* * *
Jemima stands in the darkened hallway, barring the door to my bedroom. Her hard voice hisses into my ears. “I saw how your face dropped soon as I said baby. Not all pigeon-eyed like Fanny about her man. You didn’t love him, did you?”
Jemima slides so near, her hot breath blows against my neck.
“Did he force you? Bet that’s it. If I was you, I’d get revenge instead of sitting around this shithole reading books.” Then she sneers. “Track him down. Chiv him good. Deep in the belly!”
Shivers prickle my neck. A stabbing! If ever a man deserved that, it’d be him. In that moment, Luther’s face appears like vapor. He can no longer find me but I know exactly where he is: the very lane; the very house; the very tavern. I could find him at any time.
I should shout for the matron. But no one must know what Jemima just said. I back away, holding on to the wall, to stop my hands from slamming her flat.
* * *
On the sunny windowsill of our bedroom, a glass of water is set. Inside floats something pale and wormy.
“Ugh, what is that?” Leah whispers.
Sesina tosses her curls. “Take a guess.”
Leah and I stare at the worm waving in the sunlight.
Suddenly Leah covers her mouth. “It’s not…It can’t be!”
Sesina throws her head back and laughs.
A blush colors Leah’s cheeks. “Well, I never!”
“Never what? Saw one before? Or used one?” Sesina pipes up. “If you use them, you’re safe. If you don’t, watch out!”
“What is it?” I ask finally.
“Sheep gut.” Sesina smirks. “Has to be soaked before you use it. I’m getting it ready right now, in case there’s a chance.”
“For you and Reuben?” Leah gasps.
Sesina puts her finger over her mouth. “Better not tell! Or I’ll tell plenty about the likes of you two if you squeal.”
“But—however did you get it?” I blurt out.
A little cat grin spreads over Sesina’s face. “I have my ways. You can use it over and over. As long as it don’t rip. I’ll have to teach Reuben not to buck so hard. If I can!”
* * *
On the first reading of Oliver Twist, the girls were mute. Only if I dared pause did they protest. But now that they have taken Oliver’s side, they won’t be quiet. They constantly interrupt the reading.
“Blasted! Now a baby farm’s got him!” Hannah shouts in the middle of a paragraph, halting me.
“What’s he kept there for?” Leah wonders.
“Just you wait,” Fanny mutters. “Worse is coming.”
And so it is. It’s hard to read how the starving Oliver fares in the workhouse at nine years old. The night’s reading ends with Oliver begging for more food.
“Oh, why did he have to do that!” screams Jemima.
Alice frowns. “What will happen to the boy now?”
“They’ll get rid of him.” Fanny looks up from her knitting. “Mark my words.”
The assistant matron clears her throat. “Girls, if the novel upsets you so, perhaps Orpha should not go on.”
“Don’t you dare stop reading!” Sesina stamps her foot. “We all love Oliver. And we can’t help it if he seems real.”
“Oliver’s one of us!” cries Hannah.
Miss Jane turns away, biting her lips. Her eyes catch mine and then I have to hide my own smile. After the reading, while the girls head upstairs, she beckons me to stay.
“Oliver is like many of us. I know what it’s like to live with part of you amiss.”
Her words ring in the empty room. I become very still. It’s not my place to ever ask about her life.
She continues. “I was set apart by my limp. Unlike other young girls, I was not considered marriageable.”
“But…you are so accomplished. Indeed, you are pretty too.”
“I took every opportunity to educate myself: keeping records for my father’s cloth importing business and ordering his supplies. At first, he wouldn’t let me. Then, bit by bit, he allowed it. He knew I would have to support myself without the help of any man. And so I have.”
She surprises me by telling me her age: twenty-one! Not much older than us.
“You have so many skills, Miss Jane. How I wish I could do the same as you.”
“You already do!” She smiles shyly. “You’re a clever girl. An actress. Trained by your father, as I have been. I’ve seen how closely you listen to everyone, including Mr. Dickens. That’s how one learns. And I must confess to having seen you carrying a quill too. Are you writing?”
“I am trying to.”
“That’s a very good practice. It must make you feel better to tell your story. Even if it’s only to yourself.”
That’s the very thing I cannot do. Ever. For no one must know.
“If you ever need…to talk or…want to share your writing, I’ll give a listen,” she says before bidding me good night.
Tell me again—I wish to pull her back by her sleeve—that it’s possible a girl like me can go on, in spite of everything. Tell me again.
* * *
The next afternoon, Miss Jane calls from downstairs. “Wherever has Sesina gone? She’s late for cooking soup. Is she up there with you?”
From high on the landing, I shake my head. Leah, standing beside the assistant matron, stutters, “Oh, I…I…I just saw her pass by! Let me go look for her.”
On the windowsill of our room, the glass sits empty. Later that afternoon, Sesina steals in, slinking up the stairs, on silent toes.
* * *
From across the parlor that evening, Sesina yawns loudly, stretching her back like a cat after its nap. Fanny drills her eyes on her, knitting without once glancing down at her stitches.
“Damn it!” Fanny complains. “Now I have to yank out three whole rows. It’s all messed. I forgot to purl the first row.”
Sesina spins around to watch Miss Jane, whose head is bent as she examines Leah’s needlepoint. She does not look up. Sesina lifts her chin high and smirks at Fanny.
On the settee, I sit beside Alice for a needlepoint lesson as she demonstrates how to use a thimble to protect my fingers from the needle’s sharp jab. A coughing fit suddenly overcomes her. Her breath sounds like wind scraping through tunnels. She seems as fragile as a stitch.
“Here’s the formula,” she instructs, catching her breath. “Needle held ready. Needle to the work. Take up the stitch. Push with the thimble. Take hold of the needle and pull it through.”
Alice watches as I work the needle with the thimble. “Hold the work steady, Orpha. The fabric must be stretched so the hard needle slides in easy, all the way through.”
Jemima elbows Fanny. “You hear those instructions? Bet you can do that real easy!”
There is the sound of a slap. This time, Miss Jane immediately raises her head. Fanny jumps up, crosses the room, and plops down on the opposite side of the parlor. All eyes swing to Jemima.
“What?” She grins. “I was just saying how Fanny sews so fine, that’s all. Can’t a girl take a compliment?”
Miss Jane’s eyes narrow. There’s something gentle about her. Or is it genteel? She doesn’t wring chickens’necks like our matron. Yet she’s always watching and waiting, ready to say what’s needed. She never raises her voice to scold, even when she should. I wonder what she tells the matron about us.
Alice bows her head, lost in her sewing, fingers running like a stream through the fabric draped over her. She barely finishes half her plate while the rest of us fight to grab her leftovers. What has stilled her and keeps her there, unlike the rest of us, growing bolder by the day?
* * *
Back in our own room, Sesina hums to herself at the bureau, where she tucks the shrunken sheep gut into an empty chocolate box, powdering it with talcum.
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“Worth the threepence he paid!” She sighs. “I’d pay any price for it!”
“Weren’t you worried they’d catch you?” Leah gasps.
Sesina hoots. “Who—me? The only time I ever fret is when I don’t get what I want!”
How like a raven she is, calculating its prey. I know where she went—the chicken shed. God only knows how I’ve hidden there too.
* * *
I read aloud a description of Dorrit, the troubled needlewoman in Little Dorrit, to Miss Coutts. At the dramatic moments in the novel, I lift my chin and open my throat wide, throwing my voice across the whole room.
“How beautifully you present the scene, Orpha! Mr. Dickens is right—what a fine voice you have! I feel as if I’m attending a play. Your tone reflects deep sympathy for women mistreated by society.”
“Miss, the rookery was filled with girls like Dorrit. Prison too.”
“Our society punishes at once without recognizing that suffering is the real problem. My family befriended Mr. Dickens after reading his Oliver Twist. That novel about children in workhouses and street gangs preying on orphaned children so disturbed my father that he investigated immediately to see if it was true. It was indeed.”
“Is this how you became interested in charity?”
“As a member of Parliament, my father petitioned to improve conditions at Coldbath Prison. What he found there so horrified him that he rallied for the oppressed. So Mr. Dickens speaks directly to my own family when he writes of social injustice.”
She sips her tea, then leans closer to me. “Our Mr. Dickens told me how surprised you were to discover he is the author of this novel and many others.”
She continues. “Can you promise me something? Don’t tell the others. It might confuse them. Certainly it will distract them to know how famous our Mr. Dickens is. Our girls look to him as a father. Don’t you agree?”
“I’ve already told Mr. Dickens I’d keep his secret. None of the girls have come close to a guess, miss. They don’t know his books! I would never give him away. Some do see him as a father. Hannah does.”
“And you, my dear—how do you view him now that you know who he really is?”
A long pause. “Much like my own father, who directed me as a child and would have done so again, had he not…”
All the words get sucked from my throat. He once was kind. He once was a father. After my mother died, he rarely viewed me again as his child. Although he continued my training as an actress, he was drifting afar.
“It must have been so trying for you to go on in your life without anyone guiding you. How you have managed on your own, what strength you have had, I cannot imagine.”
I catch my breath. Miss Coutts does not see me as a prostitute. Nor does Miss Jane. Perhaps that is why it is easy to speak to them. They view me as a girl, first and foremost. Mr. Dickens and the men see me as fallen, I am sure.
Miss Coutts studies my face, then examines my hair, now long enough to be pinned back without sticking up at odd angles. It’s been flattened in place with cocoa-nut oil and emits a whiff of chocolate.
Her face brightens. “I believe you are a girl we can count on to succeed, Orpha. Mr. Dickens will lead you to the best possible solution, I am certain of it. Meanwhile, you and I will have our little secret.”
As I rise to leave, she adds, “Your talents and training must not go to waste.”
* * *
At bedtime much later, I head to our room. My roommates are awake.
“Reading Miss Coutts a bedtime story?” Sesina teases, propped in bed. “You and her seemed thick as thieves today. She don’t coop us up that long. What’s she see in you, anyway?”
You can’t trust Sesina. She says one thing but means another. Beauty and barbs, side by side.
I shove the argument back at her. “Miss Coutts enjoys literature. Is there another girl here who can read aloud to her?”
Let them do it then, I wish to add but don’t.
Sesina’s glance cuts up and down my dress. “Of all the girls, it’s you she wants to talk to most. You’re her pet. Soon as you’re gone, she’ll find another.”
“You’re someone’s pet too!” Leah suddenly blurts out. “And he will dump you as soon as he’s done with you.”
Never have I heard Leah speak like this. She’s always so reserved. We have been taught that educated ladies, the kind we are pretending to be, always think before speaking. But the look on Sesina’s face is worth it. Her face aflame, she whirls away from us both.
* * *
Leah finds me dusting the parlor the next morning. She tugs my arm, pulling me into an alcove behind the bookcases. Her eyes are bloodshot. She’s been crying.
“Sesina knows my secrets inside out just as she knows yours. She’s stolen them from us like a common sneak. I’ve tried to forget. But that girl picks at scabs.”
“Won’t you tell me what happened to you as a child?”
“The worst!”
My eyes fix on hers. “I know the worst.”
She puts her fingers to her lips. “You keep your own stories to yourself. Promise you won’t tell mine.”
“I promise.”
Her eyes suddenly harden into two pinpricks. “It was my father’s thieving partner. Brought Pa home dead drunk late every Saturday. Ma was already asleep and Pa passed out. I did not scream. Petrified my father would beat me. It was something forbidden, what no one speaks of, so I never told anyone except Sesina and Mr. Dickens.”
She pauses to take a deep breath. “It took me years to stop thinking of it every day. I’ve never felt clean enough, not even after a bath. His stealing fingers. His pushy body. The marks are on me yet.”
I cry out, then squeeze her hand in mine.
“How brave you are, Leah, to tell me your story.”
Afterward, I lead her outside so we can sit in the spring sun together, letting it warm us through and through to our bones. Her head leans against my shoulder and she shuts her eyes against the light.
Haven’t I always sensed something about her? The way she tiptoes into a room as if fearful of entering. How she disappears in plain sight. How she cannot say no to Sesina. Leah lives more in the edges of the rooms than here with us. Just as I do.
* * *
Every day, the garden gives delights. Today, the black hollyhock opens the petals of its face. For supper, we eat “earlies.” Mrs. Marchmont insists that new potatoes are so edible, we need only serve them plain boiled with a pat of butter alongside a spring onion. In my mouth, the earlies squish softly, creaming my throat. Tomorrow we will harvest peas and radishes and bake rhubarb pie. I’ve wiggled my way to sit at dinner beside Alice, who leaves her shawl over the seat next to her, waiting for me.
* * *
On Saturday night, the checks for good behavior are tallied up. “Name your reward, Orpha.” The matron smiles. “Twenty marks total! You’ve saved all your earnings so far. Now, why don’t you buy something special for yourself?”
“Ink.”
“Ink?” Her eyebrows rise.
“I’ve been writing with dirt paste on old newspapers. You must have seen my muddy apron many a time.”
The next afternoon, a bottle of ink sits on the kitchen table with a ream of old papers, used on one side, blank on the other. The ink is dark blue. It’s the exact brand ordered for Mr. Dickens.
* * *
At the very end of June, we awake early to a fuss in the dining room. The matron pounds down the stairs carrying a silver candlestick. We slide to the banister. Below, in the hallway, the matron dashes off a letter while Miss Jane stands shaking by her side.
“Hand this note to Dickens. None other than him,” the matron orders the assistant. “If I could trust leaving that girl alone, I’d go myself. Awaken Zachariah and go!”
Miss Jane gasps. “Oh! What
has happened?”
“Fanny found this in Jemima’s bed this morning!” The matron points to the candlestick. “The nerve of that girl to steal!”
“Dickens!” Sesina hisses in my ear. “We’re all in trouble now!”
She tiptoes back into our room, slips a hand beneath her mattress, and pulls out the bottle of gin, now half full. She wedges it behind the dresser where she keeps other things hidden.
“He’ll be so batty when he comes, he’ll search all our rooms!” Then she pleads. “Don’t tell him! I could be kicked out.”
From downstairs, Mrs. Marchmont shouts orders. “Shake the rugs out, Fanny! Orpha, there’s dust on the tables! Alice, polish the furniture! Everything must be neat when he comes.”
All that morning, Dickens’s name hisses around the house. Hours pass. The matron removes a wardrobe of tattered clothing from a chest and hangs it up to air.
* * *
He flies into Urania like March wind, coattails lifting behind him. All girls except Jemima are ordered to line up in the parlor. His glance slides across the room and examines every piece of furniture. How odd his way of expecting each room to be shining as if set for a play.
Eyes bulging, spit flying, he now faces us. “Did any of you know of Jemima’s plans to steal the candlestick?”
One by one, we all shake our heads. He squints, studying each of us head to shoe, lingering on our eyes. Glad I am to have polished my boots and turned my apron to the clean side.
“Was she planning to sneak away with it?” he now demands.
Something passes over Sesina’s face, just a flicker. Mr. Dickens catches it too. He slides right in front of her.
Among the Fallen Page 13
