Sparkle was always a tiny bit embarrassed about her name. Her Da and Ma loved her to distraction, along with her four brothers and five sisters, but as the baby of the family she felt a bit ill-used.
Her name was not Sparkle, of course. Who calls a child Sparkle in the year of Our Lord 1889? But what really made her uncomfortable was her legal name, the one written on her birth certificate, which was Spankleberry Finn O’Toole.
Sparkle’s father, Liam Talliaferro O’Toole, made his not so small fortune in America after coming over from Ireland with his wife, one son and one daughter, and then parlayed his whisky making connections back home into a thriving commerce. At first he sold poteen smuggled into the harbor disguised in vegetable oil drums, and then expanded to more drinkable and legal varieties of spirits.
Liam was a well read man, and loved American writers, especially Mark Twain, and when he saw his newest child he chuckled at the shine in her bright blue eyes, but was a bit wayward with the pen when he wrote her name down for the nurse, and rather than Sparkleberry Finn (he was a Finn on his maternal grandmother’s side) the transcribing secretary read Spankleberry instead, and so according to her birth certificate and the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, that was her name.
No one in the family paid any attention to that, and called the baby Sparkle, as her dad wished, and that eventually was shortened to Sparky or Spar.
Her eldest brother Lochinvar (her Da knew Scott as well) was 14 years old when Sparkle was born, and took an especial interest in the little girl. It was he who soothed Sparky’s troubled mind after Da told her that she was of age and so would, like all the O’Toole girls before her, leave home and attend Miss Minerva’s Academy for Young Ladies of Gentle Hibernian Families, located in rural Ulster County, New York.
Sparkle was greatly concerned about the tales her big sisters told when they came home on holiday, of sharp tellings-off, and even sharper hidings from the masters and mistresses at school. She had to ask what a hiding was, and Lochinvar, now a police detective in Wellesley, told her that it was much the same as the spankings she had got from Ma and Da when she didn’t mind them, and sometimes too from Lochinvar, or Lucky as everyone called him, though more gently and briefly than from Ma or Da, while she was growing up. Sparkle’s eyes grew wide, and she silently prayed that no school master or mistress ever would need to touch her in that way.
She vowed to herself and to Lucky that she would behave, and learn everything they taught her, no matter how foolish it seemed. And yet somehow when she arrived at the school a change came over her.
The school building was a large, rambling Colonial affair, with several classrooms, a huge kitchen and refectory, as well as studies and bed-sits for the faculty. The girls slept in dormitories, a dozen to a room, in a long, refurbished army barracks located down a short lane from the main house. The barracks was built during the Civil War for officers who took their training in field artillery maneuvers amongst the woods and meadows of the estate.
So perhaps it was the call of distant bugles, or simply the unaccustomed absence of parental authority; maybe it was the country air, or the pollen of unfamiliar flora. But the most likely cause of Sparkle’s descent into naughtiness was a combination of keeping bad company, along with the actions of a somewhat insensitive faculty member.
Upon her arrival at Miss Minerva’s Academy for Young Ladies of Gentle Hibernian Families, Sparkle befriended Bridget Shaughnessy, a rather wild-eyed young minx whose people had recently emigrated from Dublin. It was rumored that Bridget’s father had been asked and strongly encouraged to emigrate, owing to dubious business practices, but since he paid two years’ tuition in advance and in cash no questions were asked, and Bridget was welcomed at the school with open arms.
Soon Sparkle began to talk like Bridget, affecting a rather slothful drawl when speaking to faculty and staff members, and along with it a somewhat mocking tone that bordered on impudence without quite crossing the line.
Miss Minerva Kennedy, the academy principal, knew all the O’Toole girls, and knew them to be well behaved in general, but none were particularly quiet, and all had large reserves of energy that needed to be channeled in the proper direction. Sparkle’s next oldest sister Colleen Marie had graduated the spring before, and upon reflection, the principal realized that each successive O’Toole girl had needed more and sterner discipline than the one before her, so she made a note in her student roster to keep an especial eye on this, the final O’Toole.
Bridget had made an arrangement with a nearby farmer to supply her with wine, which she hid in a disused shed behind the dormitory building. After a rather long while, she convinced Sparkle to sneak out of the dorm with her late at night, and they often sat under the bright stars and talked and drank until they both were more than a bit tipsy.
After one such late night rouse, the next day Sparkle felt more than a bit under the weather, and that morning in Mr. Gammon’s poetry class she nodded off. Noting this, a serious breach of decorum and etiquette at best, and even worse because Sparkle’s soft snores interrupted what he felt was a unique and eloquent discourse on Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Mr. Gammon quite lost his temper, picked up a two-foot wooden ruler, and clapped a sound like a pistol shot from the flat surface of his lectern.
All the girls jumped, and Sparkle squealed and jumped, then shrank back in her chair before the withering glare directed at her by Mr. Gammon.
“Spankleberry Finn O’Toole, what is the meaning of this outrage?” He stepped off the dais, the ruler still clutched in his hand, and advanced on the terrified girl. “Stand up at once, young woman.”
Never before had Sparkle been addressed by all three legal names, a common practice at Miss Minerva’s establishment for getting a girl’s attention and letting her know that matters in hand had taken a serious turn. She whimpered and rose, and looked in desperation to Bridget for support, but the girl merely giggled, grinned, and mouthed, Spankleberry?
Her face, hot and pink already at being called out, burned red with shame at her friend’s derision. Angry and frustrated, she stamped the floor, and Mr. Gammon jerked back in astonishment.
“Whatever has gotten into you?” he demanded, and grabbed a handful of her middy blouse collar.
All the girls wore the loose blouses, along with a pleated white skirt of light wool that covered the tops of dainty black lace up boots. Beneath the skirt they wore a single long petticoat of muslin, stiffened with sizing to give the skirt added fullness, and under this, stockings gartered just above the knees, and a combination or union suit of cotton. This suit was both chemise and drawers, and covered the girl from shoulder to knee, with a utilitarian opening at the back of the drawers. A light corset cinched the girl’s waist, and supported her breasts from beneath.
Mr. Gammon yanked Sparkle around to face the class, holding her up by the collar at the back of her neck like a puppy.
“You do not stomp your foot at me, miss, ever! The very idea! Showing a temper when it is you who have transgressed! Where is your modesty, young woman, where are your manners, for heaven’s sake? The principal warned me about you, and now I see why.”
“But sir, I meant no disrespect, sir! I only …”
“No disrespect? Bah!”
Mr. Gammon was not a terribly powerful man, nor a very large man, but he was an angry man and taller than Sparkle, and he loomed over her, glaring. Her chin was forced downward by the hand at the back of her head, grasping her collar and giving it an occasional shake, so her eyes were made to rise in order to meet his. She clasped her hands before her, adding to the picture of piteous supplication.
“Please, Mr. Gammon, I don’t feel at all well. Mightn’t I return to the dormitory and …?”
“You will return when I have had done with you, girl! The very idea!”
Sparkle squeaked when he spun her around and pushed her forward. She had witnessed such summary classroom chastisements, watched them between fingers pressed to her eyes, but never yet had she been on the receiving end, and she struggled to catch her breath when Mr. Gammon leaned his left hand on her back to force her upper body onto the desktop.
He reached down and quickly furled both her skirt and petticoat up and over, and Sparkle wailed loudly when she felt cool air up the legs of her combination, and through the slightly parted slit at the rear.
“Save that noise if you please, Miss O’Toole, until you need it.”
The ruler struck with a muffled whack across the fullest part of Sparkle’s behind, and she wailed again and stamped her feet, both in anger and to dissipate the sting in her bottom that grew rapidly with each ensuing clap of the sturdy wood.
Over and over Mr. Gammon swatted, higher and higher went her feet when she stamped, and wider and wider grew the parting at the rear of Sparkle’s union suit because of it, such that the ruler stung more and more exposed skin. The other girls, audience to her shame, blushed at the scandalous presentation, pressed fearful palms to palpating bosoms, but then leant forward the better to observe the awful spectacle before their eyes.
Mr. Gammon pressed hard on Sparkle’s back to hold her in place, but the strong girl, spurred by frightfully embarrassed agitation at the unseemly exposure behind, twisted free, covered her face with her hands, and backed toward the wall while her skirts fell to hide the source of her shame. Her punisher, still fuming, brandished the ruler for a moment at the retreating girl, and then flung the hot implement aside, and stalked over to grab her once again by the collar.
“We shall see what the principal has to say about your deportment and your refusal to accept discipline, Miss O’Toole!”
Sparkle’s bottom cooled slightly from the awful sting, but her moral dread mounted with every step of the long, horrid trek along the corridor and then down the stairs to Miss Minerva’s study. Mr. Gammon hesitated but a heartbeat when he entered the anteroom, nodded briefly to Miss Rhys, Miss Minerva’s secretary, who scarcely had time to look up from her type writing before Mr. Gammon opened the door to the sanctum sanctorum, hauled Sparkle inside, and shut the door behind them.
Miss Minerva’s eyes widened just slightly at the sight of the two red-faced individuals who had invaded her privacy, and nodded to the older of them.
“Mr. Gammon?”
He took a long breath, and then let go Sparkle’s collar and made a slight bow. “I do beg your pardon, Miss Minerva, but this young girl has … well she has been impertinent and disrespectful beyond all belief, and when I attempted to admonish her, she refused to stand still and accept her correction. Ma’am.”
“What?” Miss Minerva’s eyes narrowed tightly, and Sparkle shook her head, unable to speak for the tumult of emotion in her head. “I might have known.” The woman stood and rounded her desk, taking a long, whippy birch wand from a nearby umbrella stand. “Well, Miss O’Toole? What have you to say for yourself?”
The girl gasped and stammered, shaking her head and searching for words.
“Puh-please, ma’am, he … I … it was only a little wine, and I … that is, I mean I didn’t mean to fall asleep, ma’am, and … and my drawers, ma’am, they opened so, and … everyone would see my … my … and I was ashamed!”
Miss Minerva tutted, glanced at Mr. Gammon, and then pointed with the switch at a low backed guest chair. “Bend over with your hands on the seat of that, child. I’ll soon get to the bottom of this.” She smirked when Mr. Gammon covered a smile with his hand, and she flicked a finger at him. “If you would assist me, sir?”
He nodded and quickly helped the girl, despite her fearful physical and verbal demurrals, to assume the position Miss Minerva required. At a further signal from the principal, Mr. Gammon once more lifted Sparkle’s skirts, to the accompaniment of distressful wails.
“Hush, girl,” Miss Minerva ordered. “Now tell me more of this wine you mentioned.”
Sparkle’s mind whirled with unaccustomed anxiety, her fists balled on the cushioned seat of the chair, her lower limbs squeezed tightly together while she willed the horrid parting in her nether garment together to preserve her modesty while she framed an answer.
“I don’t know why I said that, ma’am. There was no wine, Miss Minerva. I misspoke.”
The woman shook her head and raised the switch. She hesitated only an instant, and in that instant Mr. Gammon read the meaningful flinch in Miss Minerva’s eyebrow, and parted wide the slit in Sparkle’s undergarment.
With a terrible whirr, the switch struck completely bare hind flesh, and Sparkle shrieked. The hot sting made her rise, but Mr. Gammon held her close round the waist, still bended, still vulnerable, and grappled her arms to her sides when she attempted to reach back and soothe the burn that grew across the switch’s path.
“You shall not lie to me, girl.” Miss Minerva lashed again, and Sparkle squealed. “Who gave you wine? Hm?”
She flicked the wand, more lightly, and Sparkle twitched, moaned, and shook her head, tears streaming from her eyes.
“P-please let me go, ma’am, and I won’t ever do it again, I swear, only don’t look at … at my … ahow!”
The switch zinged and thipped, again and again, while Sparkle shrieked and kicked.
“The wine, girl. Where did you get it? Tell me!”
Dozens of whippy strokes stung Sparkle’s backside through to its core, and her supposed friend’s treacherous smile and awful, unvoiced word appeared in Sparkle’s mind’s eye while the hurt grew in her fundament.
“It was Bridget, ma’am! She gave me wine! I’m sorry! Please let go and I shall never do it again, I swear to God!”
Miss Minerva traded knowing nods with Mr. Gammon. “Bridget Shaughnessy gave you wine?”
“Yes, ma’am, and … and made me sneak out of bed at night and … and …”
She closed her mouth when the thrashing halted, and shook her head whilst tears flooded from her eyes. Then long, horrid moments passed as she waited, skirts held up with tremulous arms by fearsome direction, her sore, red bottom horribly displayed, in the corner by the window in back of Miss Minerva’s desk.
Mr. Gammon left, his instructions from Miss Minerva clear, and the principal poured and drank off a small glass of sherry from a carafe on the sideboard, and then flexed the switch and set her jaw when Mr. Gammon tapped the door and entered, accompanied by Miss Rhys, a rather heavy set woman of Welsh and English stock, and another, much younger and more slender woman.
“Here she is, ma’am,” Mr. Gammon said, and pulled Bridget along by her arm.
The girl glared and stamped her feet, and before Miss Minerva’s questioning she vehemently disavowed any knowledge of wine, or late night sneaking out, or any other wrongdoing.
Miss Minerva turned skeptically, and reached over to tap the switch on Sparkle’s red-hot bum. “Did you lie to me, Miss O’Toole? Is Miss Shaugnessy guiltless of your accusations?”
Sparkle keenly felt her erstwhile friend’s pleading eyes at the back of her head, but even more keenly the harshness of the twig against her stinging flesh, and shook her head sadly.
Bridget screamed, and cursed, and threatened awful and unlikely retribution for the longest time while Mr. Gammon and Miss Rhys held her over the chair and Miss Minerva thrashed her bare behind. But in the end she pleaded for clemency and promised never, ever to act bad again, or to sneak out, or to drink wine, or to lead other students astray. Finally Miss Minerva relented, and put the wand away.
