Sister Noon (22 page)

One day Thomas Bell was called to the stand to testify for Allie Hill. On May 1 of 1881, Sharon’s lawyers claimed, Allie had been to the graveyard, casting spells and burying socks. Thomas Bell was called to refute. He distinctly recalled that Allie Hill had been at Octavia Street all that same day, making doll clothes for Viola and Marie.

“How many children do you have?” Sharon’s attorney asked on cross-examination.

The question was objected to as irrelevant.

“Thomas Bell claims to remember the exact day of Miss Hill’s visit, though it happened three years ago,” the lawyer argued. Surely they were entitled to test his memory a bit on other matters.

The question was allowed. Mr. Bell proved unable to answer. It might be six. It might be seven. He was flustered. “Take your time,” the attorney said. “Use your fingers.”

Mrs. Pleasant’s baby-farming, Sharon’s lawyers went on to argue, was so pervasive, the House of Mystery itself wasn’t safe from her.

In later cases, those concerning the Bell estate, the origins of the Bell children were thoroughly discussed. Friends, tradesmen, physicians, psychics, spurned lovers, and dismissed servants were all called upon to clarify the
inner workings of the household, though clarity was never the result of this mass of contradictory testimony.

One servant who did not testify, but was testified about, was a young woman from Panama named Bella Stercus. She’d come to work for the Bell family in 1879. The broad outlines of her story, as told by others, were supported decades later by the testimony given in the Teresa Bell estate case.

Bella Stercus was the oldest of seven children whose father had died and whose mother could no longer manage to feed so many. She came to San Francisco with little money and little English. One of the hands on her boat, pitying her, had told her to find Mrs. Mary E. Pleasant on Octavia Street and say she needed work. She arrived with only the clothes she was wearing, but she spoke of bringing all six of her siblings to America. Mrs. Pleasant liked her spirit.

“So you’ve experience with children,” Mrs. Pleasant said. Her Spanish was slightly better than Bella’s English; between them they managed to understand each other. She engaged Bella to act as nursemaid for Fred Bell, who was now four, and Marie, who was two.

Bella had never seen anything like the House of Mystery. When she first lived there, she walked on tiptoe through the dark halls, the white rooms. The house was as silent and dim as the bottom of a pond, though the lamps and mirrors and bits of glass sent random sparkles into it like flickering fish.

The fact that Bella could hardly talk to anyone made her feel invisible, a ghost from the nursery. The staff was mostly white and she was unused to white people. After a
day spent with the two white children, her own face in the mirror seemed murky, strange, all wrong, even to herself.

It was a quiet house, but sometimes she could see that things were going on. Doors and curtains would be closed. A murmur would run through the dark halls. She would take the children onto the lawn and reporters would shout questions she didn’t understand through the wrought-iron gate. Once she discovered a man digging in the arbor and had to call Sam from the stables to chase him away. Later she was told that many people thought Mrs. Pleasant had a cache of diamonds buried somewhere in the yard. Sam liked to say that anyone who couldn’t get to the Comstock came to dig for treasure on Octavia Street.

Nelson Brady, the colored groundskeeper, did tricks with the shadows of his hands for her. He made wolves, roosters, and angels. “Bella, Bella,” he said. He was using her Christian name, or else he was telling her she was beautiful. Either was awfully fresh, but since she didn’t know which it was, she didn’t take offense.

Fred and Marie were placid and dimpled, easy children to care for, and yet they exhausted Bella as her own siblings never had. She went to bed as soon as the children did, and sank into sleep as if she were drowning. She dreamt of boats with feathered sails, trees that had her mother’s eyes. The fog of San Francisco entered her blood, thickened coldly around her heart.

One day Mrs. Pleasant stopped Bella in the hall. She motioned for her to come into the kitchen. There, Mrs. Pleasant fried bread while Bella watched, and gave it to her, sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon. To know that someone had seen her, cared about her, cooked for her and just
for her, was the first warm thing to happen to Bella in San Francisco. This was the moment she thought she would survive there. By eating that bread, she ceased to be a ghost.

Nelson Brady walked by the window, and Bella felt herself coloring. “Married,” Mrs. Pleasant said. Bella looked at her without expression. Mrs. Pleasant struggled for the word. “
Esposa,
” she said, and Bella found she had understood the first time, after all.

Her English improved. She forced herself to speak it, even to the children, who didn’t care. She tried to make sense of the household. The children were alternately petted and ignored. Mrs. Pleasant made all the decisions regarding them and seemed also to handle the finances. When Mrs. Bell needed money, she made the request to Mrs. Pleasant, who spoke to Mr. Bell about it. This seemed odd to Bella, but she assumed it was American.

Mrs. Bell and Mrs. Pleasant were clearly fond of each other, in a stormy, door-slamming sort of way. When Mr. Bell was traveling, which was more often than not, Mrs. Bell trailed Mrs. Pleasant about the house. Mrs. Pleasant was never idle. Bella would hear them in the hall, and the mere sound of women’s voices would make her so homesick for her mother she would need to sit down until the fit passed.

But she was better at concealing it. “You’re looking well,” Mrs. Pleasant said to her one day. “It’s good to see you bloom so. Now I know you’ve settled.”

Then a new child arrived, not a baby, but a girl one year older than Fred. Her hair was dark as a shadow, her arms thin where Marie’s and Fred’s were plump, her eyes brown where theirs were blue, her manner nervous where theirs were steady. Mrs. Pleasant brought her into the
nursery and introduced her as their new sister. Her name had been Viola Smith, but now would be Viola Bell. No one suggested that Bella’s wages would change with the addition of a third, more difficult child.

Bella often drew pictures for the children to color. She was good with a pencil and favored the birds and flowers of her homeland, which, she told the children, were as bright as spinning tops. She coaxed Viola to the table with paint pots of red and pink.

Two days after Viola’s arrival, Mrs. Bell looked in on them. “Up!” Marie said, holding out her little creased arms. “Lift me up!”

“Are we having ice cream, Mama?” Fred asked. Sometimes Mrs. Bell’s visits meant special treats.

“Are we having ice cream, Mama?” Viola repeated. Her eyes were wide.

A year later Viola was still there. She was a smart girl, quicker than Fred or Marie, though perhaps merely older. She bossed Marie about, dressed her as if she were a doll, managed her at mealtimes, put her down for her nap. Marie adored her.

One day Bella gave Fred and Viola each a sugar drop for learning a poem and one to Marie for sitting quietly while they recited. Fred’s poem was “The Rainbow” by Wordsworth. Viola’s poem was “The Fairies,” by William Allingham. When they finished, Marie clapped her hands. Then she began to cry.

“She dropped her candy,” Viola, who’d already eaten hers, suggested. She knelt. “Pick up your foot, Marie,” she said. “Hold on to my shoulder.” She ran her fingers along the floor so that they came up dusty. It was quite a performance,
and then, at the end of it, Bella found the candy in Viola’s pocket.

Bella was disturbed by the incident. On previous occasions she’d also found Viola bossy, deceptive, selfish. And little Marie was thoroughly in her sway. So when Mrs. Bell asked Bella’s opinion of Viola, Bella gave it. Viola was a cunning child. Bella was worried about the influence this might have on Marie.

That same afternoon, Mrs. Bell took the children to the back lawn. The sun was high and warm. The children were rosy and glassy-eyed from their naps. Everyone was relaxed and had no reason to be afraid. Mrs. Bell put all three into the hammock together. “Swing me,” Fred demanded. He was now six years old. Viola was seven. Marie was four.

“Let me see you holding tight first.” Mrs. Bell checked all six hands. “Don’t let go,” she warned, tugging especially at Marie’s fists to make sure she wouldn’t. Then she’d given the hammock a push. The children swung out and back. “Higher,” said Fred. “Higher, higher!” Mrs. Bell pushed the hammock again. The children were laughing. Marie and Viola knocked heads, but they laughed even harder at that. “Higher,” Viola said. They were laughing so hard their mouths were stuck open.

Bella saw Viola’s hand lift to her forehead, touching herself where Marie’s head had hit. Just then, Mrs. Bell gave another push, harder, her hand under Viola’s bottom. Which came first, the shove or Viola’s hand on her forehead? Bella remembered it first one way, then the other. They came so close together. She could never settle it in her mind.

The hammock turned over, spilling all three children onto the grass. Viola flew the farthest, but Marie hit the hardest. Bella heard a sound she thought was Marie’s arm breaking. She ran to pick her up, wings in her throat. Marie’s face had twisted into an expression of shock; her mouth was a sharp, lipless roundness from which no sound came. She stood up, holding both arms out, which was how Bella knew the arms were whole.

Bella picked Marie up and turned to look at the other two children. Fred was still laughing. Viola lay on her back, the color gone from her face. Her eyes stared up at the blue sky, where the hammock swung upside down and empty, into the blue and out and in again.

Viola’s hip had cracked and shifted; her leg had been jarred out of place. She was carried to bed, where she stayed more than a month.

After that Viola was given a jump rope and Bella was told to see that she used it. It was a ridiculous request, and Bella didn’t understand. Viola could no more jump rope than she could fly. Mrs. Pleasant engaged a piano teacher, and this made more sense. But Viola was no longer treated as a daughter. In spite of her infirmity, she was given many chores and little affection. Mrs. Bell often called her down the steep spiral staircase only to send her back up on some errand. She seemed determined to proceed as if Viola had never been hurt.

A governess was hired for Marie and Fred, but not for Viola. “She’s one of Mammy’s,” Mrs. Bell told the governess in Bella’s presence. She suggested that Viola affected the limp. “A real cunning child. Don’t you be taken in.”

Bella heard her own words coming back at her. She
played the scene in the hammock through again, but now she decided Mrs. Bell had purposefully thrown Viola onto the grass. Bella had complained about her, and just that quickly Mrs. Bell had addressed the problem.

Bella had never pitied herself for being in service. She never tried to imagine having a house like the one on Octavia Street, which was more than big enough for her entire family and all their friends as well. She never tried to imagine having servants to cook and fetch for her. She’d heard that Mrs. Pleasant had been born to slavery, and found her rise a wonderful thing, but Mrs. Pleasant was an exceptional woman. Bella herself was saving money to bring her brother Eduardo to San Francisco. If Mrs. Pleasant would only hire him, too, Bella thought, she could be content.

And yet she pitied Viola. Not only crippled, but so fallen from favor as to become a servant in a house where she’d once been a daughter. It was hard to see, horrible to contemplate.

And all Bella’s fault. How could she have condemned a child over a piece of candy? She found Mrs. Pleasant on the staircase and forced herself to speak. The portrait of Mrs. Bell watched her from the wall, white diamonds and milky eyes.

Bella was frightened of her own words. She was right to be frightened, because they spun up the staircase to the floor above, where Mrs. Bell heard them. She called down. “My own mother stripped me and set me outside the window to freeze!” Mrs. Bell hovered over the landing like a golden hawk. Her voice was tight and shivered. “I never would hurt a child.” She came down to Mrs. Pleasant. “Never. See how everyone conspires against me?” She began to cry.

Mrs. Pleasant embraced her. Her face was half hidden by Mrs. Bell’s shoulder, but it did not look friendly. “Mrs. Bell loves children,” she said. “How cruel of you. You don’t see how she suffers every time she sees Viola. All this time, and you hardly know us.”

Bella was dismissed to the nursery. A few days later, she was dismissed for good. Mrs. Pleasant told Bella there was a position open in the house of Mrs. Washington. “Fred and Marie are too old now for a nursemaid,” she explained, ignoring the fact that there was a new baby in the nursery, a tiny bald girl named Robina.

A family friend took Viola to Los Angeles, where she stayed more than a year, undergoing a series of unsuccessful operations on her hip. When she came back, Bella was gone. Mrs. Pleasant had given her an excellent reference. But Bella felt she could no longer be trusted with children. She confided the whole guilty tale to Nelson Brady, then used the money saved for Eduardo’s passage to return to Panama.