Duncan scratches his beard, running his teeth along his lip. “Around the eighth or ninth year of the project, when you-all were approaching your tenth birthday, there was about thirty kids left, best Momma and I could tell. We were keeping track as best we could. That’s when folks from the Hill Coalition got involved. They argued that the project wasn’t right. Unjust and inhumane, is what they said. But it took right up until the tenth anniversary of the project for folks inside the Mainland government to listen or do anything. By then, only twenty-one were still alive. Your momma was the only one who fought to keep you when the rest were pulled from those homes.”
For my tenth birthday, Mother threw me a party. She did my nails and we sat around in swimsuits and robes, surrounded by candles. A call came through that made her so upset she left her cake and peeled off her nail polish. For weeks, little bits of red were stuck in her white rug.
“I will not give her back. Not now. Not ever. Do not call me again,” she said, slamming down the phone.
That night, we slept in the same bed, and Mother wrapped her arms so tightly around me I found it hard to breathe. “I love you so much, Elimina. I will never let anyone hurt you,” she said, and I waited until I heard her breathing slow to a snore before I got up and climbed into my own bed.
“If they were pulled, then where are they now, the other twenty?” I say as Lulabelle wanders into the garden, checking the flowers and placing her nose in the petals.
Duncan leans back, locking his fingers behind his head. I can’t tell if he wishes I would stop asking questions, or if he’s relieved to be able to talk about this with someone other than Lulabelle.
“They were going to send them all back to the Gutter. They didn’t understand that those kids were not babies anymore. Those kids didn’t know the Gutter, and they didn’t want it. They had lived with Mainlanders their whole lives. All they knew about the Gutter was whatever their Mainland families told them. And most of it wasn’t good. And who were they going to go back to, anyway? Most of them were like you. No family to even go to. A lot of those mothers were in trouble before they signed up for the project. Don’t think many were still alive by the time those kids were pulled out of those homes.”
“Do you think that’s why they picked us?”
“I’m sure of it,” Duncan says, nodding his head. “Rumor was they were going to send them to academies like the one you attended, but the Hill Coalition was fighting that too. They wanted them to be released right to the Hill. Network folks had thoughts on that, though. But when the fire happened, none of that mattered anymore.”
“What fire?”
He looks down at the ground. “They were staying at an old academy while things were being discussed, supervised by Mainland Guards and a few Mainland government folks. The building burnt down with all twenty trapped inside and not a single Mainlander. They said it was an accident. Bad wiring. But Gutter folks know better.”
I’m not sure whether to be sad or angry or what to do with my thoughts, but I feel something heavy in my heart and in my belly as I sit there with Duncan—a deep kind of hurt.
“You’re still here,” Duncan says, like he can see the pain rising. “You got to hold to that, Elimina. There’s got to be a reason.”
I stand and look at Duncan, suddenly furious. “Is there a reason they all died? Is that what you’re saying? I’m here for a reason, so they died for a good reason too?”
“Elimina, that’s not what I meant,” Duncan says, reaching out for me, but I pull back hard.
“How can you live with yourselves?” I whisper, and before he can respond, I step off the porch and run down the street toward Miss Charlotte’s, my eyes blurry with tears.
22
MISS CHARLOTTE DOLES OUT CHORES WITH JOY, LIKE she’s proud of all the different ways she’s able to make us work. We dust furniture and mop floors and scrub tiles because, according to her, staying busy is the sign of a well-made woman. Sometimes I wonder if she considers herself well-made given that all she does is watch.
“It’s good for the babies to have an active mother rather than one who just sits around growing bigger,” she says with her eyes fixed on Tilly.
We work from breakfast until lunch, and then all afternoon, and I wonder if this is good for us, all this bending and cleaning and doing. But part of me is grateful for the distraction. I am trying hard not to think about Duncan and Lulabelle and the project.
“Spot free, dust free. Healthy, healthy,” Miss Charlotte sings as I wipe down the furniture in the sitting room. When she finds Tilly in the kitchen, resting in a chair during chores, her singing turns to yelling. “Matilda, how many times do I have to tell you to get to work?”
“How many times I got to tell you, Miss Charlotte, that my name is not Matilda, it’s Tilly?”
“Your mother named you Matilda for a reason,” Miss Charlotte says, “and I intend to honor that.”
“I’m seventeen years old,” Tilly says, with her finger pointed at Miss Charlotte. “I haven’t seen my mother in twelve years. If she’s still alive and I happen to ever see her again, I imagine a whole lot of things will have changed, Miss Charlotte. My name being just a start.”
Miss Charlotte storms out the front door, mumbling about girls with no manners, and when she disappears down Main Street, Tilly takes a tart from the fridge and shoves the whole thing in her mouth.
ISOBEL AND TILLY are wiping down the windows while I sweep the porch when a black car pulls into the driveway.
“New girl’s here,” Tilly says, leaning over the railing.
A young Gutter man with thick, curly hair steps out of the car and places a blue bag on the steps. “Is . . . Miss Charlotte here?” he says, and the three of us shake our heads.
I can see a girl hunched over in the backseat, and the driver looks nervous, like he’s not sure what to do next.
“This girl’s going to need some help. Is there a doc around?”
He opens the car door and wraps the girl’s arm around his shoulder before lifting her carefully out of the car. When she stands and squints up at the sun, I gasp loudly.
“Violet?”
Violet pauses for a moment, lifting her head like she’s confused. Her hair is cut short and her body is covered in purple bruises, but underneath her white dress are the budding signs of a small, round belly.
“I was told to bring her straight to Miss Charlotte’s in Riverside,” the man says. “She was like this when I picked her up, I swear.”
“I’ll call Doc Luca,” Tilly says, heading into the house.
“Violet? Violet, it’s me, Elimina,” I say, pulling her thin body close and helping her up the stairs.
When the driver sees that I’ve got her and that I know her by name, he gets back into the car and drives away so quickly his tires squeal up the main road.
WHEN VIOLET SLEEPS for two days, barely eating or leaving our room, Miss Charlotte instructs me to take her outside for fresh air and exercise. Violet’s hardly said a word to me since she arrived, and I worry that our time at Miss Charlotte’s will go the same way things went at the academy, full of awkward silences and unkind words.
Her bruises are healing, and when she walks around the yard, picking up rocks, I can tell that the soreness that made it so difficult for her to sleep on her first night is improving as well.
“Do you want to talk about what happened?” I say.
She nods at my belly. “Do you?”
I sit on the bench and stare at the river, where a small red bag hanging from a branch is pulled by the water.
“Was it Rowan?” she says, and when I look back at her, I pause and then nod.
She grabs a rock and drops it in a jar she took from the kitchen, shaking it so the stones spread and settle.
“I’m sorry,” I say, even though I don’t know what I’m saying sorry for.
“Don’t say sorry,” she says.
“But Violet—”
She raises her hand to get me to stop. “Until I go
t here and saw you and figured out about you . . . and Rowan . . . I thought he might be hoping for me. Missing me,” she says, clearing her throat with a cough. “At one point, when things were really bad, I thought maybe he might come and rescue me. I heard about his boxing matches nearby, and I know it sounds crazy, but I thought . . . I thought he might come for me. But that only happens in books, right? In stories. Like the ones Mr. Gregors let us read in his office. And this is Gutter life. Don’t feel sorry for me, Elimina.”
“Violet, what happened?” I say.
She turns to me, combing her fingers through her short hair. “What happened when I was young or what happened after Livingstone? Which story do you want?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I guess whichever story you want to tell.”
She shrugs, sitting down on the bench, her jar of rocks beside her. “My stories are not worth telling, Elimina.”
She looks over at me with her chin raised high, the way she did at Livingstone, except this time her eyes are shimmery wet, like she’s only pretending to be okay.
“I want a story where a Gutter girl wins, where things turn out well, like they do for Mainlanders. But the truth is, I don’t know how that story goes. I don’t want to tell the stories I know, okay?”
I place my hand on hers, hoping she doesn’t pull away, and when she grips my hand tightly, we sit there like that, listening to the river, watching the red bag as it breaks away and floats down the river.
THAT NIGHT, VIOLET pulls the blue book of poetry out of her bag and hands it to me. I hold it against my chest, clutching it tight, and she smiles a little, like she’s glad to see how much it still means to me. I flip through the pages, moving my fingers across the words, reading one poem, then another.
I tell Violet we should read a poem every night for the babies, but she says there’s a power to those words that she can’t take in every day, so I tuck the book under my pillow and vow to do it quietly on my own.
“How was everything after I left?” she says, picking up the carving of the mother and child and sliding her finger along the curves.
I climb onto her bed, so we’re shoulder to shoulder, and I tell her everything—about Josephine’s disappearance and Rowan’s boxing, about the day I met Duncan and Lulabelle and the day I was born, and the truth about the Gutter Enhancement Project. I tell her about the fire that killed the last twenty project kids, and she listens thoughtfully, waiting until I’m done before saying anything.
“So Duncan and Lulabelle gave all those babies to Mainlanders, and for that they got Redemption Freedom?”
I nod.
“And now all those kids, except for you, are dead?” she says. I nod again as she exhales loudly, like it’s too much to take in. “Are you angry?”
“At Duncan and Lulabelle?”
“At everything,” she says. “At Josephine? At the project? At all of it.”
“Most days, I’m just sad. That I don’t have family. That I’m alone. And when someone makes that happen for you, the way that Josephine did, and Duncan and Lulabelle, it’s hard not to be angry. But I’m also just hurt because I feel, in a weird way, like Josephine and even Duncan and Lulabelle are the closest thing that I’ve ever had to family since Mother died. And the truth is, I don’t want to be angry with them. I don’t want to lose everyone I care about.”
Violet pauses for a moment before responding in a low, quiet voice. “I know I wasn’t good to you at the academy, Elimina. But maybe now we can be each other’s family, you know? Maybe family are just the people you meet who are worth forgiving, so you can keep them close.”
I smile. “I would really like that,” I say.
When I crawl onto my own bed, Violet lies down and falls asleep while I stare at the streetlights and the stars. I pull out the blue book, and before I go to sleep, I whisper a poem to the baby about a strange garden.
23
ON SATURDAYS, MAINLAND GUARDS HEAD TO MAIN Street and Covey Road, where bars built from old, splintered wood sit on all four corners of the crossroads. They stroll into the bars, sober and tired, and stumble out hours later, crashing on a bench or on the steps of their dorm-style apartment building.
“Stay inside. No exceptions,” Miss Charlotte says as she heads out the door to play her weekly game of poker with Doc Luca and a few of the Main Street shop owners.
The first few Saturday nights after Violet’s arrival, the four of us played cards and baked bread, staying up as late as we could manage. But on my eighth Saturday in Riverside, I convince Tilly and Isobel to help me plan a surprise party for Violet. We bake a cake and make fancy hats out of paper bags when Violet is napping, and after Miss Charlotte leaves for poker, I set up everything while the other girls keep Violet outside.
“Surprise!” we shout when she comes into the house. “Happy birthday!”
Violet stares at the decorations and the cake with an expression that looks more confused than excited. “It’s not my birthday,” she says.
“I know. But I also know that you’ve never had a party. And we all deserve a party sometimes,” I say.
She smiles slowly, her eyes turning red and watery. But before she can cry or say anything else, Tilly punches her on the shoulder.
“Oh, stop it,” Tilly says. “It’s not that big of a deal.”
We show her all of the things we made, and when Violet hugs me tightly and whispers a little thank you, I almost cry too.
Tilly uses a thin pair of scissors to style Violet’s hair, and I fiddle with the radio while Isobel places flowers she found by the river behind our ears. We sit at the table, where I spread out a cloth and place two lit candles in the center like they do at Mainland restaurants. I grab the blue book and read a few poems, just like we used to do in the Fieldhouse. When I finish, Tilly and Isobel applaud, demanding we celebrate by eating the cake.
I hand Tilly the knife, and when we sing “Happy Birthday,” she cuts the cake, lifting each slice with a knife and two of her fingers to keep it from falling. Crumbs fall everywhere and larger pieces follow with clumps of gooey icing. When Tilly is done, she spreads a streak of icing on Isobel’s face. Isobel screams, and we all stretch across the table with icing on our fingers, spreading it everywhere, until Violet, the cleanest of the group, declares a truce.
“Game over,” she shouts, pulling her chair away from the table and grabbing a damp cloth.
“Let’s play another game,” Isobel says when the icing is cleaned off.
They all nod in agreement, and Isobel and Violet settle onto the couch while Tilly slides into the armchair.
“There was this game show on the radio in Capedown called Dreamhome that Mother and I used to listen to,” I say. “It was Mother’s favorite show. People had to guess the price of things and if they guessed the right price, they got the prize, and if they guessed enough things right, they got a whole house.”
“They got a house, just for doing that?” Violet says.
I nod, grabbing a knife and holding it to my mouth like a mic, as Isobel tosses me a pillow. “Ladies and gentlemen, what we have here is a King’s Court Pillow. Made of the finest upholstery on the Mainland. Violet, what would you say this fine-looking pillow is worth?”
Violet smiles, straightening up and pretending to be nervous. “Well, I don’t know. I mean, a pillow like that . . . I’d . . . I’d . . . have to say . . . two dollars.”
When I tell her she’s correct, she cheers and the girls beg for more. They bid on spoons and cushions and Miss Charlotte’s teacups, and when they guess a number, I either tell them they’re correct or ask them to try again later. We keep an imaginary score, and at the end of the game, Violet’s declared the winner. I give her a fork as the key to her new home, and when I ask her what she’s looking forward to most, she leans in to the microphone-knife and says, “I’m just looking forward to getting the hell out of Riverside.”
We all laugh, and when they beg for more games, I invite the girls to show off their talents,
like they do on the Mainland pageant shows.
“Abracadabra,” I say, tossing a blanket out of sight and smiling as though it has disappeared into thin air by magic.
“Good magic,” Isobel says, holding on to her belly and laughing hysterically, while Tilly and Violet boo with their hands cupped around their mouths.
I ask one of them to come up and present her talent next, but all three of them shake their heads.
“It’s my birthday,” Violet says.
“And I don’t have any talents,” Tilly says.
“You must have some talents,” I say, smiling and gesturing toward the dining area, which has become our stage.
“Tilly tells good stories,” Isobel says, and we all clap and shout because it’s true.
“Tell a story, Tilly!” Violet yells, and when the three of us continue to beg, Tilly raises her hands in surrender.
“Okay, okay, okay,” she says, rising slowly and taking a deep breath with her hands on the sides of her belly.
When she starts to tell the story of Jimmy Bean, a boy she knew back at the academy, Isobel claps and cheers, like she’s heard this one before and wants to hear it again.
“Now, Jimmy Bean was sweet like chocolate,” Tilly says, licking her fingers and using fancy adult words and funny hand gestures to describe every part of his body.
“He was fine as wine, and every girl wanted him. But he wanted me,” she says, smacking her hand against her hip, so we all know he liked her curves.
“We had this shed on campus, a little wood room full of tools and broken machinery, and when Jimmy Bean took me out to that shed, the night was as pretty as a painting.”
She describes the moon and the stars and every sound that made her sweat while the three of us hold on to our bellies, begging her to keep going.
“He made a woman out of me, let me tell you,” she says, swiveling her hips as far as they’ll go and puckering her mouth.
“Tell them about his name,” Isobel shouts at Tilly, who smiles with her eyes and her ears, like she knows this is the best part.
Gutter Child Page 18