Far From Home

by Nellie P. Strowbridge

Clarissa hated arithmetic. She could never figure out numbers. As soon as Miss Ellis put a sum on the board, Clarissa’s day was ruined. When the school ma’am tried to explain multiplication and fractions one day, Clarissa laughed.

  “You are setting a bad example, Clarissa,” said Miss Ellis in a hard voice. “Learning must be taken seriously. When you go to the shop you need to know how to add and subtract money, and when you bake a cake in the school kitchen you must know your fractions. Imagine putting in a cup of soda powders when you need only half a cup.”

  Clarissa almost giggled, imagining Miss Ellis taking a mouthful of cake that had a cup – or even half a cup – of soda powders in it.

  Cora had put up her hand to correct Miss Ellis. The school ma’am seemed pleased. “I’m glad some of you are on your toes and have learned from our Home Economics classes that soda powders must be used sparingly.”

  Clarissa liked the Home Economics classes the school ma’am had started. They took place once a week in the school’s tiny kitchen. On those days, she sneaked a spoonful of powdered Klim milk – and then another. That satisfied her hunger on some of the mornings when she couldn’t stomach porridge.

  Once school ended for the day, the children walked quietly to the door, but as soon as they were outside they rushed down the steps, their pent-up voices let loose. Clarissa moved slowly, her body needing time to come back to life after a long time sitting. She was not allowed to undo the straps and loosen her braces during class. The brace strapping her right leg from her hip to her ankle sometimes cut into her leg. After a while, it was as if pins and needles were stabbing it. The short brace on the other leg made it fidgety.

  Ida, the merchant’s daughter, whispered to her friends as they passed Clarissa, “God bless the mark.” It was spoken loud enough for Clarissa to hear. She wished that Ida’s tongue was in a brace. Some people were superstitious enough to believe that when they passed someone who was disfigured or lame they should say “God bless the mark” so that nothing like that would happen to them.

  Cora surprised Clarissa by slowing down to wait for her. She hadn’t liked it that Clarissa had gone to bed in another dormitory without telling her until yesterday that she had been moved – and for good.

  “The mistresses do what they like,” Clarissa tried to tell her now. “I’m glad you brought my treasures.”

  Cora looked at her as if to retort. The girls turned at the sound of pounding hoofs. The children ahead of them screamed and dashed across the road, jumping the ditch and skittering behind the church. Cora was gone in a blink; Clarissa stared at the black bull charging towards her. She wanted to move out of its path; instead, she stopped still, the top of her head feeling as if it would explode with fright. She braced herself on her crutches, her eyes meeting the bull’s red, sore-looking ones as it got nearer. Her eyes closed and she stood trembling, waiting for the awful strength of the bull to hit her body, flattening her, suffocating her – killing her! And with all the bad thoughts she had against other people, she couldn’t be sure she was going to Heaven.

  “Clarissa – Clarissa!” Cora’s voice dragged at her. Finally she opened her eyes. The bull was nowhere in sight. She turned her head quickly, alarmed that it might hook her from behind. But it was going on down the road. She stood for a moment, her smooth forehead furrowing. The bull had gone past her as if she was nothing more than a speck of dirt.

  All of a sudden she felt vexed that the other children ran away without caring what happened to her. She staggered on to the orphanage, her jaw set. She wouldn’t talk to any of them for the rest of the day, especially Cora.

  Cora ran to catch up, calling, “I’m sorry Clarissa. I couldn’t stop a bull from running over you if I tried – and I’m too scared of bulls not to run. One time, a bull hooked my arm.” She lifted her coat sleeve, baring her right arm. A scar ran down it like a rivulet of water down a windowpane.

  Clarissa had noticed the scar before, but she had never asked about it. Her lips softened. “Oh, it’s all right, fraidy-cat.” Still, she swung herself to the orphanage in silence.

  Clarissa was afraid of the husky dog team Dr. Grenfell had given the older boys for training, afraid that their yawping would lead to biting. Once, she had gotten too close to a harbour man’s husky. It had snapped at her crutches, knocking her to the ground before the owner whipped the dog away from her. Dogs and bulls! One lot could tear you to pieces; the other could stomp you to death. She didn’t know which one was scarier.

  8

  WINTER

  One morning while Clarissa was dressing, she glanced at the dormitory window and her brown eyes widened in delight at the sight of a bunch of exquisite ferns, horses’ manes and tree leaves caught in silvery etchings on the long windowpane. She hobbled to the window, leaned forward, and blew a hole in Jack Frost’s silver curtain. Usually winter came running into the harbour like a growling husky, backing residents indoors for fear of its snarling bite. This year it had come gently, quietly rubbing away autumn’s fading hold on the land. The silence of the harbour under the thin spread of frozen water drifted into Clarissa’s senses. Dr. Grenfell’s little medical ship, the Strathcona, sat in the sheltered harbour caught in ice, waves of snow around it. She stared at the white mass of ocean, imagining she could go beyond this place – walk on solid water to her home.

  The other girls were just getting into their clothes, stunned and sleepy looks on their faces, as Clarissa pushed open the door and went out. She hurried down the stairs and moved as quietly as she could through the hall and past the dining room so she could be on the orphanage steps before anyone else. She dragged her red coat and cap from her locker, pulling them on as she sat on a stool. Her mittened hands inside their sealskin cuffs grabbed for her crutches and she swung her way to the door. Outside, she paused on the steps, glad the wind she’d heard whistling through the night had dropped to a whisper. Winter had settled itself over a sleeping earth like an angora blanket below the moon, a crystal coin still hanging in the sky. Every building, every fence, and every black dog – if it stays still – will have a fluffy white coat, she thought joyfully. Soon the harbour children would be randying down a snow-packed Fox Farm Hill.

  A few light snowflakes fell like stars on Clarissa’s long red coat as she made her way carefully down the steps, leaving behind the smudged prints of her crutches and gaiters. The movement of her feet and crutches spun the light snow into the air. She let herself slip slowly down into its soft, magical world, rolling over and over in it until she was tired. Then she spread her arms, arcing them back and forth. She moved her legs as far as they would go without feeling pain. There used to be lots of pain whenever the physical therapist had forced her legs into exercise years ago.

  Soon all the children would be out, falling around in the fine snow, trying to make snowballs. But for now she was alone and content, not caring that the orphan boys would soon be complaining about having to haul her to school on a sled.

  “Clarissa!” The harsh sound of her name hit her ears like a whip swishing through the air. She turned to meet Miss Elizabeth’s nettled look. The woman was looking down at her from the top of the steps. “You get up from the snow this minute. There’s no time for childish games. You’re without your canvas dickey and you’ve dampened your clothes. That makes for a chill on your way to school. You missed your breakfast. You know what that means.”

  Clarissa looked towards Miss Elizabeth, feeling slightly foolish. The other children were tumbling out the door, and looking her way. Cora hurried down to her friend. “I’ve got your bookbag and your lunch in it,” she said. Then she whispered, “Did you have fun?” Clarissa grinned up at her. She settled her face as Jakot walked by, his big, round face looking like it had two black bull’s eyes in it, and her red coat was a red flag.

  Soon he was pulling a sled from the barn, its rusted runners making brown marks through the clean, white snow. He stopped and glared at Clarissa as she got up from the ground. “Here comes the cripple,�
� he muttered to the other boys. They laughed as if she couldn’t even hear them, as if she was deaf as well as crippled. There’s nothing wrong with my tongue, she thought, and I’ll give you all a lash with it if you don’t leave me alone.

  Peter came up beside the sled, his face long. He knew he would have to take his turn hauling Clarissa. “It’s bad enough to have to tramp through the snow ourselves,” he grumbled. “You could walk on your feet if you tried hard enough.” He pushed her and she fell down on the sled.

  Jakot turned his back and started to pull Clarissa. She hurried to straighten herself on the sled. “You’ll not tag Clarissa a cripple,” Missus Frances called from the orphanage steps. “She is much more than her limbs and their posture, just as you are much more than your sometimes very bad dispositions. Some of you boys are so lazy,” she muttered, “you would be happy to be a sled in summer and a wheelbarrow in winter.”

  Clarissa ignored the boys, keeping to her own thoughts. She daydreamed of running – and flying, her legs like wings, lifting her above the likes of mean boys – and girls.

  “You’re not my sister or my brother. I don’t know why I have to pull you,” Jakot complained. He grunted and gave the sled a jerk. Clarissa’s head popped back. Owen, Cora’s ruddy-faced brother, ran up beside Jakot and took Clarissa’s crutches. He would take his turn pulling once they got over the first hill. Whenever he pulled Clarissa, he did it with patience, and he was nice to her.

  The children walking ahead looked like moving cut-outs going up the steep tolt to the school. They disappeared inside long before Clarissa’s sled got there. Snow clung to the corners of the school windows like angels’ hair. Twig-like marks multiplied as little birds dropped to the soft surface of new snow. Clarissa watched a thin cat, hunched on a fence post, leap into an emptiness left by a snowbird beating the air to grab its freedom. A feather drifted past the cat’s nose.

  Clarissa forgot about the hungry cat as she sat in school. All morning she was afraid her empty stomach would rumble. She was glad when lunchtime came. She took the slice of buttered bread from her bookbag; Cora’s mother always put one slice of buttered bread in each child’s bag. Clarissa and Cora toasted their bread on the red-hot pot-bellied stove, coughing as the hot butter smoked the air. Clarissa finished her lunch still hungry; one cut of cobbler’s bread was only a teaser. She followed Cora out to the porch and dipped her enamel cup into a bucket of water, and lifted it full to the brim. She drank quickly. Then she went to the bucket for a second cup, hoping a bellyful of water would keep her from feeling hungry. She looked at Cora. “By the time we get back to the orphanage, we’ll be hungry enough to faint twice over, and there’ll be no supper for me.”

  “I know.” Cora shook her head. “I wish Momma could give yer food, but she can’t – not against Missus Frances’s orders.” The girls followed the other children to their places as Miss Ellis called lunchtime to a close with the ringing of her bell. The school ma’am’s look ran around the room before it dug into Clarissa. “You will come up to my desk and read your language assignment: a description of an animal you would like to be,” she said briskly.

  Clarissa leaned on her crutches and went forward. When she reached the school ma’am’s desk, she looked at the class. And then she lowered her head to read from her scribbler: “I would not wish to be anything but human,” she began. “Animals have a greater chance of being killed and eaten. But if I were to be an animal, I would be one that was not there in the beginning of the world to get its name. Everyone would look at me and someone would ask, ‘What kind of animal is that?’ No one would be able to guess, because I was created in mystery. I would look like the most beautiful dog who ever lived. My fur would be blue and shine like diamonds. I would not bark or speak. Whenever I came close to anyone who was sick, they would feel better. They would be happy and smile. My thoughts would float into people’s ears like music they could listen to all day. No one could ever hurt me. I would run fast, and when I wanted to, I would fly in the sky like an eagle. I would never be hungry.” Clarissa looked at Miss Ellis and smiled. Her smile faded as the boys began to snigger. Miss Ellis silenced them with a sharp look.

  As Clarissa moved past the school ma’am, her right crutch struck Miss Ellis’s foot. Clarissa tripped and hit an ink bottle on the desk; it struck the edge and tipped into the woman’s lap. Clarissa couldn’t take her eyes off the blue stain creeping over the school ma’am’s mauve dress, its beautiful white collar and cuffs now flecked. She couldn’t help thinking: What a lot of interesting words that bottle of ink could have made, instead of a blotch and dots that scream, “You’re clumsy!”

  Clarissa’s eyes and the school ma’am’s lifted from the spreading ink at the same time. Pupil and teacher faced each other; Miss Ellis pursed her lips and a black hair on her chin lifted like a wire. Clarissa tried to look sorry, though she didn’t know why she had to be sorry for something that was an accident.

  “Up in the corner!” the school ma’am ordered her in a voice that seemed strong enough to pick her up and put her there. A few minutes earlier, Peter had kicked the desk irons, and the school ma’am had ordered him into the corner. Now she asked for his dunce cap. He passed it to her with a saucy grin and Miss Ellis lowered it onto Clarissa’s head. “There you go, off to the corner.”

  Clarissa smiled broadly at the thought of having crutches at one end and a dunce cap at the other.

  The school ma’am dabbed at her dress with a cloth she kept in her desk. Then she looked at the class, her eyelids drooping over her eyes. “One thing about Clarissa,” she said, “you can punish her one minute, but she’s smiling the next.”

  Clarissa decided to spend her corner time using her imagination. She began to write a story in her mind for Treffie, imagining that it was the sky she was facing and not a dreary old corner. Clouds are made from angels’ hair. When angels clean their hairbrushes, the hair falls into the sky. Young angels have dark hair and older angels have white hair. That’s why there are light and dark clouds. Sometimes the sun comes out and burns up the clouds. Then another bunch of hair falls from an angel’s brush. Angels never go bald and they never die. That is why we will always have clouds.

  After Miss Ellis let Clarissa return to her place, she copied down her story for Treffie. The school ma’am came down, picked it up and read it with her nose in the air. “You’re not short on imagination, but imagination can be a deceitful thing,” she warned her. “It can make a person believe things that aren’t true.”

  “But it’s only a story I wrote for Treffie because she has angel’s hair,” Clarissa said earnestly.

  “Hmm . . . the new orphan. In that case,” said Miss Ellis, “I will give you an adequate mark.”

  Once school was dismissed for the day and the children hurried outside, boys who usually ran on ahead lagged behind laughing. One harbour boy taunted her. “So you want to be a blue furry animal, do yer now? ’Tis der school ma’am’s skin dat’s blue. T’anks ter you.”

  Clarissa leaned against the school and took her scribbler out of her bookbag. She tore its pages to pieces, scattering her stories into the air. The wind lifted them for a moment, and then they fell like snowflakes to the ground. “See if I’ll write anything like that again,” she muttered.

  Jakot stood jiggling one skin-booted leg beside the sled. Clarissa settled down on it without a word. She passed her crutches to Peter who sometimes carried them; other times he let them hobble over the snow. Today, he lifted them to push the sled. Once he jabbed Clarissa’s back and she let out a sharp cry. It mingled with bully boy’s laugh. When they got to the top of the first hill, Jakot let go of the sled. Clarissa sat rigid with fear as the sled picked up speed; her eyes widened in horror at the sight of a tree straight ahead. She swung herself to one side and went head over heels into a snowbank. Blood dripped into the snow from where a tooth had cut into her tongue and lip.

  Jakot laughed. “That’s how to get her partway from school.”

 
“You big blubber-eater, Jakot – you Eskimo Plague!” shouted Owen as he helped Clarissa up and back on the sled. “I ought to give yer face the turn of me hand. You could have killed Clarissa. A fine fix you’d be in then.”

  Peter came up beside them, and laughed scornfully. “’Tis no more than you’d expect from someone whose people drinks girls’ pee to make ’em strong, and lifts the skins on the bottom of their igloos to use toilet holes made in the ice.”

  Jakot backed away from the boys ganging up on him. “I didn’t mean ter let her go,” he whined. “The rope slipped from me cuff.”

  Clarissa felt a surge of pity. She had to put up with the Eskimo, and he had to put up with other boys calling him The Eskimo Plague and playing tricks on him. A scar on his lip stood out raw white in the cold air. It was a reminder of when he was younger, and one of the older orphans had tricked him into putting his sloppy mouth on a cold metal bar; his lips had frozen onto the bar. His flesh had torn when he tried to get away.

  Peter pulled Clarissa, with jerks and stops, until he had her inside the orphanage gates. Then he tipped the sled over and Clarissa fell into the snow. Owen dropped her crutches beside her. She lifted them slowly, knowing there was no reason for her to rush to get inside the orphanage. She had to go to bed without supper. I’m so hungry, I can almost swallow my tongue for food, she thought as she started up the steps. The other children rushed ahead of her, even Cora.

  Clarissa hadn’t meant to go outside without having her breakfast. She had been drawn to the beauty of the snow, new and unmarked. Now she would go hungry as punishment. Whenever she was late for breakfast and didn’t get supper, the night stretched before her like a long journey she dreaded.

  As soon as she reached the inside of the orphanage, Miss Elizabeth spoke, “Get up the stairs!”

  It was no good for Clarissa to put on a long face. So many times she had struggled to get home from school, knowing it was useless to rush. Though she was feeling famished there would be no supper for her.