The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen

“But this isn’t right,” I say aloud, looking around. “This can’t be right!”


The side door to Edward’s room swings open again and Lottie grunts in under the weight of two hot kettles with wooden handles. Her face is red from the effort of hauling the water up the stairs from the kitchen, and she’s out of breath. She drops them by the tub with a thunk at the very moment that the main door to our room swings open to reveal our mother. She’s in a crisp day dress, and her skin is as smooth and flawless as cream, except for a smattering of tiny pox scars on her cheeks. Her hair is perfectly plaited over her ears and her expression is grim. We freeze. What’s all this, then?

“What’s all this, then?” she asks.

She watches Lottie, who is hunched next to the washtub and stacking a couple of towels by the rocking chair. The servant doesn’t look up. She excels at evading Mother’s active management. Then Mother’s gaze passes over me, where I’m standing like a lost waif in my nightdress, stained with sweat and staring at my own hands like a madwoman. She comes to rest on my siblings in the collapsed bed.

Edward?

“Edward?” she prods.

My brother scrambles to climb out of the wreckage and straighten his clothes.

“He started it!” Beattie insists, struggling to stand up on the sloping mattress. “I told him not to jump on us, but he always does!”

“Beatrice,” my mother says.

It’s all she has to say.

She stares at them both for a long, cold moment, and then says, “Lottie, ask the boy to see to that when we’re away this afternoon.”

She doesn’t remember. She doesn’t mention last week.

Lottie grumbles, “Yes’m.” She hates to speak to Mother. The “boy” is the Negro man Winston who does for us what Lottie can’t. A man of all work. Mother hates to speak to him as much as Lottie hates to speak to Mother.

I’m observing this minor domestic scene, but I’m apart from it. I can’t understand what’s happened. This morning is unfolding just like the morning of the day Herschel gave me the ring. That day, last week, before the . . .

The day we fled to Hudson Square. I got up, and Ed broke the bed rope, and I dressed and breakfasted with Mother, and then he was waiting for me outside the theater, and we . . .

“Edward. Beatrice. Annatje. Breakfast will be served in half an hour,” Mother informs the room full of reprobates, and closes the door to underscore her point.

“Annie,” I whisper the correction out of habit. I hate that they gave me a Dutch name; it’s so old-fashioned. I’ve been trying to get them to call me Annie for over a year, and everyone but Mother goes along with it. Even Papa. And Papa’s mother was a Stuyvestant, as Mother never tires of reminding me.

Lottie starts pouring water into the tub, and says, “I don’t care who’s first. Ed?”

With a squeal of disgust my brother flees our bedroom. There’s no getting him to bathe if he can possibly help it, and he usually can. Sometimes he goes so long without washing that his neck turns gray from grime.

“I’ll go,” I say, and my voice sounds strange and hollow in my ears.

Seeing that she needn’t rouse herself ’til I’m done, Beattie flops contentedly back into the bed, resting her doll on her belly and making faces at it.