In the corner of a doorway, sat a girl sheltering herself from the icy grasp of the wind. She wiped the wet off her face, looked down at her shoeless swollen black feet. Blistered and bloody were her tiny calloused toes. The thin tattered workhouse dress barely covered her cold bony knees. Once white, ragged and ripped, worse than an old dish towel. Bald patches were noticeable through the greasy hair that had been cut short because of the lice. Her face was dark and sooty, like the air she breathed in unsteadily. Yet, her skin was as soft as a young child’s should be, her blue eyes, bright and beautiful. Sapphire amongst the coal.
The rain started to come down harder. She started to cough. She noticed shadows by the flickering street lamp. A group of dirty people looking for shelter like herself. Babies were crying. Young children were whining from exhaustion. At the back a young woman, her face already wrinkled and worn out, coughed up rusty colored blood. The girl wondered how long she herself had until she became this way. A dog trailed behind, looking for food, bones visible through patched fur. The girl noticed a bearded man coming nearer to her. She hugged her knees tightly to her chest, the only way to shield herself. The man walked over to a garbage heap, more interested in food than about her.
As the sky grew darker the rain pitter- pattered on the roof above her. The girl’s hunger drowned out the shouts and cries of the now crowded street. The girl looked around, but there was nothing that could take away the pain in her empty stomach. The stench of cold air mixed with the smell of the rotting sewage blew into the girls face. Even this wasn’t enough to take away the hunger.
Wheezing breath on her neck, the girl spins around. A bony hand holds her in place. The hands owner, the bearded man, looks at the sky muttering about god. The girl somehow knew he meant no harm. She studied his face, the tiny raisin eyes darting quickly back and forth. Face like a stewed apple, scarred. The fingers that grasped her so strongly were long and rough, the color of old string beans. A living skeleton. The man let go, stepped down, and without looking back continued on with his journey for shelter.
It had become lighter. The sky a dark grey. She saw the smoke coming from the large factories in the distance. The smell she had become familiar with. Smoky, like burning coal and ashes, sending her into coughing fits. For the first time that day the girl felt relieved. The thought of the smell brought her back to what was around her. The crowds of people had gone away. All she could hear was the rats, scurrying across the wet ground, trying to protect themselves from the pouring rain. A woman from one of the close houses was screaming at a young child, like the boss of a factory shouting at the workers. The girl envied the child, at least he wasn’t alone.
To stop herself from thinking about food, the girl lies down and tries to go to sleep. She imagines being in a real bed, with a blanket. She imagines clean clothes and roof above her head. She imagines waking up to the smell of breakfast cooking in the morning. Her thoughts are interrupted by the crash of a broken street lamp. The sound makes her look up, and she notices an apple, rolled away from the rubbish heap. Trying to lift herself up, her body starts to ache. The cold brings her back to reality. She forces herself up, and takes slow steps with her pained feet toward the rubbish heap. The rubbish heap moves with insects. The putrid smell of old food and dying animals enters her nose and she takes a deep breath. She kneels down and picks up the apple. As she walks back to her place under the doorway, she wonders when the last time she had something to eat was. It feels to her like days, weeks, months. She looks at the apple. One side completely moldy, covered in thick green and white mold. A hole on the other, a tunnel for insects. The girl held her breath and took a bite.
It was the most wonderful thing she had ever tasted. She took another bite, and then more slowly another.
The rain comes down a little slower. The wind becomes a quiet whisper. The girl knows she can’t stay here long. A woman from a nearby house shoos a bird out the window. Its feather coat a yellow smudge amidst the black, white and grey. As it flies away from her it lands onto a disgusting pile of rotting clothes and lets out a beautiful song. She savours another bite of the apple, and realizes that the hammering, persistent rain had completely stopped. The dark canope had gone away, and the bright blue sky shined bright like an inverted sea. As she stands up and blinks up into the bright morning sun she doesn’t even notice a dark rat scamper across her bare foot.
She feels someone watching her from a distance, and peers toward a rundown building ahead. She sees a shadow, and cautiously starts making her way toward it. As she comes closer, the silhouette of a young girl starts to appear.
“Hello?” whispers the child, taking a step from the building toward her.
“My name is Lottie” the older girl says confidently “why are you out here”
The girl looks at Lottie carefully. She noticing every detail on her face, and every scar on her body. Suddenly the girl smiles, finally feeling comfortable.
“The same reason everyone else is, it was raining so I came here to hide from the storm” She pointed at the people surrounding the area
Lottie looks around. She hadn’t realized that there were so many people here, like herself. Families, the elderly, stray animals, children, they had all been here. Maybe it wouldn’t be too bad living on the streets, there were so many people that were out here, no one would really care about a young girl, she thought to herself. She then thinks of all the stories she had heard and realized how naïve she had been. She would have to grow up fast.
“Oh, and I’m Ella” the young girl said, interrupting Lottie from her thoughts
The two girls sit outside the abandoned building. Lottie explains how she had had an easy, wealthy life, until the death of her parents. Without any relatives, she had nowhere to go and went to the workhouse to live. She recounted the days where she struggled to feel accepted because of her wealthy background. And finally, she told her about how she was wrongly accused of stealing, only two short days ago, and kicked out.
Ella listened to Lottie’s story attentively, but as she started telling her story, Lottie’s heart began to melt for this little girl.
“I’ve always been poor. But Mommy would always come onto the street with me, and I would always feel safe. She would beg with me, and tell me stories. She taught me a lot, she did. She knew everything.” A tear falls from her hazel eyes as she remembered her mother,
“But then she got sick, and as much as I asked her to, she wouldn’t tell me stories anymore, and wouldn’t come out and I had to do all the work myself. But we still had a small place to live, even if it was only one room with no beds or sofas or anything.”
Ella bends her head and her voice grew softer.
“She would sleep for days, and would cough up blood. I wanted to help but I didn’t know how to, I was scared. And then one day she just wouldn’t wake up, I called and called to her, but she just lay there, I knew that she was dead. That was one year ago, I was six”
It amazed Lottie how much this girl had gone through, and only at seven. She wanted to ask her more, about how she had survived, but as she starts to speak she realizes Ella had fallen asleep on her shoulder. She looks at Ella’s tiny features and then toward the bright sky, and as she falls asleep, she knows that she would have much more time to learn from this girl.