She made the girl lie back in the water with her fingers in her ears.
“Now, bend forward. I’m going to wash your hair.” Flora circled the soap bar over the matted tangle, raised a froth with her fingertips. Scabs, on the girl’s scalp. Knots, to be gently pulled apart.
“Smells nice,” the girl murmured. She cupped water in her hands, lowered her face into it. Her shoulders relaxed.
“You wash the rest of yourself,” Flora said, when she had rinsed the soap from the girl’s hair. She waited in the bedroom until the girl appeared in the doorway wrapped in the towel. Flora snugged a blanket over the girl’s shoulders and gently steered her to a chair. She pulled another chair close and sat, facing her. They braved each other’s eyes.
A fly buzzed on a curl of sticky paper suspended from the ceiling. The strip circled, touched by a breeze. The breeze carried the four-beat clop of hooves and the plaint of gulls.
“You talk different,” the girl said.
Her cheeks sheened, apple blossom pink; her hair lay in wet-dark slabs. Her eyes struggled past the surface of Flora’s, seeking the sister of memory.
Flora leaned forward, placed a hand on the girl’s knee.
“What do you remember about that Tetbury workhouse?”
“Me and my sister, we went outside everyday and we walked round and round. In a circle. There were walls we couldn’t see over.”
“What did you and your sister do for work?”
“Hemmed gloves.”
“You are my Enid. Your poor little hands. I remember them. Tiny little red…They tore you away from me. You were screaming.”
She grasped Enid’s hands. Her voice shook, her eyes filled with tears.
“Oh, Enid, I shouldn’t have gone. I shouldn’t have. They told me I would better myself in Canada and they would send you to me. They told me you would come over the very next year.”
She wept, openly. She could not speak until her sobs subsided.
“They lied to me.”
Enid glanced down at their clasped hands and then up at Flora. A layer dropped from her face, like mist, clearing. “I remember that. I do. There were a box, a green box. You packed. I cried. You went in a carriage.”
“Yes.”
“Was it a lady, like, who said you would better yourself?”
“Yes, a lady.”
They sat, holding hands a little longer, feeling the beat of each other’s heart.
“Let’s get you dressed.”
Enid stood and the blanket dropped. Flora glanced, quickly looked away. Spasmodic shuddering, ribs, the mound of pubic hair a forlorn extravagance between bony thighs.
Leg by leg, lifted. Underpants. Arms, lifted. Tentative, flinching at Flora’s touch. One of Flora’s dresses, dropped over Enid’s head. Flora fastened buttons and ribbons, while tears gathered in Enid’s eyes and spilled over her cheeks. She said nothing, only sat as Flora began working at her hair, cutting out mats and snarls with her sewing scissors until, finally, it could be brushed, and became a thickness filled with light and air, the strands floating, crackling. Flora’s fingers flew, separating, braiding, winding the braid to Enid’s head, pinning it in place.
“You can blow your nose,” Flora said, giving her a handkerchief.
Enid did, then wiped her eyes.
“No, wait, you…”
Flora handed her a fresh handkerchief.
Enid rose and looked down at the full skirt, touched the white collar at her neck, arms willow-slender in the cotton sleeves; and Flora saw that she was not the wild, fierce girl the flour-sack dress had made her appear to be.
“Let’s go get our supper,” Flora said.
“He’s going to come for me. I should stay hid.”
“You’re safe. He wouldn’t dare come right into the Pictou Inn.”
She reached for Enid, but the girl drew back, her mouth tightening. She wrapped her arms around her own waist and made herself small, looking down. Desolate, terrified.
“Come,” Flora said, gently, taking her by the hand. “You’ll be safe.”
In the hallway, the soles of their shoes clicked like hooves on the varnished floor. The smell of chicken pie and biscuits rose from the dining room.
Be patient, Flora told herself. Touch was a thing from which one recoiled. At the workhouse, you learned to wait, to be invisible, to do only what you were told. Eyes that met your own did not do so out of love. Enid’s fear was a thing that Josephine and Ellen might know how to treat.
There was the long train trip to come.
There was the little room to show her, the bed with the quilt. The veranda shaded by lilacs and vines. Raspberry crush, the kitchen, the hens and the cow. Fresh bread.
And freedom.
EIGHTEEN Someone Else’s Happiness
“ ’TWAS ONLY KINDNESS I was showing.” Ellen flipped a butter knife over and over. Breathless, her mouth working. “Saying she hates my good custard.”
Only silence came from the dining room; evidently the boarders had broken off their dinner conversation to listen to the fracas in the kitchen. Yelling. The dog’s barking. The crash of broken crockery.
Maud was on her hands and knees, picking up the pieces of a shattered bowl. Strawberry custard dripped from the cupboard drawers. Josephine stood in the kitchen door watching the sisters going down the hall—Enid, a swirl of rage, apron torn off and fluttering onto the floor, Flora stooping to pick it up.
“I was only asking,” Ellen said. “Did she remember her parents. Does anyone ask me if I remember my parents? I wouldn’t say no to a question or two. Just to show, you know.”
“What? Show what?” Maud sat back on her heels. Her face was pained, confused. She had been excited to welcome a “little sister” into the household.
“Who a person is. Alls I wanted to know. Who is this girl who talks only to Flora. Who looks up from her good food only to say I don’t want any more. Never a thank you.”
“She’s like a stray dog,” Maud said. “Just afraid, I guess.”
Josephine resumed her seat at the table. She had no appetite for the rest of her custard.
Enid had arrived two weeks ago. Still she would not meet their eyes.
