Love, Alice

by Barbara Davis

  “Crazy stuff that don’t make no sense but must’ve meant something to somebody. A few years back I found an old cast-iron frying pan leaned up against a stone. Then there was the big old globe I found on Edna Barstow’s grave. Had some fun with that one. We used to try to outdo each other, making up stories about what the things meant. Came up with some doozies, too.”

  Dovie gnawed her lower lip, hesitating. “Have you . . . has anyone ever found letters?”

  Josiah scrubbed at his chin again. “Not me, but I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if they had. Can’t think of much we ain’t found over the years.” His gaze sharpened. “Why you ask?”

  “No reason. I just wondered.”

  Josiah’s old eyes settled on her, shrewd and all-seeing. “It’s a funny thing to just wonder about. Kinda . . . specific. You wouldn’t be holding somethin’ back, would you? Somethin’ you might ought to be tellin’?”

  For a moment she considered lying, then decided there wasn’t much point. He always saw right through her. Pulling the letter from her purse, she slid it from its envelope and placed it in his hands. “I found this yesterday.”

  He ran an eye over it, then shot her a sideways glance. “Found?”

  “The old woman I told you about—she left it.”

  “On the bench?”

  Dovie shook her head. “On Alice’s grave.”

  “You took it?”

  “Yes.”

  Josiah gaped at her. “What in hell’s fury is wrong with you?” He lowered his voice as a mother with a pair of twin girls walked past. “That letter wasn’t none of your damn business, to just go and snatch it like that.”

  “I know, Josiah. That’s why I came today, to put it back.”

  “To put it back? You mean like you never read it? Never stuck your nose where you didn’t have no business sticking it?”

  “Yes. No!” Dovie’s cheeks were beginning to burn. She needed him to understand. “I wish I could unread it, but I can’t. It’s so sad. I just want to put it back and not think about it anymore.”

  “You think that’ll make it right? You of all people? How’d you like it if someone peeked in on your grief when you weren’t looking? Made entertainment out of your pain?”

  “Please, Josiah. It wasn’t like that. And I know it was wrong. All I want is to make it right. But there are so many people around. I can’t just . . .” She paused, scanning the grounds as an idea began to take shape. “If I gave it to you, you could put it back for me—later, when no one’s around.”

  His lower lip jutted. “Why you think I want to do your dirty work?”

  “Please don’t look at me like that. She was just so sad and so miserable, she reminded me of me. Then I saw the letter, and I thought maybe she’d found a way to deal with her grief, to write it down and finally let it all go. I thought if I read what she wrote, it might help. Only, it didn’t. Oh, Josiah—” Dovie’s voice crackled. “She came halfway around the world to make amends for something that happened forty years ago, only to discover her daughter was dead.”

  “And what’s that got to do with you?”

  Dovie swallowed the sudden lump in her throat. “Nothing, exactly. Except now there’s no way for her to ever make things right, which means she’ll live with her guilt for the rest of her life. She’ll never be free of it.”

  She was surprised when Josiah’s calloused hand closed over hers. “And you think that means you, too, but it don’t. Time will heal you up, Little Miss, when you’re good and ready. Meantime, you need to stop trying to fix the whole world’s problems and take care of yourself. Leave the letter to me. I’ll look after it. You go take the lady’s glasses to lost and found, and be sure to tell Loraine where you found ’em so she can note it down.”

  Dovie watched him go, grateful for his comforting words as she turned toward the office. A pall of white dust and the steady banging of hammers greeted her as she stepped through the door marked VISITOR SERVICES. She tiptoed across the blue plastic tarp, navigating her way around handsaws, sledgehammers, and caulking guns until she finally reached the counter. A woman with a head of suspect red curls looked up at her with an apologetic smile.

  “Morning. You’ll have to excuse the racket. We’re remodeling. Otherwise, I promise you, I wouldn’t be here on a Sunday. What can I help you with?”

  Dovie rooted in her purse for the wire-rimmed spectacles and set them on the counter. “I found these yesterday and wanted to turn them in. Am I in the right place?”

  The redhead—presumably Loraine—nodded. “Sure are, even if everything is all turned upside down. We’re tearing out a few walls to make space. About time, too. It’s like a rabbit warren back there, and so much junk there’s no way to find anything. Been at it almost a week now, and they tell me it’s going be at least two more. I swear, I hear those hammers in my sleep. Anyway, enough griping. Let me take those from you.”

  She gave the glasses a quick once-over, then set them aside while she rummaged through a nearby drawer, eventually producing a small plastic bag and a form of some kind. She scribbled the date at the top, jotted down a brief description in the space provided, then looked back up at Dovie. “Can you tell me where you found them? What part of the cemetery, I mean? We try to box items by section.”

  “They were on one of the benches near the Prescott family plot. Actually, I guess it was the Tate plot. I’m pretty sure they belong to an old woman I saw yesterday.”

  Loraine pulled a pen from behind her ear and began scribbling and checking off various boxes on the form. Dovie waited for her to finish, feeling a twinge of claustrophobia as she surveyed the clutter. Storage boxes three and four deep, bulging with an untidy assortment of umbrellas, hats, raincoats, and gloves, not to mention enough stuffed animals to populate a small zoo. It was mind-boggling that anyone ever found anything.

  Finally, Loraine affixed her initials to the bottom, dropped the glasses into a plastic bag along with the form, and sealed it with a quick zip. “There we go. All set. If she comes looking, we’ll have them for her.”

  “Thanks so much. I have to say I was surprised to learn the cemetery even had a lost and found. I never thought about people leaving things behind, but I guess they do.”

  “Heavens, yes. All sorts of things. Some are left on purpose. Some not. We can’t ever say for sure which is which, so we treat it all as lost.”

  Dovie eyed the untidy boxes again, several of which had already split their seams. “What happens to it? The unclaimed stuff, I mean?”

  “We donate most of it. We try to do it quarterly—that gives folks enough time to claim what they mean to—but sometimes it gets away from us, like now. I can’t tell you how much junk we’ve unearthed since we started remodeling. I mean really old stuff from who knows how far back, and none of it labeled. But then, I’ll bet there hasn’t been any work done on this place since the fifties, maybe earlier. At this point, I’m counting the days until I can toss it all, and finally get organized. Anyway, thanks again, for bringing these by.”

  Dovie thanked Loraine, then picked her way back toward the door. As she stepped out into the bright Sunday sunshine, she found herself thinking about the globe Josiah had discovered on Edna Barstow’s grave, and the guessing game Magnolia Grove employees used to play. In the end, she decided the globe had been a grieving husband’s way of giving his wife the world, something he had promised once but had never managed to do while she was alive.

  Dovie felt a huge pang of relief when Josiah appeared along the path. It had been three days since she last saw him. Three days of solitary lunches, of no chess pie, of not knowing what had happened to the letter. Had he put it back? Thrown it away? Now, finally, she would have an answer.

  He didn’t smile as he came to a halt in front of her. “Little Miss.”

  “Josiah, it’s been three days. Where have you been? I thought you were mad
at me.”

  His lower lip jutted. “Might be. Ain’t made up my mind yet. But that’s not why you ain’t seen me. I been staying over to the office, nights. Construction fellas been working straight through, so someone had to stay. I go home and sleep some in the mornings. That’s why I ain’t been around. Not ’cause I was mad, which I probably ain’t, even though I should be.”

  Dovie fought a smile, more relieved than she could say. It would sadden her to lose his friendship. She held out half her tuna sandwich, but he waved the offer away, taking the space beside her without invitation. “I need to tell you something.”

  Something in his manner made Dovie anxious. “Did you put the letter back?”

  Josiah turned to peer over one shoulder. “Not exactly, no. Like I said, I been over to the office.” Reaching into his back pocket, he retrieved something and pressed it into her hands. “Found these in the office last night, under all that mess.”

  They were letters. On top was the letter from Alice’s mother, the one she had given him to put back. But there were five more with it now, plain envelopes of cheap yellowed paper. Dovie glanced at them, and then at Josiah.

  He nodded toward the letters. “Probably wouldn’t have noticed them if you hadn’t been talking about letters the other day, but there they were, lying right there on the floor. They were open when I found them,” he added. “Or I wouldn’t have read them. I was only trying to figure out where they come from, and, well, I think you ought to take a look.”

  Dovie fanned the envelopes in her lap like a hand of cards. They were identical, yellowed at the edges, and curiously blank, devoid of address, stamp, or postmark. She shot Josiah a sideways look. “I don’t understand. Why are you giving me these?”

  “You asked if anyone ever found any letters. Looks like they must’ve done.”

  “But the other day you were furious. Now you’re just . . . giving them to me?”

  “Here’s how I figure it. Whoever wrote ’em is long gone, so reading them isn’t going to hurt no one. And they might just help you.”

  Dovie still didn’t understand. “Help me how?”

  “By making you see that sometimes when people take a thing with them to the grave they mean for it to stay there, ’cause maybe it wasn’t so pretty. You’re all the time dying to know why when the truth is, that why might be better left alone. Now I see you got it in your craw over this old woman. My Essie was like you, over her no-account brother getting shot out back of some juke joint in Ravenel. She had to know why. Well, she dug and she dug until she found out. Truth damn near broke the woman’s heart. So maybe you’ll read those letters and realize some secrets are best left in the ground. I sure hope so. Be a damn shame to get my arthritic ass fired over a handful of old letters.”

  Dovie picked an envelope at random, holding her breath as she teased out the single sheet and spread it out against her knees. The handwriting was meticulous, the letters round and precise, like a page from a schoolgirl’s diary. She had to squint to decipher the faded ink strokes, but finally the import of what she was holding hit her full force.

  Her head snapped up. “Josiah, these were written by Alice Tandy.”

  “Go on, and take ’em,” he told her gruffly. “Damage is done. We both goin’ to hell now.”

  SIX

  Blackhurst Asylum for Unwed Mothers,

  Cornwall, England

  February 4, 1962

  Little one,

  You will never read this letter. And yet I find I must write it, to pour out the rage that has been choking me. Rage for my fate and yours, for the other girls here, and for the other babies. But I suppose I must begin at the beginning if I truly mean to tell it all.

  You don’t know me, and never will if the Sisters of Mercy have their way. And they will have their way. My name is Alice—Alice Tandy—though here I am called Laurel. No one is to know I’m here, you see, shut up in this place of sadness and secrets, because I’ve brought shame on my family. Except I have no family. Only the mother who sent me here, who is as good as dead to me now.

  She says I have no shame, and I confess that is the truth. I’m not ashamed of you, or of the love your father and I shared. That’s what makes me a sinner, I suppose, my lack of shame—and now I’m being made to pay for those sins—and so are you.

  My “mistake.” That’s what they call you here.

  But you weren’t a mistake. How can something—someone—created from love, ever be a mistake? And you were created from love, my little one. Your father’s name was Johnny. Johnny Barnes. He was a beautiful boy with brown curls and eyes the colour of the sea. It was the sea that took him from me—from us—and that’s why I’ve been sent to this terrible place.

  This isn’t my first letter to you. I was made to write another just now—the same one they make all the girls write—as penance for our sins. One of the sisters stands over us and tells us what to write, that we aren’t fit to bring up our babies, that we’re fallen women, sinful and corrupt, unfit to rear good moral children.

  It will be left to your new parents—your good and moral parents—to decide if you’ll ever read the words they made me write. I pray you do not. I can’t bear the thought of you growing up thinking of me as a sinner, or believing for one moment that I didn’t want you. I’d prefer you not think of me at all.

  For months now, I have carried you beneath my heart, but soon—far too soon—we will be parted. You’re my flesh and blood, a part of me forever, and I will never willingly give you up. But, my darling, they will take you. I’ve seen them do it, have heard the girls weeping and screaming, pleading for their babies. But the sisters are all deaf here, and the die has been cast. The same fate awaits me as all the other girls.

  I’ll never hold you, or know the colour of your eyes, never know if you’re a boy or a girl, if you look like your father or like me. I’ll give you life but won’t be allowed to give you a name. All these things they’ll take from me. But they will never take you from my heart, little one. Never from my heart. And so I’m writing this, with a mother’s love, and the foolish hope that somehow the truth will find its way to you.

  All my love,

  Mam

  Blackhurst Asylum for Unwed Mothers,

  Cornwall, England

  March 14, 1962

  Dearest little one,

  We are allowed one letter a month, but I have no one to write to, and so I will write to you. Silly, I suppose, since neither you nor anyone else will ever see it, but it helps to pass the time and is the only way I have of pouring out the poison in my heart, the anger I feel toward Mam, the nuns, the world that judges girls like me. That I should find myself in such a place, cast out and alone, is like a nightmare from which I can’t seem to wake. And so I write when I can.

  The days have become unbearable, spooling out with no one to talk to, hours on end filled with sadness, silence, and grueling work. We’re up before the sun, jerked awake by the hollow clang of the morning bell. We have ten minutes to wash and dress, or we get no breakfast. Not that any of us cares for the tasteless mush and watery tea that passes for our morning meal. Then it’s off to the laundry, hour upon hour with our bellies bent over enormous pots of steaming sheets, towels, and prison uniforms—scrubbing, rinsing, wringing—as if all that scrubbing will somehow cleanse the stain from our souls.

  It’s whispered that there’s money being made from our sweat. Restaurants, hospitals, even prisons, paying the good sisters for the work we do. There’s money from the government, too, paid for every swollen belly that passes through Blackhurst’s iron gates. We, of course, receive no wages for our labor, only aching backs and sore red hands.

  It would be easier, I think, if I had someone to talk to, but friendship isn’t allowed here. Girls who make friends are soon separated, while repeat offenders are punished with isolation, beatings, or worse. Last week, two girls were c
aught whispering during prayers. The next morning they were made to stand at the head of the mess, heads shaved and stripped to their skins, while the rest of us ate our breakfasts. No one uttered a word for the rest of the day—or the day after.

  Shame is a weapon here, used to break the spirits of poor girls who’ve been given no say in what’s to happen to them or their babies. Like birds in a cage—and I am one of them now. Some are here voluntarily, because they’re alone in the world, without friends, or family, or other means of support. But most are here against their will. Some will never leave—will actually die here—shut away at the edge of the world like the inconveniences they’ve become, some as young as thirteen with terrible stories in their haunted eyes. There are whispers of rape and incest, of good families where unspeakable things happen, where the offenses of uncles and stepfathers are swept under the carpet, while their victims are made to pay, stripped of dignity and branded as sinners.

  Those stories are squashed, of course, their victims threatened into silence. But there are ways to spot those cases, to see past the forced silence to the eerie quiet beneath, the almost uncanny stillness of a girl who has given up and is simply biding her time. And then one morning there’s an empty bed when the bell clangs, and a vacant place at breakfast.

  Another sparrow smashed on the rocks.

  My story is different. Your father didn’t shunt me off when he found out about you, though I’ve ended here just the same. Nor are the looks I get from the good sisters any different from those reserved for any of the other girls here with sad stories and swollen bellies. Perhaps they don’t believe what I told them about your father, that we were in love, that as soon as he saved up a few pounds he meant to marry me. They’ve heard it before, I’m sure, from girls who wanted badly to believe it.

  Perhaps they don’t believe Johnny’s dead. I didn’t want to believe it myself when I heard he’d that been thrown into the sea during a squall and drowned. Perhaps they think he abandoned me, and I’m just too proud to say so. It’s a common enough tale here. But I know the truth. I loved your father, and he loved me. It would have been hard at first. We wouldn’t have had much, but we would have had each other—and you, little one—and that would have been enough. He had such a big heart, your father. Big enough to love us both, no matter what anyone else thought or said.