Shattered Glass Read online

  IN EARLY JUNE 1964, the Benevolent Home for Necessitous Girls burns to the ground, and its vulnerable residents are thrust out into the world. The orphans, who know no other home, find their lives changed in an instant. Arrangements are made for the youngest residents, but the seven oldest girls are sent on their way with little more than a clue or two to their pasts and the hope of learning about the families they have never known. On their own for the first time in their lives, they are about to experience the world in ways they never imagined…

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  Shattered

  Glass

  TERESA TOTEN

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  In memory of Jack and Mary Toten

  Table of Contents

  “Twist and Shout”: (THE BEATLES)

  “Have I the Right?”: (THE HONEYCOMBS)

  “Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying”: (GERRY AND THE PACEMAKERS)

  “Walk On By”: (DIONNE WARWICK)

  “Needles and Pins”: (THE SEARCHERS)

  “Wishin’ and Hopin’ ”: (DUSTY SPRINGFIELD)

  “Someday Soon”: (IAN AND SYLVIA)

  “I Get Around”: (THE BEACH BOYS)

  “Bits and Pieces”: (THE DAVE CLARK FIVE)

  “The House of the Rising Sun”: (THE ANIMALS)

  “Do Wah Diddy Diddy”: (MANFRED MANN)

  “Do You Want to Know a Secret?”: (THE BEATLES)

  “I Saw Her Standing There”: (THE BEATLES)

  “It’s Over”: (ROY ORBISON)

  “Four Strong Winds”: (IAN AND SYLVIA)

  “I Want to Hold Your Hand”: (THE BEATLES)

  “Universal Soldier”: (BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE)

  “She Loves You”: (THE BEATLES)

  “Navy Blue”: (DIANE RENAY)

  “A Hard Day’s Night”: (THE BEATLES)

  “Louie Louie”: (THE KINGSMEN)

  “Oh, Pretty Woman”: (ROY ORBISON)

  “You Don’t Own Me”: (LESLEY GORE)

  “Suspicion”: (TERRY STAFFORD)

  “Where Did Our Love Go”: (THE SUPREMES)

  “Can’t Buy Me Love”: (THE BEATLES)

  “People”: (BARBRA STREISAND)

  “Don’t Let the Rain Come Down”: (THE SERENDIPITY SINGERS)

  “Rag Doll”: (THE FOUR SEASONS)

  “Everybody Loves Somebody”: (DEAN MARTIN)

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  “Twist and Shout”

  (THE BEATLES)

  “FIRE!!!”

  It was the fire dream again, always the same dream. But this time it was different. This time, despite the fear that was as worn and familiar as a threadbare shirt, I knew that I had to save Betty. Then I was washed in shame. How did shame sneak into my dream? We were seven, had always been “the Seven.” I had to save them all! But mainly I had to save Betty. It’d been like that since the beginning. Ever since I got there when I was three. Betty needed nonstop saving because she was too innocent, too trusting. I was not, because of my past, the things I almost remembered. My dreams were my memory. I had no proof, but there were things I knew.

  It had been almost thirteen years of trying to save Betty and almost thirteen years of fire dreams.

  But this was the first time that Betty had been in the dream.

  Smoke slid down the back of my throat and crawled back up again. I could taste it.

  That was weird.

  “Betty!” I screamed at the shape in the bed beside me. “Betty, wake up!” The words got caught in the smoke and tripped over themselves. “Betty—fire, fire!”

  She woke up and hit me. No. Wait. It was me who woke up from deep in the bowels of the dream. But Betty had definitely hit me. “What the…Betty, why did you…?”

  “Can’t you smell it? What’s the matter with you?” She did not apologize for hitting me. “Wake up, Toni! Toni, get up!”

  “Huh?”

  “There’s a fire!” she screamed. “Something is on fire!”

  Then I saw it. Hungry wisps sneaking under the door. Just like the other times, in my dreams and before my dreams.

  Before this place.

  She shook me hard. There was a taste of ashes in my mouth that soaked up all the spit. That was the way the dream always started, with the taste of ashes. I couldn’t swallow, but I could taste the fire.

  “Toni, there’s a fire, I can smell it! Toni, are you awake?”

  “Yes, yeah!” I croaked. “There’s smoke!” It slithered lazily into our room.

  Jumpin’ Joe screamed from somewhere downstairs. “Fire! Fire! Fire!”

  It was real.

  Joe, our cook and my boss, for sure had never been in my dreams. Betty tried to turn on the light. She kept flicking the switch on and off, on and off. “Stop!” I yelled. I grabbed for her arm, missed and got a handful of nightgown instead. “We’ve got to go, got to get out!”

  “Get Cady, get Malou, make sure they’re up,” she screamed.

  I checked the door, which wasn’t hot, but it opened to a wall of smoke. I froze. Joe was still yelling. “Joe?” We couldn’t see him. He called up to us from somewhere below.

  “Toni? You girls get the rest of the Seven. I’m gonna get the Littles.” The Little Ones. There were seventeen of them.

  I got pushed. Betty? She turned left and I turned right. I ran barefoot into the smoke, trying not to eat it, and pounded on a door, screaming my head off with a mouth full of soot. I wasn’t even sure whose door it was. The smoke had made me stupid. “Sara! Malou! Cady! Dot!” Betty was pounding and screaming too. The same names over and over again. “Dot! Cady! Malou! Sara!”

  I knew not to yell for Tess. She was often not there. Our Tess needed to roam. But I heard Betty calling for her.

  “Get up! Fire! Ruuuuun!”

  We stumbled in the blackness, bumping into furniture, kicking and shoving things out of our way. I was kicked and shoved. It didn’t matter. Words ran into and past each other. Voices were indistinguishable in the smoke and fear.

  “What’s happening?”

  “Oh my god! What? Is that smoke?”

  “So much smoke! Ow!”

  “Is Tess back?”

  “You’re on my nightgown. Let go!”

  “Move it! Get out of my way.”

  “Where is it?”

  “What about my stuff?”

  “Are we all here?”

  “I said let go!”

  And then, over and over, “Who’s got the Little Ones?”

  “It’s okay—Joe’s rounding them up,” Betty and I took turns repeating. “We’ve to get down to the main floor and wait.”

  Then we heard Joe’s hoarse, singsongy Southern voice floating up through the stairwell. “Hold hands, little ladies, hold hands. Two by two, two by two. Just like we practiced. There you go. Don’t ya worry. You’ll see the Seven in the main hall.”

  The Little Ones didn’t scream or cry out. Were they less afraid than I was?

  “Quick now, ladies!” He clapped his hands. “That’s right, good girls.”

  We clambered down the steps ahead of the Little Ones. Down one floor, then another. They traipsed down behind us. When we got to the back hall, Tess had appeared like a smoke spirit. How?

  We stood against the walls. Just like in the drills. Joe lead a procession of little nightgowns. “Mary, you just hold on tight to Mr. Joe’s hand,” he said.

  Mary was a little slow in so many little ways. But she was everyone’s favorite. We waited for them to pass while the smoke stung our eyes. They wanted a hug from us, a comforting squeeze, a pat, but knew they dared not risk it. They stayed in their two-by-two formations.

  “What’s that smell?”

  “I feel sick.”

  “Why is it
smoky?”

  “Why are the Seven just standing there?”

  “I can’t breathe.”

  “My doll!”

  “I want to hold Julie’s hand.”

  “You’re squeezing too hard.”

  “My nose smells bad.”

  Not one asked for her mother. Why would they? This and the weight of the darkness pressed me into the wall.

  “They’re out!”

  Now it was our turn. We began our exit, some hand in hand, some arm in arm, some alone. The floor was warm on our still-bare feet. Fear rose off of us in plumes, blending into the smoke that had followed us down the stairs. Too slow. Somebody shouted, “Move it!”

  It may have been me.

  We were chased by the fire, but we didn’t run. We walked smartly down the hall. Like we’d been taught to do. When we had to be, when it counted, we were good.

  We walked past the receiving room and the common room, which was for home and visual arts. I glanced in and made out the ghost outlines of the Singer sewing machine, two easels, the stools, all seven of them. They were waiting for us to sit and tease each other, to laugh and pout, to misbehave, at which time Miss Webster would summon Mrs. Hazelton. She was always called as a last resort. Mrs. Hazelton would pretend to be cross, and we would pretend to behave for the rest of the day.

  I knew enough to whisper, “Goodbye.”

  Through the large double front doors and onto the verandah we trooped, silent now. The floorboards were cool here and damp on our feet. All of us stopped as one, blinking at the moonlight. We had to will our eyes to see. Mrs. Hazelton had joined Joe and Miss Webster on the front lawn, far away from the burning building, almost at the circular drive. The grass bathed our feet in dew as we went to them.

  The Little Ones finally started crying. Not all, but most. Now fully awake, they were shivering and afraid. And I felt as if I was still dreaming, even though I knew I wasn’t. I was protected this way. In my dreams I got out, survived. In my fire dreams, I was smarter and stronger, braver than I really was. When I was awake, I pretended.

  “It’ll be okay,” I said to Betty. “It will be okay.” I turned to the others, smiling and pretending again. I caught Sara’s attention. Her eyes were wide, full of the night and panic, but she nodded, tried to smile. “I heard Joe say that the firemen are on their way,” she said.

  This moved like a snake among all the orphans.

  “Jumpin’ Joe called the firemen.”

  “The firemen are coming.”

  “All the firemen from town are coming. All the volunteers too.”

  “Here come the firemen!”

  “I hear the trucks. Can you hear the trucks?”

  But the trucks did not come. Not then.

  The fire came.

  The flames burst through the third floor in the very back of the building, tossing roof tiles out of its way. Sparks broke free, heading upward like inverted shooting stars. We could hear the screeching of the pipes as they distorted into new shapes, the roar and sigh of the timbers just before they fell. And then the flames reached for heaven but only managed to lick the very bottom of a black velvet sky.

  “Ooooooh!” gasped the Little Ones. Joe made a sign of the cross. I never took him for a Papist. And here I thought I knew him.

  The noises were terrifying. A fire is a loud thing. Aside from the wail of the pipes, we heard it chomp on plaster and furniture and electrical wires. It shoved things out of its way so that it could breathe better. Wood crackled, then snapped, then crashed, and the Little Ones clung to us. And still it got bigger, got greedier.

  “It’s in our room,” whispered Betty.

  I reached for her. “They’ll be here soon. It will be fine. We will all be fine.”

  “Then why are you crying?” she asked.

  I think I knew it was coming. That it was going to happen before it happened. First came the moan, the orphanage surrendering, then the explosion, in time with the one in my heart. No. Not again. I was there on the wet grass and I was in the dream, the bad one. The windows blew out in the third floor. Our room, our windows. Like before.

  And the glass shattered.

  “No!” I pushed the Little Ones away.

  There was more screaming. The trucks were coming. The bells were ringing. The glass was shattering.

  My heart broke out of my chest.

  The glass was shattering.

  “Toni, stop!”

  “Toni, come back!”

  “Toni!” Matron, Joe, the Little Ones and Betty were all calling. The Seven yelled; some came after me. “Toni, stop, will you!”

  “Toni!”

  But the glass was shattering.

  And I had to run. I ran to the river. I ran faster and faster, but not so fast that I didn’t hear the singing.

  Ridiculous.

  Our home was burning and the orphans were singing “Amazing Grace,” of all the stupid, stupid things. But still, I slowed down just enough to catch up to the words, and then I sang right along with them.

  “Have I the Right?”

  (THE HONEYCOMBS)

  AS THE DAWN broke, panic crashed against me like waves smashing against a boulder. Then again, I’d never seen the ocean, so what did I know? Still, I bet that’s what it felt like. I stared at the sputtering river, trying to calm the pounding within me. It wasn’t a dream.

  It happened.

  It’s okay. We’re all okay. I said it over and over, like a prayer. I’d been praying for hours. This was my safe place, sitting on the riverbank, under the willow in the woods near the orphanage. They all knew I did this. Well, the Seven knew, and so did Joe.

  Get up, Toni. Time to go back. Time to see…what?

  The voice inside called it like it was. Coward. Shame nipped at my heels as I made my way to Mrs. Hazelton’s cottage. Her place was far enough away from the orphanage that I figured it would be okay. That she would be okay. That she would know what to do now.

  Please.

  The rest of the Seven and the Little Ones would be at the church. That was the drill: Should an emergency occur at the orphanage, you are all to make your way over to St. Jerome’s Anglican church in Hope. The good reverend will know what to do.

  I wondered whether the good reverend knew what to do now.

  “Toni, praise the Lord!”

  Miss Webster scooped me up and into her substantial self. This was startling. Miss Webster was by no means an affectionate woman. She hustled me onto the verandah, clucking, cooing and chiding the whole way. “You gave us such a fright, dear. Mrs. Hazelton, here she is! Our Toni’s here! Mrs. Hazelton!”

  Mrs. Hazelton, our matron, stepped out her front door, which had been left wide open. She looked like she didn’t know whether to hit me or hug me. Against her better judgment, she reached out and embraced me. It had been such a long time since I had been held, not since I was one of the Little Ones. She was as frail as tissue paper in my arms. That scared me.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m so, so sorry.”

  “Toni, my dear! Joe said not to worry, but…but…how could you! How…never mind, you’re wet with the damp. I’ve laid out a uniform for you from one of our former charges—shoes, socks, everything—hanging in the bathroom, that first door down the hall.” She let go of me, but then grabbed both of my hands. “It’s been quite a night. Change, Toni, and then come into my study. I’ll have some tea and toast waiting.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I couldn’t stop shivering. “Thank you, ma’am. The others?”

  “They are all at the church where they should be. They will be coming over later—at least, the Seven will. We have much to discuss.” She sighed. “In a way, I’m glad that you’re the first.”

  The first?

  She pushed me toward the bathroom, which had been one of the great mysteries of our world if only because none of us had ever been in there. Over the years we’d all had cause to be in Mrs. Hazleton’s study for various “talks.” Some of us more than others. I was ther
e a fair bit. It usually had to do with my attitude and/or deportment. Many things would be expressed in a firm tone, accompanied by a fair bit of sighing and eyebrow raising. This would be followed by excessive promising and apologizing on my part. Attitude or not, not even I had ever dared to use her bathroom. It was one of the unwritten rules: no one goes, even if you have to go.

  I gasped when I opened the door. The inner sanctum was everything we’d ever imagined it would be. There was a dainty claw-foot bathtub and a really fancy pedestal sink. A purple bar of soap sat in a curlicued china soap dish. Lavender? The aroma made me dizzy. The whole room was covered in red and pink cabbage-rose wallpaper, with curtains that matched exactly. Pink, puffy towels were draped precisely over elaborate brass towel holders. I didn’t know that towels could look like that. Do I dare? No, absolutely not. I let my face and hands air-dry after I washed up. I just stood there, swallowed up by all those roses, and fretted about dripping on the fluffy bath mat. The shirt, uniform jumper and underthings were all much too large, as were the shoes, and I was one of the taller girls. Whoever used to wear this must have been one substantial girl. I combed my memory. Peggy! She’d left years and years ago, but the Seven had always got her confused with the staff, she was that hefty. Where had Peggy gone?

  Where would I go?

  I rebraided my hair, smoothed my eyebrows with a lick on my finger and, when I could no longer postpone the inevitable, made my way to the study.

  Mrs. Hazelton, as always, was behind her beautiful polished desk. She was dwarfed by the large leather chair that I swear she used to fill up. When did she shrink? Her desk, usually immaculate, was smothered with papers, ledgers, binders, boxes and envelopes. “Sit down, Toni, and please help yourself to the toast and tea on the side table.”

  I poured the tea and smeared the toast with butter and huge dollops of jam. Rather than drawing a reprimand, my greediness made her smile. “Go on, Toni, put in all the sugar and milk you want. I know you like it sweet.” I helped myself to three extra spoonfuls, hardly feeling guilty at all.