Gutter Child

by Jael Richardson

  “Lulabelle? Let go, please,” Miss Charlotte says, her eyes begging me not to encourage her.

  Lulabelle doesn’t let go and I don’t stop singing, and when I look down at her hands gripped around mine, and at Duncan’s resting on her shoulders, I notice that their scars are not Xs but splotches that look like dark puddles.

  “Miss Lulabelle,” I say when she finally stops singing. “My name is Elimina.”

  The old woman shakes her head hard, like I’ve got it all wrong. “You are Lima. You are Lima Jenkins Sinclair. And you are home. You finally came home,” she says as she holds my face in the palms of her hands.

  19

  I HEAR A LOUD POP FROM SOMEWHERE OUTSIDE THE HOUSE, and I sit up in a dark bedroom, alone. It’s my first time sleeping in a room by myself in more than two years, and I feel restless and jumpy at the shadows that bend and curve on the walls. I move to the window and press my forehead against the glass, but all I can see are glowing streetlamps and the quiet storefronts along Main Street.

  I listen for movement from Miss Charlotte, or from Tilly and Isobel, and when I hear the sound again—a loud pop, followed by another—I climb out of bed and step quietly across the hall. I knock softly, placing my ear against the door, and when I hear “Shhh-shhh-shhh” on the other side, then silence, I knock again.

  “It’s me, Elimina,” I whisper, and the door creaks open.

  Isobel and Tilly’s room is similar to mine, two beds separated by a narrow stretch of floor that leads to a small window. Only their window looks out on the river.

  The two girls are sitting on their beds, facing each other with their backs against the wall. Tilly’s legs are stretched out in front of her, while Isobel’s are tucked underneath her like a bow. As soon as I see them, all I can think about is Josephine and those nights we spent talking in the Fieldhouse.

  “Were those gunshots?” I say, walking toward the window and peering out into the backyard, where flecks of moonlight sparkle on top of the water.

  “I’d step away from the window if I were you,” Tilly says, and I step back quickly, sitting down on the edge of Isobel’s bed.

  “Why? What’s going on down there?”

  “Headhunters lie out in that grass every night, waiting for Gutter folks trying to make it out. I don’t trust Mainlanders with loaded guns. Especially when it’s dark.”

  “Make it out where?” I say.

  “Out here. To the Mainland,” Tilly says.

  “Nobody’s going to hire them without a hiring package. Where are they going to go?”

  “Well, you know that and I know that, but they don’t know that,” Tilly says. “They think they can get somewhere better if they can just get past the wall. Truth is, they’re dead as soon as they try.”

  “Is that why they call it Dead Man’s Bridge?” I say, and Tilly nods.

  “They should call it Dead Man’s River. That’s where they die. In the water,” Isobel says softly.

  “Mainland folks know it as South River, but in the Gutter, they call it Fadahe River, Freedom River,” Tilly says, shaking her head and removing the lid from a tin beside her pillow. “But that river don’t bring freedom to nobody. At least not in the way folks think.”

  “When you’re desperate, you try anything,” Isobel says with a tired sigh.

  “Well, the only place that river’s going to take you is straight to the devil himself,” Tilly says. She takes a cookie out of the tin and savors the taste slowly as she swallows each bite.

  “Do you know Miss Lulabelle?” I say.

  “Everybody knows Miss Lulabelle,” Tilly says.

  “She is crazy,” Isobel says, leaning into her pillow.

  “I swear it gets worse every day. That old lady shouts things from her porch, and poor Duncan just sits there with her, listening to all of it,” Tilly says. “I mean, it’s his momma, I get it. But still. Keep your distance, Elimina. Crazy is contagious.”

  I nod like I agree with them, but I think they’re wrong about Lulabelle.

  In the office at Livingstone Academy, there were files for every student on campus, and when Miss Templeton was away from her desk and Mr. Gregors was out of the office, I looked at mine, recording the things that I saw in my notebook. There were pictures of Mother when she was young along with pictures of the two of us together, and at the back, there were two documents of record. The adoption papers loosely addressed the arrangement of the project with a signature from Mother. But the official record of birth provided details I never knew about my birth. According to the record, my birth mother, Rosalind Sinclair, died on the same day I was born. Milton Jenkins, who was listed as my father, died eight months earlier. At the top of the document, a name was handwritten in careful letters: Lima Jenkins Sinclair.

  And all I can think about since I ran into Lulabelle is how she could possibly know that name when she saw me in front of Cranberry Manor.

  “I still can’t believe you grew up with a Mainlander, living like them, with them,” Tilly says, shaking her head.

  “It was just Mother . . . She never married . . . And she died a few years ago. Which is how I ended up at Livingstone . . . Which is how I ended up here,” I say.

  I look down at my belly, touching it gently, wondering if I’ll look more like Tilly or Isobel when it grows.

  “Lover or leader?” Tilly says.

  “Pardon?”

  “Was he someone you loved or was he one of the leaders? A Deco. A boss, a headmaster, you know?” she says.

  Isobel looks down, biting her fingernails.

  “Uhh. He was a friend. I guess. I think,” I say, unsure how to feel about Rowan and how to explain him to Tilly.

  “Do you miss it? Your home?” Isobel says quickly, like she wants to change the subject.

  “I don’t have a home,” I say with a shrug, and Isobel nods.

  “I miss home. So much,” she says.

  “How old are you, Isobel?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “And you?” I say to Tilly, who lifts her chin high, like she’s proud.

  “Seventeen. Been on the Mainland for twelve years now. Just an hour or so away,” Tilly says, looking out the window and tightening the short twists in her hair with one hand. “When I first got here, to Riverside, I’ll tell you the truth, it felt good to see home. But it’s hard now. I look out at that bridge every night, and it breaks me up knowing that the people I love are so close but so far away.”

  I look out at the bridge and then at Isobel. “Do you feel that way too?”

  She shakes her head quickly, scowling at the window. “That is not my home. My family, my people, we are not Sossi. We are not Gutter.”

  “What do you mean?” I say.

  She looks around the room, thinking carefully about what she might say, like the words she wants to use are new and hard to find. “In my home, the sky is bigger. The leaves on the trees, they are long and wide. And the water is clear. You can see fish at the bottom, swimming and crawling,” she says, smiling and using her hands like this is the best way she can describe it.

  “You weren’t born here?”

  She shakes her head. “The island where I lived cracked open and leaked fire. I was ten,” she says. “Our elders said it was the dead rising. We all had to leave. So we took our boats and we sailed away. My home got smaller, and everything turned red.”

  “So you came here?” I say.

  “We landed on the Mainland. On a small beach that curved out. Like this.” She makes room on her bedsheet and traces the line of the beach with her finger.

  “Mama said it was mataiolo—a welcome mat. This was where we were meant to rest. The land was welcoming us. But she was wrong. We were not welcome here at all,” Isobel says, shaking her head.

  “If you’re not from here, then how did you get your scars?”

  Isobel looks down at her hands and frowns, grabbing a pillow and squeezing it tight. “The Mainland Guard found us. At the camp we built near the ocean. They c
alled us thieves. But Papa said, ‘We are not thieves. We are kiipa. Visitors. Friends.’ But they say we are Gutter. Gutter,” she says, snarling and spitting it out with contempt, like she’s imitating the guards. “‘No. We are Ruwai. Water People. Kiipa-Ruwai,’ Papa said. ‘Friends from across the water.’ Over and over, he says this. But they called us Gutter and thieves.”

  Isobel points at everything in the room, scowling like the guards. “They point at our huts, our fire, our food. ‘Thieves,’ they say. This word means taking things that are not yours. But they tried to take us. They are the thieves. So we fight back. Hakala anowei,” she says, waving two fists in the air. “This means . . . when you are pushed, you fight.”

  “Damn straight, Isobel,” Tilly says, fists raised high like she’s ready to throw a punch. “Hakala anowei.”

  I smile at the two of them, raising my fists as well. “Hakala anowei,” I say, and for a moment, Isobel smiles.

  “We fight. But most of my family did not survive. Me, my brothers and my sisters. Six of us hid. But they found us. They marked us,” she says, showing her scars. “I cry and I cry, not from pain, but from the hurt in my heart.”

  I reach out for her and she leans her head into me as Tilly grabs another cookie and shoves it into her mouth.

  “I was taken to Healers. They taught me to speak like them, like now. But I am not very good. They taught me from their book. And I read and I read and I learned as much as I could.”

  “Where’s the rest of your family?” I say.

  “I do not know. But the Healers, they are kind. They are very kind to me.”

  “I don’t know about that, Isobel,” Tilly says with a scowl. “I don’t think they’re kind at all. No Mainlander who keeps you from your family is kind, if you ask me.”

  “They feed me. They give me a house. They teach me to read and write. I work for them. They are nice.”

  “You think they’re nice, Isobel? Tell her how you got knocked up, then. Tell Elimina. Lover or leader, Isobel?”

  Isobel looks up at Tilly, her face red and angry. “You don’t know, Tilly!” she says, growling into her pillow, like she doesn’t quite know what to say.

  “Isobel, it’s okay. You don’t have to tell me,” I say.

  “It’s not right, Isobel,” Tilly says gently.

  “They don’t have babies. Lady Ann. She can’t make babies.”

  I turn to Isobel, staring down at the neat curve of her belly as she starts to cry. “Isobel, are you having a baby for them?”

  “They were so kind,” she says, nodding and squinting like she’s not sure what to say. “They needed my help. They pay me for the baby. And when I go back to them, I work like before. No one will know.”

  “You know the reason they picked her is because of the way she looks. They’re hoping the baby looks exactly like Father Healer, that the baby will be light enough to pass for his and Lady Ann’s. They’re probably on their knees right now praying that baby’s got none of your brownness.”

  Isobel shakes her head, biting on nails that are so short there’s hardly anything left.

  “Tilly, come on, leave her alone.”

  “Look, Elimina, I love Isobel like she’s my little sister. But it’s not good for her to talk about those Healers like what they’ve done is helping her.”

  I wrap my arm around Isobel, and we both look out the window, watching and listening to the quiet that’s come since the headhunters moved out of earshot.

  “I love the sound of water,” Isobel whispers.

  “Me too,” I say, smiling down at her.

  “Did you know,” Tilly says with a grin, “that Freedom River is the longest river on the Mainland, that there’s a waterfall at the end that’s so steep folks say it’s the straightest route to heaven or hell, depending on who’s doing the falling?”

  I look up at Tilly, my face curled tight, wondering how she knows this and why she’s sharing this now. When Isobel sees my expression, she bursts into laughter, stuffing her face back into her pillow, while Tilly pretends to bow.

  “Seriously, Tilly, how do you know this?” I say, as Isobel continues laughing.

  “We had a Deco who knew just about everything there is to know about the geography of the Mainland,” she says with a shrug. “I asked lots of questions. Too many probably. Got me in trouble more times than not. Did you know there’s a Gutter bird—an actual bird that won’t ever leave the Gutter? Even though the sky is open and even though the walls are not that high, the birds just stay there. They sit on the wall, going nowhere, with feathers that are red like blood.”

  “Is that true?” Isobel says.

  “It’s called the gavanje bird,” Tilly says.

  We sit there for a moment quietly thinking about those red birds.

  “Do you think I am stuck here, like the birds? Do you think I will ever go home and see my family?” Isobel says.

  Tilly takes a long, deep breath, letting her shoulders drop as she breathes out slowly. “You know, I don’t know, Isobel. I wonder about that myself sometimes, but I really don’t know.”

  The two girls slowly lie down in their beds, and before I go, I pull their sheets up over them like Mother used to do when I was little.

  “Do you think the babies can hear us?” I whisper to Tilly. “Do you think they know what’s going to happen to them, that we’re going to give them away?”

  “I try not to think about that,” Tilly says. “The advice I got from Sarah and the girls who came before her was that it’s best not to get too attached. So that’s what I’m trying to do. Don’t think about it. Don’t get too attached, Elimina.”

  I cross the dark hallway and climb back into bed, where I lie down with my hands on my belly, thinking about Tilly’s advice. Don’t get too attached.

  20

  ON THE WALLS OF THE RIVERSIDE MEDICAL CLINIC, there’s a large map of the Mainland with “Our Home, Our Land” written in thin, curling letters. Next to the map, there’s a row of framed degrees and certificates with shiny gold seals. When a man in a long white coat emerges from a door at the back of the clinic, I know that he’s the person who earned them and the one we’ve come to see: Dr. Thomas D. Luca.

  “Charlotte,” he says, bending down and kissing her on each cheek while I stare at a head so pink and bald it seems to reflect light. “It’s always a good day when you come by.”

  “Well, that means a lot coming from you, Thomas. I know how busy you are. I came because I wanted you to meet our new girl. This is Elimina.”

  “Oh yes, Elimina, the project case. All the way from Mainland City. It’s quite an honor,” he says, removing a pen from behind his ear and placing it in his chest pocket, his fingers long and bent like a spider. “How are you liking Riverside?”

  “It’s fine, sir.”

  “Oh, you don’t have to call me sir, Elimina. Doc or Doc Luca will do just fine.”

  “Do you have a minute?” Miss Charlotte says, looking around at the quiet clinic, where a receptionist is clicking away on a typewriter.

  “Is everything okay?” he says.

  “Well, no, actually. We had a bit of a scare yesterday,” Miss Charlotte says.

  “What kind of a scare?” he says, looking at me with concern.

  Miss Charlotte looks over and nudges me.

  “I almost fainted,” I say, biting down on my lip because all this fuss over what happened in front of Cranberry Manor is embarrassing.

  “I think it was the heat. Although she hadn’t eaten much either. You know how those academies can be,” Miss Charlotte says. “She’s well fed now. But I wanted to make sure everything’s in tip-top shape—that there are no problems or concerns. She said this happened at the academy as well.”

  “Of course. Always good to check everything. Let’s have a look,” Doc Luca says.

  He leads us through a door that opens into a room where a large silver lamp hangs over a medical bed with wheels and metal levers. The bed and the lamp are positioned in the
center of the room, with machines and trays full of surgical tools lined up along the far wall. I stare at the jars of cotton and the containers of gauze on the counter, thinking about Mother’s last days in a place that also felt stiff and cold.

  “So how are you settling in?” Doc Luca says as Miss Charlotte sits down in a chair in the corner of the room. He pulls out two long metal arms with plastic grooves, which extend from one end of the bed.

  “Good, sir,” I say, anxiously watching as Doc Luca prepares a tray of tools.

  “Lulabelle Turner had one of her episodes in front of the Manor. She mistook Elimina for someone else and just cried all over her,” Miss Charlotte says, pulling a magazine out of her purse. “I don’t know if you heard about that.”

  “No, I hadn’t heard,” he says.

  “Scared Elimina half to death,” Miss Charlotte says, shaking her head and wagging the magazine in front of her.

  I want to say that’s not true, that I wasn’t scared at all, but I just stand there, listening quietly.

  “Nurses had to come and take her away. She made quite the scene.”

  “It was that serious?” he says, and Miss Charlotte nods.

  Doc Luca takes a gown from a hook on the wall and hands it to me, pointing to a curtained-off area in the far corner of the room.

  “Remove everything and put this on,” he says.

  I pull the gown on and step out from the curtain, holding my arms tight against my body and biting down hard on my lip. The fabric is thin and worn, and suddenly I feel cold.

  Doc Luca asks me to climb up on the table, and when I’m lying flat on my back, he points at the grooves at the end of the metal arms, instructing me to rest my heels on each one. “Bend your knees and slide down. Yup, just like that. A little bit lower. Almost there,” he says, until my hips are at the end of the table, my legs spread open, the gown draped over my knees like a tent.