Second Glance Read online

  “Cissy, she’s been buried. I did it.”

  I throw myself out from beneath the covers and hit Spencer in the chest, the arms, the head. “You wouldn’t. You wouldn’t!”

  He grabs my wrists hard, pulls me back, shakes me. “We couldn’t have baptized her. We couldn’t have buried her in consecrated ground.” A sob rounds from his throat. “I thought, if you saw her, you would try to follow her. I can’t lose you, too. Jesus, Cissy, what did you want me to do?”

  It takes a moment for his words to sink it. We couldn’t have baptized her, we couldn’t have buried her in the church graveyard, because to Spencer she was illegitimate. Spencer gathers me into his arms while I am still stiff with shock. “Sweetheart,” he whispers, “no one has to know.”

  My eyes burn, my throat aches. “How about the next time I have a baby, Spencer, and it looks the same way? How many Gypsies will you accuse me of sleeping with before you realize I’m telling you the truth? Before you send me off to an institution to be sterilized?” I shake my head. “My mother fell in love with an Indian. Blame her for that, not me. All I ever did wrong was fall in love with you.”

  How does it feel, I want to ask, to find yourself at the bottom of one of your own genealogy charts? But instead I pick up the swaddling blanket at the foot of the bed. “Take me to the grave.”

  “You’re too upset. You need to—”

  “I need to see my daughter’s grave. Now.”

  Spencer stands up. He picks up from a tray beside the bed the scissors Ruby used to cut the umbilical cord, a knife she had sterilized just in case. He tucks these into his breast pocket, for safekeeping. “Tomorrow,” he promises, and then he kisses my forehead. “Cissy. Let’s start over.”

  I stare at him so long that everything inside me goes to stone. “All right, Spencer,” I answer, in a voice that sounds much like the woman I used to be. My hands are shaking in my lap, but I can play his game. I am already thinking of my next move.

  In the voelkisch State the voelkisch view of life has finally to succeed in bringing about that nobler era when men see their care no longer in the better breeding of dogs, horses and cats, but rather in the uplifting of mankind itself, an era in which the one knowingly and silently renounces, and the other gladly gives and sacrifices.

  —Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, from Volume II, written in prison in 1924 prior to the 1933 “Law for Protection Against Genetically Defective Offspring” passed as part of the Nazi Racial Hygiene Program

  Lily isn’t dead. Now that I have thought about it, this is the only way it can be—why else would Spencer refuse to show me the body, the coffin, the grave? A hundred scenarios have run through my mind: he has hidden her until he has a chance to leave her on the steps of a church; he gave her to Ruby to bring to the orphanage; he is waiting for Dr. DuBois to come and spirit her away. Another reason I did not die in childbirth: it is my responsibility to find my baby.

  I wait until I am certain Spencer has closeted himself in his study again and then I get dressed. It is slow going—my head is heavy with fever and my legs shaky. I slip Gray Wolf’s pipe into the pocket of my dress and double-knot my boots— above all, I have to be ready to run away. I turn the knob of the door with the care of a military spy and creep into the hall.

  My first stop is the bathroom. Quietly I rummage through the clothing hamper; I check inside the tub. I even force myself to look in the tank of the toilet. When I cannot find her I go to Ruby’s room on the third floor, and empty the insides of the closet and drawers, mess the bed, toss the shelves. By the time I finish I need to sit down.

  Think, I command. Think like Spencer.

  On the ground level of the house I sneak from small cubby to cornerhole, peeking in places too small to fit anything but a sleeping newborn. I take care to tiptoe around Spencer’s study, where the clink of glasses places him at the sideboard. By the time I reach the kitchen I am on the verge of tears. She must be hungry by now; she must be cold. Cry, and I will find you.

  I will carry her tight against my chest; I will keep her warm. On the way to Canada, I will tell her of the sights we pass—the cows marooned in fields, the violet fireweed exploding along the road, the mountains that curve like the line of a woman’s body. We will stand beside Gray Wolf at the settlement at Odonak when he is asked, “Who are you?” so that he can point to the two of us.

  I walk into the dark kitchen, thinking of the wine cabinet, the flour bins, the root cellar. There are twenty places alone to hide in this room. I have just taken a step inside the cool, black pantry when someone bumps into me from behind.

  I stifle a scream and pull the cord above me to flood the room with light. Then everything comes clear. “Ruby, what are you doing in here?”

  She is shaking like an aspen leaf. “Getting some . . . sometimes I can’t sleep at night and I make myself a little cup of that fancy chocolate of yours. I’m sorry, Miz Pike. I know it’s stealing.”

  I narrow my eyes. “Where is she?” My hands begin to run over the shelves, under stacks of clothes, pushing aside bins.

  “Who?”

  “The baby. You’re helping him hide the baby.”

  “Oh, Miz Pike,” she says, her eyes wide and wet. “There is no more baby.”

  “Ruby, you don’t understand. She’s fine, the baby is fine. I just have to find her. I have to find her, and I have to take her away from here.”

  “But the professor, he said—”

  I grab Ruby by the shoulders. “Did you see a body? Did you?”

  “I saw—I saw—” Ruby’s teeth are chattering. She cannot cough out the answer I want.

  “Dammit, Ruby, speak up!” I shake her a little harder, and she wrenches away from me, her arm striking a shelf lined with canned beets and beans. One jar tumbles to the checkerboard floor and shatters. As the pungent stink of vinegar spreads, I push aside bins of oatmeal and biscuit mix, soap flakes and powdered milk.

  Strong hands pull me away from the shelf, into the main room of the kitchen. “Let me go, Spencer,” I say, trying wildly to free myself.

  He turns to Ruby. “Call Dr. DuBois’s service again. Tell him we need him here now.”

  “Let go of me! Ruby, he’s lying. Let go of—Lily!” I scream. “Lily!”

  It takes all Spencer’s might to wrestle me out of the kitchen. Frozen, Ruby watches him drag me, screaming, up the stairs by my wrists. “This is not any of your business, Ruby,” Spencer calls over my cries. “You can see that Mrs. Pike isn’t herself now, and I’m going to make sure she calms down.” He grunts as one of my kicks lands squarely in his shin. “Call the doctor. And then do what I asked you to do earlier.”

  “Don’t listen to him, Ruby!”

  She seems to shrink before my eyes. “Go,” Spencer bellows. “Now!” Suddenly I go limp in his arms. He catches me before I hit the floor and carries me the rest of the way. I do not open my eyes, not even when he modestly checks the pad between my legs to make sure I have not hemorrhaged, not when he sighs like a man who has given up hope. Then Spencer tucks me into bed and removes my boots and locks the door firmly behind himself.

  I do not consider this a failure.

  After all, now I know that Lily is hidden outside.

  Why not drop the whole works? . . . We have carried on for several years and what have we accomplished? It was good fun as long as we could afford it, but now it is a different matter. If Hitler succeeds in his wholesale sterilization, it will be a demonstration that will carry eugenics farther than a hundred Eugenics Societies could. If he makes a fiasco of it, it will set the movement back where a hundred eugenic societies can never resurrect it.

  —Excerpt from a letter dated February 1, 1934, from Henry H. Goddard to H. F. Perkins, in response to financial assistance requests, ESV papers, Public Records Office, Middlesex, VT

  The hardest part is breaking the glass. To do it soundlessly is nearly impossible; I have to wrap the chair in the blanket from the bed and hope that the fabric will muffle some