A Drowned Maiden's Hair (22 page)

Maud risked a glance at Mrs. Lambert. The rich woman appeared flustered, and Maud felt a surge of irritation. A grown-up, especially a rich grown-up, should have more self-confidence.

“She ought to say ‘thank you,’” insisted the red-haired man. He leaned down, addressing Maud. “Somebody does something nice for you, you say ‘thank you.’ Didn’t your mother teach you that?”

“My mother’s dead,” flashed back Maud.

She saw Mrs. Lambert wince. “Rory, let her go.”

The heavy hands remained in place. “If she don’t know any better, she ought to be taught.”

If she don’t know any better.
Maud took in the critical words and saw Mrs. Lambert’s pitying glance. All at once, she understood: they thought she was poor. Mrs. Lambert had paid for her as if she were a beggar. Rory was trying to teach her manners as if she were only half-civilized. Maud felt a stab of shame that changed swiftly to outrage. She was conscious that she was barefoot, that her dress was tawdry, that she was wearing the absolute minimum of underclothing. Nevertheless, she was respectable — she was not a street child. She flung back her head, cheeks scarlet.

“Thank you, ma’am.” She spoke with the exquisite crispness that Hyacinth required of an angel child. She borrowed a leaf from Lord Fauntleroy’s book and quoted, “I’m ever so much obliged to you.”

She had the satisfaction of seeing the pity in Mrs. Lambert’s eyes turn to astonishment. She caught hold of her damp skirts and sketched a curtsy, pointing her grubby toes. “Thank you,” she repeated. “I enjoyed the ride — tremendously. Good-bye.” With one violent twist, she jerked herself free of Rory’s hands and sprinted for the safety of the crowd.

In the dreams, Caroline’s hair was brown, not golden. The girl was kneeling beside her, patting the sand of Maud’s newly built castle. Caroline’s head was bent, and her curls tumbled down, concealing her face. They were glorious curls: lush, tangled, silky, the sort that Maud had envied all her life. But they were not golden. They were the color of molasses — several shades lighter than Maud’s sparse locks, but distinctly brown.

“I almost drowned today,” Maud told Caroline. She groped in the sand, searching for the shell she used as a spade.

Caroline handed it over. “You didn’t drown,” she contradicted. “You got water up your nose. I’ve had that lots of times.”

Maud shut her lips tightly. It was just like Caroline to contradict her. Caroline thought nothing important could happen to anyone but herself.

“It’s an awful feeling,” Caroline said kindly, “getting water up your nose. Did you cry?”

“No,” denied Maud, doubly annoyed because Caroline hadn’t realized she was being snubbed.

“I always cry,” Caroline confided, as if there were nothing wrong with that.

“You’re a crybaby,” Maud said disagreeably. She looked up from the sand castle. It was early morning, and the gulls were swooping over the water, gleaning for food. There was no one on the beach but the two children. The freshness of the morning reminded Maud that she never left the house by day, which in turn told her she was dreaming. “I don’t see why you’re always bothering my dreams,” she told Caroline.

Caroline didn’t answer.

“Why don’t you haunt your mother’s dreams?” demanded Maud. “She’d like that, probably.
I
don’t want you.”

“I can’t,” replied Caroline. “She’s too miserable.”

“She’s miserable because you drowned,” Maud said accusingly.

“Yes, but I didn’t do it on purpose.” Caroline pulled one leg up to her chest and fingered a scab on her knee. Her petticoats were snow white and frothy with lace —
real lace,
Maud thought savagely. What a waste.

“I wish you’d tell her about my shoes and stockings,” Caroline said.

Maud frowned at her sand castle. “I don’t know about your shoes and stockings,” she retorted. “Why should I tell her about your shoes and stockings?”

She waited for Caroline to reply. Then she saw she was alone. The sand lay around her in smooth hills. There were no marks, no footprints — not even a hollow where Caroline had been sitting.

M
aud twitched in her sleep. The sheet she held to her throat was moving. Someone was pulling it away from her. Maud opened her eyes and saw that the someone was Muffet. It was early morning and the hired woman was glaring at her. Maud sat up, blinking. Even half-asleep, she grasped that she was in trouble.

Muffet pointed to the window. Before it was a chair, draped with the striped dress Maud had worn the night before. Maud had placed it there to dry. Muffet stumped over to the dress, held it up, and rubbed the fabric between her thumb and fingers.
Sandy,
the gesture proclaimed.
Wet. You’ve been down to the ocean.

Maud groaned. She pressed the heels of her hands against her eye sockets and racked her brains for an answer. She wondered if she could persuade Muffet that, even though she never left the house by day, it was all right if she played outdoors at night. It wouldn’t be easy. Of all the people in the household, Muffet was the most difficult to mislead. It was really too much, Maud thought with a stab of self-pity, the number of lies she had to keep track of now that she lived with the Hawthorne sisters.

Muffet had not finished stating her case. She marched over to the bed and pointed to a few grains of sand that had ended up in Maud’s bed. She fingered a lock of Maud’s hair. Her gaze was intensely critical.

“I know,” Maud agreed. “My hair feels awful — I think it’s the salt water. Do you suppose I could wash it today?”

Muffet took out her tablet. She scrawled MAUD NOT GO IN WATER OR MAUD DEAD
.

Maud read the message, appreciative of the fact that Muffet was using the word
or,
which was new to her. It had taken Maud some pains to teach the meaning of
or.
Maud wrote MAUD NOT DEAD, tapped her chest as if to prove it, smiled placatingly, and returned the tablet to Muffet.

Muffet snorted, exasperated. She sat down on the bed and proceeded to draw. Maud gazed over her shoulder, fascinated as the seascape took shape — a long line of rocks leading from shore to sky, the curving waves, last night’s waning moon. Between the waves there was a head, and two arms raised in desperation. Muffet put down her pencil, lifted her hands, and began to gasp for air. It was a vivid and ugly pantomime of a person drowning.

Remembering the night before, Maud felt her skin prickle with gooseflesh. Had Muffet seen . . . ? No. The shore had been deserted. Maud pushed the thought aside. The ocean had frightened her the night before, but she had every intention of going back to it. She took the tablet and tried to draw a picture of herself playing in the sand. She mimed making a castle, pulling the bedsheet into peaks. She assumed her most pleading expression.
I only play in the sand.

Muffet’s eyes narrowed.

Maud pinched the grains of sand from the sheet and let them trickle onto the tablet. Beside them, she wrote the word SAND
.
Then she wrote MAUD WORK IN SAND — Muffet hadn’t yet learned the word for
play.

Muffet snatched the pencil and wrote MAUD IN WATER. She went back to the dress and wrung out the hem, producing a few drops of moisture.
You weren’t just playing with the sand; you were in the water.

Maud threw up her palms, asking for mercy.

Muffet jotted down MAUD IN HOUSE and held the tablet so Maud could see.

Maud shook her head. She took the tablet and wrote HOT IN HOUSE. MAUD GO OUT HOUSE. She stopped with the pencil in her hand. She wished she had the words to tell Muffet how much she wanted to go out. The attic was not just hot; it was suffocating. She was sick of being a secret child, of feeling lonely and invisible and forlorn. Outside was the freshness of the wind and the ocean and the magic of the carousel. An idea came to her. She seized the pencil and began a sketch more complicated than any she had tried before.

She began with an upside-down triangle, for the carousel’s canopy, and drew four stick horses, two up and two down. She drew herself standing to one side and made a dotted line going from her eye to the merry-go-round. Surely Muffet would understand that staying in the house was hopeless when there were things like that just beyond the back door.

Muffet was interested. She sat back down on the bed and watched the drawing take shape. After the fourth horse appeared, the light of recognition came into her face, and she raised one hand, miming the up-and-down motion of the flying horses. Evidently she had seen the merry-go-round.

Maud nodded. She wrote MAUD GO OUT HOUSE. MAUD GO SEE — she drew an arrow and printed CAROUSEL under the flying horses.

Muffet took the tablet from her. Her pencil moved rapidly, fleshing out the horses, changing the upside-down triangle into a cone. She often corrected Maud’s drawings — Maud suspected that her stick figures were as distressing to Muffet as Muffet’s clothes were to Maud. She watched respectfully as Muffet rounded out Maud’s self-portrait with sleeves, a sash, and hair.

Muffet finished correcting the drawing and wrote MAUD GO SEE CAROUSEL. Then she wrote MAUD WORK IN SAND. And afterward, with such pressure that the tip of the pencil broke, MAUD NOT GO IN WATER OR MAUD DEAD.

Maud took away the tablet. With the nub of the pencil, she drew a pair of feet, with a wavy line just up to the ankles. MAUD GO IN LITTLE WATER.

Muffet shook her head. She wrote MAUD NOT GO IN WATER.

Maud realized this was an ultimatum. She bowed her head. In smaller letters, she conceded, MAUD NOT GO IN WATER. MAUD WORK IN SAND. MAUD GO SEE CAROUSEL.

Muffet nodded, patted her shoulder, and pointed toward the bedclothes.
Make your bed.
Obediently, Maud stood up and began to pull the sheet taut. The hired woman withdrew to her own room, only to reappear, holding out a closed fist. There was a tentative smile on her face. Slowly she uncurled her fingers, showing five dimes on her palm.

Maud gazed at her blankly.

Muffet took Maud’s hand and tipped the dimes into it.

“Mine?” breathed Maud.

Muffet bowed her head like a soprano acknowledging bouquets thrown from the balcony. She took up the tablet and wrote proudly MAUD GO IN CAROUSEL.

Maud’s brain reeled. Five dimes. Fifty cents. Ten rides on Angel, or nine rides and an ice-cream cone. . . . Why, the boardwalk was full of things that could be bought for fifty cents! She had seen the signs. She could see a moving picture show, or buy a little bottle of cologne. She could have a frankfurter or a grilled sandwich or an egg cream or a whole big bag of candy. “Oh,
Muffet.
” She knew that the hired woman earned little more than a dollar a week.

Muffet’s smile spread to a grin. She held out her hands and Maud leaped forward, wrapping her arms around the hired woman’s waist.

“Caroline,” begged Hyacinth, in the heartbroken voice of a mother who had lost her child, “where are you? Why did you leave me?”

Maud lifted her eyes to the ceiling. The questions that Hyacinth had just asked were numbers seven and twenty-one on the list she had memorized. She knew the answers, of course, but it was the first time Hyacinth had combined separate questions, and she wasn’t sure which to answer first. “I am right beside you, dear Mama,” she answered in her sweetest voice. “I am closer than your shadow.”

“Why did you leave me?” persisted Hyacinth.

“Dear Mama,” Maud replied, “I didn’t leave you. I never shall. It was time for me to leave your world — that is all.”

“Why haven’t you spoken to me before?” demanded Hyacinth.

“Dear Mama,” Maud began, “I tried to speak, but you couldn’t hear me. Tonight it’s different. The other lady makes it easier for me to come to you.” She scratched her nose. “Do I have to say the ‘dear Mama’ part every time?”

“Every time.” Hyacinth kicked a footstool into place beside her chair, put up her feet, and lolled backward.

“It’s the same thing over and over,” complained Maud.

“It’s affectionate,” said Hyacinth. “Mrs. Lambert will want you to be affectionate.” She glanced at the list she had written out for Maud and chose another question. “Do you forgive me?”

Maud sighed. That was number four. “Dear Mama! There is nothing to forgive! Are you sure she’s going to ask that one?”

“They all ask that one.” Hyacinth sighed mournfully. “Oh, Caroline! If only I could hold you in my arms!”

“Perhaps you may, sometime,” Maud said evasively.

“Dear Mama,” prompted Hyacinth.

“Perhaps you may, sometime, dear Mama,” Maud said.

“Good.” Hyacinth ran her finger down the list. “Where are you, Caroline? Are you in heaven?”

Maud pitched her voice so that it sounded high and faraway. “I am in a country that is called by many names,” she answered plaintively. “Oh, Mama! How beautiful it is! I wish you could see it — the sparkling sunlight and the lilies and the streets as clear as crystal!”

“Are you happy there, my child?”

“Oh, Mama, so happy!” Maud grimaced. “I hate that line. It makes me feel silly.”

“Well, of course, a good deal of this is silly,” conceded Hyacinth. “However, that’s neither here nor there. When can I hold you in my arms, my darling child?”