Annie (4 page)

For hours, Annie wandered aimlessly along the chilly New York sidewalks, not knowing where to begin to look for her father and mother. From time to time, she stopped a passerby, tugged on his sleeve, and, looking up, asked, “Say, mister, did anyone you know leave a kid called Annie at an orphanage eleven years ago?” But everyone she asked either looked at her as though she were crazy and turned away, or else growled, “Nah, kid,” pushed her aside, and hurried off into the crowd. In the late afternoon, as the sun began to go down over the frozen Hudson River, the wind rose and the temperature dropped even lower, to fifteen degrees. With only her sweater to protect her from the cold, Annie's teeth were chattering loudly, and she stopped for a time to join a group of street-corner apple sellers who were huddled around a small wood fire they'd made in an ash can. She pushed her way close to the ash can and, rubbing her hands together, warmed herself at the flickering fire. Once she got warm, Annie realized that she hadn't had anything to eat all day and that she was ravenously hungry. “Say, mister,” she said to one of the apple sellers, “could you donate a free apple for the orphans' picnic?”

“Sure, kid, why not, nobody's buying any of them anyway,” said the apple seller.

“Gee, thanks, mister,” said Annie as he handed her a large red apple.

“Say, kid, when is the orphans' picnic?” asked the apple seller.

“As soon as I take a bite,” said Annie with a cheery grin, and she sank her teeth into the cold but juicy apple.

“Kids,” muttered the apple seller with a shake of his head. “You can't trust nobody nowadays.”

• • •

Night came down on the wintry city, and, to try to keep warm, Annie trudged onward, block after block, heading north this time. At Seventh Avenue and West 33rd Street, she came upon a huge, pillared structure that looked like a museum but turned out to be a train station—Pennsylvania Station. Following the crowds that flowed into the station, Annie went in and sat for a while in the deliciously warm waiting room. Looking around at the bedraggled people huddled on the waiting room benches around her, Annie realized that most of them, like her, were homeless vagabonds. Maybe I'll spend the night here, Annie thought, but then a big, beefy Irish policeman came into the waiting room and made everyone clear out unless they could show that they had a railroad ticket. Thus, Annie found herself out again in the cold New York night, roaming the sidewalks that now began to grow more and more deserted. From time to time, she passed by a hot dog stand, and the smell of frankfurters cooking on the grill made her realize that she was starving. An apple a day might keep the doctor away, thought Annie, but it sure isn't enough to keep alive on. Still, as hungry as she was, Annie kept saying over and over to herself, “I'm glad I'm not back in the orphanage, I am, I am.”

Finally, around ten o'clock, weary from having walked about the city since eight o'clock that morning, Annie stepped out of the wind into a doorway, huddled in a corner, and pulled her sweater about her. The wind rose, and the temperature dropped. Lights were going out all over the city, and Annie thought now about the kids at the orphanage and everyone else in New York—they were safe indoors and getting into warm beds. Annie had once read in a book at school that anybody who fell asleep outdoors when the temperature was close to zero would freeze to death. And the temperature now was surely just about zero. “I mustn't fall asleep, I mustn't,” mumbled Annie, but soon, despite her hunger and the bitter cold, she fell into a deep sleep. Annie dreamed that she was in a warm kitchen, at a table with her father and mother, and her mother was serving her a cup of hot cocoa and a huge stack of flapjacks soaked in maple syrup. Asleep in the doorway, the eleven-year-old girl had no way of knowing that she was indeed in danger of freezing to death.

“H
e
y, kid, wake up, wake up!” In her dream, Annie's mother had suddenly turned into Miss Hannigan, who began shaking her by the shoulders. Now Annie opened her eyes to find herself looking up into the overly made-up face of a plump, bleached blonde of about forty. The woman was roughly shaking her. It was close to eleven o'clock, and Annie had been asleep in the doorway for nearly an hour.

“Geez, kid, you could freeze to death out here. What the hell ya doin' sleepin' there?” said the woman.

“I . . . I didn't have anyplace to stay. I don't have any home,” said Annie, getting groggily to her feet.

“Oh, yeah, then you'd better come along with me to my place,” said the woman, who was bundled up in a cheap but warm gray fur coat. The woman, who said that her name was Gert Bixby, took Annie by the hand and hustled her along the freezing streets, westward toward the Hudson River. Gert Bixby had been out late at a movie and had been hurrying home when she'd chanced to spy Annie huddled in the doorway; although not normally the most warmhearted of women, she had taken pity on the sleeping child. “Come on, come on, hurry up, before we both freeze to death,” said Gert.

Ahead of them, at the corner of Twelfth Avenue and West 45th Street, by the waterfront, Annie saw a blinking red neon sign that read
BIXBY'S BEANERY, EATS
. “This here is the place,” said Gert as they reached the Beanery and stepped out of the cold into the steamy warmth of the waterfront restaurant. Brightly lit and smelling rankly of greasy food, Bixby's Beanery consisted of a scarred wooden counter with a dozen or so stools, and a half-dozen red leatherette booths. The place was all but empty. A couple of longshoremen were drinking coffee in one of the booths, and a fat, bald, florid-faced man who was reading the
Daily News
behind the counter turned out to be Gert's husband, Fred Bixby.

“Who the hell's that ya got with ya?” asked Fred with a scowl, wiping his hands on his stained white apron as he nodded toward Annie.

“Some kid I found sleepin' out in the cold—she ain't got no place to stay,” said Gert, wriggling out of her fur coat and turning to Annie. “So, what's your name, kid?” Gert asked.

“Annie,” said Annie, still shivering from the cold although her cheeks and fingers burned painfully from the sudden warmth of the Beanery.

“Ya hungry, Annie?” Gert asked.

“Well . . .” said Annie.

“Sit down at the counter and Fred'll serve ya up a plate of beans. Won't ya, Fred?” said Gert.

“What are we runnin' here, a free kitchen for bums?” grumbled Fred. “I'm not . . .”

“Shut up yer yap, Fred, and give the kid some beans,” said Gert.

“Ahhh,” said Fred, but he ladled out a steaming bowl of brown-crusted baked beans and set it on the counter in front of Annie, who quickly gobbled down every last bit. The beans were mushy and slightly rancid, but they tasted better to Annie than anything she'd ever eaten. Bixby's Beanery wasn't a very pleasant place, thought Annie, and Gert and Fred Bixby didn't seem all that pleasant either, but at least, she said to herself, I'm in out of the cold and I've had something to eat.

Fred and Gert, Annie soon learned, ran the Beanery together, sharing the work fifty-fifty and living in the back in a small, cluttered, two-room apartment. Business was bad for the Bixbys—there were many in the Depression who couldn't even afford a dime to buy a doughnut and a cup of coffee. But Fred and Gert were able to squeeze out a living from the Beanery as long as they did all the work themselves. So Fred served as counterman, short-order cook, and dishwasher, while Gert was the Beanery's cashier and only waitress. But even though they were getting by, they were scarcely happy with their lot. Fred's favorite pastimes were drinking, betting on horses, and sleeping, but he didn't get much of a chance to indulge himself, for the Beanery opened at seven o'clock each morning and didn't close until midnight. Gert loved going to the movies, but Fred gave her time off only once every couple of weeks. Luckily for Annie, tonight had been Gert's night out—she'd been on her way home from seeing Joan Crawford in
Dancing Lady
when she'd spied Annie in the doorway.

Now, seeing that Annie was still hungry, Gert went behind the counter and, ignoring Fred's angry glances, served her up a piece of apple pie and a cup of hot chocolate. “Gee, thanks, Mrs. Bixby,” said Annie, digging eagerly into the pie. As Annie ate, Gert drew Fred into the apartment in the back, and Annie could hear fragments of a heated conversation. A couple of minutes later, when Fred came back out front with Gert, he smiled at Annie for the first time since she'd come into the Beanery—a crooked, gap-toothed smile.

“So, kid, you don't have no place to stay—how'd you like to stay here with us?” asked Fred with oily geniality, leaning over to pat Annie on the head.

“Here?” said Annie. She couldn't understand Mr. Bixby's sudden change of attitude toward her. And, she noticed, it certainly wasn't reflected in his cold, scheming eyes.

“Yeah—here,” said Fred. “We ain't got no more room in our apartment, but there's a furnace down in the cellar, real warm, and there's a cot down there. We give ya a couple of blankets and you'll be snug as a bug in a rug.”

“Gee, I don't know, sir,” said Annie, “I . . .”

“Look, Annie, whatta ya gonna do, sleep outside in that cold?” said Gert. “We give ya a place to bunk, free eats, and maybe ya do a little work around the joint for us.”

“Well . . . all right,” said Annie, and soon she found herself being tucked by Gert into the cot down in the cellar furnace room. The windowless room wasn't much larger than a walk-in closet, but it was nonetheless warm and cozy, and within a few minutes, after Gert had switched out the lights and gone back upstairs, Annie had fallen deeply asleep.

While Annie had been eating the apple pie at the counter, Gert had been trying to persuade Fred back in the apartment that finding the lost child could be a stroke of good luck for them. “Can't ya see she's as strong as a little ox?” Gert argued. “We keep her here, it costs us nothin' but a few pennies a day in extra food, and we get ourselves a free waitress, a free dishwasher, a free janitor to clean up the joint.”

“Hmm, yeah, I didn't think of that,” Fred said. “But, hey, the kid must belong somewhere—we don't wanna get into no trouble with the cops.”

“Aw, she's a runaway—probably got a ma and pa that beat her,” Gert said. “And nobody's ever gonna find her here. Anybody asks any questions, we just say she's our niece come to live with us from Cleveland.”

“Yeah,” Fred said, warming to the idea. “You know, Gert, sometimes you're not as dumb as you look.” And it was then that Fred had come out to the counter and suddenly been friendly to Annie.

• • •

A light clicked on in the furnace room. Somebody was once again roughly shaking Annie awake. It was Fred Bixby. “Come on, kiddo, you don't get to sleep to noon around here, it's six thirty, rise and shine,” Fred growled. “Ya gonna stay here, ya gotta work for your keep.”

“Yes, sir,” said Annie, getting dazedly up from her cot—for a moment, she hadn't remembered where she was. A while later, upstairs, Annie was togged out in a bottle-green waitress's uniform that hung almost to her ankles. “What do you want to do first?” Gert asked her. “I don't know,” said Annie. “Well, why don't ya start by washin' all the windows in the place,” said Gert. “Yes, ma'am,” replied Annie. Later, after she'd finished the windows, Fred taught her how to make coffee in the huge urn behind the counter and how to work the cash register. All day, from seven o'clock in the morning until midnight, when the doors were finally locked and the flashing neon sign turned off, Annie toiled in the Beanery—mopping the floors, scrubbing pots and pans, cleaning the greasy griddle, serving at the counter, and scurrying about to wait on the customers in the booths. By the end of the day, Annie was so tired that she dropped off to sleep with one of her shoes still on as she fell back onto her cot by the furnace. Only to be awakened to start all over again at six thirty the following morning.

As the cold days of January passed, Annie left the Beanery to breathe fresh air only when toting pails of garbage outside to the back alley. In the Beanery, she spent a good deal of her time being tutored by Fred in the art of short-order cooking. She learned how to cook home-fried potatoes, omelets, and mulligan stew, to grill hot dogs and hamburgers, to make Boston baked beans, and to mix up batches of chicken, tuna fish, and egg salads. Within a few weeks, in fact, Annie was a far better short-order cook than Fred had ever been, and he stepped aside to let her take over the cooking. And, of course, he was delighted to let her take the job. For now, with Annie at the stove behind the counter, Fred was free to spend a large portion of his days getting soddenly drunk in a nearby speakeasy called McGuire's.

Although she had to work even harder when he wasn't around to help, Annie was far happier in the Beanery when Fred Bixby was down the street at McGuire's. For he frightened her terribly. “Look, kid, I know you're a runaway from somewhere,” Fred had said to her one day shortly after she'd come to the Beanery, “but you try to run away from here and I'll catch you, I promise, and give you such a beatin' with this belt of mine that you won't forget it for the rest of your days.” So although she often thought of running away from the Beanery, she was afraid that if she did, Fred would catch her and beat her even worse than Miss Hannigan ever had. Besides, her day out in New York in the winter had made her realize that until spring came along, it was wiser to be warm indoors and eating regularly than to be freezing outdoors and starving. No matter how hard she had to work.

Annie was happier in the Beanery, too, on those frequent evenings when Gert Bixby was off at the movies. For since Annie was on hand to do all of the waiting on customers, Gert now went to the movies three or four evenings a week. During the day, however, Gert was always around. She sat from morning until night perched on a stool by the cash register, where, chomping vigorously on enormous wads of chewing gum, she listened to the radio while reading endless movie magazines. Gert rarely looked up from her magazines other than to ring up a bill or to bark orders at Annie. “For God's sake, Annie, are you blind?” she'd complain. “There's customers in booth three that ain't been waited on!” (The customers would be just taking off their coats.) Or “Don't stand around all day, Annie, clean off the counter for that man.” And even when there were no customers in the Beanery and Annie would briefly sit down to take a breather, Gert kept at her. “Come on, Annie, get off your lazy backside—those sugar bowls want fillin'.” So Gert's evenings at the movies amounted almost to time off for Annie, especially when Fred also went out to McGuire's.

Indeed, Annie's only happy times at the Beanery were when she was left alone by the Bixbys to run the place by herself. The Beanery's customers were rough and boisterous but friendly—longshoremen who worked on the West Side docks, sailors off ships that put in at the docks, and neighborhood regulars, like Vinnie and Doug, who worked at a nearby Texaco station. Word had quickly gotten around the West Side that someone was doing some mighty fine cooking in Bixby's Beanery, and soon everyone was flocking to the restaurant for one of Annie's omelets or a bowl of her mulligan stew. The luncheon trade all but doubled, and the dinner business picked up considerably, too, much to the delight of the Bixbys. “That kid is a damn jewel and we ain't lettin' her get away from us,” said Fred to Gert. The customers liked Annie, too, for she always greeted them with a smile and a cheery, “How are you today, sir?”

“You know somethin', Annie,” joked Vinnie, “when you grow up, I'm gonna marry you—for your cookin' alone.”

“Yeah,” said Doug. “Rockefeller can have his barrels of money—we got Annie.”

The evening hours had a certain sweetness for Annie when Fred and Gert were gone and just the regular customers were on hand—people like Vinnie and Doug were the first grown-ups who had ever been nice to her. Still, she longed to get away from the drudgery of the Beanery, and sometimes, when lying on her cot before falling asleep at night, she wondered if she'd have been better off if she'd never run away from Miss Hannigan and the orphanage.

Even though her school days hadn't been happy days, she missed P.S. 62 and the chance to read and to learn. She was worried about missing the entire second half of sixth grade. But I'll be back in school next fall, Annie promised herself, somehow or other, come what may. Working in the Beanery wasn't getting her any closer to finding her father and mother, either, Annie sadly reflected, and that had been the reason, after all, that she'd run away from the orphanage in the first place. Of course, the Bixbys had allowed her to post a handwritten sign by the cash register that said, “Anybody who knows of anybody who left a baby named Annie at a New York City orphanage eleven years ago, please contact Annie behind the counter. Annie.” But no one had ever contacted her. Also, whenever a customer came into the Beanery who looked even a little bit as though he might be her father, she would go up to him and say, “Pardon me, mister, but did you happen to leave a baby named Annie at an orphanage a few years ago?” But the answer was always no.

• • •

The days at the Beanery passed by in a blur for Annie, and later there was only one day that stood out separately in her memory of that time, March 20th, 1933, when she, the Bixbys, and several customers had grouped around Gert's radio by the cash register to listen to Franklin D. Roosevelt being sworn in, in Washington, as the new president of the United States. Annie would always remember Roosevelt's inaugural speech, when he promised America that he would bring an end to the Depression and spoke the ringing words, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself!” Fear itself, thought Annie. I guess he's never met Miss Hannigan. Or Fred Bixby.