This Little Chapel

She plunged the dolly into the steaming water and turned it. Four months, and she was stronger than she'd ever been, never mind how many times she'd wrestled pigs in the other world, the real world. She looked down across the line of women, girls and children on both sides, working as she did, repetitive, back-breaking women's work. When you got stronger, they gave you harder jobs. If we weren't all so tired to the bone... She didn't end that sentence. It had been so easy. She didn't want to do it again. Or, rather, she did, so she wouldn't even think of it. There was nothing to hold on to. Nothing but this dolly, and this repeating rotation, and the surety that there'd be someone to hit later on.

(They wore dimity scarves all day long, and certainly not because it kept the hair out of their eyes. Also not because the priests got lonely and were never kind. Except Father Jupe. She heard he was very kind, once he'd stopped beating you half to death. All their faces were red, sweaty, hardened by the steam and the heat, and their hands rough as bark. Their allure was their helplessness.)