Free Angel of Brooklyn by Janette Jenkins Page A

her some gloves.’
    ‘She has three pairs already.’
    ‘I’ll pray for it to heal quickly. I’ll ask Him for forgiveness.’
    ‘Never mind Him. What about her?’
    ‘She can pray too. Two prayers are always better than one,’ said Elijah. ‘And I’m sure He won’t mind, if she doesn’t put her hands together. At least not for a while. Not in the circumstances.’
    8. School
    Beatrice and Elijah attended Bloomington School, on South Street.
    Beatrice would turn left into the entrance marked GIRLS, leaving Elijah to Mr Harland and the large rowdy classroom their father had once been so familiar with. (His framed picture of Jesse Fell, ‘founding father’ of Normal, still hung beside a map of North America and an illustrated account of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.)
    Beatrice sat beside Bethan Carter and in front of Norah Billings who was the niece of Miss Billings the teacher and who could get away with murder. Norah Billings liked dipping Beatrice’s braids into her pot of black ink. Beatrice pretended to like it.
    ‘It’s an unusual shade and it makes them look distinguished, don’t you think?’ she’d say to Bethan, when Norah was close by. ‘And I have heard that ink is as good as almond oil for giving it a shine.’
    Soon after, Beatrice was summoned to the headmaster’s office, where Mrs Billings and a red-eyed snivelling Norah were already waiting. Norah’s head was covered in her mother’s Sunday shawl.
    ‘Show her!’ Mrs Billings said. ‘Go on!’
    ‘Do I have to?’ Norah cried.
    ‘Yes!’
    Slowly, Norah pulled off the shawl. Her once dirty-blonde hair was streaked with blue and green. Beatrice covered her mouth with her hand and allowed herself a smile.
    ‘Ink,’ said the headmaster. ‘Is this your doing?’
    ‘No, sir,’ Beatrice told him, honestly.
    ‘But you said!’ Norah squealed. ‘You said!’
    Beatrice tried to compose herself. She focused on the large globe of the world, fading on the window ledge; that pale Atlantic Sea.
    ‘I just happened to mention,’ Beatrice said carefully, ‘that I had heard that ink might be good for the hair.’
    ‘Then you were obviously misinformed,’ said the headmaster.
    ‘What are you going to do about it?’ said Mrs Billings, rising to her feet. ‘My daughter looks … hideous!’
    Norah began to cry again.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ said Beatrice. ‘I had no idea that you would want to wash your hair in ink. I know I wouldn’t.’
    ‘The impudence!’ said Mrs Billings.
    The headmaster, who was very fond of Beatrice, punished her reluctantly. He could not face using the cane, so he told her that she must copy out Psalm 119, not because it was particularly relevant to the so-called crime, but because it was the longest.
    ‘And don’t go praying for my forgiveness,’ she told her brother that night, her hand already aching. ‘Because I’m entirely innocent. And anyway,’ she added, ‘it was worth it.’
    9. Housekeeping
    From the age of six, when her father had left teaching and the neighbours left him to it, Beatrice’s life had been full of fly-by-night housemaids who had baulked at the dust, the birds and her father’s unpredictable temper. Joanna had appeared soon after her eighth birthday and had stubbornly refused to let the dirt and feathers get the better of her. When she went away two years later, her cheeks blazing, prematurely forced into the arms of her nurseryman (they had five blissful weeks before the horse got him), she left a rambling three-storey house that was cluttered and in need of a top-to-tail clean at least once a fortnight, what with two messy children, a man living in his own feathery fog, sixty-five dead birds, forty-four small stuffed mammals, and various ornaments that practically begged the dust to land on them. It was a difficult job for anyone.
    At first, no one noticed the mess, though in any case, her father barely noticed anything, apart from his creatures and solutions, the
Journal of