Becoming Anne Again

Chapter Two

"Mrs. Cuthbert, you have to understand..."

"I wanted a son!"

"Mrs. Cuthbert..."

The sentences and questions swirled around Anne, seeming to completely encompass her entire being, tiny as it was.

Wipe that smile off your face, carrots. No one else is going to want you. You're wasted goods. The words seemed to rip right through her, and despite how scared she was, she was more scared that he was right, that there would never be anything left for her. She slowly put down her bag, watching as Mrs. Cuthbert became more heated. Anne had never seen someone more angry that they had gotten a girl. Well, that wasn't true. Once, she had seen it.

"So I can go now?"

It was the dull voice of the redhead that caught Mrs. Cuthbert's attention, and for the first time she looked Anne right on. It was funny, she had always imagined girls with toothy grins and braided hair, bikini tops, jean shorts, and flip flops. But Anne looked as if she was half dead, as if swimsuits should be exchanged for funeral dirges. And in another circumstance, that may have been enough to melt Mrs. Cuthbert's heart. As it was, she felt a pang, but then the indignation that social services had brought this on her flared up once again. "I hope you realize what kind of predicament you've put me in."

Alexander wanted nothing more than to sock this woman in the nose. God, he hated social work. Why had he gone into this? Was it the fact that he found out that he wasn't going to make it as a psychologist, and he needed to do something with his damn education?

None of that helped now. "Mrs. Cuthbert, is Mr. Cuthbert at home?"

Mrs. Cuthbert uncomfortably shifted her weight from one foot to the other, until finally opening the door a little wider. "Yeah, he's upstairs."

"I'm sorry, I'm not doing this." Anne adamantly stood on the steps, much to the chagrin of both Alexander Spencer and Mrs. Cuthbert. "What? Listen, I don't care if you don't want me," Anne said, even if it was a lie, because she desperately needed someone to want her, even if she was going to run the other way because she was scared out of her dang mind. "But I'm not going through this. You don't want a kid, fine!" She said, angrily shifting her bag from one shoulder to another. Her voice began to rise with every sentence, and her eyes practically lit up. "Don't take me! Now, if someone will please emancipate me, I'll be out of everyone's hair!" She was practically shouting, but Mrs. Cuthbert had yet to work up at the courage to tell the girl to shut up.

In fact, she was so loud, that no one heard the creak of the stairs until Mr. Cuthbert was in sight. "Samantha? I heard shouting."

"There's been a mistake," Mrs. Cuthbert said, practically bristling. "They brought a girl."

"I'm sorry honey, I couldn't hear that."

"She said, they brought a girl," Anne said, her lips set into a firm line. So Mrs. Cuthbert was upset? Well, that was nothing compared to what Anne was feeling. Indignity? Try raging anger because someone else had wrongfully rejected you, someone else had failed to be a decent human being. Part of her wished the darkest of fates on the woman, like Rosencratz and Guildenstern, being beheaded for a crime she did not even commit. Some days, Anne would have thought that an act of mercy.

"A girl?" Mr. Cuthbert looked over at Anne, his voice soft. His hands were buried in his pockets, and the apples of his cheeks were blushed pink. A boy made him nervous, but a girl was a new species entirely. Especially teenage girls. "And, uh, you must be the girl."

"Yeah, I'm the girl," Anne said, crossing one arm over the other. Mr. Cuthbert was surprised by how hard the girl sounded—for some reason, in that moment that he found out a girl had been delivered to their doorstep, he had expected some bubbly teenager who used big words she didn't know the meaning to and talked too much. That was not Anne Shirley.

The entire room was in such a state of confusion that if it weren't for the fact that most people avoided social work like the plague, Alexander Spencer was sure he would be fired. But that very fact was the reason why Anne Shirley was where she was today. If it weren't for the fact, the entirety of her life may have been written.

Oh, the thought! It felt as though it had been carried by the ocean breeze, although that same breeze caused Anne to think of the many romantic deaths that could happen on Cape Cod. To dress in white petticoats and wade into the ocean, dragged down to clear, shallow depths as one's skirts filled with drink. Or perhaps she could throw herself off the cliff and be dashed by the rocks below, the muse for some starving poet.

Or maybe she could steal someone's gun and take a shot behind the ear.

"Mr. and Mrs. Cuthbert, if I could speak to you both privately?" Alexander said, glancing over at Anne nervously. Her face was stoic, every expression kept from her pale face so her skin appeared to be that of a ghost's. In fact, Mr. Cuthbert had to look closely at the girl to convince himself that she wasn't an apparition come to haunt him about his own past.

"What's your name?" Mr. Cuthbert asked shyly, causing Anne to look her in almost wonderment.

"Anne," she replied, and without quite thinking, she added, "Anne with an e."

She hadn't been Anne with an e since before the O'Keafe's. But then again, no one had taken the time to ask her in a long time.

"Well, Anne with an e," Mrs. Cuthbert said sharply, looking her over. She paused, the fire inside her dying until she had collapsed into a deflated form. "We're not going to turn you out overnight."

"I'm not staying," Anne responded, her own demeanor not a bit softened. She turned her nose a bit, her hands shoved in her pockets. Both Cuthberts looked shocked, although Mrs. Cuthbert's shock appeared to be much more exaggerated than Mr. Cuthbert, who's eyes only slightly widened. Asking for any other form of attention would be completely foreign to the man, who nervously rocked back on his heels.

"Anne," Alexander said, far less surprised at Anne's outburst than the other two were. "You should stay here."

"They think they're doing me a service," Anne argued. "They don't get to feel like that."

"I know how you're feeling..."

"You have no idea how I'm feeling." Her voice wasn't loud, nor was it particularly filled with expression. She sounded dull, almost as if the life had been sucked out of her. There was no emotion present on her face—no fear, no anger, nothing but acceptance.

Matthew Cuthbert wanted nothing more than to wrap the girl in his arms in that moment. A sensitive spirit, he had always been more in tune with human emotion than his wife, much to the dismay of those who adamantly supported archetypal relations between the genders. He could feel the quiver of emotion running through Anne, because he himself recognized that no emotion was in fact an emotion—or at least it was something. It was not simply empty, just like an empty glass is not simply empty, it is empty of something. "Anne with an e," he said, his voice soft, but not quiet due to his hearing problems. "Please stay."

In the quiet of that moment, Anne could hear the waves lapping on the shore just outside the Cuthbert's house, and combined with the softness of Matthew, she couldn't help but feel just a little more at ease. In truth, she did not have many other alternatives. She could run away, but she had lived on the streets, and she knew it wasn't a fairy tale ready to be written. And she could go back to the group home, but that seemed more depressing than the first idea. So with dullness still dominating her face, she replied, "As long as you know that I don't need you."