We zinged along what was later called Cathedral Hill, a barren place where the houses gave way to fences and fields. In the middle of a large field loomed the dreaded Ladies’ Protection and Relief Society, a Gothic stone box of a building, six stories tall. Commonly called the Children’s Home, it was known to be a wretched place filled with unwashed, unwanted children in rags and castoffs, the boys and girls quartered on separate floors, and all the work of the farm done by these orphans, some as young as two or three. They tended the cows and chickens and horses; scoured the laundry of a hundred souls; cooked the grim, gray porridge.
The Children’s Home had been a favorite subject of Morie’s threats—if I did another thing to cross her, I would be sent packing to the house of the hittebarn, the foundlings. Morie delighted in describing the home’s disgusting porridge. The children got whipped, she said, if they didn’t lick their bowls clean.
But this girl couldn’t wait to get to the home. As we rounded the fence, following the brick walk that led to the stone ruin, she skipped even faster. The tiled roof had collapsed onto itself like an inverted triangle; the tall, arched windows were missing their panes. The front door had been knocked from its hinges. It leaned into the space where it previously hung, with only a narrow gap, barely wide enough for a skinny girl to slip through.
We entered a great room with a vaulted ceiling and a Spanish tiled floor. The windows on all sides were broken, with a steady breeze passing through. Yet the sun was shining, and fat, yellow rays poured through the arches and spread their warmth across the floor. The younger kids were playing hopscotch in the sunbeams.
When I was small, my greatest fear was that I would one day end up an orphan, an urchin of the street, a ragamuffin, a ward of the Children’s Home. I imagined myself assigned to a narrow cot, ten to a row, ten rows to a room, one of a hundred kids eating porridge, that was the hollow inside me. When I started reading the novels in Lars Johnson’s library, I shunned the orphan tomes. I couldn’t bear to walk the road with Oliver Twist or Tom Sawyer, those books my own children would one day fiercely love. I could never stomach the Cinderellas or the Little Matchstick Girls. They cut me, those little lost souls.
But here were the real orphans—babies and toddlers and kids perhaps as old as twelve—playing tag or scrubbing laundry in buckets or sharing the open tiled floor with chickens and a pig and even a cow. In a far corner, Monster was chomping hay from a basket.
The kids had been shouting rambunctiously when we came in, but once they perceived a stranger was among them, they dropped to the floor and played dead. Twenty, thirty kids lying on the floor, their heads crooked in contortions of deadness.
I laughed. I thought it must be a game, and that I should be it. Ha-ha-ha, I laughed. But no, these children weren’t playing. The boy lying nearest my boot, why, his heart was thumping madly, his eyes squeezed shut, as if he weren’t dead but in dire pain.
Only the babies, three souls in a crib, their faces fixed with the quietude of orphans who don’t expect folks to answer their needs, dared to look at me. They sucked their fists and steadied their unblinking eyes on my face.
I stared at that boy—I stared hard—till he opened one eye.
“You can’t come in, miss,” he whispered. “Bobby says no one must come in.”
“Where is Bobby?”
The boy slapped his eyes with his palms, shutting out the world and me.
I jiggled his boot. “Bobby,” I said. “I need to talk to him.”
“He’s out, miss,” said a girl, one of the older orphans. She had two golden braids wound atop her head. Climbing to her feet, she brushed herself off and called, “Okay! Everyone up.” And stepping over a girl who was stretching as if just awakened, she added, “Bobby’s out getting supplies.”
“Why didn’t he take Monster?” I asked, intent on proving I wasn’t a stranger.
“Faster on foot,” she said. “Bobby’s in and out before they know what’s missing.”
She was no more a woman than I was, yet she was dressed like a crone, with ripped stockings and worn heels. She was holding a feather, dancing it along her cheek, and I thought, I bet she’s Bobby’s girlfriend.
“I could take a message,” she said, as if she were a secretary in a fancy office. Around her, the children, rising to their feet, watched us with a feral intensity.
“Tell him Anyway came by,” I said, and smiled. “He’ll know. Tell him: he can find me in the gold house on Gough Street, across from the square.”
Bobby Del Monte had those orphans to care for and I was determined not to be another girl asking for his favors. When he showed up at Rose’s door, he was grinning, as if glad to see me.
I made tough, hands on my hips. His smile faded.
“Okay,” he said. “I’m here. You got the ten dollars?”
“Ten dollars,” I scoffed. “We back to that?”
“ ’Course you’d have to show me you’ve got it. Monster isn’t big on credit.”
“I’ll show you when you complete the delivery.”
He laughed. “Go on.” He peered behind me, at the naked marble goddesses posing on either side of the foyer. “Whose place is this?”
“Have you ever heard of The Rose?”
He shrugged—the first person in my new life who hadn’t heard of her.
“She’s an important lady and her people would be most grateful if you brought her home safely,” I said.
“You her people?”
“Sure.” I felt the color rise in my cheeks.
One thing about Bobby: he was never impressed by anything or anyone he couldn’t see or touch. “The piers, eh?” he said.
“That’s right.”
Bobby nodded, seeing it in his mind. “That’s a
