"That's what you all are, chi
ldren. You've been cast away like so much worthless riffraff," she would moan with the back of her hand pressed to her forehead like some terrible soap opera actress. "I will try, but you have to help me. Clean up after yourselves. Never make a mess. Never break anything. Never disobey me. Never fight or steal, and never say anything nasty."
What about the nasty things she would say to us? I wondered. Why did she want to run an orphanage in the first place? Was it only for the money, or did she enjoy lording it over helpless young girls and seeing the fear and the gratitude in their eyes?
At night she walked past our bunks and inspected, just hoping to spot some violation, no matter how small. Everyone but me would have her head turned away, her eyes closed, holding her breath and praying Madam Annjill did not find anything wrong and assign some punishment or shake her. Only I would lie there with my eyes wide open, waiting for her. I wasn't afraid. Noble was standing beside me, waiting, too.
She would stop, even though I sensed she wanted to keep going and avoid me. After all, she had to hold on to her authority. She had to pause and snap at me.
"Why aren't you trying to sleep?" she would demand.
I didn't answer. I glanced at Noble, who shook his head at her and then smirked at me.
Dealing with my silence was far more troublesome and difficult for her than the whining others did, or the poor little attempts to escape blame. Silence had always been my ally, my sword, and my shield.
Madam Annjill would look at Noble, whom I knew she couldn't see, and then she would simply nod at me.
"You know you were hatched from an egg of madness, don't you? If you're not careful, it will grow inside you, and you'll end up like your mother and your sister."
I didn't say a word. I stared at her until she walked away, muttering to herself.
Only then did I turn to Noble and show my unhappiness.
"Can't we go home?" I whispered.
"No, not yet," he said. "You have to be patient, very patient, but I promise you, Celeste. Someday you will go home again."
"Take me home now. Please. Take me home," I begged. He brushed my hair and told me to be patient again, and then he walked into the darkness.
Actually, I had no idea where home was anymore, or even what it was. It was just a wonderful word, a word that rang with hope.
Home.
Surely Noble is right, I thought. I will return, and everyone who has loved me will be there waiting with open arms. Surely they've missed me as much as I've missed them.
After all, I could still hear their screams of pain and agony as the car and the social workers took me away that dreadful afternoon. Even now, nearly ten years later, the memories of how I was scooped up and taken away from the farm and the only life I had known were painful. I remembered those agonizing days in Willis of colors, red being the most
prominent. I was so full of anger then. Why had Noble gone after Celeste appeared? I'd wondered, wearing a scowl like a permanent mask. It was all Betsy's fault, I'd decided. Somehow, it was because of her that he was driven away. I'd been happy she was dead, and I wanted to see her buried and gone from sight.
If I tried really hard to recall specific moments about that last day, I felt my insides tightening up, as if all my organs were being woven into knots around my heart.
It was far worse immediately after I had been taken. Then I would actually have a hard time breathing, what the doctors diagnosed as an emotional seizure. In fact, during, the first few months after I was separated from the only people I had known and loved and loved me, I would often fall into a sleep so deep and long, it resembled catatonia.
Sleep was, after all, a way of turning my face away from ugly reality, but even sleep wasn't a total escape. A stream of nightmares would flow through my head: Noble being pushed back into his grave, Betsy with a twisted smile, laughing at me after she died, Mama glassy-eyed and cold, her lips squirming like earth-worms. I would eventually wake screaming, and no matter what anyone said or how lovingly they treated me, I never lost the sense of foreboding, a sense that something dreadful was following me, sometimes disguised as my own shadow. I still felt it now, even at seventeen. I had the habit of glancing into corners, looking back every once in a while when I walked. I knew it drew attention to me, but I couldn't help it. Something was there. Something was always there. I didn't care if people thought I was still a mental case.
There is no way to avoid revealing that I was brought to a children's mental clinic almost immediately after being taken from the farm. I do vividly remember a beautiful woman with light brown hair and soft green eyes. She was tall and stately with an air of authority about her that made me feel confident, as confident as a baby in her mother's arms.
She was, I would learn, a pediatric psychiatrist, although she never wanted me to call her Dr. anything, just Flora. There would be others. In the beginning Flora spent hours and hours with me trying to get me to speak, to tell her why I was so angry. She knew most of it by then, of course. She had learned how my mother had died in her sleep and had been left in her bed, how my sister had accidentally killed Panther's mother, Betsy, on the staircase and then buried her in the herbal garden. Soon after, Noble's grave was uncovered as well, and the whole story of our twisted turmoil spilled out into the community like untended milk boiling over the edges of a pot.
I would learn that people came from faraway places to look at the farm, to talk about all of us with local people. Newspaper articles turned into magazine articles, and someone even wrote a book about it. At the time there was even some talk about a movie being made. We were that infamous.
Ironically, the community that had once considered us pariahs had suddenly embraced us. Everyone was anxious to tell about an experience with us, and of course with every retelling the
exaggerations grew, until the truth was as lost as youth and innocence.
Flora worked very hard with me, and eventually she got me to talk and tell her the things she wanted and needed to know. She was always reassuring me. The truth was, I wanted to talk to someone badly. Noble hadn't come with me into that place. I was totally alone, so eventually telling Flora some of my secrets gave me relief. I could feel the weight slowly being lifted off my brow and the smiles beginning to return, first with a tiny movement at the corners of my mouth and then in my eyes. I so wanted to learn again, to read, to listen to music and stories. My appetite returned, and I didn't have to be forced or convinced to eat. I came out of the darkness as if I had been released from prison.
It was then that she brought me together with children my age, and over time the past became less and less oppressive. I celebrated a birthday at the clinic. They made me a nice party, and Flora bought me a beautiful pink dress with lace trimming about the sleeves and hem. My emotional seizures became far and few between and eventually disappeared entirely.