The Wonder(32)

Didn’t seem to eat, Lib corrected herself, annoyed that she’d lapsed into accepting the sham even for a moment. But one thing was true: The girl wasn’t getting so much as a crumb on Lib’s watch. Even if by any chance the nun had dozed off on Monday night and Anna had snatched a few mouthfuls then, this was Wednesday afternoon, Anna’s third full day without a meal.

Lib’s pulse began to thump because it struck her that if the strict surveillance was preventing Anna from getting food by her previous methods, the girl might be starting to suffer in earnest. Could the watch be having the perverse effect of turning the O’Donnells’ lie to truth?

From the kitchen, on and off, came the swish and bump of the slavey working an old-fashioned plunge churn. She sang in a low drone.

“Is that a hymn?” Lib asked the child.

Anna shook her head. “Kitty has to charm the butter for it to come.” She half sang the rhyme.

Come, butter, come,

Come, butter, come,

Peter stands at the gate,

Waiting for a buttered cake.

What went through the child’s mind when she thought of butter or cake? Lib wondered.

She stared at a blue vein on the back of Anna’s hand and thought of the weird theory McBrearty had mentioned about the reabsorption of blood. “I don’t suppose you have your courses yet, do you?” she asked in a low voice.

Anna looked blank.

What did Irishwomen call it? “Your monthlies? Have you ever bled?”

“A few times,” said Anna, her face clearing.

“Really?” Lib was taken aback.

“In my mouth.”

“Oh.” Could an eleven-year-old farm child really be so innocent that she didn’t know about becoming a woman?

Obligingly, Anna put her finger in her mouth; she brought it out tipped with red.

Lib was abashed that she hadn’t examined the girl’s gums carefully enough on the first day. “Open wide for a minute.” Yes, the tissue was spongy, mauve in patches. She gripped an incisor and wriggled it; slightly loose in its socket? “Here’s another riddle for you,” she said, to lighten the moment.

A flock of white sheep,

On a red hill.

Here they go, there they go,

Now they stand still.

“Teeth,” cried Anna indistinctly.

“Quite right.” Lib wiped her hand on her apron.

She realized all at once that she was going to have to warn the girl, even if it was no part of what she’d been hired to do. “Anna, I believe you’re suffering from a complaint typical of long ocean voyages, caused by poor diet.”

The girl listened, head tilted, as if to a story. “I’m all right.”

Lib crossed her arms. “In my educated opinion, you’re nothing of the sort.”

Anna only smiled.

A surge of anger shook Lib. For a girl blessed with health to embark on this dreadful game— Kitty brought in the nurse’s dinner tray just then, letting in a gust of smoky air from the kitchen.

“Does the fire always have to be kept so high,” asked Lib, “even on such a warm day?”

“The smoke does dry the thatch and preserve the timbers,” said the maid, gesturing at the low ceiling. “If we were ever to let the fire go out, sure the house would fall down.”

Lib didn’t bother correcting her. Was there a single aspect of life that this creature didn’t see through the dark lens of superstition?

Dinner today consisted of three minuscule fish called roach that the master had netted in the lough. No particular flavour, but a change from oats, at least. Lib took the delicate bones from her mouth and set them on the side of her plate.

The hours passed. She read her novel but kept losing track of the plot. Anna drank two spoonfuls of water and produced a little urine. Nothing that amounted to evidence so far. It rained for a few minutes, drops trickling down the small windowpane. When it cleared, Lib would have liked to go out for a walk, but it struck her: What if eager petitioners were hanging around in the lane in hopes of a glimpse of Anna?

The child lifted her holy cards out of their books and whispered sweet nothings to them.

“I’m very sorry about your candlestick,” Lib found herself saying. “I shouldn’t have been so clumsy, or taken it out in the first place.”

“I forgive you,” said Anna.

Lib tried to remember if anyone had ever said that to her so formally. “I know you were fond of it. Wasn’t it a gift to mark your confirmation?”

The girl lifted the candlestick out of the chest and stroked the crack where the porcelain pieces rested together. “Better not to get too fond of things.”

This tone of renunciation chilled Lib. Wasn’t it in the nature of children to be graspers, greedy for all of life’s pleasures? She remembered the words of the Rosary: Poor banished children of Eve. Munchers of any windfalls they could find.

Anna took up the little packet of hair and pushed it back inside the Virgin.

Too dark to be her own. A friend’s? Or the brother’s? Yes, Anna might very well have asked Pat for a lock of hair before the ship carried him away.

“What prayers do Protestants say?” the child asked.

Lib was startled by the question. She summoned her forces to give a bland answer about the similarities between the two traditions. Instead, she found herself saying, “I don’t pray.”