Chapter 10
“This looks like a nice place,” I said as Rory pulled up to the orphanage. The Studebaker had deep blue-velvet seats, folding brass cup holders and rolled smooth and weighty, even on the gravel part of North Lamar. I’d never ridden in a car as nice as this.
At breakfast this morning Frances had asked Rory, again, if he’d meet her for lunch, but he’d turned her down again, though this time with a firm Frances tacked onto the end of it.
Also he was Too Busy and Under Enough Pressure and to Quit Asking, and he was so rude about it, Frances got tears in her eyes.
I kept mine down on my eggs. If Meemaw’d been at the table, she’d have threatened to prod pole him.
On high. And while I knew it was easy to judge somebody else’s marriage sitting two chairs down, I was starting to feel bad for my sister.
Selfishly, I also needed them to get along so he’d say yes about the money.
But Rory must’ve realized he was being cross and he gave in and offered to drive us instead of old Mr. Binny, and everything went back to somewhat all right again.
The orphanage was on an empty road that jutted off North Lamar just before the square, so less than two miles from the Tartts’ house.
Though I hadn’t noticed it yesterday, you could see it from Lamar, a narrow blue two-story house, with well-tended-to azaleas along a little front porch.
A sign over the front door said All God’s children are welcome.
Frances unlocked the door with a key from her pocket, then locked it behind us when we were inside.
In the entryway, a large sign read Welcome to the Lafayette County Orphan Asylum for Girls and then listed all God’s children that, in fact, were not welcome.
Frances made no notice of the dispute between the signs and I wondered if she ever had.
“In here’s the lounge where you can take a break,” Frances said, guiding me into a room immediately on our right.
It was sunny and cheery, with flowery curtains, a blue sweetheart-back sofa, and a braided blue rug in front of a fireplace.
I imagined little girls sitting cross-legged listening to bedtime stories in here.
On a round table was a coffee urn and a red metal tin.
“Oh goody,” Frances said and opened the tin and stuck a cookie in her mouth.
“Where all the girls?” I asked.
Chewing, Frances said, “Oh, they’re not allowed in here.”
Back in the entryway, we walked straight ahead down a hall.
The empty walls were a sour hue of white, and it was warmer back here with the sweet, sticky scent of babies and small children.
On the right, sun streamed in through several open doors, but on the left, the first door, which looked a little warped, was only cracked open.
I’d always had an unfortunately shrill sense of smell, and through that door I caught the smell of something dank.
“There she is. Yoo-hoo, Garnett!” Frances hurried herself down the hall, her neck walking ahead of her. At the end, a faded-blond woman turned and watched us coming, expressionless. She did not come to us.
“Garnett, good morning!” Frances said, using all of her face. “Garnett, this is my sister Birdie, who I told you about. Birdie, I’d like to introduce you to Chairlady Garnett Pittman.”
Chairlady Garnett nodded to me, and then she smiled. One definitely coming after the other. “Of course I remember. We are so very grateful you came to help out.”
“Garnett’s been chairlady going on over a year now”—and to Garnett—“with many more to come I hope!” Frances sang it more than said it. She was mouth breathing heavily.
Chairlady Garnett was thin and tall as me and looked around forty.
Her collarbone sat skeletal atop a plain dress the color of mayonnaise.
She wore no lipstick or powder on her pale, yellowy face.
Frances had on a heavy dose of dark blood this morning.
The pin on Garnett’s left shoulder was bigger than Frances’s and gold instead of copper, with the word Chairlady inscribed on it.
She was looking at me very intently with her gray eyes.
It was sort of paralyzing. “You’re from …
Warren County down in the Delta, is that right?
” I nodded; Frances looked ready to cry that Garnett’d remembered this.
“I grew up not too far from there, in Carroll County. Those were the good old days, weren’t they?
Before folks’ morals started going to pieces. ”
“Birdie balances the books for one of the stores in Footely and she’s trained, too, took a course even.” One of the stores, ha. I was surprised, though, how proud Frances sounded.
“Well, don’t worry,” Garnett said and smiled. “It’s not very difficult, what we need you to do.”
“I’m—not.”
I followed Frances over to the last door on the right side, the sunny side of the hall.
She opened it and whispered, “This is the baby nursery.” She sounded awestruck.
It was a pristine white room and held several empty cribs.
In rocking chairs, two ladies each held an infant, while two more watched on.
“And in here is the toddler room, where I volunteer,” Frances said, moving up a doorway, to the right of the nursery.
A cluster of little girls played with blocks on a blue rug while another one fretted into the neck of a very tired-looking old woman in a chair.
On the floor were some beat-up children’s books and some alphabet blocks and toys.
Connected to the room was another one full of small beds.
All the toddler girls wore short, white gauzy gowns with needlework stitched on their collars that I recognized as Frances’s, blue violets, light green leaves, red birds.
“Right now we’ve got six toddlers, ages two to five,” Frances said.
“We keep the toddlers separate from the big girls,” Garnett said behind us. “For sanitary reasons.”
Frances nodded toward the exhausted woman sitting in the corner.
“Miss Mildred sleeps here at night with the toddlers,” she said.
The girl that Miss Mildred was rocking was dark headed and looked about three.
Hearing Frances’s voice, the sleepy girl took one look at her and broke into tears.
Scrambling down from the old woman’s lap, she ran over and wrapped herself around Frances’s shin, and I realized it was love.
“Alright, Ella Jane, I’m here,” Frances said, picking her up. The girl sobbed, grinding her face down into Frances’s shoulder. Frances’s eyes glowed and she mouthed to me, Her mama died. House fire. I couldn’t say my sister looked very sorry about that.
While they searched for a baby doll that’d gone missing, with Ella Jane purple and shrieking, I eased back into the hall. I liked children, but I preferred older ones with a little more vocabulary than just screaming.
Across the hall from the baby nursery, I peeked into a kitchen.
Not terrible, though nothing fancy, but it was real hot in there.
A colored woman in an apron tended to things boiling in several tall pots.
Up from that was the door to a small, plain dining room, and next to the doorway was a narrow staircase.
Since Frances was still baby doll hunting with the screaming girl and Garnett was explaining something to the older woman, I walked up the stairs.
Midway, I started to see spots of mold on the ceiling.
I followed them like a shepherd following the constellations.
In less than ten minutes, I’d gone from This looks nice to Good Lord.
There was a large attic room up here that held about two dozen metal cots, each with a thin mattress and a sheet; some had a lumpy pillow, some didn’t.
The floor was bare and scuffed up, with a dozen rusty tin cans placed around the room.
I could smell that mildew and when I looked up, sure enough the white plaster ceiling was covered in cloudy brown water stains.
It looked dryish for now, but what a view for an orphan, lying in bed, staring up at those awful bulbous stains.
Then I saw it and almost jumped—on one of the cots was the baby doll that’d gone missing. Head, body, no legs, one arm.
Somebody snickered and I looked back behind me.
In the corner, two girls were huddled together with something.
Somewhere nearby, a handbell clanged hard, once, annoyed, and the girls dropped the something and ran out the door.
These girls were bigger than the toddlers, maybe eight or nine years old, and both wore long-sleeved, long-skirted dresses that were thin but seemed hot for July.
I walked over to the corner and there lay the pale legs and one curved arm of the baby doll.
Clearly there’d been a massacre by the under-ten set.
There were also some soggy alphabet blocks. The Q and T looked partially eaten.
“Who funds this place?” I asked Frances downstairs. She was holding a still combustible-looking, whimpering Ella Jane.
“The church mostly. We also have a big fundraiser every year—I’m trying to get on the committee—and we get some private donations. And there’s a donation box on the square. And we get some funds from the county for the schoolroom upstairs.”
That wasn’t nothing. “There was a girl upstairs eating a block.” I didn’t mention the amputee baby doll since I wasn’t sure Ella Jane could handle it. She looked like she could blow again any minute.
Frances shook her head. “I wouldn’t waste your time, Birdie, I tell you, those big girls are past helping.” She gave me an upped-eyebrow look like I ought to know why too. I told her I did not.