1949 -- In the beginning
Prologue
Julia Monroe leans her forehead against the window of the railroad car, her mind barely registering the scenery streaming by. As a young teenager, on her way home from the boarding school, she was fascinated by it, imagining all sorts of wonderful stories set on fantastical worlds. This time, Julia is thinking of a very different sort of story altogether.
Now eighteen, fresh out of college, it is with a heavy heart that she is on her way to spend the summer with her aging great-grand-mothers for what she is certain will be the last time.
Julia does not know if she can be strong for mammy Juliette and mammy Arianna as she remembers them having been for her all her young life.
Chapter 1 - 1949
Juliette Hébert, née Lalonde, was widowed early in her first marriage when her husband died in an industrial accident at the steel plant where he worked. As a young woman in her early twenties and with no education to speak of, life looked bleak for her as the social support network was almost non-existent in those days. She got luckier than most and found employment at the McGill University doing maintenance, another word for scrubbing floors but with better pay and working conditions than being in the service of some rich family where she would have been considered as much of a slave as they could get away with.
Early on she was assigned to the library where her tasks included emptying the wastebaskets, sweeping the floors every night, washing them once a week and keeping ahead of the dust which accumulated everywhere. The main drawback was that she worked nights. It was hard on her. She slept poorly in the daylight hours and so was always tired, but she eventually learned the trick to sleep a few hours in the morning and in the evening, leaving her half the day to do whatever needed to be done.
In fact, it was a friend who taught her this way to manage this different circadian cycle.
Arianna Monroe was a History student, working on a Masters degree. Afflicted with a party animal for a roommate, she made use of the university library late in the evening where she could have the peace required to complete her thesis paper.
Late one such evening, her concentration on the analysis of the early events leading to the First Anglo-Boer War of 1880-1881 was suddenly broken by an unusual noise in the silent library where she knew for a fact she was alone with the cleaning lady. Looking up, she tried to locate the origin of the sound, but, as it didn't repeat itself, she figured the woman must have dropped something. Arianna was getting back to her work when she heard a muffled groan that seemed to come from further back in the huge room.
As she was born with an insatiable curiosity and such a visceral drive to help others in need she would have been called chivalrous were she a man, Arianna got up, her left knee popping, and, slightly limping at first from a foot having fallen asleep, she went in the direction of the low noise, looking left and right down the rows of bookshelves.
Almost all the way to the back of the library she was startled to see a form that could only by a body lying on the ground. With a muttered curse, she ran toward it. She kneeled beside the woman whom she recognized as the cleaning lady she had seen every night since the beginning of the semester.
Remembering her training as a WAC in WWII, at first, she did not move her since she could see a little blood where the woman had hit her head either on the ground or on something else as she fell. She checked her pulse which, to her relief, was strong if somewhat irregular.
The woman's eyes fluttered open as she regained consciousness. She seemed startled to see Arianna kneeling by her side and made to get up, but Arianna put her hands on her shoulders to keep her still.
"Easy dear, you have had a nasty bump on the head. Stay still for now." Arianna told her softly. "What happened to you?"
"I don't know," the woman answered in a tremulous voice, "I was climbing the stepladder to dust the top shelves and I began seeing sparkling lights and feeling dizzy. The next thing I know I'm on the floor."
"That sounds like a sudden drop in blood pressure. Take it easy for a moment and you should be better soon. Your eyes seem to focus on me correctly and you sound coherent enough so you probably do not have a concussion. How does your head feel?"
"My head hurts a bit, but nothing too... Ahhhh!"
Before Arianna could react, the woman sprang upright to a sitting position. Her eyes were wide with fright as she looked at the blood on her fingers from when she had touched her head at Arianna's words.
"Easy, easy now." Arianna said, putting her hands on her shoulders as much to keep her there as to reassure her. "You must have hit your head when you fell. It already stopped bleeding, so it cannot be too serious."
Reaching in her jacket pocket, she pulled a couple of tissues from a bunch she always kept on hand.
"Here, press this on your head for a few minutes."
That's when the shock of the experience seemed to hit the woman all at once. Looking wide eyed at Arianna, she was suddenly wracked by tremors and tears flowed down her cheeks. She seemed to want to say something, but only a whimper escaped her trembling lips.
Arianna's heart went to the sitting woman and she hugged her tightly, trying to reassure her. "Now, now, sweetheart, it is all right. You just fell down. Everything will be all right."
Feeling the woman shaking against her, she dearly wanted to be a rock for her, but she could feel tears of sympathy wet her own eyes. That was the reason she had not pursued her medical career after the war. She had seen too much suffering and her sense of empathy was too strong. She had never mastered the ability to distance herself from the patients and took their pain too personally. So she had gone back to school to study history where the infinite ways which men found to hurt each other would only be of academic interest, remote in the pages of books found in the safety of warm and quiet libraries.
Having cried herself out, the woman was glad for the warmth of the other's embrace which had sustained her in her moment of weakness. As she regained her composure, she became aware that her rescuer was trembling.
Surprised, she pulled away slightly, keeping her arms around the woman and looked at her. She was amazed to see the look of sadness on her face and the unshed tears that filled her eyes.
"What's wrong miss? Are you okay?" She asked, her own hurts forgotten as she was suddenly worried for someone else.
Arianna tried to smile. "Yes, I am fine. I was just worried for you and then when I felt you cry against me, it brought up painful memories."
"Well, I'm better now and there's no need for you to get upset anymore. Let me pick my things up and we can exchange this uncomfortable floor for chairs while we regain our composures."
In a few minutes, they were seated in the deeply padded armchairs used by people who came to spend hours reading books.
"Thank you for your help, miss. My name is Juliette. I don't know what happened. I'm always so tired because I can't seem to ever get enough sleep since I began working nights."
Arianna had to chuckle at that. "I certainly can sympathize with your plight. I had so many problems with sleep deprivation at one point that it was getting truly unhealthy. An army doctor taught me how to manage it and now I can function with catnaps when I am unable to get a good night's sleep. And my name is Arianna. I am a student here."
"I know, I see you almost every night. I like it when you are here. It feels like you keep me company. I love my job, but it does get lonely sometimes."
Arianna laughed, "I can relate to that feeling. I love doing research, but even if the library is full of people, when I am working I am in my own world and I sometimes forget that life goes on around me."
As they spoke further, the women discovered a kindred spirit in each other regardless of their different backgrounds.
Arianna talked of her youth in a privileged family. As an only child, she could have enjoyed a life of leisure, married a man of her own heart and spent her days working at some charity while nannies took care of her children. Instead, an active mind and a strong sense of duty sent her to medical school on her way to becoming one of the very few women doctors. In the late 30s, women were discouraged from the profession, but Arianna, daughter of self-made CEO Douglas Monroe, was not to be denied.
When the country was engulfed in WWII, she put her education on hold and decided to do her part as a nurse in the army. Her parents were not happy about it but they had taught their daughter to be independent and they knew she was a strong woman, so they supported her decision, if reluctantly.
Unbeknownst to her, her father used his political influence to make sure his only child would be stationed on the home front where she would be safest. So he was dismayed when Arianna announced that she had volunteered to be posted in an army hospital on the European front and had been accepted. She would leave as soon as her basic nurse field training was completed.
While she was free with funny anecdotes about doctors, other nurses and life in the army in general, she was recalcitrant to share her experiences in the hospital to the point where Juliette could see her eyes misting and hear the catch in her voice whenever the subject came up.
Taking the other's hand in hers, she offered her support. "It's okay, dear. You don't need to talk about it. I can only imagine how bad it must have been. I was too young to enlist, but I read the newspapers and we listened to the news reports on the radio every night. You made it through and it's time to leave that part of your past behind you and to look forward to a brighter future."
With a wavering smile, Arianna acknowledged the sentiment and after a few minutes, her innate good nature came back to the fore. "I know. It is hard to let go sometimes. I try very hard not to think about it. In fact, I would like very much to be able to forget the whole thing completely." With a last sniffle, she changed the subject. "Enough about me, I talk and talk and I do not know anything about you except for the fact that I have to teach you how to manage your sleep better so I do not pick you up off the floor every night."
Giggling, Juliette took it upon herself to cheer her rescuer. She spoke of her large family. Of being a second mother to twelve younger brothers and sisters. Of having to quit school in ninth grade even though she would have loved to go on but having to make do with going through as many books as she was allowed at the local library. Of her frustration when many books that looked so fascinating were denied to her as a woman. "There are only so many books on family economy that I could read before becoming bored to death." She laughed at the memory. "My mother had taught me well and most of what I read was pure nonsense that had little relation to what goes on in real life."
When she spoke of her dear Jacques, the childhood sweetheart whom she had married soon after her 21st birthday, of her fondest wish to have many children and of his accidental death before she could become pregnant, Arianna could see a world of hurt in her eyes and took her hand in her turn.
"I am so sorry, sweetheart. That's why I stopped believing in God. If He exists at all, He must surely be a monster to allow such hurt in the world." And as her heart filled with sympathy for the other woman, her treacherous mind went back to her experiences in the war and, all of a sudden, she was wracked by deep sobs, tears overflowing her eyes.
