Hannah: Daughters of the Sea #1 (2 page)
“I mean…” He hesitated. “Your parents, do you know anything about them?”
“She’s an orphan, Doctor. Came on the orphan train,” Gertrude Stubbs replied and gave a shrug. But the doctor was not paying attention to her. His gaze was fixed on Hannah.
“Their nationality, child…Irish perhaps? Lots of Irish in Boston, and you with that red hair.”
Now it was Hannah’s turn to shrug. “Sorry,” she replied softly. “I don’t know anything about them.”
“You were collected then as an infant?”
Collected
seemed an odd word but she guessed that was how it had been. “Yes.”
“No early memories of anything?”
Hannah had never really thought about early memories. She’d been an orphan since birth. But as she concentrated, intimate, familiar feelings began to stir in Hannah. Like the cool mist she had first
felt on her tongue when she tasted the salt crystal, these feelings rose within her, tiny vaporous droplets meandering, dancing slowly in a circle. And with these stirrings came a longing for some
thing
, a yearning. How could she yearn for something she did not know?
“Reverend.” The doctor turned to the Stubbses. “Might I trouble you for an envelope? I would like to take some of these…these…” He searched for a word. “Crystals with me as specimens. I am catching the noon train today to attend a medical conference in Kansas City and would like to discuss this…this condition with my colleagues, and perhaps take a closer look at the specimens through a microscope.”
Hannah suddenly forgot her itching as panic welled up within her. She did not like being referred to as a “specimen,” but even more she did not like the idea of half a dozen doctors peering through microscopes at her crystals. If there was a secret about her, it was hers to know, to discover. Not the doctor’s. She had to stop what was about to happen.
“Certainly,” the reverend replied.
Gertrude Stubbs invited the doctor to have a cup of coffee and her homemade apple tart.
“Can’t pass that up!” the doctor replied.
When the reverend came back with the envelope, the doctor picked up the tweezers and carefully plucked some of the crystals that had drifted onto the blanket. He turned to Hannah and asked, “Might I take one of these crystals from your feet? Mrs. Stubbs says that it is your feet that cause you the most trouble.”
Hannah’s mind was working furiously. She couldn’t say no.
“Don’t worry. It won’t hurt,” the doctor added.
But when he uncovered her feet and he plucked what appeared to be a crystal from between her toes, she felt a stabbing pain.
“Oh. I am sorry, dear.” He was clearly flustered. “Well, I think I have enough.” He took the envelope and placed it in the open leather bag with his stethoscope and other instruments and then followed the Stubbses into their kitchen.
The moment he was out of sight, Hannah slipped from her bed and went into the reverend’s study. On
his desk was the sermon he had been working on for next Sunday’s church service. It didn’t take her long to find an envelope identical to the one he had given the doctor. She slipped the empty envelope into the leather bag in place of the one with the crystals. He had tucked in the flap, and she doubted he would open it until he was at the medical conference.
That afternoon Hannah took a turn for the worse. She felt parched, as if she were breaking into little pieces, losing herself bit by bit, and she lay feverish in her bed. Mrs. Stubbs had left the door open so Hannah could call to her if she needed anything. But Hannah knew that all she needed was to get away. Outside she could hear the whine of the wind across the prairie. The sound was dry and sibilant. So different from the blustery gusts off Boston harbor.
A visitor had come to discuss church activities, and Hannah could hear her talking with Mrs. Stubbs. The subject was not the wedding and baptism that would be occurring on the same weekend. Nor was it the new embroidered altar cloth that had provoked much discussion because of its bright
colors and elaborate design. Rather they were speaking of Hannah.
“Doc Rose left for Kansas City and she took a turn for the worse. There’s that new young doctor over in Pilcher but I think there is something very peculiar afflicting this child. I mean Doc Rose took some of her skin specimens with him.”
“Skin specimens! My word!” Elisabeth Blanchard exclaimed. “What are you talking about, Gert?”
“I didn’t tell you about the skin?”
“No, you didn’t. Just a rash you said.”
“Oh, no, much worse. There’s something very strange about the child. These sparkly tiny bits that look like sugar or salt, she sheds them. Doc called them crystals. Like a blizzard. I tell you, Elisabeth, I spend half my day sweeping up after her. I swear the child has more layers than an onion. I mean, Lord knows—oh, pardon me—but I’m desperate. Lord knows what she’ll look like when she’s finished peeling away. She’s a fright as it is. Enough to scare the black off a crow!” Her voice dropped. “I’m scared that she might die on us.”
It was as if she were blaming Hannah for having the nerve to die, when they might be held responsible.
“What does Doc Rose say about this condition of hers?”
The reverend came into the room and interjected, “He says it’s strange. ‘Outlandish!’ he called it.”
“Oh, he’s always with those big dramatic words,” Elisabeth Blanchard said.
But to Hannah the word did not seem dramatic or big or complicated at all. It seemed accurate. That night she grew even sicker and sweated so mightily that the sheets were not just damp but wringing wet. She smelled salt, and when she somehow propped herself up, she saw that where her head had rested there was a glistening imprint—like the rime of frost on a windowpane. Only it wasn’t frost, it was salt. She lifted the top sheet and gasped as she saw that her arms had left a similar salty imprint. Weakly, she climbed out of the bed and pulled the blankets all the way back. It was as if a salt ghost had slept in the bed.
Outside, the wind was blowing, blowing hard. In her bare feet Hannah managed to walk over to the
window in the parlor. She felt not exactly weak, but so light it was as if she had no weight, as if she had dissolved and were no longer flesh and bone, but something almost vaporous. A small rolling fog bank. She drifted through the darkness of the house to a window that faced east, and gazed out longingly.
Hannah had heard talk on the train that Kansas was known for its terrible tornadoes that started in the spring. She listened while some described unimaginably enormous funnel clouds that spun wrathfully across the prairies, sucking up anything in their path. Houses, buggies, entire buildings. There was even a story about a freight train being ripped from the tracks and flung into a town several miles away, where it landed on top of the town’s train depot and smashed it to bits. Hannah looked out the parlor window, scanning the horizon that now appeared purple against the blackness of the sky for a funnel cloud. If a tornado could pick up a train and fling it several miles, couldn’t it suck her up and spit her out back east?
She was so absorbed in her thoughts that she hadn’t heard the creak of the Stubbses’ feet on the
floor as they walked into the parlor, holding their bedside candle. They were stunned when they saw Hannah standing by the window. She looked like a silvery specter in the night, no more substantial than the tumbleweed that whirled across their yard. She seemed to float rather than stand, and her skin appeared almost translucent. Her eyes were luminous and her red hair fell in rippling cascades to her waist. So peculiar, so “outlandish” did she appear that Gertrude Stubbs went limp and sagged against her husband. But her husband’s eyes were fixed on the glittering crystals that had been silvered by the moonlight streaming in through the window. They seemed to blow about Hannah’s feet like a radiant mist. He thought at first it was the moonlight that infused the crystals with the vibrant hues, but when he looked closer he saw colors he had never seen in the moon’s path—soft iridescent hues of lavender and gold, twinkling shades of rose and green that matched the strange green highlights that he suddenly noticed in her hair. Was she real? A shade? A spirit? Had she just died and left this shimmering
dust in her wake as she passed out of this world to the next?
“Child?” The Reverend Stubbs took a step closer while his wife clung to him as a drowning person would to a scrap of wood in a storm-torn sea. “Child,” he repeated. “What are you doing here by the window?”
Praying for a tornado!
Hannah was tempted to say.
Praying for anything to get me back.
Finally she simply said the truth, “I have to go back East, back to Boston. I’ll die here if I don’t.”
Gertrude Stubbs seemed to straighten up a bit. She leaned toward Hannah. “You really think so, child?”
“I know so,” Hannah replied. “I have prayed to God every night. I must go back. This land is not good for me. It would be a blessing for me to return to Boston.”
“A blessing?” The reverend and his wife both whispered the word and looked at each other. Who were they to deny a blessing to one of God’s creatures, strange though she may be? The reverend
cut off the thought as he looked down at the iridescent crystals that now seemed to him like a pathway pointing east. “Yes, you must go back,” he said forcefully. “You must.”
And so it was arranged that Hannah would return on the next eastbound train. The very thought of it seemed to initiate a miraculous restoration. Her appetite improved. She was able to keep down simple foods and the rash began to disappear.
The board of The Boston Home for Little Wanderers had declared that she was too old to remain there in the orphanage. And Miss Pringle had said in no uncertain terms that she was not suitable for domestic service. But Hannah knew she would have to find something that she was suitable for. Of one thing she was certain. She had to return to the sea.
H
ANNAH LOOKED OUT
onto Boston Harbor at the steamer and the stevedores unloading the cargo. There was precious little difference between herself and burlap bags of coffee beans, she thought, both commodities for trading. If spoiled, they were dumped or burned. An inspector on board the ship walked down the gangplank, now nodding to the shipping agent that all had been received in good order. Anything contaminated would not have been permitted to off-load at this pier but would have been taken by a garbage tug to be sunk at sea or destroyed on “trash island,” which was obscured by a thick veil of oily, dark smoke.
When Hannah had arrived back at the home, she was delighted to find that Miss Pringle had been replaced by a gentler woman, a Mrs. Larkin. Mrs. Larkin was younger, prettier, and possessed of a soft, lovely voice that was nothing like a needle but more like water bubbling in a lively stream.
“I don’t see why you would be unsuitable for domestic service, my dear. Perhaps not upstairs serving tea immediately, but certainly you could help in the kitchen. Can you sew, Hannah?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well, there you go!” she said cheerfully.
Then Mrs. Larkin opened a folder and raised a finger, declaring, “Aha! The Hawleys. Mr. and Mrs. Horace Hawley, number Eighteen Louisburg Square, three daughters, ages nine to sixteen.” She looked up with a merry light in her hazel eyes. “Oh my goodness, if they are anything like my sisters and me, their clothing will need constant attention and repair. I think this is just the place for you.”
“Louisburg Square? That’s in Boston, isn’t it?” Hannah asked.
“Yes, my dear. Beacon Hill, one of the finest addresses in the city. The Hawleys are very…” She searched for a word. “Well, very refined, a very old Boston family and very wealthy.” Then she hastened to add, “But don’t let that worry you. You won’t be serving at parties, as I said. You’ll be…well, more or less in the shadows.” Mrs. Larkin now leaned forward. “But it will be a comfortable setting and earn you almost one hundred dollars a year.”
“One hundred dollars!” Hannah gasped. This was an unimaginable sum. Hannah had never had in her possession a single dollar before, had never felt in her hand the crumpled sturdiness of a bill.
“The starting wage for a scullery girl is one dollar and seventy-five cents per week. You get room and board, and you work seven days a week, but get two Sundays off a month.”
“Starting wage,” Hannah whispered.
“Yes, starting wage.” Mrs. Larkin cocked her head to one side and regarded Hannah carefully. “But that is just starting. Do a good job and you can work your way up. The head upstairs maid makes over five
hundred dollars a year and the cook…oh my goodness, cooks and butlers make almost a thousand dollars a year. I know you are bright and you will do well at the Hawleys’.”
“You mean…” Hannah hesitated. She could not find the words as real hope sprung up in her. “You…think I am suitable?”
“Yes, dear. Now, here’s the address and I am not sure if you will be speaking with Mrs. Hawley directly. It might be the butler or the head housekeeper, or perhaps the cook, but just be sweet. Don’t ask too many questions. I shall send a letter along that says you can read. And do you do any figures, dear?”
“I can do sums and know my multiplication tables, and I was beginning to learn long division.”
“Wonderful—almost fit for Harvard!”
“What’s Harvard, ma’am?”
And now Mrs. Larkin laughed very hard. “Oh, you don’t need to know about Harvard, dear. They don’t admit girls.” Hannah bit her lip lightly while she thought. She was determined to do well in this job, learn everything she could. It wasn’t just the money,
the promise of higher wages. It was the chance to live within reach of the sea. The salt crystals had stopped forming on her skin, but the crystals in the envelope that she had brought back seemed to have intensified in their color. She kept them now in a little pouch that she wore around her neck, tucked discreetly inside her camisole. Like a charm, a talisman she seemed to need to keep close to her.
“Hannah,” Mrs. Larkin said loudly, calling her back from her reveries. “Is there anything else?”
“No…but it’s a lot of money one could make someday, isn’t it?”
“Indeed! And what would you do with more money?”
Hannah cocked her head. She had never thought about such a question until this moment. But then it came to her—a stunning realization and yet so obvious. “Why, I’d buy a house. Well, not a house—a little cottage by the sea.”
Mrs. Larkin pulled her chin in and tipped her head back as if to take in a fuller measure of Hannah. “Hannah, you’re…you’re very original.”
And now Hannah grew very quiet. “No…not really, I just know where I am comfortable, where I belong. And that is near the sea.”
“Any sea?” Mrs. Larkin asked.
“Is there more than one?” Hannah replied.
“Oh, yes, my dear! But the Atlantic Ocean is closest to us.”
“That will do,” Hannah said simply.
Mrs. Larkin looked at Hannah curiously, and then she laughed. “Well, I’m glad. I would hate for you to have to go too far away to find a proper sea for yourself.”
“They’re all proper. They all fit.”
“Fit?” Mrs. Larkin asked. Hannah shrugged and did not reply.
Mrs. Larkin smiled warmly and reached across her desk and patted Hannah’s hand. “You’re just starting, my dear. The sky is the limit here. Or perhaps I should say the sea’s the limit.” Mrs. Larkin laughed gaily, but Hannah smiled quietly to herself and touched the pouch beneath the bodice of her dress.
Now Hannah looked up at the Clock Tower. The hands were at twenty-five minutes before nine. Hannah had made a detour on her way to the interview on Beacon Hill to come by the harbor. She was not due at number 18 Louisburg Square until nine o’clock, but she would get there five minutes early. That would impress them. Promptness was essential in domestic service.
Mrs. Larkin had given her a handbook to read about how domestic servants—from scullery girls to butlers—were expected to behave. Hannah had almost memorized the book, reading and rereading the sections on why girls were dismissed. The reasons were fairly clear—all of which, from drunkenness to stealing, were listed under the heading of “Inappropriate Behavior.” Most of it was clear and easily avoided, but there was one short paragraph that disturbed her. Mrs. Claremont, the author of the book, had written, “Of course, if a servant appears eccentric or odd, or for one reason or another just does not seem to fit in the household, she can be let go. Usually if this is the case, a severance payment is made.”
Money or no money,
severance
was a harsh word. Hannah knew what it meant. Dismissed, discharged, cut off. She simply could not be cut off. For cut off now might mean being sent away, far, far from Boston. Far from the salt air of the sea.
