CHAPTER III. Marilla Cuthbert's WTF Moment (1,804 words)

As the title of this chapter might hopefully indicate, Marilla wasn't in much of a Que Sera, Sera mood when Matthew trooped in with the little waif of a girl urchin in tow behind him.

"Who is that and where is the little boy you were supposed to collect from the station?" Marilla demanded, not even caring that the little girl was in earshot or that, having heard Marilla, her shit eating grin had fallen to the floor, forming a frown of hopeless despair at her feet.

"There was no little boy," said Matthew, "only her."

"Can't you do anything right? This is like the time you came back with magic beans that had no magic. What did Mrs. Spencer say?"

"Mrs. Spencer was already gone and the stationmaster said this little thing," he pointed to the red-headed water fountain of sorrow, "was the only item left behind."

"Well shit on a stick and call it a lollipop, isn't this a pretty little piece of business." Marilla grabbed her smokes and sparked one up. "Firstly, it was bad enough getting an orphan." Marilla didn't need to point out the fact that all orphans came from off-Island, it being a given that off-Islanders are the type of people who have orphans; so she just jumped to her next expostulation, "But, secondly, now we done got us a girl? And, thirdly, heaven have mercy on us, A REDHEAD!?" She shouted at the girl, "Are you a devil?"

"No! I'm not a devil and I'm not a boy! I'm just a girl. A stupid, little red-headed girl that nobody loves!" She cried so much that Matthew got to thinking that she might be handy after all, for irrigation purposes out in the back fields. "I should have known that all this bloomy and beautiful purpley landscape was too good to be true and that you don't want me." The little girl plopped herself down on a chair and splayed her arms across the kitchen table.

Marilla and Matthew stood awkwardly, with Marilla finally saying, "Now, now, there's no need to cry."

That caused the girl to blubber out more. "No need to cry?" Her swollen red eyes matched her hair. "No need to cry? Well then, why if it's brown and sticky it must be a stick, of course there's a reason to cry! The main reason being the tragicallity of it all!" And she burst into more tears. "Imagine that it was you who were an abandoned orphan who had just been shown more beauty than her imagination could ever imagine…only to have it ripped away!"

The child's rant moved Marilla so ever much that a most reluctant smile creaked across her mouth, almost causing her upper plate to ejaculate from her mouth. "Don't fret," she said, "we won't chuck you out tonight. Let's have something to eat and get a good night's sleep and we can bin you in the morrow."

The little girl wailed louder.

"All right, all right." Marilla paced as she was wont to when she was nervous. "We'll have to do some comprehending about this situation in the morrow after which we shall make our way to White Sands to make enquiries and to hopefully avoid much unnecessary circumlocution from the pursed lips of Mrs. Spencer."

The girl looked at her at the mention of Spencer's name, but she realized that she hadn't had the same conversation as she'd had with the station master, so she would have to let some editorial cuts go. Plus she had an interest to see how it all played out.

"That won't be until the afternoon." Marilla looked through the door to the front room, at the large clock. "Which means you've got a full eighteen hours to try and charm us into keeping you, like the red-haired devil you are."

"Wahhhhh," cried the girl. "Don't call me a devil."

Marilla signed, "Well, I don't see how else modern audiences can comprehend the stigma attached to red-hair in our day. I'm just trying to make this a time honoured classic."

The girl sat up and wiped a tear from an eye, "Fair enough."

Matthew coughed, "See, now, you see, but what should we call you?"

"Well fuck a duck," the little girl said, "I only just realized that we're three chapters in and nobody has asked my name. So much for Island hospitality." Marilla and Matthew looked away awkwardly.

"To be fair," Marilla interjected, "it's only been two chapters, seeing as how the first chapter was the set up for—"

"—Oh, booo hooo," said the girl. "Yet another reminder that I'm not loved."

"No, I just meant," Marilla stammered. "Okay then, what's your name?"

"Doesn't really matter, call me Jezebel. Seems to fit for all it's worth."

"Now, now, sorry about the bad start." Matthew said.

"Okay, my name's Anne."

They both looked at her, dumbfounded and beet red after trying to pronounce her name.

"Anne?" Marilla said.

"No," said Anne, "Anne. Think of it like Anne, but without an 'e'."

They both tried it a few times until they finally had success, meaning that the "e"could be dropped, for economy's sake.

"Well that is marvelous," said Marilla. "It is surely a very sensible and economical name. I always thought that the extra 'e' in Anne was a bit frivolous, wasteful and garish. Who came up with it?"

"I did," said Ann, which left Marilla judging her slightly less harshly.

"But that's neither here nor there," said Marilla. "Tell me now, were there no boys at the asylum? How could this dreadful mistake have been made, I wonder? We must send word to Mrs. Spencer that this young thing must be sent back."

Ann's thoughts about booting Mrs. Spencer in the behind were interrupted when Marilla asked again about whether the asylum had any boys. "Well," Anne began slowly. "There were, yes. I mean, of course there were boys, plenty of them."

"Had they anything wrong with them?" Matthew asked.

"Well, truth be told," said Ann, "they all only had one leg." Both Marilla and Matthew yawped vociferously at this. "Not the same leg, of course," Anne continued. "Some only had a left, and some only had a right leg."

"Goodness gracious me, that's terrible." Marilla bayed.

"Yes," Matthew exfoliated back.

"Not really," Ann continued. "For you see, they would just take the boys with only a right leg and pair them alongside a boy with only a left leg, and vice versa, and give them one large pair of trousers and an extra big belt and they were able to do their chores!"

"Really?!" the other two counternanced.

"Ummm, sure, yeah," said Ann. "Which is why…one girl…even with red hair…is as good as two boys. That's it, yes. One girl is as good as two boys."

"Well now," said Marilla, "I don't recall reading that anywhere. No matter no mind though, we'll get it all sorted out on the aft of the morrow's morning." Marilla was originally going to have the orphan boy, for surely that was what they thought was going to be the human that would be trafficked to them across the border, sleep on the coal pile. But she realized that would no longer surely do, given what a waterbucket the impertinent Ann was, with her pouring eyes she'd just damp down the coal and they'd never get the morning fire up and a going.

Ann had yet to prove she wasn't a devil so Marilla figured she couldn't have the guest room, leaving either the spot under the stairs that had been newly vacated since Harry moved out, and in with his new found relations, or the room in the east gable. Given the incident under the stairs, Marilla thought it best to foist Ann on the east gable. She lit a candle, asked the girl to collect all of her worldly possessions, and led her through the strict and austere house that was bereft off all decorations save for two daguerreotypes on the stairs that featured a front and rear depiction of

Matthew's beloved Clydesdale.

"Do you have a nightdress?" asked Marilla when they got to the room.

"Of course I do," said Ann taking a potato sack out of her bag. "Though it's only a tragical thing made of wincey and jute and with no frills. Though I did make alterations." She pointed at the holes she had cut for her head and arms.

"Well, that's nice. Get changed and I'll return to get the candle to make sure you don't burn the house down," said Marilla, leaving the room.

Ann took the time afforded to look around the room as she changed into her nightdress: The whitewashed walls were as bare as all get out, as was the floor, save for a mat sticking out from under the bed, which was more of a four-posted cot than anything. There was also a bare dresser with a dull mirror, a bare stool and you get the point that it was pretty bare. But to Ann, whose asylum life was more bare than a stick of bare made in a bare factory, it was heaven.

Until she remembered it was going to be yoinked away from her come the morning of the morrow. Which reminded her to cry again, as she hopped into bed and Marilla returned to get the candle, saying a perfunctory, "Good night."

"Good?!" Ann cried out in a rhetorical manner. "But I'm to be cast upon the wretched rocks of human wretchedness before the sun traverses its poetical arch across the azure sky once more."

"Ummm," pondered Marilla as she blew out the candle, "nighty-night, then?"

Back in the kitchen Marilla sat across from Matthew and sparked up. "Trust that old bitty Spencer to shit it up. We'll have to go over there tomorrow afternoon, uh, I mean, at the time of the morrow's day when the sun's arch has passed the meridian. Spencer'll have some 'splaining to do and maybe take up the cost of getting that waif back off-Island." She emphasized the last bit because Matthew hadn't jumped to agreement.

"Yes," Matthew finally said, unenthusiastically, "We'll have to send her back. I suppose."

"Suppose? Suppose! Has that child already bewitched you? She'd be no good to us."

"Perhaps. But perhaps we could be good for her."

"Ah, shit," condescended Marilla, "but that makes no good Victorian economical sense?"

And so they argued a bit more. Not loudly, mind, but loud enough that they didn't hear the quiet whimpering of a frightened little girl up the stairs and over in the room of the east gable, a friendless little girl now destined to know no kindred spirits and to have no bosom buddies, slowly crying herself into a melodramatic and misbegotten sleep.

CHAPTER IV. (Not a Good) Morning at Puffing Pot Pond

...coming soon...