Night came. I had another visitor, and the next night, and the next—all of them dangerous, all of them horrid.
I never knew rest. While London found the peace of sleep and sweet dreams, I was awake and plagued.
No matter the lessons I was taught every Sunday in church, no matter how hard I’d silently prayed to God, nothing changed.
The older I grew, it was easy to grasp that God could not possibly exist. Either that or he hated me.
My singular desire in life was no longer for toys, or sweets, or even the attention of my parents. All I wanted was sleep.
In the daylight hours, I would sneak to my mama’s bed. I would crawl under the covers while she was gone, bury myself behind the pillows where I might not be noticed. The household always found me. I was always tugged out of the soft nest, my dress and pinafore straightened.
Then there were lessons. I had to go to all my lessons.
How else would I learn to be a lady?
Letters and numbers, the inky curl forming each mark was of utmost importance. Mama loved to see my little writings; the more elegant they grew the more she would praise me. Then there was the harp. Every day for three hours I was at the mercy of a mean, old crone with a walking stick she wielded like a switch.
I would inevitably start to doze during each lesson. Almost daily, I earned three smacks across the palms from that blasted cane.
It got to the point that her smacks no longer provoked so much as a whimper from my throat. They were nothing compared to what might wait for me once the dark came and the rabbit turned its head.
The bloody woman was a regular visitor. She paced, she clicked, and so long as I watched her, she could not slip nearer. If I closed my eyes, if I accidentally dozed, she would edge just a little bit closer.
I had to stay awake.
There was another one who came often. Unlike the bloody woman, he did not have to be watched. Unlike the horrible little boys, he didn’t scratch or bite. He never tried to take my covers. The man with a paunch like my father would do nothing but sit in the room’s distant rocking chair and creak the thing back and forth, laughing so loud I had to cover my ears.
Lumpy face pinched, maniacal in his tone and cadence, on and on he would shriek peels of unsettling mirth.
He stared at me the whole time. He pointed at me... laughing and laughing and laughing.
With all that racket, the rocking chair, the cackles, I could not sleep no matter how hard I tried. Little hands pressed to my ears, I would rock in time with him, unable to keep my thoughts clear, feeling as if I were growing ill.
More often than naught, I’d vomit.
Even though he turned my stomach, I didn’t mind him nearly as much as I hated the boys. The dirty pair would play the cruelest jokes. Their laughter was different from the fat, old laughing man. The boys, they sounded so innocent but were so very corrupt.
Over the years I saw more and more of them, their rotted teeth on display behind grins of mi
schief. And as I grew taller, they grew more violent.
They liked to bite.
They loved to scratch.
They left marks on me that I was punished for the next morning. Good girls were not supposed to itch themselves raw in sleeping fits. Good girls were always to be tidy.
Of all my nightly visitors, I hated the boys the most.
Night in and night out, while I waited for the rabbit to turn my way, I would lay there and wonder. Would it be the bloody woman, would it be the laughing man... would it be those horrid boys?
How many bruises would I have to explain away? How much more would my nanny hate me? How many more disappointed looks would I get from Mama and Papa when they were told of how I’d wet the bed, or torn my nightclothes, or marked my pretty face—that face, with high cheeks and long lashed eyes... it had to be intact.
It was my only significance in this household.
My mother loved my face. As I grew more troublesome, I think it was the one thing about me she did like.
Chapter 2