The Whip

by Kondazian, Karen

  Eight

  A cloud of dandelion fluff floated through the air.

  “I’m making a wish. I’m making a wish,” sang little Charlotte.

  Lee was keeping his eyes protectively on her as she played in the spring grass freckled with milkweed and wildflowers. At eight years old, he was still skinny and small for his age. He was pale and intense.

  Charlotte was four now. She was happy looking, with a sweet face and bright periwinkle eyes framed by an angelic cloud of flaxen hair that seemed to harbor the new sunlight. She looked up and saw a butterfly. She fell to the ground and began to wiggle her little body. “Look. I’m wiggling. I’m a pillar.”

  “No, I told you. It’s called a caterpillar.”

  Charlotte held her breath till her face was red. Then she jumped up and started to run towards the butterfly. “See. Now, I’m a butterfly. Look at me, I’m flying,” she squealed. At the last moment she swerved, swooping at Lee with playful mischievousness, knocking him sideways.

  He let himself be knocked over and then, as she attempted to climb over his legs, he sat up, pinned her down, and plunked himself upon her, triumphant. “I win. I’m the winner,” he shouted. He lifted one fist towards the sky.

  Charlotte, face-up under him, giggled. “Look. Look.” She pointed at one of the butterflies.

  In the moment that Lee was distracted she managed to wriggle free. “Can’t catch me,” she taunted, and teetered away.

  But Lee had lost interest in their game. He was still staring at the butterfly, fascinated. It was hovering just over him. It had orange translucent wings, veined with black. The wings were glossy, like paper soaked in oil, but also—he had just sensed—there was featheriness there. He wanted to see the wings even more close up. He wanted to touch it.

  Charlotte looked back over her shoulder at him and came to a halt. She trundled back, disappointed. “Lee,” she said. “What is it?”

  “Look up,” he whispered.

  She saw the butterfly hovering just over his head and jumped towards it, reaching out with her pudgy little hand.

  “No,” hissed Lee between clenched teeth. “You must not touch it. If you touch them, they die.”

  She looked back at him, surprised by the thought that her touch could make something die. But regardless of the danger, she defiantly stuck out her finger.

  “Silly baby Charlotte,” said Lee. The butterfly was leaving anyway.

  But no, it wasn’t. It was moving over to the spot just above Charlotte’s head.

  “Don’t move,” he whispered.

  The butterfly hovered for an instant before spiraling down to her hand in a single smooth arc and, to the absolute surprise and delight of both of them, alighted on her finger.

  Charlotte and Lee stared at the little creature, amazed.

  Then, just as quick, the butterfly floated off her finger towards the sky.

  “See. See it didn’t die,” she said back to Lee.

  Nine

  One morning, just after dawn, Miss Isabelle Haden appeared at the orphanage. She was a gaunt, carrot-topped woman with high moral zeal. One might picture her marching out of some misty Dickensian orphanage of collective nightmare. As she clipped her way down the corridor, her footsteps became more and more determined, her face drying up and her lips tightening. She was attended by the scurrying headmaster. He was carrying a sheaf of paper…scribbling notes while she barked out instructions. She turned to frown at him for a moment. “Please man, keep up.”

  They continued down the corridor until they descended upon the dormitory. She paused in the doorway and surveyed the still sleeping children with pity.

  The fleshy woman appeared behind them laden with her cleaning equipment.

  The headmaster turned to Miss Haden. “Allow me to introduce one of my staff. This is Parthenia. She does the general caring for and cleaning up and looking after of our unfortunate wards.”

  Parthenia gave a timid smile.

  “Parthenia, this is Miss Haden, who has been sent by our beneficent new owner, Mr. Dyer, to assist us in our efforts here.”

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance, mum,” said Parthenia, with a bob that thickened her girth.

  Miss Haden ignored her. Looking at the headmaster she said, “Do the boys or the girls sleep in here?”

  “Why the…” he stammered. “The younger ones…they all do.”

  “Shocking,” uttered Miss Haden. She turned on her heel and clicked on up the corridor. The headmaster scurried after.

  “I can see I’ve arrived not a moment too soon,” she continued. “I shall have to inform my superiors of conditions here. And of all the frightful disorganization I have observed.”

  “But, Miss Haden, we—”

  “The first and most important thing to accomplish is that separate quarters are to be constructed for the boys. All children will learn to read, and they will all attend church services every Sunday. And the girls are to be instructed in the domestic arts, that they may someday prove of value to their husbands.”

  “Forgive my asking, but why the sudden interest in—”

  “The state of Massachusetts wishes it. President Madison wishes it. Mr. Dyer wishes it. It is important that we educate our youth…even the lowly. Of course, you shan’t be here to see it. You’re being replaced.”

  She swept out of the room, leaving the headmaster standing there in the dust motes.

  Ten

  Wisps of Charlotte’s hair floated like spun gold through a shaft of sunlight and settled in feathery piles upon the planks in the dusty attic storeroom. Lee was cutting little Charlotte’s hair. He cut it in a rough boyish style, close to her head. Charlotte clutched her tattered doll. She was squirming all over, infuriating Lee, whose fierce concentration was something to behold. He sucked on his bottom lip as he snipped.

  Charlotte was dressed in boy’s short pants. She tugged at the crotch. “I don’t like these clothes,” she pouted.

  “Be still,” he said.

  From outside the open attic window came muffled sounds of hammering. Lee glanced toward the noise. He stepped back to regard Charlotte’s haircut, the heavy iron scissors hanging from his fingers.

  “Tell me again,” he said to her. “What’s your name?”

  She rolled her eyes, ignoring him, dancing her doll on her knees.

  He grabbed the doll away. She cried out, reaching for it.

  “What’s your name?” he demanded.

  “Char…lee,” she said, her eyes riveted on her doll.

  “Good. Lee, like me, remember? Char”—he pointed at her—“Lee”—he pointed at himself. “Charley.”

  “No, I’m not. I’m Charlotte. I don’t want to be Char-lee.”

  An angry look came into his eyes. He strode over to the attic window and tossed out her doll.

  Charlotte screamed, hurling herself towards the window. “That was my mommy’s doll.”

  “Your mommy left you in a basket on the doorstep.”

  “Well your mommy just left you on the ground.”

  Lee caught her by the shoulders, shaking her, his eyes burning into hers.

  “It’s not a game Charlotte. They are separating the girls and the boys. They want to take you away from me. You’ll sleep alone, forever, with no one to take care of you and protect you. You will be all alone. Is that what you want? You are mine. Don’t you understand that? You want them to take you away from me?”

  Charlotte’s eyes filled with tears, her lower lip trembling. She shook her head no.

  Outside, the doll had fallen unobserved amongst the workmen who were still putting finishing touches on the separate quarters. Not one saw a poppet whizzing through the air, nor noticed the collision of soft doll and hard ground.

  Miss Haden and the new headmaster, Franklin Meade, were otherwise occupied
; they flanked the new entrance, welcoming a line of boys carrying small bundles of their possessions. The boys were moving forward one by one.

  Lee and Charlotte appeared from a side door of the girl’s dormitory and surreptitiously joined the line at the end. Charlotte wore her new short hair and boy’s clothes. She was feeling hostile. Each time Lee pushed her forward a bit, ahead of him, she planted her heels in the ground. He shoved forward. She resisted. Still, in a short time they’d arrived at the entrance.

  “Name?” said headmaster Meade, looking down at Charlotte with a warm smile.

  She just stood there.

  “What is your name young man,” he said. “We need to put your name on our list. Wouldn’t you like that?”

  “Char—,” She looked up, a faint glimmer of fear crossing her face. Then she glanced back at Lee, who met her eyes with a warning stare. “Char-lee Durkee,” she finished.

  The headmaster wrote her name down and looked past her to Lee. “And yourself, young man?”

  “Lee, sir. Lee Colton.”

  “Fine manners you have,” said Mr. Meade. He looked back down at the two children. “Go on, then. Next.”

  Lee took Charlotte’s hand and they moved past the headmaster, wending their way through and around the line of boys. They smiled at each other and exchanged a conspiratorial glance.

  In a moment they stood in the boys’ dormitory, amongst rows of beds with crisp new white sheets and wool blankets.

  “Here,” said Lee, putting his bundle on one bed, and gesturing to the next one over.

  Charlotte was about to swing her little bundle over on top of the taut grey coverlet when they were startled by a sharp voice behind them.

  “Not so fast, boys…”

  It was Miss Haden. She grabbed each of them by their ears and tugged, maneuvering them toward another room.

  “Ow,” shouted Charlotte in a tone of girlish injury. Lee glared at her.

  In the center of the next room were positioned several large cold-water wash tubs, each enclosing its own shivering, naked victim. Snaking from each tub was a line of boys waiting to be washed and deloused. Miss Haden, with a final twist of her fingertips on the lobe of each ear, deposited Lee and Charlotte at the end of one of these lines before sweeping herself back into the other room with a missionary zeal for more stragglers. Lee and Charlotte looked at each other. They knew they were in for trouble.

  And indeed, it was just about ten minutes later that Miss Haden, her mouth set in a hard line, hurried Charlotte’s small towel-wrapped body out of the boys’ wing and marched her over to the main house in front of the shocked new headmaster.

  Some of the girls who were outside playing saw it all. They pointed at her short hair, laughing. One of them dangled Charlotte’s doll, taunting her with it. “Come here little boy… come and get your dolly.”

  The doll had marks across its face and its dress was half-torn off. Heartbroken, Charlotte started to reach for it but then forced her hand to her side. She made herself look away. She was trying not to care—but at the last moment, just as Miss Haden was about to drag her in through the doorway, Charlotte slipped from her grasp, bit the offending girl’s hand, ripping the doll from her astonished grip. Part of the poppet’s dirty dress was clutched in the thief’s fingers, but Charlotte did not care. She had succeeded. She had taken back what was hers. Miss Haden swooped on her prey and grabbed her by the arms, giving her ear a resounding snap. It hurt but Charlotte did not cry out. Lee would be proud of her. She was feeling strong and brave for the first time in her four years of life.

  Eleven

  That night, in the girls’ dormitory, he came to her.

  The cavernous room had been tidied and painted, and the girls now slept one to a bed. Charlotte was curled on her side, her body damp from the summer’s heat. She couldn’t sleep. It was strange and lonely not to have Lee next to her in the bed. Then she heard the sound of a low, melodious whistle and her eyes opened wide. Lee. She sat up.

  He was in his nightclothes, climbing through the open window. He slung one leg over the sill and dropped to the floor without a sound. He’d already seen Charlotte’s silhouette and, raising a finger to his lips in caution, he tiptoed over to her. No one else stirred.

  She lifted the sheet open and wrapped her arms around him. With glee and relief she kissed him on his cheeks as he climbed in with her.

  He kissed her face and all over her soft body. He hugged her close and they fell asleep in each other’s arms.

  It was, of course, Miss Haden who discovered them at dawn. At first she couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing. She stood as if paralyzed for an uncomprehending moment, a candle guttering in her left hand, a scandalized expression on her pinched face.

  In her right hand she held her new silver wake-up bell. Coming back into herself, she began to ring it, tentative at first and then more and more, working herself into a frenzy. Tinkle. Tinkle. Tinkle.

  It was a devilish, loud, persistent sound. The girls began to wake up, lifting their heads, rubbing the sleep from their eyes— confused by the strange loud music. Tinkle. Tinkle. Tinkle. Some of them, out of habit, swung their feet out of bed and began to put their shoes on for some drill or other. Then they could see Miss Haden, standing in the middle of the room, staring with wide shocked eyes down at Lee and Charlotte together in bed. Some of the girls began to laugh, relieved that it was someone else that was in trouble.

  Parthenia arrived in her dirty shift and a moment later was followed by Mr. Meade, pulling the edges of a chenille robe over his nightshirt.

  Lee and Charlotte looked at each other in despair. All the girls were giggling, and some were whispering “tinkle, tinkle, tinkle.” But the faces of Miss Haden, Parthenia, and Mr. Meade were white and grim with the direst of prediction.

  Miss Haden escorted Lee later that morning to the headmaster’s office. She waited in the corridor outside, a small smile of satisfaction on her face.

  Headmaster Meade looked up at Lee as he came into the office.

  “Please shut the door behind you Mr. Colton.”

  He pushed his two hands against the top of the large mahogany desk and rose from his chair. Lee watched as he walked the few steps to where a leather strap hung by a hook on the wall. He removed it and turned, flicking the strap against his palm. He seemed distant and detached.

  Lee shrugged and then turned around, holding onto the back of a chair.

  The headmaster looked at Lee’s slender, straight back. He raised the strap. Lee’s hands tightened around the back of the chair. The headmaster snapped the strap hard. At the very last moment however, he deflected the blow onto the desk. It was a resounding strike. Lee turned around, astonished.

  The headmaster spoke in an even voice.

  “Boy, why did you go into the girl’s dormitory? You know it’s not allowed.”

  Lee, his face flushed with feeling, looked up at him.

  “Charlotte needs me. She doesn’t know how to sleep alone. She’s scared of the dark.”

  The headmaster nodded. He didn’t say anything for a long minute. He examined Lee’s face.

  Lee, his heart still pounding, waited.

  “I see,” the headmaster said. He looked down at the strap and then back at Lee. “Don’t do it, Mr. Colton. Even once more. If it happens again, I’m going to look a fool and then you know who will be doling out the punishment. Do you understand boy?”

  Lee nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  The headmaster gave him a little half smile, then moved to the door and pushed it open, standing aside. Lee dashed out of the room.

  Through the open door the headmaster’s eyes met the dogged gaze of Miss Haden. “I shan’t think we’ll have any more problems with him,” he said.

  Believing the boy had received his strong discipline, Miss Haden’s eyes shone at the headmaster with the hi
ghest of regard.

  Twelve

  Miss Haden…it was she who discovered them together again that very next night when Lee crept back into the girls’ dormitory, back into Charlotte’s bed.

  Charlotte had welcomed him, nervous but grateful. She’d tucked her head into the spot under his arm. He’d put his arm around her. He had meant to leave in a moment and she understood that, but it was too warm, too familiar, too safe. They fell asleep like that.

  Charlotte awoke with a start. A moving pool of flickering light was illuminating the walls of the corridor. She shook Lee.

  When Miss Haden arrived, pausing in the doorway, lantern in hand, all at first seemed to be in order. She turned to go. But then something caught her eye. The window was open. Miss Haden’s lips pursed. She swept towards Charlotte, who appeared to be sleeping, her face buried in her pillow.

  Miss Haden stopped at her bedside. In the silence, she could hear a soft fast breathing from beneath the bed. She knelt down with her lantern and peered under. A pair of bare feet and a huddled form could be seen in the space between bed and floor. Lee’s defiant face looked out at her. Her hand reached toward him and then all of a sudden she withdrew. She hurried out of the room, her shoes clicking expeditiously across the floor.

  It was the rope, Charlotte later thought when she could understand such things, that took whatever good there was in Lee Colton and killed it that very night. Where had Miss Haden gotten the rope, the great thin coil of it? She must have had it ready somewhere nearby—a rope to catch a child with.

  She returned to the dormitory, carrying the rope over one arm and intercepted Lee in the act of trying to leave the room through the window. One leg was already out. In this awkward position he was indefensible. Miss Haden got a good fix on him. She looped the rope around his two wrists and pulled it tight, tying it with expert speed into a packing knot. The knot held. She began to pull on the rope.