’d wait to see what was wrong first. A spot appeared on the white. Anna saw. The spot grew a little and showed red. It was blood.
A nurse there suddenly. “Anna!” Methfessel hissed. “Shame.”
Anna turned away and pulled the blanket over herself and curled to the wall. Glanced back to see Nurse Methfessel change the girl’s bandage. How she pulled off the old ones, that cotton gauze with a tract of blood cannoning down the center.
Anna was ashamed. For the both of them, because of what she’d seen. What a strange thing to feel.
It wasn’t so hard for Karel to forget the anarchists after Emil Braun was beaten at the Santa Philomena and confined to his bed. Karel had the ballplayers.