Michelle Hoover - Bottomland

I dropped into the chair.

“You farm girls, you take the cake,” Keyes said. “Don’t your mothers teach you right?”

Mother, she had never told us anything. And Nan, she’d told us even less. All we knew we knew from cows and pigs.

But Charlotte, she didn’t seem surprised. “Aren’t you going to tell her?” she asked me.

“What do you know about it?”

“Tell me what?” Keyes said.

Myrle lay on her back, her face wet. Charlotte stared at me. Her or me, that stare said.

“There was a boy back home,” I let out. “A neighbor.”

“What boy?” Keyes asked.

I shrugged. “We’re here, aren’t we?”

“But doesn’t he know?”

“He forced her, that’s what he knows.”

Myrle raised her head, as if telling was a choice. “He didn’t.”

“Yes, he did.”

“He didn’t force me. He didn’t do anything.”

“Are you forgetting how sick you were?”

Myrle’s eyes went teary. “I don’t want to remember it like that.”

“Hush now, the two of you.” Keyes blotted Myrle’s face with a handkerchief and blotted her own. “Forced or not, I can’t have a pregnant girl in this house.”

“But she doesn’t have anywhere to go,” Charlotte said.

“She has a family, doesn’t she?”

“They don’t know,” I said.

“But surely they would accept their own daughter.”

“They won’t even write her back,” Charlotte said. “Tell her, Esther. All those letters she sent.”

“Sure,” I said. “She wrote some letters.” All I could see was the tops of Father’s knees. If he thought stealing was enough for that, what would he think of the Elliot boy stealing this?

“And you sent them for her.”

“Sure I did.”

Charlotte tilted her head. “Oh, my God.” Her eyes narrowed. I shoved my hands inside the folds of my skirt. “You didn’t, did you?” she said. “You never sent them. That’s why they didn’t write back.”

“What’s it to you? It was no good their knowing we’re here. They’d make us come home. And Tom, he could do anything to her then.”

The room went quiet, like the hush of those machines at the end of a shift.

Finally, Myrle spoke. “But Tom never did.”

Charlotte huffed. “I can’t believe it.”

“Stop it,” Keyes snapped. “I don’t care about letters. We can’t keep her here. There are rules. This isn’t a charity. It’s a decent house.”

“Don’t you dare send her away,” Charlotte said.

“And who will pay for her? If she can’t work. She hasn’t been much help lately as it is.”

Myrle called out, and I jumped from my chair, but she turned away. When she called out again, she said Charlotte’s name.

“There are places these days that’ll take a baby,” Keyes said. “No one has to know.”

“No,” Myrle cried.

Charlotte took Myrle’s hand. “Esther can pay,” Charlotte said, “and me.” She looked at me, then looked away. “I can pay.”

I sat back. Esther and me , she’d said, but she didn’t mean it. Charlotte didn’t have sisters. But maybe now she had one. Maybe the kind who told her everything, the things my sister no longer told me. Charlotte and Keyes, they were watching me now as if expecting something.

“I’ll help,” I said. “Of course.” Though I didn’t know how.

But Myrle, she wasn’t thinking of me anymore. It was all Charlotte. That red hair and her eyes like lights. Could be Charlotte was the reason Myrle’s letters home didn’t matter anymore. As if I had been the one in the loft with the Elliot boy. As if I’d known it could turn to bad. But I didn’t. Still, I was the one who always got it wrong.

Five cents for every dropped stitch, five for backtracking, five for folding the collar so they couldn’t iron it and sometimes even if they could. Five for needles and five if one broke because you weren’t watching (an eye if you were watching too hard). Five for listening to Charlotte, but today she was quiet. All week at the house she’d kept her door closed, Myrle locked behind it. She doesn’t want to see you , Charlotte had said. When I knocked, I could hear Myrle inside, padding about. One cent for being late, half a day for being late more than five minutes. Five if you had to get Mr. Preston to unlock the factory door, as I had every day since I lost my sister. Five more if Preston was in a mood. I hadn’t got many dimes the week before or the one before that. The coming week I might have to owe.

If I stopped moving, I couldn’t make mistakes. If I wasn’t breathing, I would make even fewer.

Five past nine, still early in the morning. I sat back from my machine. Down the line, the girls in the same blouse, same dress, their hair caught back with the same cut of string. Even Abigail with that patch over her eye. If you looked too close at a thing, you got hurt. That’s what Abigail knew. Best not to look at all. Electric, I once thought. But light like that only showed what a person couldn’t have. I liked it dark. That needle, such a hot silver thing. I didn’t dare touch it. If I wasn’t working, there’d be no more needles. No more electric. I wouldn’t go home. I wouldn’t stay. I’d disappear even as I sat right here.

Five for disappearing. Five times five for every day you were gone and never telling anybody why. You owed ten dimes. You owed twenty. And all the time, Myrle had been growing bigger, those pipes in our room banging, Charlotte trying to get in. And now she had. The both of them, Charlotte and Keyes, saying everything would be all right. Just like home, no matter what my sister did. The way Mother held her and Father put his hand on her head like a cap. That heavy hand of his that was warm and never so sharp with Myrle the way it was with me. How many dimes was that?

A hand on my shoulder. I flinched. Preston stood behind me with the foreman. I threw that hand off.

“Number 57,” Preston said. “Let’s take a break, why don’t we? Down in my office.”

“A break?”

He nodded. Next to me, Charlotte worried her fingers.

“I don’t need a break.”

“Esther,” Charlotte whispered.

Preston cocked his head. An old man. He was nothing more than that. Old men, you never could change their minds about you. I stood from my chair, looped one of Charlotte’s curls around my finger, one last time. Charlotte touched the back of my hand.

“Watch yourself,” she said. “I’m sorry. Really I am.”

But I didn’t know what she was sorry about. I wasn’t sorry at all.

I took the train home. I’ll be back , I’d told Myrle every day before I left. Soon as I can . And that quiet on the other side of the door said she believed me and didn’t. With Charlotte around, she didn’t seem to care. But I didn’t have a dime anymore to keep the both of us there. Two charity cases, too much for Charlotte or even Mrs. Keyes. On the last night, Myrle asked me: “When?” I told her I didn’t know. “But you can’t come.” With how far along she was, we could never knock on our door. We couldn’t even cross the yard, for fear Father would see or Nan and then they all would know, and that would be the end of home. “That girl’s close to bursting,” Keyes said. “Don’t you even think of tromping off with her to the middle of nowhere.” Like a trick, now even Keyes took Myrle’s side. As soon as I got money, I said, I’d be back. Soon as I could tell the story straight and bring her along, pregnant or not. Myrle opened the door. It was just enough to show a sliver of her eye and one raw cheek. She reached her fingers through the crack. I touched them with my own. “Wait for me,” I said. “I’ll come. I promise.” She squeezed my hand and closed the door again.