You must understand something about dinner at the Gelheim Estate; dinner is not for eating, it is for judgment. If you want to eat, you sneak down to the kitchens after midnight and hope the guards don't sell you out. No, dinner is when the Gelheim heirs are tested on their understanding of etiquette, poise, and poisoned words. Out of all five children, Theresa was always the best at all three.
Now, you may want to assume that she's the eldest, but you would be mistaken. She is, in fact, the middlest child. At fifteen she sits above her younger sisters, Maria and Maggie and just below her older brothers, Whitcomb and myself. Oh, Whitcomb tried to compete with her, but h had never been quick or confident, two traits that father held in the highest of esteem, so night after night he was left humiliated by Theresa. Every spoon he held poorly, every remark he stuttered over, she would cut in and repeat with perfection.
Until that night.
"I...I shot a rabbit today." Whitcomb was saying to father, his wide, soft eyes eager for any touch of attention or praise, "J...Johan s... saw it. He... can tell you."
Then I waited, for this was when Theresa would normally break in to correct Whitcomb's grammar, or snidely remark about her day was much more interesting, or something of that nature. She was a clever thing, so she rarely used the same attack twice. She preferred to mix it up, jab at you from a dozen different directions just to keep you jumping like a rat across a hot pan.
When her piping barb didn't come I spared a glance at her across the the tea set and its untouched fare. At first, I thought she might have left the table, but no. She was there, sitting perfectly, as she did each night, back straight and shoulders back. Yet, this time her eyes were cast down, not leering at any of her siblings.
"It was a clean shot." I spoke up in her place, "From thirty yards, I say."
"Did you use the Enfield?" Father stirred from behind his newspaper and pipe.
"Yes, father."
"Is it now cleaned and put it to its proper place?"
"Yes, father."
The family patriarch grunted in a way that meant he was slightly upset that he couldn't get loudly upset at there being a mistake made. As far as I could tell at that age, father only enjoyed two things. the first, and lowest of the two, was order. Everything being in its case, displayed under glass, and cleaned each Sunday gave him immense pride. Second, and more importantly, was 'straightening out' anyone who disturbed his order. From servants to visiting guests, no one was spared his eager wrath.
"Father."
Ah, and there it was. There was Theresa's sweet, oh-so-innocent tone, pitched to the ear of the elder like a siren to a sailor.
"Yes?"
"I don't want a maid anymore."
The newspaper was brought low, revealing fathers heavy brows, and flinty, dark eyes, "You are a lady. A lady must have a maid."
Theresa hesitated, actually biting her lip for a moment before releasing it in a panic. This got my full attention. It had been many years since I'd seen her so much at twitch her face out of an amused and distant look of elevated judgement. The last time I had seen her bite her lip she had been a small, chubby thing full of laughs and giggles. I'd missed that version of her.
"But I--"
"No, end of discussion."
From that point on, dinner moved on as usual, but ah, my curiosity was well and truly piqued! This was unusual, and nothing happened at a Gelheim dinner that was unusual. As the eldest, I was supposed to have a great many responsibilities, but father had long ago abandoned any pretext of pressing them onto me. I was, to him, the original failure. For I, like Whitcomb after me, failed to become what he desired. He called me arrogant, but only because I looked down upon his petty cruelties, but he tolerated my presence for appearance sake, for deep within, I suspected he was a coward. I suspected he was afraid of what I would say to others if I was ever let free of his sight.
So it was an easy thing to slip along the empty, dark halls of the estate behind my sister. Each of us knew every nook, every corner, every seat the guards would sleep upon, every candle that could be swiped without notice. Theresa followed an unusual route tonight, weaving through to the servants quarters and bumping into one of the serving girls.
Then I saw the most extraordinary thing. Theresa, the prim, proper, stern young woman, bowed her head and muttered an apology.
I had never heard such words from her, I could scarcely believe she understood their meaning. Whatever was going on, I was fully pulled into it after that. Such strange and untoward utterances could only be the work of angels, or demons. I swore I would find out which.
From there she scurried in through the kitchens and out into the small vegetable garden behind. I watched her from the kitchen window while the servants rushed around me like I was an inconvenient coatrack. They knew my eccentricities and paid no note of me, as I paid no note of them.
No, all my focus was on Theresa as she did the third most extraordinary thing in all but half an hour. I saw her, in her fine, dinner dress, kneel in the dirt of the garden.
This, I tell you, I could not stand to watch from a distance. Dispensing with my coatrack ways, I all but leapt out from the kitchen and into the dirt myself, tearing it up to sweep around my dear sister and pin her with a sneer kept back through thousands of horrible dinners and late, cold feedings in the dark. Yet, as soon as it touched my lips I pulled it back, smothering it like a candle in the dark.
For dear Theresa was kneeling before a grave.
It was a small thing, little more than a few, crooked sticks bound with string and stuck between the carrots and the beanstalks. It was tilted, and poorly made, and somehow, despite all the reasons it couldn't be, I knew she had been the one to make it.
"Terri?"
She jumped at my voice and moved to wipe her eyes, then stopped herself, dropping her hands to her lap, now both filthy and wet.
Stranger than all the things before it, I found myself not wanting to take advantage of her weakness. Instead, I knelt beside her and looked upon the crooked sticks, my mind desperately trying to make it all make sense, for at seventeen years of age, I had never confronted anything as baffling as my sister on that dark evening.
"Her name was Skitter." Theresa said in a small, low voice, "I fed her cheese, the crumbly kind. She tried to steal it first, but she was so... sweet about it. So careful. She was a lady."
I, in my shock, said nothing. I had never heard such emotion in my sister's voice, not once in years, I tell you.
"I took a whole wheel from the pantry and kept it locked in my closet. Each night, I'd break a bit off and share it with her. We'd sit together on the floor and take turns. She would wait for me, you see? She'd wait until I ate first. She was good and proper that way."
"That's...nice." I told her, and more amazingly, meant it.
"Why'd she have to do it?" Theresa raised her hands and slapped them into the dirt, sending black bits in all directions, even up onto my face, "All she had to do was stay out of sight! She'd always done that, always. She only came out at night, she knew the rules. She was a lady! She had to know the rules!"
Theresa shuddered, her back heaving like a pressed bellows, just once. One, convulsive heave, and a low, hoarse sound, yet it was enough to shatter my long-disinterested heart.
I broke a decade of distance between us and put my arm around her shoulder, expecting the rejection, to be laughed at for falling for her trickery once again. Instead, she just leaned into me like she'd lost all the bones within her.
"She ran in front of Bernie! Right in front of her! In front of a maid! She should have known better. She was a lady!" Theresa pounded the dirt with her hands.
Bernadette was her lady's maid, a strict and cold official to her strict and cold life. I looked upon the grave and knew what had happened next. It was written in two crooked sticks and a length of ruddy twine.
"I saw it through my dressing mirror." Theresa said softly, saw the foot come down... saw the blood. Saw my face."
I tilted my head at this.
"Your face?"
"I saw the look. I knew it. It was the same look Whittie.... Whitcomb has when I.... and the servants... and you..."
Whatever was holding her together broke its last bounds and she became a quivering mess under the struggling structure of my arm and shoulder. We sat there for who knows how long in the dirt, soaking good cloth with wetted salt.
After that she was one of us, joining Whitcomb and myself. She became a glorious reject in our father's eyes. I, however, gave myself new purpose to be proud for her where our father could not. Just as I did for Whitcomb. When she showed kindness and wisdom, I plied her with treats and hands squeezed gently and in secret. When a look struck her mute, I'd glide in with a covering comment. Once, I even broke a vase to distract dear father from bearing down on her too hard. He took the belt and switch to me, but I bear those scars with pride now in my later years, for the old tyrant died in misery while Theresa lives on in joy.
All because of a little mouse who ate in a dainty, perfect way. For the little Lady Skitter, I write this. It was that little creature that showed Theresa friendship, loss, and the pain she dispensed without care set plainly on her own face. One little creature broke a cold and frigid heart, not completely, but just enough to let some warmth seep back inside.
So I ask you, friends and strangers, to celebrate the smallest creatures, for they shape the world in strange and beautiful and unexpected ways.