screeching, “Beggars can’t be choosers!” when I’d complained about something
she’d gotten at a garage sale.
The seamstress told us the alterations would be finished by the end of the
next day.
When Mrs. Monroe and I walked to the bank, I noticed the street sign,
Monroe Drive.
“Is that…” I began.
“Our family has been here for some time,” the headmistress said. “One of
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the advantages of living in a small town is that you get to name things after
yourself. Have you had a bank account before, Jane?”
“I never had anything to put in one.”
“We encourage all Birch Grove girls to learn how to handle finances.
You’ll receive your stipend on a monthly basis. It’s not much, but it should be
enough for you to buy groceries, necessities, and the occasional meal or movie
out. Not that you seem like a spendthrift, Jane, but it’s always a wise practice to
live within your means and have money for a rainy day. That means an
emergency.”
“I’m going to be careful, ma’am.” Money was safety and security. It was
a bus ticket, a sweater, a meal, a room for the night.
“Good! Since I have your bank account number, I can deposit your
tutoring pay directly.” Mrs. Monroe told me the tutoring rate, which was more
than twice what I’d hoped for.
Lucky and money. I see now how the tutoring job made me associate
Lucky with all the safety of money.
Evergreen Bank was a midsize brick building, and when we entered, it
was if we had stepped back into time. Clerks greeted Mrs. Monroe by name and
the manager came to meet us and took us to his office. I tried to fill out the bank
forms as neatly as I could with a ball point pen that kept skipping.
When I got to the section for my address, Mrs. Monroe said, “Birch Grove
Academy for Girls, 10 Birch Grove Way.” The whole process took only fifteen
minutes and I was given a bank book, a debit card, and checks.
Our next stop was a shoe store. A salesman measured my feet using an odd
metal slide. Then he brought out plain black leather loafers that looked stiff, but
when I put them on, they felt smooth and comfortable. The leather soles slipped
on the carpet and the salesman said, “Scuff the soles on the pavement before you
wear them so you’ll have traction.”
Mrs. Monroe said, “We also need white tennis shoes, black or navy tennis
shoes, and slippers.
Most kids get new shoes so often that they take them for granted. But in
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foster care, new shoes – shoes that fit and haven’t been worn out by someone else
– are rare and important. I lifted the shoe box covers just to see them in their
white tissue and smell that new shoe smell.
We had lunch in an old-fashioned drugstore, sitting at a counter. Mrs.
Monroe suggested a roast beef sandwich and pink lemonade. The meat was so
rare that the juices soaked through the wheat bread. I was hungry and she was
paying, so I bit into the sandwich, which was tastier than I expected.
While we ate, I watched customers in the long mirror on the wall. Three
teenage girls came into the store, arm in arm, giggling. They stopped when they
spotted Mrs. Monroe and exchanged whispers.
They were pretty, with shining, long hair, smooth skin, and perfect white
teeth. Two wore shorts and tank tops and the third wore a long gauzy white skirt,
lilac blouse, and a straw hat.
Mrs. Monroe spotted them in the mirror and the corners of her mouth went
up.
The girls approached in that friendly, yet wary way that you do with
people you like who have authority over you. “Hello, Mrs. Monroe,” they said in
unison.
“Hello, ladies. How has your summer been?”
Even though the girls tried to be subtle about looking at me, I was acutely
conscious of my hand-me-down clothes. They described their vacations in a
jumble of words, tumbling over each other’s sentences. One had been sailing, and
one had traveled to Italy.
The prettiest, the brown-haired girl in the skirt, had spent the summer in
Montreal with an aunt and uncle. She was as pale as the headmistress and I
caught a whiff of the same herby scent.
Mrs. Monroe said, “This is Jane Williams. She’ll be joining us this term.”
We all said hello awkwardly, knowing we wouldn’t say hello if not for
Mrs. Monroe. Their sharp eyes took in my shabby clothes and the shoe store bag
on the floor beside me.
“I won’t take up any more of your last precious minutes of freedom,” Mrs.
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Monroe said. “See you on Monday.”
When the trio drifted off to the cosmetics section, out of hearing, she told
me, “I know that it’s not easy to transfer for your junior year.”
“I’m sure it’s better than where I was,” I answered.
“I hope that you’ll find that we are more than merely the lesser of two
evils,” she said. “Let’s pick up a few basics for you.”
She took me to women’s clothing store with neatly folded stacks of
clothes and orderly racks of dresses and jackets. The price tags were tucked
inside the clothes. I unfolded a pair of jeans and the tag fell out, stunning me.
“Do you see anything you like, Jane?” Mrs. Monroe asked.
There was no way I was going to spend all my stipend at this overpriced,
old-lady store. “Not really.”
Mrs. Monroe quickly figured out way I hesitated. “One pays for quality,
Jane, and quality pays for itself in the end. The clothes are part of our gift to
you.”
That changed everything. I wasn’t going to turn down free clothes, even
boring clothes. Mrs. Monroe offered advice while I selected solid-color shirts, an
assortment of t’s, cami’s with straps wide enough to hide my scar, a black kneelength skirt, khaki cargos, and two pair of jeans.
Then Mrs. Monroe walked with me to the lingerie section and said, “You
should be stocked with a good supply of the necessities.” She picked out a dozen
pair of lace-trimmed cotton panties as well as navy knee-his and white crew
socks.
Then she looked at the bra display and said, “What’s your size?”
My face went hot with embarrassment. “I don’t know, ma’am.” I looked
down at the floor. “I don’t really need to wear a bra.” I’d begged Mrs. Richards
for bras, but she’d said I didn’t have anything to put in them and laughed an ugly
laugh.
Mrs. Monroe made a
tching
sound. “Young ladies should have proper
undergarments, and you are a young lady, Jane.” She called over a clerk and soon
I was in the dressing room and holding my arms out while the clerk used a
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The Shadow Girl of Birch Grove – Marta Acosta
measuring tape to find my size. “A very ladylike bosom,” she said, approvingly.
“There’s nothing there,” I complained.
The clerk grinned. “I have been fitting bras for twenty-five years and no
one ever thinks her breasts are good enough,” she said. “You’ll save yourself a
lot of unhappiness if you accept and enjoy what you have. Neat little breasts are
very chic.”
I thought she was completely wrong, but soon I was trying on a sweet little
white bra that made me look as if I actually had a feminine shape.
Mrs. Monroe popped her head through the curtain. She said to the clerk,
“That’s quite nice. We’ll take three white, two beige, and one black.” When the
clerk left the dressing room, Mrs. Monroe continued to look, and I felt selfconscious.
I knew what she was looking at, the pale scar above my left breast, and then
her eyes shifted downward and she said, “Jane, no more tattoos, please. They are
unseemly and unhealthy. You can get a blood-born infection, and we wouldn’t
want that.”
It wasn’t her business to tell me what to do with my body. “I was careful
and I’m fine.”
“Still, we don’t want you catching anything. We want you as healthy as
can be.”
When she’d left the dressing room, I ran my finger across the black H and
wondered what Hosea would think if he could see me in this expensive little
town, about to start an exclusive school. Hosea wouldn’t be impressed by the
money. He wanted me to be a kinder person, not a richer person.
Our last stop was the grocery store. “You can make an easy spaghetti
sauce with crushed tomatoes and herbs,” Mrs. Monroe said. “Oatmeal is
economical and much healthier for you than any packaged cereal. I like mine
with dried cranberries and brown sugar.”
Since groceries came out of my stipend, I followed her suggestions,
choosing the cheaper store brands of items that would fill me up and last the
longest.
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The Shadow Girl of Birch Grove – Marta Acosta
Mrs. Monroe waited at the entrance while I took out my bank card to pay
from my groceries. The clerk was a Latina, about 20, pretty and wearing a bright
pink shirt under her Greenwood Grocery apron. She said, “You’re not from
around here, are you?”
“It’s that obvious? I’ll be starting Birch Grove.”
She handed me a receipt. “Really? That school is way expensive.”
“I got a scholarship.”
“Good on you. See you around.”
“Okay, see you. Thanks.” I took the receipt and folded it into my new
checkbook.
As Mrs. Monroe drove back to the school, I recognized houses on the hill
and turns on the road, and I thought,
I can do this
.
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The Shadow Girl of Birch Grove – Marta Acosta
“
Birch Grove alumna become productive, moral, and ethical citizens and
understand their responsibilities as leaders in our community.”
Birch Grove Student Handbook
After saying good-bye to Mrs. Monroe, I walked along the path to my
cottage. The birch leaves fluttered in a faint breeze, revealing the light green on
the reverse side.
Once inside, I took my new clothes out of their shopping bags and spread
them on the sofa and chairs I put them in different combinations, so I would know
what went with what. Then I eliminated the four most unnecessary items, two tshirts and one pair of jeans, and put them back in a shopping bag so I could return
them for a refund.
I put the other clothes in the closet, but kept their tags on. Mrs. Monroe had
her idea of rainy day money, and I had mine.
After turning on the television for noise, I moved things around the cottage,
just because I could. I discovered a flashlight in a cupboard in the laundry room
and put them on the table by my bed in case of emergencies.
I studied a chapter of my SAT vocabulary book. I wrote out the words in
sentences and then said them aloud until they came naturally. Now that I had
privacy, I practiced the words while standing in front of the mirror, making up
sentences like, “He has an avuncular mien,” and “We were habituated to the
pedagogue’s acerbity.” Well, some things never sounded natural.
It felt like a long day, but when I looked at the clock, it was only six.
I wished I had a computer so I could write to some of my friends. I’d
always used City Central’s computer lab for my homework, but I didn’t recall
seeing any computers on my tour of the school. I should have asked Mrs.
Monroe, but now was dinner time, not a good time to phone.
The knock on my door startled me.
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I went to the front window and pulled aside the curtain. Jack stood on the
porch, holding a pizza box. His bike was leaning against the banister.
When I opened the door, he said, “Hey, Jane, thought you might want some
chow. I couldn’t find any of your natural diet, shamrocks and moonbeams, so I
brought pizza.”
He was wearing those old shorts and brown scabs had formed on his
muscular legs. I had a sense of him being a man, not a boy. It was more to do
with his effortless way than his actual age.
Mouth-watering aromas emanated from the box and beneath that I detected
Jack’s faint pine and earth scent. “Your mother took me to the grocery store
today,” I said reluctantly.
He walked right by me into the cottage. “I know what my mom’s groceries
are like. Full of antioxidants, and roughage, and moral character.” He gazed
around the living room and then went into the kitchen and put the box on the
table.
“Get plates for us, halfling,” he said. He shrugged off his backpack,
unzipped it and took out two cans of root beer.
“You’re making up that word.” I thought he was weird, but the pizza
smelled delicious, so I got two plates from the cupboard and napkins from a
drawer.
“It’s as real as you are. It’s someone who’s half human and half magical
creature. I’m guessing that you’re part pixie, hopefully not one of the evil ones,”
he said. “Are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Are you half evil pixie?”
“I don’t even know what a pixie is.”
“They’re creatures that are almost human size. Sometimes they’re helpful
to people, and they like music and dancing and pretty ribbons.”
“I think you’ve spent too much time playing RPGs and reading Tolkien.”