The Back Building
Authors: Julie Dewey
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Contemporary Fiction
Chapter Two Willard Hospital for the Insane
Chapter Seven Everything Changes with the Season
Chapter Eleven Lucy and Suzette
Chapter Fifteen Willard Once More
Chapter Nineteen Medical Records
Chapter Twenty-One Release Forms
Chapter Twenty-Three Photographs
Chapter Twenty-Five Hanging by a Thread
Chapter Twenty-Six More Medical Records
Chapter Twenty-Seven Suitcases
© 2014 Julie Dewey, all rights reserved worldwide. No part of this book may be reproduced or uploaded to the Internet, or copied without written permission from the author.
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ISBN
Other Books by Julie Dewey:
Forgetting Tabitha the Story of an Orphan Train Rider
One Thousand Porches
Cat Livin’ Large Series
The Other Side of the Fence
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Part 1
Chapter One
Iona, 1915
My white school blouse was speckled with tiny droplets of blood from my first victim. I had watched my father’s and brothers’ precise alignment of traps on many occasions when I accompanied them into the woods. I tagged along under the directive that I was to ‘study the foliage’ while they hunted. Truthfully, my mother, Esther, just wanted me out of her hair. On these forays I was reminded that hunting was ‘not appropriate for women’ and that ‘dressing the kill’ was a man’s job. I was told to ‘mind myself’ while the men strategized but I found preying on animals far more interesting than cataloging leaves and their corresponding trees. So instead, I studied the men’s tactics from afar as they stalked and caught all kinds of game.
Because I was often seen in and around the chicken coop, it made sense, then, that I would set my first trap behind the ramshackle structure without arousing any suspicion. Dandelion weeds grew tall, garter snakes nested among the logs that lay in disarray, and best of all, holes were evident. I learned from watching my father pursue animals that holes were entrances to burrows. Given the fresh scat I found, it meant bunnies were currently living deep within the earth. I secured my lead wire from the knot of a log to the coop itself. I gently formed a noose and positioned it right in front of the burrow’s entrance, then waited patiently.
The snare snapped abruptly and a defenseless jack-rabbit squirmed and bucked its hind legs as it try to escape from the noose tightening around its neck. I had to put him out of his misery with a quick blow to the head. I searched for a blunt object to bash in its brains and settled on a stacked log. One hit between the animal’s ears and the movement stopped. Blood and brain matter splattered every which way, spraying the ground and my attire. I admired my game for a moment, then sharpened the two knives I stole from our kitchen. I scraped the blades back and forth together numerous times making a shrilling sound. When the sunlight gleamed from the tips I knew they were sharp enough to gut and skin the animal. I stuck the blade into the chest cavity, piercing the warm skin, and began the gruesome process.
I wouldn’t be allowed to proclaim my kill and use it for our soup, so after I skinned the animal and buried the innards, I took what little meat there was to Hetty. (I counted precisely eight hundred and ninety-two paces from my coop to her front door. When I became confused at step number two hundred and thirty-seven, I started over.) Hetty was our house-girl who lived just down the road. She was the only black person I knew and we became fast friends. My parents paid Hetty to come twice weekly and do a thorough cleaning of our home. My mother wanted our farm to be pristine and didn’t have the time or inclination to get on her hands and knees and scrub the floorboards the way Hetty did. Hetty made them shine and the whole house smelled like lemons while she was working. Hetty was a large, ambitious girl who I fancied. She was seventeen years old to my fifteen, but she was allowed to eat her fill and it showed in her ample hips and bosom.
My mother wouldn’t allow me to have dessert except on the first Sunday of the month, and even then it was only a simple bowl of fruit or small sliver of pound cake. At supper-time I was given strict portions of vegetables and meat and was never allowed second helpings. Mother made me count and chew each bite at least fifteen times before swallowing it in order to get the most from each tangy morsel. The rumblings in my tummy were mere temptations, she said. Withholding food was meant to serve as a lesson that a young lady should never overindulge or give in to her cravings and desires, no matter the circumstance. Mother repeated her creed every night, ‘just one spoonful of vegetables, just one helping of beef, Iona, you need to be fit and trim if you want admirers’. My brothers, Greg and Michael, however, consumed second and third portions of our meal. They taunted me by greedily scarfing down their food, hardly allowing themselves time to taste the scraps on their tongues before gulping them down and mindlessly shoveling in the next bite. If they were aware of the unjust spectacle at the dinner table they did not make any amends by curtailing their moans of delight and belches.
I wanted to slop up gravy with a thick heel of buttered bread, and then smear my hand across my lips to rid the grease; then hold my hand across my belly and belch liberally, before reaching for more. I desired the crisp, salty skin from the bird plated before us, or wads of creamy butter patted on the heaps of mashed potatoes. However, mother said to let the aroma be enough. She cupped her hands and wafted the air towards her nose to inhale the steam that permeated from the fare. She took her delight, not from the delicate tidbits of food, but rather in the men’s over enjoyment of the meal she presented.
“You’ll thank me one day, Iona,” she said one particular evening over supper while I stared longingly at a rack of beef that had been smothered in mushrooms and covered in a thick, glistening gravy. I was disinclined to agree but averted my eyes and kept quiet. I would offer to help with the dishes and lick the plates clean of any crumbs that were left. I’d hoard the bones and suck the spongy marrow straight from them in my room at night, discarding the fragments I gnawed upon under my mattress.
The entire farce was meant to benefit me in my future. Learning how to transcend hunger and temptation, putting the men in the household ahead of oneself was indicative of being a good and decent woman that any man would want to marry. Marriage was not something I looked forward to. The last thing I wanted was a paunchy-faced man eating his fill before me while I smiled and licked my chops. Nor did I want him sticking it to me. I knew the ways between a man and woman because I caught my brother, Jeffrey, in the hayloft with his sweetheart, Mary Anne. Her clothes were rumpled up over her hips and her stark white legs stuck out in the air to each side making the shape of a letter ‘V’. Jeffrey’s bare butt went up and down while he grunted and fumed, they worked hard at coming together. After witnessing the performance, I would prefer to be a spinster.
Nonetheless, there was something about our house-girl’s banter and confident sway that intrigued me. I practiced moving my own scrawny hips from side to side the way she swished hers, but it felt forced and looked awkward. I was startled by the recognition that my body was starting to change. Mounds were taking shape across my chest where I was once flat. I told Hetty I would not permit this and she belly laughed out loud.
“Girl, there ain’t nothing you can do to stop the mounds from growing. You might as well start getting used to them now.” She grabbed and squeezed her own orbs appreciatively.
“I don’t want them,” I fumed, angry at my changing body.
“Most girls your age can’t wait for their bust to grow. They want to know how to get them and how to make them larger. They exercise their chests like this,” Hetty put her arms out wide and demonstrated exercises meant to increase one’s bust.
I didn’t want a bust-line that would hinder my activities, I wanted to be flat so I began wrapping linen strips tight around my chest every night to prevent my mounds from growing further. I had spindly arms and legs and never wanted to be curvaceous like some of the girls from school. Sarah Medley and Brooke Smith would fasten belts so tight around their middle, cinching their waists, to appear curvy that I didn’t know how they could breathe. I hated dresses as a rule but had no choice but to wear what my mother laid out for me each morning. I always had a straight skirt, so that I looked tall and thin, a pressed blouse, and coordinating ribbons for my hair. The second school got out I ran home (two thousand and eleven paces from the school exit to my front door), expunged my ribbons, tore out my bobby pins, and loosened my hair. I let my curls fall in disarray around my face, alleviating the headache created by the tight hairdo. I put my school clothes on wire hangers in my closet and put on looser fitting attire that allowed me to breathe and was suitable for chores.
My mother told me I was “exasperating” when I came undone. She despised when my hair was in my eyes and blinked excessively as if she could feel the tendrils scratching her own pupils. She waved her hand in the air away from me, motioning for me to go outdoors and carry on with my daily chores. Chores instilled responsibility and furthermore removed me from her presence. I believe she took a nip or two of brandy when I came home from school because after my chores she seemed more chipper and smelled of spirits.
I relished my responsibilities because they allowed me time alone with the animals. Brushing the horses’ backsides with short repetitive strokes put me in a trance-like state. When the horses were tended I visited the chickens. I would sit in the coop and put the hens on my lap while I stroked and plucked their feathers. (One hundred strokes each bird.) I inhaled the sweet smell of the hay and collected as many colorful eggs as I could find before heading back indoors, reluctantly.
Once inside (one hundred and seventy-seven paces from coop to kitchen), mother chided me to help with the dinner preparation. I had little to no interest in slicing vegetables, or rolling out crusts for fruit pies. The only exception was that I liked working with the raw meat. I enjoyed sawing the bones off the animals and studying their ligaments, taking note of the blue veins that, when alive, rushed the blood to the animal’s pumping heart. I stripped a chicken’s spindly purple vein from its thigh and ate it raw while mother turned her back. It had relatively no taste and while the texture was wormy it wasn’t the worst thing I’d ever tried. I gulped it down and felt satisfied. The raw smell of the flesh was especially tantalizing to me, which mother found disturbing. She pried me from the butchering and instead gave me the task of chopping carrots into perfectly uniform sticks.
“Iona, one serving only,” my mother said expectedly when we were seated at the table for supper that evening. My stomach rumbled loud enough to be heard over the conversation that escalated between the men.
“But, Mother, I am a growing girl, surely I need as much chicken as the boys?” I whined.
“Iona, listen to your mother, one serving,” my father, Jim, who barely spoke to me, said without looking up from his plate. He continued, “Mother tells me you are not taking an interest in tasks that are befitting a lady. From now on we insist that you take up your sewing after school rather than doing chores outdoors. It’s time you begin acting your age and start preparations for courting.” Mother rolled her eyes and reached for her brandy.