The burly man added, tightening his hold on me, “Fined if we don’t, an’ paid by de head if we do.”
Clementina saw immediately what was necessary to free me. She reached into her purse, then held out two dollar bills. The big man released me to grab them. As I regained my footing, he pushed me toward Clementina, who raised her arms as shields.
Then piteous cries came from the wagon. Two boys called out to me: “Mama! Mama! Don’t leave us!”
What was I to do? I nodded sympathetically toward the waifs. Amid their ongoing pleas, a policeman herded them out. The boys threw their thin, muscled limbs about me in a parody of affection. With my free hand I patted a tousled head.
A policeman stepped close to Clementina. “Ye gotta pay for dem.”
She wore a look of deepest scorn as she addressed me. “These are your children, too?”
“No!” I flushed. “We’ve never met.”
The boys disentangled themselves and ran rapidly away on bare, dirt-blackened feet.
“We’ll catch more soon enough,” said the other policeman. He climbed into the wagon to guard their remaining treasure. His compatriot climbed to the driver’s seat, behind two powerful horses. At the whip’s snap, the wagon lurched forward, leaving Clementina and me standing together.
“Thee saved us!” I reached to embrace her, but she stepped away and shook her coiled locks.
“Are you a vagrant?” Her clear green eyes took in my condition. “You look like one. And your breath is atrocious.”
“No,” I said hastily. “I’m just on my way to—to—”
“I suppose I ought to have given a thought to what might happen to you.” Confusion crossed her face. “Ah, there is something—” She turned her attention to her shoes, to coax a memory free. She raised her head. “I stopped in at Pine Street this morning. Our caretaker said a letter came for you.”
I couldn’t help but yell. “A letter? From whom?” Could it be from Johan or Peter? My veins streamed with optimism.
“I didn’t see,” she said, wincing. “But you can knock at the kitchen door. Mr. Mundy will fetch it.”
“That’s the best news thee could offer!” I said. “And how is Henry? I’m so terribly sorry for—”
“He’s well,” she snapped. “We’ve replaced you with a woman whose baby was stillborn. It’s far simpler.”
As I pondered how to answer this, Clementina stared strangely at my skirt pocket. She reached an arm and withdrew her husband’s handkerchief.
It hung at arm’s length in front of her, crinkled by dried splotches of milk and smeared with mouth wipings. I felt as if the handkerchief alone could reveal what had transpired between her husband and me. My face burned. Her expression was quiet and subtle, with much taking place beneath its surface; I understood from it that she’d seen evidence before of Albert’s intimacies with other women.
“I’m sorry,” I stammered, watching as red spots grew on her cheeks.
Clementina dropped the handkerchief and ground it with the toe of her shoe into the grimy cobblestones. “Vermin!” she hissed at me. I began to step away. Another voice shot across the street.
“Clementina!” Her friend Letitia—her dress a tall column of white, festooned with ribbons—dodged traffic to cross. She pulled at Clementina’s arm. “Come! We have to claim our tickets!”
The lady whose son I’d nursed looked up at me then, and I perceived in her downward-curving mouth and eyes that I had wounded her. Shame made me shrink into myself as she allowed her baffled friend to take her arm and lead her toward the brightly painted theater.
Only a few seconds passed before a rustling arose at my side, and a sharp pain crossed my hand. Someone was yanking at my valise—the very boys who’d pretended to be my own!
The case fell to the sidewalk, and their fast hands undid its buckle. I yelled as they fell upon my goods, gathering clothing in their thieving arms, but no one heeded me. Heads down, the boys ran into the crowd, concealed in seconds.
I closed the valise to secure what little remained of our possessions. At least my notebooks were unharmed. For the sake of the baby at my chest, I avoided sobbing, but strong feelings pushed against my temples and made them throb. On the sidewalk around me, people with destinations pushed past and banged against my crouching body. Charlotte began to make her hungry noises and batted my neck with her hands, making milk rush to my breasts. And all at once I wanted to scream and throw off every encumbrance—Charlotte, the valise, my wrinkled clothing and filthy boots, the pins and combs in my hair, the purse at my throat—to fling them from my body and race away from all that chained me. My heart fluttered as I tried to draw air. Sweat trickled down my back. My brief pleasure with Johan had opened the door to a living hell! I stared into its blaze.
Horses stampeded by, raising dirt into our faces. Charlotte coughed as grit descended on us. My eyes filled with stinging bits.
I am nothing, I thought. I remembered Nancy, who’d said she wasn’t worth saving.
I decided in that instant to get my letter immediately, before Clementina might take the chance to deprive me of it.
*
The fetching of the letter from the Burnhams’ caretaker occurred without incident. But reading the contents of that single sheet, forwarded from the Haven, was an incident indeed. The letter was from the Haven’s Pittsburgh solicitor, who reported locating a red-haired man named Johannes Ernst. This man has lived in Pittsburgh many years, is married to an Olivia Stone, and denies knowing me.
There was apparently nothing true about our contact, and Charlotte and I are the castaway consequences of his lies.
But why should I be surprised at his trickery? Think of all the ways the others hiding at the Haven were betrayed.
I walked and walked. Charlotte was restive at my chest; she must have sensed my distress through my nervous pulse, the dampness of my skin, my sour odor. Then hunger drew me toward the wafting scents of a market building.
Putting aside caution, I entered and stopped before the stall of a fishmonger. I observed an oblong of smoked trout, imagining how the flavors of fat, salt, fish, and smoke would suffuse my tongue. The woman’s melodious voice startled me.
“What can I get you, miss?”
“What’s the cost of two ounces of smoked trout?” My voice came out with a quaver.
“The least I sell is a half-pound.” She watched me pleasantly.
I apologized and bade her good day.
She pressed her plump lips together as I left, then called me back. “I’d be glad to offer you a taste.”
I nodded dumbly. With a long, slender knife, she cut a sliver of the fish and placed it on a paper, then reached it to me.
“You can sit there,” she said, pointing her chin to a barrel beside her stall.
I sat and ate the gleaming morsel, trying to be slow.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
I told her.
“Have you got a baby?” She gestured to my shawl.
I nodded again, not wanting to stop chewing.