Orphan Girl

I knew she was an orphan before we made it through the kitchen, possibly even before I knew her name.

            Not true. I’m pretty sure her full name was in the roommate-wanted ad I had crumpled in my pocket.

            Orphan might not be exactly accurate, either, since she was clearly in her twenties, and there is, I’m guessing, some moratorium on being called an orphan.

            But she was parentless, and this I knew before we made it through the kitchen. We bridged the nondescript space she’d dubbed the living room, crossing to the bedroom:

            “We’d have to share,” she said. “But I don’t mind if you don’t.”

            “Did you have to share a room growing up?” I asked.

            She shrugged and turned away. I took that as a no. And something about that little maneuver made it fact to me. This girl had no family.

            I moved in the next day. It didn’t take long, especially since my boyfriend—ex boyfriend—had accidentally donated all my books and CDs to Goodwill a month prior. She—Winnie Waters, once we shook hands—had cleared exactly half the closet for me, and exactly half the kitchen drawers. I didn’t need all those, but she said she’d leave them empty, anyway, because I’d probably want them later. She’d moved all the bedroom furniture to one side of the room, so strategically that I could picture the line that declared, “That side is your side.” I made a note not to push the line.

            That day was cloudy, autumn before the months were ready. It was one of those days when the trees seem to whisper to themselves, and chipmunks scuttle out to decide whether it’s time to stock up for winter, but every human being is tucked safely in his home or wrapped around a Styrofoam cup in a coffee shop somewhere. Pumpkins should have been sitting on stoops, but it was too early for pumpkins.

            She helped me move my things from my tiny, ancient Honda to the apartment without saying anything except, "Sorry," when my photo album fell off the top of one of the boxes after she'd set it down.
           "Not your fault," I said. 
           She had a pretty face and the kind of slender build every girl wants but never sees except occasionally on television--the kind that looks perfect even without an outfit picked to accentuate it, which Winnie's did not. Her hair fell perfectly at her shoulders and was naturally multi-faceted, catching the light no matter which way she moved her head, despite the fact that it was a grim day outside. She had perfectly arched eyebrows.
           All of this was off-set by her ever-indifferent expression, her softly closed lips, and her deft movement through the apartment.
           Between the silence and the severe contrast of her military-clean half of the apartment and the barren space she’d left for me, I might have been intimidated. But I was too grateful to her for not asking why a pregnant woman had shown up on her stoop looking for a home that I didn’t think to be scared.

            The first night was rough. I didn’t sleep. Every little noise—outside or in—resounded in my ears. Rustles, creaks, the clang of the furnace coming on somewhere in the building. I envied Winnie, rotating in her sleep like clockwork. Nobody to come looking for her. Nothing to be disappointed about if nobody came looking.
           I didn’t notice until two-thirty or so that she really did roll over consistently every twelve minutes. I peered over in the dark and glanced from to her to the clock as every twelve minutes she turned clockwise ninety degrees.
           I made this a fascinating phenomenon to avoid hearing the noises.[...] I’d finally relaxed enough that I was going to fall asleep when her alarm blasted—at four a.m.

            She sat up without hesitation or complaint, smacking the clock once into silence. She rose, marched to her dresser in the dark (perhaps assuming that I was asleep, although I have a hard time believing at this point in our friendship she would have been so courteous), gathered clothes and strode from the room. Seconds later, I heard the shower.

            It was a comfort to have another person awake with me, but I didn’t fall asleep. I listened to the shower for four minutes (I didn’t notice the length that morning, but from subsequent mornings, I can guess that this shower was four minutes), and listened while Winnie brushed her teeth twice. Wash, rinse, repeat. Who does that? Winnie did.

            By five o’clock, she was back in the bedroom, fully dressed and short hair styled. I pretended to be asleep and watched her through slits in my eyes. Maybe she knew what I was doing, maybe she didn’t. She didn’t acknowledge me either way. She made her bed, so crisp I could’ve bounced a quarter off it, pulled a stack of books from atop her dresser, and sat cross-legged on her bed with the books next to her and an open laptop illuminating her face.

            At six o’clock, she snapped the laptop shut. Within seconds, she was gone.

            This pattern continued morning after morning. Weekdays, weekends, it didn’t matter—Winnie rose at four and vanished from the apartment by six. I did not know where she went, but I knew for the first couple weeks it wasn’t school because school wasn’t in session yet. I did start falling asleep on the third night, but I was always woken again when the alarm sounded at four. I got used to getting up then and perusing my Bible—the only book I’d taken with me—without actually absorbing what I was reading, and returning to bed after Winnie left for the day. [...]

 

Reviews

[Wildecat]

I totally enjoyed reading this story, and look forward to reading more, nice write.