Magpie Tales#57

Willow at Willow Manor shows us this picture for her 57th. writing prompt.  Many more responses can be seen by following the link.

My Name is Violet

   Grandma told me about her mother, my Greatgran, who I can't remember.

  "She was an orphan, Lucy. A foundling." Grandma explained what a foundling was. I was eight or nine, I guess.

   "Where was she left? Was she warm enough?"  

   "Outside the Post Office. "

   "So she could be posted?"  Grandma tutted me. Tutting was the crossest she ever got. 

   "There was a ticket on the box she was in. It said 'My name is Violet.' She went into an orphanage." When Grandma explained an orphanage, I thought about Mum and Dad at home.

  "Gran . . when I come to stay with you, am I an orphan?" Grandma smiled, something that didn't happen very often. She fetched her photo albums from the bookcase nearly as high as the ceiling. 

   "I'll show you." We sat at the table. She gave me some lemonade she'd made herself. It was O.K., but not as good as Cola.

   "Here she is when she was a little girl about as old as you." We looked at a picture like the pictures they take every year at school, girls sitting in a row, another row standing behind. The photo had crease marks across it.

   "They all look thin. And sad. And their dresses are all the same. Are they all orphans? And why has that one got no hair?" I pointed to the orphan at one end of the standing-up row.

   Grandma said, "That's your Greatgran Violet." I looked at Grandma then, trying to imagine her without any hair. Or Mum. Or me.

   "What happened? To lose her hair."

   "There are dreadful things in this world, Lucy."

   "I know, Gran! She had nits." I thought about Mum's little black comb and how she said "Chop it all off. Best way."

   "The supervisors beat those children, Lucy. All the time. They called your Greatgran Little Violet NoName. They cut all her hair off because she couldn't remember 'Our Father'"
   I just looked at Grandma. The words my Greatgran Violet couldn't remember even though they cut off her hair came into my head. "Why, Gran?"
   "Then . . " I saw Grandma's jaw clench. "Then they painted her head and face and neck with stuff they used when the girls got skin rashes. Stuff called Gentian Violet. Then they laughed and told her she was a real violet now and to go away and learn her 'Our Father' and then they'd wash it off."
   Grandma got up and went to the window and stood very straight, looking out, and I saw her hands clenching and unclenching and I could tell she was angry.  I went and stood beside her and she put an arm round my shoulder and pulled me to her.
   "Her face stayed all purple till she could remember 'Our Father'? That wasn't fair, Gran."
   Grandma turned me to her and hugged me and I saw her eyes were full of tears, something I'd never seen before. "No, love. It wasn't fair." Then she said, "Look! Here's Dad coming to take you home. I'll get your anorak."
   When we got home I went to my bedroom and said 'Our Father' to myself, all the way through, just to make sure my hair would be safe.
   I was eight, then, maybe nine, old enough to want to keep my hair, too young to understand all that my Gran's story and tears had taught me.