Among the Fallen

by Virginia Frances Schwartz

  Jemima’s anger threatens to dampen any chance of finding her a post. Another long talk with her tonight yielded nothing, her head turned away. “Feral,” Chesterson aptly named her. She has one last chance here. How to defend her? How low Leah seemed on her way to London. Queen Bee Sesina stalks Urania, a motherless child who will always demand attention, mostly of the wrong sort. That devil-may-care attitude of hers is risky. Hannah, bruised by such violence that her life may never be normal. Fanny, making all the wrong choices. And Orpha, peeking out from behind Invisible bars.

  In their lives, I see my own Shadows: a mother’s Betrayal; my family’s degradation in the Workhouse; my employment as a twelve-year-old at the blacking warehouse; my schooling abruptly ended. If I were female, I might have lived the same lives as these Homeless girls.

  CD

  MAY 1857

  ·• NINE •·

  In the cornfields, boys throw stones at crows gobbling seeds from the newly planted ground. Long past dusk, they chase after the thieves. On rainy days, the boys huddle, wrapped up in their own arms.

  Out on the street, workmen dig gas lines. Urania will soon have its own gas jets instead of candlelight. Sesina and Fanny take turns peeking out the curtains at the men.

  “Look how that dark-haired one stands, like he owns the whole street!” Sesina cries. “He’s a genie from afar. I’ll take him!”

  Fanny protests. “I saw him first!”

  Later that morning, Leah arrives, carpetbag in hand, dragging her feet. “My mum’s bedridden. How long she has, nobody knows.”

  Hannah serves her tea in the parlor. Leah sips it quietly, staring out the window at nothing at all.

  The postman delivers today’s mail. Greedily, I sift through it, heart pounding. Nothing from Ivy. She should have received my note weeks ago. Why doesn’t she answer? Instead, there’s a letter with a strange stamp from faraway Canada, one of the colonies.

  “Rhena hasn’t forgotten us after all!” Sesina calls out.

  “Give it here.” Fanny snatches a daguerreotype of Rhena out of the envelope, a baby in her arms, beside a mustached husband.

  She exclaims, “Look at the arms on that man! A lumberjack who works in the bush! And here’s something else—a pencil sketch Rhena did of the log cabin he built for them.”

  At the sound of Mrs. Marchmont’s voice, Fanny slips the papers back into the envelope and presents it to the matron.

  “Good news from Rhena!” The matron reads aloud. “ ‘A son’s been born to us, strong and healthy. Even with all the hard work in this Ontario wilderness, we are happy and prospering.’ ”

  “Let me see!” Fanny peers over the matron’s shoulder, pronouncing the syllables. “Lum-ber-jack! Look! I’m reading my first letter from a Urania girl. Ain’t that something?”

  “Someday soon, you’ll be writing to us, Fanny.” The matron smiles. “You’ll be settled somewhere and have a family too.”

  Fanny leaps to her feet and twirls her skirts around.

  “How Rhena’s done it,” Jemima mutters, “is anyone’s guess.”

  “Quite a handful she was.” Hannah smirks. “Came at sixteen and ever so saucy. Dickens threatened to throw her out more than once, I heard. He’ll be proud to read of her success now.”

  Mrs. Marchmont’s lips turn down as she looks through the rest of the mail. Miss Jane leads her away, their muffled voices traveling from the kitchen. We girls speak of Polly and Agnes, gone to Australia, in whispers.

  “They were due to arrive by now.” Hannah pokes me. “We should have had a letter. Pray they arrived safe. The seas are fearsome!”

  * * *

  In our darkened room, Sesina tosses. Leah has fallen deeply asleep.

  “Will you tell me if I am a normal…girl, if I tell you a secret?”

  Sheets rustle as Sesina sits up. “Normal?”

  “If I bleed, does everything still work inside?”

  “Girls are supposed to bleed. You are normal. I seen it.”

  “But can somebody take something out of you?”

  “Who?”

  “A doctor. A nurse. Those who condemn you. While you had fainted and don’t remember?”

  “Tell me what happened, Orpha. Then I’ll tell you what I think.”

  It spills out like vomit. About the nurse in the hospital saying, “We fixed it so you can’t do business anymore and we ought to fix all girls like you.” Sesina doesn’t take her eyes off me.

  At last she sighs. “So that’s what happened! Bad enough luck to get pregnant but then be accused of even worse. I can’t believe you were threatened by those who should have helped you!”

  Have I heard anyone say those words? Never! My chest heaves.

  Sesina says, “Don’t worry, Orpha, you are on the mend. How many girls told me their bleeding stopped in prison. Those places make you feel dead. You are normal now. They didn’t fix you. Can’t be done!”

  I don’t want her to stop talking. Ever.

  But I didn’t tell her all. I could never tell all.

  * * *

  The monthly committee calls me in the first week of May.

  “Miss Wood.” Dr. Brown addresses me. “We have been reviewing your case and discussing your progress here.”

  Oh, no! Haven’t I steered clear of Jemima as the matron asked?

  “Do you know why you were invited to Urania?” he asks.

  A long pause. “So I can mend my ways and…learn.”

  “Well, many critics believe that isn’t possible.” Dr. Brown sighs. “Some deem fallen girls ‘irreclaimable,’ meaning they will never fit into society again.”

  “Society be damned!” Mr. Dickens interrupts. “Urania teaches its girls skills so they can find work. That is what we do here.”

  “Mr. Dickens has spoken in your favor, Miss Wood.” Dr. Brown suppresses a smile. “You exhibit a reserve most of our girls don’t possess. And your literacy is remarkable, he insists. We feel that with your skills you will do very well as a governess.”

  All I can do is blink and hold my breath until I am dizzy.

  “For God’s sake, Brown, tell it in plain terms!” the governor says.

  “Miss Wood, your trial period is over. You shall continue your education here until we find a position for you overseas.”

  Immediately I curtsy the way I was taught by Pa, lifting my long skirt, bending low, folding my chest deeply. The matron glows; she said nothing of Jemima after all. Her lips lift into a smile. She could have blown me over with a breath.

  DICKENS’S CASE BOOK: NUMBER 98

  She’s an Actress through and through. Curtsies like she was born to it. Full of secret hiding places where she tucks things away. Sometimes I get a glimpse of her but then she disappears right in front of you, Submerged in a London pea soup fog.

  How like Ophelia she is! A tragic girl, Betrayed by all.

  CD

  I measure myself against Sesina. Shoulder to shoulder in front of the mirror, we each study the other one. She is taller, mysterious beneath her curly locks, while I am petite, pale, and brown-headed, with heavy, straight hair that hangs like a horse’s mane.

  “If you were properly groomed, you’d be an eyeful.” Sesina shifts her eyes my way. “And the way you glide, light-footed as a willow branch. If only you’d smile!”

  She slides her own hair clip to hold my bangs in place, then cinches my waist with a belt. Little wisps of my locks she trims now, teasing them to fall over my forehead.

  “There! You look prettier now.”

  We turn back to the mirror. Sesina leans closer, turning my face to hers, then strokes my cheek with one long finger. She smiles as if she owns me.

  * * *

  The following week, Mr. Dickens suddenly rushes in late, breathless, from a speaking engagement, in a black velvet frock coat to w
hich a gold watch is chained. A scarlet silk tie peeks out at his neck and a glimpse of stripes flashes beneath his coat.

  He’s come for my confession. Once he hears it, he will not keep me here.

  “You are always writing, sir.” I point to his thick book, so full of unmentionable secrets that it must be locked up each and every night.

  “True—in this Case Book. But I also bring along my own notebook to jot down ‘mems’—little notes and ideas to further my novels. On the way home from here, a whole scene can take shape in my head and write itself from those few words.”

  “How did you become a writer?”

  “My father was a great storyteller. Some would even say a fabricator.” He laughs. “And I was early a listener, often sickly, and a reader too. Words hold a charge. The right words are alchemy.”

  “I saw alchemy in a play once. Magicians turned metal into gold. But can words change anything, sir?”

  I wonder who would ever listen to words from a prostitute, for that is what I am called, even by Mr. Dickens. There are worse secrets only I know of, forbidden acts, that society would shudder to know. But such stories won’t ever be told. Not by him. Not by me.

  “London is changing. When readers meet a child laborer in my pages, they petition Parliament to open schools. Indeed, Miss Coutts began Urania because of the desperate women I wrote of.”

  “You seem possessed by words, sir.”

  Mr. Dickens stares at me. “I’ve always lived in my books, stepped inside and completely disappeared. I had to.”

  It’s me who needed to hide, not him. Why would such a famous man need to do that?

  “I made up other worlds…when I was young. My family”—he pauses, looking into the distance—“betrayed me. No need to say how or why. I could not change what happened, but I could float to another world. I’ve gone there ever since.”

  “When I read a good book, sir, I enter another room and disappear from this one.” I lean toward him. “Words are alive, sir! They carry what one thinks and feels to the world.”

  He gasps. “Why, that’s exactly how words feel to me.”

  “All the words in the world were stored in my father’s head. Rhymes. Speeches. Song. I learned to memorize them just as he did. He was a storyteller just like your own father.”

  “Hmm…your father must have been quite a character.”

  I edge forward in my seat. The long, wiry beard and untamed ends of his hair come into view, then his bushy eyebrows and, beneath them, the darkening fire of his eyes.

  “But what do you do, sir, when words make pictures, like plays acting out in your mind?”

  His eyes change then, brightening from dark to blue. “I know the problem well. You’ve seen my shorthand before—”

  Suddenly I recall him writing at the prison desk. “Those strange squiggles, sir? Like chicken tracks in the dirt. Nobody can read them!”

  He leans his head back and roars in laughter. “Long ago as a reporter, I trained myself to jot notes quickly to keep pace with my thoughts. But…you only need take quick notes to begin with. Words. Phrases. A sentence or two. Later, you can build a story on the skeleton of those few jottings.”

  He puts his quill down then. Not one awful note has he written in the Case Book today. He studies me for long minutes until it seems we both breathe the same breath. Our bodies are sitting there in the room, but we are not. There’s a rap at the door and Miss Jane’s voice announces that the governor is here to speak to him. Reluctantly, I rise to leave.

  DICKENS’S CASE BOOK: NUMBER 98

  I must take another track with this girl. I believe she will yield her Secrets once she is ready. Insisting will only freeze her. First, she must trust me totally. That shall be my task now.

  She Charms me away from my task, guessing my real weakness: Writing is my first and, perhaps, only love.

  CD

  I have had my eye on Richard the Third, that cocky red combed rooster, crowing at all times of day. Sneaking up behind him, I grab him, squawking in my hands like I was a murderess, and pluck the longest white feather from his tail. I have my prize quill.

  It must be sharp like a weapon. So I slide the sleek paring knife from where it’s been tucked in my boot and whittle the shaft to a keen point. Dirt mixed with rainwater from a barrel is next. This I stir into a paste inside a rusty tea tin. It will do for ink.

  In the chicken coop, behind a wallboard, I’ve hidden yellowed newsprint along with Emma’s letter. No one will know what I am doing out here. It is my own private office, where no girl will pry. Outside, the hens cluck. They will be my guards in case anyone comes…

  Images pulse. I’m seeing her. The rooster’s quill begins to scrape.

  Ivy speaks to me from her dark cell, her button-brown eyes upon me. How tiny she is, a speck in a high prison. I imagine what she’d say if there were no walls and no miles between us: I’m breaking into chips, crumbling into dust. A hollow girl. He’s gone! You’re gone! There’s no one left who knows me anymore.

  * * *

  From the third-floor window, Reuben’s cap appears at the top of the fence after Zachariah leaves on an errand. Sesina leans on tiptoe against the inner side of the fence, balanced on crates. She reaches up to Reuben as he hangs over to touch her hand. He tucks something into her open palms: a bottle shimmering like clear liquid in the sun. Gin! Sesina shoves it down her bodice and grins. He has a huge mouth and looks ready to gobble her. In the next moment, he’s gone.

  * * *

  Tiny seeds have been tucked into my garden plot. There will be rows of beans, spinach, onions, and carrots beside the chives.

  “Such perfectly straight rows you have hoed! In the colonies, you will have your own allotment.” Mrs. Marchmont steps outside to inspect my task. “There you can be self-sufficient, feeding yourself and others with very little money. Even the Queen and Prince Albert’s children tend gardens.”

  “Doesn’t he have nine children?” I gasp. “And besides, he’s rich!”

  “He believes, as do many of us,” she says, smiling, “that tending a garden develops gentleness in one’s nature.”

  “Well, I can’t wait to eat lettuce in three weeks’ time!”

  The matron sits down on a bench, the first time I’ve seen her rest in the middle of the day. “My own children tended a garden, running into the kitchen with handfuls of freshly picked vegetables, so excited!”

  She’s never spoken of her own life before Urania. Mother. Widow. Tothill matron. All kinds of girls must have tried her patience at Urania. Yet she often smiles and pats my shoulder after a chore well done, as one does with a child.

  “Do you miss your family?”

  She looks up and nods. “Very much. We write to each other often. My children are grown and on their own now. They’ve made me proud.”

  “You are still raising children here.” I smile. “And it is certain that you know how to do so.”

  She smacks her hands on the bench as if I’ve told a joke, startling the chickens, setting them clucking.

  “It’s all I know how to do!” She laughs.

  To finish my chore, I tuck only ten lettuce seeds into the cool soil, as Hannah advises, saving the rest for the weeks to come so there will always be young lettuce growing. Nearby, brown clematis stems climb. High up on their tops, tiny green leaves sprout. As I wish to do.

  * * *

  Today the first blade of spinach spreads three emerald arms wide and waves in the spring wind. Seeds have their future locked inside them. What they will be, they already are. If they are given light, soil, and water, it almost happens all by itself.

  In our chicken broth that evening, my flat, oniony chives are chopped into the soft dumplings, greening our mouths.

  * * *

  Some days later, Leah drags herself upstairs and plops onto her bed, groaning. She has just cha
nged rags that bled through her underclothes earlier.

  “At least you know you aren’t pregnant if you bleed,” Sesina tells her.

  Leah blushes. “Don’t!”

  Sesina’s eyes narrow. “I won’t. But our roommate had a baby. Didn’t you know?”

  Leah’s mouth drops. My own breath stops. The hand, the hand was over my mouth.

  Complete silence fills the room afterward; then the smoky snuffing out of candles. Sesina drifts off to sleep. Leah sits up in bed. She makes a hissing sound and points to the door. I follow her out.

  “So that’s what she’s been hinting at about you,” she whispers, looking around in the dark. “Best I tell you myself before she does. I came close to getting pregnant. Didn’t guess such a thing could happen. What saved me was I was too young: I was ten.”

  My whole body stiffens. She was just a child.

  That’s what Luther did.

  A door creaks open down the hallway.

  “Are you girls still up?” Miss Jane calls. “Go back to bed.”

  * * *

  Rushing into the house the following Saturday with an armload of lemon balm for tea, I find Miss Coutts already waiting, dressed in soft mauve, like a lilac in bloom.

  “Let me take that.” Miss Jane opens her hands. She already has the copper kettle on the boil. “You tidy up first.”

  I return in fresh clothing, hair tucked back with clips into a tidy bun. There was no time to scrub my nails. Miss Coutts hands me a tiny bottle as a gift. As I open it, a floral scent fills the room, sweet and light. Lavender lotion! Tears spring to my eyes.

  She leans toward me. “Oh! I am so sorry. What is the matter?”

  Her long, slender fingers touching mine, risking the matron’s eye. A flicker of her pressing into me, vanishing in a moment.