Far From Home

by Nellie P. Strowbridge

  Suddenly she heard a stir in the room. She opened her eyes quickly. Miss Elizabeth was standing directly in front of her. Clarissa tried to swallow the knob, but it caught in her throat. She coughed and the candy fell to the floor in front of the mistress. Miss Elizabeth stood eyeing her silently, her eyes like bullets. Clarissa hated the silence almost as much as the words that followed it. “Clarissa,” the mistress said in a contemptuous voice, “you have broken one of the Ten Commandments again.”

  She said “again” as if there was no hope for her charge. Once before, Clarissa had pocketed some candy for herself and Cora. Imogene, whose head, Clarissa decided, was filled with nothing but gossip, had seen them sucking on the sweets. She had snitched to Miss Elizabeth that Clarissa had bucked candy.

  Missus Frances had admonished the children not to be carrying tales, but when the busy noshers did, Miss Elizabeth rewarded them with approving smiles and sweets.

  “You will eat your meals in the lobby for a week,” Miss Elizabeth said sternly, her hands on her hips. Her arms, with their dry, pointed elbows, stuck out like handles on a jug.

  Clarissa looked at her. Then she went back to her dusting. She wanted to smile for getting such a blessed punishment. The lobby wasn’t so bad, especially for breakfast. She could flush her hated porridge down the toilet. It was better than getting her mouth washed out with a hunk of lye soap. She shuddered, remembering that taste.

  Although Miss Elizabeth left the candy dish where it was, Clarissa knew that the temptation to take sweets again would be bridled by a sour memory. Anyway, nothing tastes good after you’ve eaten it, she thought with a shrug that almost knocked her off her crutches.

  Clarissa passed the playroom on her way back from dusting. She had no mind to be with the girls from her dormitory, sitting around playing Snakes and Ladders – squealing when they got the highest number of pips. It was one of the few games she enjoyed. But not today. She would go to her room and read.

  Ilish brought Clarissa’s supper to the dormitory bath and toilet room with an apologetic look on her young, round face. She laid the tray across the sink. Then she got Clarissa a chair. After Ilish left, Clarissa started to eat the vegetable stew. She stopped, her fork in midair, and picked up the glass of water with her left hand. She took a big gulp, and then another; here by herself she could drink the water whenever – and however she wanted to. She drained the glass and then she ate the rest of the stew, brown bread and tapioca pudding. Looking at herself in the mirror, she muttered, with her finger moving in the air as if she were writing lines, “You must not steal candy. You must not steal. You must not . . . You must . . . You . . . !” She licked out her tongue, pretending it was at Old Keziah. Then she washed and left the lobby.

  Clarissa changed into her nightclothes and went to bed, pulling the sheets up to her chin. This place, she thought, grimacing, is full of snakes and ladders: snakes like mistresses, and ladders a girl can’t climb to get away from tattlers.

  15

  SURPRISE FROM THE SKY

  The quarantine ended and the pupils went racing back to school, all except those who were slated to pull Clarissa. Jakot and Peter took turns yanking the sled over the thinning snow. Once the roads were bare, Clarissa would be able to drag herself along on her crutches. It was better than having to be beholden to the orphanage boys.

  The boys stopped the sled beside the school and Clarissa picked up the crutches Peter had thrown on the ground. She hauled herself up on them, and ambled up the steps into the school. A stillness settled inside her as she sat in her seat. When Miss Ellis spoke, her voice sounded as if it was far away and muffled. Clarissa’s head dropped and slid along her arm. She awoke as if from a blow. Her fingers were caught between the edge of the desk and the school ma’am’s ruler.

  “This is no place to sleep.” Miss Ellis’s voice was stern. “Especially not today.” Her eyes darted to the window, then back. She smiled and her tone turned pleasant. “We have a very big surprise.”

  The children lifted their heads, holding themselves quiet as if they were afraid to move for fear of missing the announcement. Their ears perked to a distant, unfamiliar sound getting louder by the second. All of a sudden, a roar filled the air. The startled school ma’am ran to the window followed by her pupils. Clarissa could not believe what she was seeing: a giant, grey craft, shaped like a huge bird, hovered above the iced-in harbour. The other children dashed out of the school, leaving the door wide open. Clarissa followed them. Miss Ellis came out behind her and closed the door. Then she, too, rushed past Clarissa, who tried to hurry for fear the strange craft would disappear into the sky before she got to it. The younger children from the lower classroom had been running as fast as their legs could carry them. Now they hung back as the big bird landed and skidded to a halt.

  “An aeroplane,” Miss Ellis explained, her eyes shining. “That’s what you are seeing. The first plane that has ever landed in St. Anthony. Be patient until the pilot cuts his engine.”

  The pupils, and people who had gathered from around the harbour, stood motionless, staring, waiting for the man in charge of flying the metal bird to appear.

  The pilot pulled back the door and stepped out of the plane. He was dressed in a leather jacket breasted with medals, his britches tucked into shiny leather boots. He ran towards the crowd, his cheeks curving into brackets around a wide smile as he announced, “Major Fisson from St. John’s at your service.”

  Major Fisson was not just a pilot. He was also a mailman. Amid the commotion of people gathering to see the plane, he passed out parcels to carriers from the hospital and the orphanage. Miss Ellis and Miss Janes, the younger pupils’ school ma’am, didn’t seem surprised when they received a package each.

  Miss Ellis turned from speaking to Major Fisson. “Back to school now,” she ordered the children. She added, “The pilot was generous enough to bring a packet of silent pictures for Dr. Grenfell’s Magic Lantern. Perhaps they will star Charlie Chaplin, the silent screen star you love so much. You will see the pictures later. For now, you can write an essay on the first time you saw an aeroplane.”

  Clarissa’s mind was brimming with the thought that someday she could be a passenger on the air ship. The pilot would fly her up into the sky, away from the earth, away from the orphanage. He would fly her home. She followed the other children reluctantly. They were all dragging their feet and looking back at the airman, who seemed to be as much of a star as Charlie Chaplin.

  “I’m going to be a flyer,” Peter called to Jakot. “I’m going to fly over to Canada.”

  “Hush, you braggart!” Jakot called back.

  Clarissa smiled. She knew that after today, all the boys and maybe some of the girls would dream of being a flyer.

  While the other children wrote about the air ship, Clarissa decided to write something else, something that was pressing so hard on her mind she couldn’t ignore it.

  “Up, Clarissa,” Miss Ellis called, gesturing with her hand, as soon as she saw that Clarissa was finished writing. “Read us your essay.”

  Clarissa stood up, nipping her scribbler against her crutch as she went up to the school ma’am’s desk. She sat down on the big chair and opened the scribbler. She remembered Miss Ellis’s instructions: Lean forward while you are speaking so that listeners see you as being in charge. Clarissa relaxed and tipped forward like she did when she was on crutches. Her voice rose and settled against the ears of the pupils, whose eyes widened in surprise.

  “Some of you,” Clarissa began, “have resented having to pull me on a sled to school. You would rather be on the sled with someone pulling you. But none of you would want to be on my crutches, or have my feet. I have wanted to put on shoes like other girls wear: shiny shoes with little black buttons. My legs are in heavy braces, my body trapped, while yours run free. You dream of flying; I dream of walking.

  “Imagine what it would be like to take a turn on my crutches, walking upstairs, downstairs, up hills and down hills. Imagine w
anting to be able to run and play games. Imagine the feeling of not being able to do that everyday forever. No, not forever,” Clarissa added, shaking her head. “If it were forever, I would not be able to bear it.”

  Peter cupped his chin in his hands as if his head was filling with the weight of her words. Miss Ellis tapped his fingers with her ruler, and he dropped his hands to his desk. He looked past Clarissa as if he was listening to something else, but he couldn’t escape what was going into his ears. None of them could, and it was not only the words. It was the sound of Clarissa’s voice, strong and full. It was not handicapped. Cora let out a sob as Clarissa finished: “I am crippled, but I am not a cripple.”

  That afternoon when the boys pulled Clarissa home on the sled, the only sharp sounds she heard were those coming from the runners going over rocks sticking up through the snow. She was glad, even though she knew her words would soon be forgotten by bullies who felt good only when they were making other children sad.

  16

  A SPRING VISIT

  Except for a necklace of slob rinding the shore, the ice had melted, leaving the harbour looking dark and cold. Then one morning in late March, Clarissa looked through the window and saw, just out from the beach below the orphanage, large pans of ice bobbing in the harbour. They held a lot of dark spots. “The seals are whelping,” she yelled to the other girls. They scattered from their beds and ran together to the window, almost knocking Clarissa off her crutches.

  “Babies. Well, if that wouldn’t square your eyeballs. The seals are pupping.” Quiet Becky breathed her words in awe. Tiny, fluffy white balls were sliding from the dark bodies of mother seals.

  Through the open window, the girls watched saddleback seals and adult harps trimming ice pans, paddling and walloping. Then there was a rush of dark figures towards the floes. Local fishermen were out to catch the snail-like creatures squirming across the pans. Some of the seals were shot, their blood staining the ice. Others slipped off the pans, escaping into the water. Soon there wouldn’t be a seal in sight. In homes all along the harbour, women waited, some of them desperate for the rich meat to feed their families; there were children near starvation. Clarissa watched a baby seal lift its head as if to mewl; its whiskers were like stiff, black threads. She cringed and turned away as Jakot clubbed it. The dead seal would be brought to the orphanage to be added to the vegetable stew. Clarissa hated to see newborn seals killed. She wished the sealers could wait until the seals were three weeks old. Then they would be as dark and their bite as vicious as the bites of older seals. She tightened her lips, resigned. To sealers and mothers in the harbour, the cries of children with empty bellies were stronger than the mewling of white-coats.

  Clarissa followed the other children down to the beach, hoping to see seals haul themselves up on the ice. The sea panted under pans scrunching against each other. Dovekies perched on outer pans lying in the ocean like little, white islands. The birds lifted into the sky and lay motionless as if dozing on the wind. By the time Clarissa reached the beach, all the seals had disappeared, some into the sea, others into the sealers’ sculp pans.

  Shouts came from harbour children clambering on the ice. They jumped from one blue-hemmed clump to another, as if daring the sea to topple them. There were squeals as cakes of ice wobbled. An ice pan tipped and Rory, a harbour boy, slid into the cold water. The other boys pulled him out shivering and blabbering. The boys were copying pans in sight of mothers shaking their heads at the boys’ mischief.

  Clarissa watched a water duck battering between ice pans. She was startled by the crack of a shotgun. The bird was soon hanging limp in the hunter’s hand. She turned away from the sight, only to see harbour boys stoning bull birds that the wind had blown out on the ice. Idle and cruel, she thought, before realizing the birds were likely for a sweet pot of soup the boys’ families rarely enjoyed.

  The ice groaned and creaked; by afternoon, glinting pans of ice had raftered. From a distance, they looked like tiny bergs. During the night, the ice left as quickly as it had come, carried away by tides moving in and out the harbour.

  In the morning when Clarissa looked through the window she let out a sigh of relief. There was no sign of seals and ice pans, and no show of blood to mark the fishermen’s rites of spring.

  17

  SPRING AWAKENING

  Spring came stirring through the ground, breaking out in a laugh through the stream by the orphanage. Dead leaves danced in the wind, then scuttled along the ground.

  The first half of April brought dark clouds bruising the sky above an ocean of white-tailed waves. There were days when white lines of rain cut the sky, and wind blowing in from the ocean popped bubbles on the harbour water.

  Uncle Aubrey stood in the arch of the orphanage door, shaking his head and muttering, “The likes of this wind is makin’ ose eggs clutch stones to steady themselves.”

  “April, I hate April!” Clarissa moaned as she ran her finger through a dull film on the dormitory window. Rain fell as if the sky itself had broken and was cascading down to drown everyone on earth. At this time of the year, dubbed the cow days of April, it was best for Clarissa to stay inside the orphanage. It would be hard for her to crutch her way through those last patches of snow now lying like blankets dragged through mud.

  Easter Monday brought relief, not from the weather, but from a Christian custom at the orphanage. The children had to be quiet and solemn during the days before Easter in memory of Christ’s suffering. Now they were free to laugh and play, as if the days of a funeral wake had ended. They would celebrate Christ’s resurrection with coloured eggs.

  Clarissa pushed her crutches as fast as she could down the stairs to the dining room. On each enamel plate were eggs dyed green, mauve and blue, and a thick slice of white bread. Not a crumb of black bread in sight!

  After supper, Missus Frances called Clarissa into her office. “An Easter parcel came with your Christmas gift from home, Clarissa. It contained jelly beans. I’ll keep the candy in my desk and you can come for some now and then. Be kind and don’t tell the other children about your good fortune.”

  Clarissa nodded, even though she wanted the candy in her hand and in her pocket – a gift from her mother to her. Missus Frances should have no say in the matter.

  “Here you are then.” The mistress smiled, showing her gold tooth, as she dropped a handful of jelly beans into Clarissa’s gimp pocket.

  Clarissa thanked the mistress. Then she clumped her way to the dormitory and sat on her bed. She dropped a jelly bean into her mouth, and bit into it, surprised at how it clung to her teeth instead of making a harsh crack like hard candy.

  A cold night had brought a damp morning with vapour rising above the sea. The children shivered outside the orphanage. Some of them were growing too big for their winter clothes and their Beanie boots had gotten worn and wet from a winter randying in the snow. Young children were jumping up and down the steps to keep the dampness out of their bones. Mrs. Budden, the new housemother, wouldn’t let the children inside the porch to warm up, and she showed no intentions of letting them randy in the playroom. She wanted them to run about and make their own heat.

  Fannie Appleby, who worked in the kitchen, motioned to the children to come into the basement. The older boys were in there stacking wood.

  Clarissa looked at Fannie to thank her just as Miss Elizabeth hurried to jaw the kitchen worker for being so lenient. “This must be what Dr. Grenfell calls ‘the fun of mothering an orphanage,’” she grumbled.

  Fannie tossed her bonneted head and exclaimed, “Hamburg and Beanie boots, with their sealskin leggings, can oblige a foot in every way if the weather is dry, but when ’tis drenching, they’re a body’s torment.”

  The mistress didn’t answer. Instead, she turned and rushed back up the stairs, as if her body, in its long, dark dress under an ankle-length, white shawl, was being swept by a gale of wind.

  Fannie’s long, curly lashes swept upward in disdain. She laid a dry, crusted hand
against her cheek and spoke with gumption. “Sure, the mistress came to a place where she figured the savages would lick her boots while freezing in theirs.”

  Clarissa was surprised at her words. Sometimes she felt that all the adults were against the children. She looked into Fannie’s plain face and smiled.

  In late April, the yellow bonnets of daffodils nodded above the earth. Morning glories followed near trees whose knobby knuckles would soon burst into fingers of green leaves. In no time, the land laid out a daisy chain of buttercups. Flocks of birds hopped over the green rug of spring; dandelions danced in the soft air. Sparrows tisped and chickadees went chick-a-dee-dee-dee in the newly sprung leaves.

  Clarissa leaned on the veranda rail and tossed a piece of hard bread from her gimp pocket. As she listened to the rolling echo of a robin’s song, a line from her Royal Reader hopscotched into her mind: “Popping o’er the carpet, picking up the crumbs ...” A robin dropped to the ground and looked around, hopping and dipping; it poked a hole in the soil and ferked up a worm. Then the robin flew away with its supper in its beak. Soon the robin would be sitting on a nest full of bright blue eggs holding the promise of baby robins. Clarissa thought of the eggs tucked away inside her body. She hoped all of them wouldn’t crack and drop out of her before she could start a baby.