Little Sparrow

Chapter Eight

Sally continued to watch me.

For the rest of the day, as we started our upstairs chores, she stared at me from across the hallway and follow my every move. She did not mention the confrontation outside, but I knew she wanted to just by how her eyes followed me wherever I moved. Charity stared back. Unlike me, she was not afraid of confrontation and had been in more fights than anyone else. I knew she had been itching to slap Sally and it looked like the opportunity had just fallen into her lap.

I did not understand why something as simple as a potential adoption had to cause so much trouble. Sally would be welcome to the Atkinson's had she spoken to them once since they first arrived. If she had not been so funny about answering the door with a wet apron, I expect they would have been more inclined to adopt her rather than me. I would not try and stop her if she made an attempt to get them to change their minds, in fact, I would have welcomed it.

Still, I doubt the Atkinson's would have changed their minds. They already seemed rather set on adopting me, even if they had given me the choice, I just wished they did not have another child. At the orphanage, we were all equal on the way we were treated and only people like Sally thought they were above everyone else. Adoption and foster placements were different. It would not be uncommon for the children of the parents to assume they were superior because they were related through blood. Most of the time nothing came of it, I had always been unlucky in that case.

When we finished our chores, we retreated downstairs for a stew supper, although I only picked at it rather than ate. Even if I was starving, I would not go anywhere near the stew we were served, no one ever told us what was really in it. Most of us would have gone hungry rather than eat it and many of the bowls ended up remaining half-full when we were excused.

"Why is the meat always so stringy? I'd take cold porridge over this any day," Ethel said. She scoped up a chunk of meat and dropped it into the stew with a slight splash.

"Rat meat," Charity said.

"That's vile." I pulled a face at her.

"Do you ever see any rats around here? No? Think about it." Charity raised an eyebrow at us. I shuddered, poking at the meat and hoping she was wrong.

"I saw a rat in the privy the other morning," Ethel countered.

"It's not there anymore."

"You're disgusting."

"Hayworth! With me."

I pulled my eyes away from Charity who had picked up a chunk of meat on her fork and had started to push it towards Ethel, squeaking slightly. Matron stood behind me, staring straight at me and ignoring the behaviour coming from just beside me. She did not look too happy with me; her mouth had been drawn into a thin line and she had crossed her arms over her chest. I did not know whether to feel alarmed by her or not, her mood was always difficult to determine.

Charity stopped taunting Ethel for a few seconds, just long enough to shove me in the back and force me to my feet. The other girls stopped what they were doing and watched when Matron and I walked past them, Matron refusing to acknowledge them and me knotting my hands together out of fear for what was about to happen. Matron summoning anyone to her office was a bad sign, but at night it was even worse.

The halls were drenched in darkness. It seemed to seep out of every corner and made the entire orphanage that much darker than usual. Through the grime-covered glass, I could see the slight flicker of the lamps outside, most of them already lit to light the way for those who liked to move around in the shadows. I almost felt like one of those people as Matron led me up the stairs to her office. Some of the candelabras on the walls had been lit to offer us a little bit of light, even that struggled to break through the gloom.