where you belong. On your knees, begging forgiveness for all the trouble you’ve caused. For all the lies you’ve told about poor Mrs. Murphy. You are a wretched, ungrateful little thing, aren’t you?”
“Y-yes’m,” I squeak out in a whisper. I’d say almost anything to get out of that room.
Mrs. Murphy rams her fists into her hips. “Telling lies about my cousin. Lurid, horrible little…”
“Tssst!” Miss Tann lifts a hand, and Mrs. Murphy clamps her mouth shut. “Oh, I think May knows what she’s done. I think she was just looking for attention. Is that the problem with you, May? Are you looking for attention?”
I don’t know what to say, so I kneel there with my guts trembling and my chin quivering. Mrs. Pulnik shoves me harder into the floor. Pain shoots down from the roots of my hair and up from my knees. Tears build inside me, but I can’t let them show.
“Answer me!” Miss Tann’s voice fills the room like a thunderclap. She limps around the desk and stands over me with her finger wagging in my face. Her eyes are the cold gray of a winter storm.
“Y-yes’m…n-n-no’m.”
“Well, which is it?”
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out.
Her fingers close around my chin. She stretches my neck and leans close. I smell talcum powder and sour breath. “Not so talkative now, are we? Perhaps you’ve seen the error of your ways?”
I manage a tiny nod.
A smile pinches her mouth, and her eyes take on a hungry shine, like she can feel the fear in me and she likes it. “Perhaps you should have thought of that before you invented some ridiculous story about your fictitious sister and poor Mr. Riggs.”
Blood pounds in my head. I try to make sense of what she’s saying, but I can’t.
“There never was any…Camellia. You and I both know that, don’t we, May? There were four of you when you came here. Two little sisters and one little brother. Only four. And we’ve done a marvelous job in finding homes, thus far. Good homes. And for that, you are most grateful, aren’t you?” She motions to Mrs. Pulnik. The weight lifts off my shoulders. Miss Tann pulls me up by my chin until I’m standing there in front of her. “There will be no more of this nonsense out of you. Do you understand?”
I nod and hate myself at the same time. It’s wrong. Everything I told Miss Dodd was true. But I can’t go back in the basement. I have to find Fern and make sure they haven’t hurt her. Fern’s all I’ve got left.
“Good.” Miss Tann lets me go and folds her hands one over the other and rocks back on her heels, her dress swaying around her knees.
Mrs. Murphy laughs under her breath. “Well, the little guttersnipes do have brains in their empty heads after all.”
Miss Tann’s lips curve upward, but it’s the kind of smile that makes you cold when you look at it. “Even the most unwilling can be taught. It’s only a matter of what means are needed to properly impart the lesson.” She squints, looking me over from head to toe before the clock on the fireplace mantel chimes and grabs her attention. “I really must be on about my business.” She brushes past, leaving her powdery scent in the room. I try not to breathe it in, but it sticks in my nose.
Mrs. Murphy sits down at her desk and picks up some papers like she’s forgotten I’m there. “From now on, you will be grateful for my hospitality.”
“Y-yes’m. C-could I see Fern now?” It’s all I can do to make myself ask, but I have to. “M-Mrs. Murphy?”
She doesn’t look up. “Your sister is gone. She’s been adopted. You’ll never see her again. You may go outside for playtime with the other children now.” Sorting through the papers, she picks up a pen. “Mrs. Pulnik, please be certain that May has a bath before you move her upstairs to her new bed tonight. I can’t bear the smell of her.”
“I will see that this is accomplishedt.”
Mrs. Pulnik wraps a hand around my arm, but I hardly even feel it. When she leaves me outside, I just sit for a long time on the porch steps. The other kids wander by and look at me like I’m an animal from the zoo.
I don’t pay them any mind.
Stevie comes and tries to crawl into my lap, and I can’t even stand to have him close. It makes