Rain Village - Carolyn Turgeon [51]
I walked past the first factory and then the second. My eye caught a flash of white to my right. I looked up, realized there was a line of row houses there, huddled together. In front of one was a small white sign. I crept up closer and saw that it said, “Rooms Available. Women only.” Please, I breathed. Please. My heart skittered in my chest as I climbed up to the door. “St. Mary’s House for Women,” I read, on a golden plaque outside the door.
I rang the doorbell and stood perfectly still, afraid to even breathe. It was pitch black outside by now, and the factories were spooky in the dim light of the streetlamps, the smoke ghostly as it rose to the sky.
A sturdy, middle-aged woman opened the door and squinted out at me. She looked me over and nodded at my sack. “I presume you are looking for a room?” she asked. Her voice was surprisingly delicate for her harsh, thick looks, her sloppy hair stuffed into a bun.
I nodded. My mouth was bone dry.
“Well, let’s not catch ourselves a chill. Come in, and I’ll show you around.”
I stepped forward, let her lead me up a flight of stairs. “Two dollars a week for a room,” she said, turning back to me. “Three for room and board. The bathroom’s down the hall and the kitchen downstairs.”
“That sounds fine,” I said, trying to fill each word with a sense of how dependable I was, how responsible. I could hear my voice trembling and was surprised when she just nodded and led me into the dour upstairs hallway, with its gray carpet and walls. She withdrew a ring full of keys and picked through it daintily with her small hands.
“We abide by Christian rules here, though some abide better than others,” she said, turning to me.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, and she smiled for the first time, wrinkles shooting out along her cheeks. A minute later I was stepping into a tiny, musty, flaking room with a small dresser and bed, a closet and window.
My heart filled. A room of my own, I thought. No Geraldine. No father’s shadow in the doorway. No cornfields outside the window, trees like brushes against the white sky. I thought of the trinkets scattered across Mary’s desk in Mercy Library, how I had vowed to have my own things someday.
“It’s perfect,” I said, nodding, tears pricking at my eyes.
She smiled and raised her eyebrows, then made some quick movements with her hands and passed the key to me, hanging from a wire circle.
“Well, good-night, then,” she said, as I handed her three of the dollars I had stashed in my skirt pocket. “My name is Esther, by the way.”
“Tessa Riley,” I said, and the words felt strange and strong on my tongue, as if I were marking the letters into dirt.
She left, and I walked into the center of the room and just stood with my eyes closed, breathing it in. Letting my relief and sorrow and excitement slide into each corner, over each inch of carpeting and flaking gray-white paint. I looked out the window, at the smoke that seemed to hover above the buildings. I spread myself out on the lumpy mattress and stared at the shadows against the wall. I felt the exhaustion relax from my muscles and spread throughout my body, weighing down every inch of skin, every vein.
And then, without even meaning to, I thought again of my quilt-covered bed in Oakley, and I imagined my mother and father and Geraldine and my brothers, wondered if they missed me at all. If they were worried or sad. I pictured the fields and the wooden floor and the giant countertop covered in dirt and vegetables. A longing moved through me that I couldn’t understand. How could I feel homesick? What was wrong with me? They never wanted you, I told myself. I closed my eyes and thought of my mother with her face turned to the wall. I thought of Geraldine alone in our big room, the silence of it engulfing her. I thought of my father bending over me, and the ache went straight to my gut, as if I’d been stabbed.
The light from the streetlamp slanted in and illuminated my closet door. I tossed