Far From Home

by Nellie P. Strowbridge

  “Hurry!” a voice called from behind her. “If you want to go to the berry grounds and pick blackberries.”

  Clarissa turned around. “Oh, Cora,” she whispered, “you are the best of friends.”

  “I’m really yer only friend,” Cora said with a pert look. Clarissa turned on her crutches to follow Cora across the road and down a path to the side of a marsh. Rory was kneeling among the shrubs picking blackberries and eating them. When he saw Cora and Clarissa he hollered, “I’m so full of berries you could crack a nit on me belly.”

  He’d have to eat a lot, Clarissa thought.

  Esther and some of the harbour girls were picking blackberries too. Esther had a baby on her back. She didn’t answer when Clarissa called, “Hello.” But when Rory started to run around squeezing Smoky Jacks in the girls’ faces, turning the air brown, she grabbed him and slapped him on the head.

  Clarissa’s braces kept her from kneeling in comfort, so she sat by the berry shrubs. She bent towards the marsh to sniff the white flowers of a bog lily. Careful not to disturb the root, she broke it off at the stem, and stuck it in the buttonhole of her sweater. Then she began filling her mouth with blackberries. When she had enough of the small berry, she scooted on her bottom until she reached the overhanging scruff of bog grasses. She went farther and farther into the marsh, trying to find mainderberries. She couldn’t find any, and when she started to get to her feet, her crutches sank into a patch of swamp, as soft and wet as fresh dung.

  “Come on, Clarissa, before the mudsuckers pull yer under,” Cora called.

  Clarissa called back: “I have two sticks that can take care of any bog creatures.” She laid her crutches flat and dragged herself along on them. By the time she got on her feet, she was drenched. A tiny dog ran up to her and sniffed at the brown patches the peat had made on her dress. The mistresses would scowl and jaw about the mess she was in. Maybe they would punish her. She was so full of berries she didn’t care if she didn’t get fed.

  On the way to the orphanage, the girls stopped by a shallow pond. Clarissa slid to the grass. Then wearing a devil-may-care grin, she unclipped her braces, and unhooked and unlaced her gaiters. Soon she was scooting into the warm water, her dress billowing around her as fluid as a jellyfish. She sat lifting water up on her fingers like threads of gold under the sun. Drops rained from her fingertips like diamonds.

  Clarissa turned to the sound of feet scuffing through the grass. She screamed as Jakot, a picnic moocher, grabbed one of her crutches, stuck it through a dry cow platter on the ground and swung it into the air. He dropped the crutch and ran off laughing. Clarissa sat fuming, wishing she could stick his nose through a fresh cow dab and give him freckles that looked like Becky’s.

  Cora washed the crutch in the pond while Clarissa hurried to put on her gaiters and braces. Then, as Cora stooped to pick a bunch of white field flowers, Peter, who must not have gone on the picnic either, crept up behind her. “Boo!” he shouted. Then he tipped her with his jackboot. “Deadman’s flowers! Pick ‘em and your father’ill die,” he added in a singsong voice.

  Cora got up, holding a single flower. “You jockabaun,” she shouted, “my father’s already dead.”

  “Well, what else’s new about fathers!” Peter exclaimed. “So’s mine.” He walked away looking as if his hips were walking on their own and his upper body, with his arms tight around it, was along for the ride.

  23

  YOU HOP LIKE A GRASSHOPPER

  Summer brought Clarissa more time to sit on the orphanage steps and read. She had already read Heidi to Treffie who was not well enough to learn how to read. Now she was reading Treffie’s book again, and savouring the image of Heidi going to the mountains to live with her grandfather.

  Peter eyed her as he passed. He went to a corner of the orphanage and scooped a mot in the ground not far from the wall. “I dare you to a game of marbles,” he called.

  Clarissa closed her book and laid it on the step. She got up with a nod. Today was a good day to pitch marbles. She had been practising: throwing the glass balls against her pillow while the other girls were out playing stick and ball. She wouldn’t mind losing some of her marbles, but she didn’t want to lose her cat’s-eye and her bumblebee. A white-flecked marble and a black one could go.

  Cora came around the corner. She shook her head, frowning. “You’ll lose ’em all.”

  Clarissa didn’t answer. She sat on the ground and reached into the pocket of her blue gimp. She pulled out the solidblack alley and quickly bazzed it against the orphanage wall. It rebounded close to the hole. She drew in a deep breath as Peter grinned and bazzed his marble. His was closer. He spanned the two marbles with his long, thin fingers; then he grabbed both of them. “Black is for witches,” he said. He tossed Clarissa’s marble into her lap. “I’ll trade you for another one.”

  “Forget it,” she said. She picked up the black marble and dropped it back in her pocket. “I’m not having my bumblebee and my cat’s-eye guttled by you.”

  Peter shrugged just as Cora called excitedly, “Hurry, the WOPS are marching!”

  The locals had dubbed the summer volunteers at the Grenfell Mission WOPS (WithOut Pay). They always marched back to St. Anthony Inn with their hands on each other’s shoulders, singing in loud, vigorous voices.

  Clarissa hurried to be close to the road. She pointed to a tall, handsome fellow and giggled. “He’s mine.”

  Cora pointed to a blond worker, and after a long bout of coughing, she choked, “That one’s mine.”

  Imogene, passing by, rolled her eyes and called, “You can’t like these workers. They’re too old for you.”

  “We can, too, Emma Jane. We can like ’em, but we can’t love ’em.” Cora stuck out her tongue at Imogene.

  The girls stood tittering while the workers marched by without a glance their way. Clarissa knew that if a WOP ever spoke to her, her tongue would be like something tied in a knot. Well, maybe a slip-knot, one a little bit of charm could slip her tongue out of.

  Clarissa steadied herself on her crutches and bent to grab one of the blue-faced pansies that had sprung from seed blown from Missus Frances’s pleasure garden. They were growing in the ditches and along the fence. The sunshine on Clarissa’s arms felt like a caress as she picked the flower locals called “a kiss behind the garden gate.” She pressed her lips together, imagining a boy’s lips meeting hers. Peter suddenly slapped her bottom; she teetered and then fell to the ground. She scowled up at him, but he was already running away. She shrugged and let her mind wander back to the WOPS.

  One night, years before, she and Cora had watched from the top of the stairs as the workers came with Dr. Curtis for a social evening. Miss Brown was one of the mistresses then. She was a mild-mannered American who always dressed like the black of night or the grey of early morning. Even when she wasn’t smiling she looked pleasant, her hair swept up and as shiny as a mahogany sideboard under sunlight. That night she breezed in wearing a cameo brooch in a velvet choker on a high-necked green dress that brushed the floor. She didn’t look like a mistress and it seemed that she had forgotten she was one.

  “We drudged all day makin’ stringed gauze bags for their coffee beans, and there they are not wanting to put even a cookie crumb on our tongues,” Cora complained as the girls watched a covered trolley go by, carrying food for the staff and WOPS. Cora coughed and Miss Brown looked up, but not in time to see Cora. She had scurried out of sight. Clarissa stood there alone.

  “Mind that nosiness of yours,” the mistress called. Then, with a flick of her hand, she had added, “Now off to bed.”

  When Miss Brown first came, everyone thought she would be kind all the time because of the full smile on her face. But one day the children started passing the word damn from mouth to ear, and it landed in the ears of Tattle-tale Imogene, who rushed it to the ears of the mistress. Miss Brown let Imogene spell the bad word, stopping her before she got to the n. Those children tattled on for using blaighard were lined
up and lye soap brushed on their tongues with a large brush and then lathered. They were left with closed mouths for a full minute and then their mouths were rinsed. Peter claimed he had only said beaver’s dam; anyway, he always brushed his teeth with soap, so it was all the same to him.

  The children had found it hard to forgive Miss Brown for putting something into their mouths that was even worse than the morning porridge.

  Clarissa forgave the mistress because she was generally kind. One summer day when the other children had gone berry picking and Clarissa was stuck in the orphanage by herself, Miss Brown gave her a doll and cradle.

  Clarissa turned from her thoughts of Miss Brown and the WOPS. She got to her feet, looking around to make sure Peter wasn’t back. Then she went to sit on the orphanage steps. She fingered the marbles in her pocket listlessly, no longer interested in games or reading. She looked up to see Uncle Aubrey, who was taking care of Dr. Grenfell’s greenhouse. He called her to come to the summer vegetable garden. Early in June, Clarissa and the other children had dropped seeds into trenches made in freshly-turned ground. She had imagined carrots too small to see wrapped inside them. Rain softening the seeds’ skins and the pull of the sun would help the carrots grow, pushing their roots out beneath the ground and their leaves up above it.

  Clarissa followed the caretaker to the little garden. Her face broadened into a smile. It was as if a magician had cast a green spell. Lacy carrot leaves had popped above the earth. Beside them, lettuce stood in rows like green flowers. Clarissa’s mouth watered at the thought of eating fresh lettuce with sugar and vinegar falling through it on a hot day. It would be as good as biting into ice crystals from an iceberg.

  A warm breeze lifted Clarissa’s hair as she made an unsteady gait back to the orphanage. She turned at the sound of heavy footsteps. Dr. Grenfell was coming up the walkway behind her, in a heavy sweater and hip boots. He stopped to swing Teddy, a new, bare-legged orphan, up on his shoulders. Clarissa looked down, relieved that high gaiters hid the sight of her legs, even if it was too hot for them.

  Dr. Grenfell dropped Teddy to the lawn with a laugh, and the little boy ran off. Then the doctor walked to where Clarissa had stopped. Leaning forward with his hands on his knees, he said lightly, “You hop around like a grasshopper. We’ll need to adjust your braces.”

  Clarissa looked at the fatherly, tanned face of the doctor, his hair and mustache almost as white as snow, and returned his smile. Her smile faded as he went ahead of her into the orphanage. She looked towards the other children running and playing. Providence had saved the doctor’s words from falling on their ears; otherwise, the nickname Grasshopper would have stuck to her like fish slime as long as she was at the orphanage.

  She had always seen Dr. Grenfell as a kind man, sometimes even a god who had stooped low enough to touch the common people. Now she wanted to yell at him, “Grasshopper – one of the creepy, long-legged creatures Peter put down my neck, and me with my hands on two crutches.”

  Clarissa replayed the doctor’s words in her mind, and then muttered them aloud, adding, “I do well to hop around like a grasshopper, seeing I have two legs and a grasshopper has four.”

  She sat down and let herself fall back on the stubbly grass, tears streaming down her face. She felt heavy, as if the Atlantic Ocean was getting inside her, filling her up – drowning her! I am not an orphan and I shouldn’t have to feel like one, she thought miserably. It’s bad enough that some orphans treat me as if I’m different, but not the doctor too! She cried harder.

  “What’s wrong, Clarissa?” Cora was running towards her, looking anxious. “You’re crying so much, your eyelashes are sticking to your face.”

  “Dr. Grenfell thinks I hop like a grasshopper!”

  “Well, he can’t do that,” Cora answered lightly, plopping down beside her.

  The girls looked at each other and burst out laughing at the idea of Dr. Grenfell hopping.

  When they stopped, Cora reasoned, “It was just a remark. Sure, there’s nothin’ to be made of it. It was likely a thought gone as soon as it was said.”

  “It will never be gone from my mind,” Clarissa retorted, “not even when I’m eighty-five and lying in bed doing naughty things like smoking.”

  Cora screwed up her face and shook her head adamantly. “I’ll never smoke. Look at a stove when it smokes. Sure, its insides are darker than a bark pot. Anyway, you should be so lucky to live until yer eighty-five.” Her voice trailed off. “I might not live that long.”

  Clarissa avoided her last remark. “Look!” she said, pointing to an insect on a blade of grass. “Insects aren’t so scary. That one’s tinier than the slip of grass it’s on.” She leaned down for a closer look. “Its wings are so thin you can’t see them until the insect dances on the leaf, its legs like lines of gold embroidery thread. Look at the tail! Nothing more than a long, black thread.”

  “It’s liable to have a grand name we can’t spell or pronounce,” said Cora. “And mind what God said about humans. We’re the same as grasshoppers. Sure, ’tis in the Bible.”

  “I don’t believe so,” Clarissa said scornfully, pulling herself to her feet.

  “Well, it is then. Reverend Penny preached on it the Sunday you were sick. He got it from the old prophet Isaiah. ’Tis thinking you’re doin’ while the reverend’s preaching. Sure, there’s the little girl in the Bible who was taken far away from her home to the house of Naaman the leper, and a little boy was crippled when his nurse dropped him. Then there’s Jesus. He loved children even more than Dr. Grenfell loves them. He said it was better for someone to have his neck weighed with a rock and drowned than for him to hurt children.”

  “You’re a thoughtful soul with a good memory,” Clarissa said, her face relaxing into a smile.

  Cora frowned. “Treffie will soon be no more than a soul. Today, while you were dusting the staff’s quarters, Missus Frances took her to see Dr. Curtis at the hospital. I heard Housemother Budden say Treffie’s not long for this world. Sure, ’tis up to three o’clock and the Missus went just after breakfast.”

  Clarissa knew that Treffie had been in the isolation room on the third floor of the orphanage all by herself for a long time. She had sneaked in once to see her. Treffie had turned her thin, white face. In a pitiful, weak voice she gasped, “The coughs come quick, Clarissa. You better leave before you gets a rattle on yer chest.”

  Clarissa had tried to comfort the little girl. “You’ll soon be a soul with wings that will take you to your mother and father.”

  Treffie’s dull eyes lightened. Then they closed. The only sound in the room was Clarissa’s crutches, thumping across the floor as she left her friend behind.

  Clarissa was looking through her dormitory window a few days into the second week of Treffie’s hospital stay when she saw Uncle Aubrey pulling a cart across the road. It held a painted white box tapered at both ends. It looked like a dead box.

  Clarissa imagined Treffie flying away like an angel, finding a cloud to sit on and drift towards Heaven, towards her mother. Still, Clarissa felt as if an icicle had slipped inside her heart as she went to find Cora.

  Cora sobbed quietly as the girls went to the kitchen to tell Cora’s mother. She didn’t seem surprised.

  “The dear child had a poor destiny,” Mrs. Payne said with a sigh. “She lost her father and mother in one year. The father went trappin’, and when he didn’t come home, Treffie’s mother took sick and died. Treffie was left in the little cottage with her dead mother. The poor little thing covered her with sealskins, thinkin’ she’d wake up if she was warm. Dr. Grenfell told us that when he found Treffie, she was standin’ on the headland as still as a figurehead. Her yellow dress, one he had brought her on his mission the year before, was flickerin’ in the wind like candlelight.” Mrs. Payne looked into the girls’ miserable faces and assured them, “Now Treffie’s safe in the arms of Jesus. She won’t be lonely or in pain anymore.”

  Clarissa, her mind knocked astray by the loss
of Treffie, spent a lot of time looking through her dormitory window. One day Missus Frances, passing by the open door, called to her, “Off with you – get out and enjoy the day. None of us has a hold on life that cannot be forced from our grip.”

  “But I can’t help thinking about Treffie,” Clarissa murmured. “Thinking when you can be doing, Child, makes for time lost to idleness.”

  “I don’t want to be doing. If I don’t stop and think about Treffie, she’ll be gone.”

  Missus Frances came close to her and said gently, “As long as you have a mind you can use it to remember, but your hands can still be busy. Trophenia does not need her body anymore. Death brings only a change to life, not an end. Your baby body changed to accommodate your older one. All of our bodies change throughout their lives, and although what happens after we die is a mystery, we know death isn’t the end of us.”

  Clarissa nodded, and Missus Frances left the room.

  Cora came into the room. “I’m going to get some forget-me-not seeds from Uncle Aubrey. We’ll have flowers next year for Treffie.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Clarissa offered.

  Uncle Aubrey was quick to get the girls seeds and a shovel, and Cora dug a small trench inside the orphanage fence. Clarissa dropped in a seed for each letter in Treffie’s name. Cora looked at Clarissa and dropped seven seeds in beside hers, saying, “God rested on the seventh day.” Clarissa nodded and Cora covered the double portion of seeds. She sprinkled the ground with water brought in a can from the lobby.

  Clarissa went back inside the orphanage trying not to think of her little friend as being in the ground. She brightened. If flowers and carrots can sprout out of the earth, Treffie’s life can sprout too – somewhere.