The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen

I turn around, keeping perfectly calm, and proceed down the steps with my head held high.

When I reach the walkway, I break into a dead run and flee into the fog. I run and I run and I run and I run, not caring where I’m going, not turning corners or looking, seeing nothing, until my chest is bursting and my stitch is back and I have to stop, leaning over, my hands on my knees, panting like a dog in summer.

The fog parts, and when I look up, I find myself back in front of our house again.

I roll my head back on my shoulders and laugh aloud.

“All right!” I scream at the top of my lungs. Screaming feels really good. I never get to scream. And none of this is really happening anyway, so why not?

“ALL RIGHT!” I bellow, and my voice echoes deadly off the face of my home. “I give up! Are you happy now?”

I don’t know who I’m talking to. Myself, I suppose.

Chuckling with relief, I walk over and plop down on the stoop.

Obviously, one of two things is happening. One, I’ve gotten yellow fever and I am at this very moment lying-in in my aunt’s house, out of my head with delirium. This is a distinct possibility, as yellow fever rips through Herschel’s tenement in the Sixth Ward every summer. It’s a wonder I didn’t get it sooner, frankly. I probably danced too much at the Aquatic Display, and certainly drank too much, and the fever took over and I collapsed. In which case, this will all be over soon, because I will either recover, or I’ll be dead.

The other possibility is that I’ve gone mad.

I’m less persuaded by this possibility. People don’t go mad all at once, do they? Isn’t madness more of a gradual kind of thing? Maybe you wake up one morning not quite yourself, and the next morning you’re even less yourself, and then before you know it you’re not yourself at all. I’ve seen mad people, of course. They take them in at the almshouse, which is why most sane paupers would sooner live with eleven strangers in a wet cellar. They turn up in the street, too, roaming about, muttering to themselves, getting beaten with a walking stick when they steal a bread crust from a coffeehouse table in the open street.

Of course, if a body goes mad, perhaps one doesn’t know it? Perhaps it’s the persuasion of sanity that truly marks a madwoman. I muse on this idea for a long while, my fingers knitted over my knees, leaning back against the step and gazing up into the blank white sky.

If I am mad, in a sense, it could be fun. My parents will still have to care for me. They’d never cast me out, certainly not while Papa has his political designs. I won’t be responsible for myself at all. I can do or say whatever I like. I can go see Herschel and not have to pretend I’m not!

At the thought of Herschel, though, my face darkens.

He’d never want to be with a madwoman. Who would?

Herschel’s not allowed to be with me, anyway. His family won’t allow it. They don’t marry outside their schul.

I look down at my hands, at my naked finger where my cameo ought to be.

If I’m reliving the day the note was stabbed to our door, then it’s the same day Herschel gives me the ring. Perhaps that’s where my cameo is. Perhaps he hasn’t given it to me yet. But how can he give it to me, if I’m trapped here?

How will anyone ever find me, in all this fog? If nobody ever finds me, what will happen then?

I shiver, huddling within myself and pulling my arms to my chest behind my updrawn legs. I sink my head down, resting my forehead on my knees.

I have to think.

I have to figure this out.

A long time passes, I don’t know how long, before I hear a young male voice say, “Hey! Hi!”

I look up, my eyes dazzled with hope. I’ve been found!

“Herschel?” I say, my voice catching in my throat. My heart thuds twice in quick succession.

The fog has thinned just beyond the stoop where I’m sitting, and I can barely make out the figure of a boy slouching toward me. There’s something familiar about him, but I can’t see his face.