Clarissa wasn’t sure what to think, what to say, what to feel. She had wanted so much to go home, praying the Protestant way to get there. She had never been a real orphan; now she wouldn’t have to be a Protestant either.
“You came here because your parents were concerned about your health. You were kept here at Dr. Grenfell’s request. You are going home because your mother is concerned about your religious instruction. Likely there will be many adjustments to be made on both sides. Understand, Clarissa, that you will be going home to an outhouse and a water bucket and a galvanized tub for bathing. Though your family has social and economic standing in the community, the place itself is backward. You will not have the privileges you have enjoyed here.”
Missus Frances turned the pages of a file in front of her. It was from the orphan logbook. “Let’s see what has been written about you: ‘. . . a fair-skinned child with chestnut hair and brown eyes.’
“You came to the Grenfell Hospital in 1915, where you were treated for infantile paralysis. You were home once. That was in 1917 when you were four, and Dr. Grenfell was away. When he returned, he wrote a letter asking your mother to send you back to the hospital. Let me see. Yes, here it is. You were brought back in 1918, when you were five. That was in the last year of the war. It was a strange time to send a child away; torpedoes could be anywhere.
“On October 18, 1920, you came to the orphanage from the hospital. You will like to hear what else has been written about you. ‘She is very meek towards older people. An obedient child – gets on remarkably well. She has won the affection of the staff by her responsiveness and courage. She is a very bright child and good in school. She helps around the orphanage. Clarissa is very good-looking.’”
Clarissa looked at the mistress. “They . . . you think that about me?” she whispered. “That’s how I am seen? I wish I had known that all these years. I thought I was in everyone’s way.” To herself she added, If I had known anyone thought I was smart and good-looking, I would have been nicer to myself in the mirror.
“You never complained.” The mistress’s voice was gentle.
But I did inside. There were times I wanted to squeeze the sides of Miss Elizabeth’s face together until her eyes were back to back, making her nose look as long as a rat’s tail.
She suddenly felt an attachment she wanted to hold on to. There was no such place as home outside the orphanage. She was familiar with this place and the people around her, even if she didn’t like all of them.
Missus Frances sighed and looked at Clarissa. “You are only one child among many who have passed through this place. But you have stood out from the other children in many ways. You must know, Clarissa, that life in a place such as this doesn’t always go the way you want it to, but in a family there is the same reality. Harsh times can stand out like the black spot on a sheet of white paper. Despite its imperfections, Grenfell’s Mission has saved numerous lives.”
Missus Frances paused, and then continued, “Everyone here is different. Becky gets made fun of for her freckles. Johnny has ears like jug handles and his tongue is long enough to lick the sleepy men out of his own eyes. Harold is so slothful he couldn’t earn the salt for his porridge. Other children have problems you don’t know about. Most of our children have suffered in one way or another.”
“But I am different in a way that hurts. Freckles and big ears don’t keep other children from running. I want to be normal!”
“You have to think of the things you can do. Your mind is not crippled by mental drawbacks as some children’s are. It dances with spirit, and it runs free to take you places many of the other children will never go.”
“My mind?” Clarissa asked, as if she hadn’t thought about her mind as an asset, like a healthy limb.
“Reading has opened up the world for you. You can go back in time to visit Joan of Arc, the courageous Maid of Orleans, as she gallops into battle. You can stay in the present and read about the place where the Simms boys from St. Anthony went to war and gave their lives to save others. Your world is not limited. It is only different like Helen Keller’s. There are no birds singing and no human voices in her ear and she cannot see the world as you can. Helen freed herself from her disabilities by concentrating on her capabilities. She set herself free to travel around the world, first in her mind and now in her body. Despite being blind and deaf, she was graduated from one of the most prestigious universities in the United States. You will learn more of that woman, I’m sure. Maybe you will meet her someday.”
“I’d like to meet her and The Statue of Liberty!” Clarissa exclaimed, letting out a gasp at the possibility of seeing a beautiful lady, her raised hand holding a flaming torch high in the sky. She often wished there was such a statue here, like a lighthouse, out on the point. “Someday,” she said with conviction, “I will sail into New York Harbour and see the Statue of Liberty, all one hundred and fifty-two feet of her!”
“It isn’t so far away,” the mistress said encouragingly. She stood up and came around to touch Clarissa’s shoulder. “You have been here long and you have suffered much. But now you are going home to a family who was willing to give you up to the care of Dr. Grenfell for your sake.”
Clarissa lifted hopeful eyes to the mistress, glad she was taking time to talk with her. She asked breathlessly, “I will get better – I will be able to walk like my brothers and sisters, won’t I?” She was sure someone had told her that when she finished growing up she would get better. She had been longing, waiting to be like other people, to be so well her body would forget she ever had paralysis.
The mistress shook her head. “You will never walk on your own. Someday you may even need a chair with wheels to take the weight off your body. Knowing you, Clarissa, you will be going down hills with your brakes open.”
“A wheelchair!” Clarissa gasped, her eyes like bright moons that dark clouds were passing over. Her chest rose and fell rapidly as she struggled to breathe against the mistress’s words, hope nipped in a small place near her heart. “You mean my limbs are damaged for good?” Her voice was barely above a whisper.
“Damaged, Child, but not for good or bad.”
Other children got better when Dr. Grenfell was finished with them. Her eyes flooded with tears. Missus Frances was saying she would have to give up her one great dream. She let her head drop into her arms.
The mistress didn’t know what it was like to walk with crutch knobs twisting in her armpits, her legs in pain, her left hand weak. She had never had to stand out from everyone else as “the cripple.” Someday I will be better, Clarissa thought stubbornly. Her spirit rose inside her like a flame, blowing out the darkness of the mistress’s words.
That night Clarissa lay in bed unable to sleep. Moonlight shone through the long window, making a beam across the room, illuminating the faces of Imogene and the other girls sound asleep. Harmless looking until their tongues rear and hiss, she thought spitefully.
She would miss the land beside the big ocean which sometimes rolled and stretched like a kitten in the sun; other times it arched its back and hissed like a tomcat under ships riding on it. She hoped it would be gentle on her way back to her real home.
She finally fell asleep, and into dreams. Treffie is shooting through the sky like a Northern Light; she goes through a hole cut out of the dark sky by a bright star. On the other side of the sky, a gentle-faced woman takes her hand. Treffie smiles up at her mother. That dream ended and another one began. Peter is lying on the ground bleeding. A red slab of skin torn away from his face lies beside him. Huskies growl and bite at Clarissa’s crutches as she stumbles past Peter’s body. Someone takes Peter away. The dogs are shot. Clarissa ventures back to the empty kennel. Steadying her crutches, she reaches to pick up a piece of flint lying in the dirt. The dogs must have chewed off the sealskin string that had held it around Peter’s neck.
Clarissa awoke with her nails digging into her palm. She opened her hand, expecting to see the flint. Her empty palm show
ed four crescents marked by her fingernails. For some reason she thought then of the brass-sheeted box on Tea House Hill. She knew she would have to go back there before she went away.
28
PREPARING FOR HOME
“Come on. Off with you to the hospital,” Miss Elizabeth called to Clarissa after her breakfast the next morning. “You will have a vaccination for diphtheria and get fitted with new braces. Now let me see that smile of yours.”
Clarissa’s heart leaped in trepidation. It must be true; I’m going home! I’ll have to tell Cora.
Miss Elizabeth opened the front door to the orphanage and Clarissa swung past her, trying to be careful as she went down the steps. If she broke a leg she’d be put in the infirmary. She would never forget the time a disease had spread among the harbour residents, and all the children in the orphanage had to be inoculated against it. She had not minded having her back punched with a needle. But that night she had awakened with the urge to vomit. She made it to the toilet and back to bed. She slid down on her mattress and back to sleep, despite a rowdiness in her stomach. When she awoke the next morning, she realized that she had messed her bed. The other girls, holding their noses, went off to breakfast. Soon Miss Elizabeth came in with a tight face. Without saying a word, she took the dirty sheet off the bed, folded it into a rope and wrapped it around Clarissa’s waist. The mistress ordered her to sit on the floor. Then she tied her to the leg of the bed with the ends of the sheet.
Clarissa had leaned against the bed frame, too sick to undo the sheet. Not long after, Missus Frances came and untied her. After she left, Clarissa was not well enough to put on her braces. She crawled into the bath and toilet room, dragged herself to the toilet, and threw up. Dora, a young helper, tapped on the door and came in. “You poor orphan,” was all she said as she helped Clarissa into the bathtub.
Clarissa shook her head to scatter the memories of things that were behind her, as she reached the doors of the hospital and struggled to get inside. She was sitting in the waiting room when Dr. Curtis came in. “Hello,” he said briskly. He called her into a small room where he quickly gave her a vaccination shot and fitted her with new braces. He dismissed her without saying anything about her going home. She left the hospital, feeling so awkward in her new braces, she was afraid of falling on her face.
It took her a long time to get to the orphanage. She began to cry as she tried to get up the steps. She sat down and looked at her red skin, chafed and well on its way to being worn through by the new braces. She stood up, leaning against her crutches, and started back to the hospital. When she finally got to the front hall of the building, Dr. Curtis was coming out of one of the wards. She took a deep breath and called, “Dr. Curtis, my braces hurt.”
Without looking at her, he snapped, “I have no time for you.”
She tried to console herself. He’s busy with all the patients. That’s why he’s sharp with me. Then she felt a surge of self-pity. A lot of these people haven’t had pain for as long as I have.
Some of them will die, said a voice inside her head.
She sat down on a bench, thinking she would like to see Dr. Curtis walking on crutches with his legs in braces for a day. She was still there, tears falling from her eyes, when the doctor came through the hall an hour later. He nodded for her to follow him into the examination room. “Your braces are too long,” he admitted. “I’ll shorten them a bit.” After he was satisfied with his work, he took her hand and said in a gentle voice, “Goodbye.”
Dr. Grenfell’s words, You hop around like a grasshopper, echoed through her head to the beat of her crutches on the corridor floor. Her mind was a fierce self arguing against a body she didn’t want, as she tried to swing legs that felt heavier than ever. The hobble back to the orphanage seemed to take forever; her lame left hand felt too tired to hold the crutch steady. Finally she was inside the familiar building. She went to the dining room and sat in her seat at the head of the table, her crutches beside her. She stared at the long, empty table, thinking about her life as an orphan, remembering Treffie and Peter. Other children’s faces came to her, but she tried to believe she would miss only Cora. She lifted her bottom off the seat, got on her crutches and went past the closed doors of the mistresses’ quarters.
I don’t want to leave, she decided. The only family I know is here. The strange, far-off place Missus Frances called Clarissa’s home was a shadow; her family was part of a dream she had a long time ago.
She left the orphanage and followed the path down the grassy bank to a dark wooden shelter; shafts of daylight poured up between the planks in the floor. Peter and the other orphan boys used it for their camp. She made her way from there to the beach, and stood looking at it as if seeing it for the first time. Tinkling water dappled shale, and smooth, round rocks scattered as if by a mighty, sweeping sea. Beside the wharf the briny sea played the ropes that held little boats.
Clarissa made her way back to the orphanage and sat on the veranda. No dancing. Not ever. I will always be like this. No, not even like this. I will be in a wheelchair. Her lower lip dropped; tears rolled down her cheeks and fell into her mouth. She kept her eyes wide open, willing herself not to blink, not to care – to become a statue. Her eyes fastened on an island of ice out in the bay. Saddleback gulls and Irish Lords hovered over the iceberg. They settled on it for a moment. Then they winged their way above it, as if blessing it on its journey around the coves of the island of Newfoundland.
Missus Frances came outside. “Come on. We have a job to do. You have to be outfitted for home.” One eyebrow lifted like a soft, light feather. “Your mother is going to have a time combing out the clits in that thick hair of yours, if you keep the habit of blowing on the pussy willows. You have them caught in your hair like burrs.”
Clarissa dragged her body up the stairs to the big clothing storeroom. I’ve been missed from my mother’s heart and her arms. I know I have. She had flung those words into her pillow more than once, remembering vaguely her mother’s tears on her face when she had been sent back to the orphanage. She burst into tears, dropped her crutches and fell into Missus Frances’s arms – arms familiar to her eyes, yet strange to touch.
“Now, now,” the mistress chided. “Think of all the children here who would like to have their own flesh and blood family.” She bent to pick up Clarissa’s crutches. “We’ve no time to waste. We must pick through the clothes donated by our American friends so you can be fitted out and sent home.”
Clarissa always wore donated dresses. The navy one with red and green buttons like Christmas decorations was getting short, and the brown one with the beige silk collar made her feel as drab as a cloudy day. Missus Frances passed her a long, green dress, a dark blue coat and a brown hat.
Clarissa spied a pair of black-tapped, pink satin shoes lying carelessly on the floor. She couldn’t take her eyes off them. They were high around like open-necked boats, and had long toes topped by tiny, pink sequins shaped into flowers; in the middle of each flower was a bead. They were the most beautiful shoes she had ever seen.
“Missus Frances,” she called, her longing for them so great that she could barely swallow, “may I have those pink Sunday shoes?”
The mistress shook her head. “Even if you could fit your feet into them, you can’t walk in them.”
“Please, Ma’am, may I have them just to sit in?”
“And let someone else’s feet go bare because of vanity?”
“If they don’t fit anyone, may I have them?”
The mistress shook her head, her grey eyes weary-looking. “I’m sorry, Child.”
Clarissa left the room and made her way to her dormitory wishing she could stamp her feet into the shape of everyone else’s. But there were other things to think about. There were only a few days left until the boat came for her. She would have to say goodbye to the girls in her dormitory. Not that they cared. She didn’t know how she was going to tell Cora.
“I’m going home,” she told the girls
that night, her chin up. They looked at her from their beds. They were silent at first. Then Becky, who rarely spoke to her, rushed to wrap her arms around her. “You don’t need to go home. Sure, you’ve got a fine fit here.”
All the girls’ faces softened towards her. She knew then, the longing they had without the hope she had. Their mothers were dead. They had snitched on her and accused her of being a pet, but now that she was leaving, going to a real home, they came to hug her, one by one. “I wish I had a real mother,” Imogene said wistfully.
“Yes, Emma Jane,” Becky said. She pulled on an eyelid as if she had something in her eye.
“Let’s play jackstones, Clarissa, before you go,” Imogene suggested, beckoning all the girls in the room to join in. Imogene isn’t so bad when she smiles, Clarissa thought. Imogene’s fingers were long and knobby-knuckled, and the marbles stayed on the back of her hands. It was easy for her to win the game – and Clarissa’s cat’s-eye. “Take your favourite marble home, Clarissa,” Imogene said, letting it slide off the palm of her hand into Clarissa’s lap.
Clarissa dropped the marble into her pocket. “Try to walk on my crutches,” she said softly. “Have a turn, all of you. Whoever does it best can have my bumblebee marble.”
“Your bumblebee marble!” The girls’ voices rose together.
They were all red-faced by the time they had stumbled across the room. “I wish I’d known how hard it is getting around that way,” Imogene said in a meek voice.
The other girls nodded when Imogene added, “Keep your bumblebee marble, too.”
Clarissa tried not to cry, but tears suddenly filled her eyes and ran down her face. Missus Frances, passing the open door, shook her head and said in a sad tone, “If I were leaving, I would cry a barrel of tears.”
Clarissa lifted her head. “And make more work for God.”
Far From Home Page 15
