Radiane’s read the books about asylums, too.
Her wrist aches a little: sparring and bag work didn’t really prepare her for laying out a grown man, even one with a glass jaw. It’s cold in here. There have been no howls or rattling chains yet. She has noticed that the doors on these rooms are heavily secured, though, and the man at the entrance had no convenient ring of keys.
Georgette is shivering, but following; Iala is pale. “You do have a plan,” she murmurs, “as to what to do when we find her?”
Proserpina says nothing, just strides grimly on.
Proserpina doesn’t have to make a rousing speech; she doesn’t have to draw a line in the sawdust. “Iala, you owe me,” she says. “Radiane. Ernestine. The rest of you can join us or not. I wouldn’t.”
And in fact, of the core group, four decline. But lumpy, awkward Euphrania Dowell volunteers, as does Emily-Jane Northup, their only third-year. So, to some surprise, does Georgette. Two glances between her and Radiane tell Proserpina everything.
“I don’t suppose we’re waiting for a moonless night to go skulking into the horrid place,” says Iala dryly.
“No,” says Proserpina, “for visiting hours.”
No one pays much mind when Miss Havisham isn’t in class the next day, but then, nobody else has spent quite as much time creeping about the abandoned wings as Proserpina.
She startles the headmaster as he leaves his office. “Oh, I’m afraid she was arrested last night. Some kind of riot or to-do,” he explains kindly. “But don’t you worry! She was of course released from her employment as soon as I heard the news. No need to have her bad influences around sweet girls like yourself!”
“With respect, sir,” she murmurs, “I count three mistakes in that statement.”
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Proserpina’s grades have not improved.
One stolen Saturday, Elijah takes her ragged disguise of a sleeve and leads her up on top of the cinema, then over a series of other roofs to a viewpoint down on Maple Street. Horse drovers and motorists shout elaborate curses as a phalanx of silent women march very, very slowly, bound together by a hand-stitched banner: SUFFRAGE.
“They’re mad,” says Elijah admiringly. “Half-dollar says one of them gets her head kicked in.”
Proserpina doesn’t think Miss Havisham makes eye contact from the front of the ranks, but at this distance she isn’t sure.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
They watch the girls sneak back in pairs, waiting until last to leave themselves. Radiane rests her head on Proserpina’s shoulder.
“I was happy, you know,” she says suddenly. “Eating with Georgette, playing field hockey, hoping Father would buy me a horse. I was.”
Proserpina is silent.
“What happens to all that now?”
“It’s still there.”
“No.” Radiane cracks her neck: an awful habit they’ve all picked up. “You took it away.”
“I haven’t taken anything,” says Proserpina, a little coolly.
“That’s true,” says Radiane. “All you do is give. But your gifts are the kind with hooks in the ribbons.”
Thursday, January 22, 2009
“I wish you’d come out to the matches,” says Radiane, under the high-pitched chatter and scuffle of practice.
Proserpina contains a blush. “I don’t feel like it lately.”
“The real boxers don’t punch like us. Did you know that? They jab or swing, from the forearm or shoulder, but you taught us to uncurl from the upper arm out–”
“I taught you what works. We don’t have muscles like they do.”
Radiane smirks. “Maybe you don’t.” She feints high; Proserpina’s already up, anticipating, and soon everyone stops to watch the old partners spar.
Miss Havisham watches too, then slips away.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
They’ve figured out that they can get away with having six girls a night out in the wings; any more and the dorm monitors get suspicious. Their ring is chalk and their gloves filched leather. Proserpina does Mondays and Wednesdays, Radiane Mondays and Tuesdays, and on Saturday mornings you can come in to spar.
The novelty wears off soon, and takes most of the girls with it. A core group possessed of a curious intensity remains. They’re learning how to take a punch; they’re learning how to answer. They are not strong, but they know what to do with their hands.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
“They were just here when I arrived for practice,” says Radiane with some chagrin.
Proserpina surveys them: a smaller gathering than at the big match, but still far too conspicuous a crowd of teenage girls to be clattering around in a closed wing.
“What do we do?”
“Start teaching them in shifts, I suppose,” Proserpina says.
“But you haven’t finished teaching me yet!”
“Exactly how much do you think I know?”
“Proserpina!” shouts Ernestine, traipsing over. “Where have you been?”
“Yes, out alone?” asks Radiane.
“No,” says Proserpina, too quickly.
Radiane cocks her head. “Not alone?”
“Not that either!” Proserpina says.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
“And anyway,” she says, “I’m only fourteen, and more anyway, I already have a–a suitor, if you must know.”
It would be different if he were threatening her somehow: she’d know how to deal with that. But instinct tells her that fists are not the proper tools for this situation. Proserpina, exasperated, wishes she knew how to counterpunch a grin that makes her back tingle.
“So which is it,” Elijah says, “you’re too young to pursue, or already caught?”
“Neither,” she finds herself whispering.
Her overall impression of kissing is that it is sort of wet, and rather defuses everything.
Thursday, October 30, 2008