Before Green Gables Book Excerpt

Budge Wilson

Chapter 20: Katie Maurice

One day, about a month after Eliza's wedding day, and about three weeks after Anne had screamed out her grief in the woods, Anne was putting some dishes away in the old glassed in bookcase that had once belonged to her own family. It was kept in a corner of the house that received very little light. When Anne closed the door, after depositing the dishes, she saw her own reflection in the glass door. She stared and stared at it. In the dimness of the reflection, her freckles had disappeared and her hair looked almost brown. For a moment or two, she thought it was another person. Even after she realized that this was not the case, she clung to the idea. "A friend! A friend!" she kept muttering under her breath.

The house was unusually quiet. All four babies and Mrs. Thomas were asleep. Mr. Thomas (who had not had a drink for many weeks) was at work. During this period, Anne was starting to get used to Eliza's absence, although still deeply sad about it. And she rather liked the new baby. He didn't cry as much as the other ones did, and he was much less beautiful than all the bigger Thomas children. In fact, he was quite odd-looking, with an oversized nose and a slight cast in one eye. He wasn't exactly cross-eyed, but he wasn't as oppressively handsome as the older little boys. Anne had always regarded herself as an unattractive-looking person. She was used to people mentioning her multitude of freckles, her excessively red hair, her skinny legs. She had always admired the beauty of the Thomas children -- because Anne did admire beautiful things and people -- but still, it was hard. It made her feel more than ever as though she didn't belong. She felt an odd sort of kinship with this new baby -- this Noah -- and liked holding him and feeding him more than she liked looking after the other boys. Furthermore, with Mr. Thomas working again and not drinking, there was food in the house. Anne's ice was starting to thaw ever so little.

And here was this phantom person, this magic friend, behind one of the glass doors of the cupboard that contained the family's dishes and preserves. With Eliza gone, there was no one to whom Anne could confide her thoughts, her dreams, her secrets. But maybe she could do this with her new friend in the cupboard. It wasn't in a part of the house where people gathered. The boys seldom even played there. Maybe she could talk to this person when no one else was around. Yes. She could. But she needed a name. At the very moment when Anne had that thought, the name was on her lips. "Katie Maurice!" she said out loud, but in a soft voice. "You're a jumping, happy person, and a smooth-running, gentle friend, just like I told Eliza about the name of her own friend Katie Maurice." The little girl in the glass was speaking. Her lips were moving. And when Anne heard one of the babies crying, and knew that she'd have to leave, Katie Maurice raised her hand in farewell at the exact moment that Anne did.

For the first time in three weeks, Anne entered the kitchen -- the social centre of the drafty house -- with a light heart. She could hardly wait for tomorrow. Ever since Eliza had started reading to her, Anne had wanted to make up her own stories -- about her dreams and fantasies. And when life became sadder for her -- after Eliza's departure - she longed to tell the history of her own life. But how could she do that when there was no one to tell it all to? If she knew how to write, she could do it that way; but she didn't know how. But now, suddenly, there was a friend to whom she could recount her own tales. There was so much she wanted to tell Katie Maurice, so many secrets, so many sad and happy thoughts. This would be almost as good as being able to write them down. But she wouldn't be able to do that for years. She could learn how to do that in school, but that was a long way off. She had four whole months before she'd be six.

So school seemed very far away to Anne. But that was all right. In the meantime she could talk to Katie Maurice. Anne knew she'd listen without interrupting, and she'd never tell her to shut up. All these wonderful things could start happening tomorrow afternoon. That's when the boys took their naps and Mrs. Thomas went to lie down. No one would hear her. No one except Katie. And she'd hear everything.

Anne could hardly sleep that night. She was too busy thinking about tomorrow's meeting with Katie Maurice. Her new friend would be dressed in a beautiful dark green dress-- maybe four -- all of them with lace on the bottom. It was so dark in the hall that she wouldn't be able to see all those petticoats, even if Katie lifted her skirt. But she'd know they were there. She'd have brown hair and pale, creamy skin, and a beautiful smile.

What would she tell her first? Anne decided that she'd tell her about her own parents, and the little yellow house. She'd tell her about how beautiful her mother thought she was when she was a baby, and how kind her father was -- never angry and never drunk. She'd tell her that there was a lilac bush beside the front door, and lots of flowers in the back garden --yellow, red, blue, mauve, every colour you could think of. And Katie would want to know that her mother had bought her a doll -- maybe made her a doll with her loving and skillful hands -- even though she was too little to know what to do with it yet. She'd tell her that it was always nice and warm in that house, and that there was wonderful food to eat -- every day, not just on payday -- molasses cookies and big slices of crusty bread, with wild strawberry jam on top. Katie Maurice would be so interested to hear about all those things.

On the following day, when naptime came, Anne suddenly wondered -- just for a moment -- if she could make herself believe that Katie Maurice was the real person she wanted her to be -- her first friend who was the same age as she was. But she thought she could do it. After all, she often pretended that she was back in the little yellow house, living with her own parents --who would of course not have died at all -- helping her mother make cookies and knead bread dough, loving the smells coming out of the oven, looking forward to her father's arrival home from his school. It was all so wonderful -- the sound of her mother's gentle voice, the feeling of the hugs - - that Anne had no difficulty in believing that all of it was real. Surely the same thing would happen with Katie Maurice.

Anne stood in front of the china cabinet in the dim back hall and closed her eyes. In the background, she could hear various gurgles and snores -- the sounds of sleep. She felt safe. She raised her hand and opened her eyes.

Behind the glass door, Katie was waving her hand in greeting and smiling broadly. Anne felt her heart skip a beat or two.

"Hello, Katie Maurice," she whispered. "I'm so glad you've come to be my friend. My name is Anne, , Anne, spelled with an e." Eliza had always said that, so it must be important, even though she had no idea what it meant.

Then Anne paused. Katie Maurice was standing very still and smiling quietly. It was clear that she was eager to hear anything that Anne might choose to tell her.

"I was born about five and a half years ago. Mrs. Thomas says that I was a very homely baby, but my mother was sure I was the most beautiful baby in the whole world. I expect that my mother was right, don't you?"

Already Anne was feeling a warmth inside her whole self that was new to her. Here was someone to whom she could tell all her private thoughts --even the ones she'd been unable to tell Eliza -- like about how sad she felt when Mrs. Thomas called her lazy or wicked, when all she was doing was stopping work for a few minutes so that she could pretend she was a princess -- like in the story Eliza read to her from one of her readers -- or a brave knight killing a dragon. Already Anne was starting to tell Katie about that.

"When you're doing something boring like scrubbing diapers, those pretend things just happen, and when they happen, you have to just stop whatever you're doing, to look at what the princess is wearing or what colour the dragon is. It's not really being lazy or wicked, is it, Katie?"

Anne looked hard at Katie. She was definitely shaking her head.

Anne sighed with relief. "Oh, Katie Maurice!" she said. "I knew you'd understand. So now I'll tell you all about my own wonderful parents."

Anne was still talking when the first baby started to cry, one and a half hours later.

ⓒ 2008 by

The prequel to is authorized by the heirs of L.M. Montgomery™.

Anne of Green Gables, Before Green Gables and other indicia of Anne are trademarks of the Anne of Green Gables Licensing Authority Inc.

Illustrations courtesy of Shelagh Armstrong

Reprinted with permission of Penguin Group (Canada)

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