Gutter Child

by Jael Richardson

  “David’s the most important thing I’ve got here. He looks out for me and he reminds me of home, and I miss my family, Elimina. I miss my parents so much. I need him like you just don’t know. So you can’t tell anybody . . . And you can’t let him leave here without me. You have to tell me if you hear anything about him or about me in the office. Don’t let him leave me here alone,” she says, gripping my arm tightly, the red fabric wrinkling under her hold.

  “I’ll tell you everything I know,” I whisper, and when I lean in, she squeezes me so tight it fills me with hope that I can help, that somehow I can keep their family from splitting up again.

  8

  JOSEPHINE AND I OPEN THE DOOR THAT LEADS OUT OF THE back stairwell and wait, just like we do each time we head out to the Fieldhouse. We watch for Mack’s flashlight before racing down the path, our nightgowns bunched high in our arms to protect them from mud as a messy rain drizzles across campus.

  When we reach the Fieldhouse, David is waiting just inside the doors. We dry ourselves off, and the three of us make our way down the halls, whispering in the dark.

  To keep up appearances, the group agreed that it would be best if I continued to be a friend of Louis’s. Which means that other than sharing a few subtle smiles when Josephine visits the office or when the boys are in the dining hall, I still feel very much alone.

  “In here, you are our friend, Elimina,” Josephine had said at our last meeting, taking my hand in hers. “But out there, you’re a Red Coat. And you need to appear like a good one, even when it’s hard.”

  I remind myself of her words whenever I hear the laughter of the other girls in the Upper Room or when Violet is particularly unkind, because I don’t want to lose these nights at all.

  “I don’t know what side of the Gutter you lived on, Violet, but your home’s no better than mine,” Rowan says in a low growl, when we reach the stall.

  He’s standing in the middle of the space, facing Violet, with the lamp flickering on the ground near his foot.

  “What are you going to do, Rowan?” Violet says. “You going to hit me? Practice your fight skills on me?”

  Rowan shakes his head and she shoves him hard as David moves the lamp and steps between them.

  “What’s wrong with you two? Do you want us all to get caught? Violet, sit down,” David says, pointing to the corner of the stall.

  “Why don’t you tell him to sit down?” she says.

  “You first,” David says.

  When she finally takes a seat, everyone sits down slowly, while Violet pouts.

  “What the hell is going on?” Josephine says, looking at both of them.

  “Can we just read?” Violet says, crossing her arms, the way she does when she’s annoyed.

  “You want to read, Violet? That’s what you want?” Rowan says. “Fine. It’s whatever you want.”

  She bites her lip and reaches between the folds of a blanket, retrieving the book and flipping through the pages until Rowan snatches it out of her hands.

  “You know what, I’m tired of you having your way all of the time,” he says. “This time, Elimina picks.”

  He hands me the book and I hold it gently, running my fingers along the edges. The pages are worn and gray, full of long, elegant strokes where each letter floats into the next like wings. I see a poem that begins like a letter, and I read it. It’s a short piece, written to a woman, that’s consuming—–the touch of her skin, her heart and her soul so deeply wanted by the person writing to her.

  When I finish the last word, no one speaks, and the rain drums harder against the roof, surrounding us with noise.

  “I don’t like that one much,” Rowan says.

  “It’s not a very good one. Definitely not one of our favorites,” Violet says, and I hear the satisfaction in her voice.

  “I wonder who the woman is—the woman the letter is written to. I’ve always wondered that,” Josephine says.

  “Probably some crazy woman,” Rowan says with a nod toward David, but David just stares at the lamp in the middle of the stall, like he’s barely here.

  “Nothing’s as painful as love,” David finally says.

  I wonder if he’s loved someone the way this writer has and what that really feels like. But when he looks up at Josephine, his face soft and fallen, I see that David is talking about a different kind of love—the kind of love we’re all missing, and a deep sadness fills my belly and squeezes at my throat.

  “Love that’s taken is the worst,” David says.

  “When you know it, when you have it, and then it’s taken . . . Nothing else has ever hurt so much,” I say, and I wonder if maybe Louis is so mean because he’s never known that kind of love from anyone.

  “The Mainland woman who raised you, she was good? She was kind to you?” Josephine says.

  I shrug and nod at the same time, thinking of all the good things she did and trying to ignore all the ways I feel hurt now that she’s gone.

  “She kept so much from me. Things that would have helped. And some days I hate her for that,” I say. “But I miss her too. I miss her a lot. I feel guilty and sad and angry. I feel all of those things, sometimes all at once.”

  They nod, like they know what I mean, and I close my eyes and take a few deep breaths, listening to the rain.

  “No one told you about anything?” Josephine says.

  I shake my head. “I didn’t know anything about my debt.”

  “How is that even possible?” Violet says. “Didn’t you see Gutter folks?”

  I wiggle my mouth, trying hard to remember all the things I saw when I was little. “I remember when I was seven, Mother took me to a beach just outside of Capedown. It was a school day, so it was quiet and pretty empty. She put her towel down on the sand so carefully. It was a big towel with pink flowers, and when she lay down, it was like she was lying down in a garden. She told me she just needed a quick rest after the drive. She closed her eyes, and I tried to make a castle out of sand, but the sand was too fine. I needed water to make it hold, so I went to the ocean with my pail. And I saw this man. A Gutter man,” I say, slowly, like I’m just remembering it all again. “He was older but not old, you know. He was carrying this thick yellow garbage bag, and he was walking along the beach picking up cups and food wrappers. His skin was like mine, and I remember watching him so closely. I remember wondering if he was my father. Maybe he was looking for me, you know. But the weird thing is, I didn’t know whether I should run to him or whether I should run away. I didn’t know whether to be happy or scared. So I just stood there. When he got closer, I noticed the two Xs. And I felt afraid. I thought maybe he was going to take me to the Gutter, away from Mother. And I didn’t want to go. But I couldn’t move.”

  “What happened?” Josephine says when I stop and look away.

  “He smiled, and I smiled back,” I say, grinning at the thought of him. “He said hello, and I remember his voice was really deep. Really low. Mother must have opened her eyes just then, because all I remember after that is her scream. ‘Elimina, no! Elimina, get away from that man!’”

  “Why did she want you to get away from him?” David says.

  I shake my head, looking down. “I don’t know,” I say. But maybe I do. Maybe Mother didn’t want me around Gutter folks. Maybe Miss Femia was wrong. Maybe Mother wouldn’t want me here at all.

  “Elimina?” David says, and I look up quickly, lost in my thoughts. “What happened to the man?”

  I squint, like I’m not sure I remember. “He . . . he just apologized to Mother, and when she pulled me away . . . he just kept going, walking along the beach with his yellow bag. Mother packed up all of our stuff and we left, and I cried because she promised we would swim in the ocean, and we never did. It was the last time we ever left Capedown. We barely left home after that.”

  Thunder snaps and rumbles, and we all jump, hands to our chests. We sit there, waiting for the next bolt to strike, but nothing comes.

  “Do you think Ida i
s lonely here?” I say as I touch the tips of my hair, which she tightened earlier today.

  Everyone just frowns and shrugs their shoulders like they’re not sure.

  “I wonder if she could leave campus if she really wanted to, or if part of her package is that she has to stay here?” Josephine says.

  “Would they do that?” I say.

  “Employers can do almost anything with those contracts,” Rowan says.

  “Do you think if she fell in love, she could get married, though?” Violet says.

  Josephine picks up a piece of straw and splits it in two. “I thought she did have someone.”

  “Yeah, but he’s long gone now,” Rowan says.

  “Oh yeah, the maintenance Deco. You remember, Jose, the one before Big Tim,” David says. “That was right when we got here.”

  “There was another Gutter Deco before?” I say, and Rowan nods, eyebrows raised, like this story is a good one.

  “He used to come to the ring and spar with me, help me train for my matches. He was pretty good, too. He’d talk about how he wanted kids someday. How being in the system wouldn’t stop him from having that,” Rowan says. “But Ida wanted to save for her family back home, not start a new one. He said she needed to start living forward, not backward. But she didn’t change her mind. Eventually, he got transferred out. Mr. Gregors brought in Big Tim and he went somewhere else.”

  “Why?” Violet says.

  “I don’t know. Maybe to start a family,” Rowan says. “Or maybe Mr. Gregors wanted to get back at Ida. I remember he was pretty mad about it.”

  “Why would he be mad at Ida?” Josephine says. “Do you think that Deco was here for her?”

  “Maybe. Which is why I was so impressed,” Rowan says.

  “Impressed?” Violet says, like that doesn’t make sense.

  “Ida didn’t want to have kids and stuck to it even though it cost her love. That’s brave. Debt for one is plenty enough,” Rowan says. “I think she did the right thing.”

  “Do you think they could have had a family? Do you think Mr. Gregors would have let her?” Violet says.

  Rowan scowls at her. “You think Mr. Gregors is just going to let Ida raise a family here while she pays off her debt?”

  Violet shrugs.

  “Violet, you’re crazier than I thought,” Rowan says.

  “Don’t call me that, Rowan. I’m not crazy.”

  “I’d like to think that there are employers who let you have kids and get married. I mean, it must happen. You’d be more likely to do your best work, wouldn’t you?” David says.

  “I can’t see Mr. Gregors going for it,” Josephine says.

  Rowan shrugs. “I think Ida has her own way of living that’s none of our business.”

  “She never leaves campus,” Violet says. “She hardly leaves the basement.”

  “Is that Mr. Gregors’s doing or is that how she wants it?” Josephine says.

  “Who would want to live like that?” Violet says. “I’ve been to those employer fairs, helping Mr. Gregors. Rowan has too. There’s not much choice involved. I bet anything she’s not allowed to leave. It’s probably in her hiring package.”

  “I heard she’s terrified of the dogs and the guards,” Josephine says. “Because of her last school. Maybe she just prefers to be alone.”

  “She’s got a whole business of her own making bags down there that Mr. Gregors sells. For a good bit of extra money,” David says. “Whatever her reasons, she’s doing good for herself and her family.”

  I imagine Ida sitting in the basement, weaving banana leaves together, and I wonder if she’s happy or if she’s lonely like I was in Capedown, trapped in our house, afraid to go anywhere.

  “I don’t think I want to be a mother,” Josephine says, and David turns to her abruptly.

  “You don’t want to have what Mom and Pop have, Jose?”

  She shrugs, swallowing hard, like the very mention of her parents is too much. “It’s not as easy as that out here, David. Maybe that’s why Ida doesn’t want to have kids. I mean, Louis doesn’t even know who his parents are. He’s been in an academy his whole life. He has no one.”

  “But Louis doesn’t have the burden of freeing up a family either,” Rowan says. “He’s lucky that way.”

  “Family’s not a burden, Rowan,” David says.

  “It is if you have to pay their debt.”

  “Or if you have to spend your life away from them,” Josephine says, but David shakes his head like they’ve got it all wrong.

  “I don’t know that life’s really worth living without family, without someone,” he says. “I can handle all of this, if it’s for someone or something. But what’s the point if it’s just me? I don’t know if I could do it that way.”

  I look at David and try to smile like I agree. I think about what Ida said about happiness and purpose, how David seems so clear about his, while I still feel so lost.

  “Sometimes I think being in the Gutter with family wasn’t so bad as being here, fighting for everyone,” Rowan says. “My dad—my pops—geez, I don’t even know what to call him. He taught me how to fight when I was barely able to walk. You can make good money at rings in the Gutter. He was raising me to make it from the start.”

  “Is he who you’re going to buy out?” I say, and everyone looks down, like this is something I shouldn’t have said.

  “He disappeared a few weeks before my seventh birthday,” Rowan says, clearing his throat.

  “Do you remember the day you left?” Violet says.

  Rowan nods, tilting his head back against the wall.

  “I remember it like it’s right here in front of me now,” she says. “Tasting the river water in my mouth, hearing those Healers sing those songs, holding on to me on that bus in shirts that smelled like the petals on the flowers in our yard. I was so glad to get out. Other kids were crying. But not me. I didn’t cry at all. I smiled when I went through that gate and crossed over that bridge for the last time.”

  “I didn’t smile,” Rowan says, as he looks up at the ceiling. “Momma was standing at the fence with my sister. I thought they could come all the way to the main gate. But the guards said no. When we passed through the chain-link fence, I turned to her, but the guards held me back. They kept pulling me away, and Momma started to cry. I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to run back, but I kept thinking about my pops and the way he got so angry whenever I cried or made a fuss. I had to be tough. I was the man of the house. And I was going to take care of us. So I just walked away. I got into a van and we drove through those Gutter gates slowly. I remember sitting in the backseat as the gates swung closed. They clicked, like locks on a cell. They made that noise. I was seven years old, and the thing that sticks out most to me now is the sound of that gate clicking shut. I never saw the Gutter that way until that moment. I never realized we were trapped in there until I was on the other side.”

  For a second, the rain seems to slow down, like it might be ready to stop, but when I close my eyes, it picks up again, faster and harder this time, like the clouds are not done feeling sad.

  “Funny thing is, I’ve always thought of my pops as the perfect parent because he wasn’t the one who made me walk out those gates. He didn’t give me away. Maybe, if he’d been there, he would have stopped it all, you know. Maybe I’d still be home,” he says, clearing his throat again. “Truth is, my pops gave me the only worthwhile skill I got—the one thing that might get me out of this mess.”

  I smile, small and sad, and he looks at me and does the same, lifting the corners of his mouth before letting them fall.

  “Do you want family, Violet?” David says. “Is that why you want to know about Ida?”

  She shakes her head. “I didn’t have a good family,” Violet says. “Maybe that’s why I’ve always wanted a family of my own. To do it well . . . But maybe Rowan’s right. Ida too. Maybe it’s better to do this alone.”

  But as I watch Josephine and David together, and as I lo
ok around the stall, rain pounding against the Fieldhouse walls, I think maybe Violet, Rowan and Ida have it all wrong. Maybe alone is the hardest way of all.

  9

  ON THE LAST FRIDAY OF EACH MONTH, LOUIS HOLDS Red Coat meetings in the Main House courtyard, where we discuss difficult students and suggested punishments. At the meetings, Louis almost always pushes for the leashes and I always plead for alternatives.

  “Can’t he just miss a meal or do some extra work in the Fieldhouse?” I said at the last meeting when we discussed a maintenance student who had been late five days in a row.

  Louis shook his head, hands pressed firmly against his waist. “Punishment and discipline are gifts, Junior. Why would you withhold the opportunity to give your peers a gift when you know it will further their learning?”

  When I arrive at the meeting, Louis is standing near the leashes with Murray Smith, a new student with a crooked smile that bends under a scar that runs from the corner of his eye to the point of his mouth.

  I try not to show how bothered I am that Murray is here at the meeting, given that he’s not a Red Coat, but I can tell by the way Murray and Louis are both smirking that my discomfort doesn’t bother them at all.

  Murray Smith transferred to Livingstone Academy two months ago, taking one of five beds that became available on campus after a handful of older students were hired at a recent employer fair.

  Murray is only fourteen, but his body is thick and wide like an oak tree. His skin is covered in scars that run along his arms, legs and neck, each one neat and round like a coin or the end of a cigar. According to Murray, the scars were caused by his father, who hated the look of his own son so much, he took it out on him every day. But whenever Murray says this, he smiles as though it’s the very thing that makes him strong.

  Murray insists that his five years in the Gutter with the meanest father on the planet made him brave and untouchable, and that it’s his purpose in life to create that same kind of inner strength in others, which is exactly why Louis likes him. He’s stocky and strong like Rowan but tall, with a permanent just-give-me-a-reason-to-punch-you look on his face, and Louis treats him like he’s his own personal bodyguard.