Free In Her Mothers' Shoes by Felicity Price

Gisborne way; and little Pearl, the prickly one who’d been so insistent about where everyone sat, was from Wellington, like herself, but from near the top of the Hutt Valley, where Lizzie had to admit she’d never been.
     
    ‘You’ve never been over our side of town? You haven’t lived!’ Pearl said, coming out of her sulk. ‘I can see we’re going to have to educate you.’
     
    Lizzie hoped being ‘educated’ didn’t mean being subjected to the sort of treatment the girls meted out to newcomers at boarding school.
     
    She’d already been appalled at the lightning speed with which the girls had devoured their single biscuit and slurped at their tea, although she had to admit she was starving herself. All she’d had on the boat was the sweet dry biscuit the ancient stewardess had brought before dawn with tea in a cup so thick there was hardly any room for the milky tea. With no breakfast, Lizzie felt like scoffing the extra biscuit herself, but held back, mindful of her mother’s words about first impressions. She’d reminded her how much it had cost to send her to the home – ‘so you’ll be with girls your own class, no riff-raff’. Despite their shameful circumstances, all these girls must be from families who were comfortably off – even Pearl and the Maori girl, whose presence surprised her considerably. If her mother could see her now, sitting next to a Maori girl. She’d be so shocked. Lizzie permitted herself a smirk as she finished her tea. There’d been no Maori girls at Marsden that she knew of. In fact, Lizzie didn’t even know what they were until she was about six and her mother said to her one day in the tram, ‘There’s a Maori woman getting on.’ She’d stared at the woman and her unfamiliar brown skin until her mother had told her it was rude. It wasn’t until she was in an older class at primary school she’d seen two other Maoris and they’d been so unusual the other kids had laughed at them.
     
    The alarm bell rang again.
     
    ‘Come on, back to work girls,’ Jessie called, clambering off the bench-seat. She looked across at Lizzie. ‘You too, Lizzie. It’s time for you to find out what you’re in for.’
     
    ‘Yes, to be inducted into the mysteries of the Laundry for Wayward Girls.’ Meg sniggered and took her arm, leading her behind Jessie through a maze of corridors to the far end of the building.
     
    ‘All the girls here call it Bleak House.’ Jessie pulled a face. ‘It is too.’
     
    ‘Do we do all the washing for this place?’ Lizzie asked innocently as they walked.
     
    ‘Yes, and the rest.’
     
    ‘The rest?’
     
    ‘Fitzgibbon House’s laundry is just the beginning,’ Meg said. ‘Most of the work is the laundry from the maternity home and hospital over there.’ Meg pointed out the window.
     
    ‘That’s where the good mothers go,’ Jessie said on her way to the door. ‘The ones with husbands.’
     
    ‘The father of the baby – we don’t want any of those around,’ Pearl said.
     
    ‘Not likely to see them either,’ Jessie said, putting her arm round Pearl.
     
    They trailed behind Jessie and Pearl on the way out.
     
    ‘Do you know about Essex Hospital, Lizzie?’ Meg asked.
     
    ‘Yes. It’s where we go to have our babies.’ It had been a morning of unpleasant revelations, but her mother had at least told her that much.
     
    ‘Well, it’s over there, behind the washing lines and through the back fence.’
     
    Lizzie looked out the window where Meg was indicating. Behind a line of trees she could just make out another white building, smaller than the one she was in, equally plain and functional. ‘Not far to go then when your time comes.’ Lizzie smiled. It seemed a magical time way in the distance.
     
    ‘No.’ Meg laughed drily. ‘Nice and handy. Meanwhile, we get to do all their washing. It’s enough to put you off having a baby for ever – all that blood! Ugh!’
     
    ‘Really?’ Lizzie didn’t want to show