The Murderer's Daughters (5 page)

“She’ll take you when she takes you,” I said. “Now shut up or they won’t let us live here. You know what will happen then?”

Merry shook her head.

“We’ll end up living in the gutter, stealing food and clothes,” I said. “That’s what.”

I waited for Uncle Hal to shush me, but he just stared at the dusty paintings of Indians hanging on the wall, between a clock and a series of framed quotations stitched in blue thread on yellowed muslin.

Maybe we would end up living in the gutter. Maybe they wouldn’t keep us here if we weren’t good enough. Maybe Aunt Cilla would open up the
Daily News
and see that the police had found our frozen bodies lying in the street.

I won’t have Joey’s girls living here. Not in my house.
That’s what I’d heard Aunt Cilla say after the funeral. “They’re black marks on my sister’s memory, a dark shadow on my mother’s name. Having them here is ripping out my
kishkes,
” she’d hissed at a collection of relatives we’d never met. “My mother’s dead, my sister’s dead, all because of that man. And now I have to look at the two of them every day?”

Merry and I had listened to Aunt Cilla from the doorway of her spotless kitchen, the best-behaved girls in Brooklyn, ready to go in and offer our assistance in bringing out the platters of cold cuts and sliced brisket, the baskets of bagels, the lox spread out in an oily orange pinwheel. Could we take the cookies out from the many white bakery boxes tied with string and arrange them on Aunt Cilla’s silver trays? we’d planned to ask politely, proving what good girls we were. With Mimi Rubee dead, and Grandma Zelda too sick to care for us because she had the sugar, we weren’t sure where we’d live.

Maybe if we were very, very good, Aunt Cilla would change her mind about us.

I looked Merry over, making sure she’d stayed clean between leaving Aunt Cilla’s and arriving here at the Duffy Home. Then I avoided looking at Uncle Hal by turning to the stitched warnings admonishing me from the wall. I only had time to read “A Joyful And Pleasant Thing It Is To Be Thankful, Bible: Psalm 147” before a woman stepped out from behind the frosted administration door.

The midgety-short woman appeared childish until you saw the scowl
embedded in her face. She placed her hands on her thick waist and asked, “Yes?”

Uncle Hal coughed before speaking. “Mrs. Parker?” The woman nodded as though she were a hundred feet taller. “Hal Soloman. We spoke last week?”

She gave another royal nod and crossed her arms over her pigeony chest. “You have Louise and Meredith with you?” she asked.

“Here they are.” Uncle Hal pushed us forward, a hand behind each of our backs.

“Louise is the older one, right?” Mrs. Parker tipped her head to the side. “You are eleven?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. I’d never called anyone ma’am before, but this woman was most definitely a ma’am.

Merry sniffled.

“Merry and Lulu. That’s what we call them.” Uncle Hal kept a hand on Merry’s shoulder.

“Yes. You’re not Meredith’s and Louise’s legal guardian, correct?” she asked. “That would be their grandmother? Zelda Zachariah?”

“I have the papers from her, as you requested.” Uncle Hal drew an envelope from the inside pocket of his suit jacket.

Mrs. Parker took the glasses hanging from a chain around her neck and balanced them on her fat nose. She made clucking noises as she looked over the long sheets of paper covered with black type, stopping only when Merry’s choking sounds were too loud for any person to ignore. Mrs. Parker took off her glasses, tipped her head, and took Merry’s chin in her hand.

“Meredith, correct? And you’ll be seven in December?”

Merry nodded.

Mrs. Parker bent down and patted my sister’s shoulder. “You’ll be in the Bluebird dorm, dear. You’ll have blue blankets and blue nightgowns.” She offered this as though Merry would find it comforting. “You’ll have a set of drawers and a shelf for books, if you have any.”

My sister nodded again.

“Most of the time, we have no one here to hold you when you cry. Sad,
but true. The best thing you can do is find ways to comfort yourselves. I advise new girls to take up a hobby as soon as possible. You can pick either cross-stitching or crocheting. The East Side Women’s Group donates kits. Your floor mother will show them to you.”

I scuffed through dried leaves, hoping I looked like a normal almost-nine-year-old girl shopping with her grandmother instead of what I was, a motherless girl with a father in prison, who lived in a home for girls, which was just a name for orphanage.

“Again your sister’s not coming?” Grandma took my hand, waiting for the Flatbush Avenue traffic to slow down.

“She has to study.” Every other Saturday, Grandma asked the same question, and I gave the same answer, sidestepping Lulu’s refusal to see Daddy.

“So how is everything at that place?” Grandma always called the Duffy-Parkman Home for Girls that place.

“Everything’s fine.” I gave her hand a little tug.

“Fine. Never mind with the fine. You live in an orphanage. So tell me, how is that fine? It’s all because of that Cilla.
Ptoi.
I spit on her and her useless husband.” Grandma repeated some version of a spit or curse on Aunt Cilla every Saturday. “It’s okay to cross now?” she asked.

I checked the road left to right. “It’s safe.”

We wove around the fruit seller wrapped in two ragged sweaters, Grandma sidestepping his stack of pumpkins.

“You’re doing great, Grandma. I think your eyes are getting better.”

Grandma shook her head. “Dream on,
tatelah.
These eyes are shot.”

“Think good energy, Grandma. Send good karma to your eyes like Susannah said. Maybe they’ll get better. Then Lulu and I can come live with you.” I squeezed her hand to show her how much I loved her and what a help I could be.
See how strong and dependable I am!

“Enough. Every week it’s the same story,” Grandma said. “They won’t let me take you in. And by the way, your new friend Susannah might look like a Breck girl, but she’s still a crazy hippie.”

Grandma had been calling anyone she didn’t approve of a hippie for as long as I could remember. Anyway, Grandma might not appreciate Susannah, but I thought she was practically the nicest person I’d ever met. I’d met her at prison, where she visited her husband every week, and she didn’t once ask me about Daddy’s reason for being there. That’s how nice she was.

I wondered what Mama would have thought of Susannah, who never wore makeup. Mama had worn apple red Snow White lipstick, and she’d drawn perfect black lines around her eyes. A plain Jane, Mama would have called Susannah. I remembered Mama using that expression a lot. Lulu says I’ve imagined all my memories, but she’s wrong. I remember being little.

Most mothers who didn’t wear lipstick looked sick, but Susannah without makeup seemed just right, like a character in a Little House on the Prairie book. Susannah gave me advice about life while we waited for visiting hours in the prison to start, especially when Grandma went to the bathroom and Susannah and I were alone.

“You could take an eye test,” I said, as Susannah had suggested. “We take them at school. I could memorize it and teach you, and then you’d pass the test. Then we could come and live with you.”

Grandma laughed. “Sweetheart, I can’t take care of myself, much less you and Lulu. Any day now, I’ll have to go to a home. Between my sugar and my eyes, I can’t even walk without my cane anymore. Promise me you’ll come visit me when I’m in a home.”

I almost hit bone digging my fingernails into the palms of my hands, a trick Lulu had taught me to keep from crying. How would we ever get out of Duffy-Parkman if Grandma went to a home?

“If Lulu and I moved in with you, we’d take care of you, and you’d never have to go to a home.”

“Take my advice, Merry.” My grandmother gave another of her bottomless sighs. “Don’t get old.”

We entered Woolworth’s, where the saleswomen were setting up their registers and straightening the long counters. The candy counter clerk, who wore a gold kitten pin with diamond eyes like always, gave us a smile as sweet as jelly beans. I loved that she really seemed to look forward to seeing us week after week. Every Saturday, Grandma bought me a bag of candy.

I reached out for a multicolored candy necklace, my hand hovering over the pastel disks strung on rubbery string, pleading silently for Grandma’s approval.

“Fine. Pick out your
chozzerai.
I don’t pay the dentist bills. Get something Lulu would want, also.” Grandma laced her bony fingers and sniffed at the candy she’d called garbage. “You know, I understand more than both of you think.”

“Maybe Lulu will come with us next time,” I lied. Lulu had vowed she’d never see Daddy again, and anytime I tried to change her mind she’d remind me that he
killed our mother,
practically spitting in my face as she said it.
How can you even look at him? How can you stand to breathe the same air? Look what he did to you.

Then she’d run her hand along my scar.
What’s wrong with you, anyway? Why do you go?

Because Grandma wants me to.

Because he needs me.

Because what will he do if I don’t, Lulu?

I didn’t know how to tell her that I was scared that if I didn’t go and keep him happy, things could get even worse. Lulu didn’t seem to worry about stuff like that.

Grandma shook her head and bent to the candy bins. “Is this the kind
Daddy likes?” She pointed to the mound of sugarcoated gumdrops. I smelled the mothballs in which she packed her sweaters. Cherry scents of the Smith Brothers cough drops she constantly sucked puffed around us, mixed with the tang of the Dippity-Do goo she used to set her thinning hair into tight waves.

On the Saturdays we didn’t visit Daddy, I smelled like Dippity-Do when I went back to Duffy-Parkman. On those Saturdays, Grandma set me on the bathtub lip and combed the pink, jellylike liquid through my hair while I tried not to squirm. Then she rolled my hair into spongy pink rollers. I’d go back to Duffy-Parkman with hanging sausage curls, the butt of all the girls’ jokes, since everyone was trying so hard to get their hair straight, straight, straight, but I could never hurt Grandma’s feelings. Anyway, feeling Grandma’s fingers fussing through my hair made the jokes worth it.

“Circus peanuts are his favorite.” I ran my fingers along the wooden bins, looking for the orange marshmallow candies Daddy liked. “I wish we could bring him some.”

“Never mind the peanuts. He’ll buy candy from the canteen. I have to put money in. I think he needs Right Guard—he wrote me. But he writes too small.” Grandma handed me a folded paper. “Here. Read.”

I unfolded the cheap white stationery, hating the blurry blue stamp informing the world that this paper came from the Richmond County Prison. Because of that stamp, I folded Daddy’s letters into the tiniest of squares and hid them inside a toothbrush holder to keep them from Enid and scaly-faced Reetha. My enemies. They called me Prison Girl.

Enid and Reetha were the ickiest girls at Duffy, with twisted teeth, burn marks, and scabs from I didn’t know what. They tortured me. My few friends and I were the cute ones. We stuck together in the upside-down world of Duffy-Parkman, where ugly reigned.

I unfolded the paper and read my father’s words in a whisper.

Ma, here’s what I need. Toothpaste. Candy. Deodorant. Put as much as you can afford in my account, but don’t leave yourself short! Books—Ian Fleming or Len Deighton if you find any I don’t already have. Whatever you find is
good, Ma. Thanks. I sure hope you and my little Sugar Pop can come next Saturday. Are your legs okay? Have you gone to the doctor to get pills for the pain? Maybe if you went to Florida for a week or two, the heat would help. The ocean water would be good for your arthritis, right? Love, Joey

“Florida. Hah!” Grandma snorted. Then she smiled. “Joey has a good heart.”

“Did you get the books?” I asked.

“I went in and out of every store in Brooklyn.”

“Did they have them?” I snuck a finger to my scar; Grandma swatted my hand away from my chest.

“I got them, I got them. Don’t be such a worrywart!” Grandma leaned on my shoulder as she straightened up from inspecting a candy bin. “Let’s go or we’ll be late.”