IV
SOMEBODY’S WATCHING
That August morning, the day after she’s brought P’tit back from Folsom Street—rescued him, as Blanche thinks of it, so she’ll feel valiant rather than simply miserable—her face in the great mantelpiece mirror looks a whole year older. Shoulders hard as boards. She used to do handstands on horseback, she reminds herself; carrying a baby around shouldn’t be too much for her. She’s feeling feeble only because she’s barely slept. P’tit’s seal bark got worse in the night, or perhaps it just seemed to because the tin sides of the trunk made it echo. (Arthur gave up at two o’clock and decamped to the sofa.) Clearly this is going to be as much work for Blanche as giving birth to the creature all over again.
“Light housework,” Gudrun repeats like a protective incantation, tying on her apron.
“But this would be instead of housework—as I said, never mind the dishes if you’ll just take him out for an hour or two so I can have a nap,” pleads Blanche.
The Swede’s golden head shakes firmly. “I told yesterday, no experience.”
“You’ll soon get the hang of it.”
“I don’t want,” says Gudrun.
“What about wages on top of your board?” offers Blanche. “What do you make for sewing shirts?”
Still shaking her head. “I prefer factory.”
“Whatever you’re earning, we can pay you more,” says Blanche, too shrill.
“I never be a live-in.”
“No, no, you’ll still sleep in your attic. It’s only day nursing I’m talking—”
“I prefer factory.”
Blanche gnaws her lip and carries P’tit into the bedroom without another word. She examines his puny armpits. At least all the patient sponging with ice water has cleared up the rash. She’s going to stay in here until the young woman’s finished the dishes and tidied up, because if Blanche starts a fight and Gudrun walks out, there’ll be no one even to carry the chamber pots down to the drain in the hall.
The long Monday drags by. All P’tit seems fond of is his wretched doorknob. But he’ll accept other things if Blanche puts them to his rash-rimmed mouth: bottles of milk, meat broth, bread pap out of a duck-shaped feeding boat. And of course his sugar tit, the little cloth bag of honeycomb (recommended by an American grocer) that she’s tied to his sheet. P’tit lies there in his padded trunk, mouthing the sweetness. His spatulate limbs swim in a spasmodic way that Blanche finds not at all human.
He sicks half his meals up, but Blanche grits her teeth and reminds herself that that must be because his stomach isn’t used to ample feeding or because something’s gone down the wrong way, making him cough till he convulses. His diapers overflow with brown liquid, and the stinking pile is rising. No one’s hauled it to the laundry above Hop Yik’s because Blanche forgot to ask Gudrun before the girl marched off to the shirt factory.
Arthur knows that Blanche has answered a note from Madame—but not that she did so by sending it back torn to pieces. He’s of the view that Madame Johanna’s so busy running the House of Mirrors, she’s probably never been to see how Doctress Hoffman looks after all those babies, and besides, it’s pointless to bear a grudge when there’s no real harm done, hein?
Blanche stares at P’tit. Harm has been done. She’s convinced that Madame knew exactly what she was doing when she sent P’tit to Folsom Street at barely a month old. What was the plan, for him to snuff it, natural-like, and be no further trouble to the Lively Flea? It’s astonishing that P’tit has survived his first year on earth. No wonder he’s … well, damaged goods. “Though doing well, considering,” Blanche says out loud, with hollow cheer.
For answer, P’tit farts, sailor-style, and braces his swollen stomach with a look that—she’s already learned to recognize—signals a violent squirting. “Don’t leak on the sofa,” she pleads, rushing to pick him up in time.
He can see her, at least. Blanche is sure of that much now. His hearing, she’s not so certain about. The tiny hollows of his ears seem gummed up with wax, but when she tried to dig it out with the tiny spoon from the salt dish this morning, he started wheezing with distress. Her guess is that he can hear but he’s doing his best to ignore her. When Blanche roars at him, he startles and cries, and she feels awful. He’s come to tolerate her carrying him about the apartment—in fact, seems to rather prefer it to being left in his trunk—but can’t bear anything in the nature of a caress. The few times his father’s picked him up, P’tit’s puked on his cravat or all over the ring—black onyx set in gold, with a scarab motif—that Blanche bought Arthur the first time she earned a hundred dollars in a single night.
She passes the hours yawning and wondering what—if anything—is going on behind that bulging forehead. P’tit’s face remains closed, except when it pinches up in agitation. He hasn’t had much to smile about, she supposes. But the bad times are over, doesn’t he realize that? Or at least the worst times. He’s home now, with Maman, in the best apartment in the building. He could make some effort …
She does know how absurd that sounds.
By evening, the heat of the day has thickened like a smell. P’tit finally falls into a snuffling doze in her locked arms.
A tap at the door. Has Arthur gotten so cockeyed he’s dropped his keys somewhere? Blanche hoists the sleeping child and walks over to open it.
Jenny Bonnet, the pool of purple around her eye faded to greenish yellow, the swelling gone down. It was only two days ago when the thug walloped her chez Durand, Blanche calculates. That was in Blanche’s old life, before she brought P’tit home.
Jenny’s loose suit is flecked with mud, and there’s a sack over her shoulder. “Hi,” she says, with a grin. “Hungry?”
Blanche’s first impulse is to slam the door in the woman’s face.
But she’s desperate for some lively company. Someone who sees her as something other than a vehicle or a bottle filler; someone who doesn’t wail at the sight of her face. And the fact is, if Jenny hadn’t asked Blanche those nosy questions then P’tit would still be in that dark room at Doctress Hoffman’s. And Blanche, for all her crabbed mood, can’t wish that. So she steps back.
Jenny strolls into the salon. “That your little fellow visiting?”
“We’ve …” Taken him back? No, that sounds as if Blanche and Arthur gave him away almost a year ago. “He’s staying here. That eye’s on the mend,” she remarks, to change the subject.
“I heal like all get-out,” boasts Jenny. “How’s the leg?”
Blanche half laughs. Her thigh, bruised from the collision with Jenny’s high-wheeler. “I haven’t had time to notice.”
Jenny’s taking off her jacket and waistcoat, quite at home.
“Bet you’re glad to shed a few of those stifling layers,” says Blanche.
“Says you, trudging around in a bustle even when there’s no one but a baby to see you!”
Blanche grins, granting the point. “Any news of the world?”
“I had to get a fresh scab just to be let on the streetcar,” offers Jenny, patting her upper arm. “Saw one unfortunate with tight sleeves obliged to peel her dress halfway down to prove she’d had hers,” she adds with a dirty chuckle.
Blanche laughs too, picturing it; how awful for the girl.
“You know next door’s boarded up?” says Jenny, jerking her head that way.
Her face stiffens with alarm. “Number eight thirteen? The boardinghouse?”
“Must be scores of poor saps in there. Six weeks of risking fines or lockup if they so much as step outside. And when it’s Chinatown, the health inspectors rush to conclusions. I heard of one boy on Bush Street they dragged off to the hospital with a bad case of pimples.”
A laugh escapes Blanche, startlingly deep. It makes P’tit leap as if he’s been touched by Madame Electra at a fair. “Chut,” she whispers, rocking him back to sleep.
“This epidemic’s given the authorities an excuse for playing the heavy with undesirables,” remarks Jenny, settin
g her Colt on her folded jacket. “Cursing’s banned now, did you hear? So’s having the DTs, flying kites …”
“Kites? Surely not.”
“Hey. Trust a jailbird to know the law to the letter.” She holds out her hands. “Give us a look, then.”
A look at what? Then Blanche realizes she means P’tit. “Bring that lamp,” she says, leading the way into the bedroom.
Blanche lays him down on his back in his trunk, an inch at a time.
He sleeps on, spread-eagled on his grubby sheet in the pool of light. Nothing innocent about his severe little face.
“Pretty homely,” Blanche whispers so the visitor won’t think she’s blinded by maternal feeling.
Jenny doesn’t contradict her.
Which Blanche resents, perversely. She realizes she was hoping for someone to persuade her that this lumpen-headed goblin is a prince among infants.
“A year old, you said? Looks half that,” murmurs Jenny.
P’tit’s bowed legs curve inward; his feet have found each other.
“Well, he can move all his limbs, anyhow.”
“He’s deformed.” Blanche says it out loud to hear how it sounds.
Again, Jenny doesn’t say no. “Rickets.”
Blanche doesn’t know this English word. “What’s—”
A shrug. “That’s what it’s called when they look like that.”
A jolt of relief, powerful as whiskey in her veins. “Then there are other babies who look like this?”
“The ones who don’t get enough,” Jenny clarifies.
“Enough what?”
“Whatever they need. Don’t know what it is, just how it looks when they go without it.”
And what makes Jenny an expert on babies? Blanche wonders with sudden fury. “His stomach was always round, on visits,” she protests.
Jenny grimaces. “That’s just wind.” She’s bending over P’tit now, fingering his broad ankles and wrists.
“Don’t disturb him,” snaps Blanche.
“Just checking for lines.”
Lines? Doesn’t everyone have lines at wrist and ankle, creases at every point where the limbs need to bend?
“Weals, you know, if they’ve tied them to the beds.”
“He can barely sit up, they wouldn’t have—” Tears, with no warning; Blanche clamps her hand over her eyes to stop them. Why now? Why hasn’t she been crying for her sickly, unsmiling baby all these past months?
This is the moment an ordinary woman might put her arms around Blanche; rub her shoulder, at least. A kiss on the cheek or the hair. Some human comfort. But Jenny gives no sign of noticing her state. “No marks,” she concludes, looking down at P’tit, head on one side. “I’ve seen worse.”
That’s such cold comfort, Blanche almost laughs. Her son’s bones are misshapen, his muscles wasted away to nothing from lying jammed in a corner in that stifling chamber on Folsom Street. He’s stunted. And though Blanche can think of several people to blame, her own name is at the top of the list.
“He’ll mend,” says Jenny. “Corkscrew?”
“What?”
“I need your corkscrew,” she says, pulling a bottle out of her satchel.
“You said he’ll mend,” cries Blanche, grabbing her by the sleeve. “How do you—”
“I’m only guessing,” says Jenny.
Blanche wants to punch her in the eye.
“Most things do.”
“Do what?” demands Blanche.
“Mend.”
She stares at Jenny.
“Sooner or later. One way or another. Now can I open this sherry?”
Blanche takes a long breath.
At the deal table, they sip from their glasses.
She should eat something while the baby’s asleep, she tells herself. Is there any of that cassoulet that Arthur brought back last night? She wonders whether she can stomach it cold and save herself the bother of heating it up over the spirit lamp.
“You mean to keep him here for good now, your P’tit?” Jenny asks.
Blanche nods. “We’ll hire a nursemaid. We’ll be a proper family at last,” she says, to convince herself.
“A proper family. Oh, that’s a guarantee of happiness right there,” says Jenny, sardonic.
“Where are your people these days?” Blanche wants to know.
“Gone to the devil, mostly! Are yours still in Paris?”
“They don’t even know about the baby,” admits Blanche. “But yours, are—”
A wail goes up from the bedroom. Jaw tight, Blanche trudges in. P’tit’s scraping at where his hair meets his neck. He freezes at the sight of her. Stares as if he’s never seen anything stranger. Then his eyes slide off to a corner of the room, chasing shadows.
Like it or not, I’m all you’ve got. The accidental rhyme jangles in Blanche’s head. She scoops him up efficiently, turning his face from hers as she walks back to the salon. His diaper’s still dry, at least. “Hold him a minute?” Without waiting for an answer, she dumps him in Jenny’s arms and goes to the lavatory.
Just to splash her eyes with water from the jug. Just to rest her head against the door. The truth is, Blanche would like to stay shut in here for a week. If someone would take P’tit off her hands for only an hour, even, carry him out of hearing range so she could get some sleep … but Jenny’s not that kind of woman.
When Blanche finally comes out, however, Jenny’s lit the stove and is sautéing garlic in a casserole dish. The smell is glorious. She’s got P’tit propped against the wall with cushions and she’s trilling what sounds like a Creole song in his direction, accompanied by loud finger clicks and exaggerated faces. “‘Chapeau sur côté, Musieu Bainjo—’” She mimes the dandy’s rakishly tilted hat. “‘La canne à la main, Musieu Bainjo—’” The twirling cane. “‘Botte qui fait crin crin, Musieu Bainjo—’” The squeaky new boots. Her voice surprises Blanche again with its lightness. “Enjoys his music, don’t he?” Jenny remarks, breaking off the song.
Does he? Blanche nods, as if of course she’s noticed that. But P’tit’s gaze still seems blank to her. The fact is, it hasn’t occurred to her to sing to the baby in the day and a half she’s had him here.
“Looks like he’s waiting,” says Jenny, watching P’tit as she might a hawk or an otter. “That makes sense, I suppose, if he’s been used to lying in a crib all day.”
Blanche tries not to think about the other weeklies in their dark room, the ones it wasn’t her business to rescue. The ones whose parents no doubt have their reasons, reasons that seem good enough to them. And, oh Christ, the paid-ups … the ones she never actually saw but whose images torment her anyway. Now Blanche remembers what she dreamed last night in one of the little stretches of sleep P’tit let her have: that she was back in that house on Folsom holding a pillow and running from crib to crib, pressing it down on each face, leaning hard, snuffing out these abominable half-lives.
Her stomach rumbles, bringing her back to the present. She breathes in the warm aroma of the garlic. “What’s going into that?”
“Frog legs, of course, fricasseed with sherry.” Jenny stirs with a sure hand. She pulls a blotchy creature—five inches long—out of her sack. It strokes the air convulsively. “Ever met a California red-leg?”
“Not close up and moving,” says Blanche, making a face. “Why aren’t its legs red?”
“Reddish, wouldn’t you say?” Jenny holds the frog closer to Blanche, who squirms away. “Redder than other frogs’, anyhow.”
With its dark mask, the red-leg has the look of a bandit. Prominent ridges rise from hips to eyes. “They’re horribly like us,” Blanche remarks. “Fingers, toes …”
“Ten toes, but only eight fingers,” Jenny points out. “He’s a handsome fellow, don’t you think?”
Blanche giggles. “How do you know it’s a he?”
“Slightly thicker arms and thumbs …”
Without a word of warning, Jenny kills him with a quick jab of the knife to the neck.
She turns the creature over, baring a surprisingly bright pink belly, and makes a slash across what Blanche can’t help thinking of as his waist, then flips him again and scores the small of his back. With the steel tip of her knife, she yanks down the flecked skin as neatly as a pair of pants. Or, no, stockings, dangling in a tired tangle. She chops off the top half of the frog with a crunch and flicks it into the scrap bucket. The lower half, all firm buttocks and muscular calves, reminds Blanche of nothing so much as a boy out of the corps de ballet. Only the blunt feet betray the fact that this is not half of a tiny person.
Jenny works on, skinning and bisecting, throwing each pale pair of legs into the bubbling pot. “They can jump twenty times their length, did you know that? But their best trick is turning from tadpole to frog. Last summer I lay by a pond all day and watched one.” Her eyes are alight. “In the morning she was a little algae-sucking wriggler. I saw her grow legs, bulging eyes, a long sticky tongue to catch prey and a big jaw to swallow it, a pair of throat sacs she could inflate like rubber balloons …”
Jagged sobs from P’tit, who’s slumped sideways, off his cushions; his face is now pressed to the skirting board. Blanche sighs and picks him up. Too much to ask for, to have a bite to eat in peace, or a conversation.
“By sunset,” says Jenny, “she was unrecognizable. A brand-new creature.”
Blanche hums an old circus tune, swaying from side to side.
P’tit does seem to enjoy that, or at least not object to it.
Jenny echoes the melody. “What’s that?”
“Just the waltz they always played for the trapeze act.” She swings P’tit, exaggerating her knee dips like some cracked old diva.
Jenny shakes the pan of frogs. “Do you miss your old life?”
Blanche looks up, forcing her eyes away from that nasty rash on P’tit’s hairline. Need Jenny ask? How could Blanche not miss the liberty she’s had all these months while P’tit’s been on Folsom Street? She’s paying for that freedom now, like a debt to some backstreet moneylender.
“Your Cirque d’Hiver, I mean.”
“Oh.” A long moment, while Blanche considers this different question. “I rather miss the horses.”