• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 545 0

on the brush; Margaret teased them with her cold fingers. She could not seem to learn the rules of bodies. What Mistress Mary called innocent caresses were allowable, and these were: cheeks and foreheads, lips on the backs of hands, arms entwined in the orchard, heads briefly nested on gray satin skirts. But when Margaret slipped into the governess's chamber one morning and found her in shift and stockings, she earned a scathing glance. Gross familiarity, Mistress Mary called it, and immodest forwardness. When she had fastened her last button and called the girl back into the room, she explained more calmly that one must never forget the respect which one human creature owed another. Margaret could not see what respect had to do with dressing in separate rooms. She hung her head and thought of breakfast.

"Has any of the servants ever tried to teach you dirty indecent tricks?"

"No, Mistress Mary. Dot is always busy, and besides, she knows no tricks."

It was June by the time she found that there were words for girls like her. Words tucked away in the library, locked only until you looked for them. Romp and hoyden she knew already. Tomboy was when she ran down the front staircase with her bootlaces undone. But there were sharper words as well, words that cut when she lifted them into her mouth to taste and whisper them. Tommie was when women kissed and pressed each other to their hearts; it said so in a dirty poem on the top shelf of the cabinet. Tribad was the same only worse. The word had to mean, she reasoned, along the lines of triangle and trimester, that she was three times as bad as other girls.

Margaret knelt up on the moving steps as the page fell open to that word again; her legs shook and her belly-rumbles echoed under the whalebone. Tribad meant if she let the badness take her, she would grow and grow. Already she was taller than anyone in the house except her mother. The book said she would grow down there until she became a hermaphrodite shown for pennies at the fair, or ran away in her brothers breeches (but she had no brother) and married a Dutch widow. The change was coming already. When the girl lay in bed on hot mornings the bit between her legs stirred and leapt like a minnow.

One noon she limped into the bedchamber, phantom blows from her mothers rod still landing on her calves. Dot was sweeping the cold floor, her broom trailing now as she gazed into the frontispiece of a book of travels.

"Give it," said Margaret.

Dot regarded her, then stared at the book again, at its pages flattened by the gray morning light. She looked back at the girl as if trying to remember her name. Seizing the besom, Margaret threaded her fingers between the twigs, and set to bludgeoning the maid's thick body with the handle. The coarse petticoats dulled the impact; it sounded like a rug being beaten. She pursued Dot to the window with a constant hiss of phrases, from "idle ignoramus" to "tell my mother" to "dirty goodfornothing inch of life." Dot broke into a wail at last, expressive less of pain than of a willingness to get it over and done with. She stood in the corner, hunched over to protect her curves. Tears plummeted to the floorboards.

"Beg pardon," Margaret instructed. Her ribs heaved and sank under the creaking corset.

"Beg pardon, Miss," Dot repeated, her tone neutral.

The broom was lowered but the eyes held.

Margaret had made it to the door before, with a lurch, she found herself sorry. She turned to see Dot industriously brushing her tears onto the floor. She was so sorry it swamped her, left her feeble. Was there any comfort to give? A lump in one of the unmade beds reminded her, and she scrabbled under the coverlet. The doll she pulled out was missing one eye, but her pink damask slippers were good as new. The girl walked up behind Dot and tapped her on the shoulder with the doll's powdered head. "Take her," she said graciously, "and leave off crying."

Dot turned a face that was almost dry. "What am I to do with that, Miss?"

Margaret was disconcerted. Play with her, she could have said, but when? Dress