Her timing was fortunate. In those days, the benefactors of the orphanage were still generous enough to fund her overseas passage. Her exam results were better than almost anyone’s on the island and this was the kind of thing that made a sponsor proud. By the time she met Coventina Brown six years later in England, Elly was finishing her nursing studies and already in the midst of formulating a new plan.
Cake
“Go on, Elly,” Coventina said.
Elly closed her eyes but could still see the light from the candles through her lids. She took a deep breath and blew. She was twenty-one years old. Not long ago, she was just a skinny pickney living in an orphanage thousands of miles away.
Elly at ten, always hungry, never sleeping.
Elly, walking barefoot on cool tiles in the dark.
Elly, praying for no scorpions in the hall.
Elly, at the kitchen door, searching for the tin.
Elly, breathing in the smell of rum-soaked fruit.
Elly, scooping cake crumbs out of the tin.
Licking her fingers, closing the lid.
Rushing toward her bed, praying for no nuns.
Now she had her very own cake. The birthday candles were for her. The applause and hugs were all for her. The girls who shared the kitchen in this London bedsit had been soaking the fruits for weeks and setting aside the eggs, just for her. Elly was still motherless, still fatherless, but not alone.
“Here,” Coventina said, handing her a knife to cut the cake. Coventina had made the cake and Edwina had done the icing and Elly the Orphan was happy. She had found a new family in a chilly, damp city, an ocean away from her island home.
Elly didn’t know when she would get back to the island. It might be years yet. She kept a picture of a butterfly tucked in a Bible that Sister Mary had given her. She kept a cardboard box with a letter from Sister Mary and some shells from the garden at the orphanage and the old hair comb and coins that she’d found while digging in the dirt. One day, she would go back and show Sister Mary her photograph of the girls from the nursing school. They were smart-looking and smiling and standing in a row as if they had always been together and always would be.
Covey and Elly
When Covey first met Eleanor Douglas at the teaching hospital, Eleanor said, “Call me Elly, like jelly, or belly!” She was such a serious-looking gyal but she’d come out with things like that to make Covey smile. Covey knew that she was taking a chance, striking up a friendship with someone from the same island and agreeing to move into lodgings with women who all knew one another. Still, by the time Elly said, “Why don’t you come live with us?” it seemed like the most natural thing to do.
It was only then, in the cottony air of Elly’s laughter, in the pots of stew peas and rice on the kitchen table, in the novelty of walking down the street together, that Covey realized just how bad she’d been feeling until then. She hadn’t been part of any kind of group since the swim club. She hadn’t had anything like a real friend since Bunny.
“Shhh,” one of the other girls said through the door of their room one night, rapping lightly on the partition wall. She and Elly had been chatting too loudly, as usual. There were rules about such things. Better to have their housemates warn them than the landlady herself. They should have been in bed but instead, they were both sitting on the floor between their respective cots, peering at the map that Elly had smoothed out over the rug.
“So this is where we are,” Elly said. “See, here? The rocks in this part of England are some of the youngest. Mostly covered by clay and other soils left behind by glaciers.”
“Glaciers,” repeated Covey. The idea of a force of nature so vast and slow and cold, shaping the world, intrigued her. It made her think of the sea, of how they’d been taught as children that the world was land surrounded by sea when in fact, it was the other way around.
“This piece of land, here,” Elly went on, shifting her finger along the waxy surface of the map, “was pushed into existence by violent processes and rose up to become what it is today.” She raised her eyebrows. “Not so different from what happened to our own island, see?”
Covey nodded. She tried not to smile. In that moment, Elly’s expression made her look more like a middle-aged schoolteacher than someone hardly older than Covey.
“Everything is connected to everything else, if you only go far enough back in time.”
Covey thought of the ocean that stretched from where they were now to the faraway place where they’d both grown up. And without intending to, Covey found herself talking about her life before. “I used to swim,” Covey said. “I used to swim in the sea. For miles and miles.”