Another Governess / The Least Blacksmith: A Diptych

Chapter 19

42 JOANNA RUOCCO I gather the crumpled pages from the corner. I put them in the fireplace. The map is stuck to the wall where the food has wetted it. I scrape the map. I peel the map from the wall and put it in the fireplace. There is nothing to make the papers in the fireplace burn. There is no flint and steel. There is no phosphor . It is cold and dim in the nursery. I am tired. I lie down on the carpet in front of the fireplace. Spot lies down. Tamworth lies down. This is where they sleep in the nursery, on the carpet in the nursery. I like to the lie down on the carpet. There is no carpet in the field. I lay in the field. I stood up. I fell down. I lay in the field, the field the farmer chopped from the forest. I lay in the field. I cut a lump on my foot and a worm came out. It was a very black worm. The jackdaws circled me. They pecked my hands, my feet. A fat girl from the dairy passed by me. Good morning Mister Magpie, she said and I tried to strike her with a rock. There were no rocks in the field. There were 19 43 ANOTHER GOVERNESS furrows. I pushed my hands deep in a furrow, but there were no rocks. I threw clods at the milk pail. The clods came apart in the air. Mister Magpie, the fat girl said, but they were jackdaws. The fat girl swung her pail back and forth so that her fat wrist creased. She did not know jackdaws from magpies. I laughed on my back in the furrows, looking up. The fat girl’s head was beside the blue sky and she did not know anything at all. In the dairy, Mister Cow, said the fat girl, but it was a wolfhound. I laughed at the fat girl, her fat bottom on the stool and her fat wrists creasing as she tugged at the udders of the wolfhound . The clod did not reach the pail. The clods came apart and the dirt fell onto my face. I wanted to strike the fat girl with a rock. Why weren’t there rocks? In the ground, there are rocks. Someone had cleaned the rocks from the furrows, had dragged the rocks away in the sledge. It could not have been the farmer, the man who owned the field and the dairy and two daughters with hats. The farmer did not drag a sledge through the furrows, picking rocks. He rode on a horse, his short legs flapping on the sides of the horse, his short arms flapping the reins on the neck of the horse. Perhaps it was the fat girl from the dairy. She came in the night to the field and filled her pail with rocks so I could not strike her with rocks in the day. But in the ground, the rocks are always rising. The rocks rise up from deep in the ground so that when you pick the rocks from the furrows soon there are more rocks, many more rocks, rocks that float to the top of the field. The fat girl could not have taken away all of the rocks in the night. The rocks would come back. She would need to keep picking rocks, walking the furrows, picking rocks, and then when would she milk in the dairy? The farmer’s two daughters are great big girls. They must drink great quantities of milk. They must treat their skin with milk below the hats. I have seen the two daughters dipping ladles in stone jugs of milk. At the top of the milk is 44 JOANNA RUOCCO the cream. The cream rises to the top of the milk and the two daughters drink the cream, great clots of cream. They don’t know if the cream is from a cow or a wolfhound. I laughed again in the furrows. I dug harder for rocks and found only clods. I threw clods at the pail. Finally the fat girl was struck by clod. The clod broke apart on her teeth through the open lips as the fat girl said, Mister Magpie, Mister Magpie, and the jackdaws circled all around her. The fat girl dropped her pail and it tilted over in a furrow and...