Chapter 2

There were five women at Milleson House. They were the permanent staff members of the boarding-house-turned-orphanage. Three of them had served guests when it was a boarding house. The other two had been hired on when the children arrived, and had been there now for three years.

Mavis Milleson, the owner, was forty years old and a widow. They had only been married for four years when her husband was killed in a mining accident. They had been unable to have children and, before he died, he had taken her to an orphanage back east to try to find a child for her to rear. That trip had been an eye opener for Mavis. She had been disgusted at the conditions the poor children had to endure, and had wanted to adopt them all. Her husband talked some sense into her, but the process wasn't even yet started to adopt a pair of children when he was killed and it all fell apart. She knew how those children were treated in the state-run institutions, and when she found out she might be able to rescue some of them she jumped at the chance. The fact that the Government subsidized her rescue mission was just frosting on the cake. Now Mavis couldn't even contemplate any other life.

Mavis, had she taken the time to pay attention, was still a handsome woman. Though there were a few gray hairs slipping into her thick hank of dark brown hair, she didn't notice them because she usually wore her hair up, in a bun. And at bedtime, she was too tired to stare into the mirror. The fact that she'd never had children, and was engaged in an active lifestyle, had ensured that her body was still firm and slim. Her breasts weren't overly large and she had no need to wear the stiff undergarments that were designed to support and control the sagging breasts of most women her age. Her waist was still thin and her hips swelled to make a perfect place for her skirts to hang from. There were men in town ... before the war anyway ... who had gazed longingly on those hips as she walked to and from the market. There were men who had stayed in her boarding house who were interested in her too. But she'd never taken the time to treat any of that interest seriously. She thought herself a sensible woman, and sensible women didn't dwell on dimly remembered pleasures. Just getting by was work enough that when she went to bed she was too tired to think of her unfulfilled physical needs.

Donna Pratt was one of the women who had worked at Milleson when it was a boarding house. She was now thirty-three. She married, at the tender age of sixteen, an older man, a farmer her father had done business with. Walter, her husband, had gotten her with child even though he was in his fifties at the time, and she had given birth to and raised a fine son. Life on the farm had been good, for the most part, even though her aging husband wasn't able to meet her sexual needs. She had only known one lover, and didn't really know what she was missing. She had found, long ago, that her fingers could bring her a very satisfying pleasure, though she'd never admit to anyone that she did that in the dark of night. She had also done something with her husband she couldn't bear to admit. When he was unable to achieve an erection any more, her love for him had led her to take him into her mouth. While he never got hard enough to service her starving pussy, she loved hearing his moans and gladly sucked the few drops of sexual nectar he could produce in those days. He had died peacefully in his sleep one night just before her son had decided to join the Army and go fight the Hun. She still lived on the farm, though she didn't work it. She rented out the land and took a share of the profit. Perhaps, when her son came back from the war he would work the land.

If he came back from the war.

Donna had grown into a lush figure, with large firm breasts and hips to match. She had never quite been able to get rid of the pad of flesh on her stomach that was left over after her son was born, but it didn't bother her any more. She, too, had been sought by men in the small community, but had rebuffed their attentions, choosing to enjoy her freedom to do what she wanted, when she wanted. Not that there was much to do. Still, it was nice to know she was under no man's thumb. The only real regret she had was that she had never had more children. When Mavis began taking waifs in, that urge abated somewhat. She was able to take care of babies, the thing she loved most, and even though they weren't hers, it was enough.

The other veteran of the boarding house phase of Mavis' life was Prudence Watson. Prudence was the only one of the women who had gone on to college after High School. She was ahead of her times in that society, being a confident woman who was willing to go up against a man to get what she wanted. The Depression had ruined that for her when her father, a successful merchant, lost everything and he could no longer afford her tuition. She had had to come back to Hamptstead, where she got a job working for Mavis.

She accepted the attentions of George Watson, primarily because he spent money on her that her parents couldn't. Love grew grudgingly. He wasn't an imaginative man, but he had a job and there wasn't really anybody else in town she was attracted to. And, while he didn't make her heart flutter, he made her loins ache and she was tempted on many occasions to give in to his repeated attempts to claim her maidenhead. He was twenty-three to her twenty-two years in age and when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and he decided to join up, she had, in a fit of emotion, married him before he left. After a thoroughly unsatisfying and somewhat brutal loss of her virginity, in succeeding sexual unions she had managed to get to the point where she had an orgasm while George lay on her gasping as he tried to get her pregnant before he left. But there had been just that one orgasm, at least with George. She too had figured out that her fingers were an acceptable replacement for what her husband was now using on some French slut who had stolen him away from her. She knew, at age 26, and with no children, she'd be a good catch for some man, but that was only if she somehow disencumbered herself from George. His letter saying he wasn't coming home might get her a divorce, but it would be horrifyingly embarrassing to go through that. All people would see was a young woman trying to divorce a GI, and would think her distastefully unpatriotic. More than once she'd wished he'd be killed in the war, which would make her situation quite secure. She also felt guilty about that on more than one occasion. Whenever that happened she just took his letter out and read it again. That solved that problem.

George's best attempts to impregnate her had failed. Prudence was torn between yearning to have her own babies, and being happy that he didn't leave her with child, considering what he'd now done.

Meg Johnson had come to work for Mavis after the war started, and after the boarding house had been transformed into an orphanage. She was eighteen on December the seventh, nineteen forty-one, and under extreme pressure from her wealthy parents to find a suitable man and settle down. Their idea of a suitable man and hers were widely diverse. Meg had a streak of wild woman in her, cultivated by stories her aunt Melvina told about the prohibition years, and the gin mills and dancing with men who pressed themselves against a girl in a way that made her want to do unseemly things with them. Aunt Melvina had an old box of photographs that she kept in her closet and one day Meg got into them. At the very bottom was a picture of her aunt at about age nineteen. She was standing in a forest, by a huge rock, with a large body of water in the background, and she was completely naked. She was obviously completely unembarrassed about her nakedness, based on the smile on her face, and the fact that she was obviously posing for the photograph. Aunt Melvina had caught her looking at the picture and had, at first, scolded her, telling her that a thirteen year old girl had no business seeing photographs like that. But eventually aunt Melvina had told her the story of the handsome man who had taken that picture, and what they'd done after it was taken.

Meg had wanted to experience what she had seen in her aunt's face, and heard in her aunt's voice ever since that day. But she didn't want to experience it with the men her parents thought were "suitable". They were stuffy, self-important men who expected her to blush and flutter around them. All she did was think they were boring. She wanted a wild man, a western man, perhaps. Someone who would sweep her off her feet and make her life glorious. Then, perhaps, when she had tasted that sweet forbidden pleasure, she might be willing to settle down with a boring man.

The war gave her a reprieve, since most of the "suitable men" went off to be officers in the service. And working for Mavis not only convinced her parents that she was trying to be responsible and support the war effort by taking care of the unfortunate. Meg had learned something else from her aunt, and that was what the little bump at the top of the slit between her legs was for. It was for making her feel good until she found the man who would sweep her off her feet. She kept that little bump in good working order by using it every single night. Part of her employment contract was that she was supplied with a room in the house, and meals, which got her out of under the thumb of her parents, at least most of the time.

And, Meg found that she had something to offer the children. She loved to read to them, and became expressive when she did, making up voices for the characters in the stories she read. It wasn't at all unusual for all the children in Milleson House, except for the babies, anyway, to be in a pile around her feet, like a litter of puppies cuddling together, while she read stories until it was bedtime. More often than not the only reason she stopped was because Mavis made her stop.

Last, among the women, not only in this story, but in real life as well, was Sally Winston, age twenty-three. Sally was, in a word, plain. She had always been plain, and would probably always be plain. Her nose looked a little off center, or maybe her eyes were too close set. Her hair was thin and a mousy brown color. She couldn't afford the special soaps that might have made it shine more, and it hung limp to her shoulder blades because she didn't know how to style it. Her father was a mill worker who made enough to feed his eleven children, of which Sally was the youngest, but couldn't save anything for his retirement. Her mother was a walking talking baby machine who was thin and worn from taking care of so many children. Now, with only Sally left, they could relax, but that was about all they did. They too were singularly uninteresting and uninterested. Sally had lived at home because no men came calling to see her. She helped her mother around the house, and took the job Mavis offered her at church one day because she didn't have anything else to do. She also took it because it came with a room and board.

As the youngest, Sally had never had to take care of her brothers and sisters. She had always been on the low end of the totem pole and had learned, like Bobby, to be invisible as much as possible.

But working with the children had awakened something in her that had slowly bloomed over the years into a quiet pride that told her, if no one else did, that she was good with children. She also listened when Meg read stories, and put herself in those stories as deeply as the children did. She read the books on her own too. When she was in the fantasy world of a book her life had color and excitement.

Sally had a certain amount of scholarly knowledge about sex and how children were made but, to her own mind, she had never had a sexual feeling in her life. Her breasts were flat, mere swells on her bony chest. Her pubic hair was so sparse as to be almost invisible. She bled, more or less monthly, like other women, but her cycle was nowhere near regular or dependable. It was almost as if her body had suspended its glide toward maturity while she was right in the middle of puberty. And, with so many older brothers and sisters, who pursued their own agendas in the household, it was as if she were invisible as she grew up.

Not that she was sad, or unhappy, particularly. It was more like she was a child who had been kept in a small room all her life, exposed to nothing much, and so she had no concept of what life could be like. True, she had been exposed to more than most with all her reading, but to her that was a dream, a fantasy ... not real somehow.

The women watched in awe as Bobby kept eating. At some point it became a game, to urge him to eat more, just to see if he could. There were occasional surges of vocal emotion at seeing the boy eat like he had been starved for years.

"Lands sakes!"

"I can't believe it."

"The poor thing's starved half to death!"

"Take your time Bobby, nobody's going to take it away."

"Well, no leftovers tonight," said Mavis, standing up and picking up her plate.

"If you ask me there'll be no leftovers ever again," snorted Donna.

"That's fine," said Mavis evenly. "I always strain to think of ways to use leftovers anyway. But we'll have to go to town more often." Even though the merchant area of Hampstead was only a few blocks away, they all referred to that short trip as "going to town".

As for Bobby, he knew he would suffer for what he was doing. Once, when a truck had overturned near the orphanage he was staying in, he had picked up eight apples off the road while the driver screamed at him. He had run with the apples, eating one as he pounded away. Then he had hidden and eaten all the rest. He still remembered the sweet juicy taste of the fleshy fruit, and the agonizing pains in his suddenly overfilled stomach as he lay in the punishment room on a thin mattress that night.

But the food was so good he couldn't make himself stop eating it. That he was allowed to do so, and was even handed a knife to cut his meat with, caused a haze in his brain he couldn't quite see through and some part of him still expected to feel a blow as someone finally noticed that he was eating more than his share. He was almost glad when Meg tipped the bowl of green beans over his plate, scraping out the last eight or ten beans. There was no more food in sight, and he could sit back.

He was so stuffed that he didn't want to move, and gave a long sigh.

"Well" said Mavis. "You can't eat like that at every meal. You'll turn into a pig if you do. But we're glad to have you with us Bobby. I hope you'll feel at home here."

Bobby sat and wished he hadn't eaten so much. His stomach felt bloated and he was already uncomfortable. He watched as the children who were old enough all carried their plates into the kitchen, where the woman who hadn't spoken yet took them and stacked them in the sink. The cleanup was surprisingly quick and efficient.

"Bath night!" sang Prudence.

Bobby almost winced as the children erupted in shouts. "Bath time" in his memory consisted of being hosed down with cold water while you scrubbed with lye soap frantically, since the water wouldn't stop until the attendant thought you were clean.

But these children were jumping up and down, for the most part and he saw several of them dash into the parlor. They came back with books in their hands and clustered around Meg, holding the books up and crying "This one!" or "Read this!" among other things he couldn't quite make out.

Donna approached the group and began herding some of the children into a group as they complained. Bobby watched in amazement as he began to understand that one group would be taken to bathe while the other would be read to by Meg.

Since nobody seemed to be paying any attention to him, he just sat and watched.

But somebody was paying attention to him. One small pale girl stood between the group that was settling to the floor, or had climbed up to sit beside Meg on the settee where she sat, smoothing her skirts as books were piled on her lap. The girl looked uncertainly at the chattering children, and then at Bobby, who sat, leaning back in his chair, still at the table.

Slowly, almost like she was trying to sneak, she came to Bobby and took his hand, from where it lay in his lap. She pulled, looking somberly up at him with big brown eyes. He stood and she pulled him toward the group, which had now quieted as Meg sifted through the books on her lap. She looked up and saw Bobby standing, his hand in the little girl's.

She smiled. "Sit down, Bobby. I read to the children on bath night, and you're welcome to join us." She looked at the little girl. "Thank you June Bug. It was nice of you to invite Bobby." She pointed to a chair that was just far enough away from the crowd of children that none of them wanted to sit there.

Bobby sat down and was astonished to find that June Bug immediately crawled up on his lap. She sat, her legs straight out, and leaned back against his chest.

Meg was staring at Bobby and the girl with a strange look on her face. She saw the astonishment in Bobby's face and the placid look of something close to contentment on the little girl's face too.

"Bobby," she said quietly. "June Bug is like you in one way. She doesn't talk either. I think you've made a friend."

Bobby didn't know what to think. This place was so strange that he had no frame of reference on which to draw to decide how to act. He found it strange that a little girl would want to be his friend when they'd only just met. Always before he'd had to jump through all kinds of social hoops to establish his place in the hierarchy of whatever place he was living in. Sometimes that involved doing things for people. Sometimes that involved fighting. Sometimes it involved comparing stories and the intricate social dance that was casual conversation between people who are forced into close contact with each other.

But here, in this place where he had done nothing other than eat until his stomach ached, where he had said not one word, somebody had drawn near to him simply because he couldn't talk. It was an amazing social experiment that he'd never have thought of getting involved in, but which was suddenly fascinating. Not knowing what else to do, he decided to just sit. The little girl wasn't hurting anything. As long as she didn't pee on him or something he decided to just let her sit there.

While Donna and Prudence herded the unlucky children chosen to be hosed down first into another part of the house, Bobby sat and listened as Meg chose a book, opened it, and began to read.

He was entranced immediately. No one had ever read to Bobby in his life. Bobby knew what books were, of course. They had been used at one time or another in his education, which was based on the "Three Rs", Reading, Riting and Rythmatic. And, truth be known, Bobby was quite proficient at all three of the basics. That was primarily because, if one did well in school, one received less abuse, but the result was the same as if he had wanted to learn.

He had once found most of a book in a trash heap. It turned out to be about four fifths of "Treasure Island". It had been involved in a fire, so both the front and back pages were missing. Still, Bobby had been able to figure out the basic idea of the book and he had been enthralled instantly, comparing himself to Jim Hawkins. There were a multitude of adults in his life who fit the personalities of Long John Silver and his crew of pirates, but the characters of people like Dr. Livesey and Captain Smollet remained a fantasy to him.

The tattered book was taken from him and thrown out as punishment for some forgotten misdeed. Bobby had always wondered how it ended.

Now, as Meg read a simple children's story, her lilting voice rising and falling, changing as the characters in the story changed, Bobby found himself transported in his mind, like reading Treasure Island had transported him to a hot, wet, dangerous, jungle island in some far away place when he read his book.

It seemed like she had only been reading for a few minutes when six naked and screaming children, wrapped in towels, came running into the room. It was time to change over, and there were groans of dismay from the children who had been listening, eyes wide and mouths hanging open, as Meg read to them.

June bug hopped down off Bobby's lap and again took his hand, pulling at him.

Meg spoke to Prudence, who was herding the six unwashed children in the direction the naked ones had come from. "June Bug has adopted Bobby," she said. Then her mouth froze in a look of almost agony as she realized what she had said. "Adoption" was a very special word in this house, and not to be used flippantly.

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The Orphanage Blues

Lubrican

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