The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen

I think.

My ears are still ringing from the fireworks, and I rub my eyes. Behind my lids there’s an explosion of colors as I dig in my knuckles, trying to rub away the confusion. There’s an acrid smell in my nostrils, from the gunpowder, and I can tell that the stench of smoke is still clinging to my dress. It’s on my skin and in my hair. Lottie will kill me for wearing this dress. The ribbons and lace make it so hard to clean. She was dead set I wear the other one.

When I move my hands from my eyes to my cheeks, the details of the room become clearer. Yes, it’s definitely Mother’s bedroom. In our house on First and the Bowery, not my aunt’s in Hudson Square where we all went to be safe after the . . .

Anyway.

My hands fall to my sides and I listen.

The house is silent. Eerily so.

“Mother?” I call out.

My voice sounds odd in the room, dead and unechoing.

I stand still, ears straining.

The room looks the same as when we fled a week ago. Lottie’s left sand on the floor, which will make Mother wild. She hates to see the residue of cleaning. The coverlet is pulled up over the bed, white knotted lace stretched all the way up over the bolster. Lottie’s left the key in the bed frame, too, because Mother’s always after her to tighten the ropes. Enamel bowl and pitcher on the washstand, empty. Knotted lace doily on the dressing table. On the doily, a pair of gloves, a silver hairbrush, and a cut-glass bottle of perfume. Mother’s sampler from when she was a girl framed over the dressing table, with its alphabet and numbers and quote from Daniel 12:2 framed by laurel leaves.


And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.

I’ve always hated that quote.

The pale pistachio curtains are tied back, though, which is another error of Lottie’s, as the white glare of the sun streaming through the windows will bleach the wallpaper. It occurs to me that I should close them. Or Lottie should. Someone should, anyway.

“Lottie?”

No answer.

There’s no noise whatsoever, which is unsettling. Usually I can hear all the traffic on the Bowery from everywhere in the house, even upstairs. The wagon wheels creaking, the stamp and snort of horses. Right before we left I heard a woman and a man grunting in the alley next to the drawing room, and Mother hustled us upstairs. She doesn’t know I’ve actually seen them, the bright-colored women who walk the Bowery now. There’s a lot Mother doesn’t know that I know.

I rub a slipper over the floor, and the familiar grate of sand on pine sounds even odder in the silence. It’s hot in Mother’s bedroom, because of the sun most probably. I don’t remember the sun ever coming in this strong. Usually elm branches keep it shady on the front of our town house. Cool air and rustling leaves once you get a story above the dust and filth of the street. But now the sun is glaring so harshly along the walls and floor that the room seems filled with a pale white haze.

“I should close them,” I murmur to myself. “Mother will be upset.”

My voice sounds strange in my ears. I’m not certain if I spoke the words, or only thought them. When I start to walk to the window, my feet feel like they’re sunk in sucking mud.

I stop short, looking down at my slippered feet. I wiggle one set of toes, then the other. I make like I’m going to take a step, but I can’t.

“Oh, come now,” I mutter. I reach down and wrap my hands round my thigh, trying to bodily pick up my limb.

It doesn’t budge.

I can flex my toes in my slippers, and I can twist at the waist and touch my face and my hair, and run my hands down my dress, but I can’t move from this spot at the foot of Mother’s bed.