Earthly Astonishments (2 page)

Don’t ring, just don’t ring yet. Josephine reached up to put the ink bottle carefully on Felicia’s desk. She hauled herself onto the bench and steadied her feet before filling the inkwell. She had to use both hands to hold the heavy bottle and all her concentration not to spill.

The clamor of Miss Finley’s bell made her flinch. Ink splashed across the scarred desktop. The bell announced the stampede returning from the music room. Now she was in for it. No time to fetch a rag. She swiped
her apron across the drops, soaking up the evidence.

The dreaded girls burst into the room. Josephine was caught, horribly visible on the bench, as if on a pedestal. She slipped down and under the desk, wishing to disappear. A useless effort, she knew at once.

“Eeek!” shrieked Charlotte. “It’s a great, ugly mouse!” Her friends snickered.

“No, no! A hairy, horrible rat!” Harriet was not to be outdone.

With a pounding heart, Josephine crept by the jeering students. Passing Emmy, she heard the whispered word, “Sorry.” She turned her head slightly to catch the girl’s crimson blush of shame. The others jumped away from her as if from vermin. Josephine was tempted to bare her teeth and hiss like a mad cat, but what good would it do?

She sat herself down in the corner, on an upturned bucket. This was the safest place in the school, with a clear view of everyone’s back.

Upon the arrival of Miss Finley, the girls took their places and came to order at once. No one wanted to feel the swipe of the pointer across her palm.

Dust danced in the shafts of sunlight that fell across the room, but there was not a whisper of summer breeze. The windows were firmly shut against the sound of horses’ hooves and wagon wheels rumbling past in the street. There was not quite enough air indoors to go around, and what there was smelled of scorched porridge and underarms.

Josephine took a deep breath to calm herself and blew damp curls from her eyes. As the lesson began, she picked up her mending.

Josephine was kept on at the MacLaren Academy because of her talent for tiny, perfect stitches. She could hem a sheet or mend a pinafore more neatly and swiftly than anyone ever before employed by Miss MacLaren.

Josephine blew at her hair again. In June, she did not envy Emmy’s flannel nightdress as she did during the winter months. It was too hot now to wear anything so warm. She flapped the soft folds to make a breeze for her legs.

Emmy did have lovely clothes, though. Josephine had once made a dress for herself from a skirt that Emmy had outgrown. She could never wear it, of course, for fear of humiliating the donor. And then Old Betsey had found it one day, under her mat, and Josephine didn’t see it again.

She sighed and kept stitching while she listened to the teacher drone.

“If the baker used twelve pounds of flour to make eighteen loaves of bread, how many loaves could be made from forty-two pounds?”

Miss Finley peered out across the classroom, but no one raised a hand.

Charlotte’s pimpled forehead slowly sank to her desk. Felicia plucked an invisible crumb from her bodice. Emmy’s fingers fiddled with the ribbon tying her left braid.

Pudding-for-brains, thought Josephine. Every one of them. She tied a knot and neatly snipped off the thread.

“Anne?” asked Miss Finley, her voice chirping impatiently. “Felicia?”

May as well look for honey at the water pump, thought Josephine. She folded Emmy’s nightdress and reached for Nancy’s camisole.

“Your parents will be deeply disappointed if this is your level of performance at Parents’ Day tomorrow.”

The girls moaned. Miss Finley’s bony shoulders slumped in resignation.

“Josephine? Can you give us the answer?”

Josephine saw the herd of faces turn as one to glare at her. Felicia, Charlotte, Anne, Harriet, Emmy, Nancy, and Catherine. She felt the blood rise in her neck, heating her cheeks from within. How she longed to leap up and shout the answer aloud! Sixty-three loaves, you nincompoops!

Six pink tongues popped out in unison, all directed at her and all hidden from Miss Finley by carefully arranged postures. Only Emmy kept her tongue behind pursed lips and stared hard at the floor.

“She’s not a paying student at this school,” Nancy burst out. “She’s a servant and should keep her answers to herself!”

The other girls twittered behind their hands and then waited to hear Miss Finley’s response.

“I should think you’d be shamed into paying attention to your lessons. A stunted servant girl, a full year
younger, can do them better than you!” Miss Finley snarled. The mistress didn’t care that Josephine always knew the answer. She cared only that the others did not.

“Josephine!” Miss Finley did not try to cover her ill humor. “Collect the workbooks! Bring me the workbooks immediately!”

Josephine slid her mending into the basket and stood up. She examined her too-big hand-me-down boots, wiggling the bare toes inside.

This was the moment she most dreaded each day. It was a test she performed and failed every morning, with the blood pulsing in her ears. She walked along the row of desks, reaching up to take the book resting on each one.

“Freak!” whispered Nancy.

“Runt!” hissed Charlotte.

Anne’s fancy, red shoe shot out at the last second, too fast for Josephine to avoid. She fell with a thud, letting the workbooks fly and slapping her palms on the planked floor, amidst a shower of laughter.

Miss Finley glanced at the grandfather clock against the wall and promptly grasped the handle of the bell on her desk. She rang it sharply, signaling that it was time for the young ladies of the MacLaren Academy to follow their teacher to lunch.

Although Josephine was on duty in the kitchen during the midday meal, she waited on the floor until the students had giggled their way out of the room. She had long ago learned that it was safer that way. If she were
foolish enough to show pluck during an incident, another would be soon in coming. Josephine felt lucky today. Incidents in the classroom usually involved an inkwell tipped in her direction.

The trills and warbles of the girls faded away down the hall. Josephine stood up and pulled her apron straight.

If I don’t hurry, I’ll be walloped for sure, she realized, scurrying to the door. The new cook was vicious with the ladle. Old Betsey had left a week ago to live with her son. Betsey had been in the Academy kitchen for probably a hundred years, certainly the five years of Josephine’s stay. She’d had a tongue that could slice an onion, but she never hit. Not once.

Josephine bunched up her skirts and galloped the shining length of marble tile, clattering like a horse bus on Broadway. She closed one eye at the sign reminding her:

She paused at the top of the narrow back staircase. Josephine did not like stairs. Each riser came up to her knees. Climbing up and down was like tackling the side of a dangerous gully. Since no one was watching, she clambered to the bottom on all fours like a baby, feeling carefully for each step with her boot.

Josephine could hear the dreadful voice through the kitchen door.

“Where is that puny dwarf?” The cook’s bellow was louder than the pots crashing or the squeaking wheels of the service trolley cart.

Sylvester, the scullery boy, grunted his assurance that he didn’t know where Josephine was hiding and didn’t care a fig.

“I’ll give her such a thrashing she won’t walk on those stumpy little legs for a week,” promised Cook.

Josephine’s legs weren’t stumpy. They were skinny, if anything. It’s Cook who’s shaped like a stump, she thought. A stump all covered with knobs.

The bell from the dining hall rang insistently, begging for luncheon to be served. Josephine imagined the cooling lumps of haddock, the boiled potatoes, and the mashed parsnips. The food was all the same blanched white as the crockery it sat upon.

“You’ll have to wash your face, boy,” said the cook, “and take in the trolley yourself.”

Josephine heard a burst of cussing from Sylvester.

“And if you see that lazy pygmy, you tell her I’ve warmed the ladle.”

Josephine sank onto the bottom step. She couldn’t think of one reason to push open that door.

t was well after lights-out when Josephine I leaned against the ice chest, pressing her sore bottom to its cool side. Through her thin skirt, the ladle had branded moon-shaped welts across her thighs.

Josephine had waited as long as she dared to appear in the kitchen. Sylvester had leered at her over the tea tray and continued to smear lard on the bread. Then Cook silently unhooked her weapon from its place over the fire and closed the oily fingers of her other hand around Josephine’s wrist. She had grunted with each whack, sending puffs of curdled-milk breath down Josephine’s neck.

Now Josephine shifted her backside to a fresh, cool spot. Old Betsey hadn’t thought much of her, but she would never have whacked her with a ladle. Josephine’s eyes burned again, as she fought the tears down.

“Nasty hag! Horrible hog!” Josephine couldn’t send enough bad thoughts in Cook’s direction. And her saying that Josephine carried disease and ill luck!

Suddenly the idea that had been flickering like an ember in the grate sparked a fire in her brain. She would run away! Why stay here for another walloping? Her thoughts began to fly in circles, gathering up speed.

Old Betsey hadn’t been so cruel as this cook was. There would be another position for Josephine. Unless all cooks were cruel and Betsey was the odd duck. Was that possible? How could Josephine know? She was small, but she was a hard worker, and she would prove it. But she was small, no changing that. One look and most folks spat. Or laughed. Could she find the right folks? If she walked a ways from the school? She’d knock on kitchen doors until she found a better situation.

She’d need some food. Josephine paced around the ice chest, tapping her knuckles along its side as she made a plan. She’d take Cook’s cheese, hidden in a tin behind the cracker barrel. And the bread ends. What about her shawl? It wouldn’t be hot always. And money. Josephine stopped moving. She might need money.

The only person she knew with money was Miss MacLaren. The headmistress spoke of money often; especially how much it cost to give the MacLaren Academy girls their fine education and how disappointed the parents would be to find their dollars were ill-spent. A bucket of nonsense, as far as Josephine could tell. The only money being spent was on Miss MacLaren’s hats and her tasseled velvet cape, on her chocolates all the way from Belgium, and on the scented cushions in her study. The headmistress must have pockets full of money!

Josephine had never needed money before now. She was fed—a little, and clothed—unless you looked close.
So what did she need with money? But Old Betsey had been paid, Cook got wages, even Sylvester, she supposed, must receive a few pennies, since he kept coming back to plague them all. And Miss MacLaren had promised a wage to Josephine’s father that very first day at the Fair! So where was it? She’d have to ask for her pay!

She ignored the sign in the hall outside Miss MacLaren’s study:

A gas lamp burned on the wall by the door and another on the gracious writing desk. The walls had fancy paper on them, with a dark, rose-colored stripe. The whole room was pink and ghosty feeling. It was like being inside somebody’s stomach.

The headmistress sat hunched over her desk. By her feet was her prayer stool, its hinged lid open to expose a cedar-lined compartment. Miss MacLaren’s hands moved in the circle of lamplight, scratching numbers in a book. Josephine hesitated at the open door, her exhilaration dribbling away.

Miss MacLaren’s lips hung open slightly while she wrote. Josephine was reminded of the luncheon haddock when it was still whole, lying gape-mouthed on the chopping board. She realized with a jolt that stacked on
Miss MacLaren’s desk, just beyond the circle of light, were little towers of coins. The haddock was counting her riches!