The Strange Case of Baby H (2 page)

“Merciful heavens!”

“Lord save us!”

“Watch out!”

From all around the neighborhood came the sounds of people shouting, someone's high-pitched screaming, thudding bricks, and cracking boards. The Curfman family and their five lodgers clustered together.
Safety in numbers
, Clara thought, pressing against Mother. Geoffrey Midgard wrapped his burly arms around Miss Chandler and Miss Peggy DuBois, the violin teacher. Hiram Stokes gripped old Mr. Granger's shoulder. Father's head was bowed as he sat in his wicker chair. It looked to Clara as if Father were praying.

But of course Father never prayed anymore.

Clara's heart was thumping wildly again, and the glimmer of safety she'd felt only moments ago was gone now. Mother walked out to the street, calling to neighbors, asking if anyone needed help. The closely spaced houses along Clara's street were still standing, but Clara saw that their own house's chimneys and those of the house next door had collapsed into piles of brick. Jagged shimmers of glass littered the yard near the house. The Curfmans' house seemed otherwise intact, but how could they ever be sure it would be safe to go inside again? Where would they ever be safe if even the earth they stood upon couldn't be trusted?

In the distance they heard the clang of alarm bells, and Father lifted his bowed head. “There's fire,” he pronounced in his gravelly voice.

Now Clara could see plumes of smoke rising into the dawn sky. Fire, she knew, could sweep a city. Her whole world was falling to pieces, and she reached down to Humphrey for comfort. He was trembling.

Nobody was safe, she realized. Nobody, and nowhere. Her eyes stung with unshed tears and smoke. Her heel throbbed. And miles beneath her feet, the earth started rumbling again.

C
HAPTER
2

T
HE
W
ORLD
T
URNED
U
PSIDE DOWN

Clara braced herself, arms around Humphrey, until the trembling stopped.

“More and more quakes!” Miss DuBois moaned. “I can't bear it!”

“We're all right,” Miss Chandler comforted her. “Everything will be all right.”

Clara shivered in the early-morning air. The dawn sky was striped now with columns of smoke. Miss Chandler was trying to be kind and brave, but everything most certainly was
not
going to be all right.
We could so easily have been killed
, Clara thought.
We weren't, but surely others were
… She breathed in the sooty smell of burning.
Or will be
…

The clang of alarm bells in the distance made Clara wince. Mother beckoned to her. “People will be homeless,” Mother said in a dazed voice. “Or hurt. I need you to help me make ready for them.”

“But where will we put people?” asked Clara. “We're not a hospital!”

“We are uninjured,” said Mother more firmly. “We seem to have escaped the worst, and so of course we will help others as we can.”

“Fire's going to spread fast,” Father intoned from his wheelchair. “If the wind picks up, we may not remain so fortunate.”

“There you go,” snapped Mother. “Still the sea captain, are you? Reading the winds?” She turned away, linking her arm through Clara's. “Let's find something to bandage up your foot, dear, and then you shall be my chief helper.”

Mother climbed up the ramp into the house and Clara followed morosely. San Francisco might burn to the ground, but still Mother would find chores for Clara to do. The whole state of California might be shaken off the map, but chores would never perish. Clara looked around the wreckage of their kitchen and sighed. Broken crockery lay on the floor. Tins of flour, sugar, and salt had tipped off the counter, their contents muddied on the floor by spilled coffee beans and oil.

“There's no water,” Mother announced, trying the taps at the iron sink. “We'll swab you with vinegar, Clara. Come here.”

Clara bit her lip at the sting as Mother cleaned her heel. Then Mother ripped a strip off a clean dishtowel to wrap tightly around the injured foot. “Better now?”

Mother reached for the broom that had fallen under the table. “Now you can start sweeping up in here while I go find your shoes and a dress. And a ribbon to tie back your hair …” Mother turned to leave, muttering under her breath. “And we'll get a fire going in the stove. People are going to need breakfast after this shock.”

Clara gripped the broom handle. She could see she'd be trapped cleaning all day. But what about Emmeline's birthday party tomorrow? It had been so hard to get Mother's permission to go to the party, and so unfair if the quake should ruin everything!

Since turning their home into a boardinghouse, Mother had kept Clara so busy that there was rarely ever time for fun. No afternoons with Emmeline, Clara's dearest friend. No time to visit the library as Clara used to do every week. And certainly no time for swimming …
Certainly
not swimming. Never again.

Since the accident, there was little money. Father could no longer work, and the lodgers' fees went for groceries and other necessities. Father and Mother had once talked eagerly about college educations for their children, and going to college was one of Clara's fondest dreams, though Gideon had said he'd rather be a steamship pilot and didn't need a college degree. But now college was not an option for Gideon and was unaffordable, anyway, for Clara. “Out of the question,” Mother said.

Since the accident, Mother
always
said no. Anything Clara wanted to do was either
dangerous or frivolous
. Mother was so unreasonable! And Father—since the accident—wouldn't even listen to Clara's side. “Mother knows best,” Father always mumbled when Clara turned to him. Then Mother would hasten Clara onto a new chore, or one of the lodgers would ask her to do some mending. Lodgers were nearly as bothersome as parents.

It wasn't that Clara actively disliked the lodgers—not exactly. Mr. Midgard and Mr. Stokes were passably pleasant; the two music teachers were even friendly. Old Mr. Granger stayed in his room a good deal of the time. But she had found sharing her house these past two years quite disagreeable. Their pretty yellow and white house was meant to be a family home, she felt—not a
hotel
. It felt too small with so many people living in it. The dining room, where Clara served every meal, felt especially cramped with five extra people around the table. One chair was always empty, of course.

What would Gideon be doing if he were here
? Clara wondered as she started sweeping the crockery into a pile. Her brother would probably be hurrying around the neighborhood, checking on the safety of their neighbors. Clara decided she would go over to Emmeline's house. No matter that there could be no party; she would still take Emmeline her birthday present. She knew Emmeline would love the little velvet pocketbook Clara had sewn herself.

“When you finish in here,” said Mother, coming back into the kitchen with Clara's clothes, “you can start in the dining room. All that china—smashed! Such a waste—” She broke off with a gasp as a volley of explosions boomed in the distance and the floor shook. Hiram Stokes burst through the swinging kitchen door.

“Stop, Mrs. Curfman! Don't light a fire in the stove!” he yelled.

“Mr. Stokes!” cried Mother.

“The stove, ma'am—have you lit it?”

“No,” replied Mother. “I haven't found anything to cook yet—but why?”

He ushered Mother and Clara down the ramp to where Father sat in his wheelchair. Clara's heel throbbed under its bandage. All the lodgers were talking in worried voices, and Miss DuBois was sobbing.

“Gas lines are exploding,” Father spoke up into the clamor. “Fire's spreading fast. The whole city could go.” He wheeled his chair over to Mother. “You mustn't light the lamps or cook anything in the house, Alice, till the gas lines are repaired. Just a spark—and the next explosion you hear could be
us
.”

Clara looked at Father with wide eyes. It was so unlike him these days to speak with authority. He sounded almost like the old Father—the Father before guilt silenced him. Mother also seemed surprised. She regarded him stonily for a long moment.

“Mr. Curfman is right, ma'am,” interjected Hiram Stokes. “I venture to say we'll need permission from the fire marshal before we dare cook indoors.”

Mother nodded slowly. “I see,” she said. “But then how shall we cook for ourselves? Whatever shall we do?” Her voice rose. “The pantry is a shambles and there's glass everywhere, and what are we to eat?”

“We could build a fireplace from fallen bricks,” Clara suggested. “A sort of outdoor grill.” She hobbled over and picked up a heavy brick from the pile on the ground.

“Capital idea,” said Mr. Stokes, coming to assist her.

“We'll all help,” said Geoffrey Midgard, the other middle-aged bank clerk. “In times of trouble, folks pull together.”

Miss Chandler and Miss DuBois came forward and started helping Clara carry bricks from the collapsed chimneys onto the patch of grass in the side yard. Mr. Granger, a quilt clutched tightly around his thin shoulders, directed. Mother hurried indoors again to search for breakfast offerings. Father rolled his chair to the side of the house, where he could see their tree-lined street. He stared at the neighbors' brightly painted houses, now with broken steps and chimneys. In the distance, smoke billowed above the rooftops.

Clara was surprised how quickly all of them working together were able to fashion a stove. Two bank clerks, two music teachers, one retired brick mason, and Clara all made a square of brick, several feet high, to hold wood or coal. Father, watching from his chair, directed them to take some of the iron fencing stored in the shed to serve as the grate. It was a crude outdoor grill, but it would work, Clara decided. And Mr. Granger said there might be a way to build an oven, too, if they could find some sort of mortar to hold the brick together …

Another boom like cannon fire split the air.

What if Emmeline's family didn't know not to light their stove or lamps? “Mother?” asked Clara. “May I please go check on Emmeline?”

“Not yet, child. We need to get things in order here.”

Mother handed out bread and cheese for a hasty breakfast, and they ate beneath the canopy of the oak tree. The sun rose higher in the sky, but the day was unnaturally dark. Frequent explosions in the distance meant new fires were erupting every hour. Mr. Stokes and Mr. Midgard set up boards across two sawhorses to create a table in the side yard. Clara, her mother, and the lodgers all made quick runs into the house to get dressed and to carry foodstuffs and furniture outdoors. Mother brought out a big pot of broth and beans that she had started yesterday and placed it on the makeshift stove, and Miss Chandler and Miss DuBois set themselves the task of chopping cabbage and celery to add to the pot.

Clara didn't feel safe inside the house. She moved quickly, helping to bring out bedding, kerosene lamps, and chairs—things they might need to set up housekeeping in the yard until the house was deemed safe. She worried every time she set foot indoors that another quake would send the walls tumbling down around her.

Clara and Gideon had been born in this house. Clara had played in every room and knew each space intimately. She and her brother had spent years playing out in the small backyard or two blocks away in Golden Gate Park. Mother had trusted Gideon to keep Clara safe and had allowed them the freedom to get new books at the library, to see moving pictures at the cinedrome, and later to take the streetcars all the way across the dunes to the Sutro Baths at Ocean Beach.

Then one day Father had decided to take Gideon with him on a steamship run down the coast, and the accident that changed everything left the steamship wrecked on the rocks, Father badly injured—and Gideon dead.

With Father unable to work anymore, Mother had thrown herself into running a boardinghouse. She and Father moved out of their big bedroom upstairs to sleep instead in the study off the dining room. Now Mr. Midgard and Mr. Stokes shared the master bedroom. Clara moved to the sleeping porch so that the two music teachers could have her sunny bedroom. Old Mr. Granger settled into the guest room. The only bedroom that had no lodger was Gideon's. His room remained just as it had been the day he'd died two years ago—Mother's shrine to her lost boy.

The first weeks after the accident were hazy in Clara's memory. She remembered only the numbness she'd felt, as if she'd lain too long in the saltwater tank at the Sutro Baths. The water, straight from the Pacific Ocean, was icy cold. A brief plunge could be refreshing—any more and her bones would ache. After Gideon died, Clara ached all over—as if she, not he, had been the one to smash on the rocks where Father's steamship foundered. She had missed Gideon with a sharp intensity at first, but now, two years later, the ache had dulled. She sometimes forgot he was gone; when she heard an amusing story at school or learned a new joke, she'd think,
Wait till I tell Gideon
!—and then remember that she could not tell him anything anymore. Now she met him only in dreams, dreams where he did not drown because she swam out after him and pulled him to safety on the rocks.