Forever a Stranger*

Once upon a time, long ago and in a land far, far away…
There was a young girl who lived in the mansion on the hill, just at the edge of town. Her mother had lived there since before most of the villagers could remember so they’d got used to her and her ways. They said she’d inherited a fortune as well as the house after her husband died, which was just as well – its corridors rambled here and there, it was ramshackle and needed a lot of work to keep it in good order.
She didn’t invite friendship but she didn’t interfere in their affairs either. From time to time, if they needed a new village clock, say, or fresh fencing for the school playground, she’d donate enough to meet the need. She wasn’t lavish in her charity, but judicious. And she rarely refused.
She was somewhat old-fashioned too. She expected people – even the farmhands – to be clean and neat if they came calling, no muddy boots or grubby hands. And she’d receive them in her drawing-room, high-ceilinged with tall, thin windows, tall and thin like her. Her bearing seemed stiff to some people, sitting straight in her chair, insisting on the proper formalities. Most odd of all, she always wore a full-length dress with long sleeves, a headscarf that sometimes seemed to hide half her face and gloves – pretty, lacy things in a lovely creamy finish that seemed at odds with her otherwise bleak demeanour.
No, she wasn’t liked as such, but she was valued. And, the women added, she couldn’t be all dour and drab, because after all, she had a daughter. The girl was eleven now, all legs and elbows like girls coming to that age often were. That spring she’d completed her time in the village school and after the summer was due to start at the big school in the neighbouring town.
Now, the girl raced into the house, clattering through the kitchen and hall, slamming doors behind her and skidding to a halt behind her mother. She was panting, though whether from her headlong dash or her violent emotion, it was hard to tell.
“Quietly, child,” admonished her mother, without turning round from the window where she stood gazing out over the low meadow. She sighed. “Yes?”
“It’s not fair!” the girl wailed. Her eyes flashed as she paused a second for her mother to turn round so she could accuse her face to face. Her mother didn’t stir. Presented with the immutable grey of her mother’s back, she suddenly drooped, all energy and anger huffed away, her hands dropping to her sides, limp and hopeless. “Oh mum! Please! Please let me go. Just this time.”
She negotiated instinctively. Having grown up without siblings, nothing but adults at home, she’d learnt early how to bargain for what she wanted. And carried on, even when it rarely worked. She was provided what was needed and what was useful for her – and little more.
She drew a deep breath and carried on.
“Please – they’re going to the pool up by the high woods. It’s so hot now and it’ll be fun. Please. It’ll save me having a bath tonight and I promise I’ll keep my clothes clean. Stupid clothes,” she added under her breath, tugging at her sleeves, pulling one up and scratching vigorously at her eczema. She’d learnt to stop scratching or picking at the spots on her face but the itching on her arms defeated her. Most of her classmates had developed spots in the past months so she didn’t feel so awkward any longer, though hers had begun earliest and seemed bigger and redder than theirs. But still, if she scratched or squeezed them like the others, they didn’t pop, just got bigger and felt redder.
“No.” Her mother’s denial was absolute. She didn’t raise her voice. If anything she had dropped it. And that just made it more final. “No,” she began again, softer. “Sweetheart, has that Katy been saying things about you again? Is that what this’s about?”
“No!” snapped the girl. Though in truth she’d not have known if Catty Katy had been telling lies about her again, turning the other children against her. She now spent her break times walking the perimeter fence alone, looking purposeful but actually picking at weeds, watching insects or simply day-dreaming. “No,” she added more quietly, “But last time we asked her for tea she told me people like us don’t mix with people like her!”
Her mother’s head jerked. “What? What did she mean?”
“It’s your fault!” her daughter said, gathering her defences into attacking the only thing she had to attack. “Why’d you have to be so rich?” she carried on without drawing breath – so that she didn’t see her mother’s back untense or her shoulders slowly fall with a sigh of relief and something else – resignation?
“She said that she’s too poor to be getting all gussied up just to have tea. She’s got work to do. And we’re too rich, we don’t know what it’s like to be like everyone else – we’re different!” This last ended almost as a whisper, pleading to be told this ultimate injustice would disappear, dismissed with a single wave of her mother’s capable hand.
At last her mother turned to look at her. “But we’re not rich, darling,” she said, as the girl drooped before her. “We only ever just get by. I have to manage things carefully. You know that. We need to keep this house going, and it…”
The girl interrupted, something not usually tolerated. “No we don’t! Why? Why do we need to keep it? Why can’t we just buy somewhere in town? Somewhere small, and then we could just forget dad’s money and I could be like everyone else!”
Her mother stood silent a moment before she slowly breathed out to prepare herself for what would come next. She had been dreading this all her life, ever since she’d discovered it for herself. She knew how lucky she’d been to find her husband, to find he loved her and married her. She was what? Fourteen, fifteen? So young. Young enough to fall in love with the idea of romantic love, too young to understand those courting her were using her naivety against her. And when she discovered the one she chose hadn’t loved her, but had loved her money instead – the wealth he thought she’s inherited – she’d been bereft. She’d made herself into an ice queen, the better to fit his taunts of ‘frigid bitch’, while she crumbled inside. But she never let him see her true self. Not even when he’d taken her and she’d become pregnant.
When he left, the habit of coldness had become ingrained and so she embarked on the third part of her life, being a mother to her child. It was for her she’d invented the story of a rich, dead father who she could idolise or blame as needed. But for her herself, she loved the baby as she’d never loved anyone, not even herself. But she hid that love behind discipline, a discipline needed to keep them both safe.
Her daughter had come to a stop, having flung the accusation in her mother’s face. She hadn’t noticed her nails scratching at the skin on her arms, where her rash was now so pronounced it was a disfigurement she’d be alarmed to see.
The mother gently tugged her own sleeves down over her wrists, ensuring the hems were covered by the ends of her gloves. It was an automatic reaction, one she didn’t usually notice. But now she thought, yes, you’re your mother’s daughter.
“Darling – quiet now. Listen!” When she was sure the girl was really listening to her, instead of being caught up in her own thoughts of resentment and frustration, she went on.
“Your father was not rich. He was not even well off. What money…” she’d paused over the word – “what money we get, doesn’t come from him. It comes from me.”
She’d picked her words carefully. So carefully she thought her daughter wouldn’t yet understand, but these unnoticed words might affect her a little so that when the truth became clear it might help her accept it more easily.
“Here,” she added, “Let’s sit on the divan by the window.” And she sank down and held her arm along the back, gesturing for the girl to sit next to her. The child paused a beat – her mother never did this. She never relaxed or petted her, in fact she’d often thought her mother tried to avoid touching her. So she was wary as she sat down. She didn’t nestle into her mother as another child might have but sat hesitantly within the embrace of her arm.
Her mother bit her lip, then, smoothing the fabric on her knee, began to speak.
“Your father had no money. He knew I had – though he was mistaken about where it came from. And that’s why he married me. He wanted to be rich. I didn’t. I’d have given anything not to be wealthy. I wanted what you want.”
She could see her daughter puzzling over this. If she didn’t want to be rich – if she’d never wanted to be different like that, then she could have just given it all away. The woman gestured, stopping the child even as she opened her mouth.
“No. It wasn’t possible. I have tried to give away my riches. It doesn’t help. I’ve tried using it to help others – in the end it doesn’t help. I’ve tried hoarding it – but that just breeds jealousy and anger.”
“In me as much as in anyone else,” she added to herself.
“No, if one’s as wealthy as I have been at times, then nothing helps: you’re different to everyone else. And it hasn’t been possible for me not to have this, not to accept this. This,” another sigh, “burden, that some would call a gift, cannot be refused.”
Her daughter thought there was more to come – what her mother had said was so odd, she couldn’t quite understand it, so she waited.
But then her mother lost courage.
“Darling, you’ve understood that this gift is no gift. It’s,” she paused and shrugged to take the bitterness from her next words, “It’s a curse. But it’s what we have. We must accept it. As different as it makes us, we must accept it.”
“Now, off you go. I’m proud that you’ve discovered this for yourself. But now I need you to accept it.”
The girl slowly stood up and turned away, walking back out of the room. She’d noticed that her mother had talked, at the end, about ‘we’, what ‘we’ have, not what she had.
———————————
A day or two later, the mother, as was her habit, took the path over the meadow into the next town. There, she boarded a train to the capital, and that afternoon, having lunched quietly in a little-known restaurant, she visited a small, backstreet place where goods were sometimes bartered, and the owner recognised the Real Thing when he saw it. Though she’d been coming here for years – having established to her own satisfaction that he did not gossip – he examined closely through a jewellers’ loupe the items she handed over the counter. He looked up to take her measure, but today, as always, she was veiled, her face concealed behind a silk tulle of the finest weave. Frustrated, he decided, as always, to rely on what he knew and paid her – not well, but fair enough, and clearly satisfactorily enough for her purposes.
She nodded and departed. He was sure he’d see her again in a month or two. Her visits would ensure his old age wasn’t spent in the poverty he’d feared. He’d already made enough on her donations to set by a tidy sum. But he was no longer cheating her. Not that she’d ever protested, but she’d chosen him when there were many other in the city she could have patronised, and she’d been coming to him for so long that he felt he owed her some respect. They’d never become friends – she’d rebuffed the occasional warm words he’d offered her, commenting on the weather, enquiring about her trip, where she’d eaten, when she might plan on returning – but she murmured such nothings, it dismissed his efforts and he’d given up years before.
Now, they respected each other, used each other – but with fairness – and left it at that.
——————————————
She returned home, and drank tea, thankful for the respite. The relief after such a day was palpable. But just then her daughter charged into the room, breathless and with one arm thrust out in front of her.
“Mum!” she yelled. “Look! What is it? It, it…” she gulped to a stop and opened her hand, palm up.
There, in the middle of her hand, sitting insignificant and ordinary, lay a tiny pearly sphere, not much more than a creamy dot which seemed to glow with life. The woman looked closely at it. She’d been expecting this for so long, yet she needed a moment or two longer to gather her thoughts. She picked it up from her daughter’s hand and held it up to the light. It was perfect – no blemishes, no discolouration, no bumps or chips – a perfect, tiny pearl. But she still wanted to tread carefully, to preserve as long as possible her daughter’s childhood.
“Where did you find this?”
“On my pillow! This morning!” Everything she said came out as exclamations, she was so excited. “I’m not sure, but I think the tooth fairy may have left it!”
“But you haven’t lost any teeth for ages, darling.”
“Oh, well, yes. I was thinking though that maybe she scouts about, looking for wobbly teeth and maybe this fell out of her rucksack when she was checking on me!” The child was not looking for confirmation for this frankly unbelievable story. She’d grown out of the idea of the tooth fairy some years before and now delighted in gravely agreeing with the little ones at school that this year the tooth fairy would be leaving pound coins, not just ten pence pieces. No, it was clear to both of them that she wanted not agreement but comfort, for some logical explanation that could dismiss the jewel in her mother’s hand as inconsequential.
“No,” said her mother, “I don’t think it was the tooth fairy.”
Frustrated at her mother’s stalling, the girl grabbed it back and brought it up close to better examine it. “But what is it?” she demanded.
“It looks like a pearl, sweetheart.”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I thought!” The child’s excitement overtook her fear – which she’d not even been conscious of, or barely. “Yes, it is a pearl. Only a little one. But isn’t it lovely!” Then, after a pause while they both admired the little gem – “but I do wonder, where did it come from? Did you leave it for me?”
“No, I didn’t,” smiled her mother. She sipped her tea and then set her cup carefully back down on its delicate saucer. “It’s yours.”
“You mean I can keep it?” She looked delighted, and allowed herself to not notice the missing ‘but’. To not hear how those words – “it’s yours” – could mean something different.
“Yay!” and she bounced away in search of a suitably fine box to keep it in.
—————————————————
It was no more than two days later that she sought out her mother again. The child had returned home from trailing after the village girls who’d got up a picnic outing to the low meadow. They’d pretended to get tipsy on home-made lemonade, held roly-poly races down the hill, made daisy-chains and picked grasses and seeds out of each other’s hair. The girl from the big house had crept closer till a kinder child took pity on her and let her join in – but her clothes, heavier than theirs, kept getting caught up and her long sleeves and leggings left her hot and bothered.
“Oh why do I have to wear these silly clothes?” she complained. “Why can’t I wear what everyone else wears?”
“But you know the sun makes your eczema worse,” replied her mother.
“Yes, but I get so hot!” she protested, “And it’s getting worse anyway” she added.
“Let’s see,” said her mother, rolling up the girl’s sleeve. She looked at the rash, which had now concentrated more or less in one spot on her forearm. At the centre of a large angry red area was a paler mark, raised above even the dry red blotchiness. She brushed her fingers across it – it was definitely a lump.
“It’s worse on my other arm,” grumbled the girl, and slid up her other sleeve, scratching as she did so. Then, with a sharp in-take of breath, her fingers caught on the lump and tore the translucent skin stretched so tightly over it. “Ouch!” she squeaked. They both looked down.
The girl’s jaw dropped as they looked at what was now exposed on her flesh. The mother said nothing. What could she say?
“It…it looks like my pearl,” said the child. Trembling slightly, she reached for the thing and picked it out of its bed of clear fluid. She rolled it into her palm and they both stared at it. Then she raised her eyes to her mother’s, asking the unspoken question.
“Yes,” said the older woman, matter-of-factly, “Yes, that’s another pearl. Here, let me just dab you dry,” and she took a tissue to the girl’s arm, patting gently. “That’ll heal in no time,” she said.
“But what…what…?” the girl couldn’t form the thought, never mind the words. She shook her head.
“It’s okay, darling,” said her mother. “This is just what happens when you reach puberty. Remember I told you about that?”
“Yes, but that was just about, about down there stuff and my chest,” she said, grimacing. “And besides, no-one ever said anything about this!”
And then, before her mother could reply she rushed on, “And I did hear Katy and the others talking about that, about periods and stuff, and spots, and boys,” she paused to pull another face, “but no-one said anything about pearls!”
Her mother turned away from her. She gazed out of the window again. Then she stretched her head up and back, trying to release the tension in her neck, and eventually spoke quietly.
“Yes, but that’s them. This is us.”
The child didn’t know what that meant, but she did understand the deeper message – that whatever this was, it was particular to her family, something that set them apart, that was different and could never be wished away. So she waited for her mother to continue.
“You’ll get your period – any day now, I expect – just like all the other girls. But your skin problem, it’s not likely to get better, I’m afraid. That’s why I’ve taught you to dress modestly, always. You needed to get used to covering up. You’ll need to stay covered up from now on.”
The child was in shock. Still holding the pearl, holding this thing that had been made by her body, that had grown out of her body. She didn’t have eczema or acne, but she had something – something else. And she was looking to her mother to explain it to her. But the knowledge that she was different had been growing in her unnoticed during these few short, eternal moments and with it, a flood of anger.
“How? Why pearls? They are pearls, aren’t they?” she pleaded, but rushed on, “How? Why us? Why me?” She finished on a wail of panic.
“Shhh, child,” interrupted the woman, who now turned and drew off her gloves and pulled back her own sleeves. The skin was puckered with tiny scars, as numerous as freckles. She pulled her scarf away from her forehead – it was the same there. And her other arm. The girl watched open-mouthed at each revelation.
“We are different.” A pause. “Each girl in this family, as she becomes a woman,” another pause, “when her periods begin, she develops a skin con…she develops the ability to…”
She sighed. “Our bodies start making pearls. Where other children develop blackheads and white heads – spots of any colour” she laughed sadly, “where they make spots, we make pearls.”
Her head felt heavy. She was covering up her arms without really noticing. These days she didn’t feel comfortable with any part of herself exposed to the world, so long had she practised the habit of hiding. She felt guilty. She knew she wasn’t, that she’d had no choice but to tell her daughter, but the telling hurt the girl, and she felt guilty for that. Just as her mother had done to her. And her mother before her? Yes.
“But why? How?” The child was beginning to cry. And it seemed that her mother hadn’t managed to answer her questions. No, her mother thought, no more than my mother did for me.
“There’s no ‘why’ to it, darling,” she said, “I don’t know why this happens. Nor how, really.”
She pressed on over her daughter’s anger, the beloved face now lifted to glare at the older woman.
“All I do know is that it’s just us, no-one else. And that you mustn’t let anyone else know. Your grandmother was used and – and hurt by people who found out.” She couldn’t tell the child what had happened all those years ago. How the family her mother had married into had kept her to be milked of her pearls as they erupted. How her mother did nothing until she realised they planned to treat her own daughter the same way. Then, oh yes, then her mother had begun to plan. Had schemed and gathered a few necessary things, hidden them over months until the night when everything came right and both of them fled, away from their captors, away from the revulsion they provoked, away from the humiliation of their lives.
No, she couldn’t tell her that, not yet. She might yet find a way to be accepted, perhaps a life less isolating than the one she’d fashioned for herself. After all, she’d kept herself safer than the child’s grandmother. She might be alone, but they were secure and if she was not loved, she was at least respected by the community around her.
“You must keep this private,” she said, “It doesn’t stop. You won’t stop making pearls after you’ve grown up. They keep coming. You’ll never have to worry about having a roof over your head, or food.”
She gathered her thoughts, reminded herself that she was talking to an eleven-year old. “And you’ll always be able to afford the nicest clothes and the best toys. And we can start going on visits abroad, see all those places you’ve learnt about at school.”
But it was no use. The child had understood the hardest thing. That however much good the pearls might bring, whatever the benefits, she would never again fit in. She would never have the same sort of life as her class-mates, she could never look forward to sharing their lives, to friendship or love, not even to companionship. She was different: she would never fit in, she would never be accepted.
——————————————————
And so their lives carried on. The mother protected her daughter as best she could by teaching her how to reduce the ill effects of her affliction, trying too to show how it might, in a small way, be also a gift. The child turned to her books for comfort. In the course of time, the daughter won a scholarship to university and her mother accepted that even the companionship of her child was to be lost to her. She accepted her future calmly. She didn’t understand why the women in her family were different, but at least she had provided a less harsh childhood for her daughter than she herself had had.
Years passed and the daughter returned to her childhood home when a message reached her that her mother was dying. She went to her mother’s bedside and whispered the needful things – her love, her sadness, her hope.
“I’m not hiding, mother,” she said. “Not exactly. And I’m not alone.”
Her mother’s pale gaze shifted towards her. She was too weak to speak.
So the elegant woman kneeling at the side of her mother’s bed told her of her life. How she’d studied fine art and then sought out a particular jeweller in the capital and asked to be his apprentice. How, after years of watching and learning, she began creating her own pearl-encrusted pieces and how she gradually established a name for herself. How the elite, the rich and even royalty began to buy her rings and earrings, her necklaces and headpieces. She became the kingdom’s most sought-after jeweller, surrounding the most beautiful and perfect pearls with graceful artwork in gold and silver and platinum.
Her reputation brought many men to her door. Eventually one came more often than the rest and showed her more care than the others. She took a long time, suppressing her own instincts and checking his apparent feelings time and again, testing how far honesty and kindness imbued his being. Eventually, she came to trust him and when he asked her to marry him, she accepted – on one condition. But over the months, even this she set aside, finally letting him see her. She forgave him his momentary shock, for no look of disgust followed it and they reached for each other in a loving embrace that met and fed their deepest need.
She told how she had children – two boys and a girl. And that while her sons were ordinary lovely rascals, her daughter was quiet and watchful, perhaps sensing already that there was something. But for herself, the strange way she dressed was now accepted by others as the quirkiness of the artist. She had found a good enough way of living.
As she finished, she realised the covers her mother lay under had become absolutely still and that her mother was gone. On her face was the faint outline of a smile. She too had found a good enough life.
And as she gently closed her mother’s eyes, she whispered “Thank you for doing your best, for loving me. I wish I could have recognised that love more easily.” She sighed. “But knowing you loved me was enough – in the end. I don’t know why we’re different, no more than you did, but I’ve found a way to live. And perhaps my daughter will take the next step. Perhaps she will learn what makes things as they are, why they become what they are. But I promise, before that, I’ll help her find a way to live without fear, within the warmth of a family that accepts her even in her difference.”
She stayed a few moments longer, kneeling at the bedside. And then she rose and turned to face the world again.
* “Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone?”
Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938), American novelist

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