The Wonder(65)

When Anna was dressed and wrapped in two shawls to stop her shivering, Lib prevailed on her to take a spoonful of water. “Another tick, please, Kitty,” she called from the door.

The maid was elbow-deep in a bucket of dishes. “We’ve no others, but the colleen’s welcome to mine.”

“What will you do?”

“I’ll find something by bedtime. It doesn’t matter.” Kitty’s tone was desolate.

Lib hesitated. “Very well, then. Could I have something soft, too, to put on top?”

The maid wiped her eyebrow with a scarlet forearm. “A blanket?”

“Softer than that,” said Lib.

She pulled the three blankets off the bed and shook them so hard they made a dull slap. Piled all the blankets in the house on his bed, Rosaleen O’Donnell had said. This must have been Pat’s bed, it occurred to Lib; there was no other except in the outshot where the parents slept. She ripped off the grimy bottom sheet, baring the tick. Her eyes traced the indelible stains. So Pat had died right here, cooling in his little sister’s warm grip.

In the chair, Anna seemed folded up into almost nothing, like the Limerick gloves in their walnut shell. Lib heard voices arguing in the kitchen.

Rosaleen O’Donnell bustled in a quarter of an hour later with Kitty’s tick as well as a sheepskin she’d borrowed from the Corcorans. “Quiet this morning, sleepyhead?” She held her daughter’s misshapen hands in hers.

How could this woman think sleepy was the word for such lethargy? Lib wondered. Couldn’t she see that Anna was melting away like a halfpenny taper?

“Ah, well. A mother understands what a child doesn’t say, as the proverb has it. Here’s Dadda now.”

“Good morning, pet,” said Malachy from the doorway.

Anna cleared her throat. “Good morning, Dadda.”

He came over to stroke her hair. “How are you today?”

“Well enough,” she told him.

He nodded as if convinced.

The poor lived for the day, was that it? Lib wondered. Lacking control over their circumstances, they learned not to borrow trouble by looking any farther down the road?

Or else this pair of criminals knew exactly what they were doing to their daughter.

When they’d left, Lib made the bed again, with the two mattresses and then the sheepskin under the bottom sheet. “Hop back in now and rest some more.”

Hop: a ludicrous word for the way Anna was crawling into bed.

“Soft,” the girl murmured, patting the spongy surface.

“It’s to prevent bedsores,” Lib explained.

“How did you begin again, Mrs. Lib?” The words came low and gravelly.

Lib put her head to one side.

“When you were widowed. A whole new life, you said.”

She was ruefully impressed that the girl could rise above her own suffering and take an interest in Lib’s past. “There was a dreadful war in the east, and I wanted to help the sick and wounded.”

“And did you?”

Men had spewed, soiled, sprayed, seeped, died. Lib’s men, those Miss N. had assigned to her. They’d died sometimes in her arms but more often while she was obliged to be in another room stirring gruel or folding bandages. “I believe I helped some of them. Somewhat.” Lib had been there, at least. She’d tried. How much did that count? “My teacher said this was the kingdom of hell, and it was our job to haul it a little closer to heaven.”

Anna nodded, as if that went without saying.

Wednesday, August 17, 7:49 a.m., Lib noted down. Tenth day of watch.

Pulse: 109 beats per minute.

Lungs: 22 breaths per minute.

Unable to walk.

She took out the books again and worked through them until she had what she needed. Lib expected Anna to ask her what she was doing, but no. The girl lay still, eyes on the dust motes dancing in the rays of morning light.

“Would you like another riddle?” asked Lib at last.

“Oh yes.”

Two bodies have I,

Though both joined in one.

The stiller I stand,

The faster I run.

“‘The stiller I stand,’” repeated Anna in a murmur. “‘Two bodies.’”

Lib nodded, waited. “Do you give up?”

“Just a minute.”

Lib eyed the second hand of her watch going around. “No answer?”

Anna shook her head.

“An hourglass,” said Lib. “Time falling like sand through the glass, and nothing can slow it.”

The child looked back at Lib, unshaken.

Lib drew her chair very close to the bed. Time for battle. “Anna. You’ve convinced yourself that God has chosen you, out of all the people in the world, not to eat?”

Anna took a breath to speak.

“Hear me out, please. These holy books of yours, they’re full of instructions to the contrary.” Lib opened The Garden of the Soul and found the line she’d marked. “Look upon your meat and drink as medicines, necessary for your health. Or here, in the Psalms.” She flipped to the right page. “I am smitten as grass, and my heart is withered, because I forgot to eat my bread. And what about this: Eat, and drink, and be merry? Or this line that I hear you say all the time: Give us this day our daily bread.”