| Chapter 2

If there was one good thing about living in Mrs. Almon’s house, it was that I didn’t have to sleep in the stable.

That small house had no stable, but instead there was a storage room behind the kitchen for stocking food. It wasn’t a very wealthy household, but at least there were sacks of potatoes, onions, and carrots piled up, so there was no worry about starving.

Every day, I would spread a blanket there and curl up to sleep. There was no sound of horses neighing, no terrible smell from their excrement. Just the faint scent of earth and dust, and the mellow odor of rotting crops, so I could sleep comfortably.

Sometimes I would dream of hearing the intimate sounds of Dad and Mom entangled together, but I would forget by morning. Because I had to deal with the demon.

Time flew by. By the time I was greeting my sixth summer in that house, the demon had lost its power.

Mrs. Vino no longer screamed ear-splittingly or wandered around defecating anywhere. She lay in bed all day, eating on the bed and taking care of her business on the bed.

Until I met Mrs. Vino, death had always been sudden for me. Everyone left suddenly. One day they would suddenly be hit by a carriage or struck on the back of the head and die just like that.

But Mrs. Vino was different. With each passing day, I could see the life force draining from her.

The bones that caught on my fingertips when changing her clothes became more emaciated day by day, and her breath smelled of decaying corpses. The spots that had been here and there on her face now covered her entire face, and her skin was so dried up that it looked as if the bones inside were struggling to break through.

I started each day by placing my hand on her nose. Sometimes, doing this would remind me of how she used to stick out her tongue and throw things at me.

I don’t mean I miss it. It’s just that sometimes I would remember. At least then, yes.

She was alive.

* * *

“You start cultivating yourself too, you wench. Who knows? We might end up like Senar, getting a house of our own and living lavishly with maids serving us?”

Women had come to the stream with large baskets full of laundry and were washing clothes. Having arrived late and settled at the lower end, I began rinsing Mrs. Vino’s diapers in the water.

There was a certain hierarchy at the washing place. Moreover, since the laundry I brought was generally the dirtiest, I could never go to the upstream area. The upstream was for those who were older and had louder voices.

“Ugh, but I don’t want that. Vernon is already like a grandfather. He even needs a cane to walk!”

“You foolish girl. That’s exactly why it’s good. He’ll be gone in a few years, won’t he?”

“Don’t say that. I heard he recently made a fortune from trading ships and bought some unheard-of delicacies. They say he even imported dozens of snakes not long ago!”

“What’s an old man going to do with snakes? Does it even work for him?”

The women burst into laughter. Laurel, sitting nearby, glanced at me.

“Stop it, you all. There’s a little one here.”

“Oh my, the little one is here?”

“Diaper laundry again today? You work hard every day, child.”

I was known to them as ‘the little one’. They’d been calling me that since I was eleven, but at seventeen, I wasn’t particularly fond of the nickname. Of course, compared to them, I was still little.

“Anyway, I’m just envious. Until recently, she was here with us beating laundry paddles, and now she’s probably having her knees massaged by a maid.”

“If you’re that envious, why don’t you go find another old man who’s about to breathe his last? Like that Mr. Pierce?”

“You wench, that old man is actually bedridden!”

The women start fighting, one slapping the other’s back with her wet hand. I shook my head and started scrubbing the diaper. Laurel sighed, brushed back her red hair, and turned to look at me.

“Have you eaten, little one?”

“Yes. A little pea soup.”

“How is Mrs. Vino?”

“The same as always. A little more dead than yesterday.”

Laurel blinked her eyes and said, “Oh my,” at my nonchalant reply. I moved my hands while half-listening to Laurel, who was trying to continue the conversation by bringing up another trivial topic.

She said she had a sibling my age back in her hometown. But from what I could see, that was just an excuse. Laurel simply needed someone to listen silently to her stories.

Because no one else would listen to her stories without interrupting.

“How was the book I gave you last time? Did you read some of it?”

“A few pages.”

“I see. Even if it’s hard to read, keep trying. When you learn to read, there’s so much more you can do.”

Laurel said she wanted to be a teacher. She said she wanted to save a bit more money and then return to her hometown to teach children. Perhaps that’s why, ever since she found out I couldn’t read, she started interfering with a happy face.

She probably doesn’t understand what it means when I stare at her blankly every time she says this.

I felt that I needed to see someone who could do more things because they could read before I would feel motivated. After all, most of the things Laurel did didn’t require reading.

The only reason I was reluctantly learning to read was purely for the candy.

If I brought a paper with letters traced over about ten times, Laurel would give me one piece of candy. There had never been anything like candy in Mrs. Almon’s house, and there probably never would be.

In fact, reading wasn’t particularly difficult. But I was deliberately taking my time, pretending not to be able to, for fear that if I learned too quickly, the candy might stop coming.

Suddenly, my skirt slipped down and touched the stream water. I hurriedly put down the laundry and grabbed my skirt, making a knot to hitch it up to my waist. As I straightened my back, I loosened my hair tie, letting my hair down. A breeze blew, making me feel the beads of sweat on my skin cool down.

I’m hungry. The pea soup has been eaten for three days now, and the bottom of the pot is almost visible. When I get back, I need to hang the laundry and make potato soup. Because Mrs. Vino can only eat thin foods, I’ve been eating the same.

Of course, I’ve been secretly taking out potatoes and carrots from the storage room and boiling them to eat once in a while. Sometimes, the dried-up bread crusts that Mrs. Almon gives me help too, but generally, I’m always hungry.

As I wiped my nose, I suddenly felt a gaze and turned my head. The women doing laundry were looking at me. Marie, who was sort of the leader of the laundry group, whistled lightly.

“Would you look at that? When did our little one grow up like this?”

I lowered my gaze, uncomfortable with the attention focused on me. Even without that, Marie was an uncomfortable person.

I was watching from the corner of my eye as her hefty body suddenly stood up and strode towards me, and I jumped when her hand roughly grabbed my chest.

“Eek!”

“Well, well, you’ve developed quite some curves, haven’t you? Your hips have widened too. You’re starting to smell like a woman.”

I desperately backed away, trying to escape from the hands that were kneading my waist and hips. Marie’s eyes, scanning me, reminded me exactly of the drunks I’d encountered in the marketplace.

It was as if her moist tongue was licking down my skin. My lower abdomen throbbed unpleasantly. Reflexively, I shuddered and hugged myself, which made Marie burst into laughter.

“I didn’t notice because you’re always hunched over, but you have a pretty face. Who knows, maybe this little one will be the next to rise in status!”

“Marie, what are you saying to a child?”

When Laurel angrily burst out, Marie shrugged her round, fleshy shoulders.

“I’m just telling her how to live comfortably in this world. Little one, you know Senar, right? You should start putting on some makeup and going out in the evenings too. Someone will notice you.”

“That’s enough. If you’re done, gather your laundry and go home.”

Laurel gestured to me with her chin as she helped me put the water-heavy diapers into the basket. Marie clicked her tongue and slapped Laurel’s bottom.

“You need to wake up too, Laurel. Instead of hanging around with some guy from a traveling troupe in the marketplace, why don’t you try sweet-talking the master? If I had worked in that house, all the men there would be in my grasp by now.”

“Not in your grasp, but between those enormous br*easts of yours!”

Raucous laughter erupted. I was pushed by Laurel’s hand and left the washing place carrying the basket. My face felt a bit hot, perhaps from being in the sun for too long.

Laurel tended to be overprotective of me. She probably thinks I still believe that babies are brought by storks carrying baskets in their beaks.

But the naive one was Laurel.

I knew more than she thought. For example, I knew why the widowed Mrs. Almon baked sugar-glazed fig pies with an excited face every Tuesday, why a man sometimes entered through Mrs. Almon’s window late at night, and what shape the brooch was that the man had dropped.

Mrs. Almon’s bed was quite noisy. Listening to the rhythmic creaking sounds, I thought about Mom and Dad.

Our bed was always just a pile of straw, so it didn’t make such noises.

And I also knew what kind of life Senar was living. I first saw it on the night I had to run out to call a doctor because Mrs. Vino had a seizure.