Far From Home

by Nellie P. Strowbridge

  The doctor, having a mind for listening to orphans and discerning the truth, dismissed him. His departure had brought a look of relief to the boys’ faces and a frown to the mistresses’ and housemothers’ faces, as if their tasks at hand had widened.

  Mr. Manuel had once given her a two-cent copper. “A big, brown cartwheel penny for your thoughts,” he had said with a chuckle, “though I don’t think yours can be bought.”

  A penny for some buttons, she had thought. She bought a shiny black French jet button and a calico button at the Grenfell shop. She had given the calico button to Treffie to put on her bracelet of buttons. A few days after Treffie died, Clarissa had noticed that the nail fastening the front of Hipper’s overalls was gone; in its place was a large button that looked like the one that had been on Treffie’s father’s overcoat. It wouldn’t be there long. The housemother had sewn a button on Hipper’s overalls before; he had twisted it off and gone back to his nail fastener.

  “May I have one of Treffie’s buttons?” Clarissa asked Miss Elizabeth one day when she was thinking hard on Treffie.

  “The buttons have all been put to good use, the same as Peter’s belongings,” she was told. “Young Johnny, who is big for his age, is wearing poor Peter’s shoes and clothes.”

  Clarissa was holding the beads with the cross on them when she heard Cora’s voice behind her. ‘I won’t ever see yer again. I won’t, will I?”

  Clarissa turned slowly towards Cora, who was leaning against the door frame with a sad, questioning look. She faced her, not sure what to say. She could not make promises she might not be able to keep.

  “Missus Frances made Suzy and me go to the hospital for tests this morning. I heard the nurses at the hospital talking about tests Suzy had before. They think her lungs are clotted – she’ll likely die in a year. I’ll likely die too,” Cora added in a resigned voice.

  “In a year!” Clarissa reached instinctively to put her arms around her friend. She fell flat on the floor. “You can’t ever die!” she cried. “We are sisters in spirit – sisters of the heart.”

  Cora reached down to help Clarissa up on her crutches. She drew back as coughing racked her body. Coughs and sobs mingled.

  Cora stopped coughing and said in an even tone, “God will take me to Heaven where my father is. I’ll just go a little earlier than you.”

  “But you have to live here first. There’s lots of time to go there. You should be at least as old as Mrs. Grenfell and have as many children.”

  Clarissa could understand why Cora’s mother sometimes seemed sad. She was likely thinking of her husband gone, thinking of Cora, and little Suzy going. . . . Sometimes Mrs. Payne looked to be fading.

  Cora began coughing again and didn’t stop until blood foamed on her lips. She dug into her pocket for her brown handkerchief and wiped her mouth. She sighed. “I tried to not to cough in front of the mistresses, but they found out that I’ve been having coughing spells.”

  “You may need to have your turn at the hospital, Cora,” Clarissa said honestly.

  “Don’t be telling me that. I don’t want to go there and then disappear like Treffie.”

  “Treffie was run down when she came. Then she got TB meningitis. That killed her quick. I heard Ilish and Georgia talking.”

  Sadness closed around the two girls; Cora’s eyes bubbled with tears. “I want you to stay here.”

  “But I can’t, not for long.”

  “How long is long?” Cora’s voice sounded muffled.

  “I don’t know. Whenever I’m called to go on the boat. Maybe tomorrow.”

  Clarissa had often stood on the wharf feeling dizzy as she looked up at the spar of the Prospero, and its flag, the Union Jack, waving in the wind. Now she was going away on the Meigle, a big ship that voyaged among icebergs.

  The next morning, Cora emptied Clarissa’s locker and brought its contents to the dormitory. Georgia was helping Clarissa get ready for home. She was combing Clarissa’s hair and prating on about how the mistresses let her grow her hair long enough to swing like a rope now that she was old enough to take good care of it. She was telling Clarissa that Dr. Grenfell was sending her to study nursing in the United States when Miss Elizabeth rushed into the room. “The Meigle has come before it was expected. You must hurry.”

  “But my corsets! I need to buckle them on!” Clarissa sputtered.

  “You don’t have time,” the mistress said sharply, grabbing the surgical corsets and shoving them into Clarissa’s arms. “Here, carry them. Georgia will take your bag.”

  There was no point in arguing. Clarissa tucked the corsets under her arm, feeling as humiliated as if they were her navy drawers. She squeezed her arm against her body, hoping she wouldn’t drop the undergarment.

  She sweated her way along the gravel road in her heavy coat. She stopped to look back over her shoulder at Cora standing by the orphanage gates, sad and silent.

  ***

  The sun was sitting in a blanket of fog as if it had just awakened and was getting ready to roll out of bed as Clarissa was lifted into a lifeboat, which was winched up to the Meigle, a long and ugly steamer. Able-bodied passengers walked up the rope ladder. A gust of wind swung the ropes and Clarissa heard squeals from passengers. A sailor shouted, “Davy Jones, here I come – down into your locker room!”

  The Meigle, a Union Jack flying from its spar, bid farewell with three blasts of a horn. It was an eight-hour trip to Battle Harbour, where Clarissa would disembark and wait for another boat to take her the rest of the way home. She was glad when the sun broke through the fog, sending clouds drifting across the sky like fluffy little creatures on their own journey somewhere. She wouldn’t have wanted rain from a dark, cold sky to mingle with her flowing tears as the schooner voyaged past the orphanage. The orphans had gathered on the banks to wave goodbye. Instead of the brown handkerchiefs they always carried, they lifted white handkerchiefs in the air as if they were sails helping Clarissa on her way. All except Cora, who waved a brown handkerchief.

  Standing on the deck high above the waves, Clarissa looked towards the children, letting her tears fall freely. She knew they would miss her. She would miss them terribly, even the ones who had made fun of her and called her a cripple. But she would miss Cora most of all.

  As the ship moved out to sea, she stood at the rail, one hand on a crutch, the other holding tightly to a belaying pin. Gulls kliooed above waves swimming in the bay like fish, white finned against dark water.

  “Ha, ’twon’t be the best night to see the Titanic,” predicted a rough-looking sailor who came to stand beside her. He pulled on his overgrown beard. “’Tis a good omen if we do. But it bes always on a calm night, like the April one when she sank. Its ghost bes so big it could knock a ship flat in the water. But it just passes on by.”

  The sailor helped Clarissa down dirty stairs to a small seat where someone had laid her bag. She sat down and placed her crutches beside her. Then she pushed her corsets into the bag. She leaned back with the bag in her arms, holding everything that was familiar.

  “Lie here,” the sailor said, putting a pillow on the seat. She lay down, exhausted with thoughts of going home. Her mind felt as if it were latched to St. Anthony like an ose egg to a rock as the ship moved out to sea, bumping over waves, slapping down on them as if they were giant boulders. She shuddered to think that she was in the middle of a large ocean in a ship that could sink like the Titanic, whose grave she hoped she wouldn’t have to cross. She curled up on the seat, her braces still on her legs, and let her body go limp. “Hush, hush, sharp wind knitting seas into a hundred knots. Drift, drift, sweet wind; flow free your scarf of a hundred breaths,” she murmured as she drifted into sleep.

  Clarissa knew nothing else until a voice hauled her to her senses.

  “You’m a sleepyhead fer sure,” the sailor was saying. “But yer here now in Battle Harbour ter wait for der Segona to take yar home. So, ’op, ’op.”

  She followed him upstairs and was winche
d down into a smaller boat that would take her ashore. In the twilight, she stared at Battle Harbour, a cold, empty-looking place. There was hardly a tree in sight. Outside the hospital there were only a few crude dwellings, including fishing stages; the stink of fish was overpowering. The sailor helped Clarissa onto Croucher’s wharf. She steadied herself and followed him over a bumpy path to the nursing station.

  Nurse Barter, one of Dr. Grenfell’s summer nurses, greeted her with a smile and a nod. “Come with me; your room is all ready upstairs.”

  The nurse stopped outside a small room. Inside, a young girl was already asleep in a narrow bed. A lit lamp stood on a tall bureau.

  “Goodnight then,” the nurse said, and left. Clarissa stared at the girl. There were sores on her hands and her mouth. Clarissa went into the room shuddering at the thought of catching the girl’s sores. She was tempted to sleep on the floor. Instead, she slid into bed with her head at the foot and curled herself up like the tail of a cooked lobster. Despite her nap on the schooner, she soon fell asleep.

  “Come on then, down to the kitchen for breakfast,” Nurse Barter called, stirring Clarissa from sleep. The other girl was already gone from the bed, evidence of her illness left behind on the pillow.

  Clarissa washed her face in the basin sitting on a nightstand beside the bed, wiping away the salty crusts of dried tears around her eyes.

  She was coming down the stairs when she saw Dr. Grenfell at the bottom, speaking to a German doctor she’d seen once before at the orphanage. Dr. Grenfell looked up, and Clarissa’s smile vanished when he remarked to the other physician, “She was a mess when we got her.”

  What does he mean by that remark? she thought, as she made her way to the kitchen. She sat at a small table and Nurse Barter brought her bread and jam from the pantry.

  ***

  Dr. Grenfell asked Nurse Barter to get Clarissa ready for an examination in the infirmary. The German doctor was in the room with them when Dr. Grenfell said again, “Yes, she was a mess when we got her.” The nurse helped her climb up on the table. Dr. Grenfell looked at her body and wondered aloud about the dents in her hip. “Why do you have hollows in your hip? Were they made by running sores? Oh, I know,” he murmured sheepishly. “I did that. I put them there myself when I was trying to stretch the muscle.”

  Clarissa remained calm during the doctors’ examination, displaying the sunny disposition she was supposed to have, but that night she lay on the bed crying as Dr. Grenfell’s words banged at her mind. After awhile, her eyelids slipped together like curtains against the light, and she fell asleep.

  ***

  Night after night, she hobbled back and forth across the veranda at the nursing station, crying. Her heart longed for St. Anthony. One evening she watched the green and lavender Northern Lights: Merry Dancers prancing across the sky, promising that the next day would be calm and sunny. Another night, the moon was so full and seemed so near, she reached up her hand as if she could hold it like a sand dollar.

  On the tenth day, Clarissa saw the Segona cutting through the waters, its flag flying and spars lit up with multicoloured lights. Her heart felt as if it were caught in her throat. She was really going home. Her insides seemed to fill with fluttering moths, their discarded caterpillar bodies heavy in the pit of her stomach.

  “Come on,” Nurse Barter urged Clarissa. “Make haste!” She grabbed Clarissa’s arm, pulling on her, hardly giving her time to get the crutches under her arms. Once she got to the wharf, a rough-faced man lifted her into a small boat, and the crew rowed them out to the Segona.

  Clarissa had just gotten settled in the bunk of a deck cabin when she was called for supper. The dining room had two long tables: one for the passengers, and one for the captain and the crew. The steward, dressed in a spotless white coat, asked her if she wanted fish or roast beef. The main course came with a salad topped by the cook’s special dressing. There were soda biscuits and cake or pie for dessert. For a moment she forgot about everything but the food. She ate her supper joyfully, finishing it off with what the cook called a “civil” orange. Miss Elizabeth would have called it a Seville orange.

  The next morning when she went for her breakfast, she was happy not to have to eat porridge. She filled up on milk, toast, eggs and bacon as she sat facing the porthole. Suddenly the sight of waves splashing against the porthole made her stomach lift and turn. A voice that sounded as if it was a long ways off called out, “See that container, with the cardboard lining, down be yer feet? Dat’s fer yucking in.” She retched into the gum bucket, feeling as if her insides would split open with the force.

  The steward hurried towards her with a wet cloth. “Yesterday it was so windy there was a lop on me soup, but today, me girl, ’twill be calm enough for you to stare the sea in the face and show it yours mirrored dere as plain as day. We’ll ’ave a relish for yer puddick: a fine meal of Jiggs dinner.” The thought made Clarissa’s stomach roll like the schooner.

  From then on, she lay in her bunk without washing or changing her clothes and without eating. When her stomach settled a bit, thoughts of the strangers she would soon meet drifted into her mind. She remembered Missus Frances telling her, “Clarissa, you are going home to be with people to whom you belong.”

  But I don’t know those people, she thought. I don’t know what it feels like to belong to someone. Her heart leaped. Maybe I’ll have a sister who will share a bed with me. She’ll curl around my back and wrap her arms around me when I’m having bad dreams. We’ll be spoon sisters.

  One memory swirled inside her head until it became a clear image. She and her parents were in a little dory; they were going to Wild Cove on a picnic. The dory moved through the water, tickling it into laughter. When they reached the beach, Clarissa’s mother jumped out into the shallow water and lifted her out of the boat. She waded ashore, holding Clarissa in her arms, while Clarissa’s father hauled the dory onto the beach. They settled on a grassy mound and ate a lunch of bread slathered in molasses, and dried caplin her father roasted on a fire. Clarissa sat on a log and watched her parents swim. She touched a weed that had pretty, white flowers, and then put her fingers to her mouth. The yellow dust from the flowers made her stomach sick – the way she was feeling now.

  The creak of the cabin door opening startled Clarissa as she lay curled around herself.

  “Sure, ’tis a sad little gurl you be,” a gruff voice said.

  She looked up to see Captain Simmons. His head was topped with a hard cap trimmed with a gold braid matching the ones on the sleeves of his blue uniform. Clarissa thought it dressed up his face in a royal way. “Yes,” she answered in a muffled voice. A tear slipped from the corner of one eye and rolled down her cheek into her mouth.

  “But yer goin’ home.”

  “I thought I was, but now I know I’m leaving home. I won’t know anyone, and no one will want a stranger.” She began to sob.

  “Yer family is bringing home their own flesh, a part of ‘em dat was missing. Just like a part of you have been missing all dese years. I’ve met yer farder, sure, the train engineer – and a right nice man.” His voice softened. “Dry yer eyes, me maid. You’m too pretty a gurl to let yer eyes fill with water. The salt’ll fade the blue.” He squinted. “If yer eyes was blue, but yers is as brown as earth.”

  She didn’t answer, but she let him wipe her eyes dry with his red handkerchief. When he tipped his hat to her, she smiled and settled down on her bunk and went past the grinding, trembling sounds of the boat into a deep sleep.

  She slid into a wild dream. Viking warriors had pulled all the nails out of the schooner. It fell apart, dropping her into the Atlantic Ocean. She drifted on a boat rib. It slipped under the Tea House floor into the mysterious box. Her body was suddenly wrapped in musty fur, her head inside a skull.

  31

  A SISTER’S CONFESSION

  Clarissa’s eyelids flew open as her body made an abrupt shift in the bunk with the lurching of the schooner. There was a sudden stillness:
the engine had been cut. Then came the racket of voices and feet moving, and the clanging of iron chains thrown out to secure the Segona to the gump posts of the wharf.

  I must be home! I’ll see my family soon. A tremor went through her body. What if I don’t like anyone? Worse, what if no one likes me? Will they expect me to walk and run like them?

  She had often imagined running towards her family, her feet light, her arms swinging carelessly, her body unshackled – running straight into her mother’s arms. If only that could be! She heard people calling from the boat, and the distant sounds of unfamiliar voices answering from shore. A little later, a cabin boy knocked on the door and opened it. He glanced at Clarissa’s wrinkled clothes. “I see yer ready, even if ’tis in a sorry state,” he said, smiling and raising his eyebrows.

  I have been this ready since I left St. Anthony, she could have told him. She would not let him know she had not had a good wash since the day she waved goodbye to the children at the orphanage.

  The cabin boy picked up her crutches and passed them to her. Then he grabbed her bag and helped her out of the cabin, across the deck and down the gangplank. She was helped ashore by a jolly-looking man in a Lammy coat. The smell of lamb’s wool and sweat filled her nose.

  A man and a woman were looking in her direction. A dark-haired boy hurried to her side. “I’m your brother, John,” he said, grinning expectantly. Clarissa smiled at him, but she didn’t say a word. It was as if her throat had grown together over all the words she had wanted to say for so long. John stooped and picked up the bag lying beside her feet on the wharf. When he slung it over his shoulder, a cry came from its depths.