Nanny

No word, uttered or inscribed, can claim that all they tell is true to the letter; in every slip and stutter of the human voice, every unspoken detail in fine print, a lie takes root and defiles the same soil that nourishes it, until it burgeons into a carnivorous parasite. Last summer, Rosenthal Manor snatched me away from my life with a bouquet of hopes and walled me into her cold, high corridors, where every step that falls on the marble floor, every voice whispered in its chambers, does so in the name of rules that no soul dared disobey for centuries.

It all began a couple of months after I graduated from university, when I woke up to a call from my old professor. “Mr. Rosenthal attended our program when I was a young researcher,” said Professor Datta, “Commuted all the way from that god-forsaken mofussil every day: a bright, hard-working man despite his wealth. He’s looking for a talented young woman to teach his son English while he’s out of the country. And you—straight A’s since day one, former class rep—you’re the first name that came to mind.”

I wasn’t keen on becoming a private tutor, but I told myself that to become a teacher, I needed some teaching experience on my resume. Besides, ever since we graduated, I watched all my old classmates take up jobs while I stayed holed up in my little room.

Professor Datta was known for being precious about what she considered proper Calcutta, so I brushed off her comment about how far it was. It was on the Sealdah–North train line, and I had been on that route before to meet friends. Once I reached the platform, I gritted my teeth and hoisted myself up to the ladies’ compartment, hanging at the steel handlebars for a risky moment. Then, the pressure of more passengers getting up behind pushed me away from the gates and into safety. Outside the windows, houses grew shorter and dwindled, until we passed large patches of farmland dotted with tiny clusters of huts in the distance.

After what felt like an hour, the train squeaked to a halt at Itapur. This time, there was no rush of people. Neither were there any curses hurled at those blocking the way to the gates. I pushed my way through and stepped down onto a small, empty station, with only two platforms on either side of the rail track and a few wooden benches rotten with age. The train whirred into motion and rushed away the moment the clock hit twelve as though it couldn’t be paid to stick around for an extra second. Once it passed, a full view of the station confirmed what I had already surmised: not one other person had gotten off.

The Itapur station looked forsaken by the railways: toilet stalls with rusty locks on them, a canteen with lowered shutters caked with dust, and an empty ticket booth—although it had lights and an old creaky ceiling fan turning slowly. As I moved closer, I found the station master sitting on a chair outside with his face buried in a cricket match on his phone.

“Excuse me,” I cleared my throat. “I’m looking for the way to Rosenthal Manor.”

The station master looked up at me with his mouth open in shock and blinked hard. “What brings you here?”

“I’m here for a job at Rosenthal Manor,” I repeated.

“That’s what they all say,” said the station master, shaking his head.

He got up from his chair with a groan and led me to the station gate, then directed me to take a left from the intersection ahead.

“How will I know if I’ve reached the right house?”

He sighed. “You’ll know.”

I wanted to ask the station master about what the old woman said to me on the train and ask about what Itapur was like, but he disappeared back into the station before I made up my mind.

The road left from the intersection was a long walk over an unpaved track, starting amid paddy fields and then through empty plains until a tall spire jutted out in the distance. There were no shops lining the road in Itapur, nor any houses after I had passed a small clump of farmed lands around the station.

Rosenthal Manor stood a lonely, forgotten remnant of the British Empire surrounded by acres of empty land. The once-white mansion had been washed down to its dark bricks after years of decay in the damp air, and yet it perched tall and unbent, casting a long shadow that seemed to snatch away color from the greens that surrounded it.

At the front door, a pale man in a black suit greeted me. He held his chin so high I could barely discern his expression, but he gently ushered me in. Whether it was the distance from the bustle of the city, a slight elevation of the land, or the thick Victorian walls, the moment the door shut behind me, I could forget the tropical summer in the icy stillness of the air inside. The main hall was lined with tall windows, but little light entered through the dark, velvet curtains that loomed over them.

“Mr. Rosenthal?” I asked the man in a suit as we settled down at a large table.

“No, I am the butler. I’m afraid Mr. and Mrs. Rosenthal left earlier this morning to attend business in London, leaving me the responsibility of appointing a nanny for the young Master.”

“You want me to babysit their child?” The word nanny slapped me across the face. I thought I was here to teach, not change diapers.

“Not a babysitter,” said the butler. “We are looking for a nanny. Someone qualified. Cultured. Local ayahs—well, their vernacular leaves much to be desired, and we need someone who can raise Master Rosenthal with excellent manners for these foundational months.”

I searched for an excuse to turn down the offer. “Thank you, uh… that sounds great. But, I need to talk this over at home. The distance is quite long for me to travel every day.”

“The commute should not be a concern. We were, of course, expecting to arrange accommodations for you, here at the Manor.” The butler produced a calculator on the table and added. “Undoubtedly, you will be compensated most handsomely for your troubles.”

He typed a few digits on a calculator and extended it to me across the table. This was probably one of their polite ways of talking about money. After I had a look, I thought he had made a mistake, but he assured me he was serious. This could cover tuition for my Master’s abroad—and for just a couple of months looking after a child! I no longer felt too keen on surrendering the opportunity. It was far more than a teacher in India could expect for a salary, let alone a fresh graduate like me.

We discussed some specifics, about how I was to teach Master Rosenthal by reading stories to him in English and instructing him on the alphabet, how I didn’t need to worry about cooking for him since they had a private chef who catered for the Manor, and that the Rosenthals would return by early December, no more than a couple of months from now.

“Welcome to the Rosenthal Manor,” The butler said once we were both satisfied with the terms. “Although I must warn you, there are some rules you must maintain during your stay.”

I was determined by now, but I was curious to ask, “What kind of rules?”

“Simple rules, but ones that you must follow as if your life depends on it,” The butler added, “You’ll find a list of them in your room.”

Resolved to not let this hold me back, I stood up and shook his hands. Although I wondered why he cared for the rules when the employers had no way of knowing if they were maintained so strictly, I thought it best not to be inquisitive. I turned a deaf ear to all my doubts. All that mattered was that I would get to tell my partner Bela, and everyone back home, that I got a job and that a few months from now, this would help me move abroad for my studies.

The butler led me up a wooden spiral of stairs and down a long corridor, in what I later learned was the northeastern wing, where the junior employees of the Manor had been housed over the centuries. I was meant to live in a small room at the end of the corridor with a wooden almirah and a twin-sized bed. Like the rest of the Manor, it was poorly lit but lacked the grandiose decoration of the rest of the house. I sighed a breath of relief knowing that at least here in this tiny corner, I might not feel so out of place.

On a small table next to the bed lay an envelope and a set of neatly folded clothes. A uniform. I didn’t know I’d be required to wear one, but I had heard nannies often had to put up with protocol. I slipped into the long black dress, then tied on the white apron that came with it. As I turned towards the mirror hanging on the wall, what stared back was a nanny who looked like she belonged in the Manor. Yes, I was going to become someone new here, someone away from the safe, familiar confines of my parents’ small apartment. I would become me, starting with a nanny who brings the joys of reading to a young child, and after I was done here, a foreign student, a teacher.

I clicked a picture and tried to send it to Bela. She’d be waiting to hear that I reached safely and was about to begin my new life. But that’s when I realized that my phone had no signal. A wave of loneliness washed over me. Miles away from home, here in this room that I must learn to call my own, I was stuck without the means to send in a message of arrival. Was this why nobody liked coming to Itapur?

Master Rosenthal, as the butler insisted we address the baby, lived in the room near the stairs at the other end of the corridor. The first time I saw him, he looked up from between the wooden bars of his cradle, with bright blue eyes and an expectant smile. Then, as his sight settled on me, he broke into tears.

I tried to calm him down. At first, I asked what was wrong, to which he only responded by crying even louder. I put down the picture books chosen for our first lesson and reluctantly picked him up, but that was no use either. What made it worse was that someone started banging on the front door. I tried to cushion the baby’s ears with my arms. After a few loud knocks, silence fell over the Manor, and then was broken by another series of knocks. And so, it kept on, while the baby cried increasingly loud no matter how much I tried to comfort him. Every time the knocking stopped, I hoped that it would end for good.

But the noise continued, so I put the baby back in his cradle and climbed downstairs. The moment I opened the door, a middle-aged woman moved forward to grab me by my shoulder. “Is this Rosenthal Manor?”

The woman looked desperate, with her bony hands shaking as they held me, and her feet bleeding in her torn slippers. I knew nothing about the Manor or its business, but I wanted to at least let her sit in the drawing room and ask her to wait while I alerted the other staff. Just as I was about to let her in, the butler dragged me away from the door.

“Please follow the highway for five miles and take a left,” he snapped at the woman, then shut the door in her face.

He turned to me, boiling with rage. I didn’t know what to say. “Why did you-”

“Did you not understand what I said during the interview?” He said, “You must follow the rules like your life depends on it.”

The rules must have been given to me with my uniform inside the envelope, I realized. I’d forgotten all about them in my excitement to start teaching. I wanted to know why he lied to that woman, what possible reason she could have for that desperate look in her eyes, but I couldn’t ask now. Not before looking at the rules that the butler so insisted upon. I apologized and rushed back to my room.

Inside the envelope was a single folded sheet of paper, and on top of the page, read the first line: “Rule no. 1. There must be no guests at Rosenthal Manor.”

That was it, no explanations about why, or how to act in front of any visitors, but a simple prohibition. The urgent, human touch of the woman at the door that I still couldn’t forget, all inscribed into a part of a routine with a single line.

Although I hadn’t exactly broken the rule, I wish I never opened the door. The knocking came back thrice the next few days, then gradually grew more infrequent over the week. I couldn’t look down at the door from the baby’s room, but I was curious about why the woman came back here so often. Looking for a spot from where I could get a view of the front porch, I sneaked into a room on the opposite wing. It was a bright room strewn with photographs of a cheerful white girl roughly my age, always beaming in long, flowy dresses, with her silky hair neatly braided and tied with a ribbon.

When I peeked out from the window, I was taken aback. Instead of the woman, today, it was an old man banging the door. The next day, I went back to the room again and found yet another new person. But the knocking, I realized, kept coming back in a constant rhythm. A loud knock with two quick ones topping over each other, a pause before two raps, and then another trailing after.

Even after I came to terms with the first rule, my job at the Manor didn’t get easier. The baby should have become used to seeing me around, but he refused to settle down, and my picture books lay untouched. Maybe because I couldn’t make sense of the second rule.

“Rule no. 2. The nanny must learn to conduct herself like Emily.”

When I asked the butler about who Emily might be, he looked at me like he wasn’t expecting the question. I always assumed that the butler was in charge of enforcing the rules, or at least that he must have seen them when he printed them out.

“We don’t share all of our rules at the Manor,” the butler explained after I told him about the rule. “Emily is the Rosenthals’ oldest: a refined young woman. She looked after Master Rosenthal until she moved back to England, and the poor child hasn’t been at ease with anyone else since.”

The girl from the pictures. I wondered if these strange rules were a part of some sick prank my employers were pulling on me to see how far I’d go to fund my studies abroad. What responsible parents, after all, could leave their baby all alone in a house in the care of a woman they never met? Maybe they were still here, waiting to see if they had hired a slave willing to follow whatever commands they uttered without care for personal boundaries. But whenever I thought of acting out in defiance, the frantic prayers and mourning eyes of the woman I met on the train held me back.

For the first time since I had to put on a school uniform in my teens, I tied my hair in a braid like in all of Emily’s photographs, then wore my dress without the apron the butler gave me. I didn’t like being told what to wear. But when Master Rosenthal saw my new look, he didn’t wail like before.

A friend once told me that young children don’t develop full eyesight early in life. They can’t see colors well, nor do they get a clear image of everything around them. To a child who sees the world in shapes, I probably looked like his dear sister, and that put him at ease. This was my first big step forward in my job. When I picked up a picture book to read to him, he listened in silence.

The other rules were more straightforward, although a lot more unnerving. “Rule no. 3. After putting the young Master to bed, the Nanny must retire to her room immediately and never shut her door over the night.”

Master Rosenthal dozed off while I was reading The Ugly Duckling, so it wasn’t difficult to put him to sleep. What made me restless was the clause about keeping my door open all night as I slept. Ever since I got a room to myself as a teenager, I had always slept with my door locked. I wasn’t ready to keep it all the way open the first day in a strange house, so I turned off the light and pushed the door all the way, only stopping an inch short of shutting it. The butler had warned me enough about following the rules, so I retired to bed with the door slightly ajar. The hallway was darker, with the moonlight that slid in through the window dying out by the time it crossed the length of the room.

I tossed and turned, waiting for sleep, but it isn’t so easy to get used to a new place to sleep after living in the same house your entire life. I read through the rest of the rules carefully and set the page aside, then lay on my bed in a stupor. My mind wandered over the warnings of the station master and the woman on the train. Others, like me, had come to Itapur before—and what could they have done if they too found rules so ridiculous handed down to them? If I lived on like they didn’t exist, would the butler reprimand me, get his employers to fire me, and appoint a new nanny in my place? This new person I promised myself I would become would die with nobody to mourn her, and all my dreams of going abroad would be shattered—but what else? A noisy part of my mind cried that there was more. What else could the Manor have in store for me? My thoughts settled on this question, but there were no answers….

“Nanny, are you up?” An unearthly, low voice startled me awake from my daze, sending a shiver down my spine.

I lay still in the darkness, careful not to make a sound. The door was wide open—I could have sworn I’d only left a small gap—but there was nobody in the corridor outside, or at least, nobody I could hear. If anyone stood an inch outside my room in the pitch-black corridor, my eyes wouldn’t be able to tell.

This was what I was the most uneasy about when I read the sheet of paper. “Rule no. 4. If the young Master cries during the night, the nanny must tend to his needs. She must ignore any other encounters until the break of dawn.”

Did someone enter my room? I felt a pit form in my stomach. I moved my head slightly to take a closer look. The cupboard remained shut. My books lay on the table, my backpack slung over the chair—just as I had left them. But the room felt colder, with the wind rushing in and out. That’s when I realized: I must have left the window open, and the ventilation must have pulled the door wide open, too.

But the voice—did some part of me succumb to the frantic warnings about Itapur and the Rosenthals and put together a voice from the blowing of the wind? I shut my eyes, hoping sleep would come over me. But I couldn’t settle my mind all night, as I kept listening in for the voice to return, or at least some kind of sound that might vaguely remind me of it. Anything that could convince me that I had heard wrong and that there was nothing to fear at Rosenthal Manor. But I waited, and waited, until the light from the window grew brighter and the darkness withdrew deeper into the corridor.

The clock read 5:53. Time for me to get back to work again. “Rule no. 5. The nanny must take Master Rosenthal out on a walk at 6 AM every morning but return by 6:30 without fail.”

With no time to think about what happened last night, I set out for the walk with the young Master in a stroller. After a sleepless night, every time he cried, a migraine hammered me down and took me further away from prim-and-proper Emily. And yet, once I walked with him out in the sun, I felt calmer. Within a single day, the cold, suffocating walls of the Manor had sucked the life out of me.

Outside, no crops grew, nor did any cattle graze on the empty lands surrounding the Manor. Farmlands were further on the horizon than a thirty-minute walk would take us, and no houses were in sight as far as I could see. There was only an unpaved country road that stretched on either side into open fields. And every morning, I picked the one that led towards the station to see how far I could go before seeing another soul. Before long, the clock neared 6:30, and I had to hurry back inside without meeting anyone.

Days rolled on to the next, and I wondered if I grew closer to fitting in as the nanny at Rosenthal Manor. The incessant knocking at the door appeared only once a day, around noon. I kept up my habit of peeking at them from the window in Emily’s room. Nobody returned two days in a row, but when they returned, they always wore the same clothes, like they were stuck in a single day, repeating itself over and over.

Another thing I perceived was that my every move was being watched. The butler wasn’t always around, but since I didn’t know where he was at all times, he could be anywhere, waiting for a slip-up. The walls of the Manor were always breathing on my neck. Every single portrait of the Rosenthal family strewn across the corridors and halls was painted in the same regal fashion. In front of those placid eyes, I felt judged at every step—whenever I ate hastily at the dinner table or moved around in a dirty dress.

I found myself constantly asking, “How would Emily act in this position?”

The second rule left much for me to extrapolate from her pictures and what the butler said about her. Elegant, even when she laughed. Not a hair out of place, or a single spot on her dress. If I were to truly conduct myself like her and act in a way befitting of the Manor, I made note of the additional measures I must take.

One such measure I took was to pay attention to table manners. All my life, eating had been a space for bonding. But the butler was not the liveliest of people to sit across the table with. He had little to say and never asked me about my life either—maybe he didn’t want me to feel uncomfortable with questions. Every time he ate, his hands carried a knife and fork like he was sewing an intricate pattern on silk, and raised food to his mouth in small bites. He never said a word to me about my eating manners, but I couldn’t help but feel like a brute. I learned to chew softer, not take an extra bite before swallowing the mouthful, nor open my mouth in between.

Another addendum I figured out for the second rule was to keep my dress clean. The Manor was not decorated with the most luxurious furniture of the day. Much of it had aged and withered, and its ‌sparse decoration spoke of goods being discarded or sold away over the years. Whatever remained, the butler kept spotless. He too never had a speck of dust on his suit. And here, my dress kept getting soiled whenever Master Rosenthal had an accident. I thought I’d wash up in the evening, but the dirtier my dress got, the less Master Rosenthal listened, and the more tantrums he threw. After all, Emily could never go about her day without a clean dress.

By the end of my second week at the Manor, I began getting the hang of my job as a nanny. But I was consumed by loneliness every night as I retired to bed in the silence of the Manor. I yearned to speak with Bela and tell her about my new life here, but my phone had never picked up a signal. I couldn’t fall into a deep sleep with my door open just yet. My mind hovered partially awake, cautious of my surroundings.

That was when Master Rosenthal broke out in a scream, loud enough to wake me up four rooms away. Without thinking, I rushed out of bed to go find him. But the moment I stepped into the corridor, my limbs tensed up in terror and made it impossible to rush through the dark. A beam of light spilled out of the young Master’s room, and he wailed so loud I was afraid it would puncture his small throat. What could possibly make him cry like that in the middle of the night?

Just as I was about to enter his room, a voice called from what must be around the stairs. “Nanny, are you up?”

It sounded like the butler, but the texture of his words was obscured in a low rumble. Adrenaline rose through my body, begging me to run, but rule no. 4 held me hostage in motion towards Master Rosenthal. If I were to respond, run, or even freeze in place out of shock, it would violate the rule. With feet heavy with fear, I entered the room.

Master Rosenthal didn’t respond to me as I picked him up, hugged him against my chest, and started rocking him in my arms. I wanted to calm him down with a song and put him to sleep, but as I heard footsteps follow me into the room, my throat was jammed into silence.

His screams stopped immediately. As I took Master Rosenthal away from my shoulder, I saw his face turn pale. His eyes did not blink, and his breath was quick. He had seen who walked into the room behind me.

“Well done, Nanny,” said the voice, and then the footsteps started moving away.

I fell to the floor, clutching the young Master close to me until I couldn’t hear the footsteps anymore. Once I gathered myself, I put him to bed and turned to leave. Master Rosenthal lay watching, wide awake, but in dead silence. What could he have possibly seen that rattled him so? As I walked back to my room, I kept my eyes fixed on the floor.

The first rays of dawn were painful to look at after sleepless nights, but every daybreak also came with the comfort of knowing I made it through without another encounter with whoever Master Rosenthal saw that night. When I asked the butler if it was him who called out to me last night, he looked at me gravely, like he did back when I had nearly broken the first rule.

“It is best not to discuss what happens after bedtime at the Manor out loud,” he said. “For the sake of our own wellbeing.”

The next morning, Master Rosenthal was just as quiet, although he looked like he slept better than me, after the encounter. Instead of putting him into his stroller, I set off on the walk carrying him in my arms. I took the road leading away from the station, hoping to show him a different view than usual and bring some color back to his face. Whenever we came across a turn in the road, he closed his eyes tightly. I stopped in place and caressed his tiny head, telling him that it was okay until he opened his eyes and looked around.

Strolling along the road, we stumbled upon a telephone booth. That was strange, I thought. Who could possibly use a telephone out here, in the middle of nowhere? It must have been put up with hopes that the Itapur village would expand deeper into these plains at some point. But life never seemed to cross the threshold of the Manor and its dark spire. Wondering if the line worked, I picked up the dusty receiver. Against my expectations, the speaker buzzed. I broke into a wide smile, and Master Rosenthal chuckled, stretching out towards the receiver. With this, I could talk to Bela! I didn’t have my purse on me to pay for the call, and neither did I have the time to fetch it now, but I resolved to return to the booth the next morning.

I started preparing for my walk well before six, come next day, scouring my bag for coins of all sizes because I couldn’t tell which one would fit. Right when the clock hit six, I took Master Rosenthal and rushed back to the telephone booth. I picked up the receiver and tried to jam the coins inside. Finally, the old one-rupee slid into the hole and the line sparked into life. I dialed Bela’s number and waited for her to pick up.

As it kept ringing, I cursed under my breath. She’d never pick up an unknown number. After a dozen rings, the buzz fell silent.

I couldn’t tell if the line was dead. “H-hello?”

“Lohori, is that you? Are you okay?” Bela’s voice flooded me with warmth.

I was okay, I wanted to tell her, despite everything, and that I was sorry, for not finding a way to call her sooner. So much had happened since I came here, and I wanted to tell her all about the people who knocked on the door asking for the Manor every day, about the baby I held in my arms, about the sleepless nights….

My voice broke as I tried to gather my words. “Bela, it’s me-”

“I’ve been trying to reach your phone all this time,” she said with a gasp. “Are you okay?”

“Yes, for now.”

“For now? Is there something wrong over there? I can come meet you if you send me the address.”

“No, no,” I blurted. “It’s just that I work all day, and I don’t sleep well. I don’t know, it’s made me neurotic… You know, I’ve been hearing things.”

After a brief pause, Bela said, “I’m sorry you’ve had to go through this all alone, Lohori. I wish I could help somehow.”

I smiled. “Well, talking to you, helps.”

Then I told her about the odd people I met along the way, and how that must have set me on edge. But as I kept talking, Master Rosenthal started getting restless in my arms, and just as I was about to start telling Bela about my rules, he started crying. That’s when I realized the sun was a lot higher in the sky than I remembered.

“Shit, the time! Bela, I’ll call you later,” I said, as I hung up and rushed back towards the Manor.

I didn’t dare stop to look at my watch until I entered its gates. Then, as I read 6:29 on my watch, I breathed a sigh of relief.

Every day, I went back to the phone booth with a new coin and told Bela about my new life. She was worried about my health and even offered to take me back home, but I wouldn’t get any days off until the Rosenthals returned. The baby wasn’t happy about standing around at the same spot every day, so he let me know by bursting into tantrums every few minutes.

The next day, I took a break from the telephone calls and took the baby on a walk on a different side of the road. I sang his favorite tunes, hoping that he would settle down after I brought all my attention back to him. But now, he turned away whenever I lifted him up and started crying like he did in the beginning. His face was flushed. The last few days, while I was occupied at the telephone, summer had ushered in a dry, scorching hot wind. Rule no. 5 said that I must return by 6:30, but I’d assumed we must stay out that long—maybe only because it suited me. But for a baby that young, this could be fatal.

Once I got back to the Manor, I put the baby on the sofa in the living room and shouted for the butler, not bothering to shut the door behind me. “We need to get to the hospital!”

When nobody answered my call, I rushed in to get some water for the baby, bolting up the twisted stairs and into the bathroom next to Emily’s room on the other side of the house. I felt like screaming. Why wasn’t the butler here, now that I needed him? His obsession with these stupid rules had made me forget common sense. I brought back a mug of water and sponged it over the baby, then thrust his feeding bottle into his mouth. He was conscious, but his screams got worse whenever I got close to him.

“Did someone call for a doctor?” said a man holding a briefcase, standing at the front door.

“Yes,” I shouted, “The baby’s in danger!”

The man walked in and set his briefcase on the table. He kneeled by the sofa next to me and pressed the back of his hand against the baby’s forehead. Then, pulled out a thermometer and put it into his mouth.

“Just what is going on here?” The butler demanded.

I got up to face him. “I thought you called him here.”

He walked over to the sofa and whispered in the ears of the doctor. Then, he picked up the crying child and handed him to me.

“You have broken a rule. The price shall be paid. Go back to your room.”

Something about his words made me feel like they came from beyond him. I wanted to know what he said to the doctor, but the man had frozen into a stupor on his knees. His pale face reminded me of the way Master Rosenthal looked that night, when he saw the person who entered his room.

When I set Master Rosenthal down on his cradle, he stopped crying slowly. But whenever I sat next to him and started reading, or picked him up to change his clothes, he burst into tears. That’s when it hit me. He couldn’t recognize me anymore. Rule no. 1 was not the only one I broke. In all my frantic attempts to get on the telephone, and all the running and screaming, I had strayed further and further away from his image of Emily.

The rest of the day, I fell back into inaction and kept my distance from the young Master, because the closer I got to him, the worse he behaved. I withdrew into my room and stared at myself in the mirror as events from the last few days washed in front of me. When the butler called me down for dinner, I told him I didn’t have an appetite and he left without a word.

When the clock nearly hit 8 PM, I got up to put Master Rosenthal to bed, but he was already asleep, probably exhausted from all the ruckus this morning. I turned off the lights in his room and went to bed and drifted into sleep.

“Did someone call for a doctor?” a raspy voice called, waking me up.

I was about to sit up with a bolt but immediately stopped myself. It was rule no. 4 again.

“You care for the rules now, nanny?” Inches away from my ear, a voice that sounded like the doctor’s hissed. “Don’t you want to see how I bore the price of your mistakes?”

My heart thumped against my chest. I wanted to know what happened, but if I looked up, or so much as let out a single gasp, I knew I wouldn’t get away unpunished this time. With my eyes squeezed shut, I lay on my bed silently for what felt like hours. Every time I was about the doze off, I was awoken by that terrible sound.

“Did someone call for a doctor?” A scratchy voice called, sometimes from right next to my bed and at other times from echoed outside the room or further away as though the Manor was mocking me.

This went on until I felt sunlight hit my face and opened my eyes slowly to find my room empty. And so, sleep became a stranger to my nights at the Manor once again and the mornings grew excruciating. Going to the telephone booth had disrupted the flow I built before, and with my stack of coins running low, I stopped going. Just a couple of months, I told myself, and then I could see Bela again.

Although I got out at 6 AM every day, I didn’t spend much time out in the sun. I had failed in my attempts to appear like his older sister to Master Rosenthal. In all of her pictures, Emily shone bright, bringing beauty to the world around her. And here, as I looked into the mirror, I saw a face darkened as though with age. I started by using a bar of soap to scrub the dirt off my skin every morning before going out for a walk. Soon, I realized that that wasn’t enough. After returning from the walk in the morning, I turned to the soap bar once again—after all; I needed to wash away all the muck from the road. Then it dawned upon me to do it before bed too. And how could I miss it over the afternoon, when my face tended to turn back into an oily dirt sack?

Weeks in, I realized that I was not going to look like Emily anytime soon with these efforts alone. Soap wouldn’t turn my face any whiter, and the black dress I got from the butler looked nothing like the ones I had seen Emily wear.

I had entered Emily’s room many times before. I had looked out from her windows and stared at her old photographs day after day, trying to figure out my place in this strange house. But this time was different. I entered her room after I was sure the butler was out dusting the main hall downstairs, but my skin crawled with a hundred eyes fixed upon me, from every corner of the Manor, out of each portrait hanging on the walls. This time, I knew before I entered that I was there to steal.

But the rules had brought me here, held me hostage against my will. I shut the door behind me and changed into a summer dress from Emily’s wardrobe with balloon sleeves. Her clothes fit me like they were my own. Or maybe they were. I was, after all, meant to become Emily.

Master Rosenthal’s face lit up when he saw me enter his room and grabbed onto my finger with his warm, tiny hands.

I picked him up in my arms and hugged me tight against my chest. “Sorry for taking so long.”

I was going to become Emily, if that’s what he was looking for. Every hour, I ran to the washing room to rub stains off of my dress. I put bleach all over my body and scrubbed my skin whiter every day with a shoe brush. After that, I went to Emily’s room on the other side of the Manor and caked powders onto my cracked skin.

The rules were here to protect me. I had been foolish to doubt them, thinking they were cruel to not let in the people banging on the Manor door. The outsiders didn’t capture my heart like they did in the beginning. They looked just as desperate and pitiable, only less human than I once thought. No matter how long we ignored them, they would keep coming back, in the same filthy rags, banging the door in the same pattern.

After I regained my foothold in the Manor, Master Rosenthal erupted with glee every time I picked him up. He listened to me intently when I read to him. Sometimes, he would try to mouth words after me and laugh when he sounded close to it. Every time I got up to leave, his small hands wrapped around my finger. I wondered if he would ever learn to speak my name, even call me nanny. All his bright blue eyes saw was that his old sister had come back home to see him, and that was all that he cared for.

Strangely, the butler did not share this happiness. “You must stop, for your own sake.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know well what I mean,” He said, then added in a hoarse whisper. “They see what you are doing in Emily’s room. They see everything.”

I couldn’t stop a smile from beaming across my face. Yes! I wanted to scream. And so what if they did? I had become as white, as graceful as Emily. The Rosenthals watched everything that moved inside their Manor through their dead eyes, painted in oil or carved in marble busts. They looked at me as I became their girl, how I mastered their rules. Tirelessly, they watched, always inches away from my skin. And I delivered a treat!

What would the butler do to stop me, anyway? I had slaved after the Rosenthals’ child and their rules for months and stayed up countless nights, running to put Master Rosenthal to sleep in the pitch darkness, but now it was nearly time for me to be free.

Free? Yes, free from the Manor at last. I lay in bed, restless, waiting for the clock to strike twelve, and for dawn to come. Tomorrow was the first day of December when the Rosenthals would return.

The clock did strike twelve, and the dawn came. But come morning, nobody arrived at the Manor. By the time it was the afternoon, I figured they didn’t mean the first day of the month.

But when there was no news by the end of the week, I brought it up with the butler.

“Oh,” he said, surprised. “My apologies for not informing you sooner. Mr. Rosenthal sent me a letter earlier saying that they are tied up with work, but they’ll be back soon.”

“When?”

The butler thought for a moment, then said, “End of January.”

Nights grew harder, with eerie whispers murmuring at my ears, inviting me to sleep in Emily’s room instead as I settled into an uneasy slumber. Every other day, red patches appeared in different parts of my skin and erupted with puss. As the days rolled by, my body got used to the discomfort and kept moving, slipping in and out of consciousness during the day whenever I got the chance to sit down. A fog loomed over my head just as it did over the Manor and kept me moving through the hours in a mindless whirr.

I waited and worked for two more months without a sign of the Rosenthals. Only when I prompted the butler, he told me that they would be held up longer. My stay at the Rosenthal Manor was nearing the end of half a year, and it was biting into my body deeper every day. I could no longer step out into the sun for too long without my skin burning into a red pulp. Master Rosenthal had grown heavier than my arms could bear. But he was fond of me, and it was difficult to leave him in the middle of the day.

So, the day I prepared to set off from the Manor for good, I put him to bed at 8 PM and waited for the butler to turn off all the lights and retire to his room. I tiptoed down the spiral steps, careful not to trip in the dark. The butler’s room was in the wing right next to the main gate, so he would hear any noise of struggle if he were awake. I moved the door handle inch by inch, trying to avoid any sudden clangs.

Right then, as I heard the sound of footsteps coming from inside the butler’s room, I pressed down on the handle decisively and swung the door open. Then, I sprinted through the road that took me here from the station. I could feel the skin peel off my ankle and blood trickle down to my feet. After a few minutes of running, my calves screamed and my knees were about to give in any moment, but I didn’t stop. I kept running, from the suffocating walls of the Manor and the person I had become inside them.

In the distance, ahead of me, I could see the silhouette of a building. I didn’t know if I could even find a train right now at the station, but if I at least found the station master, he might keep me safe in the night. I kept running all the way just until I was about to reach.

But once closer, my steps faltered, and I slowed down. The station building couldn’t have been that tall. A few minutes later, my walk stopped me at the open gates that I couldn’t mistake for another so up close. By some twist in the road, I was back at the Manor. But how? I never turned back or took a road that should have led me here. All the way from the front porch, I could hear Master Rosenthal’s screams. Maybe he needed me one last time, and I could be free after comforting him. I stepped back in and climbed up the stairs I had promised myself to never set foot on and made my way to the room.

Footsteps followed me into the room as I picked up Master Rosenthal with all my remaining strength. He didn’t stop crying, so I started rocking him in my arms.

Bela’s voice called from behind, “I’ve finally found you! Are you okay?”

Hearing her voice after so many months, my knees gave in. Before I could gather my thoughts, I turned around, hoping she would pull me into a tight embrace and take me away from the Manor. But the room was empty, and the door swung shut.

The baby started shaking in my arms and wheezed for air. His gasps grew sharper until he squealed to a stop.

“The price has been paid,” said a low rasp.

The baby stopped breathing. As I set him down in his cradle, his lifeless eyes stared in fear like they always did at whatever entered behind me. His mouth, which always burst into a smile when he looked at me and saw his sister, lay open in his last gasp for air. I slapped his back, pushed down on his chest, and checked for his breath. But he was gone. I had failed him, and he bore the burden of my mistake. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I put him back in the cradle. The one for whom I had left home and for whose sake I made myself hostage to the will of the Rosenthals. The Manor took even the last remaining semblance of human connection I had made since coming here.

Wrestling the door open, I bolted my way down the stairs. I ran for the exit and clanged the door open. But instead of leading me outside, it took me to a dusty room. I turned back around and squinted in the dark. I must have taken a wrong turn in my haste. Hurtling out of the room, I ended up moving deeper into some corridor. Then, I started back the way I came from, but bumped into a door I hadn’t noticed at first. Just as I was about to open it, I heard cries that sounded like Master Rosenthal from inside. I jolted back and rushed down the end of the corridor that should curve right to step into the main hall, but there I was faced with another door with the same cries.

I scrambled for the front door for hours. Sometimes, I got to enter the main hall, but once I reached the door, it led me back to another passage. The baby always cried from inside some of the rooms, but I kept away from those. Slowly, I realized that there was no other way but through. My hands trembled as I swung the door open and stepped right back into Master Rosenthal’s room.

This night would never end. I had known for a while now, but it took me long to come to terms with it. Every step that fell on this marble floor, every voice whispered in these chambers, did so in the name of rules that no soul could disobey for centuries. And I was never going to find my way out. After all, there must be no guests at Rosenthal Manor.

I collapsed in front of the baby, whose face lit up like he met his lost sister.

As his icy hands clasped my finger, the words stumbled out of my lips, “You’re already dead.”

“Nanny?”