Read Online The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay by Beverly Jensen - Free Book Online

should have known a lot more about than she did.
    Hardly any sounds at all came out of her when she was around Bill. She would answer a question when asked—never more than a word or two—or just nod. She looked down at her feet when she finished her answer.
    So far Avis had learned the most. Maddie had no brothers or sisters that she knew of. French was what she spoke when she was young, but she’d had to learn the English more when her mother left her. She once had a cat named Nuage, which meant cloud, but he got lost in the woods and probably eaten by something.
    She had no middle name.
    “Didn’t your mother give you one?”
    “She never told me.”
    Avis liked being called “Petite Avie” and started asking for words in French. This amused Maddie, and she would point to things and tell Avis the word: la fourchette , le cheval, la tasse, il pleut .
    Avis made Maddie laugh out loud at breakfast one morning when she asked if she could pass her “an oaf.” “Oeuf !” Maddie laughed. “Not ‘oaf.’”
    “What is an oaf anyway?” Avis asked.
    “Well, that’d be someone like me,” Dad said, laughing, too. “Right, Maddie?”
    “Non.” Her laughter stopped. “Mon père,” Maddie replied. “Mon père est un ‘oaf.’ ”
     
    Maddie wore the one dress over and over. It was gray wool, more like a blanket than a dress, tight over her breasts and under her arms. She’d worn it so much that it was soft and thin in places, like at the elbows. One day the girls noticed that she’d done something to the dress to make it fit across her front better. She’d taken strips of fabric from her brown blanket and sewn them into the side seams under the arms like panels. It looked funny, but the dress didn’t pull on her so. Her breasts were looser, not so bound. Idella and Avis chose to not say anything out loud about the changes, though they both noticed and discussed it between themselves.
    There was a lot of brown to Maddie. Idella thought her hair and her eyes were the light color of leaves that’ve been on the ground the whole winter and crumble when you pick them up. An earthy brown.
    But all of her color came out when she sang. The whole first week she was there, she didn’t sing a note. She was serious all the time. Then one day she started in singing while washing the windows. It was a clear, bright, windy day, and suddenly Maddie started singing a French song. It started soft and sort of hummy, then got louder as each window got cleaner, as if the more light she let in, the more sound she let out. It was like a bird singing in the house, Idella thought, listening from the bedroom.
    One day Dalton came into the house unexpectedly for some lunch. He was quiet, as he heard Maddie singing upstairs. He stood in the kitchen and listened until she tumbled down the stairs, quilts to be aired in her arms. She stopped still upon seeing him.
    “Go on, Maddie.”
    “Oh, I thought no one was here.”
    “No one was. Now I am.” He smiled. “I’d be glad for you to sing. Mother sang in the house, too.”
    Maddie blushed and smiled. But she did not sing anymore. She went out to hang the quilts from the line. She shook them busily, snapping them from the corners, until she saw Dalton come off the porch. Sandwich in hand, he waved and walked on into the barn.
     
    “She wears things,” Avis said one morning as they watched Maddie standing at the cliff edge.
    “What are you talking about?” Idella turned away and slipped out of her cotton nightie.
    “She wears things in her clothes. There’s a lump that moves around.” Avis stood on the bed to get a better look at Maddie. “Sometimes I think it’s stuck down her boobies.” Avis demonstrated, her hand under her nightdress across her flat little chest. “Sometimes I think it’s under her skirt.” Avis waggled her fanny.
    “You’re crazy.”
    “You ever seen her undress?”
    “No. But I’d like to see you get dressed.” Idella tossed Avis her