Orphan Eleven Read online

  They were a long way from the circus, but still Lucy saw posters plastered in shop windows, on fences, and on telephone poles. Every time she spotted one, Lucy felt a warm hope flicker inside. But the longer they drove, the fewer she saw. Then they disappeared entirely.

  Mackinac’s grip on her arm had loosened. At the next red light, Lucy would pull open the door and dive out.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Mackinac whispered, tightening her grasp.

  Lucy shuddered. At the orphanage, the girls said Mackinac had a sixth sense. She knew what you were plotting almost before you did.

  Mackinac smelled of cherry cough syrup and something sharp, like disinfectant. Lucy tried to scoot closer to the window, but the iron hand held her in place. Her arm hurt where Mackinac’s fingers dug in.

  Why hadn’t Mackinac and Grundy looked for the other orphans? Why did Lucy matter to them, and not Doris, Nico, and Eugene? Mackinac couldn’t stand Lucy. Why in the world would she want her back?

  “We told them you had the flu. Are you listening to me, Lucy?” Mackinac demanded.

  Lucy nodded. Mackinac’s voice buzzed with importance when she said them. That usually meant she was talking about the university people.

  “This is the position your nonsense has put us in,” Mackinac said.

  “Five hundred mouths to feed on a budget for two hundred and fifty. Fifty percent more than the orphanage was built for,” Grundy agreed.

  “How are we supposed to make that work?” Mackinac asked.

  “We don’t turn children away. Earned our place in heaven, that’s for sure,” Grundy said.

  “But, Lucy, your selfishness has put everyone at risk,” Mackinac scolded.

  Lucy didn’t see what she had to do with any of this. They should be happy to have one less mouth to feed.

  “Now you listen to me.” Matron Mackinac grabbed Lucy’s chin and wrenched her head around until Lucy was looking straight at her. “You will cooperate fully.”

  Lucy nodded, trying to avoid Mackinac’s piercing eyes.

  “Your friends will not appreciate getting punished for your shenanigans. You chew on that for a while, young lady.”

  Lucy clenched her teeth, the rage rising inside.

  At first, when Miss Holland told Matron Mackinac that Lucy hadn’t been cooperative, Mackinac had thrashed Lucy with the superintendent’s belt. She’d been given toilet scrubbing duty, and was made to sit in her chair while everyone ate supper. When Lucy still wouldn’t open her mouth, Mackinac had punished Lucy’s best friend Emma instead. That worked every time.

  Now they rolled to a stop at a light, but she couldn’t get away. Mackinac’s fingers burned her arm. The light turned green again.

  Lucy thought about Dilly and the route card. The first week in May, Saachi’s would be in Chicago for a three-day stand. Today was April 24. Lucy had to catch up with the circus before Chicago. She’d never find Dilly locked away in that orphanage.

  Lucy’s elbow grazed the pocket of her dress underneath her coveralls. Inside the pocket were the precious route card, the silk purse with the elephant hairs, her baby tooth, her paper and pencil, and Dilly’s button.

  Would Jabo know what happened to her? Would Grace? Would they think she’d abandoned the elephants? She felt sick to her stomach thinking about it.

  Grace trusted her. Bunk, Rib, and Jabo would back her up. They cared about her. She knew they did. She wasn’t just an orphan anymore. She was an OOFO.

  Mackinac and Grundy were arguing about which road to take. Mackinac prevailed, as always. A few minutes later they drove past large, stately buildings with foreign words on them. And then past more buildings with big pillars.

  COLLEGE OF JOURNALISM one sign said. COLLEGE OF FINE ARTS read another. This was the university where rich people got to read as many books as they wanted.

  How excited Lucy had been that day eighteen months ago when they told her she’d been chosen for a special honor: lessons from the university lady. Mackinac had said it was because Lucy was an A student, always the first to raise her hand in class. And because she had a beautiful voice. Lucy had made Mackinac proud.

  Matron Grundy pulled into a parking space.

  “Take off those ridiculous pants.” Mackinac said. She had brought her a dress, but when she saw Lucy had the dress Betts had made for her underneath the coveralls, she didn’t make her change.

  The two flanked her as she walked up the steps to the building. Matron Grundy’s wiry arm was linked through Lucy’s. Matron Mackinac held her elbow with her iron grip.

  They marched her into a hall and up the stairs, through a waiting room to a small office where Miss Holland sat with her stinging smile.

  When Lucy had first met Miss Holland, she dreamed Miss Holland would adopt her and sew her dresses the way Mama had. She imagined Miss Holland bringing her great stacks of books and sheet music to help her sing solos. But Miss Holland didn’t ask Lucy to sing, and she didn’t care what Lucy thought.

  At first, Lucy had thought Miss Holland beautiful, with her dark wavy hair and blue eyes. But now it was painful to look at her. It was Miss Holland’s scorn that had made Lucy hate her own mouth. Hate her own stupid tongue.

  “We’ve missed you, Lucy,” Miss Holland said with a chilly smile. “So glad you’re feeling better now.”

  Lucy studied her shoes. She imagined the feel of Baby’s trunk. The way her big flat feet liked to splash. She thought of Jenny’s lumbering walk. The coarse feel of her hair.

  Miss Holland turned to Mackinac. “Take about an hour,” she said.

  Matron Mackinac leaned down and whispered in Lucy’s ear, “Do exactly what she says. Do you hear me?”

  When Miss Holland had come to the orphanage, the sessions were held late in the afternoon in Matron Grundy’s small office. They were never at the university.

  Why was she here?

  The room had sunny bright windows, leather armchairs, and framed degrees on the walls. On a shelf were slates, notepads, machines with long paper readouts, and machines that measured hand strength. Lucy remembered when Miss Holland had brought the machines to the orphanage.

  “So, Lucy, Dr. Smithson will be joining us to observe. I’ll let him know you’re here.” She hustled out.

  Lucy tracked her to the door, but when it opened, she saw Mackinac and Grundy seated like guards in the next room.

  Miss Holland pulled the door closed, preventing Mackinac’s and Grundy’s prying eyes from seeing. When the latch clicked, Lucy flew to the window. The office was on the fourth floor, but there was no balcony and the window didn’t open.

  What if there was a fire? Could Lucy shout the word “fire”? Could she get by Mackinac and Grundy?

  Then she noticed the file sitting on a table. ORPHAN ELEVEN, GROUP B, FLUENCY STUDY the tab read.

  Lucy flipped open the file and read the handwritten notes inside.

  Age nine at the onset of the study. She has no known living relations.

  Orphan Eleven is intelligent, with strong verbal skills. She possesses above-average speech and fluency. No marked hesitancy. Orphanage personnel chose her for this study because she is an enthusiastic student. “Eager to please,” they said.

  Rebecca Holland has seen Orphan Eleven for fifty-five minutes, once a week, since the study onset in October 1937. Miss Holland has worked with the orphanage personnel to continue the training in all interactions with Orphan Eleven. Orphanage personnel were cooperative with all aspects of the study.

  The children in Group B, the fluent-speaker group, were told they had begun to stutter and needed to correct this problem immediately or it would grow much worse. Assistants worked with them to create consistent doubt about their speaking abilities.

  They were told that if they didn’t stop stuttering, their prospects in life would be bleak.


  Orphan Eleven’s progress is proving Dr. Smithson’s thesis: Stuttering is a learned behavior. A parent’s constant criticism can cause it.

  Since shortly after the onset of the study, Orphan Eleven has demonstrated a desperate fear of opening her mouth. Every week she becomes more withdrawn. When coerced to speak, she demonstrates typical stutterer behavior, such as gasping and leaving long silences between words.

  Lucy heard the outer door opening and footsteps approaching. She slammed the file closed and dashed back to the chair. The door opened and a gray-haired man in a white lab coat and dark-rimmed spectacles came in, followed by Miss Holland. Miss Holland sat in a chair across from Lucy. The gray-haired man sat at the desk.

  “Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?” Miss Holland suggested. “What is your name?”

  Lucy stared at Miss Holland. Her stomach hurt, her head felt light. Then she saw the gray-haired man pick up the file and begin making notes.

  “Lucy, your name,” Miss Holland barked.

  Now everything made sense. She was valuable to them because she had proved Dr. Smithson’s theory correct. The criticism and constant humiliation had been intentional. They had done it to make her stutter.

  Lucy closed her mouth so tightly it made her jaw ache. She sat up straight, drilling her feet into the floor. The one thing she absolutely would not do was stutter.

  But she’d been trying not to stutter since her sessions with Miss Holland had begun. The only way to keep from being shamed was to keep her mouth shut.

  Then, in the whirl of thoughts, Bald Doris popped into her mind. Doris had caught her singing in the bathroom once. Lucy didn’t stutter when she sang.

  Lucy stared defiantly at Miss Holland, imagining a tune for her name. Then she opened her mouth, and in her clear soprano she sang, “Sauvé. Sauvé. My name is Lucy Simone Sauvé.”

  Miss Holland’s eyes narrowed. “That is not what I asked for.”

  Lucy shrugged, but she couldn’t keep the smile off her face.

  “Say your name. Say it. Don’t sing it. Dr. Smithson is observing. Don’t waste his time.”

  Lucy stared at the man in the lab coat.

  No. No. No.

  “Lucy, your name!” Miss Holland barked.

  Lucy hated Miss Holland’s criticizing voice. Hated how it had gotten inside her head. How she couldn’t open her mouth without hearing Miss Holland and Matron Mackinac’s ridicule.

  “This will be a lifelong problem. No man will marry you. No boss will hire you. You will not be able to make your way in the world, unless you let us help you.”

  Lucy had believed them. Until now.

  Lucy shook her head, her ponytail brushing across her face.

  “N-no,” she whispered.

  “See how she’s struggling.” Miss Holland’s eyes drifted to the man in the lab coat. He nodded his approval. Miss Holland gave him a small, triumphant smile.

  “We can help you. That’s why we’re here,” Miss Holland said in her smooth lying voice. “Please repeat my words exactly as I say them: My name is Lucy Sauvé.”

  Lucy considered the word “help” as if it were on her vocabulary list. Help meant making something easier for someone. But when Miss Holland said the word “help,” it meant something else entirely.

  Lucy sat in stony silence while the man in the lab coat made notes in the file. Her file. The one that said Orphan Eleven.

  “If you waste our time here, we’ll need to inform Matron Mackinac. We would prefer not to do that, but…” Miss Holland let her sentence trail off.

  “She is st-stubborn,” the man in the lab coat said.

  Lucy stared at him. His name, Dr. Smithson, that was the name in the file. He had designed the study and he stuttered.

  None of this made sense.

  Lucy began to write, but Miss Holland yanked her paper away.

  Lucy glared at her. She had never hated anyone this much.

  “One thing…I…know”—Lucy took a big gulping breath—“y-you are…not t-trying to help me.”

  “She can’t get a sentence out without pauses and repetition.” Miss Holland beamed at the man, ignoring the content of Lucy’s words as she always did.

  “Good work, M-Miss Holland.” He nodded.

  Good work?

  Lucy grabbed her paper back and wrote, I spoke fine before I started working with you. Her hand shook as she shoved the page in Miss Holland’s face.

  “She writes her responses. A key trait of selective mutism,” Miss Holland reported to Dr. Smithson.

  “I c-can see that.” He nodded, his eyes bright, the corner of his mouth twitching as if he was trying hard not to smile.

  Lucy could not stop staring at him. The horror of her time with Miss Holland was a victory for him!

  Lucy’s voice busted out of her, unstoppable. “You…cannot do this to me! I am not…your Orphan Eleven.”

  March 24, 1939

  Dear Lucy,

  I’m getting up every morning at three and going to Mrs. LaFinestre’s. Mrs. LaFinestre gave me a key and she leaves the light on for me. She lets me use machine #71 so long as I don’t sew my dresses during work time. I sell my dresses to the office girls. They are happy because I make them look pretty.

  Sometimes it seems like all the girls have family around them and dates and parties they need dresses for. And then there is me, one lone girl sewing. Maybe you are gone & I will never find you. But I’m not giving up. Even if I go to Riverport and do not find one single thing about where you went to, I will have tried with my whole self to put together what Thomas Slater broke apart.

  Love,

  Dilly

  April 13, 1939

  Home for Friendless Children

  Riverport, Iowa

  Dear Mrs. Mackinac,

  I have not heard anything back from my last letter. I will be in Riverport on April 24. Please could you send me directions of how to get to your orphanage from the train station? I need them right away.

  Yours truly,

  Dilly Sauvé

  April 14, 1939

  Dear Lucy,

  Remember how we would tell Mrs. Three Eyes things we didn’t want to say to each other? I wish I had Mrs. Three Eyes now, because there is one thing I haven’t told you.

  It isn’t as bad as Thomas Slater telling Mama he was rich and had a car and a home when he had nothing, but it’s awful bad just the same.

  My plan was to write it here. But I can’t. I don’t want to see the words in black-and-white on this page. Maybe you could hear my sorry without knowing all I did.

  Love,

  Dilly

  P.S. The last time I saw Mrs. Three Eyes she was packed in Mama’s suitcase. I hope she’s with you.

  On the way out, Lucy heard Dr. Smithson talking to a man with a beard that fanned out from his chin like a skirt. “Nice when the results support your hypothesis this way,” the bearded man said.

  Dr. Smithson smiled. He stood up straighter. His eyes shone.

  He was proud of what he’d done.

  Why would the orphanage have allowed her to be a part of this terrible study?

  The question went around in Lucy’s mind as the car’s ignition turned over without catching. Did they think the study would help the orphans? That was what Matron Mackinac had said when she explained the program to Lucy. But Mackinac had to see that the sessions were designed to create problems. She had to have realized what the time with Miss Holland was doing to Lucy.

  Mackinac had to know the truth. She had to.

  The Ford’s ignition turned over ur-urr urrr, then finally caught, and Grundy backed out of the parking space.

  Lucy stared out the window at the university buildings. Then she thought about the shiny new orphanage oven
, the thick wool orphan coats, the boxes of chocolates and caramels for the matrons. Had the university given the orphanage gifts in exchange for using Lucy for their study?

  That was why Mackinac and Grundy wanted her and not Doris, Nico, and Eugene. Lucy was valuable to them because she was in the study.

  Lucy stared out at the houses, the white church steeple, the sign welcoming them to Riverport. The car had slowed and Mackinac’s grip on Lucy’s arm had loosened. Lucy could yank free and dive out. But once again, Mackinac sensed Lucy’s thoughts and tightened her grip.

  Soon, the wrought-iron fence and the sad gray cottages of the orphanage came into view. How familiar and how different they looked.

  The fence was tall, but it was just a fence. It made her ashamed of the power she’d let it have over her. She wouldn’t let their fence stop her again.

  The old car bumped up the road to its parking spot by the incinerator. Mackinac was scolding, “It is only out of the goodness of our hearts that we didn’t take you straight to reform school. But if you give us any more trouble…if you get called out and sent to the chairs even once”—spit flew out of her mouth—“we will deliver you that very day. Do you understand?”

  The reform school in Elman was a few hours’ drive from the orphanage. Miss Holland wouldn’t want to drive all the way to Elman every week. It was an empty threat. They weren’t going to send her to Elman at all.

  Lucy longed to tell Mackinac that. She wanted to see the reaction on her face when Mackinac understood that Lucy had figured out exactly what was going on. But she knew it would only make Mackinac angrier, which would mean more restrictions. It was better to play along.

  “And not a word about where you’ve been,” Mackinac said.

  Lucy nodded, her eyes on her lap.

  They walked by the schoolroom window, where girls sat at old wooden desks huddled over their lesson books. Mackinac pushed open the door and heads popped up. Everyone stared at Lucy as she walked down the aisle between the desks.

  They were gaping at the dress Betts had made for her and the shoes she’d gotten from Diavolo. Girls who came back from running away were dirty, torn, and tattered in their ill-fitting orphanage dresses. No girl had ever run away and come back looking better than when she left.