Pinkerton's Sister (83 page)

“Do you think he needs to use an ostrich feather?”

(Extra-loud snigger at this point.)

“
Several
ostrich feathers, I should imagine.”

Snigger.

“Can you imagine?”

Snigger
.

“Keep her fresh and shining.”

Snigger
.

“I think
she’s
under a cloud, don’t you?”

(That expression again, and it caused another extra-loud snigger.)

“She’s
come to grief
.”

Snigger, snigger, snigger.

’Twas summer, the darkie was gay.

No. This darkie had come to grief. No gaiety for her.

Snigger.

All coons look alike to me.

(“Coons” rhymed with “tunes.” Sing those tunes, coons! Sing those tunes! Make sure that you pronounce the words
properly
!)

Gracious.

Whatdoyoumacallit?

My word.

Thingamajig.

If I might be permitted.

(She would be.)

Whatsit?

Darkie.

Darkie.

Snigger.

Snigger, snigger.

(
Snigger
sounded –
Snigger, snigger, snigger
again
–
like “nigger.”
Snigger.
)

Annie walked amidst the sunshine, but rain rained on her alone, a little black cloud that followed her about, and cast her shadow before her, so that people moved away to avoid the darkness.

A little water hadn’t cleared Alice of the deed of zebra-bottomed hands. She was so covered in ink that if she’d applied Eureka Ink Eradicator she’d have disappeared completely from sight. She had rubbed, rubbed away for what seemed like weeks – Yet, here’s a spot – a Lady Macbeth ensanguined with black blood, slaughtering an entire court in a
Titus Andronicus
bloodbath as she enthusiastically sang minstrel songs. She dreamed –
Stab! –
of Mrs. Albert Comstock –
Stab! –
with the light brown –
Stab! –
hair. The more she remembered the sniggers she’d heard, the more enthusiastically she imagined the stabbings, in the way that she’d found that to thump herself on her breast helped to take away the pain of certain thoughts.

Ha –
Stab! –
ha –
Stab! –
ha –
Stab! –
ha –
Stab!

“V” is for Vengeance.

“V” is for Villainy.

“V” is for Very Enjoyable Indeed.

It was always Mrs. Albert Comstock and Mrs. Goodchild she stabbed, as she thought of the way they’d sniggered about Annie. The wooden doll’s head was mashed to the texture of well-chewed licorice root when there was no flavor left, the tongue all black, and the fibers whitened to the color of long thin whiskery leeks’ roots. “Lickerish” meant greedy, lustful, lecherous. She imagined a big red tongue licking wetly, noisily, slurpily turning black as it licked away the ink on her hands, the ink in all the books, until everything was white again, and no written words remained.

After the stabs, the slurps.

She’d been stabbing Papa also, though he was someone they had been sniggering about, not someone doing the sniggering. She stabbed extra hard when she thought of him. In most productions of
Hamlet
, Hamlet “pranced about” (this was Mrs. Albert Comstock’s insightful phrase: she was a woman who possessed a keen critical mind, a rare grasp of the essentials of world literature) for nearly four hours. After an hour and a half, the mighty Mrs. Albert Comstock buttocks would be shifting restlessly, and her corsets creaking like the timbers of a sailing ship in a storm, and she would be talking even more – and even more loudly – than usual.

In Alice’s production (she had thought about it in lingering detail), the Ghost of Hamlet’s Father – after his demand for revenge, after his description of his murder – would say “Remember me” and Hamlet would leap upon him and stab him to the heart with a cry of “Then, venom, to thy work.” It was a
dagger that he saw before him, and – unlike Macbeth’s – this one
was
sensible to feeling as to sight.

Curse him!

Stab!

Curse him!

Stab!

Curse him!

Stab!

STAB ELSINORE’S SOVEREIGN!

The play would be over before the end of Act One, Scene Five, and everyone could leave the theatre in ample time for a decent meal without having to sit through the rest of it. Mrs. Albert Comstock would be thrilled. The venom was slow-working, but it poisoned the heart.

“V” is for Venom.

Hamlet’s Father was also named Hamlet.

Hamlet stabbed through the breath-stained glass of the looking-glass and destroyed the misty reflection of himself. It was what Dorian Gray had done. It was what Frankenstein’s creature had done. It was what Dr. Jekyll had tried to do. It was what she had tried to do, telling Dr. Wolcott Ascharm Webster what she saw in clouds, what she’d seen in dreams, the distorted images of her inner self. She’d talk, and she’d be cured. The rest would be silence, and in the silence there would be a long-sought-for stillness.

(Rather silence than the voices she heard, through the walls and up the chimney, the music in the distance. Rather blank white paper than the written troubles of the brain.)

In her version of
Macbeth
(this was the result of much studying of the panel in the schoolroom: scholarship took many forms) the Third Apparition – the Bloody Child – instead of prophesying that “none of woman born shall harm Macbeth” said (this was a
much
better idea than Shakespeare’s was, Alice thought, and so did Charlotte) “no man of woman born shall harm Macbeth.” In
her version the Witches’ trick was with the word “man.” It was (the idea had been like a revelation) a
woman –
Lady Macbeth, in her madness, his own loving wife – who killed him, lopping off his head, not a man at all!

First “Give me the daggers!”; then
Boing! Boing! Boing!

Who would have thought Macbeth to have had so much blood in him?

Those hands would ne’er be clean.

What was done could not be undone.

Macduff’s late revelation that he was not “born” because he was “from his mother’s womb untimely ripp’d” always struck her as cheating, feeble playing with words, certainly not one of Shakespeare’s better efforts. No wonder Macbeth was annoyed. She’d have been
furious
. At Miss Pearsall’s School for Girls these words were tactfully not explained. At Miss Pearsall’s School for Girls these words were not even
printed
in their edition. It was the very words that were untimely ripp’d. Wombs did not exist at Miss Pearsall’s School for Girls, where the human form was as comprehensively lopped of all dubious portions, all possible sources of not-very-niceness, Mrs. Albert Comstock and Mrs. Goodchild shriekingly unleashed, weighed down with razor-sharp scissors and chisels, demolishing great swathes of Ladies’ and Gentlemen’s Districts like the most uninhibited of New York City’s property developers. In their edition Macduff announced – it was rather self-important of him to employ the third person – “let the angel whom thou still hast serv’d/Tell thee Macduff was untimely born,” leaving most of the class baffled. You felt, in their edition, that Macduff (a perpetually embarrassed Dr. Twemlow of Fife, scarlet and twitching as the wind whipped at his kilt) would have blushed a becoming pink, and diffidently informed Macbeth that Macduff was – ahem – untimely – ahem – born, with much embarrassed hesitating and spluttering on the ahems. Mary Benedict and (less convincingly) Miss Swanstrom did their best to look knowing at this point.

Another red feather circled between them, and landed on the white bedspread. It was the wrong color to be a pigeon feather, the feather escaping from the sleeper’s pillow and so permitting death to follow. Now – she continued to look around her – she was inside the little wooden box she had imagined from the other side of the door, inside the illuminated interior of the violin, and the soundholes – the italic “f” and the reversed “s” – now opened into darkness.

That “f” shape always made her think of music, and of the use of the long “s” in the old eight-volume edition of
Clarissa –
Clarifsa –
that she had read, the events of the novel taking place to the sound of chamber music, sad sounds in small rooms. The wind was louder in the room than she had imagined it would be. She felt small and tucked away, like a doll stored by a child who had become too old, something hidden inside a cigar box beneath the elaborately decorated, brightly colored lid. She did not like this image, thinking of the smell of cigar smoke on clothes and beards. It was a time to talk, to share confidences and tell stories, not a time to think of Bearded Ones.

She explained about the bird, and began to feel tearful again.

“Have you had a d-d-dream?” she asked Annie, to change the subject.

Annie shook her head. No dream.

Alice unwrapped the Dream Book from the scarf, the ritualistic beginning of an interpretation, as if Annie had said yes. Annie asked her if
she
had had dreams, and she said no, wondering if Annie was lying to her, as she was lying to Annie. She flicked, apparently casually, through the little book –
Album
,
Dragon
,
House
,
Morgue
,
Pulpit
,
Stone Mason
(all things had hidden meanings) – and stopped at
Wind
.

She could not remember, years later, what it had said, but Rosobell’s
What’s in a Dream
said:
To dream of hearing the wind soughing, denotes that you will wander in estrangement from one whose life is empty without you.
It was disconcerting when something in
which you did not believe told something that seemed like a truth, like a prayer being answered when you did not believe in God. For a moment, the feeling had come across her that she should ask Mrs. Alexander Diddecott to take her to one of her séances, so that she could call up Annie and talk with her again. Annie would be a little girl, and Alice would be an ugly, peculiar spinster, a madwoman in a schoolroom. Annie would be frightened of her. “It’s
me
, Annie. It’s
me
.” Like she had imagined happening with Papa’s “friend,” like Faithful, Annie would turn away from her, shuddering at the sight of the person she had become, turning away from her empty open arms.

“Are you
sure
you haven’t had a d-d-dream?” she asked Annie. “A while ago, if not last night?”

She was hoping that Annie would say yes, and then Alice would lie to her. She knew that she was going to lie to Annie. It came to her all of a sudden.

Annie said yes.

“Well …” she began.

She paused, struggling, wanting to use the same formula. It had to be the same words, or – Annie felt – it wouldn’t work, and she had said that she hadn’t had a dream.

“I had …” Alice prompted, letting her know that she understood.

“I had a dream last night …”

It was said in a rush. The two of them were hurrying toward each other.

She looked straight at Alice, the direct look of the dark eyes.

For a moment, Alice saw her at a distance, far away and out of reach, a small figure alone in bright moonlight with a painted board behind her bearing the words
Dreamed A Dream
. It was like a sign –
Take care. She bites –
that she should wear upon her back like a knapsack, or like the burden upon Christian’s back, a sign defining what she was, what she had done.

“It
was
last night.”

“Liar,” Alice said teasingly, meaning not that she was lying now, but that she had been lying when she had said that she hadn’t had a dream. It was a word that could be used only with someone to whom you were very close. Annie knew what she meant.

“Disgraceful,” she said. “A corrupting influence on a young child.”

“So much now becomes clear.”

Annie reached between them, to pick up the red feather, and then picked at Alice’s hair, plucking an exotically colored – Turkey red – turkey. She pulled away so many feathers – they tugged; it felt like they really were being plucked from her skin – that Alice thought she must look like a Red Indian brave ready for war on the shores of Gitche Gumee. Her war paint would smudge the sheets.

“Deck them with your brightest feathers.”

She quoted the line from
The Song of Hiawatha
as Annie fanned out four or five feathers against her nightgown. She hadn’t known then that the aviary had been damaged in the storm, and that the little dead bird from outside her window was one of many, though she knew that the aviary was the place where she’d seen it. She tried to visualize the signs that identified the birds, trying to recall the name of the little red bird. As you stood with your back to
The Children’s Hour
, you could see the little paintings of the birds in front of the glass structure, and the black and red lettering saying what they were.

Annie held the feathers up above her face, and blew at them, scattering thistledown or dandelion seeds. She smiled at Alice as they floated between them.

“… and this is what I dreamed.”

She pointed at the feathers, quick little stabbing motions, setting them spinning around and floating upwards again.

“Feathers were falling downward, all around me, many more than these, as if I’d burst the mattress when I was making the bed. It was like being out in a snowstorm, like being out tonight. There was a wind howling, but the feathers weren’t being blown. They were falling straight down, and mounting up around me. I thought that I was going to be buried under feathers, suffocated. I looked upward …”

She moved her head, looking up toward the white boards of the ceiling, as the feathers fell unnoticed on the bedspread, closing her eyes. She always reenacted what she had dreamed, making Alice feel what she had felt.