The War that Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

“What’s flush? How do I flush?”
“There’s a handle, like, and you push it down.”
I waited my turn and then I went in and figured it out, even the flushing.
There were sinks, and I splashed water onto my hot face. A girl right in front
of me—the shabbiest, nastiest-looking girl I’d ever seen—was using a sink in
front of my sink, which seemed odd. I frowned at her, and she frowned back.
All of a sudden I realized I was looking in a mirror.
Mam had a mirror. It hung high on the wall and I never bothered with it. I
stared into this one, appalled. I’d assumed I looked like all the other girls. But
my hair was clumpy, not smooth. My skin was paler than theirs, milky-white,
except it also looked rather gray, especially around my neck. The dirty
calluses on my knees stood out beneath my faded skirt, which suddenly
seemed grubby and too small.
What could I do? I took a deep breath and staggered out. Jamie was
waiting. I looked him over with newly critical eyes. He was dirtier than the
other boys too. His shirt had faded into an indeterminate color and his
fingernails were rimmed in black.
“We should have had baths,” I said.
Jamie shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.”
But it did.
At home, when I looked out my window onto the lane, across the street, three
buildings to the left, on the corner, I could see a fishmonger’s shop. They got
fish delivered every morning, and laid it out for sale on a thick cool piece of
stone. In the summer heat, fish could go off fast, so women knew to pick
through the selection carefully and chose only the freshest and the best.
That’s what we children were: fish on a slab. The teachers herded us down
the street into a big building and lined us up against one wall. Men and
women from the village filed past, looking to see if we were sweet and pretty
and wholesome enough to take home.
That they didn’t think many of us were good value was clear from the
expressions on their faces and the things they said.
“Good Lord,” one woman said, reeling away from sniffing a little girl’s
hair. “They’re filthy!”
“They’ll wash,” the iron-faced woman said. She directed operations from
the center of the room, clipboard still in hand. “We need to be generous. We