Orphan at My Door

by Jean Little

Later, After ten

  When we had blown out the candle and were waiting to go to sleep, I took a deep breath and asked Mary Anna about that little boy, Jasper. I’ve been longing to ever since we came home from the station that first day.

  “Is he your brother? Did he come with you? That lady said the boys came from somewhere else.”

  She did not answer.

  “Are you asleep, Mary Anna?” I said.

  She pretended she was. I listened to her breathing. She wasn’t. But I let her go on play-acting. I’ll ask again when I know her better.

  It is nice that I can relight my candle without waking her —

  As I wrote those words, the door opened a crack and Moses pushed her way in. She ignored me but went and jumped up next to Mary Anna. I think I saw Mary Anna shift a little to make room, but maybe I imagined it.

  June

  Tuesday, June 1, After breakfast

  We have to leave for school soon but I just have to write about what happened at breakfast. Mother called Mary Anna at half-past five. Yesterday she let her sleep until seven since she was not going to school until she had had a day to settle in. Now she has to go down and get the stove lighted, bring in water and put some on to heat for washing and tea, set the table and start the breakfast.

  Once Mary Anna had tiptoed away, though, Snortle saw no reason not to start the day, and tried to tug off my blankets. I gave in and got up too. I felt strange about Mary Anna having to get up so much earlier than me. It is funny because I never once felt guilty about Peggy getting up so early, and I could always hear her banging about. Mary Anna is nearer my age, of course, and sharing a room makes me feel different about her. Anyway, I got washed and dressed fast and was down a lot earlier than usual.

  Aunt Lib was already seated at the kitchen table. Maybe she never went to bed. She sat up stiff as a poker and glared at each person as he or she arrived, as though anybody not down and dressed by sunrise was a sluggard and a backslider.

  I stared at her, and for the first time I saw how very old she looks. Her skin looks like the old leather gloves Mother uses for gardening. She has dark spots all over her hands, and WHISKERS! She caught me staring.

  “Well, Miss, you’ll know me next time we meet,” she snapped.

  She sounded so cranky that Snortle growled at her.

  “Sorry, Auntie,” I said. But I nearly laughed.

  Before I sat at the table Mother unplaited my braids and brushed them out without saying anything. I can do it myself, but she does a far better job.

  After school

  I’ll start right in because I had more to tell when we had to leave.

  Aunt Lib caught sight of Mary Anna. She stared at her the way you might look at a slug. Then she said, “That girl is scrawny as a picked chicken. How the doctor thinks she will be any real help with the work, I fail to see.”

  She always talks about Father like that, calling him “the doctor.” Nobody knew what to say. She goes on and on about our bad manners, but she is far ruder. She saw we were shocked because her cheeks reddened a bit. But she was not ashamed of herself. She thinks whatever she does is right.

  “And why, pray tell, is she wearing a good dress to do housework?” she demanded.

  “Mary Anna is dressed for school,” Mother said quietly. “I helped her choose what dress to wear last evening.”

  I was there when Mother went through Mary Anna’s Barnardo trunk. The clothes were made to measure before she left England. But she must have grown taller and thinner during the voyage and at Hazelbrae. She said she was terribly seasick. But a couple of the dresses still fitted, and Mother said another two can be altered. None of them is really pretty, though. There are no ruffles or braid trim or nice buttons. There are boots and underclothes and a tam and a shawl. She only has one good dress to wear to church, and Mother told her she was going to have to wear the church one to school too, on the first day at least, until she and Mrs. Dougal can get to work and fix up some of the others.

  Mary Anna offered to stay home, but Mother was having none of that. I could have told Mary Anna to save her breath to cool her porridge. My parents are bound and bent on getting us all the best education possible. And that includes Home Girls.

  “School!” Aunt Lib squawked, straightening up as though someone had put a pistol to her head. Her eyes popped so wide open they looked as though they might fall out. “Surely she won’t be going to school.”

  Mother told her that Mary Anna was going to school with me this morning. She spoke in such a cool voice I thought Aunt Lib would drop the subject. She didn’t.

  “What use will she have for book learning? You can teach her to be a good housewife right here. Anna never went to school.”

  “I know,” Mother said.

  I can’t explain how she said those two words. But it seemed as though she’d said much more. After a funny little pause, she went on, “Mary is only twelve. She will be company for Victoria when Thomas goes to the collegiate in September.”

  “Thank heavens she’s not going to the collegiate,” David muttered.

  Mother just looked at him, one of those looks that makes you feel less than an inch tall.

  “Excuse me,” he said, and bolted.

  “It’s nonsensical,” Aunt Lib said, as though David did not exist. “I thought this Home Girl was to be a help, not just an extra mouth to feed.”

  Mother looked at the breakfast on Aunt Lib’s plate, but did not answer back or try to argue with her. I was glad. Aunt Lib never changes her mind about anything no matter how long you try to set her straight. But Aunt Lib still did not give up. She said she had heard Home Children were mostly workhouse brats who would do well to learn to write their names.

  “Your cousin Albert says they are all mentally defective. And many are diseased,” she said.

  Mother had sent Mary Anna out for more water, but she returned just in time to catch these last words. She set the pail down with a clang and went to poke the fire. Her face looked hotter than the stove.

  “Aunt Lib, that is more than enough. The child has ears and she is a stranger in our midst,” Mother snapped. “I will not have you speaking about her as though she is a stick of wood.”

  Aunt Lib tossed her head and gave a snort. Cousin Anna gave a gasp of fright. Mother glanced at her and spoke more gently, all about their agreeing to send Mary Anna to school, and it was not as though they had farm chores for her to do. Then she told them Father had hired Mrs. Dougal.

  “You know,” she ended up, “Mary Anna can read and reckon as well as most Canadian children her age.”

  Father came in then and asked Cousin Anna if she had slept any more soundly. Mother ordered Mary Anna and me up to strip the beds, since we were early still. I did mine like lightning so I could write down the horrible scene at breakfast before I forgot. I have never been ashamed of one of my grown-up relatives before, but listening to Aunt Lib being so heartless made me feel sick at my stomach. Now I must RUN!

  After supper

  Mother thinks I am studying, but I have more to tell.

  The three of us left for school together. Tom often goes with one of his friends, but today he came along as if he thought we needed his support. Maybe we did. We met Mrs. Dougal coming up our walk. She bobbed her head slightly and went on in without a word.

  I thought Mary Anna might chat with us as we went, but she just plodded down the road two paces behind. When I told her to come on, she looked at the ground and kept trudging step by step without speeding up one bit. Finally I stopped trying to jolly her along. Truth to tell, I almost forgot she was back there. We arrived just as the last bell finished ringing. Everyone had gone inside.

  When we walked in, the whole class stared at our Home Girl. The older girls looked her up and down as though she were some rare specimen on display at the fall fair. A two-headed calf maybe.

  “Oh, it’s just their Home Girl,” Polly Sampson said to Nellie. “My mother was talking to Mrs. Cope at church and she
said they were getting one. I didn’t think she’d come to school with us, though.”

  Mary Anna and I both looked away and pretended we had not heard. It was cowardly of me, maybe, but I couldn’t help it. I did not know what to say. I needed words to crush her and I could not think of any.

  Mr. Grigson took one glance and sent Mary Anna to sit at the back of the classroom in the row he saves for idiots and foreigners and the foundling boy who was left on the steps of the county home when he was a baby.

  Two years ago Mrs. Symes, the Baptist minister’s widow, took him to live with her here in Guelph. She told my mother he was “right handy” and she really likes him. His name is Jed Pryor and he’s smart, even though he never says a word. I saw him reading A Tale of Two Cities once. He’d taken it from the shelf at the back of the room. He hid it in his desk until he finished it, and Mr. Grigson never missed it.

  I did not object to where Mr. Grigson put Mary Anna. It wouldn’t have done her any good if I had. Maybe she’ll feel more at home back there and she’ll be safer. He mostly ignores the back-row pupils. He only notices them when he’s furious for no good reason and wants somebody to roar at. Nobody will complain to the school trustees about his treatment of those children.

  It turns out Mother was quite right about Mary Anna’s learning. She can figure as well as I can. She can read too, but not as well as I. She gets the words right but they come out slowly, without what Mother calls “expression.” Mother and Father have read aloud to us ever since we were babies. I suppose nobody has listened to Mary Anna reading. Hearing her is like watching someone walking across a sheet of ice. You keep wanting to put your hand out to steady her in case she falls. But you don’t and she doesn’t.

  “Well, that is proficient,” Mr. Grigson said after Mary Anna had read a few passages. He sounded surprised and somehow insulting. I got a funny feeling he was disappointed.

  Then Nellie Bigelow demanded that Mary Anna move over a few seats. She had been right behind Nellie’s desk.

  “Everybody knows those Home Kids have nits,” she said, tossing her mane of hair around as if she were a horse. She has a long face and her laugh is a definite whinny. It’s strange how nice a horse looks and how unpleasant the same features are on Nellie.

  I almost told her right out that Mary Anna is free from bugs because Mother checked. Then I saw Mary Anna’s eyes looking right at me and I knew she was praying I would not say a word. So I didn’t.

  We went home at noon, as usual. I talked a lot, as usual. Mary Anna might have told about her morning, but she eats in the kitchen. I am sure she would not have said a word about school anyway. Absolutely, positively, sure.

  As soon as we got back to school Tom ran to join the bigger boys. Mary Anna and I went over to where the girls were gathered under some trees in the corner of the schoolyard. She hung back though. She sat herself down in a fence corner where there was no shade. I suppose I should have called to her to join the rest of us, but I couldn’t. She had made her choice. If she had sat down next to me, I would not have moved away. I don’t think she likes us.

  I do not agree with David about Home Children, but I guess they really are different from us. If they weren’t, they would not have left their families in England. If something happened to my father and we had no money, we would go straight to Uncle Peter or our grandparents. Everybody has relatives.

  She took out a book and kept her head bent over it. Yet she never once turned a page. I watched out of the corner of my eye. We played red rover and tag and started on a game of hopscotch. I tried to enjoy myself, but I was glad when the teacher rang the bell.

  I looked at Mary Anna’s book later. It was Elsie Dinsmore. No wonder she did not keep turning pages. Elsie is such a namby-pamby prig that nobody could keep caring about her. Even Beth March in Little Women, who is a bit too good, is one hundred times more alive than Elsie.

  When we came home after four, Aunt Lib and Cousin Anna were in the kitchen. I burst in with things to tell but the looks on their faces shut me up.

  “Girl, fetch me a fresh cup of tea,” Aunt Lib rapped out before Mary Anna had put down her books.

  “All right, Auntie,” I sang out, moving to the stove fast.

  Aunt Lib reached out with her cane and caught my leg.

  “Not you, Missy, and well you know it,” she barked.

  Mary Anna was filling her cup without a word when I got away and came up here to write.

  Later

  The minute I got downstairs again, Cousin Anna said she was so sorry, but she had broken a tiny ornament in my room. It was my little statue of a shepherdess, which my old Sunday School teacher had given me as a keepsake before she got married and moved to Waterloo. I have had my shepherdess since I was seven. I loved her. I even named her Lucette. I could not say a word. I just turned my back and tried not to let her see I was crying.

  “I’m truly sorry, Victoria dear,” she said in a voice like treacle. “My scarf caught it and swept it off the dresser. It was only a cheap little thing or it wouldn’t have overbalanced so easily. You should put things well back from the edge, dear, if you want to keep them safe.”

  Lucette sat safely on my chest of drawers for over four years without once overbalancing. I hate Cousin Anna. What was she doing in my room anyway? She’s ugly. I could not say, “Don’t worry. It’s all right.” It was NOT all right.

  Why does she let herself look so awful? She wears spectacles which are scratched and always dirty and she wears shoes which clunk like horses’ hooves. Her clothes are either grey or black and they look drab. Her hair is pulled back into a tight knob. She smiles all the time, but none of the smiles are real or happy. Her eyes dart around, watching for you to do something she can tattle to Mother. I wish Snortle would bite her.

  I don’t believe she was ever a child. I think she was born a schemer and a whiner.

  It is funny how writing it all down in black and white makes me feel better. It’s like when Mother lanced the boil on Tom’s neck last summer and pus poured out. He said it felt way better the minute she let out the poison.

  While I was picking the bits of Lucette out of my wastepaper basket, Mrs. Dougal, who was still tidying up, came by with a mop in her hand. She stopped, looked at Lucette, clicked her tongue in what seemed a sympathetic way, and walked on down the hall. Not one word did she utter. I wrapped the bits of china carefully in a soft handkerchief Grandma Sinclair gave me. It has tiny daisies embroidered in the corner. Then Mrs. Dougal brought me an empty candy box which still smells of chocolates. It was just the right size to hold the pieces.

  Before I could thank her properly she was gone again, never saying a word. I like her a lot.

  I put Lucette’s broken body in my treasure box, which is a cedar chest Father gave me when I turned nine. I will keep her forever. I do not think I can ever forgive C.A.

  Evening, About eight o’clock

  After supper, Mother suddenly announced that she wanted Thomas to help Mary Anna with the dishes because she had a job for me to do upstairs. When we got to her room, she sat down and pushed her little footstool over to me.

  “Sit down, Victoria. I can feel you are bursting with some tale of outrage, and it is time to get it off your chest.”

  I don’t know how she always knows, but I poured out the whole story. Then, “Why is Cousin Anna so different from Aunt Lib?” I asked her again. “Great-Aunt Lib is so bossy and Cousin Anna is always so whiny. She says she doesn’t mean to fuss, and then she goes ahead and fusses. I think they are both awful.”

  Mother stroked my head and was quiet.

  “Why don’t they look alike?” I asked her. “They don’t, you know. You’d never guess they were related.”

  Mother smiled, and then astonished me by saying, “It is time you were told some family history. They don’t look related because they aren’t.”

  I was leaning against her but I jerked up straight and stared.

  “What?” I gasped. “They must be!�
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  Diary, you will not believe what she told me. Cousin Anna isn’t Aunt Lib’s daughter! Not only that, but they aren’t even blood relatives. Aunt Lib’s husband, Hubert Fair, was a Presbyterian minister. Mother was afraid of him when she was small. He never laughed, and she thought his smile was cold. He had a twin brother, Humphrey, who married a woman with a little girl named Anna.

  When Mother said “a little girl named Anna” it began to sound like a fairy tale. I wasn’t even surprised when the child’s parents died in a typhoid epidemic and she was left an orphan.

  Aunt Lib’s husband went to the funeral in Winnipeg without her. He told the lawyers, without saying a word to Aunt Lib, that they wanted to adopt his brother’s step-daughter. Then he brought the three-year-old home with him. Aunt Lib, who had never gotten along well with children, was handed a spoiled and lonely little girl. “This is your new daughter,” her husband announced.

  “She must have been so happy to have a baby at last,” I said. I felt thrilled at the way it was turning out.

  Mother’s smile looked twisted and her voice grew sharp.

  “No, Victoria. Anna was not a sweet little baby. She was almost four and she was wished on Aunt Lib without either of them having any say in the matter. Don’t forget that Uncle Hubert was only her step-uncle. She barely knew him. And he commanded her to call them Father and Mother.”

  “She must have been angry … confused too,” I said slowly. I couldn’t think of one word to express all she must have felt. Frightened. Forsaken. So lonely.

  Mother nodded her head. “Whenever she annoys me, I try to think of what the two of them had to deal with. Aunt Lib thought Anna was badly brought up, and set out to change things overnight. Poor little Anna might have turned to her uncle, but he was a busy man who believed raising children was women’s work. Anna was old enough to know that nobody really wanted her.”