Rose also didn’t tell Maxine or Alice about helping the girl because she knew they’d be mad at her for doing it. Helping was dangerous. Helping meant time in the cages. But Rose didn’t care. Helping felt good. Alice said this girl was the kind who would never stop eloping, and so Rose was planning to help her again.
Rose had never tried to run away from anywhere. Not even like Maxine had done when they’d lived at their other home, the one with their mother and father and brothers. Being out at night in the dark without a blanket or a bed or her stick—she shivered just thinking about it. She imagined it might feel a little like the time she got a burning-up fever and got stuck inside a bad dream where everything was all wrong and she couldn’t find her way out for the longest time. When she’d woken up cold and wet and no longer in the dream, Rose had cried with joy at everything that was real.
But the girl with the long, tangled hair and black eyes, that girl liked it out there—on her own in the dark. She wasn’t afraid at all. Watching her open the window had been like watching someone opening a Bit-O-Honey. The girl had been excited by the idea of climbing out the window high above the ground and out into the rainy night, so much so that she’d forgotten to look back at Rose. She’d just disappeared over the ledge.
Rose loved remembering that moment. The tickle of it pushed her to speak.
“Nurse?”
The woman’s cold hands were wrapping a tape measure around Rose’s head. They measured her head a lot.
“Yes, dear.”
“I want to help more in the clothing room.”
“Hm.”
Rose could tell that the nurse wasn’t exactly listening as she scribbled in a chart. Rose’s measurements had filled so many charts. The numbers were like stars awakening in the night sky—a new one twinkling into sight before the last one could fully be noticed.
“I know how to fold. I’m good at folding. But you know, practice leads to improvement,” Rose said, being sure to give words she’d heard them use over and over.
“Very true, young lady,” the nurse said, looking at her for the first time.
Rose leaped onto this connection. “Could you ask Mrs. Vetter if I might have more practice by working the clothing room?” She tagged on a few more of their words at the last second. “I feel up to the task.”
The nurse looked away, searching through her instruments. She picked up the thermometer, shook it vigorously, and stuck it into Rose’s armpit. When the nurse’s eyes finally made it back to Rose’s, her head was tilted to the side and a sad kind of smile was on her lips. “These decisions aren’t up to me, dear.”
She was backing down, about to move on… past this, past Rose’s chance. Panicking, Rose pressed her naked arm against her body, cooperating as much as possible to keep the thermometer in place. She needed to say the right thing next. But she wasn’t sure what it was.
“But people listen to you,” she blurted, scared she’d lost the nurse’s attention.
The nurse stopped, her hand still on Rose’s arm and, more important, her eyes on Rose.
Rose had done it. Following lunch the very next day, she and Maxine were given clothing room duty.
* * *
“Why are we here instead of the laundry?” Maxine grumbled.
She wasn’t really asking Rose this question, she was just complaining, so Rose didn’t answer. Of course Rose knew the answer, making this another thing Rose knew that Maxine didn’t. Although, this secret didn’t tingle in her stomach as the last secret had. This one felt more like a sharp jab.
“It’s not hot like the laundry,” Rose said.
She was right. The laundry room was the sweatiest place in the whole world, especially in summer. But it wasn’t summer. It was getting closer to winter, and the clothing room was a little cold since the school never turned on the gas until almost Thanksgiving. Soon it would be really cold. Winter was not a good time to elope. If Rose was going to help the girl, she had to do it soon.
“What are you thinking about, Rose?” Maxine asked, looking at her for the first time since Miss Sweeney had let them into the clothing room.
“Winter,” she answered, which was true. But it wasn’t the entire truth, and Rose felt another one of those jabs.
“What about winter?”
“Will you try to sing alone at Christmas again?” Rose asked.
“Audition for a solo? I don’t know,” Maxine said, folding another summer dress. The uniforms the girls wore came in two varieties, winter dresses and summer dresses. The first were made of a wool and cotton blend, heavier on the wool, which made them itchy, and stink a bit. The summer version was muslin, soft and comfortable. Rose hated when they switched to winter dresses, which they’d done just yesterday with the advent of November. When the girls walked the circles on a warm fall afternoon, the body odor mixed in with the wool and smelled as bad as the toilet room.
“But maybe I will, Rosy,” Maxine said, smiling. “Maybe this year I’ll get it.”
This made Rose’s heart happy. She liked that her sister was always trying for things, but she really liked that now Maxine would start thinking about singing while she folded the hundreds of dresses, underwear, socks, and towels that sat in large bins in front of them. She needed her sister lost in her daydreams so that Rose might focus on one bin in particular, the one filled with outside clothes.
Outside clothes were worn by the girls with families who visited them each month. On family visiting days, as well as on community visiting days, when the people who lived in town came, the girls who owned these special clothes were allowed to choose what they’d like to wear. Rose noticed it was the same with the boys. Although she rarely saw boys. They lived on the other side of the school and in other buildings. Girls and boys only came together for Christmas and Easter. On these holidays, when the community and families were invited, Rose would marvel at all the colorful clothes. It was like the difference, she thought, between the green trees of summer and the vivid leaves of fall. Outside clothes had soft sashes, satin bows, lace trims. They were bright blue, and deep red, and the crispest white, like the low puffy clouds of summer.
Maxine and Rose didn’t own any outside clothes. Neither did Alice. Neddie did, and each month on visiting day when she put on an outside dress with a long lace collar that draped over her shoulders, the waist cinched by a thick satin ribbon, the skirt billowing around her as she walked, she looked like a beautiful princess. Sometimes, if Miss Sweeney was the attendant, she’d iron Neddie’s hair so that her bangs curled perfectly right over her eyebrows and her long tresses ran down her back in ripples. Neddie would perch on one of the soft couches, surrounded by her family in the visiting room, looking like a painting. Rose couldn’t help wondering what she herself might look like dressed like this, her long hair let loose from its tight braids.
“You better stop dreaming about Christmas and start thinking about folding some of those towels, Rose.”
“You’re always dreaming,” Rose shot back.
“The difference here, Rosy,” her sister said, clearly annoyed, “is that I can dream and work at the same time.”
She was right. Rose said nothing and picked a stiff, clean towel up from the towel bin.