Gutter Child

by Jael Richardson

  “What’s wrong with her? Where is she? What’s taking so long? I want to see her now,” she shouts.

  A few moments later, Miss Charlotte rushes out of the house, carrying the baby. She moves quickly across the porch with one of the Mainland Guards, heading directly for the gray car.

  “Wait. Where are you taking her, Miss Charlotte?” I say, stepping toward her.

  “Get back,” the guard yells.

  “She just wants to hold the baby,” I say, stopping in my tracks as the woman steps out to greet her like they’re old friends.

  The two women exchange a few words as Miss Charlotte leans forward and hands her the baby, which she places in the bassinet in the car.

  “Thomas will send along the paperwork as soon as he’s back in the office,” Miss Charlotte says with a low voice, and the woman nods, waving to her and the guards before climbing back into her car and driving down the road.

  WHEN TILLY APPEARS at the front door, led by one of the guards, her eyes are veiny and red. There’re bandages on one hand, and she pauses in the doorway, gripping the frame.

  “You said I could see my baby. You said I could hold her,” she shouts as another guard leans in from behind, pushing her out.

  Isobel gasps when she sees her and she drops down on her knees like she can’t stand up any longer.

  “Tilly!” I shout, and she looks over at me, then at Isobel and Violet, her face hollow and tired.

  “Where’s my baby? I want my baby,” she shouts as the guards force her toward the driveway, pushing from behind and pulling from the front as she leans back to slow them down.

  A few neighbors in thin cotton robes stand on the sidewalk, watching everything and shaking their heads as Miss Charlotte and Doc Luca stand on the front porch.

  “Where is she? Where did you take my Baby Bean?” Tilly shouts, but they don’t say anything.

  Two guards push her up the ramp that leads into the van, while the others stand by for support. When she’s inside, they slam the door shut as Tilly sobs and bangs on the walls.

  “Please, please,” she begs as the van pulls away and heads down the road.

  When the van is gone, I kneel down in the grass with Violet and Isobel. We huddle close, weeping for Tilly and her baby, weeping for each other.

  26

  I STAND IN THE DOORWAY OF DUNCAN’S TAILOR SHOP WITH a letter for the Hill tucked deep in my pocket. Duncan is hunched over a pair of pants with a needle and thread, tapping his foot to the music, which is playing so loudly, he doesn’t hear me enter the store.

  “Duncan?” I say.

  He looks up and moves toward me. “Elimina. You alright?” he says.

  I can’t tell if he’s frightened by my arrival or by the way I appear, but I can tell by the way he’s looking at me, the way he moves in slow and careful, that he knows I’m not okay at all.

  “Is this about Tilly?” he says, and when I nod, he leads me to a chair. “She okay? I saw some vans at the house. Figured she was next.”

  “They took the baby, and then the guards took her away . . . She pulled a knife on Doc Luca. Miss Charlotte says she’s in real trouble.”

  Duncan turns down the radio, and I tell him about the way they loaded Tilly into the van and the woman in the gray car who took the baby.

  “It was awful. What do you think is going to happen to her?”

  “I don’t know,” Duncan says, shaking his head. “Hard to say. There’s a jail in the Gutter, but not too many women there. It’d be rough. But Tilly’s a tough girl. I’m sure she’ll come out alright.”

  I think about how badly Tilly wanted her baby and how much she wanted to go home, and I shake my head because I don’t know if I agree with Duncan. I don’t know if she’ll be okay at all.

  I pull a letter out of my pocket, addressed to David Hamble, and hand it to Duncan. “The headmaster at the academy told me not to tell anyone I’m here. But the driver who brought me here said to come to you if I need to send a Network letter. I need to see if the Freemans can help.”

  “Help you how?” Duncan says.

  “I want to keep my baby.” Just saying these words feels like a breath of fresh air.

  “And how is this letter going to help you do that, Elimina?”

  “Maybe they’ll take both of us,” I say, but when I think about what Tilly said about the Allisters and what I know about Mr. Gregors, I feel the same doubt I see on Duncan’s face.

  “The Hill’s a long ways away. It’s going to take time to get this to them.”

  “I don’t want to give up my baby, Duncan. I want family. Like you and Lulabelle have.”

  Duncan sits down and places his head in his hands, like he knows this is partly his fault, that what I want and what I need is tied to the day he and Lulabelle brought me into the world and took me away.

  “If the Freemans don’t come, Miss Charlotte and Doc Luca will deliver the baby and just give him away. Like they just did with Tilly. Like they did with Sarah. I can’t do that, Duncan.”

  “I know you’re scared, Elimina, and I wish I could help . . . I mean, I hope this letter helps, but—”

  “Wait. Wait,” I say, pausing in the middle of the shop and looking at Duncan as an idea begins to grow. “What if you and Lulabelle deliver the baby? Instead of Doc Luca? In secret, you know?”

  He shakes his head back and forth, like he doesn’t like this plan at all.

  “If you deliver the baby, maybe I can get to the Hill myself.”

  “Elimina, it’s not that simple,” he says. “Delivering a baby here so no one knows, then making it all the way to the Hill? It’s impossible.”

  “Duncan, please. Help me.”

  “Okay, let’s say we do this, Elimina. Let’s say me and Momma and you, we all do our part. How are you going to get to the Hill?”

  “Couldn’t the Network help? They get letters there. Couldn’t they get people there too?”

  “A baby and a woman who just gave birth are a little harder to hide than a letter. Trust me, there’s no way you’re going anywhere north of this town, especially the Hill, without getting shot or found some way. And there’s no way I’m helping you die, Elimina. I can’t do that. Not after what Momma and I already did.”

  I place my hands on my knees, breathing deep and slow, while Duncan watches me.

  “If you want to keep the baby, and that’s your concern . . .” he says, sighing and shaking his head like he’s not sure if he should go on.

  “What? What should I do, Duncan?”

  “Your best bet is heading the other way, to the Gutter.”

  “The Gutter?” I say.

  “We’d have to find a way to make it seem like you’re not much worth to Mainlanders. We’d have to find you the right paperwork. But that’s the best way I can think of. Assuming Momma and I help with the delivery.”

  I place my hand on my belly as the baby flutters and kicks. “I’d have to go to the Gutter?”

  “You don’t have to go to the Gutter, Elimina. There are other ways to pay down that debt. Momma and I, we have some money. It won’t pay everything. But it’s a start. You don’t have to give up. You could get Redemption eventually.”

  “But what about the baby, Duncan? I don’t want to end up like Rosalind or Tilly. I want to keep my child with me.”

  “What about the Hill, Elimina? You got a life to live too.”

  “I want to go to the Hill, and I hope this letter gets there and that the Freemans can come for us both. But I can’t rely on hope, Duncan. I don’t want to go to the Hill if it means I go alone.”

  Duncan wanders the room, pacing and rubbing his head while I sit there thinking about life in the Gutter.

  “Maybe the Hill was never meant to be,” I say, clearing the thickness in my throat. “I was born in the Gutter. Maybe Lulabelle was right. Maybe you never should have taken me from there. Now I’m just going back. Starting over. Making things right. Maybe that’s where I belong.”

  Duncan shak
es his head, squatting down in front of me and holding my hands. “Where we are is where we belong. What you got to think hard about right now, Elimina, is what kind of life you want to live—where you want to be and who you want to be with. You got to be sure on that. Because debt, it can hurt just like a wound.”

  “I want this baby. I want a life with my son. Like you and Lulabelle have. I’m willing to go anywhere to get that.”

  He rubs his hand over his mouth like it’s not the response he wants. “And you’re sure it’s not better for your boy if you go to the Hill alone? I know how one choice can eat away at everything that comes after. It can swallow you whole, Elimina. Trust me.”

  “Duncan, how can this baby survive if he’s alone, if he thinks the person who brought him into this world gave him up? I know what that’s like. He’ll wonder about me forever. He’ll think about me every day and feel a hole, even if he pretends he doesn’t. Tilly, Isobel, Violet, the project cases, every person I ever met at Livingstone Academy—they all lost their families this way. It’s not good. We’re not good, Duncan. And the girls who come here, to Riverside, to Miss Charlotte’s—we’re doing it all over again. Giving our babies away. Growing up apart. This is my only family. And what if he’s all the family I’ll ever have?”

  Duncan looks out on Main Street and watches the marked vans come and go.

  “You’re healthy and good and loving, Duncan, and your mother is right here. Like she’s always been. What if that’s what I need to do? What if that’s what we need to do, stick together? No matter what,” I say, holding my hand on my belly and thinking of Josephine and David and our nights in the Fieldhouse, of Saturday nights with Violet, Tilly and Isobel. “What if greatness only happens when we’re together, when we don’t let them pull us apart?”

  Duncan turns to me, head tilted to one side, chewing his lip and rubbing his beard.

  “Duncan, if I don’t do anything, they’ll take him, and I won’t ever see him again. And I don’t think I can live with that. I need your help. Please.”

  Duncan reaches out and pulls me close, and I cry into his chest like he’s the father I’ll never know.

  27

  A MONTH AFTER TILLY’S ARREST, I WAKE UP ONE MORNING to find the door to Isobel’s room wide open and the sheets stripped from her bed. Her mattress is bare and sunken in the middle, like an invisible body is there. I wake up Violet and we hurry downstairs as quickly as we can. Miss Charlotte is standing in the kitchen making breakfast, yolk dripping from a broken shell.

  “Where’s Isobel?”

  “Well, good morning to you too, Elimina,” Miss Charlotte says, eyebrows raised like she’s expecting an apology that I refuse to give. “I was waiting to tell the two of you the good news over breakfast.”

  “What good news?” Violet says, her voice sharp and angry, like she already knows anything but good news is coming next.

  “Isobel had her baby last night.”

  “She’s gone?” I say, and Miss Charlotte nods, humming a happy yes.

  “When? How? Where did she go?” Violet says.

  Miss Charlotte cracks another egg, letting the yolk ooze into the bowl. “She’s fine. She asked me to say goodbye to both of you.”

  “I didn’t hear any noise last night,” I say.

  “When I checked on her, she said she was feeling a little pain, so I took her down to Doc Luca’s. Her water broke, and by morning the baby was out. Things go rather smoothly when you stay healthy and do as you’re told,” Miss Charlotte says, grabbing a fork and whipping it through the eggs.

  “Did she go back to the Allisters?” Violet says.

  “That’s not something I can discuss.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s between Isobel and her employer, Elimina,” Miss Charlotte says. “It has nothing to do with the two of you. What you need to know is that Isobel has been suitably compensated, and that she’s at a good place of employment. That’s all I want for you ladies. That is why you’re here.”

  But I can tell by the way she turns away from us that what happened to Isobel is exactly what we all feared: the Allisters took the baby and sent her somewhere else. And all I can think about is how lonely and scared she must have felt delivering the baby alone, how horrible it would have been to see her baby go and to know the Allisters didn’t want her.

  When Miss Charlotte asks us to set the table, Violet and I slowly gather dishes and cutlery, carefully arranging three place settings at a table that suddenly feels empty.

  “Are the new girls coming soon?” Violet says, as Miss Charlotte leans the frying pan forward and distributes scrambled eggs on each plate.

  “There are no new girls just yet,” she says, dropping the empty pan in the sink.

  “Why?”

  “I think it will be good for the two of you to have your own rooms. It will make things a little more comfortable,” she says, sitting down at the table and spreading a napkin over her lap. “I know how much you like the river, Violet, so I figured you might like to take the room across the hall.”

  “I’m not changing rooms,” Violet says, her jaw rigid and tight as I scoop eggs into my mouth. “And neither is Elimina.”

  MISS CHARLOTTE FINDS me on a stool in the front yard assembling flower baskets, while Violet plants near the bench in the back. She sits down on the front porch and watches me from the same place I sat on the morning of Tilly’s delivery, and I try to hide my anger and frustration. I don’t want to get taken away in the middle of the night like Sarah. I don’t want her to know I resent her.

  “Elimina, why don’t you come and take a break?” she says.

  I sigh with my back to Miss Charlotte, pushing up from the stool and leaving the small gardening tools on the ground, while Miss Charlotte pours a glass of cold tea.

  “I know the last few weeks have been difficult,” she says, handing me the glass. “I just want to make sure you’re ready to go back to Livingstone. I know you have big plans for the Hill.”

  “I’m ready,” I say, slow and careful, so my words sound calm and certain.

  “I know you were close to Tilly,” she says. “And Isobel.”

  “We’re all close,” I say, as though they’re not significant attachments, even though they are. “Gutter folks are always saying goodbye, Miss Charlotte. You just get used to it eventually.”

  But this is a lie. Every goodbye hurts, sharp and deep, and suddenly I understand why Ida stays in the basement of the academy and prefers to live alone.

  “I know it’s hard to see them go,” Miss Charlotte says.

  I nod, sipping tea that’s cold and bitter on my tongue. “Is that why you aren’t bringing in any new girls?”

  She stares down into her cup. “It’s been a hard month. I could use the rest. Maybe a little vacation,” she says. “Trust me, Elimina, I only want you and Violet to be comfortable. I thought Violet might like her own room. The water seems to calm her.”

  I nod because it’s true. Violet sits on the bench every day and watches the river, collecting her rocks.

  “What happened to Tilly was not what I wanted,” Miss Charlotte says. “But she’s a stubborn girl, and that stubbornness was bound to get the best of her eventually.”

  “She just wanted to be a mother,” I say.

  “Is that what you want, Elimina? To be a mother?”

  “No, Miss Charlotte. I don’t want a baby at all. I want to go to the Hill and pay off my debt. That’s all.”

  She smiles and nods, and I can tell this makes her happy and that she believes what I’ve said.

  “You’ve got an excellent opportunity there,” she says. “You’ll be out in no time.”

  “Duncan and Lulabelle are the only people I’ve ever met who’ve actually done it. Do you think I really have a chance?”

  “I’ll be honest. It’s hard, Elimina. But not in the way you might think. It’s not any more difficult than working here or being a tailor like Duncan or even a doctor like Thomas. But there are j
ust so many temptations for you. Distractions that can get in your way. Which is why I think you will do it. I think you, more than anyone, know how to avoid those temptations.”

  “Temptations?” I say.

  “Relationships and bad influences that can lead you astray. You have to know what’s really important, so those kinds of distractions don’t add to your debt. I think you’re the kind of girl who’s learned an important lesson by being at a place like this.”

  A Gutter man with a foot that curves inward makes his way down Main Street, and we sit there for a moment, sipping tea, as I watch him limp down the road, toward the bridge.

  “Do you like it here, Miss Charlotte?”

  “I think it’s no better or worse than anywhere else. But yes, I like it. I like it a lot.”

  I think about the gentle weather in Capedown and the paved roads, the fancy buildings and the boardwalk. I think of all the people in town who hated that Mother picked Capedown as the place she wanted to live and raise me, how she had to fight so hard and give up so much. And even though I wish I’d known more, and that things had been different, I wonder if I have what it takes to be that kind of mother.

  “Do you think Tilly could have been a good mother, Miss Charlotte? If things were different?”

  “A baby requires structure and safety and discipline, Elimina. Tilly couldn’t provide any of those things. She didn’t even demonstrate them herself. It would have been very difficult to go back to work after what she did to herself, don’t you think?”

  “She loved that baby,” I say, trying hard not to show how much I despise everything Miss Charlotte says and does. “I should get back to work. Thank you for the drink, Miss Charlotte.”

  She smiles at me, but when I step down to the yard, Miss Char-lotte stands too, like there’s something else she wants to tell me.

  “What Tilly did was not love, Elimina. It was selfishness. She could have really hurt the baby. And she certainly hurt herself. That’s not what good mothers do.”