Get a job - easier said than done, she thought sadly. Her job experience was shoveling poop, watering and grooming livestock. She knew how to peel vegetables and slaughter pigs and chickens, but she didn't know how to cook them. She was lucky to be where she was, getting the scraps and straw she got from the O'Donnells, that was what she'd been told – why did she have to go somewhere else? Didn't that count as a job?
Puzzled, she wandered about town, as she did not like to do alone. "I'm looking for a job," she murmured softly to people at their stores and stalls, but was turned down by the people that acknowledged her presence. Dejected, the strange girl sulked to the barn.
"And what are you doing, out of class?" Greta scolded from the clothes line as she saw the familiar and disturbing form slink by.
"I'm looking for a job," Vanessa replied, head down, words still a little hissing from the teeth. "I passed a test and I graduated," she explained, voice cracking.
Greta laughed. The pathetic girl entered school not long ago; graduation so early was impossible.
Vanessa didn't think it was funny, but stood stoic. She pulled the stiff page from inside her shirt and held it out to Greta. "What am I supposed to do with this?" she asked, since no one had yet told her. It wasn't money. She'd checked.
The laughing stopped.
"I'm supposed to get a job, now. I work here, but I don't get paid money, so it's not a job, but I can't find a job. It's really hard," she sighed, running her dirty, bare toes in the sand absentmindedly.
"You get paid in the food you eat, the roof over your head," Greta grumbled, feeling herself grow warm with anger, though she didn't think why. "And you eat entirely too much; you've become a nuisance. Really, you should leave; there's no reason to let you live off of us anymore," she went on, hands on her hips, tone stern. "You go on then, get. Find somebody to pay you as a farmhand, hmm? Not in Haven, not likely."
Vanessa's pulse quickened, knees weakened. Her face went numb and tingly, her ears not quite hearing properly. "W-where?" she stuttered, shocked.
"October's not far, hitch a ride." Greta snapped, returning to the wash, flustered, as Vanessa plopped onto her rear in the sand, silent.
As they were, Greta began to feel sorry for the girl, again, began to think this was too harsh. But no, it was not harsh, because this barn, this life had been a crutch to the girl, yet, look at her, she isn't a girl, she's a woman, she needs to stop pretending to be a child and grow up and move on! Yes, Greta reasoned, she was doing the right thing. It was one thing to give charity to a child, but she'd been wrong, the girl wasn't a child, she was an adult. How silly of her, she'd made a mistake, and this was best. She finished hanging the wash, but paused before returning to the house. "Vanessa, you need to leave now," she demanded in a somewhat soft voice.
Turning over her shoulder, Vanessa's glazed green-blue eyes gazed up. "I want to say goodbye to Jon and Sean and Marcus first."
That was why Greta was ushering her away; she didn't want her boys to have the chance to stop her. The poor boys just wouldn't understand; they were only children. "It's best if you go, now. It'll only hurt my boys more if you're here when they come home from school."
Vanessa hadn't thought of that, but it sounded right. She stood shakily and began to walk off. "Thank you."
OXO
Shining in the sunlight that poured from the windows, the organs glistened pink and red and purple. The heart was not beating, the flesh was still, and colder than when it was alive.
Vanessa felt wary eyes fall upon her. Before she could be scolded for dawdling again, she raised her blade and let it fall in a few choice places. She lifted the precise cuts onto paper for Lu to rush out to the customer and listened for the next order.
The hog carcass hung from the ceiling beside her high-stool, allowing her to cut and sit at a comfortable level. She didn't bother to wipe her blood-stained hands upon her long apron until the work day's end, and she rarely let her eyes leave the carcass. It had much to teach her.
She sharpened her long blade between carcasses, keeping it as sharp as she could at all times, making her work easier at this butcher shop in Carcasses, owned by brothers Lu and Yu.
A live hog would have made for better learning, but Yu always killed them out back before she could work on them. They screamed and squealed when they died, and she supposed she'd better have no part in that. It hurt her inside, to hear that.
"Lock up when you're through," Lu would always call out from the front of the shop, when it was time for he and his brother to call it a day. "See you tomorrow."
Vanessa cleaned off her hands and pulled a little book and pencil from the simple sling bag she wore across her chest under her clothing. She selected a few choice organs from the pile beneath the carcass hook and took them to the table in front of a window to dissect. In the paper-bound journal, she wrote notes and diagrams in such a small, delicate, precise print that it could barely be seen at all.