The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames

by Justine Cowan

  Hurray! Hurray!

  Miss Woodward died today!

  Hurray! Hurray!

  Miss Woodward died today!

  The din grew louder as they circled the field in a scene reminiscent of The Wizard of Oz, a movie my mother and I watched together countless times—the Munchkins celebrating the miraculous demise of the Wicked Witch of the East. I imagined my Dorothy there, small but defiant, her arms swinging in unison with her classmates’ as they marched through an empty field, overwrought with joy that Miss Woodward was undeniably and reliably dead.

  It was one of the best days of Dorothy’s life.

  Hardly able to contain her delight, she left the other girls and ran into the building.

  I remember racing up the staircase to my dormitory, though it was out of bounds during the day. I felt compelled to kneel at my bed and to thank God for taking Miss Woodward away. In cold dark nights I have several times knelt there asking Him to help me stop misbehaving and to stop Miss Woodward from punishing me. I could never have imagined that He would take her away forever, and I was not in the least sure that He had done so just for me, but I was glad that He had.

  In the days that followed Miss Woodward’s death, Dorothy felt a sense of freedom and relief, knowing she could walk along the corridors without fear of encountering Miss Woodward again. Her shrill voice in the gymnasium would become just a memory, and most important, Dorothy would never again be subjected to her brutality.

  14

  Escape

  When I opened my eyes, I could see the moonlight streaming in through the window near my bed. The pale light should have soothed me, but my heart was beating fast and hard, and my forehead felt unusually warm. Something bad was about to happen, but I didn’t know what it was. Then I remembered. Soon I would be sent off to boarding school, as my sister had been a few years before. I should have welcomed the chance to leave—the arguments between my mother and me had intensified. But I was consumed with fear at the thought of leaving home, and I stumbled across the hallway into my mother’s bedroom. My parents had slept in separate rooms for as long as I could remember—my mother cited my father’s snoring as the cause. For a moment I stood quietly next to the bed. Sensing my presence, my mother opened her eyes.

  “I don’t want to go,” I said simply. The look on her face gave me the answer I didn’t want to hear.

  I went to my father the next day, hoping he would help. I should have known it was a fool’s errand, but it would be years before I understood the essential part my father played in perpetuating our family’s dysfunction.

  There was a pecking order in our house, and my mother was always top hen. Nothing about that seemed unusual. When the two of us argued, or when my mother became agitated for any reason at all, my father would turn to me and say, “Let’s be nice to your mother.” It didn’t matter who was right, or what had precipitated the argument. Deescalating the situation was the priority, and back then I accepted my father’s role as peacemaker without question.

  I adored my father, and while I kept my mother at arm’s length, I always longed for more time with him. Once I had my own home, I often invited him to visit, stocking the fridge with his favorite foods, the ones he wasn’t allowed to eat at home—pimento cheese and white bread with potato salad on the side. We would take the dogs for long walks and go out to dinner with my friends. In the evenings, we sat on the back porch watching the fireflies as I told him about the cases I was working on.

  My mother put an end to the visits. I don’t know what she said, but one day my father told me that he could no longer visit unless she came along. At first, my anger was directed in only one direction.

  She ruins everything, I thought.

  That perception began to evolve when even speaking to my father on the phone became a challenge. I would call home, crossing my fingers that he would answer, so I could talk to him without my mother on the line or in the background.

  “I just want to talk to you,” I would plead. “Don’t put Mom on the phone.”

  Again and again I would beg, but it was as if the words had never even come out of my mouth. Can’t we talk for just a few minutes? Then she can get on the phone. Without missing a beat, he would call out, “Mom, your daughter wants to talk to you! Get on the phone!”

  If my mother answered before he did, I would simply hang up.

  I pleaded with my father to stand up to her, for the sake of our relationship. In response, he came up with a sordid solution and set up a secret voice mail.

  “Just leave me a message that you want to talk,” he would instruct me. “I’ll drive to the library and call you from there.”

  I called once but hung up, too ashamed that my father had asked me to do something so dishonest. I had trouble reconciling the father who wouldn’t take a quarter from the phone company with the man who had asked me to lie to my mother.

  For a while I just lived with the inconsistency, ignored it, but doubts tickled the back of my mind. He was a prominent attorney who represented powerful corporations. It was his job to stand firm. What would have happened if he simply spoke to me for a few minutes before turning the phone over to my mother? And why couldn’t he simply say to his wife, “I am going to visit my daughter”?

  The questions about my father’s role in our family dynamics lurked in the back of my mind, their intensity growing, until the dam broke, and my anger came rushing out.

  It happened in a crowded bookstore. I was living in Atlanta, and my parents were in town for a visit. They were staying at a nearby hotel, and my father and I had found some time alone under the guise of getting him a book for the plane ride home.

  “Why do you always take her side?”

  My voice was filled with anger, and too loud for a bookstore. I was distinctly aware of the looks from other customers, but I couldn’t stop the feelings that had been stored deep inside from spilling out. I counted off each time he had taken her side, each time he had neglected our bond, and then broke down sobbing in the middle of the store, repeating over and over again:

  Why didn’t you protect me?

  Why didn’t you protect me?

  My father grew quiet, and then he whispered, almost inaudibly: “Because I had it worse.”

  I have no way of knowing if my father was right on this score. Perhaps I should have felt more sympathy for his pain, but as his words sank in, I only felt anger rising in the back of my throat until it erupted in a scream.

  “You could have left. But what about me? I was only a child!”

  Growing up, I sensed that my parents’ marriage was troubled, but the specifics of their interactions remain slightly out of focus, in the way that all childhood memories do. Raised voices would have only reached me as muddled vibrations through bedroom walls in any case, as I spent most of my time in my room, playing with my toys or reading books.

  Many years later, I learned that my father had once tried to leave, going so far as to pack up the car and load my sister and me into the back seat. I was a toddler at the time, and don’t remember what led my typically restrained father to take such a bold action. My mother must have done something terrible, but I only know what I’ve been told: that my father sat for a long time in the loaded car in the driveway before making a choice for his daughters. A broken mother was better than no mother at all.

  As for his happiness . . .

  In the vision of him I perpetually conjure up, my father is sitting alone in the living room, a newspaper folded neatly on a small table next to him. The room is quiet, and his shoulders are slightly hunched, his hands on his lap as he stares across the room at nothing in particular. Perhaps he was only resting, but I interpreted the silent hours spent in his well-worn leather chair as a symptom of a deep sorrow born of a joyless marriage. This is conjecture on my part, of course. By the time I was old enough to comprehend adult dynamics, I had moved thousands of miles away and had little insight into my parents’ daily lives. I do know that when my mother was initially
placed in a facility for the memory-impaired, she was housed in a small apartment that allowed my father to live with her. It wasn’t long before a nurse found my mother hitting my father, and he was forced to move out. I will never know if it was the first time my mother had struck him, or simply the first time there had been a witness.

  Sorting through some old files, years after my father’s death, I found a handwritten letter he sent me in response to a long-lost letter of mine, its contents now forgotten. His note was uncharacteristically forthright on the subject of my mother, and painful to read:

  I was very pleased to get your letter today. I read it several times and have it firmly in my mind. Then I shredded it so that it would not get into the wrong hands.

  I am at the library so I can write uninterrupted.

  I am very sorry about the family situation. I love you very much and will always be there for you. But I need to explain something. I am 81 years old and want to live out the remainder of my life with as much harmony (at least less disharmony) as possible. I cannot turn my back on Mom.

  He went on, pleading with me to make peace with my mother. I had been the lucky one, he claimed, not having endured the full force of her wrath.

  “I am going to tell you again,” he continued, “I love you and will always be there for you.”

  He would always be there for me. I felt such hope reading those words. I yearned for us to be close, cherishing each stolen moment we were able to spend together away from my mother’s influence. His letter let me know that it was not to be:

  I wanted to come see you. But if I had told Mom that, she would have wanted to come also. So it was my consideration of you that caused me not to come.

  His words stung, a firm reminder of the price that I paid for keeping my mother at a distance.

  Looking back at our intractable family dynamic, petitioning my father not to send me away to boarding school was a peculiar stance for me to take. In a few years’ time, I would be willing to go anywhere and do anything to be far away from my mother.

  But seen from an adult perspective, the oddest thing about my request was the misguided hope that my father might actually help me. To do that, he would have had to do something he had never done—stand up to my mother on my behalf.

  A few days later I was peering through the back window of a car as my father drove off, my mother standing at the end of our driveway, waving, tears streaming down her face.

  I never questioned why he’d made me leave home against my wishes, not until years later, when I asked him point-blank why I had been sent away. His response was simple: “To get you away from your mother.”

  IN 1944, WHEN Dorothy was twelve, it was understood that in two years’ time, she too would be sent away—leaving the Foundling Hospital in order to receive training in the domestic arts. Along with the other girls her age, she would be sent to Roselawn, part of the Foundling Hospital’s Domestic Economy School. There, she would receive rigorous training in “modern housewifery,” learning to cook and clean. Though she would no longer be within the walls of the Foundling Hospital, she would continue to be isolated, forbidden to leave the premises except to attend church or run an errand. When her training was complete, she would be placed into a household as a maid or a cook.

  For two centuries girls like Dorothy had been apprenticed as domestic servants while boys were sent away for a life at sea or became laborers. There were occasional exceptions—a few girls might be trained as milliners, and boys, who generally had more options, might be apprenticed as cheesemongers, butchers, or blacksmiths. The conditions of the apprenticeships were negotiated by the Foundling Hospital, the terms similar to indentured servitude; the masters agreed to provide training, food, shelter, and clothing in exchange for cheap labor. Foundlings could be apprenticed only to Protestants and could not be transferred to another master without the hospital’s permission. And girls could not be apprenticed to unmarried men—nor to married men, unless their wives had seen the girl and expressed concurrence in the application. The age of apprenticeship varied over the years, sometimes dipping below ten but generally hovering around eleven or twelve, and ending between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-four.

  Over the lifetime of the apprenticeship project, the hospital was continually under pressure to make its charges as productive as possible. In the 1760s, Parliament threatened to withhold all financial support. The need for a pool of able-bodied servants hadn’t diminished, but the stigma against the poor, who were still thought of as lazy, immoral, and undeserving of public support, endured. The hospital continued to receive funding, in part due to the king’s intervention, but over the following decade, various resolutions condemning the institution were passed on the grounds that the foundlings were unfit for useful labor. One resolution, which sought to reduce the costs of caring for the children, recommended that they be apprenticed by age seven or before, bringing swift opposition from the governors of the Foundling Hospital. A child apprenticed at such a young age would not be desirable, they countered, boys under the age of ten being unfit for service at sea, and girls likewise not yet able to perform tasks required by domestic service.

  Once apprenticed, a foundling’s fate would be forever set as a soldier or dressmaker, seafarer or chambermaid. Running away was risky. Many who tried were caught and returned to their masters, but not before they were punished. Those who eluded capture would encounter few prospects for earning a living without a legitimate apprenticeship. Most foundling apprentices would remain at the mercy of masters who were free to mete out physical punishment, provided it was used in moderation and left no lasting marks. There were few deterrents for a master who failed to abide by these loose standards, with historical accounts revealing ample claims of overwork, beatings, and sexual assault, and very few prosecutions. A wood screw manufacturer attempted to “debauch” a girl of eleven and had “debauch’d several other Apprentices,” but no legal action was taken.59 A prominent attorney forced a young girl’s head between his knees while simultaneously beating her, a fact that was discovered only after she escaped to the Foundling Hospital, her body still “of livid colour, tho’ 6 days had lapsed” since the incident.60 The revelation did little to hinder the attorney’s legal career, perhaps because it was not uncommon for girls to be sexually assaulted. The proof lay in the Foundling Hospital’s own records, which contained pleas from young former charges begging to have infants born during these apprenticeships admitted to the Foundling Hospital. Even murder failed to move the dial for an abusive master. In 1771 a weaver named William Butterworth kicked his apprentice “on the Belly with his foot and broke her Belly that she could neither hold her stool or Urine,” and then in the morning, “stood over her & made her eat it.”61 She eventually died as a result of her injuries. While Butterworth was charged and convicted with her murder, the judge reprieved him.

  Despite the risks, and with pressure mounting to make useful citizens of foundlings more quickly, the governors allowed some to be apprenticed to the factories that had started to pop up across England. The placements would occur en masse, but historical records indicate that the governors did take their duty to protect foundlings from unscrupulous masters seriously, dispatching inspectors to check on the conditions. When the hospital apprenticed twenty-four girls to an embroiderer in Essex, Governor Hanway inspected the premises himself and found the children in good health and clean. But not all masters could be scrutinized, particularly those located far from London. The results could be catastrophic, as when charges of rape and beatings followed the apprenticeship of twenty-one girls to a screw maker in Stafford. Or worse, the case in 1765, when seventy-four children were apprenticed to a clothier in Yorkshire, and a year later twenty-two were dead.

  By the time Dorothy arrived at the Foundling Hospital, young girls were no longer being sent off to factories to toil away under brutal masters. But Dorothy could still expect a hard life in domestic service. The thought of scrubbing floors and polishing silver for
a wealthy family filled her with dread. As far as she knew, the life she’d glimpsed that night with the American GIs was beyond her grasp. She was trapped, her every movement monitored, with no chance for escape. A fence surrounded the school, and the exit was always guarded. Runaway foundlings existed in stories from the past—but usually they were apprentices who escaped once they’d left the institution, slipping off when a master had his back turned. Most were quickly found and returned, as the administrators knew to look first to the child’s foster family after receiving a report of a runaway. Some would try again, but unless there were proven instances of abuse, the foundling would simply be returned to his or her master once again.

  Dorothy had never considered running away. The chances of success were too slim; it had never been done. But on April 16, 1944, Miss Wright did something out of the ordinary. It was an insignificant decision, one whose consequences would change the course of Dorothy’s life.

  Once again, Dorothy had done something to displease Miss Wright. But Sunday services were about to begin, and Miss Wright had little time. Instead of securing Dorothy in the usual place, a closet or the storeroom near her office, she locked her in an upstairs washroom—a room with windows.

  As Dorothy heard the key turn in the lock and listened to Miss Wright’s footsteps fade down the corridor, she realized that she was alone, the building empty, with everyone across the courtyard in the chapel. It felt strange to be alone, but at least she wasn’t in a windowless storeroom. Nor were German planes whirring overhead, as they had been the night she had spent in the infirmary. Dorothy stood with her back to the door, surveying the room, one wall lined with a row of white porcelain washbasins, two walls each containing a single sash window. She peered out the first window; she was on the second floor, and below the window was a sheer drop. The second window was more promising, looking out over a wide, flat roof. Dorothy inserted her small fingers between the sill and the window casing and yanked with all her strength. To her surprise, the window moved, opening an inch or two. With a bit more pushing, she was able to edge up the bottom half of the sash just enough to wiggle her small body through the gap.