The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen

“Annatje! Beatrice! Edward! Get in the carriage!” Mother commands.

“Annie, we have to go,” Beattie says. “We can’t stop now.”

Then I see him. Herschel’s stepped up where one of the liverymen should be standing, on the trunk platform at the rear of our carriage. He catches my eye with a quick wave of his hand, and he gestures with his chin over his shoulder. I see the other two boys from the Luddites, the ones who frightened me in the street, attached to other carriages in the procession, here’s the one in the skullcap sitting up next to the driver, there’s the broken-nosed Senegalese holding a horse’s bridle in his fist. There’re probably others I don’t know and can’t see.

I think of the painting in Maddie’s house as my eye falls on a quivering-lipped Ed. The barge. Must they all be on it but him? They were before. But must they now?

Can memories be made to change?

I nod and hustle my brother and sister to the waiting carriage door. As I take Beattie’s hand to bundle her in next to Mother, I clutch her wrist and force her to look me in the eye.

“Listen to me,” I say, digging into her skin with my fingernails. “Listen. Whatever you do, do not get on that barge. Understand?”

“What? Why?” Beattie asks, Ed peering moonfaced over her shoulder from inside the carriage.

“Don’t you let Ed get on, either. Neither of you gets on the corporation barge. Got it?” I shake her.

Ed and Beattie nod silently as Mother shouts, “Get in the carriage! Now!”

I glance at Herschel perched on the rear of the coach, who leans in close to me and says, “Annie. Get in. I’ll be right here.”

His voice. Oh, his voice. That’s what it sounds like. I feel like I haven’t heard it in decades, even though I only saw him last week. My skin shivers with pleasure, waves running along my limbs to the tips of my fingers and toes. The ring on my finger glows at the sound of it, and my heart swells so that I fear everyone will see, as though light might come streaming off my face.

I climb inside, and Herschel slams the carriage door closed and raps on the roof, signaling to the distracted driver up front that we’re ready to go. Another loud series of pops as more firecrackers go off rat-tat-tat on the cobblestones, causing a horse on the carriage in front of ours to rear, clawing the night with his hooves. Our horse backs up, too, throwing me into my mother and then cracking my temple against the door handle. Stars explode behind my eyes, and the reek of gunpowder gets even thicker.

Cries of “Let’s go!” and “Walk on!” and the carriages lurch one at a time into the rolling river of people who walk, some carrying little makeshift Stars and Stripes, some dressed to the nines and others in rags, bands marching past the carriage windows, trombones and cornets blurting their sounds over the heads of the passersby as we all flow in a river of humanity down Broadway to the Battery.

I twist my skirts in my fists. Papa is laughing, his head rolling on his shoulders, and Mother is waving across his great belly out the window, keeping her hand just out of reach of the beggars.

“What are you going to do?” Beattie leans forward to whisper in my ear as we bounce over a curb.

“New-York has to see what the canal will do,” I whisper back. “We have to show them.”

“But, Annie,” Beattie says. “You can’t stop it now. The canal’s finished. They’re going to dump the water of Ganges and the Hudson and the Amazon all into the sea, and then it’ll be open.”