Darla had long, lank hair that fell flat over her face and parted around her ears like scant curtains. She walked with a hunch in her shoulders and her tiny, dark eyes glared out from under a heavy brow, suspicious. Just smart enough to know that most other people were smarter.
Marla’s hair sat up on top of her head like a tumbleweed — coarse and round and puffy — no matter the weather. Her face and neck were even puffier, which, combined with the hair, gave the impression of a small and cheerful snowman sitting on her shoulders.
Carla had no hair and only one eye due to an unfortunate incident as a baby when their mother dropped an entire kettle of boiling water onto her head. Other than that, she was stunning.
Even as a baby, Carla had been too pretty. Her mother did her a favor, really. She still drew attention, but not the kind that’ll get you pregnant. And Carla was so young when it happened, she didn’t remember the plasters or the salves or the crying. In fact, her whole head was numb now, except for an occasional tingle over her right ear.
The girls were born less than a year apart each: Irish triplets, people said, even though they weren’t Irish at all. Their mother washed clothes for rich people and when school was out on the weekends and summer, the girls washed clothes with her. They were put in charge of rifling the pockets of pants and jackets before the wash to check for “tips”, their mother called them. Anything they found was to go into Mother’s apron pocket.
They helped with folding and ironing, too. Carla and Marla loved to fold the lingerie; they’d inspect the delicate lace details and swipe the silky nylon across their faces when no one else was looking. As the eldest, Darla was the only one trained to iron. She hated it; it was hot and heavy and she’d burn her hands at least once every time, but she did a good job. She’d get the dress shirts as smooth as her own hair. Once, she complained about the burns and her mother said, “Never do a bad job well,” and handed her another crumpled pile to flatten.
Never do a bad job well. Darla couldn’t figure out what that had to do with the burn on her hand, so she stuck her finger in her mouth and straightened out another shirt on the board.
At home they slept three in a bed, with Mother on the sofa in the living room. She snored all night long but the bedroom door had been taken off to use for a table so they plugged up their ears with cotton and then the only sound they heard was their own blood pumping through their brains and it sounded like the ocean.
All of them had webbed toes. Darla’s more than the others, but Mother most of all. She said she got them from her mother, who got them from her mother, who got them from her mother, who must have got them from God. She said they brought good luck and insisted that they all cover their feet all the time and not tell anyone just in case someone got the idea to cut a foot off and carry it around like a rabbit’s foot amulet. While other children would swim in the summers, they kept on their brown dresses and brown shoes and sat on the riverbank to watch. Darla figured that if she were ever allowed to try, she could swim faster than a fish and go far away, thanks to her foot-paddles.
One hot day, she did it. She unlaced her boots and took off her thin socks and waded into the river with her clothes on. She took a breath and dove underneath and never came up again.
“Having webbed feet doesn’t make you a duck,”
is what their mother said.
Mother said she was angry at Marla and Carla for not stopping Darla from going in the water, but she didn’t seem that angry and she didn’t seem very sad, either. Marla told Carla that Darla had swum all the way to England and was right that minute sitting in her own private cottage eating apple tarts and drinking hot tea sweetened with strawberry jelly. Mother said that the river doesn’t go to England and to not be an idiot.
Anyway it did mean more room in the bed and more food on the door-table.
It also meant Marla would have to learn to iron.
Marla was a good ironer. Not as fast as Darla but she burned herself less often at least, and she was proud of that.
Carla was the only pocket-picker now. Most people didn’t tend to leave very important things in their pockets — usually just buttons or receipts or sometimes a single penny coin. The buttons Mother would sew back on and the receipts would be thrown away and the pennies would go into Mother’s apron pocket for holding on to in case someone asked about them but no one ever did.
On the first day of autumn, three months after Darla swam away forever, Mother sat Carla in front of a pile of wool coats sent in for de-beetling. She’d shake the coats vigorously and stomp on any carpet beetles or larvae that dropped onto the floor. Then Mother would wash them with lye and hang them in the sun.
One particularly heavy coat shed not only a dozen beetle larvae, but also a small gold ring. It flashed and clinked on the floor like a wind chime and before anyone else saw it, Carla stomped it with her foot. Her mother gave her a dirty look for stomping so loud but as soon as she’d turned away, Carla scooped up the little circle and dropped it into her boot.
That night after the bath, she slipped it onto her pinky toe and put her socks on over it. Her pinky toes were free and untethered from the rest of her toes and the ring felt like it belonged there. She wanted to show Marla but thought better of it. Marla liked shiny things, too, and maybe she would take it.
The ring became a comfort and while she sat in school or folded laundry, she would flex her little toe in and out and up and down to feel the metal. At first she felt self-conscious, as if people could tell she was worrying her toes inside her boots. But no one noticed because no one ever looked at her. Occasionally she would catch someone staring but as soon as she did, they’d flinch and look away. Look anywhere but at her. Maybe it was better than being ridiculed, but maybe not. Carla got plenty of neglect at home and perhaps some abuse at school would liven life up. She wondered if the ability to fight — to punch — was innate or not.
That winter, Mother came down with a cough. A terrible, whooping cough that kept the girls awake all night even with cotton earplugs. Marla made her a syrup with boiled horehound and molasses but she wouldn’t drink it.
Mother turned pale and thin and her face went nearly translucent. She looked like a beautiful skeleton. But she needed a doctor.
Marla went to the doctor’s house and asked him to come but without payment, he said, it was impossible. Marla cried all the way home and when she told mother, mother only rolled over and put the pillow over her face and coughed until blood came out.
Carla thought of the ring in her shoe and how many doctor visits and medicines it would purchase.
Mother died three days before Christmas and Marla cried as she shared with Carla the bar of Turkish delight that would have been Mother’s gift. Five cents were found in Mother’s apron pocket to pay the man to take her away to the cemetery and another ten cents spent to have her buried.
Marla and Carla sat vigil at the grave all night the first night. Marla cried and Carla flexed her pinky toe while she tried to look sad.
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