The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen

A few people scatter in the street, opening a path before me in surprise. A dog barks and nips at my heel, tearing away a mouthful of lace from my underskirts.

My arms pump, my breath coming hard and fast in my chest, and even though the cool autumn air whistles through the cross streets, mixing air from the river into the city miasma, a sheen of sweat beads on my forehead as I run, skirting rickety stairwells and wives out marketing and bands of frock-coated bloods lounging in the doors of victualing houses with oyster shells heaped at their feet.

Herschel, I think, my eyes smarting with tears. Herschel, I have to see you.

I run faster and faster, and the Bowery blurs around me, faces and horses and barrels and baskets and hanging hunks of meat for sale and theater marquees all smearing into an indistinct mass as I fly past.

I gasp for breath in the rhythm of his name, Her on the inhale, schel on the exhale, and as I run the pale morning sky descends slowly, transforming by degrees into a fog rolling up the streets. I almost trip over a rut in the cross street, my skirt ripping on the heel of my slipper when I catch myself, but I keep running. The fog coils thicker, so thick I can feel it against my face. Before long the path by the shopfronts is completely swallowed with mist, and the sounds of the street life have deadened.

I slow to a walk, my hands pressed to my ribs against the painful stitch that’s digging into them. My breath comes in short gasps. The fog rolls nearer.

I stop walking.

There’s no one on the street. I’m alone, completely enclosed in a veil of fog. I strain my ears, listing for the telltale calls of pineapple sellers, children scavenging the trash heaps for bits of rope and broken nails, peddlers’ carts creaking past, black fortune-tellers selling numbers for policy, whores hustling the men coming out of coffeehouses.

There’s nothing.

I rub deeper into my rib cage, frowning.

I’m surrounded by dead silence.

“Well,” I say aloud to myself. “If that don’t beat all.”

I wait for what feels like a long time for the fog to lift. These fogs happen sometimes, though usually not this far uptown, and usually not this far from the wharves. This is oyster-selling fog. Ocean fog.

The stitch in my side finally subsides, and I smooth my pigtails back into place and wipe the sweat from under my eyes. Lottie will kill me, with the sweat stains I’m leaving on this dress. I bend down to inspect the damage to the hem, and find it not too bad. A roll and a few stitches, and it’ll be too short for me, but Beattie can wear it. It’s too small for me anyway, and we’ve let it out twice already.

I start walking again, with some care, as the fog is so thick I’m having trouble telling what direction I’m going. But I know the way to Herschel’s store as well as my way to Hudson Square, or to the ferry landing, or the Battery. I know it as well as I know the path from our room to Ed’s, or from the kitchen door to the privy. I’ll find him.

I keep walking.

My feet carry me for a long time. I’m not sure how long, as the fog stays heavy, but I feel myself begin to get tired. And the corn hasn’t held me hardly at all. I want dinner. I want Herschel to give his uncle some kind of excuse so that we can slip off a few blocks away and find a beer hall that serves cured ham. Course, Herschel can’t eat ham. Well, Herschel will have to go despite himself. Ham is what I’m hungry for. Or bacon! I should’ve stopped for some bacon before leaving. I don’t know why I was in such a rush, only . . .

My ruminations on dinner are interrupted by the thinning of the fog, ever so slightly. I peer ahead, trying to make out where I am. I should be at Chatham Square by now. Or past it, even. Well past. I could have walked all the way to the water, by mistake, though you can generally hear the rigging and the seagulls and the ships creaking, between all the hubbub of the wharves and stalls and junk shops.