Scarecrow

Genny interviewed them in the library.

It was term number five. We choose our own staff. On the second morning, a slim gray folder arrived from the Director’s office with six names in it, six photographs, and six neat pages of qualifications. Governesses. Tutors. People who would live on the sixtieth floor and teach the twins and look after Mother, when I was gone.

Genny read the folder at the kitchen table, in front of the glass wall, with her lips pressed together.

”He picked them,” she said.

”Of course he did,” said Mother.

”So they’re all his.”

”Probably.” Mother looked at her over her teacup. ”So pick the one who’s least his.”

The library was all shelves, floor to ceiling, more books than I’d known were left in the world, with a ladder on wheels to reach the top. Garnet had already spent most of two days lying on the rug in it.

Genny sat behind the big desk with the folder and a sheet of questions in her square writing. Her feet didn’t reach the floor. Mother sat in her wheelchair by the window, with a blanket over her knees. I sat in the corner and stayed out of it. Garnet sat on the ladder.

The first candidate was a tall smiling man who called Genny ”little lady” and lasted four minutes.

The second was so frightened she kept looking at me before she answered anything.

The third was an older man with a beard who asked a great many questions about what the twins could do. How much they could lift. How far. Whether they could demonstrate. Genny looked at him for a long time. Then she crossed his name out so hard the pen went through the paper.

”Number two,” she said. ”No tests. No assessments. You can go now.”

He went. Very fast.

The fourth and fifth were worse.

The sixth came at four o’clock.

She was older than the others. Fifty, perhaps more. Thin and straight in a plain dark gray dress with a high collar, her gray hair pulled back so tight it made her face look severe. A plain face. The kind you forgot as soon as you looked away. Except for the eyes, dark and very sharp, missing nothing.

She looked at the room. The shelves. Me in the corner. Garnet on the ladder. Genny behind the enormous desk with her feet dangling.

She didn’t look at Mother. Not then.

”Miss Dask,” she said. A low, dry voice. ”I’m Harriet Pell.”

”Sit down,” said Genny.

Miss Pell sat. She folded her hands in her lap.

”Why do you want to look after us?” said Genny.

”I don’t,” said Miss Pell. ”Particularly. The Director’s office asked me to apply. I was a teacher for many years. I’m considered suitable.”

Genny’s pen stopped.

”The others said they wanted to,” she said.

”The others were lying,” said Miss Pell. ”Nobody wants to look after children they’ve never met. You get to want to. Later. If you’re lucky.” A pause. ”And you sit up straight in that chair, Miss Dask, not because it’s polite, but because you think if you sit up straight enough I won’t notice your feet don’t touch the floor. I noticed. It doesn’t matter. Sit how you like.”

Genny went red to the roots of her hair.

On the ladder, Garnet made a small delighted noise.

Genny reached out, without looking, toward the tray on the corner of the desk, where Mr. Dunmore had left a pot of tea.

The teapot rose. It floated across the desk and stopped in the air a foot in front of Miss Pell’s face, steaming, tilting very slightly, as though it might pour.

Genny watched her.

Miss Pell looked at the teapot. Then past it, at Genny.

”If you intend to throw that at me,” she said, ”throw it properly. Otherwise put it down. Holding a hot thing in front of someone’s face to see what they’ll do is rude, and you know it’s rude, and you’re doing it because you’re frightened.” A pause. ”And if you’re going to pour, I take it without sugar.”

The teapot drifted down. It tilted. It poured, very carefully, into a cup that had floated over from the tray to meet it, and the cup settled on the desk in front of Miss Pell without spilling a drop.

Miss Pell picked it up and drank.

”Thank you,” she said.

By the window, Mother hadn’t moved.

She’d been sitting very still the whole interview, with her hands folded on the blanket. I’d thought she was tired. I looked at her now and saw that she wasn’t tired at all. She was looking at Miss Pell. Not the way you look at a stranger. The way you look at a word you know is in a book somewhere, if you could only remember which page.

Miss Pell set down her cup.

And then, for the first time since she’d come into the room, she turned her head and looked at Mother.

They looked at each other across the library for a long moment. Neither of them said anything.

Then Mother said, very quietly, ”Matron?”

Something happened to Miss Pell’s face.

It was only for a second. The plain, forgettable face went still and then cracked, along one line, the way Genny’s did. And under it was something that wasn’t plain at all.

Then it closed again.

”Hello, Dorothy,” said Miss Pell.

Nobody in the library moved.

Genny looked from Mother to Miss Pell and back, with her pen frozen over the page. Garnet had stopped swinging her feet on the ladder. I’d sat up in my corner without meaning to.

”You know each other,” said Genny.

”Orphan Hall Three,” said Mother, without taking her eyes off Miss Pell. ”She was a matron. The youngest one. She had the little ones’ dormitory, on the top floor.” Something moved in her face. ”She can’t have been more than nineteen.”

”Eighteen,” said Miss Pell. ”When I started.”

”You left,” said Mother. ”After the program came. I looked for you, afterward, when I could walk again. They said you’d left.”

”I did,” said Miss Pell. Her voice was perfectly level. ”The week they took the older children up the hill to the Ministry. I stood in the yard and watched them go up in a line, holding hands, the way we taught them to walk on the ring street. And I didn’t say anything. I didn’t do anything. I watched.” She looked down at her folded hands. ”Half of them didn’t come back. I left the week after. I couldn’t sing to the ones who were left. Not knowing.”

The library was very quiet.

”Sing,” said Garnet suddenly, from the top of the ladder.

Everyone looked up at her.

She was looking at Miss Pell with an odd, intent expression, her head tilted, the way she looked at a pebble she was about to change.

And then she hummed.

Not loud. Just a few notes. The old song. The one with no words. The one she sang coming down the porch steps every morning, and sang at Mother’s bedside in the dark.

Miss Pell went white.

She didn’t move. She sat in the chair in front of Genny’s desk with her hands folded in her lap, perfectly straight, and her face went white as paper. Her eyes went up to Garnet on the ladder and stayed there.

”Where,” she said. Her voice had gone very strange. ”Where did you learn that?”

”I didn’t learn it,” said Garnet. ”I just know it.”

”Dorothy sang it to her,” said Mother quietly. ”Every night. In the cot. Until she was two.” She was looking at Miss Pell. ”I learned it from you, Matron. On the top floor. You sang it to us every night so we’d know we weren’t alone in the dark. You said nobody knew the words. You said it was older than the dome.”

Miss Pell closed her eyes.

She sat like that for a long moment. Then she opened them, and her face was plain again. Closed. But her hands, folded in her lap, were shaking. I could see it from my corner.

”I’d forgotten,” she said. ”I’d made myself forget.”

”Did he choose you because of me?” said Mother.

Miss Pell looked at her.

”The Director,” said Mother. ”Did he put your name in that folder because he knew I’d see you? Because he knew I’d remember?”

”Of course he did,” said Miss Pell.

She said it simply. As if it were obvious.

”He came to see me himself, two weeks ago. At the school where I teach, on the lower floors. He knew everything about me. Orphan Hall Three. The top floor. The week I left.” She paused. ”He said the children would need someone. He said their mother would trust someone she’d known as a girl. He said he would like me to report to him every week. On the children. On their health, their lessons, their moods. On what they said.”

Genny’s pen snapped in her hand.

Nobody moved.

”I’m telling you,” said Miss Pell, ”because Dorothy would have found out. Because she was always the cleverest girl on the top floor, and she’d have worked it out in a week, and she’d have been right never to trust me again.” She looked at Genny, at the broken pen. ”And because I was a coward once. In that yard. I stood and watched them walk up the hill, and I didn’t say anything. I don’t intend to do it twice.”

She stood up. Smoothed her gray skirt.

”So,” she said. ”Now you know. If you’d like me to go, I’ll go.”

Genny looked at Mother.

Mother was looking at Miss Pell. For a long time.

”No,” she said at last.

Miss Pell didn’t move.

”You’ll stay,” said Mother. ”And you’ll report to him every week, exactly as he asked. Their health, their lessons, their moods. What they say.” Her voice was very quiet and very steady. ”And then you’ll come and tell me what you told him. Every word. Every week.”

Miss Pell looked at her for a long moment.

Then something happened at the corner of her plain mouth. Not a smile. Not quite.

”You always were the cleverest girl on the top floor,” she said.

”Yes,” said Mother. ”Sit down, Matron. You take it without sugar.”

Miss Pell sat down.

Genny looked down at her list. At the broken pen. She picked up the half with the nib, and very carefully, she drew a small neat circle around the name Harriet Pell.

That night, after everyone was asleep, I took out notebook fifteen.

I turned past the list I’d been keeping since the night of the sand bread. Bread.Fish (on the moon).Mother.Halvard Crane.The Accord. Nine people. Can’t.

Under Mother, for the first time since I’d written it, I wrote something.

Alive.

I looked at it for a long time.

Then, at the bottom of the page, I wrote a new line.

Harriet Pell. The song. Reports to Crane. Reports to Mother.

I thought about a man who’d had a satellite on our house for eleven years. Who’d known which girl had slept in the bed next to Mother’s in Orphan Hall Three, and which matron had sung on the top floor, and which week she’d left, and why. Who’d put her name in a folder so that Mother would see it and remember, and trust her.

Who’d known that Miss Pell would tell us. Probably. And had sent her anyway.

I didn’t know if that meant he’d lost a spy, or gained one I couldn’t see.

With him, I was starting to understand, it was always both.