The Quintland Sisters(93)

I returned to my own berth with émilie, tired now, rubbing my eyes, trying to find my way. It was darker in my little room than in the others, the curtains closed. I don’t remember drawing the curtains. I slid the door closed behind me and stepped toward émilie’s bunk for one last good night.

I didn’t see him in the room. Did I sense him? How could I not have sensed him there? I started to lean over émilie, squinting to make out her sleeping form. That’s when his hand clamped over my mouth and his other pinned my arms. I screamed, or I tried to scream, but no sound came. The screaming was in my head and in the train itself, but it wasn’t in that little room. It felt like the rush and chug and squeal of metal on rails got louder then, although émilie kept sleeping, and, in the middle of that terror, I felt some relief. That she was still sleeping. She hadn’t heard my scream, none of them had. In that instant, I was more afraid that émilie would wake and be scared or be hurt herself than I was of what was happening. Of what was happening to me. He pushed me to the floor of the train, his hands on my face and throat, the left side of my face, my ruined left cheek, grinding into the carpet. I couldn’t breathe let alone make a sound. I thought then that he was trying to kill me, that he was trying to choke the breath from me there on the floor of the train. This was all.

But that wasn’t his intention.

Pain. Pain like nothing I’ve ever thought possible, bigger than any scream. I tried to pull his hand from my throat, but it was as if moving through sand, too dense, too thick. No force in my grip. His jaw pressed against my temple, cursing, growling, things I couldn’t make out. His breath dank and foul. His hand so heavy on my throat I thought my head might break away. The pain so great, I hoped it would.

If the girls should wake, I thought. If émilie should wake and sit up in her berth. If she should see me, like this. See him. I couldn’t bear it.

So I didn’t kick. I didn’t fight. I felt the train scream beneath me, felt his mouth wet and hot on my ear, the fear and iron bitter in my mouth. Then his head thrust abruptly against my skull so hard, the agony so great, I must have blacked out.

And then he was gone. I lay weeping, I don’t know how long, then sat up and was sick in my own lap. It was as if I’d been cleaved in two. And there was blood, I realized. So much blood, hot and sticky and shameful. I was sitting in it, in my own blood and vomit and horror. My uniform, I thought. My whites.

Then I thought again of the girls waking, of émilie or one of the other girls seeing me like that. Of the guards who would surely be patrolling these rooms. Of Miss Callahan popping in to check on me. Of the reporters, night owls all, eager for a story.

Of him, coming back.

It dawned on me like a deeper kind of darkness that there was no one I could go to in that moment, no one who would help me, or point fingers, or allow any kind of fuss to be made. Not today of all days, but not any other day either. I sat there shaking. This is what men do. This is what men like this man do to women like me. Worse: I was not the first and I wouldn’t be the last. The catch: what had happened to me doesn’t happen in the lives of the Dionne quintuplets. It can’t and won’t, and if it does, I realized suddenly, it is erased. Ivy’s stories came careening back to me: all the gossip and tattle I’d elected to shrug off and ignore. Even this has been erased before.

I managed to pull myself to standing, trembling. So cold, so cold. I slid open my door and poked my head into the corridor. I looked right and left: once, twice. Then I took a deep breath and stepped through the door. Terrified of seeing him, terrified of seeing anyone. No safe place to go. The thudding beat of the train in my ears, the chug and clang of my heart.

I made my way to the rear of the carriage, wrenched open the heavy door, and stepped onto the rattling platform in the open air. A sob welled up, mute and deafening, louder than the train, shriller than anything outside in the night. The train was slowing down. I could see the lights of a town in the distance, too small to be Toronto, but big enough. Big enough to take me in. We slowed, we slowed, and I didn’t stop to think. I jumped.





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11 Rue Saint Ida


Montreal, P.Q.

May 24

Emma Trimpany When you didnt arrive on yesterdays train I called Callander and Davis household. Received no answers. Very worried. Please reply.

Lewis Cartwright 2pm





June 1, 1939

Miss Emma Trimpany Dafoe Hospital and Nursery Callander, ON

Dear Emma, I received one hell of a telephone call at the hangar today from Ivy, who was choosing her words carefully. She said you are safe and in sound mind, but that she couldn’t tell me where you’d gone or why—nothing beyond the cryptic message she said you’d asked her to pass along. She was upset by it, I could tell.

How on earth do you expect me to forget about you?

None of this makes sense. Wouldn’t it be better if we spoke together, you and me? I’ve tried all week to reach you at the nursery, but your Mr. Sinclair has refused to give me any information, merely parroting that you are no longer working there. I hope they at least have the courtesy to forward this letter.