The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen

We’re interrupted by a tattoo from a trumpeter, and the crowd simmers to a roar as the governor waves his hands for their attention. The sunset flames across the sky over Manhattan, turning the shop windows into red mirrors. I hear a sharp rapport, like a gunshot, and jump as a mob of children scatters laughing before an exploding string of firecrackers. The air smells rancid with gunpowder.

“Welcome, one and all, on this historic occasion in the City of New-York, and indeed, the world over!” Governor Clinton booms through a speaking tube, arms held wide as though he could embrace all the rabble and gather them to his noble chest. “Welcome to the flotilla newly arrived from Buffalo with their Aborigine guides, and welcome to the esteemed members of the Canal Corporation, whose vision and achievement this is!”

Applause smatters across the crowd as my father and a few other men, waistcoats too tight and hats too tall, attempt to bow in a way both puffed with noblesse oblige, yet sufficiently modest as to win the votes of sailors and draymen. Everyone fails, with my father’s secretary even losing his hat in the crowd to a quick-fingered urchin. The bronzed Aborigine standing behind the secretary, in a tight plaid suit and hat but with long black plaits over his shoulders, has to smother a laugh.

“We gather tonight to celebrate the union of the waters of Lake Erie with the waters of the mighty Atlantic Ocean,” the governor continues, thumbs behind his lapels.

“Look at them,” I whisper to Beattie, glaring at Mother and Papa, both of them beaming out over the crowd, my mother’s gloved hand waving at no one. “They’ll say anything to the crowd to get what they want. The canal’s corrupt, Beattie. The corporation took money from the slave traders to get it built. And they’re going to rip open the Indian lands, too. It’s rotten, and it’s wrong, and these people should know it’s all a scheme to fatten up the slavers, and fatten ourselves to boot. Look.”

Beattie follows my gaze, and I see a glimmer in her eyes of beginning comprehension. Monsters aren’t these fairy things in storybooks. They’re not pumpkin-headed ghouls galloping through the night in old Knickerbocker stories. They’re people like this, who bend others’ suffering to their own gain, and smile and wave while they do it.

“The note—” Beattie starts to say.

“Herschel put it on our door,” I whisper, my breath hot on her ear. “Herschel did. It was a message from the Luddites. To warn me, about our parents. Don’t you see?”

Beattie’s eyes are widening with panic, and Ed has edged nearer to us. My mother opens her mouth to laugh, her face long and distorted like a marionette’s.

“Now,” the governor booms into the night, “the assembled company shall process down to the Battery for the Grand Aquatic Display, wherein the waters of all the greatest rivers in the world shall be joined together as one. It’s a new world, a new dawn for the City of New-York!”

The bands all bellow in semi-unison, jarring enough to make ears bleed, as a bevy of carriages rolls through the massed crowd, liveried drivers scattering beggar women here and there with a brandishment of the horsewhip. A dark woman with her head wrapped in a scarf trips as she backs out of a horse’s way, and she collapses on the cobblestones with a scream. Hands grasp her arms and dress and haul her out of the way. A hoof clops down on the stone where her head lay an instant before, and the horse whinnies against the shouts of the crowd.

“Come, children,” Mother calls to us as she steers Papa to the edge of the dais and toward the waiting carriage. Its door is open, and a small child with no shoes on and a muddy face hangs gawking on its window.

“What are you going to do?” Beattie asks me.

Mother gestures to us impatiently as the carriage driver fights off the throng from dragging on the horses’ reins. Beattie’s eyes jump between our parents and me, and Ed clings to her waist, trying hard not to cry.

I’ve lost sight of Herschel. He’s been swallowed by the crowd, or worse, what if he’s been trampled? I crane my neck, rising on tiptoes to try to get a better look, but the light is failing, and the flames of torches make the shadows of the mob duck and dance crazily in the street.