Time Comes In Roses

by CrawleyHouse

Summary:

Scout had once remarked to her father that Miss Maudie Atkinson had a way of speaking that was awfully crisp for a woman of Maycomb’s breeding. If she had pondered for even a second longer on the thought, before running after Jem again, she might have noticed that it was remarkably similar to her Aunt Alexandra’s own diction.

A vignette-ish collection of Maycomb County stories.

Chapter 1: Prologue

When the April rains swept over Maycomb county in the altogether soggy year of 1894, they bore witness to a series of unfortunate events that occurred in close and devastating succession.

For the first time in many years, the Buford's found themselves anticipating the birth of a child.

As was customary when children were born, all manner of female relatives, no matter how distantly related, came to lend assistance to the expecting household whether it was welcome or not. In this case, however, the only female relation left to the Buford family was Dr Buford's sister; Caroline. An unmarried woman with more Northern attitudes than was comfortable to their neighbours, Caroline Buford had not returned to Maycomb county since the birth of her niece several years earlier. Her coming back to the Buford homestead was likened up and down the county to the coming of a biblical plague, a comparison that was not helped any when the river burst its banks and took much of the county's livelihood with it. A pacifist in her heart but stubborn in her mind, Caroline (to her sister-in-law's infinite amusement) had oscillated violently from day to day between quietly packing her bags and furiously digging in until the surrounding landowners seemed set to make up her mind for her.

Then Mrs Buford, and her baby, died. 

When dreary April turned over into a soggy May, and Dr Buford's sister seemed to have settled in to stay, every flower from Mrs Buford's muddy garden beds could be found atop the twin graves under the old oak tree.

In the sad months that followed the death of his wife, and wary of his sister's more liberal leanings, Dr Frank Buford had hurried to engage his daughter in the only other female company within several miles.

Given that they were the only children within calling distance, the Finch children were not wholly unknown to him and his daughter was often called home from their property with grass seeds in her hair and a stick in her hand. They made for an odd collection.  A serious and upright boy always tailed closely by his severe younger sister. They resembled adults in miniature from a distance and often like harried parents as the youngest followed behind in short pants.

As he watched the boys play by the river from the widow's walk he could only suppose that it was a symptom of their own mother’s early passing. 

Grief stricken as he was, and at quite a loss for any other viable course of action, perhaps he had hoped that the delicate learnings of Southern womanhood would come by way of his only child by sheer proximity if nothing else. But if this had been the case, his hopes had come to naught.

While almost equal in age and breeding, the two girls could not have been further from each other. 

Alexandra favoured her complexion.

Maudie loved the sun.

Alexandra was as delicate and dark as a shrike and Maudie remained as rambling as a swath of orange marigolds. 

But, for all of his faith in the Finch’s gentle influence, Dr Buford was awarded one small boon; for when he was not receiving his father’s instruction, or reading quietly in a corner, Atticus Finch could be found roaming the vast expanse of Finch’s Landing with Maudie Buford by his side.

Chapter 2: One

“Atticus! Wait!” the girl called after him.

“Why don’t you hurry?” he hollered back.

Maudie struggled between the rungs of the fence, yanking unceremoniously at the delicate lace that had caught on a rogue splinter until it came free. 

“You know I’m not as fast as you.” she complained when she had caught up.

“That’s cause you’re littler than me.” he teased, straightening his broadening shoulders to emphasise the difference.

Atticus had just turned 13 and was growing like a bean pole. It seemed that he had grown a whole foot in the last month alone and it was starting to bother her.

Taking too much after her father to ever be called a petite girl, Maudie was unused to having to look up at Atticus to meet his gaze. It made her uneasy in a way she could not quite articulate. When her Aunt Caroline had noticed her disquiet she had said that Maudie was beginning to appreciate the burden of her own femininity. When she had brought this observation to Alexandra, who was half a head shorter than Maudie anyway, she had said that that kind of supercilious thinking was exactly why her Aunt Caroline had never found a husband. 

Maudie didn’t think either one of them had it right.

Though Atticus had never been unkind to her (even when she would have deserved it) and never excluded her from any of his activities, she had the distinct feeling that their worlds were separating somehow and that she was being left behind.

“Ain’t neither.” she objected though she had to skip a little to keep up with his longer stride. “Did you do the books with your daddy yesterday?”

“Yeah.” he grimaced and squinted against the sun, searching for a stick sturdy enough to be useful. 

“Gonna get any more cows next spring?” she asked.

Maudie loved cows. She thought they were big, wonderful, lumbering animals and wished her father kept their paddocks full of them. But he didn't go out so much now without her mother to join him and didn't keep enough field workers to manage more than the few dozen they already had.

Mr Finch though, he bred seed stock for the region as well as for beef, and his cows were sought after up and down the Alabama. In a fit of kindness, he had once offered a pale little poddy to the young Miss Buford, should she want it. Though she begged and pleaded, just to have a milk cow of her own, her father would not be moved. It was easier to make money from pork than beef and he was too busy doctoring to bother himself with anything else, even one dozy milk cow.

“Only the ones gonna drop from our heifers… though most of them’ll go to the yards. He wants to talk to Mr Johnson down the way about pigs. He’s thinking about raising a few. See how he likes it.”

Maudie wrinkled her nose.

After their own pigs had broken loose of their pen and wrecked havoc on her mother’s flower beds she no longer thought that pigs were worth the trouble they saved. Though it had made for one of the most satisfying Christmas dinners of her life, it had taken a full month, under her father’s careful tutelage, to put the garden back to rights.

They wandered aimlessly through the fallow paddock, Maudie picking tall, bobbing seed heads from the long grass and Atticus breaking up old dusty cow pats with his stick. They had used to kick at them until Alexandra had taken them both to task over the state of their shoes when they had come back up to the house one evening. 

It was one of the rare occasions that Mr Finch had sided with his daughter over his son and had threatened to tan his hide for a new pair if he ever caught Atticus kicking at cow muck in his good shoes again. As he only owned two pairs of shoes, his good pair and his church pair, and the frequency of rattler sightings was too high to go barefoot, Atticus had simply picked up a stick instead.

Maudie’s own father had been less concerned. It was good for the grass and she grew out of shoes too fast for it to matter much. 

“Wanna go look for gold in the river?” Maudie asked, tossing her handful of seeds in a wide arc.

“There ain't any gold down there,” Atticus contradicted, “if there was, folks would’ve found it by now.”

“Well… maybe they ain’t lookin’ right.”

“And what makes you think you’d be lucky enough to find gold in there, then?”

“‘Cause luck is something you make for yourself, stupid.” Maudie put out stubbornly.

That, Atticus thought, was the complete antithesis to the definition of luck. At least as he knew it. But then again, Maudie was the complete antithesis to what he knew a girl to be and yet she stood before him, so he stayed quiet.

 

They ended up by the river. Picking for rocks and any small bits of treasure that had been lost from river boats over the years.

They did not find much. 

Some good, flat rocks that skipped almost to the other side of the river. A rusted half penny and a broken piece of plate that Maudie had muddied her dress for when it popped from the thick silt like a cork from a bottle. 

It was not shiny but it was gold of their own making and as they dawdled back up to the big house, flipping the coin between them and concocting grand stories of travellers from river boats past, Atticus thought that maybe Maudie had been right.

Chapter 3: Two

“Good morning, Dr Buford.” 

The carefully practised greeting carried up the stairs to the sitting room Maudie shared with her aunt and she looked up from her page.

“Good morning, John Hale.” she heard her father reply and wrinkled her nose. 

Her daddy must be the only person alive to ever call Jack by his proper name. Even being scolded to bed, Jack was only ever called ‘Jack’, even by Mr Finch who had no doubt named him in the first place. 

Maudie put down her book and crept over to the bannister, pushing her face against the rungs in an attempt to better see down into the foyer but all she spied was the top of her daddy’s head.

Jack Finch was a stocky little boy who had not yet outgrown a toddler’s chubbiness. He had a round face with his sister’s features but, unlike Alexandra, he adored Maudie and had done since before he knew the meaning of the word.

“Can Maudie come and play?” Maudie saw his squat little shadow cross the threshold but her father peered around the door frame.

“Do you have your brother with you?” he asked, “Or your sister?”

“No, sir.”

“Does Mr Finch know where you are?”

“No, sir. He’s gone to town with Atticus.”

She saw her father’s head raise but was too slow to move out of his eyeline.

Maudie was in trouble, though she didn't rightly know why, and stayed crouched awkwardly by the stairs, her hands wrapped tightly around the railing. Hoping to be released from her recent imprisonment and Aunt Caroline's care.

Her Aunt Caroline had assumed a position of maternal authority in her father’s house almost immediately in the wake of her mother’s passing though she rarely chose to exercise it. She was an odd woman, with a kind, pleasant face and no patience for small children. In day time hours and fair weather, their paths rarely crossed but the season had been treacherously wet and, after coming up from the creek with a fever that had kept her in her bed for over a week, Maudie found herself obliged to be in her company more than was strictly comfortable.

While no great stickler for Southern sensibilities, Aunt Caroline was a lady in every sense of the word and, though rumour across the river was that she had actually been in one of those "women’s marches", general consensus was that no amount of living in Boston could ever buff the Alabama out of her. She was not generally a presence enough in Maudie’s life to be called a nuisance, more of a vague irritant but she was authority enough to disrupt her day when it struck her interest and Maudie's age and present sequestration proved to be interest enough. 

She had gifted her a beautiful set of silver brushes for her hair and ordered a fine, high backed corset from Montgomery to discourage her lazy posture. Maudie had accepted them both with the graciousness expected of her and suffered quietly through their use.

She liked to enquire after what Maudie had read that day, and if she had enjoyed it. When Maudie would invariably answer “yes” or “no” to this dull inquisition. Aunt Caroline would always ask, “why?”.

‘Why’ seemed to be Aunt Caroline’s favourite word and when she could not articulate a suitable answer, which was often, her aunt would seize upon the opportunity for education.

Maudie had spent long hours practising her letters; copying long passages from the family bible, or sometimes Shakespeare if her aunt was in a more fanciful mood. She would be made to read aloud, recite scripture, and watch on with glazed distraction while Aunt Caroline balanced her father’s chequebooks. Her penance for such inattention was always served at the piano, plodding out a rhythm that set the whole house’s teeth on edge.

She was also surprisingly easy to evade.

During brief spells of sunshine, she was curiously blind to her whereabouts whenever Maudie sought refuge from her lessons in the flower beds. She never denied a request to accompany her father into town nor did she ever interrupt her reading. She always mended any torn dress or burst seam that passed under her nose without mention or anger and had even left a stack of newly bound books at the end of her bed (which she had promptly shared with Atticus) for no other occasion than she thought she might enjoy them.  

Despite these small mercies, Maudie was worn out from such close and prolonged attention. She felt tired, stretched thin.

The rain had stayed away a whole week now, the ground was drying out, and her Aunt had gone to Mobile.

Her face brightened hopefully at Jack’s request.

Frank Buford looked up into his daughter’s expectant face, a resigned sigh rising in his chest. He had never been able to deny her anything.

“Maudie,” he called and she scrambled to her feet, “would you come down here a minute.”

Maudie clattered down the stairs to find her father already holding open her coat. She stuffed her arms in before he could change his mind and felt her hat settling snuggly on her head while she did up the buttons.

"I'd like you to take young Mr Finch home, please. See he gets there safely now, and then come home." He took her by the shoulders, "If that sky darkens my doorstep before you do, I will personally see to it that you never leave this house again." His tone was nothing short of a threat but, as her father wound a scarf carefully around her neck and tucked in the tails, Maudie couldn't help but notice that it was not even past midday yet.

"Yes, sir." she said, leant up and kissed his rough cheek swiftly and seized Jack by the elbow.

---

"You look awful." Were the first words out of Alexandra's mouth when she arrived up at the house then promptly turned on Jack for running off. 

Maudie was accustomed to receiving a less than warm reception from Alexandra but thought her assessment was harsher than usual. She made a quick examination of herself while Alexandra wore herself out on Jack and promptly decided that the weather had done no favours to her humour. Her hair was neat and clean and her skirt didn’t have a speck of mud on it. Something that could not often be said even when it was dry.  

Alexandra’s courtesy extended far enough to set places for them to eat dinner. It was a modest affair with Atticus and Mr Finch absent but it filled them up to bursting and Maudie was duly reminded that no one made cracklin bread as good as the Finch’s cook.

Jack wanted to play checkers and insisted on sitting out under the mimosa tree. You could see the road from there and Jack thought to give Atticus a fine surprise with his company.

He did. 

After helping his father unhitch the mules from the wagon, Atticus made his way leisurely up the slope in the yard, a smile softening his hardening features. Jack puffed up like a proud little rooster at his brother’s approach.

“Maudie came to play with me.” he said, satisfaction shining on his face.

Atticus made a sweep of Maudie’s appearance that was not dissimilar to Alexandra’s then turned back to Jack.

“Did you have a good time?”

“Yessum.”

“Good,” he fished in his pocket for a small paper packet and tossed it to Jack, “go on and help father with the wagon. I think it's time we let Maudie go home.”

Jack hesitated and opened his mouth to argue but Atticus raised an eyebrow and looked pointedly at the brown paper bag, threatening to take it back. Jack shuffled off of his makeshift seat and dragged his feet all the way down the yard.

Atticus extended a hand to help her up.

“You look like you just stepped out of your grave.”

Having stood just about enough guff to last a lifetime and feeling unusually tender about it, Maudie bristled and got to her feet without his assistance.

“And what is that supposed to mean?” she snapped, dusting her hands on her coat.

“Just…” Atticus kicked the toe of his shoe into a tuft of grass and put his hands sheepishly in his pockets, “Dr Buford said you’d been sick, is all…”

“Hardly even.” she denied stubbornly, but she was tired for it being not so late in the day.

Atticus’ mouth thinned a little, unconvinced.

“Come up to the house a minute, then I’ll walk home with you.”

She kept close behind him on the familiar route to the living room and the long wall covered in tall shelves, full of books in covers of black, red, and green. She thought she looked skinny in the reflection of the bay window, something she had never been accused of before. Bruise-like shadows under her eyes making them look deeper set in her face. Atticus shuffled through a short stack of notebooks on one of the side tables, pulled out a lone book from the pile; the one she’d loaned him. 

Without a word he took her by the arm in proper escort and led them back through the house. 

“Are you cold?” he asked when she shifted her arm to sit more comfortably in his.

They had made it a little way down the well worn track between their properties.

“No.”

But he drew his arm, and her, closer to and Maudie settled her side against the warmth of his body. It was not a long distance, maybe a little more than a mile, but it was made easier with Atticus blocking the wind.

“Are you better now?” he asked after a while, sounding more like a boy than the man he so often sounded like these days.

“I think so.” Maudie admitted quietly, “I don’t really remember being sick… just bored.”

“Jack has been bored without you.”

“I’ll happily take Jack over Aunt Caroline any day.” she grumbled.

“She’s not so bad,” Atticus chuckled, then added, “Father likes when she visits. You should tell her to do it more often. He thinks she’s funny.”

Maudie took in Mr Finch’s opinion of her aunt with healthy scepticism, having only ever thought of the woman as dull as a block of wood, but grown folks could be as crazy as a box of cats sometimes and Mr Finch was as entitled to his opinion as she was.

Her father was waiting on the porch for them, his office windows affording a generous view of them coming up the road.

“Good evening, Dr Buford.” Atticus called from a polite distance but did not dislodge Maudie to take off his hat.

“Evening, Mr Atticus.” her daddy called back, “How’ve you been keeping in all this wet?”

“Well enough, I reckon.” he climbed the back step but went no further, “It was kind of Maudie to bring Jack home earlier, I thought I’d return the favour.”

He handed Maudie back her copy of Around the world in 80 days and stepped back down into the yard with a quiet, “sir” to her father.

He was almost past the pecan trees when her father called back across the yard.

“Maybe you’d like to bring him over tomorrow? The rain looks like it will keep away one more day and there are flowers coming up on some delphinium he helped me put in the ground a while back.”

Atticus smiled.

“Thank you, sir. He’d like that.”

Chapter 4: Three

The Summer had been a hot one and for the first time in Maudie’s memory all four of them had spent it together.

Jack was big enough now not to be so much of a bother and Atticus, while still fond of his time spent in solitude, seemed perfectly agreeable about spending his leisure hours in their company. 

Alexandra had been the biggest surprise of all, tagging along in their adventures in an old dress and enormous hat. She sat in the shade most of the time or on the jetty with her feet in the water while Atticus taught Jack how to swim and Maudie plaited water weeds in the shallows. It was obvious that she was putting in considerable effort not to comment on the state of her clothes at the end of a day in the fields and was doing her best to enjoy herself as well as she knew how. She would bring a book but never read from it, packed sandwiches and cake in a neat little basket and carried clean water in an old lightning jar. She kept a close eye on Jack, especially near the water but Maudie had a small suspicion that Alexandra was keeping careful watch of her too. 

This was not unusual, passing judgement on Maudie’s ways was a favourite pastime of hers, but this new attention felt furtive… almost secret and whatever it was she was looking for, if she ever found it, for was something that Alexandra made no comment on at all. 

But the Summer was almost over and Maudie was to be sent away to school in the Fall.

Well, Alexandra was being sent to school and Mr Finch had offered her father the sum of Maudie’s tuition if he would consent to let her go as a companion for his daughter. It had taken some time, and some gentle nudging from his sister, but Dr Buford had eventually agreed.

Maudie's complete bewilderment had quickly turned to unenthused politeness when Alexandra had broken the news to her with little grace. Atticus too had been curiously put out by this new development. Upon hearing his sister's announcement he had walked off without a word but when he returned after a long period of quiet reflection, he seemed to be his old self again, having decided to dedicated himself to their company while he still had it. 

 

“Come in, Alix.” He had teased that afternoon, throwing Jack high from the jetty and into the water with an almighty splash. He pushed wet hair back from his forehead and made to grab for his sister’s shoulders, “You look ripe as a strawberry in that sun.”

Alexandra swatted at him until the threat of being pushed in abated some.

“Atticus Finch, your brain has come loose if you think for a second I’m getting in that water.”

Atticus slumped lazily off the jetty in response, close enough to splash the pair of them with a lurch of murky water. 

Alexandra shrieked. Maudie laughed.

“You’ll come in, won’t you Maudie?” Jack asked, panting through a clumsy breaststroke. 

Atticus, now resurfaced, had already wound long fingers around her ankle when Alexandra proclaimed, “She will not!”

She needn’t have worried herself. Maudie had already been shaking her head. 

“No thank you, sir.” she smiled at Jack, his round face buoyant in the water. 

“What? Why?” his feet had found solid ground and he stood with his hands on his hips in the shallows.

“I can’t swim.” she said, jiggling her foot in Atticus’ grip. 

He tightened his hold momentarily, then let go. 

“Can’t swim!” Jack exclaimed, scandalised as if he’d been swimming all his life and not the past few weeks.

“No, sir.”

“Alix,” he said, rounding on his sister, “you can swim?”

“Enough to not drown.” she said shortly, shading her eyes with her hand. She did look very hot.

Jack looked awful disappointed. Not only would his favourite playmate not play with him, but she couldn’t swim to boot. He bobbed after Atticus, striking out into cooler, deeper water. They stayed out a while, splashing at each other and treading water against the current until Jack’s head began to drop closer to the water level.

“Jack.” Alexandra called, “Atticus, bring him in. It's time to go home.” She was red in the face, flushed across her cheeks and down her neck. 

The boys obeyed in the round about way that boys often did. Coming in slowly, lazily, by a route that weaved and meandered the long way around the jetty. 

Alexandra was fixing the fastenings on her basket and feeling behind for her shoes when she shrieked for the second time that day and slipped off and into the water with a splash. 

Maudie had no time to consider what had happened. Cool fingers had latched onto her ankles and she was yanked in right after with a little scream of her own. 

For a moment it was cool and silent. The noise of the day vanishing under the dark of the water. She felt light and buoyant as her skirts rushed up around her in a cloud of white cotton. Her feet touched at the slippery bottom but her head was still below the surface, her buoyant skirts turning heavy as they took on water. 

She had no time to panic. 

The same hands that had pulled her in were gripping at any random limb they could find, pulling her up again.

With her head back above the water, Atticus readjusted his grip and Maudie splashed out as she dipped back towards the bottom.

It wasn’t very deep. 

Atticus could stand on tip toe and keep his head. He grinned at Maudie from underneath his wet fringe, a careful grip on her waist keeping her afloat. She pushed it out of his eyes for him and grinned back through the water streaming down her own face.

Alexandra, who had been pulled out deeper than she had, could evidently swim well enough to chase Jack halfway down the river. Shrieking and hollering after him about all the things she would do to him once they were back on dry land. 

Jack, who was already tired and moved to laughter by Alexandra’s threats, lost ground quickly and was soundly dragged up the bank by the arm. Laughing all the way.

Atticus waded back in slowly after them, playing with the way he could move Maudie’s weight through the water. He let go once it reached her knees then went back for Alexandra’s hat; slowing sinking in a thatch of reeds.

Jack was still chuckling weakly, spread eagle on the grass as Alexandra wrung out her skirt and cursed his name. 

Maudie followed suit, returning some of the water back to the river when Atticus returned to shore and deposited Alexandra’s wet hat on her already sopping hair. She rounded on him next and beat soundly at his arm while Atticus just smiled genially and pulled on his shirt. She had just begun gaining momentum about how she would never forgive either of them when Atticus pulled her into a fierce hug.

Still cross, Alexandra hung her arms stiffly by her side but Atticus held on until her fists loosened and she wrapped her arms around her brother’s middle.

“I’m going to miss you, Alix.” he said quietly, so only she could hear, and felt her hold tighten then let go.

He would have done better to hug her before getting dressed, a large, Alexandra-sized wet patch sticking his shirt to his skin in places. But he supposed fair was fair.

Maudie was uncomfortably aware of her corset, the thin ridges rubbing against her skin through wet chemise, but she was glad for it all the same as she went to retrieve hers and Alexandra’s shoes, the lines showing through the layers as she dripped a steady trail along the rough wooden planks. 

 

They sat in the shade to dry a while. 

Alexandra had returned to her usual colour and was picking pins out of her ruined hair. Maudie was trying for the same but had accepted Atticus’ help in the endeavour. He was surprisingly careful for a boy. Jack, who was sitting by his sister, his hands full of hair pins in penance, looked on with a strange wistfulness. 

“I didn’t know you couldn’t swim.” he said as she massaged her scalp roughly, searching for stragglers.

“Never learned.” she shrugged, “Deepest water I’ve ever been in was Baptism.”

Satisfied that her hair was free, she wound it up on top of her head and secured the knot with the pins from her lap.

Atticus' frown deepened. It obviously troubled him that for all the time they had spent in the shallows he had never known that she could go no further. 

“I can teach you.” he offered, as if this might close a gap he could not quantify. 

Maudie just smiled. 

“Don’t be so silly, Atticus.” and she looked over at Alexandra, checking Jack over and dusting off his britches, “Ladies don’t swim anyway.”

Chapter 5: Chapter 3 cont.

Maudie had been allowed to stay the night, Mr Finch unwilling to send her home in wet clothes, and she climbed into bed beside Alexandra in a borrowed nightgown. 

She was almost to sleep when a voice whispered in the dark.

“Maudie?” it asked.

“Mm?” was her sleepy reply.

She waited so long that she had blinked back to wakefulness.

“... nothing.”

Alexandra rolled away from her, onto her side, and said no more.

She had just about eased herself back to sleep, listening to Alexandra’s breathing level out and soften when the door creaked open a sliver. 

Maudie squinted in the near dark, expecting a smaller silhouette than the one that peeked around the door. Atticus’ sharp profile, a slightly darker shadow than the dark around him, beckoned for her to come when he saw that she was awake.

Brow furrowed sleepily, she edged out from under the covers and tiptoed to the door. She crossed her arms across her chest self consciously as she crept out onto the landing and followed Atticus down the stairs through the main bedroom. 

It was lighter down here. Illuminated slightly by the still lit sitting room where Mr Finch no doubt sat reading and steadily drinking his way through a fifth of bourbon. Atticus motioned for her to be quiet, a finger pressed to his lips, but there was little need. Mr Finch would whip Maudie just as soon as his own children for sneaking out of bed. 

She followed on silent feet through to the mudroom and watched as Atticus collected up her damp things from where they were still drying on their racks. He balanced their boots on top of the pile, edging through the door with barely a squeak and out into the moon drenched yard. 

“Atticus.” Maudie hissed in a low whisper once the door was safely closed behind them. 

“Put these on.” he whispered back, thrusting a cool wad of scrunched up cotton into her crossed arms.

“Why?” she asked, even as she buttoned up her corset cover over her nightgown, pulling a petticoat over her head. 

“‘Cause I’m gonna teach you to swim.” he said conspiratorially and handed her her boots.

“It’s the middle of the night!”

“So?”

“Atticus!” but he had already started off down the slope, leaving Maudie to hurry in doing up her laces to catch up.

 

The river seemed to run faster at night. The gurgle and swish of the water somehow louder amongst the night time noises, away from the light. 

“Come on.” he said, sitting down on the grass to take off his shoes.

“I’ll sink straight to the bottom!” she exclaimed, remembering the weight of her waterlogged clothes.

“You don’t need all those layers.” Atticus said, pulling off his own shirt. 

He looked bigger in the dark, older. The shadows chiselling already sharpening features. 

They were almost grown up.

Suddenly, the thought of wearing nothing but her nightgown in front of him made the colour rise in her cheeks. It felt dangerous somehow and was made even deadlier by the fact that it wasn’t even her nightgown.

“I don’t mean to live forever but I don’t wanna die tonight.” she protested, “It’s Alexandra’s.”

“Well go take it off behind those bushes yonder.” he reasoned, “It’s dark. No one will see you.”

At a loss for any kind of excuse, Maudie obeyed.

It was still just Atticus after all. They’d played together forever and a day, climbing trees and fossicking in that very river with her skirt pulled up high out of the water and it had never bothered her before. The only difference now was that he was taller and a faint shadow of hair darkened his bare chest but the memory of cool fingers around her ankle made her shiver and she hurried to pull her corset cover back over herself, checking that the frills and ruffles lay flat on her chest. 

She bundled Alexandra’s dress in the fork of a tree for safekeeping and hurried back to the bank. He was already knee deep.

“Aren’t there gators?” she asked, hesitating where the grass gave way to muddy sand. 

These things they didn’t consider during the day.

“They don’t like it this far north,” Atticus said matter-of-factly and held out his hand expectantly, “I’ve never seen one.”

“Ain’t ever seen a bobcat neither but I know they’re in the woods.” Maudie muttered, edging into the black water. 

It was a warm night but the water was almost cold now. She squeaked as it hit against the back of her knees.

“Lord, when did you get to be so much of a girl?” he teased, chuckling at the unfamiliar sound.

“I’ve always been a girl.” and she reached for his hand, “Your own fault you never noticed.”

Atticus shivered as the bottom dropped off and he sunk quickly past his waist. 

“I noticed.” was all he said.

He tugged at her gently when he felt her baulk at the edge.

“It’s ok.” he assured, “It don’t run so fast here.” and Maudie let him pull her out to him. 

She dipped quickly up to her neck but Atticus straightened his arms to brace her above the water.

“Don’t let me go!” she gasped, her chin dipping in the water, a death grip on his hands.

“I won’t.” 

 

Maudie was not a natural swimmer and she just about wore Atticus out trying to keep her from drowning. Atticus, however, was a natural teacher and eventually his confidence and steady patience won out. Maudie could swim. Or, at least, she could keep herself from sinking but she was also thick bottomed and any momentary pause in her efforts lifted her rear and planted her face squarely in the water.

A phenomenon she did not find nearly as funny as Atticus did.

“Don’t laugh at me.” she snapped without any real bite, taking on a mouthful of water as her concentration lapsed.

This only served to make him laugh harder but he grabbed at her arms to pull her upright as she choked on it. He made a seat with one of his legs, balancing her weight on it with an arm around her waist. The other thumping heartily between her shoulder blades.

“I’m not trying to bring up the whole lung.” she objected hoarsely once she'd caught her breath and he stopped.

"Sorry." he apologised and dropped his knee without thinking. 

Maudie yelped and splashed out as her seat gave way. Caught by surprise, she struggled to right herself, bobbing like a cork in the current. Floating off and away until Atticus caught up to her with an arm around her chest. 

"I'm sorry." he gasped, pulling her tight against him and Maudie held tight his forearm with both hands. 

Her heart returning to its normal rhythm, Maudie managed to laugh.

"You said you wouldn't let me go!"  still slightly breathless but Atticus did not share in her humour.

"I'm sorry." he repeated against her hair, muscles trembling, and swam them back one armed to shallower waters.

She felt like a ghost in the water. The slow, heavy swirl of her petticoats like a dark cotton cloud beneath the surface. Raising goose bumps on his arms as they brushed against his legs. Her body warm against his chest, fighting off the chill of the water. Soft and pliant.

He felt for the bottom when he was sure they were close enough, river silt and pebbles cold under his toes.

"We should go back." he said quietly when Maudie could set down on her own two feet again. 

She only nodded, pulling herself through the water the way Atticus had shown her.

He was careful to keep her in front of him as she stroked back towards the shore, pushing off from the bottom each time, but when she made it to water that reached her waist she stopped and would go no further.

"What's the matter?" he asked, waterlogged trousers hanging low on his hips. 

"Nothin', just... you go first is all."

"Maudie..." but she crossed her arms tight across her chest and made herself plain, "Oh."

He splashed past her, trying to keep his attention towards his feet but failed more than once. 

She was pretty, even half drowned. Her hair in long, lank ropes over her shoulders, her clothes plastered to her skin. She reminded him a little of the statues he'd seen in a book a long time ago when Rome and its emperors still fascinated him. Her round cheeks and long nose, the way the fabric creased and gathered against her hips and knees. He had often wondered after the artistry in their making; the kind of power that must exist within a person to be committed to stone like that. 

Atticus retrieved his shirt and held it out to her in an effort to be gentlemanly and she took it with a quiet 'thank you'.

It was a hollow effort. His shirt soaked right through the moment she pulled it on but it was enough for her to raise her gaze again and uncross herself. The night air blew soft against their wet clothes and raised goose flesh on Atticus' bare arms. He had no idea how long they'd been out, how soon it might be until they would be missed. Hoping to be helpful, he reached up into the high fork where Maudie had stuffed his sister's dress and Maudie watched in horror as the fine lacework of Alexandra's nightgown snagged on a snarl in the tree. Tearing apart as if in slow motion as Atticus yanked it down.

Maudie yelped, clapping both hands over her mouth. They stared at each other in abject horror, her eyes wide over her fingers at the mess of white lawn dangling from Atticus' fingertips until a short puff of laughter burst past his lips. The nightgown tumbling from his loose grip and adding grass stains to injury. He stooped to pick it up as Maudie lowered her hands.

"Its not funny!" she scolded, smacking at his shoulder with the back of her hand.

"Do you think you can mend it before she wakes up?" he asked, trying to examine it by the dull light of the moon. Maudie knew before she ever looked at it that it was beyond her skill to fix, and certainly not in the dark few hours before morning. Her face must have said as much because Atticus suddenly became grave as an undertaker. 

"Well then..." and he pressed the ruined fabric into Maudie's shaking hands, "I'm certainly glad not to be the one sleeping next to her tonight." 

Then a broad grin overtook his face at the look of righteous anger on hers.

"Come on, Maudie." and he jerked his head in the direction of the house but he did not get far.

“Atticus Finch I will kill you!”

And forgetting that she was soaking wet in her underthings, Maudie lunged after him, catching him low enough to buckle his knees and bring him to the ground. She scrabbled up on top of him until she could push his head down into the dirt like she had when they were small but they were small no longer.

Atticus pushed up from the grass and rolled, her weight no match for the strength of his adolescence. The movement pitched her forward and onto the ground and he climbed on top of her, pinning her arms by the wrist and sitting on her hips. 

Her breath let out with a soft ‘hmph’ and Atticus froze.

Maudie did too. Alexandra's nightgown forgotten in the grass.

He watched her chest heave as she caught her breath, even in the dark the delicate little ruffles not quite enough to conceal what lay beneath. Her cheeks prettily pink from the exertion.

She was so soft. 

Maudie was uncomfortably aware of his weight on top of her but when he released one of her arms to brush her wet hair from her face, fingertips tracing gently along the curve of her cheek, she made no move to push him off.

"Will you miss me, too?" she asked quietly, defiantly.

A lopsided smile split his face; pensive eyes and rueful mouth. 

"What do you think?" he challenged.

"That that ain't an answer."

Flat on her back she was surprised at how authoritative the words sounded coming out of her mouth. 

Atticus chuckled and climbed off of her, helped pull her to her feet, brushing his mouth against her knuckles before letting go.

"Well... you have it anyway."

If the cloud cover had been any less it would have been plain for God and everyone to see the violent blush that spread over her chest.

Chapter 6: Chapter Four

Atticus had roused Maudie early and helped her sneak back to her own house before Alexandra woke up, no doubt concocting some excuse for her absence to his father. But, struggling with a strange guilt she could not quantify, Maudie spent the last week of her Summer as far away from Finch’s Landing as she possibly could. Which inevitably meant that she spent it with her Aunt Caroline.

It came as some small surprise that Aunt Caroline was not nearly as unpleasant a woman as the last 8 years her childhood would have her believe. In fact, she was rather nice and surprisingly funny when given enough time.

She and Maudie’s father had been raised on a model of tenacity and self-sufficiency and, while it was often remarked that a long period of city living had robbed her of the latter, it quickly became apparent that her Aunt Caroline had not suffered one bit for her life in Boston. She knew more about canning and bread making than any cook Maudie had ever met. She could catch and kill a chicken as quick and easy as if she were chopping kindling and taught Maudie just the same. In fact, the only thing she was not generous with was a small pocketbook of handwritten notes that she kept in close possession, studied often and showed to no one.

When Maudie had asked about it, she had promised her niece that she could read it once she was dead. 

Aunt Caroline’s other habits, however, remained just as Maudie remembered them. She slept until late in the day, managing to rouse herself in time for a midmorning coffee that she would subsist on until supper. After which, she would unbutton the false front of her long skirt to reveal them as trousers and sit cross legged on the rickety old swing, a book in one hand and a man's pipe in the other that she would smoke steadily until nightfall. Maudie had always liked how she smelled, like dry tobacco and vanilla. Even decades later, when the whiff of pipe smoke would pass her window, it put her in fond remembrance of those warm evenings spent in pleasant silence. 

She had spent the morning packing. Her school things having finally arrived from the dressmaker in Maycomb and her aunt had made her try everything on to make sure it fit. It was a good thing too, she had grown in the weeks since going to town and they had spent most of the previous day re-hemming her skirts. 

With everything tucked neatly in a trunk that would see her through until Christmas, Maudie wandered aimlessly to the kitchen, hoping to find anything that might quell the vague nausea that had settled in her stomach. She started slightly to find someone already there.

“Sorry.” she said, “I didn’t think anyone would be in here anymore.”

She must have been about her age, maybe a few years older though it was hard to tell, in a dull coloured dress and apron that said she was probably one of her daddy’s workers. But she wasn’t working. She was sat at the scrubbed table hurriedly packing a book and tablet back into a cloth sack.

“Oh, I don’t mind.” she started, pointing at the cistern and feeling rather stupid, “I was just getting a glass of water…” then, remembering her manners, “can I get you one?”

The girl shook her head and drew the cord tight around the sack.

“I didn’t mean to- … please don’t leave.” 

Her quiet plea had little effect but the girl hesitated just briefly.

“What were you doing anyway?”

She looked at Maudie like it was a trick question, the gold flecks in her brown eyes flashing as she considered whether it was safe to answer.

“Writin’.” she said quietly.

“Writin' what?”

“Just copyin’ something Miss Buford showed me.”

“She sets you lines too, huh?” Maudie smiled, feeling some of her appetite return. “Can I see?” she asked, reaching for an apple and taking an enormous bite as the girl pulled her things back out on the table.

“You’re much neater than me.” Maudie appraised around her mouthful, “My ‘b’s take up half the line. I never can make ‘em right.”

She smiled shyly and put her things away again.

“That’s mighty kind of you to say, Miss Buford.”

Maudie wrinkled her nose.

“You can just call me Maudie. It's too confusing having two Miss Bufords.”

“Thank you, Miss Maudie, but I should be getting along now. Can I help you any before I go?”

“Oh…” Disappointed, Maudie shook her head, “No… no thank you. Do you work for my daddy?”

“Sometimes. My daddy does but my momma works up at the house on the Landing. This time o’ year I help her in the kitchen mostly.”

“Oh, well, I’m pleased to have met you…?”

“Calpurnia.” 

Maudie extended her hand and Calpurnia took it awkwardly.

“Pleased to have met you, Calpurnia.” she called after her as Calpurnia hurried away.

With Calpurnia’s departure, Maudie’s newly restored appetite quickly followed her. She abandoned her half eaten apple on the table, the taste turning to vinegar in her mouth, and she was glad of her solitude when her mood turned quickly to tears. 

She was not prone to weeping as some other girls were but neither was she as stoic as Alexandra who so far had proved herself incapable of such a thing. Her tears had been acceptable when her mother had died but tolerated little after that. Though, once when her father had scolded her for crying over what seemed to be nothing, her aunt had gone and scolded him right back. Shooing him away and out of the room, saying that some girls cried during their courses and it made for a poor doctor and husband who ought to have known that. It was one of the few maternal displays Aunt Caroline had managed in all the time she had been living with them and, through her mortification, Maudie had been grateful for it.

“What’s this now?” her aunt’s sharp voice cracked through Maudie’s melancholy like a pick through ice and she jerked her head up off the table. Hurriedly wiping her eyes.

Aunt Caroline was not fooled. She had the same blue-grey eyes as Maudie and her father and they narrowed as she considered her niece.

Maudie sniffed and took a second pass at her eyes with the back of her hand.

“Nothing, Aunty.”

“Mmmhmm.” was all she said, suspicion heavy in her throat, “Just tell me it’s not over a boy and we can go about our day.”

“It’s not.” Maudie agreed as her Aunt moved past her to set their mid-morning meal, nodding at her half eaten apple.

“You eat up the rest of that or I’ll keep this cake to myself.”

Maudie knew it was an idle threat. Aunt Caroline had never taken cake or anything else with her morning coffee and was unlikely to start now. She said it was how French women kept their figures and, true or not, it seemed to work. She was as slender as a willow branch.

Maudie forced down the rest of her apple in as few a bites as she could manage but it was like chewing on cotton and sat heavy in her stomach.

“Are you all set for school tomorrow?” she asked, setting down a cup of milky white coffee in front of her.

Maudie just nodded, blinking furiously as her eyes began to leak anew. Aunt Caroline seemed to consider politely ignoring her niece’s distress, then set down the coffee pot, wrapped her arms around Maudie’s shoulders and tucked her head under her chin. 

“Oh darlin’.” she said quietly into her hair, “Let’s have none of that.”

“I don’t want to go, Aunty.”

Aunt Caroline pressed a kiss to the top of her head.

“And I never met anyone who ever got everything they wanted… your father wants the best for you, baby. And this is the best way he knows how.”

“He didn’t even ask! Why can’t I stay here and just keep on like we’ve been doing? It doesn’t bother anyone any.”

Aunt Caroline squeezed a little tighter.

“That is too big a question for me to answer, Maudie Buford… We were born women, darlin’, and sometimes that means doing the best we can with what we’ve got.

“It’s not fair.” she sulked.

“That may be but no amount of wishing is going to make it so. You’re a smart girl, and going to a school like this is only going to make you smarter. And we need smart girls, Maudie. It will give you options.”

She held tight a little longer until Maudie’s breaths no longer came in shudders.

“Are you together again?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Aunt Caroline slipped out of their embrace and back to the counter, fixing up a plate of butter cake.

“Aunty?” Maudie asked when she set the plate in front of her, “Do you like it here?”

“You know I do, baby.”

“Then why did you move to Boston?”

Her aunt considered her question for a moment, eyeing her across the table in a way that made her feel grown up for the first time in her life.

“I just woke up one day and… I suppose I just saw my whole life laid out in front of me and I realised I didn’t want one bit of it… That there wasn’t a single person in this whole county whose life I wanted.”

“And you just left?”

“Well, your daddy will never admit it but we have a cousin in Boston.”

“We do?”

“Second cousin,” she clarified, “and your grandmama managed to convince your grandaddy to send me up there with $50. It sounds like a lot, but it wasn’t even back then. I think she was hoping I’d turn around and come right on home again.”

“Did you like it?”

“Darlin', I loved it. There are so many people in a city like that Maudie Mae, you have no idea. I met men and women who’d been to Singapore and India and even one man on his way to California.” She considered for a moment and then pulled out her pocketbook, opening it without searching for a page. “I wanted to stay there forever, but I had no money.” Maudie took it from her and flicked through page after page of scribbled recipes, temperatures and formulas, pencil drawings of fussy little cakes and neat pastries.

“I had always been good around the stove at home.” her aunt explained, “I thought I might get by cooking in big houses like this one but I never got that far. Managed to take up at a bakery a few blocks from me. Got burned a few times,” and she pulled up her sleeves to show half a dozen shiny scars, “it was hard. I’d never been so tired in all my life but I liked working and I was really, really good at it.”

"Then why'd you come back? Don't you miss it?"

Aunt Caroline smiled a tight little smile, "Yes. And no."

She pulled down her sleeves and rebuttoned them at her wrists.

"You can love some place else and still miss home. You never know... I might go for a visit while you're at school, but Boston isn't my home anymore. Maybe it never was. I was born in Maycomb County, right here in this house, God willing I'll die here too. Besides, these folks need someone to gossip about or they'll go crazy. It's the Christian thing to do." she added with a wicked grin.

"Is that why you smoke a pipe?"

"I smoke a pipe because I like it... and it drives your daddy crazy."

Maudie giggled.

“The world is a big place, Maudie, but you are always going to be a woman in it. What I’ve tried to teach you… what you’re going to learn at school, is important. You need to know it because knowing how to dress, how to speak, how to behave, they’re skills just as important as knowing how to milk a cow or chop cotton. Whether you go to university, work a shop job, or raise a family. Ignorance is it's own prison, darlin', and it is the fastest way to find yourself trapped in a life you can't escape."

 

---

 

Maudie was pacing in the gravel road in front of the Finch's gate waiting for Alexandra.

It was bare morning and her Aunt Caroline dug into her waist coat for her pocket watch. She squinted through bleary eyes at the tiny face in the half light before clicking it shut again. She did not bother tucking in back in her pocket but rather let it swing on its chain.

"Quit your trackin'." she snapped out at Maudie before leaning against the fence and muttering, "We are so Goddamn early."

If Maudie's stomach had not been tied up so tightly in knots she might have felt sorry for her Aunt. Her face looked pale and puffy in the grey light, the untidiness of her hair only just hidden under the wide brim of her hat.

Mr Finch had organised for a buggy to deliver both girls to Maycomb Junction, Aunt Caroline acting as their escort for the train. Not wanting to repay Mr Finch's generosity with tardiness, her own father had roused them both exceptionally early in anticipation of the day and Aunt Caroline had cursed his name all the way down the drive. Maudie might have joined her had circumstance been any different, but she had not slept enough to be tired.

Maudie did as she was told and held herself still, watching the fog rise and roil off of the river and across the fields. Time is hard to track at that time of day. It might have been hours or only minutes when Maudie caught the rhythmic sound of crunching gravel and the heavy breath of a man carrying a burden too heavy for him. Both women turned to the sound and saw the small, neat figure of Alexandra walking primly up the drive, one of the house negroes a pace or two behind with her trunk.

An odd sensation, like the bottom of her stomach dropping away, was building in her belly.

"Where's Atticus?" she asked, looking past them.

"What?" Alexandra asked distractedly, as if it were a stupid question.

"And Jack?"

Alexandra looked up at her with an odd expression that mimicked confusion.

"Didn't they want to say goodbye?"

There was a metallic clopping and steady wooden rumble that heralded the arrival of their transport.

"They already did." she said, matter-of-factly, and made a show of pushing her gloves more snuggly in the spaces of her fingers.

She watched dumbly as Aunt Caroline instructed the driver in loading their bags, a bizarre unrealness clouding her brain. Something was ending, she was sure of it. This was a chapter. The period at the end of a line. A point in time that would measure only 'before' and 'after'. She felt as if she were watching herself from afar, stupid and slow, moving through molasses to shake herself out of her stupor.

That could not have been the last time. She hadn't known it would be the last time.

Without thinking, Maudie bolted for the fence. Dropping her bag as she went and winding herself as the slammed into the railing.

"Maudie!" 

Panting, she squinted through the haze.

"Maudie!

She couldn't see far enough.

"Maudie!"

She climbed up onto the fence. First one rung and then the other.

"Maudie!

Trailing through the fog like a ghost, Maudie could just make out a familiar outline. His hands in his pockets, kicking at clods of earth and manure.

"Atticus!" she shouted across the fields.

But he only moved deeper into the haze.

"Hey!" she tried again, loud enough to carry all the way up the Alabama. 

"Atticus!" 

The figure paused a moment and turned to face up the slope.

Maudie could have sworn she could make out his face despite the distance. His features strangely blurred, stoic and dull beneath a furrowed brow. 

She raised a hand. 

In the pale, crowning light, Maudie watched as Atticus ducked his head and turned away. 

"Maudie! Get down!"

A pair of hands yanked her off of the fence and she stumbled in the dirt. The terrible, swooping sensation fully realised in her gut.

"What on earth were you thinking?"

Her aunt's voice sounded a hundred miles away.

"I just... wanted to say good bye."

 

Chapter 7

While their appetites were delicate after such a long journey, they had arrived too late to take supper with the rest of their cohort and so Aunt Caroline had treated them at a nearby lunch wagon when they finally disembarked from the train.

Aunt Caroline did not accompany them on the cursory tour they were afforded upon their arrival at the school but she said her goodbyes at the end of the long drive. Maudie suspected she would have liked to have hugged her but did not think it sensitive or appropriate in Alexandra's presence. Instead, she gave each of them a small package, wrapped in brown paper, and encouraged them to write before stepping back up into the buggy. Maudie felt her knees turn to water as the feeling of a great, sucking chasm opened up in her stomach again. It had been somewhat distractible in the amiable aloofness of her aunt's company but returned now with a determined vengeance as she watched her drive away into the dusk.  When she felt herself beginning to cry she was startled out of the sensation by the silent slip of Alexandra's hand into hers. It squeezed gently, just once, then let go.

It came as some small comfort that she and Alexandra were to share a room. The woman who had shown them there, a Ms Kline, had offered no information of what they could expect in the morning. Only said that they were required in the dining room at 7am, shut the door sharply behind her and left them to unpack their things. A chore both girls attended to in silence.

The room was hardly grand, but it could not be called cheap either. Boasting the same solid and unassuming construction as the rest of the place. Maudie had every suspicion that it had once been a grand house that had outlived its original intent. The lower walls were panelled in some nondescript American timber; painted, along with the uppers, in an unimaginative shade of beige. It was hardly smaller than her room at home but was devoid of any of its comforts. A nightstand separated two single, wrought iron beds with enough space for their trunks at the end. A tall wardrobe dominated one corner of the room while a dresser and washstand took up much of the other. A four-peg rack behind the door already wore their hats. 

When they climbed into bed and blew out the candle, Maudie lay a long time staring into the dark; trying to discern every difference in the night time noises outside their window from the ones she was familiar with at home. The only sound she recognised was the measured inhale and exhale of Alexandra's breathing, the staggered rhythm offering the only clue that she was not asleep either. She thought a while about speaking out into the darkness, wondering if they reached out at the same time if their fingers might touch. But when she finally worked up the courage to murmur out her name, Maudie's request was met with the same silence that had followed them all evening.

"Alix?" she tried again, her voice barely a whisper.

Again, there was nothing except for the silence of a breath held. Squeezing her eyes tight shut, Maudie pulled the covers up to her chin, rolled onto her side and tried to sleep. 

 

Despite her exhaustion, Maudie rose with the sun. She washed her face in the basin and changed out of her nightdress, helping lace Alexandra into her corset before she endured the same.

"Stand still." Alexandra rebuked when Maudie had rocked violently at her efforts to draw the laces tighter.

"Quit yankin' on me, then!" she shot back. The quiet demurement of the previous day broken at last by their relentless familiarity. Even facing the opposite direction, Maudie could still tell Alexandra was sucking on her teeth.

Properly dressed and thoroughly upright, they checked each other over, beating out any imagined creases in their skirts, and went down to breakfast. They sat together and ate little. When Alexandra picked up conversation with a red headed girl across from them, Maudie took an opportunity to glance about the room and noticed that no one was taking much of anything except black coffee. She wondered if they'd all been reading about French women too. A blonde girl at another table was picking at the last crumbly flakes of a beignet from her plate and sneaking her sugar coated fingers into her mouth. She stopped when she saw Maudie looking at her, her blue eyes wide in her face, and Maudie smiled in what she hoped was a friendly overture of a secret shared. But the girl flushed scarlet to the roots of her hair and looked away.

The day did not improve any after that.

The clamour of a large brass bell signalled for the start of lessons and she and Alexandra were to go with the new intake of girls to be examined on their literacy. It was a dull start, taking turns to read aloud from books of increasing complexity to a man who seemed as bored as she was but, by early afternoon, every one of them proved to be sufficiently literate to not require further instruction. The same could not be said for their penmanship and Maudie had been the first of many to be caned for the "unintelligible scratch" of her handwriting and then whipped again when her aching hand produced no better results. 

She had no appetite when they were released for dinner. She sat in silence with her head down, clutching her smarting fingers in her good hand. Maudie had never been struck before, not by her father, her aunt, or even Mr Finch. She had been threatened plenty and Mr Finch had certainly come closest, but the threat alone had usually sufficed to keep her from doing something truly foolish (or urged her into deeper secrecy). It seemed a stupid thing, she thought blinking hard, to hit someone as encouragement. She loosened her grip to better examine the red and white welts across her palm and knuckles, swollen and stiff with the shock of their abuse, and thought it even stupider. 

As the weeks wore on, a distinct feeling of claustrophobia began to tighten in her chest. Their days were so thoroughly scheduled and regimented that she thought even her Aunt Caroline would bristle at such stricture and, even if it had not rained steadily since their arrival, the amount of time they were allowed outside neared unbearable.

Alexandra was thriving. She seemed to have been born ready made for whatever it was that this place was preparing them for and she swanned about in a swirling mix of envy and approval. Never before had her haughtiness been rewarded in such a manner. Her manners were impeccable, her etiquette flawless, and her preferred past time of needling at Maudie had begun to curry favour with the other girls. The barbs of Alexandra's ridicule had never stuck particularly deep before but without the benefit of distance and other company, Maudie's skin was starting to wear thin. It had always been abundantly clear to her that Alexandra thought that she was better than she was. This had never troubled her before and it failed to bother her anymore now, Alexandra simply thought she was better than everyone and so Maudie took extreme seriousness in dedicating herself to conduct that might outshine even Miss Finch.

She fared well enough in her academic classes. She had never thought that she was a bad student; quick enough with a decent memory, and she had been accused several times in her life of indecent curiosity but Ms Kline was of a contrary opinion. 

She seemed to follow them through all of their classes, pacing the perimeter of their desks like a starving, straight laced lion. She had a hard, uncompromising face that made Maudie flinch. Not least because it was so often followed by her cane. She had slapped the switch across her shoulders when she slouched in Latin class and then left a stinging welt behind her knees for the same in elocution. Ms Kline was more liberal than most when meting out her cane and Maudie could attest that she was particularly skilled in laying new stripes over the old ones, but she found that it was difficult to concentrate when she was more focused on her posture than how a verb declined and wondered more than once if maybe that was the point. 

Literature was a welcome relief. She had always consumed books as easy as water from the time that she was small, but she did say a silent prayer of thanks to her Aunt Caroline and her asinine questions of 'why?' when it became apparent that most other girls had never considered more than the word on the page in front of them. They wore identical, blank expressions whenever this question was turned on them and reminded Maudie of the dull, vacant eyes of chickens confronted with rising water. Her proficiency with numbers, however, had produced the first real look of shock she had ever seen on Alexandra’s face and had induced the first glimmer of pride she had felt since she arrived. Maudie had been sat tense and ready for rebuke at the hard look on Mr Aiken's face. Kept her head bowed and her gaze on her desk as he looked over her slate and flinched as he set it back down but the reprimand never came. He only tapped it twice with his forefinger in approval and moved on down the line.

As they inched ever closer to Christmas, Maudie began to receive the impression that their teachers cared little more about them than the name that bracketed their first. Whether a girl was gifted at prose or language seemed to matter very little to them and they were all of them being forced and moulded into identical, replicable shapes as surely as they were lacing their corsets tighter every morning. She had become quiet and withdrawn. Sitting in silence unless called upon for fear of Ms Kline’s cane. She wrote slowly and formed her letters well rather than elucidate her thoughts on the page. But as the weals on her hands began to heal and fade a different hurt began to bloom. She seemed to have missed her chance for friends, Alexandra ruled that roost, and she felt a bitter loneliness that only lifted with every letter from home.

She spent her evenings bent over them all while Alexandra practiced her needlework with the other girls in the library. She spreading their coloured paper out over her bedspread, re-reading her favourites and rationing out the last of the chocolate her aunt had given her from its little paper packet. Her father, in official white, would write to tell her of the flowers in her mother's garden, of some quarrel between Mr Johnson and Mr Spender over several unmarked cows that had broken down a fence between them, and drew out plans (for her inspection and approval) for the old cotton fields in Spring. Jack's letters made her laugh. They were three times as fat as everyone else's but his handwriting twice as big. He gave every subject equal measure and to his mind there was little difference between Atticus going away to Montgomery and his favourite chicken laying an egg that yielded two yolks. Aunt Caroline wrote little but often on dainty paper in pale blue and always hoped that she was well. They were unimportant, meandering little jottings for the most part but they held within them the simple truth that life, and her along with it, still existed outside of these walls. She took to carrying one with her with her through her day, picking out whomever she thought she might need most and secreting them in her pocket; her father for fortitude, her aunt for clarity, Jack for joy, and let spite carry her through the rest.

Maudie sucked the very last smudge of chocolate from her thumb and folded the wrapper until it was unrecognisable. She was sure the chocolate was not allowed but Alexandra had never tattled about it. She had received some too after all, but Maudie did not know if she had ever eaten it. She looked over at the neatly made bed next to hers, a folded nightdress waiting beside the pillow. She didn’t think that Alexandra was eating much of anything.

They’d argued that morning when Alexandra complained that her corset was too loose and then burst into angry tears when Maudie had insisted it was closed as far as it would go.  It was the first time that she had noticed how thin she was. Alexandra had always been slender, her features fine but her shoulder blades where sharp under the thin cotton of her chemise and her cheek bones could have carved ice. She had wanted to say something, maybe extend a hand in comfort but Maudie had long given up trying to puzzle out exactly what it was that Alexandra wanted. It seemed to change at any given moment.  She was irascible, mean, and overbearing but she could also be sweet, even tender, if the mood struck. It seemed impossible for two girls who had grown up as closely as they had to misunderstand each other so fundamentally but Alexandra simply refused to be deciphered.

She considered her lessons and applied an exercise that Mr Ballard had instructed them in earlier that day; that the essence of a poet and his poetry might be contained within a single word if one sufficiently understood their soul. Maudie shook her head, chiding herself at her own foolishness. Alexandra was not a poet, she was just a girl, like the rest of them, balanced on the precipice of womanhood. Playing at perfection as if her life depended on it. As if suffering the stroke of Ms Kline's cane was as final as the swing of the axe. She wanted something, desperately, that much was clear but doubted if even Alexandra would have been able to tell what it was.

She looked over again at Alexandra's side of the room, sterile and cold save for a pale blue envelope peeking out from the pages of her bible. 

Maudie had been struck enough now to know exactly how not to sit and how to stay silent. She had been an active girl with control and command of her body, a theologian from her mother’s womb and a reader from her daddy’s knee. Her aunt had taught her music and numbers, days keeping up with Atticus had driven her tenacity, and Alexandra had honed her resilience. It occurred to her that, somehow, the love and attention she had received her whole life served her better now, even in her isolation, than the mild neglect that Alexandra had endured all through hers.