The smell of the Barbary Asylum had not changed. In the past, Maud had not been aware of it; she had lived in the stench as a fish lives in water, without knowing it. Now she wrinkled her nose. Cabbage and bland boiled dinners, sour milk, mice, dirty diapers, mildew, wool uniforms that were never washed, sweaty little girls who washed far too seldom. Maud knew that in no time at all the smell would be part of her.
The Asylum’s ugliness was unchanged. The linoleum was still cracked; the rooms were still painted in flaking mustard, olive green, and a color that was referred to as “cream” but more closely resembled bile. The vivid chromos of biblical subjects were as flyspecked as before. The embroidered “Suffer the Little Children” was perhaps a little dustier. As for Miss Kitteridge, her mouth, always small, seemed to have grown smaller. The Superintendent’s lips were thinner and meaner than ever. It was a mouth that might have been designed for the sole purpose of whining.
Miss Kitteridge complained that it was a great disappointment to see Maud again. The Asylum was so overcrowded that any addition to the population was a burden, and, of course, Maud Flynn had never been what she might call an asset to the community. That was what the Superintendent said, but her lips twitched as if she were struggling to hold back a smile. That tiny half smile made Maud feel sick; she knew that Miss Kitteridge was savoring her disgrace.
“I believe I warned you,” Miss Kitteridge reminded Judith. “I told you the child was saucy and deceitful —”
Judith’s eyes strayed to the clock. “Miss Kitteridge —”
“Maud Flynn was the very last child I would have chosen for such a select home,” lamented Miss Kitteridge. “I said so at the time. It would have been better for everyone —”
Judith interrupted a second time. “Please be quiet.”
Judith was being rude toward Miss Kitteridge. Immensely cheered, Maud raised her head.
“The trouble with Maud Flynn,” announced Judith, “was not that she was deceitful, but that she was not deceitful enough. When all is said and done, she is fundamentally honest — and she has a heart. I am returning her, not because she failed us, but because we failed her.”
Maud’s hand stole into Judith’s. Miss Kitteridge’s face was a study. She was both enraged and baffled. Unable to think of a telling response, she sniffed. “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand you, Miss Hawthorne.”
“I suppose not,” Judith replied. “It doesn’t seem to me that your intelligence is of a high order.”
Maud could have kissed her. But the time for parting had come; already Judith was letting go of her hand. “Good-bye, Maud Flynn,” Judith said formally. “You deserved better.”
Maud put one leg behind the other and curtsied with all the dignity she could muster. “Thank you,” she said. She realized that she was going to be able to get through the interview with her dignity intact. She kept her head up as Judith turned away. The old woman moved slowly, favoring her burned foot. Like Maud, she was holding on to her dignity.
Maud didn’t cry. She didn’t even blink.
Miss Kitteridge stood up. “Maud Flynn, you are to go to Ward Three and change into uniform. Put your dress in the clean laundry bin.”
Maud gave a single, staccato nod. “Yes, Miss Kitteridge.”
“Are you going to leave the room without thanking me?” demanded Miss Kitteridge. “Once again, your care is in our hands. Once again, this institution is bound to provide you with everything you need, from the food you eat to the clothes on your back.”
Maud had an inspiration. She lowered her lashes and tilted her head a little to one side. “Yes,” she murmured, in Hyacinth’s most maddening tones, “but such frightful clothes.”
On the morning of the first day of October, Maud was picking through the potato bin, assisted by her former enemy, Polly Andrews.
It was a disagreeable task. By autumn, the bin was almost empty, and the remaining potatoes were sprouting and rotten. The reek of decay was powerful enough to make the children gag; Maud’s fingers were clamped firmly over her nostrils. Polly prodded a shriveled potato, agitating a swarm of tiny flies. She whimpered with dismay. “Oh, Maud, this is awful! I do so hate bugs!”
“I hate Miss Kitteridge,” said Maud, going to the heart of the matter.
Polly looked horror-stricken. She glanced over her shoulder, as if expecting Miss Kitteridge to materialize beside the potato bin. “Do help, Maud. I can’t fill the basket by myself.”
Maud took hold of a potato that squished between her fingers. She dropped it and wiped the ooze on her skirt. “This is horrible,” she announced. “I’m not going to do it.”
She sat down on the cellar steps. Polly regarded her with resentment, admiration, and fear. “You’ll be punished.”
“I’m always being punished,” retorted Maud.
It was true. Maud’s return to the Barbary Asylum had not been peaceful. The battle between herself and Miss Kitteridge had become a war. Maud had discovered that Hyacinth’s airs and graces had a powerful effect on Miss Kitteridge’s nerves. In the past weeks, Maud had spent whole nights in the outhouse. She had been assigned the dirtiest tasks the Asylum had to offer; she had been deprived of meals, spanked, slapped, scolded, shaken, pinched, whined at, and sent to Coventry. Often she wondered where it would end. She knew that in provoking Miss Kitteridge she was flirting with doom, but she kept on with it. There was something about hating Miss Kitteridge that made her feel she was getting back at a world that had wronged her.
Besides, she had a reputation to uphold. Maud had become the official black sheep of the Barbary Asylum, a position that gave her some status in life. The disgrace of being sent back was so dire that the other girls regarded her with a mixture of pity and awe. Maud took advantage of both. She dropped mysterious hints about her life with the Hawthorne sisters, managing to suggest that she had lived a life of terrible wickedness and luxury. The girls at the Barbary Asylum were fascinated. They became so interested in spiritualism that Maud was sorely tempted to hold a séance or two. Even without confederates, she reckoned she could hoodwink them; they were so naïve and so hungry for a little excitement.
Nevertheless, she held back. The memory of Mrs. Lambert’s stricken face was fresh in her mind. Maud kept to the truth on one point at least: the séances in which she had taken part were all shams.
There were other truths that she kept to herself. She didn’t talk about Muffet, not wanting to share her, and she held her tongue about her dreams of Caroline Lambert. She made much of the fire that had destroyed Victoria’s mansion — Maud had remodeled the cottage so that it closely resembled the Hotel Elysium — but she never told anyone that her guardians had abandoned her the night the house burned. Instead she embellished the glories of her brief adoption; she regaled hungry girls with descriptions of Muffet’s Floating Island pudding and shabby girls with accounts of the dresses she used to wear.
It was the tales of finery that had ensnared Polly Andrews. Maud had come to the conclusion that Polly wasn’t such a bad little thing; she simply lacked the gumption to misbehave. Even now, the younger girl went on trying to fill the potato basket, while Maud sat on the steps and watched.
“You might as well stop,” Maud advised her. “Just about every potato in that bin is rotten.”
Polly gave up. She sat on the step next to Maud. “Maud,” she said wistfully, “is it true that when you were adopted you wore velvet dresses every day?”