My breasts would be the first to know. I’d worry about it if it happened.
The rock wall was too smooth for climbing, unless you was Merry Lee. But with the sewing machine, I could drive the fingers right into the mortar between the big stones, and the feet had grippers meant to anchor the thing when it was hauling cloth off bolts of denim heavier than it was. It weren’t easy, don’t get me wrong. And I broke three needles and blunted the scissors and awl something fierce. But length by length, I dragged me and Signor up that wall.
Effie tells me that when I hauled myself over the edge of the street and lay there suspended inside the frame, the machine scrabbling on its belly like a big turtle out of water to move forward, the first thing that happened was a cheer. I don’t remember, or maybe I just couldn’t hear it over the incredible roar of the fire. I was coughing and coughing and coughing, and all I could feel was the skin on my hands and around my eyes where the sheet didn’t wrap, tight and sunburned hot and sore.
Crispin and Effie got me up — or guided me up, anyway. The machine did all the work. They led me at a staggering run away from the blazing building, to where the rest of the girls was huddled, staring and waiting. Crispin just looked at me — he didn’t say Connie’s name. I couldn’t even make myself shake my head, but he must of read the answer in the way I closed my eyes. When I opened them again, he didn’t say nothing. He just started unbuckling the armature. Effie was petting my cheek and crying.
She started crying harder when they unwrapped the sheet and found Signor.
I looked down, not wanting to. He looked small — ridiculously small, for a white cat — gray now, smudged and sooty — with a head as big as both my fists together. And at first my heart lurched, and I moaned … but then I saw his eyes was open, his ears laid flat.
He looked me right in the face and hissed like a furious teakettle, and I hugged him as hard as I have ever hugged anything in this life or, if Priya is right about what happens when we die, I am likely to hug them in the next one.
And then everybody was around me, helping me out of the sewing machine, and Bea took Signor, which was good because she’s the only person on the planet who can pick up that damned cat without getting scratched. I staggered, and I stayed up because Crispin held me up. It seemed like I was doing a lot of that tonight — staying up because something else caught me.
Then he and Miss Lizzie was unwinding me, pulling his burned coat off, checking over my every limb. There was a little drizzle out here, and I turned my face up to it. There was a heavy mist, too, and it fought the smoke back and felt good, so good, on my scalded skin. “Connie,” I said.
Crispin put his finger on my lips. I pushed it away. Or tried to: I missed. But he moved it back a fraction. That’s what I like about Crispin. Well, one thing out of many. He leaves it to you to judge what you is and ain’t capable of. Most men seem to like to decide that for a girl.
Maybe it’s because he ain’t preening his feathers for no woman. Maybe Crispin’s just busy trying to run the lives of other men.
Or maybe he ain’t. This evening, my money’s on ain’t.
“Somebody did this on purpose,” I said. “There was fire at all the doors.”
“Connie was murdered.” He said it like he was getting it straight in his head.
I meant to nod; I don’t know if I succeeded. The firelight was painting us all weird through the mist, stark and glowy at the same time. Like somebody draped gauze over one of those Dutch oil paintings that show somebody’s face side-lit. And I don’t think it was just the fog made everybody look a little hazy at the edges.
Miss Lizzie finished inspecting me. She said, “You need aloe on all of that,” and then she said, “Honey, it’s a miracle, but if you don’t pick open a wound scratching and if it don’t take a taint you’re going to live without any big scars. Maybe a couple around the knees there, but stockings will cover that. Most of this ain’t even going to blister.”
I didn’t quite make sense of it.
But she moved away, and suddenly my arms were full of Priya hugging me breathless tight, which started me coughing again. “Stupid!” she yelled at me when she stepped back. “Stupid, stupid!”
And before I could try to hug her back she knuckled her eyes and ran off, shoulders hunched. The mist ghosted over her. I took a step after, Crispin steadying me, but Miss Lizzie had pulled his boots off me and the cobbles hurt my feet something fierce. “I don’t—”
“She likes you,” Crispin said with the tired wisdom of somebody who’s seen it all before. I half-hated him for his wisdom at that second, and I was half that grateful for it. “She’s running away because she’s scared of how much it would have hurt if you’d got killed. She’ll be back, no fears.”
“I’m sorry about Connie,” I said between coughs. Lord, don’t let me retch.
He kissed me on the head. “I ain’t sorry it weren’t you, too.”
That was when, with a thunder of hooves and a clamor of bells, amid the barking of a pair of dalmatians who ran guarding the horses, the fire engine wheeled out of the mist, rampaged past us, and halted before the blaze with so much rearing and head tossing that I would of marched right over there and had a word with the driver about hauling on the horses’ mouths that way. I would of, that is, if I hadn’t of fainted.
Somebody caught me this time, too. But I didn’t see who, because everything was black in all directions.
Chapter Seventeen
I woke up. I wasn’t sure I had expected to. But I did it anyway. And where I woke up was someplace I had never been before.
It was a comfortable room, with green walls and ivory window ledges, and I was tucked up in a narrow bed. My hands and arms rested outside the mint-colored chenille bedspread laid over me. They was wrapped in gauze, which felt stuck to the skin with something slippery. Miss Lizzie’s aloe leaf, I was guessing. And I was wearing a clean nightgown, too big for me, red flannel. With a frayed lace collar.
My hair on the pillow was still in its braid, though pulled all which-a-way, and it still smelled like dirty fire. My skin smelled like dirty fire, too.
I was alone.
I sat up cautiously, but the room didn’t spin. My arms smarted, and the skin around my eyes. The burns on my knees from the sewing machine were welted, blistering, and I guessed before long they would scab. They were the worst of it, though, and I have never felt so lucky.
There wasn’t any gauze on my face, but the skin felt sticky there, too. And it itched as well as stinging. I reached for it with gauzy fingers, then remembered Miss Lizzie telling me the scalds weren’t bad and that I wouldn’t scar if I could leave it alone. So instead I groaned. I might of sat on my hands — or laid on ’em, I guess — but they hurt too damned much.
So instead I put my feet on the floor and winced. I had no socks, and the boards were ivory painted and rugless, cold. Not a rich room, by any means. But not a poor one, either. The bedstead was oak, and mended. There were sprigged gingham curtains over the windows, a blue and green that went with the green of the coverlet, and the blue-and-silver wallpaper. I wondered if somebody had just taken the rug outside to beat it, though that would be weird in the winter.
Sitting up seemed to be going better than anticipated. I felt … well, I didn’t feel dizzy. But I didn’t feel all myself, either. Light-headed, maybe. Like I wasn’t quite in my own skull, but above and behind and a little to the left. Watching myself rather than … I don’t know. Being myself.
I wondered if I could stand. At least my feet weren’t burned, and thank Crispin for that. I put my gauzy hands down — one on the bedspread, one on the sheets — and slow as I could I pushed myself up. Now, Da would tell you that Caution ain’t my middle name, but this once, honest, I was trying. There was a ladderback chair right there, too, that I could grab if I needed, or so I was thinking.