that was among the prescribed school looks—no dangling locks

By this time I was feeling glum, which is one of the effects a birthday can have: you’re expecting a magic transformation but then it doesn’t happen.

Maybe I was too old to ever learn it, I thought. Maybe it was like fine embroidery: you had to start young; otherwise you would always be clumsy.

The books were very old, and the pictures had been altered at Ardua Hall. Jane wore long skirts and sleeves, but you could tell from the places where the paint had been applied that her skirt had once been above her knees and her sleeves had ended above her elbows. Her hair had once been uncovered.

Secretly I feared that I would be unable to believe in either. Still, I wanted to believe; indeed I longed to; and, in the end, how much of belief comes from longing?

Arms covered, hair covered, skirts down to the knee before you were five and no more than two inches above the ankle after that, because the urges of men were terrible things and those urges needed to be curbed.

to, but the past was too dark. Such a cruel thing, memory. We can’t remember what it is that we’ve forgotten. That we have been made to forget. That we’ve had to forget, in order to pretend to live here in any normal way.

my life of tiptoeing and eavesdropping continued. I worked hard at seeing without being seen and hearing without being heard.

Meaningless, I know, except for those who must have loved her and then been torn apart from her.