CHAPTER SEVENTEEN #2
“Right. All’s well.” She tugged at the brim of the ridiculously small top hat pinned to her hair – as was the fashion – and resumed her walk to town, strolling slowly to give him more of a chance to compose himself and follow.
Soon, his shadow appeared beside hers, cast long and lean ahead of them.
Their footsteps fell into synchronicity. “Let’s get that drink.”
Molly Franke was dry-eyed when her hulking guards escorted her into a chill, white-walled foyer with low ceilings and gas lamps.
Her terror had receded on the ride to this terrible place and all she felt now was numb.
Was this how Cole Graham had felt when they’d dragged him away at the beginning of the semester? Numb, hopeless?
In a fog of disbelief, she had been held in the revered mother’s office until the end of the day and then taken from Clementine by men in strange uniforms. She’d protested vehemently, begging for her father, but nothing she’d said mattered; they’d lifted her off her feet with huge, hard hands and carried her to her doom, stinking of tobacco and sweat, deaf to her sobs and pleas.
They didn’t speak, didn’t try and calm her, only tossed her like a sack of coal into the back of a wagon.
Upon arrival at Bright Renewal, the uniformed men handed her over to a woman in a plain gray dress covered by a white apron, her hair held back by a kerchief.
Her eyes stayed dry even after she was led into a small room with only one high, barred window and a drain in the freezing concrete floor. Then she was ordered to strip.
Cheeks burning, she removed her clothes, fumbling at her buttons while the woman watched, face pinched with impatience.
She tried to fold her garments, but the woman made a rude noise and swept them into a bundle, declaring they’d be “burned with the morning trash” and left her alone.
Cold and naked, she wrapped her arms around herself and shivered violently.
The dour woman returned carrying a bucket of sudsy water in one hand and a scrub brush in the other.
Molly’s detachment broke as the woman came at her with the brush and bucket.
Cold water splashed onto the floor, onto her feet, and she backed away, arms extended, palms forward in a warding gesture born from pure horror. “No, please, I – I can wash myself.”
“Are you resisting?” the woman said, waving her sopping scrub brush. She seemed almost gleeful about it. “Girls like you are always trouble, I swear.”
“I’m not! I don’t mean to be–”
Scowling, the woman set down her bucket and grabbed Molly by the arm, yanking hard. The girl toppled, landing on her knees in a soapy puddle. “Settle down and let me get on with it.”
The brush hit her skin, hard bristles digging and scraping across her back and shoulders. She couldn’t help it – she screamed.
“Oh, so, that’s the way of it, right?” The scrubbing stopped and a second later a wave of icy water crashed over her. She gasped, then found her breath for a shriek somewhere between outrage and horror.
“What’s all the caterwauling about?” demanded a new voice, female. “Should I call the guards?”
Guards? Did she mean the men who’d brought her here?
The idea threw Molly into a panic. She lashed out, kicked and fought, shaking her head wildly.
Then suddenly the small room was full of people – all women, thankfully, she noted before her face was smashed against the concrete, multiple hands holding her down.
Someone was practically sitting on her! It was all she could do to breathe.
The scrubbing resumed, harder this time, and humiliatingly thorough.
Crushed beneath this onslaught of cruelty, she gave in and went limp.
“There’s a good girl,” someone said soothingly. A hand stroked her wet and tangled hair. “You’ll learn, child. You’ll learn quick. I guarantee it.”
“Or else,” another added ominously, eliciting a slew of gleeful sniggers.
Scrubbed pink and raw, Molly stood trembling in a new room no bigger than a closet, this one containing a bench with folded clothes atop it.
Her skin still damp, she was nonetheless ordered to dress by her escort, another woman in the nondescript “uniform” of plain dress, apron and head scarf.
They looked like nurses but acted like prison guards, those hard men she’d seen her father interact with a time or two.
Once she was dressed in a scratchy, ill-fitting outfit that was a washed-out facsimile of her Clem Prep uniform, with a spare set clutched in her arms – shirt, skirt, two pairs of underwear, two pairs of socks, two bandeaus: all the clothes she was to be provided with here at Bright Renewal, apparently – she was taken to yet another small room.
This one had a window, at least, though it was covered by thick curtains.
The walls were raw brick, the floors sanded wood, cold and bare like all the other rooms she’d been in so far.
Here, she learned the rules of Bright Renewal Academy:
There was no talking – none . (This was emphasized sharply.) Not with other students, not to teachers or faculty (unless they ordered it first.) Laughter was prohibited. Smiling, too. Frivolity led to sin.
Letters to parents were allowed but would be carefully scrutinized for “falsehoods” and “nonsense.” Uniforms were to be kept neat and clean (she would be doing her own laundry; this was not a place that coddled disobedient children!).
Chores would be assigned daily: scrubbing the common areas, cleaning the lavatories, kitchen duty, laundry, etc.
Demerits would earn additional chores and other punishments (these were not explained in detail, but Molly did not want to find out.)
Every day, the students rose at dawn for prayers and “reconditioning,” then spent the day at their studies, curated into a “specially designed curriculum,” whatever that meant.
Healthy, nutritious meals would be provided.
Anyone found to be hoarding food would be punished.
Good attitudes and adherence to the rules would earn a student points toward graduation.
The faster one obeyed and learned correct behavior, the faster one would earn their reward.
Points would be lost for every violation of the rules.
“Your time here can go swiftly, Ms Franke,” one of her new (teachers? guards? handlers?) said to her as she stood at the center of the cold, empty room, stiff and stinging from her scrubbing, stunned into submission, “or it can be interminable. Do you understand?”
Terror kept her from answering. Was she supposed to speak now, or would it earn her punishment? She stared at the woman, older than her mother with thick jowls and hard eyes. “Well?” she demanded, scowling. “Answer me!”
“Y-y-yes,” she blurted, clutching her new clothes to her chest. “I understand.”
“I understand, Mistress Blume ,” the woman said, speaking slowly and clearly, as if to an idiot.
“I understand, Mistress Blume.”
A smile cracked her granite face. “Very good. Now, it’s been a long day and it’s time for bed. Tomorrow, everything will be better. The Goddess only gives us as much as we can endure.”
Meekly, Molly followed Mistress Blume down a long, grim hallway, up two flights of iron stairs which led to another long, grim hallway, this one lined with doorways – not doors; there were no doors anywhere.
As they passed rooms, Molly could see into all of them.
Cots and bunk beds filled each room, four to six children crammed in together, all girls.
None of them looked back at her as she passed.
Outside each room sat a woman on a chair wearing trousers and a thick jacket – the place was frigid.
Each one eyed her sharply as she walked by.
So even when she slept, she would be guarded. A wild despair made her stomach drop.
There was a lavatory on this floor, which Mistress Blume took her into so she could perform her nightly ablutions.
There was a wooden toothbrush among her clothes and a small tub of baking soda beside the sink, along with a sliver of soap.
She brushed her teeth and washed her face quickly in the ice-cold water, then turned toward the row of stalls.
The bathroom wasn’t so different from those at Clem Prep, she reflected, but for the utter bleakness and the fact that these stalls had no doors.
“Do your business,” Mistress Blume ordered when Molly hesitated. “You have lost the privilege of privacy through your reckless actions, missy. Being treated like a normal girl again must be earned. ”
A hard cot with a thin blanket awaited her in a room near the end of the hall.
Three other girls were already huddled in their beds in the same small space.
She caught the glint of one pair of eyes as she made her way to her new bed.
Slowly, they blinked – once, deliberately – and then the girl flipped over to put her face to the wall.
Shivering, Molly crept into her cot. Despair filled her throat in a hard, sore knot, but she held in any tears, distinctly aware of the guard outside her door.
Instead, she focused on the memory of those eyes, the slow blink.
A smile of solidarity where smiles were forbidden.
She felt a small spark of hope and held it close.
All she had to do was obey – obey and endure.
How long could this nightmare last?