Chapter: Witches' Fingers

-

There is a sad tree outside my window with branches bare and knobby as a witch's fingers. It's alone in our tiny yard, spiraling up towards the sky. Looking for something. On the nights when I'm not working I stare out the window, my eyes reflected in the cloudy glass.

That damn tree'll die soon, Mama Kate says when she brings me my bath water in a rusty pail.

-

Every day I put on my mask. White powder and red paint. Eyes become smoky and full of false mystery. Lips turn as crimson as a bitter apple skin. Hair curls and gleams.

When I get away from here I want to be a cruel woman. The kind of woman who wears paint on her lips and tight dresses on her body because she wants to. A woman who belongs to no one. I want break the rules.

A woman so beautiful that men beg at her feet but she just pushes them away.

-

Effy who wears pearls and has cracked fingernails from biting. Isabel with the black hair and breasts like white globes in her corset. Jacqueline with eyes the color of dragonflies. Roma of the pale legs and wiry hair.

We are all the same. We all look the same to them. A woman. Faceless.

But only we know that Isabel is afraid of rats. That Effy was raped when she was thirteen. That Roma had a child who died before it came out. Jacqueline has a scar from when a man tried to stab her. Caro likes potatoes—roasted, not boiled.

I am the youngest. They look at my face that does not have wrinkles yet and smile like it hurts.

Child, you're goin' to have a hard life, they say.

-

There is a man here who tells stories and everyone listens. His hands move like frightened birds. He has artists' fingers.

We don't know his name but the other people seem to. Effy gives him his drink and he smiles at her, a wide beam of gold teeth. I sit down to listen.

The pirate who talks of nothing. Of fairies and ghosts, of cursed treasure. Of useless things. He watches me with his eyes, black as a brackish swamp. He is silly. He wastes his time with worthless words.

I go with him upstairs because he asks me to. Because it is what I do.

-

He says he is called Captain Jack Sparrow.

I've heard your name, I say. He just smiles.

-

You gave me a bracelet, remember? I still wear it. Every day. It was from Italy, you said. From Rome, you said.

You must know you never really left me. I can still imagine every part of your face. Every dimple, every bristly hair, every imperfection. Your scent like cinnamon and olives.

I'm waiting. Remember, I'm waiting.

-

I ask him something. What's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen?

I've been to a lot of places and seen a lot of things, love, he says. We are done now. He leaves money on the table.

My Italian oil painting.

What?

My Italian oil painting. The most beautiful thing.

He looks at me like he is looking at a dying animal and leaves more money than I ask him for.

-

The clouds are like wool today, so wispy and pale that you have to squeeze your eyes almost shut to see them. There is a horse walking on the muddy street, hopping on three legs like a carriage with a bent wheel. It's ruined.

Mama Kate brings her shotgun out of the cupboard and goes outside and shoots it in the head. I watch its side move up and down, up and down, until it shudders and then stops.

Mama Kate pays the blacksmith's apprentice a tuppence to get rid of it.

-

Every day I put on my mask. Caro says it makes her beautiful. Effy says it makes her confident. Jacqueline says it makes us look like geishas. Those tiny Japanese ladies that only a person like Jacqueline would have heard of.

I say it helps me hide. It helps me be.

-

A/N: Well? How did you like Jack?

Thanks for the wonderful reviews so far. I know right now it doesn't seem like the story is going anywhere, but that's just how this story is going to be, mostly. Plot will pick up a bit, though.