was her primary lesson. Adapt and move on. She might have clipped me around the ear for ignoring my skills, but she’d have been proud of what I was doing to get by.
As I shoved the dirty clothes into the washing machine, I remembered the days of Momma cleaning our place from top to bottom. Emma wasn’t as clean. She kept on top of things, but I remembered seeing Momma on her hands and knees, scrubbing the joints where the linoleum in our caravan met, trying to keep it clean.
Which it had to be.
She’d done that twice a day.
In this world, she’d be considered OCD. In ours? That was a woman’s lot. To cleanse and purify the home. It was a duty, to be sure. But more than that, it was an honor. A way of protecting the family, and to be honest, I preferred to look at it that way.
I bit my lip, wondering why thoughts of my past were brushing at my mind. Normally, when I did the laundry, I thought about school the next day, and classes and exams I needed to work on after I ate. I wasn’t thinking about Momma and Papa. I thought about my nanny more, because she’d been the one to really teach me the cleaning skills required of a Romni—a Roma woman who was married—and there were plenty of rules. Rules I was glad I could ignore, even if some of them were ingrained in me.
I’d lost my parents too young to remember them that well, so thinking of them did nothing more than sadden me. Nanny, less so. I missed her something fierce, but thinking about her made me smile. She’d made me into the survivor I was, whether or not she liked what I’d done to get here.
After splitting up Kenny’s and Jon’s clothes from the ones Emma, Louisa, and I used, I shoved the women’s stuff into the washing machine and winced at the blood that immediately made the water in the machine turn red. I wanted, so badly, to rinse those sheets, but I’d already been told off about wasting water, and I knew a second wash would be frowned upon considering how much laundry there was. It would also take me all night if I did everything twice, but I still cringed.
Louisa’s nose bleeds were getting more and more frequent, and I often heard her sobbing into her pillow at night from the pain. I wished I could do something for her, wished I could help. Nanny could have. She’d have known what to do, and Emma was so sweet and kind, Jon so earnest and hard-working...they didn’t deserve to lose their little girl.
I set the washer, then retreated to the kitchen. Emma was stirring a pot of something that smelled rich and tangy, and I perked up. She made the best tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches.
Heading to the sink, I switched on the faucet and filled the basin. As that ran, I grabbed a bowl, a set of cutlery, a glass, and a dish and rinsed off the items, then dunked them and washed them again, before giving them another wash under the running tap water. Emma, knowing my ritual, said nothing, just waited until I placed the dishes beside her on the counter, then taking the cutlery with me, I hustled over to the table and waited for her to serve me.
“What time will Kenny be back?” I asked her as she puttered around the kitchen.
“He has practice, so seven.”
I nodded, thinking about what I’d teach him when I tutored him in math. He was a year older than me, but he hated school. I actually thought he was dyslexic. He wasn’t stupid, but when it came to looking at his books? He just got so angry he wouldn’t concentrate.
If I said a calculation out loud, he’d be able to work it out no problem. But when I made him do a mock paper? That’s when he had tantrums like he was a five-year-old.
“Did you meet someone at the pool?”
Her interest stunned me because Emma didn’t tend to ask me personal questions, and yes, to me that was a personal question. “What makes you ask that?” I queried in surprise.
A smile crossed her lips as she looked over her shoulder at me. “I just recognize that look in your eye. It feels like a lifetime since I met Jon, but I think I was as struck as you were.”