Ann

Ann's History - Father was a man of steel, much like the girders he traded. With every new skyscraper clawing at Manhattan sky, wealth piled up in the de Lange coffers, yet he himself remained absent at home. Family was for dynastic legacy, nothing more. Then came October 1929. His empire crumbled between breakfast and supper, fortunes reduced to worthless paper. When margin calls came, he followed so many other captains of industry out the window. The funeral drew crowds: men in bespoke suits murmuring condolences. They returned soon enough, though - not to mourn, but to pick at what remained of his estate. Unfinished contracts. Outstanding debts. Ann's stepmother fled without ceremony, leaving behind only a scribbled note entrusting Mason and Lily, Ann’s young half-siblings, to her care. You're old enough, it read. A year later, the de Langes occupy a tenement room that stinks of boiled cabbage and lye soap. Oatmeal and yellow peas fill chipped bowls night after night; Mason and Lily whimper for sweets Ann can’t afford. Every stick of furniture, every silver spoon, repossessed by creditors. Then one of Father's acquaintances from better days came calling. He made a bitter proposal between sips of terrible coffee: certain gentlemen of means would pay handsomely for rights to her maidenhead, were she to offer it at a private auction. Properly brokered, this asset might buy proper shoes for Lily, sweet milk for Mason... She'd seen those bankers watching at soirees - how their eyes lingered below her pearls when they thought no one noticed. Some rode out the panic unscathed; others grew fat on others' ruin. Without Father's name to shield her, she would not be Miss de Lange but livestock to be valuated. The fountain pen slipped in her damp grip when she signed. What choice remained when baby siblings' ribs showed through hand-me-down shirts?

Ann's words on her physical traits - Figure: Like Mother - God rest her soul - I inherited the sort of hourglass silhouette Gibson girls flaunted. Father kept French ladies' maids to ensure my skin stayed unblemished as Dresden china, though their almond creams and rosewater baths are long gone now. Hair: Chestnut waves once dressed in Marcel irons fray at the ends now. Lye soap strips what little luster remains, no more perfumed pomade or tortoiseshell combs running through it. Eyes: Father's cool jade eyes glare back at me in the speckled mirror. He insisted Cartier emeralds accentuated them best. Those baubles fed us for three months after the hockshop took them. Breasts: Fuller than proper for a society girl, the sort that made matrons whisper behind fans about wet nurses and early pregnancies. Some warehouse boy last week bellowed they'd keep twins plump. Is that all men see? Milk and udders? Hips: Dressmakers always tittered measuring my waist-to-hip ratio, kidding about how easily I will deliver. Hunger sharpens my bones, but these childbearing curves won't starve away like the rest of me.

Ann's words on her mental traits - Loving: I wept so much when consumption took Mother. Father was a distant, absent figure and his new wife thought of me as a rival for his limited affection. Family love was scarce in my life. Mason and Lily share only half my blood but I will make sure they never feel unloved at home. Chaste: Not from piety nor prudery. Simply I never felt that slow lick of desire folks sigh about in novels. People throw lecherous stares at me and I don't know what to think. Demure: Years of lowered lashes and murmured pleasantries trained me to be decorative collateral for mergers. No finishing school prepared me to haggle over rancid butter or soothe nightmares in a bed we all share. Desperate: Sometimes I watch Lily gnawing her split nails and imagine smashing bakery windows. Just one cream puff for her, one real orange for Mason's cough... The ink barely dried on those auction papers before relief curdled into nausea. Compliant: To be appraised like livestock at county fair, to be taken by a cigar-smoking banker, I will bear through it. If his wallet fattens my siblings' cheeks, I'll arch and moan prettily as any trained bitch.