Parcel and Paper Clip

Eloise had a soul of mottled parcel and paper clip, wound all around with twine. She had dull, pale blue eyes, white-blonde hair- thin and fluffy as a chick’s. She always wore dirty socks, and her elbows always itched. She’d stand on the edge of the playground and scratch her skin. She’d itch and itch calloused and flaking, arms crossed, dull blue eyes staring staring staring at the other children playing and jumping and squirming in the sand. She was poor. Her mother was poor, her older brother Benton was poor, her grandparents and aunts and uncles were poor, and her father, had he not jumped on a train three years ago, would be poor as well. Yet, when the new girl sat down in class with her hand-me-down blue jeans and crinkled plaid blouse, Eloise giggled with all the other students. She smells, she whispered to the boy in front, who snorted and held his nose. 1

When the teacher commenced the lesson on division, and asked how many times does four go into seventy six? And the new girl raised her hand with vigor, wanting so hard to let her classmates know that she was no dunce, and the minuscule, yet deafening rip made by the seam of her armpit tearing into a hole silenced the classroom for the most miserable five seconds of her life, Eloise was the first to point and giggle. 2

Despite the new girl’s humiliation, she went on to make friends with a couple of girls, and gain the respect of a few boys when she beat them at the races on the playground. Eloise remained alone, day after day, sneering at the dirty, chubby, angelic faces laughing, hooting around her. She scratched at her elbows and sang disjointed, made up verses of high-pitched discord. She made up songs about Eloise the invisible witch, who snatched up children in the night and sewed them into dolls for her to play with at home. She made up songs about giants who ate babies, and teachers who were burned alive for punishing Eloise, the princess who always got her way.3

Eloise’s mother’s soul was a small bottle of vinegar. She was a ragged, tired, overworked woman. Her hands shook when she gave her breast to her newborn son, slung in a white, splotchy sheet around her chest as she swept, mopped, and dusted the homes of Eloise’s richer classmates. Her songs were made up as well, and she cooed in a dry voice to her baby as they both rocked back and forth, her peeling hands scrubbing up and down and up and down and up and own the dusty floorboards.4

Pearly white baby teeth5

Holler and you howl6

But Mama will give you spoonfuls of honey7

Mm-hmm8

Mm-hmm9

Mama scrubs the boards10

And baby’ gums hurt11

Mm-hmm12

Mm-hmm13

She told Eloise every day that she loved her as the girl ran out the door to spend the evening in the back, poking at bugs and scratching at her elbows and digging through the dirt. But they both knew she was too tired.14

Eloise’s job was to wash the baby. She unpinned his diaper with disgust, and put it in the bucket. She stuck him in the tub filled with well water- yellow and murky- not like the clear cold faucets in town. He squirmed and fussed and his tiny legs kicked and his tiny face scrunched up red and evil. Eloise tried not to let the water get in his eyes, most the time, but she once held him under water, to see what he would to. To her surprise, he held his breath. She lifted him up, howling like a cat, rubbed his tiny strands of hair into his shiny, rubbery scalp and peered around to make sure none of her other brothers or sisters saw.15

Her older brother was the only person she liked. He had friends in town that did bad things, like robbing, and playing tricks on cows, and messing with girls. Her mother spat at him when she heard him "telling little Eloise such tales," but she moved to the other corner of the house to attend to some more maternal duties, and he continued, with Eloise propped up on her elbows, leaning in close and excited. 16

One day, he got a job on a railway. Eloise had nothing to look forward to during the day, and she grew meaner than ever, and scratched and bit far more than usual. Her mother, on the other hand, seemed to have had a tiny little injection of life in her blood. She smiled sometimes. She read stories to her children now, before they went to sleep. Eloise cursed at her mother for being so happy with her oldest son gone. She shook her head, and ignored the child. Eloise’s chest felt like a tiny package had ripped, and paper clips were let loose, rattling around her bones all cold and sharp.17

Her mother told no one that her eldest was sending home twenty dollars a week. She put it in a tin each time she got the mail. Slowly, it began to fill up. She started putting other bits of change in there, as well. When Christmas came, and over two hundred dollars filled the tin, Eloise’s mother disappeared.18

Christmas day, Eloise and her brothers and sisters sat at a train station with an aunt they had never met before, and a couple of grown ups they didn’t know. They were being sent to Philadelphia. Maybe a relative there would take them in, their strange aunt said. If not, than these two grown-ups would make sure they are taken care of. Eloise looked at her baby brother, sucking on a bottle, nestled in the large, warm arms of the aunt. He was staying.19

Eloise held a candy cane. The train was loud and bouncy and she scowled and let the candy cane drip red and sticky onto the sleeve of her coat. She looked out past her siblings into the far end of a train, where another little girl sat next to her mother and sister, coloring on a pad of paper. Eloise watched her hands: delicate, and controlled- despite the jostling of the train car- and she had the most gorgeous white mittens, and the prettiest little charm bracelet gently tinkling at her wrist. The girl looked up and saw Eloise. She whispered something to her sister; they both looked at the ragged, dirty girl with candy cane dripping down her arm and giggled. Eloise buried her face into her brother’s smelly coat, squeezed her eyes tightly, and sang to herself.