The Wonder(31)

It was the simplicity of it that struck Lib, the silliness: a child’s dream of picking up sweet stuff from the ground. Like finding a gingerbread house in the woods. “Is that all there is?”

“And the children of Israel ate manna forty years,” the nun read. Then she slid the book shut.

So Anna O’Donnell believed herself to be living off some kind of celestial seed flour. Manhu, meaning “What is this?” Lib was strongly tempted to lean in close to the other woman and say, Admit it, Sister Michael, for once can’t you suspend your prejudices and acknowledge that this is all balderdash?

But that would be exactly the kind of conferral that McBrearty had forbidden. (For fear the Englishwoman might prove too skilled at brushing away the old cobwebs of superstition with the broom of logic?) Besides, perhaps it was better not to ask. It was bad enough, to Lib’s mind, that the two of them were working under the supervision of an aged quack. If she were to be confirmed in her suspicion that her fellow nurse believed a child could live off bread from the Beyond, how could she carry on working with the woman?

In the doorway stood Rosaleen O’Donnell.

“Your daughter’s not awake yet,” said Lib.

The face disappeared.

“This lamp’s to be kept burning all night from now on,” she told the nun.

“Very good.”

Finally, a small humiliation: Lib opened the little chest and pointed to the broken candlestick. “I’m afraid this was knocked over. Could you pass on my apologies to Anna?”

Sister Michael pursed her lips as she fitted Mother and Child back together.

Lib picked up her cloak and bag.

She shivered on the walk to the village. Something was kinked in her spine. She was hungry, she supposed; she hadn’t had a bite since supper at the inn yesterday before her night shift. Her mind was foggy. She was tired. This was Wednesday morning, and she hadn’t slept since Monday. What was worse, she was being outwitted by a little girl.

By ten Lib was up again. Hard to keep her eyes shut with all the clattering in the grocery below.

Mr. Ryan, her red-faced host, was directing a pair of boys as they hauled barrels into his cellar. He coughed over his shoulder with a sound like cardboard tearing and said it was too late for any breakfast because didn’t his daughter Maggie have the sheets to boil, so Mrs. Wright would just have to wait till noon.

Lib had been going to ask if her boots could be cleaned, but instead she requested rags, polish, and brush so she could do it herself. If they’d thought the Englishwoman too high-and-mighty to get her hands dirty, they couldn’t have been more wrong.

When her boots were gleaming again, she sat reading Adam Bede in her room, but Mr. Eliot’s moralizing was getting tedious, and her stomach kept growling. The Angelus bells rang out across the street. Lib checked her watch, which said two minutes past noon already.

When she went down to the dining room there was no one else there; the journalist must have gone back to Dublin. She chewed her ham in silence.

“Good day, Mrs. Wright,” said Anna when Lib came in that afternoon. The room smelled close. The child was as alert as ever, knitting a pair of stockings in creamy wool.

Lib raised her eyebrows interrogatively at Sister Michael.

“Nothing new,” murmured the nun. “Two spoons of water taken.” She closed the door behind her on her way out.

Anna didn’t say a word about the broken candlestick. “Maybe you might tell me your Christian name today?” she asked.

“I’ll tell you a riddle instead,” offered Lib.

“Do.”

“‘No legs have I, yet I dance,’” she recited.

I’m like a leaf, yet I grow on no tree.

I’m like a fish, but water kills me.

I’m your friend, but don’t come too close!

“‘Don’t come too close,’” murmured Anna. “Why, what would happen if I did?”

Lib waited.

“No water. No touching. Only let it dance…” Then her smile burst out. “A flame!”

“Very good,” said Lib.

This afternoon felt long. Not in the silent, stretching way of the night shift; this was tedium broken by jarring interruptions. Twice there came knocks at the front of the house, and Lib steeled herself. A loud conversation on the doorstep, and then Rosaleen O’Donnell would bustle into Anna’s room to announce that—as per Dr. McBrearty’s orders—she’d had to turn away visitors. Half a dozen important personages from France the first time, and then a group from the Cape; imagine! These good folk had heard of Anna as they passed through Cork or Belfast and come all this way by train and carriage because they couldn’t think of leaving the country without making her acquaintance. They’d insisted Mrs. O’Donnell pass on this bouquet, these edifying books, their fervent regret at being denied even a glimpse of the marvellous little girl.

The third time, Lib was ready with a notice that she suggested the mother paste on the front door.

PLEASE REFRAIN FROM KNOCKING. THE O’DONNELL FAMILY ARE NOT TO BE DISTURBED. THEY ARE GRATEFUL TO BE KEPT IN YOUR THOUGHTS.

Rosaleen took it with a barely audible sniff.

Anna seemed to pay no attention to any of this as she formed her stitches. She went about her day like any girl, Lib thought—reading, doing needlework, arranging the visitors’ flowers in a tall jug—except that she didn’t eat.