by Katie Perez
It took everyone a little while to figure out what had happened. Then Rose’s friend started crying, and there was chaos. People were screaming and crying and pushing to get off the stairs and as far away from the scene of Rose’s death as possible. Somewhere in the middle of all this, someone had the initiative to call Mrs. Levitski, and she appeared downstairs. She shouted at everyone to shut up, and glanced at Rose’s body. She sighed, and began to look for someone relatively old and responsible.
“KLUSMAN!” she shouted, seeing Molly. “Get down here this instant.”
Molly made her way downstairs.
“Stay with this girl while I get the doctor.”
Bit late for that, thought Molly. She knelt down beside Rose on the floor. She knew Rose pretty well. Rose was about ten or eleven and had lived at the orphanage her entire life. She and Molly had shared a dorm for their whole lives. She was a nice enough girl, creative, maybe a little bossy sometimes.
Molly brushed Rose’s blonde hair off her face. Her eyes were dull and unfocused, and a trickle of blood was running out of one, like she was crying blood. Her nose and mouth were bloody too, and her ears… and of course the large crack in her skull where she had hit the ground. Her skin was already taking on a grayish tinge.
It really wasn’t fair, thought Molly. Rose had really never had much of a chance to live. She’s been brought up in an orphanage and died in a stupid accident. That wasn’t a life, really. It also occurred to Molly that Rose’s fate was likely to be hers, too. For the first time in her life, Molly realized that any day now, she could die just like Rose. And for what? Why?
The doctor came at last, and just glanced at the girl before throwing a sheet over her.
“I’ll get the dead man to come around later, pick her up,” he said.
The dead man came just as the orphans were leaving for school, with his horse and cart piled high with bodies of today’s victims of cholera and tuberculosis. They avoided the dead man as much as possible usually, because his cart stunk and there were flies and rats crawling all over it.
But Molly stayed behind everyone just for a minute. She watched the black-clothed dead man and his assistant carry Rose out of the building. She was naked now, apart from a sheet, because the Levitskies never wasted clothes. Molly felt a stab of anger as she saw the undignified way Rose was thrown on the already pretty big pile of bodies.
That’ll be you soon, she heard a voice say. She wasn’t exactly sure whether the voice came from inside or outside her head.
5. Melancholy
At Evening Prayers the night of Rose Franck’s untimely demise, there was a mention of her twice. One was the usual passing comment in a prayer, about keeping her safe in heaven. When the prayer was over, Mr. Levitski began to speak.
“Today, as you all know,” he said, “an orphan-girl was killed on the stairs. You have no-one but yourselves and your own negligence to blame. I have spoken to you all many times about being careful on the stairs and today was not the first instance of such a thing happening. Deaths do not reflect well on this institution,” Mr. Levitski stressed. “Newspapers have already been paying a little too much attention to this asylum as it is.”
He went on and Molly was lost in her own thoughts. It wasn’t Rose’s fault she died. Why should she be made an example of and her death be turned into a safety lecture? Poor thing. Not that the Levitskies really gave a damn if any of them died really. They just hated the media attention.
Though there wasn’t as much media attention as there had been, even since, say, last year. There’d always been deaths. Of course there’d always been deaths. Children get sick. Children have accidents. It happens. But the number of deaths did seem to be increasing. Last year there was all that sensation, the “THREE DEAD IN A MONTH AT ORPHANAGE” headlines. But then the deaths increased more, to the point where it was just plain unnatural. So the papers seemed to stay away now.
The other thing Molly was struck by was how little anyone seemed to care about Rose, or any of this. Even people Molly was sure were Rose’s friends seemed undaunted.
It got Molly thinking if anyone really would care if she were to die today. A melancholy thought, but she had a point. No-one was likely to.
In bed that late that night, still suffering from the chronic headache from the day before, in the darkness of her mind she heard the end of Charlotte Percival’s conversation with Shirley.
Something made Molly think they might have been discussing Rose.
They were talking about how the government were planning to build yet more houses beside the orphanage, meaning they would need to take away some of the yard of the orphanage. It had been going on for a while now and Mr. Levitski refused to let them do it. Rose was dead, and that was all anyone cared about.
Molly found herself wondering what the point was in living when no-one would care if she died anyway. Tomorrow, she thought as she fell asleep, tomorrow she would kill herself.
6. War
Molly woke up late the next day, Saturday. Saturday meant she still had to go to school, at least in the morning, for military training. Military training had been made compulsory eight years ago as a way to get more people into the army, since the War didn’t look as though it would be over too soon. Molly hated military training. Running around gave her a stitch, she had no hand-eye co-ordination to fire guns and she hated falling in the mud in the rain. She was still tired from last night, when Mr. Levitski had made her scrub the kitchen floor as a punishment for pushing Charlotte Percival into the bed on Miriam’s first night. And planning her suicide all night hadn’t helped either. When she awoke, everyone was heading down for breakfast.
Molly shot out of bed and got dressed in her grey school dress, her only clothing apart from her Sunday Best. She raked her hair back into plaits and pinned them up, as orphanage rules dictated. She put on a grey jumper over her dress, and as it was cold, went to put on her trench coat as well… only to find it wasn’t where she had left it hanging on a bedpost. Molly looked around the dorm but couldn’t see it anywhere.
“Does anyone know where my coat… is...” Molly trailed off when she realized that of the few girls left in the room, no-one was listening. Pulling on her boots, she decided she would brave the cold.
Mrs. Levitski was at the bottom of the stairs, snapping as usual as everyone walked past to fix their hair or scrub their nails. When she got to Molly, she shouted, “Klusman! Why are you going out without a coat? You’ll freeze!”
“I…I couldn’t find it, ma’am…” Molly stammered.
“Careless! Report to the office after school! And go to the spare clothes store and get another coat. I am not having another orphan here getting ill and dying from the cold, you hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Molly went to the spare clothes store. It was a closet which contained clothes that the orphans grew out of, or if they died, their clothes went here. Everything was ancient and worn and faded, with stains or bad smells. Molly felt a moment of sadness when she found Rose Franck’s clothes here, but quickly moved on. There were two coats I here, one that might have fitted a five-year-old and one much too big for Molly. Molly chose the oversized one. It was similar to her old one, only black. As she buttoned it up, she realized it was in fact a boys’ coat, but Molly really didn’t care. Something was digging into her side. Concealed in a make-shift pocket made from a rip in the lining, she found a small notebook. She opened it to the first page and found a name, Jean-Pierre Richard[i] written in loopy handwriting, and a date of around sixteen years ago. She flicked through the pages, which were filled with neat yet hard to read copperplate writing. She pocketed the book again and hurried out for breakfast. She’d look at it later, if she could be bothered or had the time.
Molly’s morning was soon occupied by military training. After reciting the pledge and singing the national anthem, the Lieutenant announced that today would be target practice. Better than running at least, thought Molly.
Shooting was going as it did usually, Molly failing to hit anywhere near the target and the boys trying to shoot birds instead. Suddenly there was a scream.
People crowded around a group of boys and started shouting, “Call a doctor! Call a doctor!” Through the crowd Molly caught a glimpse of a boy lying on the ground, and a lot of blood. A doctor came fairly quickly, but by then it was too late. Whoever it was, was dead.
It was much later before Molly got the whole story, or the story as everyone was telling it. She could have guessed- a boy had somehow got shot in the stomach, and died. The boy was Wilbur Kladis, Miriam and Steadfast’s older brother.
Miriam cried all night. It was tough, having your brother die so soon after arriving at the orphanage. She was swept into a hug by many girls in the dorm. Molly was not one of these. She felt oddly distracted. She remembered the book she had found earlier and tried to read it.
It seemed to be a diary or journal of some kind. Jean-Pierre’s writing was hard to read with its copperplate handwriting and the way he switched fluidly between French to English, seemingly whenever he felt like it and often in the same sentence. Molly tried to read the first page.
Hi, he wrote in French. This is a bit weird writing this since I’m probably only ever going to be the one reading it, but I thought I’d tell you who I am. My name is Jean-Pierre Richard and I’m almost fifteen. I live at Villemonte City Orphanage in Villemonte City, Quebec. It’s okay, I guess. I’ve lived here since I was eleven. It’s kind of a long story. I’m writing this because I just heard one of my friends is dead. His name was Olivier Allan, and he was fighting the War out in Maine. He was a year older than me, fifteen, and so he’d just joined the army. He’d always wanted to join the army, and now he’s dead because of it. We got a letter today from the War Office. “It is our sad duty to inform you that Olivier Thomas Allan has died serving our country. He will be forever remembered as a hero…” blah blah blah. Half my brothers died as ‘heroes’ and no-one ever remembers them. Olivier was one of my best friends when he was here and we were always playing baseball together and I just… I really can’t believe that he’s gone. I hate the War. I hate the government for making this stupid War and killing people like Olivier.
The entry ended there. Molly put the book away, feeling slightly uneasy. Jean-Pierre Richard, whoever he was, could get arrested for writing stuff like that about the government and the War. The War was for a good cause. They were fighting a monster. They’d told her that in school, so it must be true. She wondered why he had written it and where Jean-Pierre was now… and why it had turned up in a rip in the seam of a black trench coat in the spare clothes store…
7. Haunted
Hi, Diary. Sorry about the other day… I was a little stressed out, understandably I guess because of Olivier. I still miss him so much, but I’m starting to get used to the idea that I’m never gonna see him again… I guess I could have guessed, though, when he joined the army. Most of my brothers who joined the army are dead now… I guess I should explain. Everyone in my family has been involved in the War somehow. I have, or maybe that should be had, ten older brothers, and seven of them were in the army. I think. It’s hard to keep track of them now. Four of them are dead now, killed in action. Another is missing… he might have deserted, which means he’s probably dead too. Actually I wouldn’t be surprised if more are dead now, too… no-one in my family ever tells me anything. But I’m actually not that close to my brothers… they’re all a lot older than me and I actually haven’t met some of them. I’m not even sure of all their names.
My parents are both medical people in the War. I want to be a medic too when I grow up. I don’t really wanna fight. Being a medic seems a lot more rewarding and a lot less dangerous than being a soldier...
Molly wasn’t exactly sure why, but in the next few days she found herself returning Jean-Pierre’s diary a lot. She was never a great reader, but it was oddly interesting to read about people who had lived at the orphanage years ago. Jean-Pierre wasn’t like any boy she’d ever met. He seemed very intelligent and he was clearly popular… she felt a certain liking for him, a certain wishing he was around today. She couldn’t imagine him ever calling her a whore.
It was little over a week after she’d found the diary, and Molly was cleaning the dining hall, as a punishment for something. She couldn’t quite remember what it was. She was always getting into trouble, for her person not being clean or tidy enough or breaking things or losing things or just being her awkward self.
She was going around the room, lifting the long wooden benches and putting them on top of the tables because it made sweeping the floor easier. Suddenly there was an almighty crash behind her. She turned, and saw that behind her a bench had fallen from the tabletop. Assuming she hadn’t placed it on correctly, she put it back, pushing it as far away from the edge of the table as possible.
Almost as soon as she had turned back, it fell off again.
Now getting slightly disturbed, she once again put the bench back on top of the table. She stayed where she was for several minutes, afraid to turn away. She studied it carefully where it sat, noting how it was lying about ten centimeters from the table edge. She took a deep breath, and turned away.
Immediately the bench crashed down again. Turning around quickly, Molly thought she saw a dark shape move quickly away from the table. An involuntary shudder seized her whole body and made her fall to her knees.
“Who’s there?” she choked. The deathly silence of the hall was the loudest thing she had ever heard. “Why are you doing this?” She was trembling, tears starting to run down her cheeks. Her head was swimming and she couldn’t get her thought straight. She felt a panicky, a sense of loss of control. Somewhere in her head she knew she was acting unreasonable… but her body didn’t listen. She let out a long, piercing scream that made her throat burn. Then another. A third brought people to the room- Molly didn’t know whether they were the Levitskies or other children or who- just people and she couldn’t handle being around these people and when they tried to reach her she ran faster than she ever had in her life. She ran out of the dining hall and into the kitchen and tripped over a loose floor tile, slamming against the large sink and banging her knees hard against the cold floor. Still shrieking and crying she hit her head hard against it, and straightening up, swept a stack of wet dishes that were sitting beside the sink to dry to the floor. The tin plates and glasses clattered to the ground. Molly fell back onto the floor and lay there sobbing uncontrollably. In a daze of tears she reached out in front of her and found a knife, plunging it into her thigh as hard as she could. She screamed as the sharp edge pierced the skin and blood began to flow through her grey dress. The still wet handle of the knife slipped from her grasp and clattered to the floor.
8. Bedrest
The doctor was called soon afterwards. He gave Molly a sedative, and cleaned and stitched the wound on her thigh.
“The asylum?” inquired Mr. Levitski when the doctor was finished.
“Well, now, that depends. Has this happened before?” he replied.
“Certainly, increasingly.” Mr Levitski responded.
“Hmm. Has she ever harmed another orphan?”
“More than a few times now she has attacked another girl.”
“Has she harmed herself like this before?” the doctor said gesturing towards Molly’s bandaged thigh.
“Not that I know of.”
“Do you know of any family history of lunacy?”
“Her mother, I believe, spent time in the asylum. It was that reason Marie was sent here.”
The doctor looked thoughtful. “Well, unless this happens again, I see no reason to admit her. But if anything does happen…” he motioned towards Molly’s unconscious body. “Delusions… outbursts like this… do not hesitate to contact me.”
Molly spent most of the next week or so in bed, under the doctor’s orders that she was to be kept quiet. It was pleasant enough, despite the unbelievable rumors that w
ere circulating the orphanage and the stares she received morning, noon and night from the other girls. She slept a lot. She still had that chronic headache, which seemed to be worsening. She read Jean-Pierre’s diary a lot. She was reading it one particular Wednesday when things had got a little more interesting- he mentioned a girl.
I actually don’t even know her name; everyone calls her a fat bitch all the time. She is fat, I’ll grant you that. But she’s not a bitch, at least I haven’t seen anything that makes her seem like one. Well, she’s quite big like I said, and she’s got really thick, bushy hair that the girls tease her about. She wears big glasses too. She’s not pretty like some of the girls here. She’s… different. I wouldn’t call her ugly. She’s the opposite of pretty, but… there’s something about her. I don’t know. Anyway, so I have to start cleaning the kitchen with her tomorrow as a result of accidentally dropping my plate yesterday at dinner… clearly going hungry for a night wasn’t enough for Mr Levitski, and I have to help clean up the kitchen for a week. Fun, I know. But then again, I guess it’s just what the girls do all the time. The girls do all the chores here, apparently because it’s their job. I don’t know, I’ve always felt a little guilty about that.
Just then Madison Kittrick, the youngest of Shirley’s sisters, approached Molly’s bed.
“Is it true you stabbed yourself, Marie? Because that’s disgusting.”
Molly ignored her, but Madison persisted.
“Did you, Marie? Cause Shirley said you did. Why would you do that? That’s gross. Are you mental? Is that why you did it, Marie?”
Molly sighed, and threw off the thin blanket of the bed and pulled up the leg of her nightdress. The cut hadn’t healed well; it was turning a sickening green, the same color as the mould on the ceiling of the dormitory. Madison shrieked and ran away.
“My name’s not Marie,” Molly called as a means of saying farewell.
