The Home for Unwanted Girls

by Joanna Goodman

  The pillowcase comes off her head, and Elodie realizes, to her great horror, that she’s in a dark, airless cell with boarded-up windows. The heat is stifling. “What have I done?” she cries, pleading with Sister Ignatia. “Why are you doing this to me?”

  Sister Ignatia does not answer, and her silence is more frightening than anything she could have said.

  “Please don’t leave me here!” Elodie wails. “Please! Sister—”

  Sister Ignatia slides a bucket under the bed, and Elodie understands immediately that she’s going to be here for a while; that she won’t be untied, even to go to the bathroom.

  “Don’t leave,” she pleads. “It’s so hot. Please—”

  Sister Ignatia turns sharply, the skirt of her habit swishing at her feet, and marches out of the cell with her lackeys trailing mutely behind.

  Elodie contemplates screaming out, but quickly discards the idea. She knows no one will hear her; if they did, no one would come. She squirms around on the cot, trying desperately to find some shred of comfort—a slightly bearable position at least—but it’s impossible with the straitjacket and the heat and the metal digging into her flesh. Sleep doesn’t come either. Without a mattress or air circulation or the ability to move her limbs, she can only lie there, berating herself for not having tried to escape a long time ago.

  Could she have? Not at seven years old. Not once she was locked behind the doors of Ward B. Agathe escaped. Emmeline escaped. Perhaps death is the only viable way out. She decides she will never again grieve the death of another Saint-Nazarius girl. Why should she? They’re free, they’re at peace, and she, Elodie, is the one left in hell.

  She measures time by the meals they bring her three times a day—a purée of whatever was served in the cafeteria. The cell reeks of urine and feces and her own vomit. Once in a while, out of intolerable boredom, she prays. She bargains with God, questions how He can allow her to be treated this way, but no answer ever comes, only more of His callous silence, a void where there is supposed to be solace. She hates Him almost as much as she hates Sister Ignatia.

  After nearly a week of imprisonment—exactly seventeen vile milkshakes—the door opens and Sister Ignatia appears, her expression smug. She unlocks Elodie’s chains and wordlessly unfastens the straitjacket. Elodie winces the moment her arms are free. Her muscles are stiff, her joints ache, and her bones are weak. Every inch of her body hurts. When she tries to sit up, she lets out a cry and collapses. The sharp metal in her back was preferable to the pain of trying to move.

  Sister Ignatia hands her a dress, wincing at the stench from the overflowing bucket, and then covers her mouth and nose with her hand.

  “Is it because I told the doctor about Emmeline’s overdose?” Elodie wants to know.

  A flash of something gleeful—victory or amusement—passes over Sister Ignatia’s bat-like eyes, but she doesn’t give Elodie the satisfaction of a response.

  Chapter 25

  Maggie

  Maggie wakes up from a terrifying nightmare, crying out so loudly she wakes Roland. She leans over and turns on the lamp with trembling fingers. Her heart is racing.

  “What’s the matter, dear?” he says, placing his hand on her shoulder.

  “I dreamed I was drowning,” she says, trying to calm down. “I was pregnant and we were both drowning, the baby and I. I kept thinking, I can’t lose this one, too. Oh Roland, it was awful!”

  She doesn’t mention that the unborn baby’s name in her dream was Elodie.

  Roland pulls her close and they lie back together, leaving the lamp on at her insistence.

  The next day, having barely recovered from her sleepless night, Maggie sits down in one of the booths at Fern’s and orders a cup of coffee while she waits for Audrey. Maggie’s got a driver’s license now and a Ford Falcon that Roland bought her for her birthday. Now that she’s finally quit Simpson’s, she has even more free time on her hands, mostly to ruminate over the two lives she finds herself caught between—which is no doubt to blame for her recent nightmares. One of those lives contains her beloved homes, her treasured garden in the country, and her marriage to a wonderful man she can never quite love enough; the other—still mostly a fantasy—contains Gabriel, which, she believes, is enough.

  She hasn’t stopped thinking about him since their encounter at the apartment on Papineau. She’s been telling herself a lot of things lately to justify her emotional infidelity, but the one that seems to assuage her most is that she should have been with Gabriel all along. She’s only just found him again, but her feelings are as deep and unyielding as they always were. Roland doesn’t ask much of her. He works long hours and is generally happy when she’s happy. His trust and complacency—or unwillingness to scratch beneath the surface of things—makes falling in love with another man almost too easy.

  She lights a cigarette, still thinking about how things left off with Gabriel when she went to the apartment the other day. Say hi to Audrey for me, he said as she was leaving.

  His tone had an edge to it. She’d made the mistake of letting him know she was getting together with Audrey in Dunham. Of course it brought back that incident long ago, with Barney and the fight in the street when Gabriel pulled a knife. He didn’t have to say it, but he was angry—she could see it in his face at the mention of Audrey’s name. Maggie regretted it immediately.

  They didn’t speak while she collected her things. A familiar tension had wedged itself between them, and she worried fleetingly that maybe love could not surmount one’s roots. She wants to believe love is irrepressible, but what if it can’t hold its own against who a person is, fundamentally, at the core? It terrifies her that they would have to give up on each other after all this time and retreat to their respective sides, defeated by the complexities of language and class.

  “Can I see you again Friday?” he asked her.

  “I can’t,” she said. “Roland likes to see a show on Friday nights.”

  “Qu’i mange d’la marde,” Gabriel muttered. Let him eat shit.

  She kissed him and touched his face. His eyes were dark gray, angry.

  “Another day,” she said. “Any day but Friday. I want to see you again.”

  He looked away. She made him promise to call her. That’s how they parted.

  She glances up from her cup of coffee and sees Audrey waddling toward her. Audrey is seven months pregnant with her third child, rosy-cheeked from being outside, and more adorable than ever. Her blond hair is bleached platinum now, like a movie star’s. They’ve continued to stay in touch over the years, politely and from a distance, just enough to still be able to count each other as an acquaintance. Audrey likes to send Christmas cards with photographs of her family, accompanied by long, self-indulgent letters detailing their achievements with exclamation points. Barney was promoted! Lolly is finally potty trained! Davie won the Goutte de Lait Healthy Baby contest! She also likes to get together once or twice a year for pie and coffee so she can brag in person.

  “How are you feeling?” Maggie asks her.

  “Not so bad,” Audrey says, sliding her unwieldy body into the booth. “You look gorgeous. You’ve still got that figure. I envy you.”

  Maggie smiles, but she can tell Audrey does not envy her at all. Audrey orders a coffee and some apple pie and takes a drag off Maggie’s cigarette. “Where do we begin?” she says, clapping her hands together.

  “How are the kids?”

  “Lolly is a hoot, and Davie is an absolute mohn-ster. I’m crazy to be having another one! I don’t know what I’ll do if it’s another boy. Listen,” she says. “Before we get into things, how are you coping, Mags?”

  Maggie tips her head. “Coping?”

  “I hear you’re having a hell of a time getting pregnant,” Audrey says, her voice turning sympathetic. She lowers her voice and whispers, “The miscarriages.”

  Maggie flicks her ashes into the ashtray. “Where did you hear that?” she asks.

  “Oh, you know Dunham,” she s
ays. “Violet, I think.”

  “I’ve had a tubal washing,” Maggie tells her. “The prognosis is good.”

  Audrey is obviously rooting for Maggie to get on the baby bandwagon. People seem to have so much invested in a married woman getting pregnant within the accepted timeline. It troubles them when it doesn’t happen, as though some universally agreed upon contract has been tampered with or disturbed. Maggie can actually feel the unspoken championing of her success at fertility, the simultaneous panic if she were to fail.

  The waitress brings Audrey’s pie. “Do you think . . .”

  “What?”

  “Never mind,” Audrey says. “Forget it.” She has a bite of her pie.

  “What?”

  “Well, I wonder. Do you think . . . Is it possible there was some damage from the, um, first pregnancy?”

  “Yes. That’s exactly what the doctor said. There was scar tissue after the first miscarriage—”

  “No, Maggie,” she interrupts. “That’s not the pregnancy I mean.”

  Maggie freezes. Audrey is rubbing her belly protectively, watching Maggie. “What are you talking about?” Maggie manages, her chest pounding.

  “Oh, it’s all right, Maggie. I’ve always known.”

  Maggie stubs out her cigarette and lights another one. Her fingers are shaking. Audrey reaches across the table and touches her hand. “It doesn’t have to be a secret anymore,” she says.

  “How did you find out?” Maggie asks, trying to keep her voice calm and contain the waves of shame rising up in her throat.

  Audrey gobbles another forkful of pie and burps. “I’ve got the worst indigestion,” she says. “To be honest, I always suspected.”

  “How?”

  “I know what Gabriel expected,” she says. “I wouldn’t go all the way with him, which is probably why he traded me in for you.”

  The remark stings and Maggie glares at her. “How did you know I was pregnant?”

  “There’s a reason girls get sent away for a year,” Audrey says. “And, well, now you’ve confirmed it.”

  Their eyes lock. Maggie is suddenly confused about why Audrey wanted to meet with her today. Perhaps Audrey’s been biding her time for years, waiting for just the right moment to pay Maggie back for stealing Gabriel.

  “I wasn’t pregnant when they sent me away.”

  Audrey’s blue eyes widen. “You weren’t?”

  “No, my parents sent me away to keep us apart. Just like I told everyone. It was all true.”

  “And he came to see you there? He got you pregnant while you were there?” She leans back in the booth, looking very satisfied. “Don’t be mad at me for bringing it up. I’m just curious.”

  Maggie is quiet as she tries to guess at Audrey’s motives. Maybe she’s just trying to be a friend. Before Gabriel, they’d been inseparable.

  “I just want you to know that I’m here if you need someone to talk to,” she says, burping into her napkin. “I know we grew apart when I started dating Barney, but I’ve always missed our friendship. I know you’re going through a hard time right now. I wanted to reach out.”

  “Does anyone else know?” Maggie asks her.

  “Not that I know of,” Audrey says. “Does Gabriel know?”

  “No,” Maggie says. “Not yet. And please, no one else should know. I’ll tell him when the time is right.”

  “It’s been ten years.”

  “I hadn’t seen him until recently.”

  “So you’re in touch with him again?”

  Maggie swallows nervously, wishing she could backtrack. “We ran into each other,” she says vaguely. “We were both home visiting. I am going to tell him. Soon.”

  Audrey nods, smiling sympathetically. “What was it like?” she asks. “Being pregnant and knowing you were giving up the baby?”

  “I don’t really remember,” Maggie lies.

  “I always feel so bonded with my babies when I’m carrying them.”

  “I guess I liked the feeling of her inside me.”

  “Her?”

  Maggie nods.

  “A girl?” Audrey gasps, as though knowing the sex makes it all the more tragic. “Will you try to find her one day?”

  “Giving information to the birth mother is illegal,” Maggie explains. “So it won’t be easy, but yes, I’m going to try. I’ve already called the foundling home where she was supposedly taken.”

  Audrey raises her perfectly plucked and penciled brow. “Do you think about her a lot?”

  “Every single day of my life,” Maggie confides, grateful to finally say it out loud. “I think if it wasn’t for what I did—giving away my own child, sending her out into the world alone—things would be all right. I just find it . . . Well, it’s impossible to ever feel completely okay, knowing she’s out there. The guilt’s been so much worse since the pregnancies and miscarriages.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “Maybe I don’t deserve to be happy, or to have another child.”

  “Rubbish,” Audrey says. “How’s Roland handling this?”

  “He works a lot.”

  “They always do. But he’s a good husband for you.”

  The remark reminds Maggie of her days at Simpson’s. She’d point out the sturdy clasp and the thick, supportive straps. This is a good brassiere for you, she’d tell the customers. He’s a good husband for you.

  “Listen, the other thing I wanted to tell you,” Audrey says, brightening, “is I’ve got a job for you. My uncle’s a journalist at the Gazette and he mentioned he knows a French-Canadian writer who just had a book published. He needs a translator for the English version. I told him I know someone who could do it.”

  “I’ve never translated anything before.”

  “How hard can it be?” Audrey says. “You’re perfect for it. You’re bilingual. I don’t know anybody as good in both languages as you are. And you were always so good at composition.”

  “I could never.”

  “It would be published, Maggie.”

  Maggie’s heart lurches just thinking about it. “I’m unqualified.”

  “Just meet him,” Audrey says. “His name is Yves Godbout. What’ve you got to lose?”

  Maggie’s interest is definitely piqued. Perhaps it’s an opportunity to do something useful for a change. “All right, I’ll meet him,” she says, feeling brazen.

  “Oh, good,” Audrey says, reaching for her hand.

  Maggie smiles appreciatively, thinking she’s underestimated Audrey all these years.

  Chapter 26

  Yves Godbout is waiting for her at the St. Regis Brasserie downtown. He’s sitting at one of the long wooden tables with a pitcher and two glasses, a pack of tobacco and rolling paper spread out in front of him. The tavern is long and narrow, a man’s place, with wood floors and wood paneling on the walls, even rows of picnic-style tables lined up like in a mess hall. There’s a loud clang and clatter of dishes from the kitchen behind them.

  Godbout looks to be in his late thirties. The roots of his brown hair are greasy, and even though it’s warm outside, he’s wearing a ratty gray sweater with holes in the elbows. He nods as Maggie approaches, but doesn’t stand up to greet her. “I’m told you’re half French,” he says, not wasting time.

  “My mother’s French.”

  His eyes narrow. He lights his homemade cigarette, and the smoke that floats into her face makes her gag.

  “From where?” he asks.

  “Hochelaga.”

  “Mine, too,” he says, warming slightly. “My mother still lives in the same tar paper shack where I grew up.”

  Maggie isn’t sure what’s expected of her. Does he want her to commiserate? “I don’t have any credentials,” she tells him.

  “Credentials?” He laughs. “You think I have a degree in creative writing?”

  “How long is your book?” she asks him, trying to sound professional.

  Before he even finishes his cigarette, he licks the edge of his rolling paper
and seals a fresh one without answering her. “About fifty thousand words,” he responds. “The publisher pays three cents a word.”

  She does a quick calculation. The money isn’t much of an enticement.

  “So you married an Anglo,” Godbout says. “Larsson.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he asked me.”

  His eyes dart down to her pearl necklace and then back up to her face. “You know, not so long ago, a small English press wouldn’t have considered publishing a book like this,” he says, reaching under the table and pulling out a copy of his book. He holds it against his chest, over his heart.

  “But things are already beginning to change,” he tells her. “With Duplessis dead, there’s going to be a revolution in this province. My publisher—he knows this. For an English guy, he’s pretty smart. He has vision. Anglos have never wanted to read anything by a Québécois writer unless it was Gabrielle Roy.”

  He hands her the book. It’s called On Va en Venir à Bout.

  “Is there a deadline?” she asks.

  “Hopefully before I’m dead. I think my publisher wants it done as soon as possible, to capitalize on the fervor around Duplessis’s death. Things will move quickly now.”

  Fifty thousand words.

  “You don’t get any sign credit,” he tells her. “Which means your name won’t be on the cover of the book, only on the copyright page.”

  She looks down at the cover and instantly knows what it will be called in English. We Shall Overcome. “I’ll read it,” she says.

  “I’ll have the publisher call you.”

  They shake hands, and Maggie leaves the tavern feeling terrified and inexplicably excited.

  Less than an hour later, she’s standing outside Canadair, where the men are starting to pour out after the day shift. She can’t wait to tell Gabriel about her meeting with Godbout. They’ve spoken a couple of times over the phone, but haven’t seen each other again. She spots him in the crowd, and his face instantly brightens when he sees her. She breaks into a smile. Will it always feel this way with him? Exhilarating, wicked, slightly terrifying?