The Forgotten Home Child

by Genevieve Graham

  “Bring who in?” Cecil asked the other three.

  Jack raised an eyebrow at the cows. “I reckon we’re about to become cowboys, mates.”

  Ever since that moment when they’d first arrived on the farm, they hadn’t stopped working. They were up at four thirty every morning and closed their eyes somewhere after ten each night. They slept in what Warren called a bunkhouse, an old shed with four walls and a questionable roof. Each boy had a narrow wooden pallet with a moth-eaten blanket tossed on top. There were no windows, there was no light, and the mosquitoes were a plague that worsened after dark. The familiar, comforting sounds of Jack’s friends sleeping were forgotten when the whine of a bloodsucker sang in his ear. The creatures drove him mad, and he hunted blindly for them, occasionally crushing one between his palms. Until the morning light revealed proof, he wouldn’t know whether he’d gotten it before it got him.

  When the day’s first round of milking had been completed, Jack and the others lined up at the door to the house, and Warren’s timid wife dropped a lukewarm lump of oatmeal into each boy’s bowl, her eyes never leaving the pot. The glutinous cereal sat like a ball in their bellies, and it had to tide them over until suppertime, when they lined up again for a dry biscuit along with some kind of meat in broth.

  Almost everything the boys did at Warren’s farm was new to them. Barnardo’s had trained them to make boots and brushes, taught them metalwork and other trades, but no one had thought to tell them what would be demanded of them on a Canadian farm. Their hands and feet blistered as they slaughtered chickens, milked cows, built fences, pitched hay, chopped firewood, and dug out rocks, turnips, and tree trunks. The work took over Jack’s mind. Sometimes he forgot there was anything beyond the farm.

  Now his gaze travelled to his shovel, the handle sticking up from the dry dirt like a flagpole. Thunder came again, closer this time, and he rolled his head around his neck, preparing to get back to work. Maybe they could finish clearing this one trunk before the rain came.

  In the end, they cut down four more trees but could only pry out one trunk before the clouds finally burst and they finished for the day. They held their faces to the fat, warm raindrops, soothing their parched skin, but when lightning sliced through the air, they bolted to the farmhouse for their supper.

  The door opened, and Jack caught a brief, pained expression on Mistress Warren’s face before her husband barged past her.

  Warren took up the entire doorframe. “Those stumps ain’t dug out yet.”

  “They’ll come out tomorrow, once the ground’s wet.” The words were out before Jack could stop them.

  Warren strode through the door, forcing him backwards. “Did I tell you to take them out tomorrow? You saying I did, you lying limey bastard?”

  “I didn’t. I just said the trees are stuck till tomorrow. The rain’ll help them loosen up.”

  Warren’s fist caught Jack in the jaw, and stars exploded in his vision. He stumbled back and landed on the fresh mud.

  “Master Warren!” Cecil shouted. “Leave him be.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do, boy. Don’t forget who’s in charge,” Warren said, low and deliberate. He turned back to Jack, who tried to scuttle away, but he couldn’t get out of reach fast enough. He heard the whoop! of Warren’s stick as it cut through the air, and he braced just as it sliced down on his stomach.

  “Get off him!” Cecil yelled.

  The stick sang and snapped again. When Jack opened his eyes, he saw a bright red line cutting Cecil’s cheek.

  “It ain’t right,” Edward said through his teeth. “It ain’t right how you’re treating us. We don’t none of us deserve this. You’ll never get away with it.”

  “Is that right? Who’s gonna stop me?” As if to make his point, Warren wheeled on Jack again. “I’ll do as I please. I paid for you. You’re mine.”

  Jack curled into a ball so the blows bit into his back rather than his front, wishing he was anywhere but right there, squirming in the muck. Anywhere—on the boat, in the Home, in the orphanage, on the streets of London, running free and happy with Mary, the two of them dressed in rags with barely anything in their bellies. Mary! he grasped for her name between flashes of pain. Was she all right? Was she safe? Was she alone? With every one of Warren’s blows he clung tighter to the hope that she and Winny had been taken together into a fine, caring home to be ladies’ maids. It was too much to imagine them alone and afraid in the pouring rain somewhere, lying in the mud at the whim of a cold, cruel master.

  Be strong, he thought, as much for his sister as for himself. When this nightmare is finally over, I swear I will move heaven and earth to find you.

  ten WINNY

  Winny sloshed through the mud and slid the bushel of cucumbers onto the bed of the truck before turning back to the garden to gather more. Rain had poured down all night, turning the garden to muck, but she had to keep working. Mistress Adams had told her two days before that she needed the whole garden harvested by this morning. This field was the last one to be cleared. When Winny heard the farmhouse door creak open, she picked up her step.

  “You’ll never get this done in time,” Mistress Adams snapped. “You’re too slow.”

  She was going as fast as she could, Winny wanted to say, but she’d learned long ago that it wasn’t worth a bruised cheek to argue.

  “Home Boy!” Mistress Adams shouted, stomping through the puddles toward the cow barn. “Get over here!”

  Minutes later, the Home Boy appeared and got to work beside Winny without a word. Appeased, Mistress Adams retreated into the house.

  Since she’d arrived on the farm three months ago, Winny had done no more than peep a quick hello at the Home Boy in passing, and only when she felt absolutely certain no one else was around. She had discovered that his name was David, because she’d heard Master Adams call him that once. Winny had never spoken to Master Adams. She’d only ever seen him across the field, sometimes with David, sometimes on his own. From a distance, she got the impression that Master Adams was gentler than his wife. He walked with an easy lilt, slow and steady, and she’d never once heard him yell.

  Winny twisted a cucumber off its vine and glanced sideways as she tossed it in the basket. “Thanks for your help.”

  He looked up, startled.

  “You’re David, right?”

  He nodded.

  “It’s awful nice to work with someone. To… to talk with someone.”

  David focused on the plants in front of him. “You work harder than a girl ought. I’m sorry about that, Winny.”

  It had been so long since anyone had called her by her name or said a kind word to her. “I’m all right,” she said, but her voice wavered. She reached for safer ground. “How long have you been here?”

  “Oh, five years or so.”

  “Five years! I can’t imagine that. You must be so lonely.”

  “You get used to it. And Master Adams is good company sometimes. He’s the one who told me you was coming.”

  That answered her question about how he’d learned her name.

  “Did you talk with Helen at all?” David asked. “I mean, before she left.”

  Helen’s marriage three weeks ago had been a small affair but demanding for Winny. Nothing had ever been good enough for Helen, and if dirt could be made to shine, she would have made Winny clean it. Winny wouldn’t miss her at all.

  “Oh no. I wasn’t allowed near her.”

  “Right. Diseases and all that.”

  Winny gasped. “I ain’t got a disease!”

  “None of us does. But they say we do. That’s why they won’t touch us. That’s why we can’t sleep in the house.”

  “I can’t imagine sleeping in the same house with such horrible people.”

  “That’s the spirit,” David said with a smile.

  They settled back into the silence of their work, picking vegetables and dropping them into the bushel. Despite the calluses that had toughened Winny’s hands, her fingers wer
e swollen and tender from cucumber prickles, and when she lifted the full bushel, it felt as if she were squeezing bits of glass. But just like the unrelenting hunger pangs, and just like the ache she constantly felt for her friends, she had learned to put the pain in a box, shut the lid, and tuck it in the back of her mind. Winny’s life was crowded by stacks of boxes filled with different kinds of hurt, all of which she feared might one day tumble down and crush her.

  But she couldn’t ignore everything. These days it was her feet, or rather her boots, that weighed on her mind. Her body had shrunk due to hunger and hard work, but her feet kept growing, stretching the limits of her old boots. Every step was excruciating. Taking her boots off at the end of each day was sheer bliss. A week ago, she had worked up the nerve to ask Mistress Adams about getting new boots before the weather turned cold, but that had thrown the woman into a rage.

  “You want boots?” Mistress Adams had shrieked, her face bright red. “We’re in the middle of a depression and some people can’t even afford to eat! Selfish, ignorant girl! You’re lucky I give you a roof to sleep under.”

  In the beginning, Winny had thought the worst part about being at the farm was the heap of straw she had for a bed, but she found she was so tired at the end of every day she could have slept on dirt. One time she’d fallen asleep in a haystack in the middle of the day. Mistress Adams had found her there, and Winny was soundly whipped. She’d learned her lesson, swearing she would never again let herself close her eyes and rest. Not until her workday was over.

  Then she’d thought the wrenching emptiness in her stomach would be the hardest thing to handle. She’d learned to time her days just right so she could get her meals before the dogs did, but sometimes the pitiful allotment of leftover scraps was hardly worth the effort. No one cared that she was weak and dizzy. At night, she snuck out to the vegetable garden and dug up what she could find, always making sure to fill in the holes and cover her tracks after, in case anyone noticed carrots or potatoes were missing.

  But working with David now, she realized that the bleakest thing about her life was the loneliness. Day after day, night after night, she had no one with whom to share stories, no one to share kindness.

  “Why are we loading all this?” Winny asked as David slid a bushel into the truck, tight against the peas.

  “It’s a big family party. They do this once a year. They can vegetables and trade things.” He pointed toward the front. “She had me load up all the yarn you made, did you see?”

  Winny nodded, privately admiring the covered baskets. She knew every inch of that yarn, could still feel its twisting fibres winding through her thumb and fingers. When she had first arrived at the farm, the sheep had already been sheared and a mountain of wool waited for Winny. It had taken her a week to soak the pounds and pounds of stinky raw wool in water and lye, then stir it over a fire until the stubborn oils and dirt finally rose to the surface. When the wool was clean, she’d set it all out on racks to dry and prayed it wouldn’t rain. That was the afternoon Mistress Adams had caught her sleeping on the hay. Her back still stung the next day when her mistress showed her how to turn the dried wool into yarn.

  “Now watch closely,” she had said, sitting outside the barn with Winny, “because I’m not spending all day out here teaching you.”

  In her hands were two large square brushes. Winny watched her press the wool onto one brush then use the other to sweep the strands across over and over again, taking out all the tangles and rolling the wool into a smooth sausage shape.

  “This is called ‘carding,’ ” she explained, handing over the brushes. “I taught each of my daughters how to do this, and we used to get it done quickly between the four of us.” She corrected Winny’s hands with a surprising gentleness. “It was something we looked forward to every year, doing the carding together.”

  Winny moved the brushes back and forth, back and forth, until a long tube of wool formed. She held it up for inspection, and Mistress Adams nodded.

  “That’s it. When you’ve got it all carded, tell me and I’ll get you spinning.” She turned and began walking back to the house. “Don’t fall asleep while you’re at it,” she called over her shoulder.

  Turning wool to yarn took forever, but it was light, repetitive work, and it gave Winny time to think about better days. She called up foggy memories of her family gathered around the table in Ireland, back when Da was still alive and there was warmth and love in their house. It was a shame, she thought, that memories could not bring back sounds, because she would dearly love to hear his laugh again. The clearest moments, and the ones she loved to relive, had happened after she’d met Mary and Jack and Cecil and Edward, when they’d become a family of sorts. Just as she did every night, she focused on bringing each of their faces to mind while she worked, because unlike her, the memories could and often did escape.

  “Do we go with the Adamses?” she asked David. She was curious about the party, but at the same time she did like the idea of spending a day without Mistress Adams hovering over her.

  “Yeah, we walk out then unload everything, and you’ll get stuck chopping and cleaning and the like. The ladies like to say they work, but they’ll give you a lot to do.”

  “What will you be doing?”

  “I’ll be cutting firewood, most likely. There’s always firewood. Or maybe fencing. Master Renfrew is the biggest dairy farmer in the area, so there’s always lots of that.”

  Renfrew? The image of a round woman in a blue dress appeared in Winny’s mind, and for a moment, she couldn’t move. There must be plenty of families with that name, but what if… oh, what if Mary was there? Her entire body buzzed with nerves.

  “Do you know if they have a Home Girl named Mary Miller?”

  David cast a look back at the house. “They used to have a Home Girl a year ago, but she’s gone now.”

  Winny fought off disappointment. Then again, a lot of things could change over a year. Maybe David just didn’t know about Mary. “Do they have any Home Boys?”

  He shrugged. “Some.”

  “Have you ever heard of one named Jack Miller? Or maybe Cecil or Edward Drury?”

  “I don’t know those names. Sorry, Winny.”

  It had been a long shot, she knew. Still, David couldn’t know everything. What if her friends were there? Suddenly she couldn’t wait to be done with the work and get going.

  They finished harvesting the cucumbers just as the sun came out in a burst of brilliance and Mistress Adams bustled out of the house. “The weather is on our side,” she said, a rare smile on her face. She inspected the goods in the back of the truck. “Bring the eggs too, girl.”

  Master Adams loped towards the truck from behind the barn, and he frowned sideways at the full basket of eggs in Winny’s hand. “Why do we need all those? Surely Doreen has enough eggs already.”

  “Lots of families will be there. One of the others will trade for jam, I hope,” Mistress Adams said cheerily. “With such a wet spring I didn’t can as many strawberry jams as I would have liked.”

  Her husband paused by the back of the truck, surveying the load. “You’ll walk behind,” he said to David. “Might be room for you on the way back, though.”

  He climbed into the truck without a word and started the engine, a signal to his wife that it was time to go. She squeezed in beside him and they chugged down the road, Winny and David trailing behind.

  For the first half hour, Winny welcomed the heat as it dried their rain-soaked clothes and warmed their bodies. When it became too much, she tied a rag around her head like a scarf in an attempt to lift her thick waves off her neck, but the material couldn’t keep all the stinging sweat from her eyes. Worst of all were her feet. What was left of her boots pinched them terribly, and she had to keep stopping to empty out dirt and pebbles.

  “Why don’t you just take them off?” David asked. “We’ve a long walk ahead of us. If Mistress Adams gets angry about it, I’ll take the blame.”

  “Y
ou’re not to blame.”

  “No, but I imagine you’d let your feet fall off before you chanced a whipping.”

  He was right about that. “I just—”

  “It’s all right, Winny.”

  She’d slipped them off and he held out his hand for the boots. He tied the laces together and slung them over his shoulder. “Better?”

  The rocks on the road were hard under her tender soles, but that discomfort was infinitely more bearable than the restrictive boots. “So much better. Thank you.”

  Knowing they had miles to go, Winny distracted herself from her feet by asking David where he was from. He told her he’d been born in a workhouse then moved to an orphanage as a baby.

  “Never knew my family. It was better that way,” he said, and it struck Winny that maybe her life wasn’t all that bad, compared to his. At least she had a few fond memories of her family to call on when the loneliness got to be too much. David had none. Then again, did it hurt less if you didn’t know what you were missing?

  “Tell me about you. How old are you?”

  “September’s my birthday,” she said, swatting at a horsefly. “I’m almost sixteen. You?”

  “Seventeen.”

  The same age as Jack and Edward. Even though she had barely met David, she felt a pang of loss. “You’re almost free of this place. What will you do when you’re eighteen? Where will you go?”

  David looked out over the sleeping fields. The harvest was done, the dried stalks broken and bent. “I’d like to be a farmer. Master Adams says he’ll help me. Who knows? I may not even leave when I’m eighteen. He still needs help here.”

  She stopped in her tracks. “You want to stay here?”

  “I like being outside and working hard. My life here is better than the one I had in England.”

  Perhaps to a boy with nothing to lose, coming here might feel like a good thing, she thought. Canada was beautiful and the birds sang with such happiness. But it was still a cage to Winny.