Rain Village - Carolyn Turgeon [15]
It was as if I had suddenly become someone new, and she stopped and looked me over, suspicious. “What kind of a job?”
“Helping out in the library. Helping with the books and with buying things. Today I bought paper and pens, for the library. So I can contribute to the good of the family.” It was a phrase I’d heard my father use: “Now maybe you’ll start contributing to the good of the family,” he’d say, usually while working one of us over.
“I see.” She kept staring at me. “And what are you getting paid for these valuable services, if I may ask?”
“A dollar a week,” I said, pulling a number out of air.
“A dollar? Every week?”
It wasn’t a lot of money, but I knew it was enough for my mother to buy cold cream at the corner store, for my father to buy drinks at a tavern in town, for them to splurge once in a while on meals of steak and fish.
Her face changed and she didn’t seem as angry anymore. She stared at me so long I started to feel woozy. “Well, then, as long as you do your sewing in the evenings, that might be all right. I don’t think your father will have too much of a problem with it, if you’re contributing.”
She looked at me for one moment longer, her face softened now, before turning back to the kitchen.
I breathed an enormous sigh of relief, but it didn’t last long. My father had to agree, and then I’d have to convince Mary to pay me a dollar a week. I steeled myself for whatever was coming. Then another thought came: How could I help in a library if I couldn’t even read? I thought of all those books and marks and tea labels and felt faint. I ran outside, in those moments before dinner, and tried to remember the letters Mary had shown me when we had written my name in the dirt. I remembered the T and the beautiful S shapes, and I traced them again and again, burning them into my memory.
At the dinner table my mother told my father about my new job.
“I know she will be working for that woman, Lucas, but a dollar a week would be a nice contribution.”
“Tessa has a job!” My brothers laughed, and I glared at them.
My father leaned back in his chair and looked at me. He had a long, drooping face with a large cleft in his chin, and he almost never looked at me directly. His stare seared into me, made me feel exposed and unclean. I dropped my eyes immediately. “Well let’s just make one thing clear,” my father said, finally. “I never want to hear about that woman or see a book from that library in this house. You got it?”
“Yes, sir,” I said, staring into my stew.
“You see to that, girl.” He slammed his fist on the table, and I jumped in my seat, tried to control the shudder that ran through my body.
My voice dropped to a whisper. “Yes, sir,” I repeated.
His eyes bored into me. “Okay, then,” he said, turning from me and looking around the table, satisfied. “Now we can all make our contributions.”
“Is she really a big slut?” Connor asked, after a moment, laughing with his mouth full.
“I think she’s pretty,” Geraldine said softly.
At that, my father reached his huge hand over and smacked her right on the face. Geraldine just sat there, her face like a beet. As usual, I dared not say a word.
Mary?” I asked the next day, as she showed me how to organize the books by number.
She stopped what she was doing, turned to me right away. “What?”
“I did something terrible,” I said. I was so ashamed I wanted to disappear into the floorboards. I didn’t look at her, knowing that the want was written on my face in glaring letters. “I told my parents that you were going to give me a dollar a week. That woman you saw me with yesterday talked to them, so I told them that, and they said it was okay. I’m sorry.”
“Tessa!” she said then, releasing all the tension in her body and letting out a low laugh. “You’re going to be working with me. You think I’m not going to pay you?”
“Do you really want me to work for you?” I asked.
“Of course,” she said. “Aren’t we