# Episode 2
If there was any upside to living in Mrs. Allmon's house, it was that I no longer had to sleep in a stable.
That little cottage lacked a stable; instead, it had a pantry tucked behind the kitchen to store provisions. While it was hardly a wealthy household, potatoes, onions, and carrots were at least stacked by the sack, so there was no fear of starving.
Every night, I spread a blanket on the floor there and curled up to sleep. There were no sounds of horses snorting, nor was there any stench from manure. Only the scent of earth and dust, paired with the faint, thick aroma of rotting produce, allowed me to sleep in comfort.
Sometimes I had dreams where I could hear Mother and Father tangled together in tender intimacy, but by morning, the memories would fade. I had a demon to contend with, after all.
Time flew by like an arrow. By the time I greeted my sixth summer in that house, the demon had lost her strength.
Mrs. Vino could no longer let out ear-splitting shrieks or wander wherever she pleased to relieve herself. She lay in bed all day long, taking her meals and doing her business without ever leaving it.
Until meeting Mrs. Vino, death had always been a sudden thing to me. Everyone had departed without warning—struck by a carriage out of the blue, or struck dead on the spot from a blow to the back of the head.
Mrs. Vino, however, was different. With each passing day, I could watch the life draining straight out of her.
The bones brushing against my fingertips whenever I changed her clothes grew more skeletal by the day, and the breath leaving her lips carried the rot of a corpse. The blotches that had once dotted her skin now covered her entire face, and her leathery flesh had dried so thin it looked as if the bones beneath were straining to burst through.
Every morning, I began my day by holding a finger under her nose. Doing so occasionally brought back memories of how she used to stick out her tongue and fling whatever she held in her hand at me.
Not that I missed it. It was just that the thought crossed my mind now and then. Back then, at the very least—well.
She had been alive.“You start dollin’ yourself up right now too, girl. Who knows? We might end up like Senar, landin’ a house of our own and living large with maids runnin’ errands for us.”
At the brook, women had lugged their laundry down in large wicker baskets and were busy washing. Arriving late, I settled down downstream and began rinsing Mrs. Vino’s cloth diapers in the water.
The washing place had its own pecking order. Besides, my laundry was generally the filthiest of the lot, so heading upstream was out of the question. The upstream belonged to the older women with the loudest mouths.
The women burst into cackles. Laurel, seated nearby, glanced toward me.
The women called me ‘kid.’ It was understandable since they had seen me since I was eleven, but at seventeen, I wasn’t particularly fond of the moniker. Though, compared to them, I was indeed still a kid.
A wet hand smacked down on someone's back with a wet thwack, and bickering broke out among the women. I shook my head and set to scrubbing the diapers. Laurel let out a sigh, pushed back her red hair, and turned to look at me.
At my flat reply, Laurel blinked, murmuring an ‘oh dear.’ As she brought up another trivial topic to keep the conversation going, I moved my hands while letting her chatter go in one ear and out the other.
She said she had a younger sibling around my age back home. But in my eyes, that was merely an excuse. Laurel simply needed someone who would listen quietly to her stories.
No one else would ever sit through them in silence.
Laurel said she had wanted to be a teacher. Her plan was to save up a bit more money, return to her hometown, and teach children. Perhaps that was why, ever since learning I was illiterate, she had taken it upon herself to meddle with an eager smile.
She probably had no idea what it meant whenever I merely stared back at her after hearing that.
I felt I would only find the motivation if I actually saw someone who could do so much more just because they were literate. Nearly all the work Laurel did required no reading whatsoever.
The only reason I was reluctantly learning to read at all was entirely for the candy.
Whenever I brought back a sheet of paper where I had traced over the letters about ten times, Laurel would hand me a piece of candy. In Mrs. Allmon’s house, sweets were something that had never existed and certainly never would.
Truth be told, letters weren't all that difficult. But I was deliberately dragging my feet and playing dumb, fearing the sweets would dry up if I picked it up too quickly.
Just then, the hem of my skirt slipped down and brushed against the brook. Hastily dropping the laundry, I gathered up the skirt, tied a knot, and hiked it roughly up to my waist. Taking the chance to straighten my back, I loosened my slipped hair tie, and a breeze wafted over. The beads of sweat dotting my skin felt pleasantly cool.
I was hungry. Having eaten pea soup for three straight days, the pot was practically empty now. Once I returned, I had to hang the laundry and brew potato soup. Because Mrs. Vino could only consume liquids, I was stuck doing the same.
Of course, I secretly filched potatoes and carrots from the pantry from time to time to boil and eat them. While the dried-up crusts of bread Mrs. Allmon occasionally tossed my way helped, I was generally always hungry.
As I wiped my nose with the back of my hand, a prickle of eyes on me made me turn my head. The women washing their laundry were staring my way. Marie, the de facto ringleader of the group, let out a soft whistle.
Finding the collective gaze uncomfortable, I dropped my eyes slightly. Even without this, Marie was an overbearing person.
Catching sight of her heavy frame rising and marching straight toward me out of the corner of my eye, I leaped in shock as a rough hand suddenly clamped onto my breast.
“Eek!”
Desperate to escape the hands kneading my waist and rear, I scrambled backward. The way Marie ogled me called to mind the drunks I had crossed paths with at the market.
It felt as though a wet tongue were licking down my bare skin. A sickening ache twisted in my lower stomach. I wrapped my arms around myself with an involuntary shudder, which only made Marie bark out a laugh.
When Laurel snapped at her, Marie simply shrugged her fleshy shoulders.
Helping me pack the waterlogged, heavy diapers into my basket, Laurel gestured toward me with her chin. Marie clicked her tongue and smacked Laurel’s backside with a sharp slap.
Raucous laughter erupted. Pushed along by Laurel's hand, I lifted the basket and made my way out of the washing spot. Perhaps because I had been under the sun for so long, my face felt slightly flushed.
Laurel was prone to overprotecting me. She probably assumed I believed babies were delivered in baskets carried by storks.
Yet Laurel was the naive one.
I knew far more than she thought. For instance, why the widowed Mrs. Allmon baked sugar-glazed fig pies with a flushed face every Tuesday; why a man climbed through her window late in the night from time to time; and what kind of brooch that man had dropped behind.
Mrs. Allmon’s bed was quite noisy. Listening to the rhythmic, creaking racket, I would think of Mother and Father.
Our bed had always been a pile of straw, so it never made a sound like that.
And besides, I also knew what kind of life Senar was living. I had seen it firsthand on the night I ran out into the dark to fetch a doctor when Mrs. Vino had suffered a fit.
