Far From Home (6 page)

Clarissa smiled wistfully. “There are mountains and the ocean between my mother and me. She's not an angel, so she can't see me. Your mother can see you from Heaven, you know.”

“You mean Heaven's got windows in the floor? Sure, dat's a strange place.”

“Heaven is a glass house you can see through, no matter where you look,” Cora said as she came into the room. “Golden streets run right through the house and you can walk on them and look down to earth. I dreamed all about it.”

Treffie lifted her shoulders and let out a sigh. She seemed relieved that the older girls knew so much about the place where her mother had gone.

Clarissa leaned her arms on the table and said in an optimistic voice, “One good thing about having your mother dead is that she can come to where you are without having to go by boat or dogsled. She can move lighter than smoke, and she can get you out of trouble. Mr. Manuel, the old caretaker we had here before Uncle Aubrey, said to me, ‘Clarissa, yer mudder could do a lot fer yer if she wus dead. Mine let me outta a cellar after me stepmudder locked me in it.' He said it just like that. Your mother would have let you out of the closet if Missus Frances hadn't. Anyway, time always moves a punishment to an end.”

“Pay no mind to the mistresses,” Cora said, lifting her nose disdainfully. “Most of the grownups here are from away. They come to look after poor white and dark natives, and to look down on us at the same time. No one stays long – sometimes we get a nice one.”

“Have youse been here a while?” Treffie asked Clarissa.

“It seems like forever,” Clarissa said slowly, her eyes moistening. “I came to the hospital first, then to the old orphanage. From there I was sent home for a little while. Then Dr. Grenfell had me brought back to the hospital. That's where I met Nurse Helen Smith.”

Treffie looked at her curiously. “I've never been to a hospital and I've never seen a real nurse.”

“You should be glad for that,” Clarissa answered, “though a nurse, in her white gown with a cloud of white veil framing her face, can look like an angel. Nurse Smith wore white stockings and thick, white shoes. When I was operated on, she shaved my skin and washed me with green soap. Then Dr. Grenfell put ether on a cloth and told me to count to ten after him, and breathe deeply. I went out like a light, and he sliced my leg open and sewed it up without me feeling a thing. I woke up in a big, white room, and the pain was terrible. My hip and leg were wrapped in a cast. When it got dark, I fell asleep with my hand out over the bed. I woke up screaming – something was chewing on my finger. Nurse Smith rushed in with a lantern. I held out my hand and she looked at it. ‘Shush! Shush!' she said. ‘One of the rats inhabiting this place bit your finger. I'll wash and sterilize it for you. Keep your hands under the covers from now on.' I was terrified.

“The next time Dr. Grenfell came to operate, I thought it was about the finger the rat bit. ‘It is your hip, Clarissa,' he explained, his eyes twinkling as if he was about to burst out laughing. When I woke up, there was a new cast on my hip.”

Treffie's eyes followed Clarissa's glance down to her high, laced-up boys' gaiters with hooks and eyes, and a brace that came up to her left knee. The other brace went from her right ankle to her hip.

“See, the brace fits into metal clips and is held by cleats. I pull a lever up and down to bend my leg.” Clarissa laughed as if she didn't care.

“Would yer let me see your legs?” Treffie asked.

Clarissa drew back. Treffie's legs were perfectly shaped from knee to toe; Clarissa was sure that under her knitted stockings, her skin was unblemished.

“No!” The word dropped from her lips like a hot potato. She didn't know why anyone would want to see the marks made by Dr. Grenfell's knife. He had cut into her limbs because she had what he called infantile paralysis and other people called polio. Her left ankle was not only marked, the skin was puckered. Her feet looked like odd socks.

Clarissa took a deep breath, and said in a forlorn voice: “I miss Nurse Smith. When I was at the hospital, she often put my hair in ringlets and tied ribbons in it, and she let me piggy-back down the stairs. Then she would run back up and get my crutches. Sometimes she took me to her office and read me
Peter Rabbit
. Other times when I was sitting in bed waiting for my cast to come off, she would hurry in wearing her coat and boots and call, ‘Come on, Clarissa, we're going on a sleigh ride.' And we did!”

Clarissa looked at Treffie. “I couldn't be too big of a crybaby because Nurse Smith always said, ‘Clarissa, you have a sunshine smile.' But one night I couldn't help crying myself to sleep. I got punished for something I did when I shouldn't have or for something I didn't do when I should have. I can't remember which it was. When I woke up, Nurse Smith and another nurse were by my bed, their faces looking out of white clouds. Nurse Smith whispered, ‘The poor little thing! I hate to punish her. She'll be excited when she sees these little, brown shoes.'”

“Did yer like the shoes?” Treffie asked eagerly.

“I loved them, but they wouldn't fit over my crippled feet. I cried to keep them to look at, but the nurse was firm. She said they would fit some other little girl's feet. When Nurse Smith had to leave St. Anthony and go back to the United States because of chilblains, she hugged me and told me to write her a letter when I learned how. She sent me a beautiful blue handkerchief trimmed with white lace. When I'm in bed and I feel the tears coming, I pull my handkerchief from under my mattress and let the tears drop into it. Nurse Smith told me that God takes all our tears and puts them in a big, blue bottle. When the bottle gets full, He empties it into the ocean. That's why the ocean is always full of salt water. It holds the tears of everyone who was ever born. Nurse Smith was the most wonderful person – like a mother.”

“But you've got a mudder somewhere. Can't she take yer home?” Treffie asked.

“She will,” Clarissa answered firmly. “Someday she will.”

No one said anything for a moment. Clarissa's eyes clouded. “I thought I was going home after I got better from the operations, but then I was sent over to the old wooden orphanage. We didn't have flush toilets there.”

Cora grinned. “But we had an indoor outhouse fastened to the orphanage. Wintertime, the floor got covered in ice. You should have seen Clarissa sliding on her skittering stumps. She'd be dancing to stay standing.”

“It was the fastest times I moved,” Clarissa admitted, tossing her head back and laughing. She stopped suddenly, sadness crossing her face.

Treffie's face filled with excitement. “I've never seen toilets inside a house before, ones with handles to churn water around and make everything disappear. That's a wonderful t'ing. I never knowed that water could run hot unless a fire wus under it, and I never seen lights that didn't start with a chuffie match.”

Clarissa shrugged. “The mistresses spare electricity. They still use lanterns, like in the old place. Miss Elizabeth called the old orphanage “a home of rags and patches.” It was built with green wood, likely cut when the moon was waning. Uncle Aubrey said that wood shouldn't be cut under a losing moon. The timber used in buildings shrinks, leaving gaps for the north wind to whistle through. Sometimes frost burst the pipes and we had to huddle together to stay warm. We moved into this orphanage three or four Christmases ago. The harbour boys make fun of it; they call it a cracker box because of the flat roof.”

“Sure, there was a fire in the old place,” Cora said.

“Not much of one,” Clarissa was quick to tell Treffie.

“Uncle Aubrey was accused of smoking in the furnace room, though no one knows for sure what happened. Uncle Aubrey knew I was worried about not being able to run if I was caught in a fire, so he gave me a lucky rock. It has a hole worn through the middle. ‘Think on it, and when there's trouble you'll have the perseverance to run through it like water runs a hole through a hard rock,' he said.”

Clarissa shifted on her chair. “I was beaten in the old orphanage, sometimes with a rope.” She looked around to make sure the mistresses were not within earshot. “Once, when Missus Leah was here, she made me come into her room. I knew what was coming when I saw the stick with splinters in it. She made me lie across a trunk. I cried before she hit me; in my mind I could already feel the splinters. She gave me one hard bang on my bare behind. I think Dr. Grenfell took her out of there so she wouldn't knock the daylights out of all of us. I haven't been beaten since then.” She crossed her fingers.

“You got beaten like I wus at home,” Treffie said in a timid voice.

“You were beaten at home?” Clarissa's words came out all crusty. She cleared her throat.

“I got the stick if I didn't mind me farder.” The little girl's pale face looked pinched, her eyes bruised blue.

Cora looked at Treffie. She spoke low and sad. “My father never beat me. The spring ice took him when I was seven. Momma was standing at the coal stove with a black frying pan in her hand. There were pork cracknels in it, hot and popping; she was looking through the window for Pappa to come home with some fish to fry. That first night he was gone I imagined him floating under the ice into the mouth of a whale; the whale would swish him around a bit and then spew him like the whale spewed Jonah in the Bible story. Uncle Sims and my cousin Jim found him the next day tangled in a fish net with ose eggs and starfish. They brought him into our house wrapped in brin. Then they made a box and laid him down in it, with his face covered in a white shroud. Uncle Sims let me touch his hand; it was as cold as a fish. People said they were staying up all night to wake Pappa. I went to bed thinking he would be awake in the morning. When daylight showed, I ran out to touch his hand. It was still key-cold, and I let out a scream that frightened meself. I never paid any attention to people talking about waking the dead after that. 'Twas all a lie. Pappa had sold the fish he had caught the summer before to pay the merchant, thinking to get more fish in the spring. We'd have starved if Dr. Grenfell hadn't come and taken us to the orphanage.”

“You can manage here,” Clarissa told Treffie. “You can run and play games like hide-and-seek.” She noticed a string of buttons on fish twine around the girl's arm. “You can play button-the-button and always have the button.” She laughed.

“They might come in handy here if you lose a button off yer clothes,” Cora said.

Treffie stiffened. “I'm keeping 'em,” she said firmly. “Dey's me memory buttons. Before me family died, dey put a memory in every button, and when I touch 'em, good memories come.” She fingered a large one. “Dis big dodger belonged to me farder's overcoat. He would hold me against his coat, and I would feel warm even if it wus cold.” Her finger moved to a small, delicate button. “Dis sparkly one come from me little sister Sarah's dress; she died of the fever.” Treffie's eyes clouded with loss. “Dis pearl button wus from me mudder's favourite dress. Me buttons reminds me I wasn't always an orphan.”

“I'm not a real orphan,” Clarissa said with a lift of her chin, “even if Dr. Grenfell made me one by bringing me here and leaving me. I have parents and sisters and brothers beyond the waters.” She looked at Cora. “And you're only half an orphan. You got your mother, your sister Suzy and your brother Owen.”

Cora nodded, and the girls sat together staring ahead as if they were thinking things too deep to lift in words from dark places inside them. No one spoke for a long time.

6
A MORNING FRIGHT

C
larissa surfaced from sleep with a jerk, not sure if it was the morning bell or the elephant that woke her. She had been rushing to close the dormitory window against a creature that was big enough to crush the orphanage. She smiled in relief. The elephant chasing the orphanage as it rolled down over a hill on cartwheels wasn't real.

The senseless dream flew out of her mind and a shudder slid down her curved spine. She had wet her bed, something she hadn't done in a long time. Narah and Alice, whose beds were next to hers, used to spy on her. They would wait until they thought she was asleep. Then they would reach their hands under her bedclothes. In the morning they would rush off and tattle to the mistress that she had peed. Clarissa could see the glint in their eyes when the mistress pulled her nightclothes back and whipped her wide awake with a doubled rope.

Now her long fingers came away from a warm, moist spot beneath her. She stared ahead, motionless, alarmed that any movement would waft a scent through the cold air, and the tattlers' senses would stir to it.

“You must try harder, Clarissa. Pull your muscles tight down below.” That's what Miss Elizabeth said to her time after time, standing there with the rope slapper dangling on her arm. She had stared back at the mistress, feeling the after-burn of the rope on her bottom, angry that the woman had added red marks to the white scar Dr. Grenfell's knife had left on her hip.

She had strained to pull her in-between place up inside her like a stopper on a hot water bottle, wanting to pull tight enough to hurt it for betraying her. She had promised herself over and over that she would never wet the bed again, but when her mind went to sleep, it seemed that her body forgot the promise, and she would awake to the feel of wetness and a dread creeping through her whole body.

Now she waited for the morning bell to clang, and for the other girls to finish in the bath and toilet room. When they had gone down to breakfast and there was silence, she slid out of bed. She gasped at the sight of red stains on her nightclothes, and a red dribble down her lame leg. Her insides were leaking out from her in-between place. “I'm dying,” she told her wide-eyed face in the mirror. “I will probably be gone before Cora and Treffie, and the children in the infirmary who have consumption.” Her eyes stared back at her like dark pools she could drown in. “I'll probably go to the Protestant side of Heaven and my parents won't ever find me.”