The Wonder(23)

“Clever puss.”

“It was because of scholar.”

“You should go back to school,” Lib told her.

Anna looked away, towards a cow munching grass. “I’m all right at home.”

“You’re an intelligent girl.” The compliment came out more like an accusation.

Low clouds were gathering now, so Lib hurried the two of them back into the stuffy cabin. But then the rain held off, and she wished they’d stayed out longer.

Kitty finally brought in Lib’s breakfast: two eggs and a cup of milk. This time greed made Lib eat so fast, tiny fragments of shell crunched in her teeth. The eggs were gritty and reeked of peat; roasted in the ashes, no doubt.

How could the child bear not just the hunger, but the boredom? The rest of humankind used meals to divide the day, Lib realized—as reward, as entertainment, the chiming of an inner clock. For Anna, during this watch, each day had to pass like one endless moment.

The child accepted a spoonful of water as if it were some rich wine.

“What’s so special about water?”

Anna looked confused.

Lib held up her own cup. “What’s the difference between water and this milk?”

Anna hesitated, as if this were another riddle. “There’s nothing in the water.”

“There’s nothing in the milk but water and the goodness of the grass the cow ate.”

Anna shook her head, almost smiling.

Lib dropped the subject because Kitty was coming in to take the tray.

She watched the child, who was embroidering a flower on the corner of a handkerchief. Head bent over her stitches, just the tip of her tongue sticking out, in the way of little girls trying their hardest.

A knock at the front door, shortly after ten. Lib heard a muffled conversation. Then Rosaleen O’Donnell tapped on the door of the bedroom and looked past the nurse. “More guests for you, pet. Half a dozen of them, some of them come all the way from America.”

The big Irishwoman’s sprightliness sickened Lib; she was like some chaperone at a debutante’s first ball. “I should have thought it obvious that such visits must be suspended, Mrs. O’Donnell.”

“Why so?” The mother jerked her head over her shoulder towards the good room. “These seem like decent people.”

“The watch requires conditions of regularity and calm. Without any way of checking what visitors might have on them—”

The woman interrupted. “What kind of what?”

“Well, food,” said Lib.

“Sure there’s food in this house already without anyone shipping it all the way across the Atlantic.” Rosaleen O’Donnell let out a laugh. “Besides, Anna doesn’t want it. Haven’t you seen proof of that by now?”

“My job is to make sure not only that no one passes the child anything, but that nothing is hidden where she can find it later.”

“Why ever would they do that when they’ve come all this way to see the amazing little girl who doesn’t eat?”

“Nonetheless.”

Mrs. O’Donnell’s lips set hard. “Our guests are in the house already, so they are, and ’tis too late to turn them away without grave offence.”

At this point it occurred to Lib to slam the bedroom door and set her back against it.

The woman’s pebble eyes held hers.

Lib decided to give in until she could speak to Dr. McBrearty. Lose a battle, win the war. She led Anna into the good room and took up a position right behind the child’s chair.

The visitors were a gentleman from the western port of Limerick with his wife and in-laws as well as a mother and daughter of their acquaintance who were visiting from the United States. The older American lady volunteered the information that she and her daughter were Spiritualists. “We believe the dead speak to us.”

Anna nodded, matter-of-fact.

“Your case, my dear, strikes us as the most glorious proof of the power of Mind.” The lady leaned over to squeeze the child’s fingers.

“No touching, please,” said Lib, and the visitor jerked back.

Rosaleen O’Donnell put her head in the door to offer them a cup of tea.

Lib was convinced the woman was provoking her. No food, she mouthed.

One of the gentlemen was interrogating Anna about the date of her last meal.

“April the seventh,” she told him.

“That was your eleventh birthday?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And how do you believe you’ve survived this long?”

Lib expected Anna to shrug or say she didn’t know. Instead she murmured something that sounded like mamma.

“Speak up, little girl,” said the older Irishwoman.

“I live on manna from heaven,” said Anna. As simply as she might have said, I live on my father’s farm.

Lib shut her eyes briefly so as not to roll them in disbelief.

“Manna from heaven,” the younger Spiritualist repeated to the elder. “Fancy that.”

The visitors were pulling out presents now. From Boston, a toy called a thaumatrope; did Anna have anything like it?

“I haven’t any toys,” she told them.

They liked that; the charming gravity of her tone. The Limerick gentleman showed her how to twist the disc’s two strings, then twirl it, so the pictures on the two sides blurred into one.