by Katie Perez
Feeling happier than before, she returned to Jean-Pierre’s diary. She finished Jean-Pierre’s description of the girl and turned to the next day.
Well, I just got back from washing dishes with her, and I have to say she’s really nice. A bit shy and all, but I feel so sorry for the way everyone treats her. I found out her name, by the way. It’s Beulah St. John, which I think is quite pretty.
Beulah St. John?
As in, the girl who got pregnant?
9. Jezebelle
Molly thought about it all night. Beulah St. John? It seemed ridiculous in a way, like meeting your favorite character of a book in the street. And yet… the diary had been written something like sixteen years ago. Beulah, if she had existed, had gotten pregnant around fifteen years ago, according to legends. So…
Who would know… she pondered. Then a thought hit her, and she turned to Jezebelle Killy in the bed beside her.
“Jezebelle?” Molly whispered loudly.
Jezebelle groaned and turned to face Molly. Jezebelle was incredibly different from her younger sister Charlotte Percival. Jezebelle was quiet, a girl-in-the-background, known almost exclusively as ‘Charlotte Percival’s sister’.
“What do you want?” she yawned. It was, after all, two in the morning. But Molly was wide awake and with an almost hyper manner.
“Was Beulah St. John real?”
“Who?” Jezebelle rubbed her eyes.
“Beulah St. John.”
“Oh, her.” Jezebelle yawned again. “Marie, that was before my time. I’ve been here for less time than you, remember?”
“I know, but you’re older than me. Didn’t anyone ever talk about her when you were little? The older girls? They must have.”
“Yeah, yeah- they did. Golly, Marie, that was ages ago. I was only three or four… the older girls didn’t want to talk to me.”
“My name’s not Marie. It’s Molly.”
“Whatever. Do you remember a girl who used to be here, Delphine Garrison?”
“The one with all those weird marks on her arms?” Molly giggled. “It looked like someone stuck needles in her. Like a pin cushion.”
“Yeah… her.” Jezebelle was slightly disturbed by Molly’s manner. She’d never seen her giggle, let alone say more than two words.
“Delphine… she knew Beulah really well, apparently.”
“I didn’t think she was that old.”
“She’s just a bit older than me. She always acted older than her age.”
“How… how old was she when Beulah got pregnant?” asked Molly.
“That was what, fifteen years ago? She could not have been older than nine.”
“Did Beulah really get pregnant?”
“Delphine swore to it. She probably did. Everyone used to talk about it, way more than people do now.”
“Who… who was the father?” inquired Molly.
Jezebelle shrugged. “Ran away,” she repeated the legend.
“Did he really?”
“Probably. How should I know? Marie- I mean, Molly, go to sleep. It’s two in the morning. We have school tomorrow.”
“I don’t.”
“You should go to school. You shouldn’t get to lie around in bed all day just because you stabbed yourself.”
Molly said nothing, and resolved to not ask Jezebelle anything ever again. She wasn’t much use anyway. All she could say was repeat what Delphine had said. Molly wasn’t sure she could trust the words of a… what was it Mrs. Levitski called her once? A woman of ill repute…
So Beulah St. John probably did exist. That was strange. Molly tried to imagine how it would feel to get pregnant at such a young age. Well, the Levitskies would kill you for a start. It must be so lonely… especially if the father, whoever he was, ran away like that and just left you. Suddenly Molly didn’t blame Beulah for trying to kill the baby with a piece of barbed wire. She wondered where Beulah was now, if she was still alive…
Molly must have fallen asleep because she woke up to Mrs. Levitski shouting in her ear.
“Why are you not up yet?” came that familiar high-pitched shriek. “You are supposed to be downstairs!”
“I’m not…” Molly couldn’t find the words. “I’m not supposed to get up.
“Why not? What makes you so different from everyone else?”
“I… my leg…”
“Nonsense.” Mrs. Levitski threw back the covers of the bed. “I don’t have time for this. You can’t stab yourself and expect to lie in bed all day. Either you’re in the asylum, or you can go to school. I have a right mind to call the doctor right now.”
“No! No, please, ma’am, don’t, I don’t want to go there, please…” There were horrible stories about the asylum.
“Then,” Mrs. Levitski grabbed Molly’s arm and pulled her roughly out of bed. “You can go to school.”
She left leaving Molly alone in the room. Rubbing her arm and willing her tears back, she began to make her bed. She knew it wouldn’t last. School. She hated school, absolutely hated it. She had been held back a year, so she was in the same class as Charlotte Percival and Shirley, and all their following. School was something of a joke for the girls, anyway. They didn’t expect much of girls at the school. They were girls, after all, only supposed to cook and clean. Until twenty something years ago, girls didn’t get an education at all. The school was run by the military, and everything was taught within military context. Really, all it was for was to make medics out of the girls, since they couldn’t fight.
After she got dressed hurriedly and put on Jean-Pierre’s coat, she went down to the dining hall, heart beating fast. She was nervous about going in there after… after whatever that was that had happened. She didn’t know what had happened. It was probably her imagination. That happened sometimes. But Molly knew in her heart it was not.
The day went as usual, and soon it was time for Evening Prayers. There were more new people. A family of six. No doubt to fill in the spaces left by Rose and Wilbur. Molly wondered absent-mindedly how long it would be until one of them died.
Then there was the roll call.
“Killy Jezebelle.”
“Present, sir.”
“Kittrick Madison.”
“Present, sir.”
“Kittrick Shirley.”
No-one replied.
“Kittrick Shirley?” Mr. Levitski repeated.
Again, no response.
“Has anyone seen her today?”
“She didn’t come back from school, sir,” said a worried Charlotte Percival. “I don’t know where she is.”
Molly felt a thrill of excitement. No Shirley? One less person to tease her.
No-one saw Shirley for a full week. Then someone saw her, lying in a ditch not far from the school, naked and slashed into pieces.
10. Knife
Abducted, raped, tortured, murdered. That’s what they said. That’s what everyone said. The kids at the orphanage, the Levitskies, the police, the doctors, the newspapers.
Shirley. Shirley Kittrick.
Shirley Nadine Kittrick.
They’d made more of a fuss over her death than anyone else’s that Molly could remember. Her parents had appeared. Both in silk and fur, her father with a silver topped walking cane. They were apparently still alive and well and wealthy, which just brought more confusion as to why the Kittrick girls were at the orphanage. They’d paid for a funeral, taking place that Saturday. Molly was expected to go, but she didn’t. She’d been to enough funerals in her time and they all ran into one after a while. What she hated most about them was the way they were always full of people the dead person didn’t even know or particularly like, acting as though they cared, and talking about how wonderful the dead person had been… when they were often quite the contrary. She wandered away from the crowd of sobbing girls going to the church and found herself at the beach.
It wasn’t a beach day. But then, Villemonte Beach wasn’t much of a beach in the traditional sense. On all but the
warmest days, it was an expanse of grey. The sea, polluted from Villemonte’s many factories, reflected the grey skies. There wasn’t any real sand; it was all dark grit and gravel. On a windy day the sea would spit at you, stinging your face and your bare legs if you walked too close to it.
It had been a nice beach once. That was what Villemonte was famous for, originally. A beautiful little seaside town. But the Revolution had hit it badly, and soon it was a dirty, overcrowded city. And things just got worse. People blamed the Revolution, the tuberculosis, the War… somewhere along the line, Villemonte lost its beauty.
Molly walked along the concrete step leading down to the beach. It was windy and raining half-heartedly. She wasn’t really thinking of anything. She was thinking, of Shirley and Beulah and Jean-Pierre and Rose’s blood-stained face and the day the bench kept falling down.
There weren’t many people about. Just the occasional person walking who looked barely human. As she came near to the port she saw a small group of local girls, a little younger than her, watching the sailors go by and giggling. Molly had never done that in her life. She’d never done anything any of the other girls had done as a part of growing up, messing around with make-up and swapping clothes and talking about boys. No reason; she just didn’t. It wasn’t something she did.
She watched the girls and the sailors for a while. One of them, scarcely older than Molly herself, came over to the girls and said something which made them shriek with laughter.
If she’d been born a boy, Molly thought, would she join the army? They didn’t use girls much in the army. Just in emergencies. Molly was pretty much useless at military training and all that. She’d probably die on her first day.
That made her think of Jean-Pierre’s friend, the one who died in the army. She wondered how many were dead like that, how many were yet to die like that. She realized with a start that right now, there was someone who had no idea that they were going to die in the next thirty seconds. Molly stopped walking and counted to thirty out loud. Bang. They’d just been shot.
Well. It could happen to any of us. You don’t need to be fighting to die suddenly.
And the War would be over soon. They were winning. Year after year, they promised the War would be over by Christmas, that they were so close, that they were winning.
Molly sat down on the cold concrete where they pavement met the sand. Without being entirely sure why, she began to cry. She pulled up the skirt of her dress and carefully traced around the scar on her thigh. She gazed around the beach and saw a penknife, dirty and wet. She smiled and stopped crying, unable to believe her luck.
She returned to the orphanage sometime later. Everyone had already returned from Shirley’s funeral, but thankfully Molly slipped inside unnoticed. She went to her dormitory, though she didn’t have a clue what she would do there. She decided to read more of the diary. She was still reading it, though not exactly sure why. It wasn’t of much use for anything, really. He talked about Beulah St. John a lot, clearly besotted with her. Molly, while she admired Jean-Pierre for being nice to Beulah when clearly no-one else was, still found it all rather tedious.
Before she could get out the diary and fall into a world where popular boys were nice to ugly girls, Miriam turned to her.
“Marie?” she sniffed.
“Molly,” replied Molly, without even turning around.
“Right. Molly.” Miriam sniffed again, and wiped her eyes. “Isn’t it awful? I mean, Shirley. She was so nice to everyone.”
Molly looked up finally in disbelief. “No. I hated her. I’m really happy she’s dead,” she said with a genuine smile.
Miriam was taken aback. “What? Are- are you kidding me?”
Molly sighed. “No. I’m really happy. I hated her. She made my life hell. She deserved everything she got. The only thing I’m sad about is that no-one did it sooner.”
Miriam stared at Molly. She hadn’t said one word to her since her first day, accepting what everyone else said about her, that she was weird. However, Miriam could never have believed that she was this weird.
“But… isn’t it horrible? Abducted raped tortured murdered …” Miriam repeated the line everyone had been saying, with little understanding of the words. “What does it mean?”
“What?”
“Abducted raped tortured murdered.”
Molly smiled. “Well,” she began. “Abducted means kidnapped. Of course, since Shirley is… was thirteen, I’m sure, you know, it was pretty hard. She probably struggled a lot… but I guess he was too strong. He probably tied her up.”
Miriam gasped. She didn’t want to hear this. But a part of her did.
“Raped… well, that’s when someone makes you have sex with them. Now, with most thirteen year olds, that would have hurt them. But Shirley was a whore,” Molly said simply. “She was probably well used to it. Though, then again…” Molly tilted her head to one side. “The guy was clearly a psycho. He had a knife, you know.” Her smile broadened and she looked excited. “So you know, he was probably digging the knife into her and all…”
“Stop!” Miriam shrieked, tears running down her face.
“That’s exactly what Shirley probably said,” Molly giggled. Her eyes were wild and gleaming. “And I won’t stop, I haven’t told you what ‘tortured’ means yet. Well, you know he had the knife, and…” She stopped abruptly, her head jerking up towards the ceiling as though someone had just called her name. Then she smiled broadly. “You want me to show you?”
“What?” Miriam said faintly.
Molly took the penknife out of her pocket.
“Wha- No! Don’t hurt me! I don’t wanna-”
Molly smiled again. “Miriam, of course I wouldn’t. I was gonna demonstrate on myself.” And with that she dragged the knife across the palm of her hand, pressing as hard as she could. She watched the blood drip and run across her wrist with quiet fascination.
Miriam had already got up and was running out of the room sobbing. By this time the other girls had noticed what Molly was doing. Some followed Miriam, others stared in disbelief, a few attempted to ask Molly what was going on. Molly just laughed. She couldn’t ever remember being this happy.
“Shirley was a bitch,” she said shakily, and fell back onto the bed.
11. Molly
Molly woke up early the next morning, Sunday, with little memory of what had gone on the night before. She groaned and rolled over, wincing when she rolled on top of her injured hand. She stared at it, still bleeding lightly, and wondered how in the world that had happened. The bed sheets were stained with dried blood. Something was digging into her back, and she realized it was a penknife. Still utterly confused, she got out of bed and put on Jean-Pierre’s coat and her boots.
Molly could see her breath in the air and it seemed oddly still and quiet. She crossed the room to the window and saw it had been snowing during the night. Ensuring she had Jean-Pierre’s diary with her, she silently crept down the staircase and out the door.
The yard of the orphanage was enclosed by tall black gates all the way around, but the gates had been taken down around the back where building work was supposed to be done, against Mr. Levitski’s wishes. They hadn’t begun digging yet actually inside the orphanage grounds, but they were pretty close. Why Mr. Levitski objected so much was anyone’s guess; it was only a few square meters. But then, Mr. Levitski objected to many unimportant things. He hated anything new and different. That was why he insisted Molly was called Marie, when she wasn’t, she was Molly, that was what her mother had said when they had found her… she was too sick to say anything else, even her own name, but told everyone her daughter’s name was Molly Klusman and never even mentioned ‘Marie’. But Molly wasn’t good enough for Mr. Levitski. It was ‘slang’. Marie was a better name, a holy name… it meant ‘bitterness’. Molly had looked it up. At least ‘Molly’ didn’t really mean anything.
Molly sat on the back steps of the orphanage and opened the diary. It was freezing but she didn�
��t care. She scanned the page. More about Beulah St. John.
I really like her. People have started seeing us together and saying we’re boyfriend and girlfriend, which isn’t making the Levitskies too happy. I don’t know. I don’t like her that way. She’s a friend. She and I think the same about a lot of things. For example, today, a new girl started here. She’s about two years old, and her name is Despair. I am not even joking. A few years ago there was a boy here called Murder, which was weird enough, but Despair is even worse. Why in the world would you name a child Despair? Clearly her parents weren’t quite all there, which is probably why she’s here. I honestly hope the Levitskies rename her. They do that to people; they hate nicknames, especially Mr. Levitski. Personally I don’t see what their problem is with nicknames. It’s not like something bad is going to happen if you call a child Sam instead of Samuel their whole life. But anyway, Despair. I can’t believe it. I can’t even imagine how she’ll feel when she’s old enough to know what it means.
Beulah agrees with me completely, and we had this random conversation about names. Beulah hates her name, which surprised me because I think Beulah is a beautiful name. Much better than Jean-Pierre. I don’t know how many Jeans and Johns and Jean-Pierres and Jean-Claudes there are at this orphanage. We were talking about our favorite names. Beulah likes a lot of German names, because her mother was German, but she says her favorite name is Molly. I always thought Molly was rather brusque and ugly, but now I think about it it’s actually quite nice. Molly. I like the way it sounds.
Molly?
That was… weird… Molly suddenly felt as though someone was watching her, playing some sick joke on her.
Coincidence. Total coincidence. Of course it was. It didn’t mean anything. There are other Mollys in the world. In Villemonte.
An odd coincidence though. A little too odd.
She shivered, and told herself it was just the cold. Maybe she should go back inside. She got up, shaking slightly, and let herself in through the back door, and immediately came face to face with Mr. Levitski.
