Far From Home by Nellie P. Strowbridge Page B

lunchtime,” the mistress called after her. “After all, it’s Saturday. The other girls can do your dusting.”
    Clarissa now had another iron railing to totter against, or lean on for a rest before she got to her room. She thought about Missus Frances’s strange words as she struggled up the layers of steps, up past her floor – away from Cora. She felt as tipsy as a lamb must feel after feeding on gowithy bushes. She hadn’t known there were eggs inside her, and the mistress didn’t explain about the shells. Were the broken ones scraping her insides – causing the tearing feeling in her belly?
    By the time Clarissa got to the dormitory, Ilish had finished making her bed by the window. The young helper gave Clarissa a sympathetic smile as she left the room.
    Clarissa fell across the bed and lay there holding her crutches and the napkins. She wondered what would happen to her other eggs if she never got married. Would they keep breaking and dropping out of her until they were all gone? Esther, who lived in the shack down the road, was pooked out and set to have a baby all on her own without marrying anyone.
    Clarissa stayed in the dormitory until the supper bell rang. When she went down to supper, no one acted as if they knew something strange had happened to her. She breathed a sigh of relief. All kinds of questions about her body piled on top of each other until she felt as if her head would burst and scatter them. She imagined black letters floating in the air, and Peter grabbing them and putting them together in words she could never speak aloud. She was relieved when supper was over and she could start back upstairs. She wanted to tell Cora that Missus Frances had moved her upstairs with Imogene, but Cora had stopped to talk with Ettie. Besides, she wouldn’t be able to give her the reason. Not yet. They never discussed the things about their bodies that made them girls.
    Clarissa got ready for bed, pulling a fresh nightdress over her head. She was smoothing it down around her when she felt a bump. Her nipple was like a raspberry bud above skin that looked swollen – as if a bee had stung her. The other side hadn’t changed.
    That night the older girls came into the room whispering. They were not even polite to her; they talked among themselves as if she weren’t there. They were still whispering as they got ready for bed and snuggled under the sheets. Maybe they believe my brain is not as clever as theirs , she thought. But I’m quick enough to notice they’re growing bumps like mine, only a little bigger – and on both sides .
    The next morning Clarissa woke up to dust dancing in sunbeams that fell in a slant over her head from the high window. She felt better, almost happy, until a black spot on the white wall started to move. She let out a scream, her eyes fixed on a black spider.
    Celetta, the girl who had moved from Clarissa’s dormitory the year before, was in the bed next to hers. Her head shot up off her pillow and she glared at Clarissa. “Fraidy-cat.”
    Imogene, in the next bed, simpered, “Oh it’s so b-i-i-g. Knock it over the head with your crutch, why don’t you?” Becky, a quiet girl with thin, black hair and freckles the boys called cow dabs, looked at Clarissa without saying a word.
    â€œDevilskins,” Clarissa called back, sure that they didn’t want her in the room with them because she was a cripple. She would show them. Her body was curving more and more like theirs, and she was growing breasts like them, even if it was one at a time. She drew in a deep breath and thought: Maybe this is the year I will grow out of being crippled.

7
SCHOOL AND A FEARED
ENCOUNTER
    C larissa’s clean change of blouse and gimp lay on the foot of her bed as it did every Monday morning. She leaned against the basin in the bath and toilet room, brushing her teeth and washing her face and hands, careful to clean the