It seemed like a disaster waiting to happen to Winnie. She was afraid she would slip on the floors of the courthouse. The floors were polished marble, and the soles of her shoes were well-worn, smooth. She was out of place in a building so pristine. White walls, white floors, lawyers and judges in white robes. Her second-hand suit, made of faded blue gabardine, had seemed a good choice in the morning. Now, it seemed too attention grabbing.
She leaned closer to her lawyer, Lister Morris. “Is what I’m wearing alright?”
Her lawyer ignored her, busy going through the papers of their complaint. He was a young lawyer, and inexperienced. However, he was the only one they could get. All the others had refused to take their case. It was a case that was doomed to be lost, some had warned her.
Winnie knew it too, but there was no alternative. It was either fighting or dying faster. Starving or succumbing to the poison. At least this way, there was a chance of getting something from the factory owners. She walked into the courtroom, behind her lawyer, avoiding the prying looks and flashing cameras of the photographers.
“Is it always so full?” she asked Lister. He looked up from the files briefly and around the room. As his eyes grew wider, Winnie regretted bringing the crowded courtroom to his attention. He looked like the kind of person who would have performance anxiety. The other girls had stayed home. Some because they were too ill, and others because they did not see the point.
The crowds settled into the mahogany benches, hands folded on their laps. When the three judges entered the room, they all rose. Winnie rose too, but half a second late. She was not used to the etiquette of higher society. They weren’t easy to learn, either. Etiquette classes were taught in the northern part of the city, and she couldn’t afford the taxi fare let alone the lessons.
One of the judges cleared his throat. They all took their seats slowly, after observing the people of the courtroom, pausing over her blue suit. They were all old men, with hair as white as their robes and lines between their brows. She finally looked towards her left, at their opponents. She didn’t recognize the representative, but their lawyer was a familiar face. He was all over the televisions, with his charming smile and placating voice.
“It’s unfortunate, what is happening to the girls,” he said on interviews. “But it has nothing to do with my client. The girls were given the gift of good jobs, good pay, and they indulged in dangerous lifestyles, experimented with illicit substances. The consequences of those excesses are what we are seeing now. All that my client did was provide a livelihood to those in need of it.”
The interviewers parroted his words. The scientists claimed that nothing in the Hollyworth factory was harmful. Some of the other girls took hush money from the company and disappeared back to their villages. Some died. Counting Winnie, only twelve remained in the city, repeating a truth no one was willing to listen to or believe except those in their own circumstances, who knew how money worked in Tharn.
The first of the judges waved a hand towards Lister. “We will hear opening arguments.”
Lister stood, coughed into a closed fist, and began. Winnie tried to hide her expressions as he spoke. Lister was not a gifted orator. He stumbled over their prepared statement. He stumbled over nothing as he walked nearer to the judge’s pulpit. And when she thought it could get no worse, he bumped his knee against their table and let out a groan.
In other, less life threatening, life altering circumstances, she would have found it funny. As it was, it was horrifying. She could see the frowns deepening on the judge’s faces, expressions like they had been chiseled in. At the end of it, they looked towards Hollyworth’s lawyer expectantly.
He rose, buttoning his suit and readying himself. He cleared his throat. Winnie was reminded of the street performers she and the girls had sometimes given coin to as they walked home from work. He was a performer in front of an audience, the judge and the crowd behind them both awaiting his statement.
“We know young girls do silly things, Your Grace,” he began with a chuckle. The light-hearted expression fell away to one of deep concern. “Often, those thoughtless actions lead to severe consequences.”
Winnie bent her head down. She was tired of hearing herself and her friends being portrayed as careless women. Not even women, but girls. The entire city thought they were sour and vindictive, that they had been wild and uncontrolled and the drove themselves to their miserable fates.
They’d had fun, it was true. But they were girls freshly anointed with the confidence of a steady salary, a respectable job, and the charm of youth. Of course they’d lit up the city of Soverden in the evenings. They went to the public dances in their polka-dotted uniforms and work boots. They’d sprayed themselves with cheap perfume and skated along the length of the Halewen River in the winters.
It wasn’t a crime to enjoy their lives, but Hollyworth’s lawyer made it seem so. She could feel the disapproving looks on her back, the whispered murmurs about why girls should stay home, should get married and have families. Their uncommitted ‘crimes’ would be used to condemn all women their age, all women who desired an inch of freedom.
She still had hope, even against all the evidence and arguments against her. Her hope existed even in the face of her common sense. The people around her lived in Soverden. They knew how the system worked, or rather, how it didn’t. At least some of them must have been wronged by the same cogs of the machine that was now trampling all over and her friends.
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Hollyworth’s lawyer looked towards her. “I understand that you’re upset, Miss Glass. But your tragedy does not entitle you to the money that Mr. Hollyworth has worked his entire life for.”
Winnie couldn’t help herself. She scoffed. Mr. Hollyworth didn’t know what work was. He had inherited the factory and company. All the work involved was done by his employees. He demanded respect he did not deserve.
Witnesses came forward, their words smooth from practice, made more convincing with the bribes Hollyworth must have offered them. The day passed with falsified evidences and lying experts, the judges scribbling notes onto papers in front of them.
At last, Winnie was called to the stand. She was one of the stronger ones of the girls, still barely sick. She knew it would get worse. It always did, for all of them. She’d started to get weaker as the day passed, and today was no exception. She wobbled her way to the witness stand and swore to tell the truth. Not that it mattered.
“How long were you employed at the Hollyworth factory, Miss Glass?” the lawyer asked.
“Two years, sir,” she answered.
“And no illnesses during that period?” he asked.
“Not the first year,” she answered. “But all of us started getting sick when the new products were brought in.”
“But there was another change too, wasn’t there Miss Glass?” he asked.
“What change?”
Hollyworth’s lawyer folded his hands behind his back. “All of you girls moved into Miss Blanche’s Rooms for Girls, didn’t you?”
They had, around the same time the factory started receiving orders for the new products.
“Miss Blanche offered us a good deal, for all of us together,” she said. “It was cheaper than renting rooms in peoples’ homes.”
“Why was it cheaper, Miss Glass?” he asked.
“I assume because the rooms were smaller?” she suggested.
He tutted at her. “It was because Miss Blanche’s Rooms for Girls, was more an establishment meant for gentlemen.”
“Excuse me?”
“A brothel, Miss Glass,” the lawyer said. “Your cheap accommodation was in exchange for your services. We have experts certain that your current illness is a result of those activities.”
“There was nothing of the sort!” Winnie exclaimed.
“We have sworn testimony from more than a dozen men, Miss Glass.”
“And how much did it cost, their testimony?” she asked quietly.
The lawyer only smiled. Winnie hated his smile. The company could’ve paid them all what they asked for, but they’d spent many times that on the court case, on proving the company’s innocence. The lawyer had made a small fortune on discrediting them and running their reputations through the mud. Their coworkers had received promotions and bonuses for backstabbing.
She was done.
“It doesn’t matter, does it?” she asked. “It doesn’t matter what we say or what happens to us.”
She’d thought justice was important, but as a wave of nausea came over her, she knew something else stood higher. Time.
Winnie stood and bowed to the judges. “Forgive me, Your Graces. I’m dropping our suit.”
She stepped out of the witness stand and left the courthouse behind. The photographers and reporters followed her to the main steps, swarming her like parasites. When she saw the familiar yellow of a taxi, she called out to it.
Sitting inside, she almost told him her address. Miss Blanche’s Rooms for Girls. Had Miss Blanche been part of it? She was only a sweet old lady, but sweet old ladies could be persuaded by money too. Winnie paused. There would be no money, no settlement to look forward to. She couldn’t afford a taxi all the way home, even though her days were numbered.
“To the nearest bus stop, please,” she said, knowing he would drive her a bit further, take a few side turns to make a bit more money. She couldn’t blame him. The city swallowed those who did not survive. They disappeared into its gaping mouth, into the bowels of poverty and addiction, to the final release of death.
He dropped in front of a bus stop, where she was now overdressed among the other people waiting. It was nearing sunset, and the city was starting to glitter. The northern part of the city always had power. The lightbulbs of the street lamps were replaced within hours of them burning out, the roads had no potholes. Even the buses were new. She would have to change buses along the way, but at least part of her journey would be spent in comfort.
As she traveled through the city she saw the way the wealth trickled away. The houses crowded closer together, the buildings fell into disrepair. The people along with her changed as well. Students and young professionals got off, replaced by housemaids and gardeners going home to their more humble abodes in the southern part of the city.
She arrived at the front door of their home. More a nursing home now, than just a home. The garden had been taken over by weeds long ago, all the girls who grew flowers dead in their graves. She had visited some of the graves, barren things that didn’t even have grass growing above them.
The door opened, and Sara looked out. She leaned on her crutch, her face heavy with perspiration. It was an effort to do the most basic things as days went by. Her legs were growing weaker, the eyes losing their life.
“We lost?” she asked. There was a resignation the question. Winnie knew it was the eventuality, the only ending to their plight that made sense. There were no miracles in Tharn, no saviors coming to help the poor, miserable souls stuck in Soverden.
“I gave up, Sara,” Winnie admitted. “I dropped the suit.”
Sara’s face twisted into anger. “After coming this far? After ignoring all of us that said to drop it sooner. Now, you give up?”
“There was no hope anymore, Sara,” Winnie said.
Sara would know soon enough. The newspapers and the television reports would tell her what they were now labelled as. They had lost everything, and soon, when the papers were out, they would lose their reputations.
Sara sighed. She slowly turned around and walked into the darkness of the house. They kept the curtains closed most days. It was cooler, and it kept them out of the eyes of curious neighbors and passersby. Miss Blanche walked in a basin of hot water. The sickest ones could no longer get up. Winnie fell into the chair at the kitchen table. She was tired, but hunger was a distant emotion she no longer remembered. The illness took appetite away.
“You should eat something.”
There was no point. Eating would only prolong her suffering, extend her lifespan by a few days, maybe. She wished she could be like some of the girls who had given up from the beginning. They had known that death was inevitable and fell into it headfirst, wanting nothing but freedom from the pain. She had seen their bodies fall apart, figuratively and literally, while they struggled to put food on the table. Miss Blanche had been kind to them, but now she might suffer as well.
She couldn’t bring herself to tell them the truth. It would make no difference. From upstairs, she heard the the clang of the basin of water hitting the wooden floor, and Miss Blanche’s silent weeping. She’d gone into Beatrice’s room. Beatrice was lucky, in a way. She’d never have to face living in disgrace, at least.