The Pages of Time

Gilded Summers-16

“Do you not understand it?” Pearl asked me, her face florid at whatever she saw upon mine.

“No, I understand.” I shrugged with a shake of my head. “But this, this how you live?” I stabbed the page with an accusing finger.

She frowned. When she frowned it was like a dark cloud passing in front of the sun. Such a frown—and one I put there—put something new in our floral cavern. It was an awkward, uncomfortable thing.

“Well, this is how we are made to live.”

I began to understand even if she did not.

“Believe it or not, how you hold a parasol is seen as a sign.” She lectured with words she spat from puckered lips.

“A sign-a?” I shook my head at the added vowel sound, the part of my accent I had so much trouble erasing from my speech.

“Oh, yes.” Pearl chirped, the other Pearl. “Let"s say a young lady is walking down the street and she sees a man she likes approaching her. Raising her parasol as he passes tells him she"s interested.” Pearl taught me much more than how to read and write. “If she wants him to follow her, she would close the parasol and hold it in her right hand. One must be very careful though, the wrong signal can lead to the most dreadful misunderstandings.”

I stared at her. She studied my scrunched face.

“Women are not alone in such things.” She plucked at her skirt as if she plucked words from an out-of-tune violin. “The men do as well. They must know the right flowers to send and to whom. Red roses, of course, are a sign of true love, while yellow speaks of jealousy or of favor once held lost. Yes, the men must know the language of flowers and how to speak it with…their…florist.”

Her words fell away beneath my lengthened stare. She shrugged dismissively, though not without her pale cheeks blushing pink. I couldn"t stop myself, though I wish I had.

“These things are…are…importante?” I faltered for the English pronunciation.

importante“Important,” Pearl corrected me kindly, as a friend, not a teacher.

“Ah, si, important.” I held the book out toward her. “These things are important to you?”

si,To this day, I"m unsure if it was the question or the cynical way I asked her that offended, or whether seeing it through my eyes allowed her to see things all too clearly.

She snatched the book from my lap.

“Well, yes, of course they are important,” she said, imitating her mother. “One must live gracefully.” She faltered. She didn"t like the sound of her mother"s voice coming from her mouth any more than I did. “Well, you know.”

I grabbed her gaze with mine and held it. She lowered her face against its penetration. We had journeyed to places better left alone, places that disrupted ourselves, and what we were becoming together. Such a journey needed to end.

“Maybe they important, are important,” I said, barely keeping the smile from my face. “But not to you. I know what important is to you.”

This time I grabbed her hand, pulling her down the tree clumsily.

her“You will make us fall,” she warned as her free arm pin wheeled like a rudder to my engine.

I kept pulling, straight out of our hideaway.

“Ginevra?” Pearl sputtered, stumbling along behind me, gaze flashing this way and that, looking for lookers. I took us into a run toward the carriage house.

No one was there. The grooms were either driving the family or exercising the horses. It was the perfect time.

“Ginevra?” Pearl stammered on thickening confusion, scudding to a stop, pulling her hand from mine. “What are we doing here? Yes, I like to ride but it"s not that important to me.”

I laughed. I couldn"t help myself. I took possession and pulled her again, pulled her up the side stairs on the outside of the carriage house, to the small loft above. I opened the door, stepped back, and thrust her in. Her gasp echoed upon the rafters.

Pearl slapped her hands to her cheeks, walked into the room with slow deliberate steps. She spun to look at me, then spun back. She couldn"t take her eyes off the items in the corner by the back, bay window. There stood her easel, a canvas already on it. On a table at its side lay all her paints and brushes.

She spun back again, her face slack with wonder. “Goodness gracious. Ginevra, what have you done?”

It sounded like she scolded me. She didn"t. Her smile brimmed and quivered, as did her tears.

I scuffed my toe into the roughhewn wood floor. “I only did what you would do for me.”

She came to me and wrapped her arms around me. It was our first embrace. It would not be the last. I had been in her world only a short time, but even then, I knew how rare such an embrace was, an embrace between the privileged and those who served them.

With me still in her arms, Pearl jumped up and down. I had no choice but to jump with her, laugh with her. She jumped and laughed her way to her paints and her easel.

The next time we met, when Pearl came for our reading time, we read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn* * *

I whirled through days in a haze of work and salty breezes. Each day a little of the strangeness of this strange place became familiar. Every morning I woke up to a different me, no matter how tightly I held onto the old.

I saw people of such riches come and go, carrying their wealth with little thought of its treasure. I saw meals served to crowds and intimate parties, food fit for a king"s table and his court.

I saw little of Pearl. She had the whirl of society and I my work and my studies. I did both to my best. I almost came into Mrs. Briggs" good graces. Almost.

“Turn the light out already,” Greta grumbled at me that night. It was not the first time; it wouldn"t be the last. The late-night hours were often the only time I had to do my reading, practice my writing. A servant"s day was ten to twelve hours long, even a seamstress, even if all she did was sit in a room in case she was needed, back growing stiff, fingers actually longing for work, and a mind unoccupied to wander adrift. I preferred the nicks of needles in constant motion to the tedium. I didn"t know what bothered Greta more, the light or what I did within it. The louder she grumbled, the louder I turned pages.

“Just a few more minutes,” I muttered without looking up from my book.

With a huff, she threw off her thin summer bed linen and stomped out.

“I need a wee,” she announced as if I asked.

I heard her stomp down the hall. I forgot her as her outraged footsteps faded to soft thumps, becoming as faint as the tick of a clock.

The pictures in the magazine, a copy of Harper"s Bazaar I had stolen from the trash bin, set my mind on fire. The glossy pages were filled with fashion, articles on fashion, pictures of fashion, I lost myself to it. I learned who Worth was. I studied each picture, each sleeve, each skirt, picturing how I would change things, imagining how I would design such creations. I left this room, this world, and went to the place of my dreams.

The dream shattered.

“What do you think you are doing?”

Mrs. Briggs stood in the threshold. I hadn"t heard her steps, hers and Greta"s, hadn"t heard the door open. My body and my face tightened, almost painfully.

“Well, I-a reading.” Nerves invited back the accent I tried so hard to lose.

She marched across the room to my bed; robe wrapped and tied as tightly around her as her anger, dark ash blonde and gray hair falling in a frazzle down her back. Mrs. Briggs grabbed the magazine from my hands with such force, without warning, the page in my hands ripped. The sound made me flinch.

“Harper"s Bazaar? Hah!” she laughed at me, so did Greta, standing behind her, smirking with satisfaction. “Why does a girl like you need to be reading such a thing?”

“I thought…good for my work.”

“Your work is to mend and fix, nothing more. Your kind will never be anything more.”

My gaping mouth snapped closed. Pain stabbed my jaw as my teeth ground together. I longed for a sharp tongue in full possession of English with which to whip her.

“Go to bed, go to sleep this minute,” Mrs. Briggs ordered, stomping out of the room with the same anger in which she had entered, taking the magazine with her.

Greta slipped back into her bed, “Nighty, night, Geeneeva,” she twittered at me.

I stared at her back. There was an English word for her, I had heard the men in the basement use it. It began with a `b," though that was all I could remember. In my language, under my breath, I called her a puttana.

puttana* * *

Somehow, one of Mrs. Worthington"s day dresses, one of her favorites, had become ripped at two seams, long stretches of them. I spent the entire morning fixing them, every stitch I made, I made with the best of care.

“Ah you done yet?”

I jumped. Once more Mrs. Briggs stood in the threshold.

“Almost,” I replied, unable to keep a note of pride out of my voice.

Within a flash, she stood before me and my table perched before the window. Mrs. Briggs picked up the dress, scoured it with mean eyes. Her two hands traveled down the length of one seam, all the way to the hem. She pulled.

The rip was like a scream, it screeched through my head. In seconds, she destroyed hours of my work; in truth, she longed to destroy my strength.

“Not good enough.” She dropped the dress on the desk. “Do it again. Better this time.”

She left as she came. I barely noticed.

The clanging in my head wouldn"t stop. My hands shook. I gripped the edge of the table until my knuckles blazed white-hot. She had made the damage worse; she had made my job harder. I almost thought to throw it away, almost.

I picked it up and began again. If the battle continued, I would not fall to it.

* * *

I had had no lunch, thanks to Mrs. Briggs and her destruction. I skipped it to finish the work, just barely making it to the dinner table in time.

I sat beside my father as always. He rarely saw me, saw my truth, for he rarely looked for it, but not that night. He raised his shoulders at me, face scrunched by question and confusion. I just shook my head, sat, and began to eat.

As my hunger ebbed so did my anger. Not for long.

“Faleece!” From the senior staff table, Mrs. Briggs bellowed at my father.

He sat upright, stopped chewing.

“The sideboard door has broken, again. You will fix it after dinner. Do not go to your bed until you do.” It was an ungracious order, in truth, one Mr. Birch should have given. Mrs. Briggs brought her displeasure with me crashing down upon my father. Hatred is a poisonous thing; we do not often have the antidote for our own. My back stiffened. My fingers turned white as I strangled the fork in my hand.