Oxidizing Halos

Oxidizing Halos - Justina Guido (A.W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts, Eleventh Grade)

The young woman’s hand twitched once, twice, three times before she was finally startled awake by a sharp squeak. From the floor, her eyes locked with those of an older woman who was holding a straw broom. 

“Dorrie, darling, you cannot lay outside of my shop forever,” she hit the now-dead rat away from the girl’s hand. 

“I have told you to not address me as that,” Dorcas sat up and dusted off her lap, noticing the fresh wound where the rat had been nibbling, “damned bastard bited me. Alas, though, my name is Dorcas Hilliard and I am nothing to you but Miss Hilliard.” 

The woman smiled, shook her head, then reached her hand out for Dorcas to take. “You are near my daughter, Dorcas, that does not feel right.” 

Dorcas refused the help and stood up on her own. Her ripped skirt hung just above her ankles and her leather boots had holes. Her shins were covered in dirt and scabs. “D’you got anything to eat in that shop of yours, Lucy? I have money,” she reached into the breast of her corset and pulled out a handful of coins. 

Lucy’s eyebrows furrowed. 

“You ought to stop doing that, Lucy. You have far too many lines on your face already.” “I know. But you weren’t of that wealth yesterday, dear. Where did you happen to get that?” She walked Dorcas into her bakery and sat her at a table. 

“You do not wish to know.” 

Lucy brought over a bowl of stew and sat it in front of Dorcas. She then sat down in front of the young woman.

“But I do. I have my concerns for you.” She watched as Dorcas shoveled spoonfuls into her mouth. 

Without finishing, she responded, muffled. “A man came up to me yesterday and made me an offer. We drank for hours together and the rest followed,” she swallowed. “I had to leave quickly, though, for his wife was coming home.” 

Lucy gasped. “You slept with a married man!? That is adultery, dear!” 

“I was not aware that he was married, therefore it is not my fault,” she took another bite of stew. “If I had known, I likely would not have- but you should have seen his house Lucy!” Dorcas threw herself back in her chair and sighed, smiling. 

When Dorcas was led into the man’s home, she couldn’t bring herself to move for seconds. There wasn’t a thing she couldn’t see her reflection in and each piece of porcelain was blue china-- worth more than she herself was. She swore even the bed frame was made out of copper and gold. 

“I would do anything for that type of money, Lucy.” 

While Dorcas was in her daydream, Lucy had gotten a damp piece of cloth. She touched it to Dorcas’s face and wiped off her dirt freckles. 

“You are gorgeous, though, dear,” the woman now put the cloth down and held Dorcas’s face in her hand, “you do not need to do such things for love.” 

“For love!?” Dorcas pulled her head back. “I am not acting in such ways for love. I have felt nothing during the moments apart from joy when I receive my payment. I am not a woman fit for love,” she blinked rapidly trying to push the tears back.

When Dorcas was six, her mother, Margaret, had died. Lucy had tried to explain to her it was from all of the filth Margaret had been sleeping with, but Dorcas refused to accept that. She was bedridden for months and Dorcas would always try to aid her. She would sneak out at night and weasel into shops that left their doors unlocked, hoping to find food for her mother to keep 

her strong. One of those nights, she wandered into Lucy’s shop. 

The woman was sitting at a table in the dark, tears streaming down her face. Dorcas gasped and ducked behind a chair. 

“If whoever is there has come to take my earnings, please take my life as well,” Lucy sniffled and wiped the back of her hand across her cheek. She couldn’t bear a life without her now-dead husband and daughter. 

Dorcas’s curiosity got the better of her. She stood up, her face barely peeking above the chair, and tilted her head. 

“Missus, why are you crying?” 

Lucy lifted her head. “A child?” she said to herself. Too old to be my Eloise, she thought. “Dear, come to me, it’s alright.” 

Dorcas walked from behind her hiding spot and sat at the table with Lucy. She tilted her head, her sand-colored grease-covered hair bouncing to the side with her. “Why do you want to die? My mama is dying.” Dorcas put her hands in her lap. “You are far too-” 

“I am not too young. My mama tells me I am too young. But that is not true. I am not too young to understand and help my mama and even you, Missus.” 

Lucy wiped her eyes again. “I am sorry about your mother, dear. My baby and my love-” “Do you have any bread for my mama? She is hungry and weak and I need to help her.”

Lucy stifled a small, awkward chuckle. She realized she was talking to a child whose thoughts were still focused on one thing- helping her dying mother. The kid wouldn’t understand the death of Lucy’s only two loves of her life. 

“Yes, dear, I do.” Lucy stood up and beckoned Dorcas to follow. She took her into the back of the shop where she stored stale loaves of bread that she’d try to sell early in the morning. “Where is your father? Should he not be watching over you?” 

Dorcas grabbed two loaves bigger than her head and tucked them under her skinny arms. “My mama always promises to bring me a daddy. She always has new gentlemen coming into the house and they all seem polite. I want a daddy.” 

Lucy’s eyes shot open and darted around the room, soon focusing in on the blood that was still splattered against the storage room’s wooden walls behind Dorcas. “It is best not to get involved with those ones, dear,” her voice shook, still focused on the oxidizing red. 

Dorcas, always plagued by curiosity, turned around and pointed at the spot. “What is that, Missus? My mama sometimes has that colour wiped across her undercloth. How did it get there?” 

Lucy picked up a loaf of bread, stuffed it under her arm, grabbed Dorcas’s hand, and dragged her out of the room. “Just a design, dear. My husband created it for me.” Lucy continued to talk with the young girl and Dorcas continued to interrupt with her thoughts. In the following nights, Dorcas kept showing up, constantly asking about the gorgeous halo splatter of red “paint” in the shop, saying how she wanted that design in her house one day. Lucy always changed the subject.

Eventually, Dorcas’s mother passed away, but she didn’t cry. She had spent the last month under the care of Lucy who treated her more like a mother than Margaret ever was. For years, Dorcas lived with Lucy, helping her around the bakery as the dough-kneader and food runner. That was until Dorcas turned thirteen. 

A floorboard in her pale, pollutant-stained pink bedroom had been lifting up. Dorcas, still plagued by curiosity, pried it up and grabbed the lump of wood-- a doll-- and the piece of paper under it. Both were dressed in brown fingerprints. The doll had dust-covered yarn hair, tied in a loose braid. The yellowing dress reeked of spoiled milk. The paper had thin edges, permanent wrinkles, and unfaded ink writing. Dorcas, learning her literacy from Lucy, scanned the letter. 

Dearest Lucy, 

I cannot live with myself any longer and do not wish to curse you with Eloise. I have sent you out tonight for a reason. I did not need to have my pants tailored by Mrs. Cralle down the street. I just did not wish for you to hear the click of my revolver. You do not know I own one, but it is documented under my name. You will not have blame placed upon your shoulders. 

I am doing this for nothing but our own good, dearest Lucy. I cannot live with the guilt which is sleeping with Lady Hilliard down the street. This will be the first and the only time you have heard this. I hope you can find another gentleman to treat you kindly. 

Goodbye my dearest Lucy, may the rest of your time stay in your favor. 

Much love, Charles Hughes.

Dorcas shook and dropped the letter, clenching the doll in one hand and letting her nails dig into the palm of her other. She charged out of the room and down the stairs to confront the mother she never had. 

“Why is my mother’s name on your letter!? And who is Eloise?” she pushed the doll towards Lucy, still shaking. , 

Tears immediately struck Lucy’s eyes and she reached out to take the doll. “Where did you find this, Dorrie?” she ignored the first part of her question. 

“Under the floorboards. In my room. This is not mine. I have never once seen this toy.” “El-” she choked on the mucus dripping into her throat, “Eloise was my baby. Daughter of the Charles you must have seen.” 

“Why have I not been told you had a daughter?” Dorcas frowned. 

“You were too young, Dorrie. It did not even matter.” 

“Then- then why is my mother-?” she stumbled back. 

“Margaret is not mentioned--” 

“But Lady Hilliard is,” Dorcas could now feel tears dropping onto her apple cheeks. “You are a Hilliard?” Lucy said, trying to hold back the hiss in her voice. “Your husband killed my mother-” Dorcas snapped at the woman. 

“Your mother killed my husband,” Lucy laughed slightly as she said it. 

The argument between the two lasted into the evening, ending as Drocas left the house. She wandered the streets until a man approached her and offered to pay her for her body. Dorcas accepted without hesitation, acting in what she couldn’t decide was spite or distress. When she returned to Lucy’s shop late that night, she found the woman crying once again. The next morning, Lucy attempted to resolve the bickering, but the tension was present from that moment forward. 

As the years went on, Dorcas became less present in the shop and more present laying on the gravel outside of it. 

“I have shown you nothing but love! Do not say you are unfit, Dorcas!” Lucy hated to argue ever since the night Dorcas had discovered the past she kept hidden, but she couldn’t help but raise her voice at the girl she helped raise who stood in front of her. 

Dorcas clenched her teeth, hesitating for a moment. “Your love is only left over from your daughter, Lucy. And I am not her.” 

Lucy slumped back in her seat, her eyes darting around the room, picturing the blood-stained doll Dorcas had brought to her attention six years ago. “Why do you insist I should not care for you? I have been since you were a petite thing.” 

“I was caught last night, Lucy! You had to know this time was to come!” Dorcas cracked, spitting as she screamed at the woman. “You did not care when I snuck out that night. You did not care when that man first paid me. You do not care now. If you had, I would have been stopped.” 

“I-” 

“You made me this way, Lucy. Not my mother. Not your husband. But you. You have ruined me.” 

As she finished her sentence, the bakery door was pushed open. Men in blue coats swarmed in and took Dorcas by the arms. Lucy couldn’t speak as she watched her second daughter get taken away from her.

“And you do not even fight for me, Missus,” Dorcas said through clenched teeth as she was pulled back. “If you see me again, I will assure you you will only call me Miss Hilliard. I will ruin your life like my mother had.” 

Lucy watched in silence as the girl was thrown into a carriage and driven down the road. She returned to the back of her shop where the brown halo haunted her, bent down and lifted the other floor board, picked out the loaded revolver she had stored underneath, and pressed it to her temple.