Anne sat down by herself in the corner, facing away from Gilbert, because she'd have to turn her skirt upward to sew her petticoat.
She cut a length of thread from the spool, then held the thread in one hand and the needle in the other. It hurt her wrist to grasp the thin needle, so she worked as quickly as she could.
But every time she pushed the needle through the fabric, she winced in pain.
Finally she decided to use her other hand instead.
It took longer to use her non-dominant hand, but she was determined to do it.
Eventually though, her wrist began to hurt even from just having to grasp the fabric while her other hand pushed the needle through.
She had only made nine stitches when she felt two fat tears in the corners of her eyes. She wiped them away, frustrated at the slow pace of her work and the pain it was causing.
She started pushing the needle through again. As she pressed, her hand shook. The needle finally popped through but fell on the floor.
"Ugh," she breathed, upset.
Gilbert had been sitting in the door of the little house, facing the woods to give her privacy.
When he heard her, he turned slightly and looked at her.
"You need help?"
"No," Anne said.
Anne leaned over to get it, but didn't see it. The end of her thread hung loose. She'd have to find the needle in the leaves on the floor and thread the needle all over again. A small task, but her wrist ached from the constant squeezing.
"What happened?"
"I dropped the needle." She stated, trying not to let her voice show how close to tears she was. She scolded herself in her mind for getting so upset.
Gilbert stood up and came back in. "Where'd you drop it?"
"I don't know," Anne said, her voice shaking. "Right here. But I don't see it."
They both crouched close to the ground and looked, moving dry leaves out of the way. Finally Anne found it.
She tried to thread the needle, but her hand was shaking.
"Hey. Here," Gilbert breathed, taking the needle from her and threading it himself.
He handed it back to her, threaded.
"Thank you," Anne said evenly.
Gilbert turned away from her so that she could pull up her skirt and work on her petticoat again.
It took her several minutes to make just four more stitches. She had to keep stopping to let her wrist rest. But resting it between stitches, while necessary, almost made it hurt worse when she had to move it again.
Anne couldn't keep a couple of tears from slipping out as she pushed the needle shakily through the fabric.
She stopped and wiped them away, choking on a sob.
Gilbert turned around again. "Anne, what's going on?"
"Nothing," Anne said, trying to hold it back, and pushing her skirt down since Gilbert was facing her direction again.
"Is it too much for your wrist?" He guessed.
"I can do it."
"How much do you still have to do?" Gilbert asked.
Anne pulled her skirt up a tiny bit, turning away from him so he wouldn't see, and looked at her ripped petticoat.
Thirteen stitches. That was all she had done so far.
Twenty stitches to an inch, she remembered learning.
She looked at the long, long jagged piece of cloth still to sew. Even if she sewed her stitches a much further apart, cheating a little on the size, it would take her forever to finish it all.
She began to cry, turned away from him. She couldn't help it.
"Hey," Gilbert said softly, reaching out and touching her shaking shoulder. "What can I do?"
"Nothing," Anne said shakily, trying to stop her tears.
"Look, I...I could try. I could sew it," Gilbert offered.
Anne wiped her eyes. "You can sew?"
Gilbert nodded. "I can't say I've had a lot of practice. You didn't see little white doilies underneath vases anywhere in my house, did you?"
Anne smiled, closing her eyes. "Doilies aren't sewn. They're crocheted."
Gilbert smiled at her. "So you can see my knowledge of needlework."
Anne laughed.
Gilbert smiled, "Well, I'm no expert, but I do my own mending."
"Your mother doesn't do the mending?"
"No," Gilbert said, his eyes downcast.
Before Anne could respond to that, he brightened up and said, "So why don't you let me give it a try. I can manage it. I can't promise you it will look very nice, though."
Anne said, "If it's sewn badly, at least it's sewn. I just don't want to go home with a big strip of cloth hanging loose. Once my wrist is better I can fix it."
"Can you?" Gilbert asked.
"Yes, it's easy. You just cut open the stitches and re-sew it."
"Would the Cuthberts really be angry with you for ripping it?" Gilbert asked.
"It's not that...I just don't want the rip to show because...well, it's just that I don't want to have to explain it...I mean, if I tell Marilla I ripped it off, she'll call me careless. And if I tell her the truth, she'll want to know how it came about that Billy ripped it off."
Gilbert stopped and looked at her. "Billy ripped it off?"
There was a strange look on his face.
Anne flushed.
"I just...assumed you'd stepped on it when you fell?" Gilbert said, looking confused.
Anne bit her lip. "Well...he ripped it himself, but...it was...it just...happened."
Gilbert looked at her a moment. "Why would he...."
Anne cut in, sounding annoyed, "Are you going to help me or not?"
"Yeah," Gilbert said, "Of course. Do you want..." Gilbert looked down at her skirt. So they had settled on him sewing up the petticoat, but actually doing it was another matter. He didn't know quite how to start. "Uh...do you want....I guess you'll have to..."
Anne blushed, too, realizing she'd have to let him see it. She pulled her petticoat out as much as she could, but there was no avoiding it- she'd have to pull her skirt up and tuck it around herself, letting her petticoat be almost completely exposed.
They both looked awkward for a moment and avoided each other's eyes.
Gilbert threaded the needle and then looked at the petticoat. His hand shook a little when he reached out to touch it.
Anne sighed at the same time Gilbert took an unsteady breath.
"Okay..." Gilbert said, almost laughing. "This is...okay, this doesn't have to be weird. It's...it's just cloth, right? It's not like-"
"Right, right. It's cloth. It's nothing strange- it could just as well be a dress, if you think about it..."
"Yeah...yeah. It's really no different than a dress when you think about it. It's just a white dress underneath a regular dress, that's all," Gilbert rushed on.
"Exactly! It shouldn't even be considered part of underwear, I mean it's not like it's underwear, not really..." Anne blushed at realizing she'd just said the word 'underwear' to him.
Gilbert shook his head and laughed. "It's only weird if we make it weird. It'll be okay. Let's do this."
Anne nodded, pushing down her embarrassment.
Gilbert reached out and took the petticoat more confidently this time, lined the fabric up, and began to sew.
After a couple minutes, Gilbert had to move over a fold of her dress. As he did so, he had a sharp intake of breath and stopped for a moment.
"What's wrong?" Anne asked.
He didn't answer for a moment.
"What?" She asked again.
"Nothing," He said slowly.
After a few minutes he said, carefully, "So he knocked you to the ground, and then he grabbed your arm..."
Anne said, "No, that's not what happened. He just grabbed my arm and I just- I just fell-"
Gilbert questioned, "Then when did he rip your petticoat?"
Anne stopped. "What are you getting at?" She said tersely.
Gilbert took a deep breath. "Nothing, I...I just- thought-"
Anne said, "Whatever you're thinking, stop it right now. Nothing happened."
Anne was so defensive that Gilbert felt sure something more had happened.
He was quiet.
Finally, Gilbert broached, "You know, Anne, if there's more to the story-"
"There's not," Anne said flatly.
"Then why are your stockings torn too?" Gilbert pointed out.
Anne stared down at her leg.
She had not noticed.
But Gilbert had.
And that– Anne realized- was what had caused him to stop and breath in sharply a moment ago.
They were high up enough on her thigh- an area that would normally be covered up- that he wouldn't even have been able to see them, except her petticoat was turned up to sew.
There were five of them.
Five rips, each the size of a fingernail, scraped across the inside of her left thigh.
They were unmistakably caused by someone's fingers, because he could see the fingernail marks impressed into her leg, as if her leg had been angrily grabbed, and the scrapes made by them had been enough to draw tiny streaks of blood across her thigh.
Now Anne was staring down at what Gilbert had seen.
She didn't know how long she stared at those five little rips before Gilbert brought her out of her solitude– by saying softly-
"Anne."
Anne could not look up at him. Suddenly her eyes were full of tears. She could not blink or they would spill over and go rolling down her cheeks.
Don't cry. Don't cry. She willed herself. Anne could not move. She could barely breathe.
"...I think we need to tell someone," Gilbert said seriously. His voice, and the way he looked at her, brows creased, she knew that he knew.
"Tell them what?!" Anne spit out, finally looking into his eyes. "Being bullied isn't the end of the world you know. There are bullies everywhere. So, he hit me. So? This isn't the first time a boy has hit me-"
"Anne." Gilbert said again, calmly, cutting across her protest.
"What?" She spat.
Gilbert looked at her eyes. Finally he said:
"You told me he didn't hit you."
His statement hung in the air.
Anne stared at him, caught in a lie.
Gilbert asked," But he wasn't there to hit you, was he?"
Gilbert went on, thinking out loud, "He grabbed your arm. He pushed you to the ground. He ripped your petticoat from you. And he left fingernail marks down your stockings."
There was a pause before Gilbert continued. "Yet you don't have a mark on you- no bruises, no swollen eye, no split lip."
Gilbert looked into Anne's eyes. "He wasn't after your face, was he?"
Anne looked away from him.
"I'm...I'm guessing I know what he did."
Her face twisted in agony. "Don't tell," she whispered, shaking her head. "Please, please...don't breathe a word of this to anyone."
Gilbert took a breath, looking like he didn't know what to do. "People should know. His parents, yours...the doctor maybe..."
Anne looked angry. "No!" She said, fiery.
"Why not?" Gilbert asked, his face looking like a question mark.
"Because! Because I don't want them to, that's why. It's nobody else's business. It's not your business, either, but I couldn't exactly keep it from you, you saw him."
"But...it's...look, it doesn't say anything bad about you. This is about him."
Anne shook her head. "No, it's not about him. It's not about him because he can go on like nothing happened, and I can't."
Anne's voice caught in her throat and she couldn't go on.
"Hey," Gilbert said softly, leaning in. "You said being bullied isn't the end of the world. Well, this is more than just bullying, but this doesn't have to be the end of the world either. We can get through this."
"We?" Anne asked, wiping her eyes.
"I told you I'm with you to the end, didn't I? And this isn't the end." Gilbert said, giving her a sad smile.
Anne looked up at him, then, into his eyes, and she didn't feel so alone anymore.
But the wind blew through - and she shuddered.
"I don't know what to do." She choked on her words.