The Orphan Collector. Ellen Marie Wiseman
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might be sick with the flu. The twins still lay between her and the wall. She sat up with a start and nearly fell off the edge of the bed, then blinked and looked around, trying to figure out how long she’d slept. She got up on her knees and pulled aside the drapes.
It was dawn.
And her note to Finn still dangled on the clothesline.
Ollie turned toward her, kicking his legs and starting to fuss. Max was starting to wake up too. She picked Ollie up and bounced him on her hip, her eyes fixed on Finn’s window.
“Shh, Ollie boy,” she said, patting his back. “Everything’s going to be all right.”
She watched Finn’s window for another few seconds. No one moved behind the glass. Had they taken his brother to the hospital? Or were they all sick? Ollie started to wail, his face turning red, his small hands in fists.
“I know,” she said to him. “You want your mommy. Have you had enough of me?” She got down from the bed, snuggled his cheek against hers, and moved toward the bedroom. “All right, all right. I’ll take you to your mutti.” Then she stopped and glanced over her shoulder at Max. “Stay right there, good boy. I’ll be right back.”
Max blinked and grinned at her, still half asleep, while Ollie howled in her ear, loud enough to wake the people next door. She started toward the bedroom again, a growing surge of fear coursing through her, making her chest hurt. Surely Mutti could hear Ollie crying. Why hadn’t she come out to see what was wrong?
Pia knocked lightly on the door. “Mutti? Are you up?”
No answer.
“Mutti?”
Pia opened the door and entered slowly, keeping her eyes down in case her mother was dressing. “I’m sorry to wake you, but Ollie’s hungry. I fed him some Mellin’s a while ago, but—” Then she looked up and went rigid.
Mutti lay on her side in the bed, her clawed hands frozen at her throat, her mouth agape as if stuck mid-scream. A dark fluid ran from her nose and mouth and eyes, red and crusty and black, and her skin was the color of a bruise. The coppery smell of warm blood filled the thick air.
“Mutti?” Pia managed.
No response.
“Mutti?”
Realization, sudden and horrible, struck Pia. Her legs turned to water and she bent over, gagging and almost dropping Ollie. She grabbed the iron footboard to stay upright. The floor seemed to tilt beneath her feet.
Ollie wailed louder, filling the room.
Pia fell to her knees, her heartbeat thrashing in her ears. No. This can’t be happening. It can’t be. Dizzy and hyperventilating, she edged around to the side of the bed, the wood floor like a rasp on her bare knees, her shaking arms struggling to hold on to her baby brother.
“Mutti,” she cried. “Get up! You can’t leave us! You can’t!” She held her breath and reached out with trembling fingers, as if one touch would shatter her mother like glass. “Please, Mutti. Wake up!” Her fingertips grazed the sleeve of Mutti’s sweater, and she drew back, her stomach turning over. She didn’t need to touch her mother’s skin to know something was horribly wrong. She didn’t want to touch her and feel death. Grabbing the side of the damp mattress, she pulled herself to her feet, put a hand on Mutti’s shoulder, and shook her. Mutti’s body wobbled back and forth, like a life-size doll lying on a shelf.
A scream built up in Pia’s throat, but she clamped her teeth against it. She fell to her knees again and let Ollie slide to the floor, her arms too weak to hold him. He lay on his back, his face red, and cried harder. In the other room, Max started wailing too. Pia buried her face in her hands and squeezed her eyes shut, hoping the image of her dead mother would be gone when she opened them. This can’t be true! It can’t be! Mutti is not dead. She’s not!
She dropped her hands to the floor to keep from collapsing and opened her eyes. Her mother was still there, on the bed, covered in blood. Pia moaned and slumped to the floor, her legs and arms vibrating out of control, her breath coming in short, shallow gasps. Violent sobs burst from her throat one after the other, before she could catch her next mouthful of air. Each wail wrenched the strength from her body. Ollie howled beside her, oblivious to the fact that his mother was dead and his life had been changed forever. He reached for Pia’s arm, clutching her sleeve in his small fist. She picked him up and hugged him to her chest, her shoulders convulsing, her mind screaming in terror and grief.
More than anything, she wanted to lose consciousness, to faint and escape into nothingness, where pain and fear couldn’t reach her. But she had to take care of the boys. She had to go out to the other room and get Max, who was crying even harder now. When she trusted herself to stand, she staggered to her feet, still hugging Ollie, and stumbled out to the kitchen. She hefted Max onto her other hip and carried her brothers back into the bedroom on quivering legs, then slid down the wall opposite the bed, dizzy and out of breath. Her body felt like kindling, her nerves stripped and sparking, ready to burst into flames at any second. Her mind raced and her stomach churned, overwhelmed with grief and horror and disbelief. How could Mutti be dead? Dead? She rarely caught cold. How could she catch the flu? She kept her feet dry. She stayed warm. She even ate sugar cubes soaked in kerosene.
Pia stared at her mother, bile rising in the back of her throat, the babies howling in her arms. What were she and the twins going to do without her? Who was going to take care of them now? Pia wailed with her brothers, fighting the urge to scream and vomit, the black manacle of grief closing around her shattered heart and locking into place with a horrible, sickening thud.
CHAPTER TWO
BERNICE
October 11, 1918
For what seemed like the thousandth time in the past few days, twenty-year-old Bernice Groves stared out the third-floor window of her row house on Shunk Alley in the Fifth Ward, trying to figure out how to kill herself. She thought about jumping out the window, but worried the fall would only break her legs, not end her life. Slitting her wrists with a kitchen knife was an option, but she hated the sight of blood. She could swallow the rat poison her husband had brought home before he was drafted, but she didn’t want to die writhing in agony. Her death needed to be as quick and painless as possible. Maybe that made her a coward, but she didn’t care. There was no one left to notice, anyway. Then her eyes traveled to the clotheslines between the buildings, crisscrossing the alley like the threads of a giant spiderweb. Braiding several lengths of it together might make a rope strong enough to hold her weight so she could hang herself. But how would she get that much? She couldn’t very well go door to door asking her neighbors to loan out their clotheslines. Not that they would answer their doors, anyway. Since the epidemic started—Had it been a week? Ten days? Fourteen?—no one dared let anyone but family into their homes, and sometimes not even them.
No children played in the alley below, no women hurried out to run errands, no men whistled or smoked on their way home from work. Even the laundry lines hung empty. The only living things she’d seen over the past few days were a street sweeper sprinkling some kind of powder along the cobblestones and a brown dog sniffing two sheet-wrapped bodies across the way before dashing down the alley, his nose to the ground. More often than not, she wondered if she was the last person alive on earth.
It was easy to understand why the man who lived upstairs, Mr. Werkner, had shot his wife and two children before putting a gun to his own head instead of letting the flu decide their fate. While the rest of the city waited in fear and bodies piled up outside the morgues and cemeteries, he had taken matters into his own hands. She would have done the same thing if she’d known a week ago what she knew now. And if she had a gun.
Hopefully she already had the flu and would be dead soon, anyway. Then she would be with her husband and son. Except she didn’t want to wait that long. She wanted to die now, to escape this wretched grief, this horrible, heavy ache in her chest. She couldn’t stand the agony another minute. The Bible said taking your own life was a sin, but surely God would understand that