Annie (3 page)

A
nn
ie tiptoed from her place at the window back to her bed, and in the pale light of dawn, she quickly got out of her nightgown and dressed as warmly as she could for the chilly day that awaited her outside the orphanage. She had no winter coat, of course, and so had to make do with the raggedy maroon wool sweater that she wore each day to school. She took her wicker basket from under her bed and hastily filled it with her meager belongings—some underwear, socks, and an extra dress. She made sure that she had her locket and her note and then, picking up the basket, turned to go. But in her haste, she banged the basket against her iron bedstead, and the clanging sound awoke several of the girls in the beds near her.

“Now what?” groaned Pepper.

“Annie, whatta you doin'?” asked Kate.

“Runnin' away,” said Annie.

“Oh, my goodness!” cried Tessie.

“I just know now that my folks are never comin' for me,” said Annie, her basket on her arm, poised to leave. “So I gotta go find them.”

“Annie, you're crazy,” said July. “Miss Hannigan'll catch you.”

“I don't care, I'm getting out of here,” Annie said. “And I'm ready. Goin' now. Wish me luck.”

All the orphans but Pepper, who was shaking her head in disgust, quietly whispered good-bye. “Good luck, Annie!” “We'll miss you, Annie.” Looking back, Annie saw that Molly was sitting up in bed, her head bowed and her large dark eyes abrim with tears. Annie went to Molly and embraced her. “Good-bye, Molly,” said Annie gently, hugging Molly to her. “When I find my folks, I'll come back for you, and we'll live together, all of us, you and me and my folks.”

“You promise, Annie?” asked Molly.

“I promise.”

“Okay, Annie,” said Molly. “Good-bye, Annie. I love you.”

As the other girls knelt on their beds and watched her go, Annie tiptoed to the top of the stairs that led from the dormitory down to the front hallway. She listened for Miss Hannigan. All was quiet downstairs in the orphanage. “Okay, here I go,” said Annie with a last wave to her friends. “So long, dumbbell,” whispered Pepper. “And good luck.”

The stairs creaked as Annie went slowly down on tiptoe, one step at a time. It seemed to Annie as though it was taking hours to get down just one flight of stairs. Somewhere outside a car horn honked. Now she was at last at the bottom of the stairs. The big oaken front door that led to freedom—and maybe to her father and mother—was only four steps away. One step. Two steps. Three steps. She reached out to turn the front doorknob.

“Aha, caught ya!” shrieked Miss Hannigan, leaping out from under the staircase, grabbing Annie by the scruff of her neck and flinging her violently to the floor. “I heard ya, ya rotten orphan, I
always
hear ya! Now, get up! Get up!”

“Yes, Miss Hannigan,” said Annie, getting warily to her feet. She saw that Miss Hannigan, in a ratty-looking peach-colored flannel bathrobe, was brandishing the heavy oaken paddle with which she regularly smacked the orphans.

Annie and Miss Hannigan glared at each other. “Turn around,” commanded Miss Hannigan, but Annie didn't move. “I said, turn around!” Miss Hannigan shouted. As slowly as she could, Annie turned around, and Miss Hannigan whacked her a dozen painful times across the backside with the heavy paddle. But Annie neither cried out nor even flinched—her stern pride and her hatred of Miss Hannigan had made her all but numb over the years to the beatings she took.

“There!” said Miss Hannigan, breathing heavily, reeking of rye whiskey. “Now, what do you say?”

Annie said nothing, even though she knew what she was supposed to say—the phrase that Miss Hannigan made the orphans greet her with each morning.

“What do you say?”
repeated Miss Hannigan.

“I love you Miss Hannigan
,
” said Annie through gritted teeth.

“Rotten orphan!” snarled Miss Hannigan.

“I'm not an orphan!” Annie shouted, “My mother and father left a note sayin' they loved me and they were coming back for me!”

“Yeah, that was in 1922,” said Miss Hannigan with a cruel laugh, “and this is 1933. They must've got stuck in traffic. Now take them damn things and get back upstairs.”

“Yes, Miss Hannigan.” Annie picked up her basket and trudged defeatedly back up to the dormitory, where the other orphans, who'd heard everything that had gone on below, were hiding under their blankets. Alone at the bottom of the stairs, Miss Hannigan took a long swig of whiskey from the bottle in her bathrobe pocket and followed Annie up the stairs. Storming into the dormitory, Miss Hannigan flicked on the lights, blew the police whistle that always hung around her neck, and screamed at the children, “You in here—get up, get up!”

“Yes, Miss Hannigan,” said the orphans, sighing as they got up and went to stand in a row at the foot of their beds. They shivered in their thin cotton nightgowns and bare feet on the cold wooden floor.

“All right, for this one's shenanigans,” said Miss Hannigan, pointing a bony finger at Annie, “you'll stay up and scrub this floor.”

“But it's five o'clock in the morning,” whined Tessie.

“I know,” said Miss Hannigan with a mean laugh. “And you'll get down on your knobby little knees and clean this dump until it shines like the top of the Chrysler Building. Get to work!”

“Yes, Miss Hannigan,” said the orphans. Shoulders slumped, they filed to the corner closet to get out the buckets and scrub brushes with which they cleaned the dormitory floor several times a week.

“Why any kid would want to be an orphan I'll never know,” muttered Miss Hannigan to herself as she went downstairs to begin cooking the mush for the orphans' breakfast.

“Gee, I'm sorry, kids,” said Annie, as the orphans lined up in the washroom to fill their buckets from the tap in the sink.

“Yeah, sorry, a lotta good that does us,” grumbled Pepper. “You and your dumb ideas, runnin' away, gettin' us all in Dutch.”

“It's okay, it ain't your fault, Annie,” Kate said.

“And, heck, you're still here,” said Molly with a happy grin. “So I don't mind scrubbin' no floor.”

“Thanks, Molly,” Annie said. “And hey, kids, Happy New Year!”

“Huh, some Happy New Year,” muttered Pepper, as the orphans got down on their hands and knees and began the dreary job of scrubbing the cold dormitory floor.

“Rotten smelly life,” said Duffy.

As the orphans worked, the snow stopped falling outside and a pale winter sun came up over St. Mark's Place. Day dawned, and a new year had begun in the orphanage. Scrubbing away on her hands and knees, Annie agreed with the complaints of the other orphans. It was true—they lived a cheerless life that stretched before them like an endless prison sentence. And Annie became more determined than ever to run away from the orphanage. She might have failed in her first attempt to get away, but she wasn't going to fail in her next one. “I'm getting outta here,” Annie said to herself. “I am, I am, as soon as I spot the chance.”

And Annie spotted her chance two mornings later, just before Miss Hannigan was to march the orphans off to school, when the laundry man, a plump, lumbering dimwit named Bundles McCloskey, showed up at the orphanage. “Mornin' kids, clean sheets once a month, whether ya need 'em or not,” chuckled Bundles, lugging in a huge bundle of clean linens from the laundry truck he'd parked outside the front door of the orphanage. Whenever Bundles delivered clean laundry, the orphans were expected to strip their beds and put their dirty sheets and pillowcases into a large laundry bag for Bundles to tote away. As they began pulling off the sheets, Annie suddenly had an idea. Quickly, she told the other orphans what she had in mind—she'd get into the bag with the dirty laundry, and then Pepper and Duffy would carry it out and put it in the back of the truck for Bundles. Downstairs, in the front hallway, Bundles was gabbing with Miss Hannigan, and this gave Annie plenty of time to get into her sweater and to climb into the laundry bag with her wicker basket of belongings. Pepper and Duffy hefted the unwieldy bag and toted it down to the front hallway.

“We'll put the bag in your truck for you, Bundles,” offered Pepper.

“Okay, thanks, kids,” said Bundles.

“Oh, no, you don't,” Miss Hannigan growled. “You're not here to do his work for him. Now, get outta here with that damn laundry, Bundles.”

“Okay, gorgeous, have it your way,” said Bundles good-naturedly, heaving the laundry bag, with Annie in it, up onto his shoulder. “Whew,” he said, “either I'm getting weak in my old age or this here laundry of yours is getting heavier every month.” Thank goodness Bundles is such a dumb cluck, thought Annie inside the laundry bag, trying not to move as her heart pounded with fear and excitement. Miss Hannigan wasn't stupid, of course, and at any moment, Annie knew, she might figure out what was going on and try to stop Bundles. Annie could hear Pepper saying, “Here, we'll at least open the door for you,” and then she felt a sudden draft of cold air as Bundles went down the front stoop and out to his truck. She felt herself and the bag being thrown into the back of the truck, and she heard the back door of the truck slamming shut behind her. So far, so good. At least she'd made it safely out of the orphanage and into the truck right under the nose of Miss Hannigan! Annie held her breath and prayed as she heard Bundles trying to get his old truck started in the cold of the January morning. The engine coughed and groaned but didn't start. And then, with a sinking heart, Annie heard Miss Hannigan shouting from the doorway, “Bundles, Bundles, stop, don't go!” Clearly, Miss Hannigan had discovered that she was missing, thought Annie, and had figured out that she was in the laundry bag. Annie heard Miss Hannigan's footsteps coming down the front steps and up to the laundry truck. “You stupid oaf, you didn't give me a receipt for that dirty laundry you took,” said Miss Hannigan to Bundles. “Oh, yeah, sorry, Aggie,” said Bundles, and after a moment Annie could hear Miss Hannigan's footsteps going back up the front stoop of the orphanage as Bundles again attempted to start the truck. “Whew,” said Annie to herself, “I thought she was comin' for me for sure.” All of a sudden, Bundles's motor started with a loud clatter, and the truck went rattling off down the street. Annie had escaped!

A few minutes later, in the orphanage, Miss Hannigan was lining up the girls for their march to school and counting them off, prison style, as she did each morning, to make sure that all were on hand. “Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen . . .” counted Miss Hannigan. “Wait a minute, Annie . . . where's that Annie?”

Replied the orphans in a chorus of sweet, angelic voices, “Annie ain't here, Miss Hannigan.”

“Whatta ya mean, ‘Annie ain't here'?”

“She went,” said Pepper, “with Mr. Bundles.”

“In the laundry bag,” added Duffy.

“What? Annie gone!” shrieked Miss Hannigan. Blowing her whistle, she ran out the orphanage door and down the street screaming, “Bundles, come back here! Police! Police!” But Bundles and his truck were already blocks away, and Annie was gone. As they watched Miss Hannigan running crazily down the street, totally out of control, the orphans shouted with delight. “Hooray, no more rotten smelly life for Annie!” cried Kate. And even though they knew that they'd be punished for helping Annie to get away, they all whooped and danced with glee. All, that is, but Molly, who stood alone by the front door, her nose pressed against the cold windowpane, tears streaming down her cheeks. Her Annie was gone.

• • •

In the back of the truck, Annie had huddled inside the laundry bag without moving for about five minutes, waiting until the truck was far enough away from the orphanage for her to make her break. Now she wriggled out of the smothering bag and stood up in the dark back of the truck as it rumbled along a bumpy street. After a time, the truck came to a jerking halt, stopping for a red light, and Annie opened the back door a crack and peered out. The truck was stopped at the corner of Third Avenue and East 14th Street. Quickly, Annie hopped out, slammed the door behind her, and ran off along East 14th Street, in a moment disappearing into the crowds thronging the sidewalks that led to Union Square. Annie was free. Free—but alone, with no money and no place to live, in the middle of New York City on a chilly January morning. Still, thought Annie, pulling her sweater tightly around her as the cold wind snapped down East 14th Street, she'd at least begun her search for her lost father and mother.

• • •

Living in the orphanage, Annie had dimly realized that New York—and all of America—was in the midst of something called the Depression. But Annie didn't know that the Depression was the worst economic slump in the history of the country. In 1933, when the population of the United States was about one hundred million, more than fifteen million Americans were out of work. And more millions were broke, homeless, and all but starving. Moreover, the Depression had hit New York harder than just about anywhere else. In New York, one person out of every three was out of work, and even those who had jobs were earning barely enough to scrape by on. In the Wall Street crash of 1929, which had started the Depression, tens of thousands of America's wealthiest industrialists and bankers and stockbrokers had been wiped out financially almost overnight. And now, in the bitterly cold winter of 1933, as the Depression reached its low point, men who'd once been presidents of banks were working as shoe-store clerks or found themselves selling apples on New York street corners. In November 1932, the voters of America had elected a new president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had promised to do something about ending the Depression. But in January 1933, Roosevelt hadn't yet taken office, and President Hoover, who seemed to be able to do nothing about the Depression, was still in the White House. The bottom had dropped out of American life. Everything looked hopeless. So that January day, shivering and alone on East 14th Street, Annie was, in every sense, out in the cold in the coldest of all possible worlds.