The Wonder(73)

Better to have tried than to have done nothing? Better for Lib’s conscience, she supposed; for the starving girl, it made no difference.

She threw out the shrunken flowers and tidied the missal back into its box.

Then on an impulse she took it out again and leafed through it once more, looking for the Dorothy prayer. Out of all the formulae there were, why did Anna recite that one thirty-three times a day?

Here it was—the Good Friday Prayer for the Holy Souls as Revealed to Saint Bridget. The text told Lib nothing new: I adore thee, O most precious cross, adorned by the tender, delicate and venerable members of Jesus my Saviour, sprinkled and stained with his precious blood. She squinted at the notes in minute print below. If said thirty-three times fasting on a Friday three souls will be released from purgatory, but if on Good Friday the harvest will be thirty-three souls. An Easter bonus, multiplying the reward by eleven. Lib was about to shut the book when she belatedly registered one word: fasting.

If said thirty-three times fasting.

“Anna.” She bent and touched the girl’s cheek. “Anna!”

She blinked up at Lib.

“Your prayer, I adore thee, O most precious cross. Is that why you won’t eat?”

Anna’s smile was the oddest thing: joyful, with a dark edge.

At last, thought Lib, at last. But there was no satisfaction in it, only a heavy grief.

“Did he tell you?” asked Anna.

“Who?”

Anna pointed at the ceiling.

“No,” said Lib, “I guessed it.”

“When we guess,” said the girl, “that’s God telling us things.”

“You’re trying to get your brother into heaven.”

Anna nodded with a child’s certainty. “If I say the prayer, fasting, thirty-three times every day—”

“Anna,” Lib wailed. “To say it fasting—I’m sure that means skipping only one meal on one Friday to save three souls, or thirty-three if it’s Good Friday.” Why was she granting these absurd figures credence by repeating them like something from a clerk’s ledger? “The book never says to stop eating entirely.”

“Souls need a lot of cleaning.” Anna’s eyes glistened. “Nothing’s impossible to God, though, so I won’t give up, I’ll just keep saying the prayer and begging him to fetch Pat into heaven.”

“But your fasting—”

“That’s to make amends.” She strained for breath.

“I’ve never heard of such a ludicrous and horrible bargain,” Lib told her.

“Our Heavenly Father doesn’t make bargains,” said Anna reprovingly. “He hasn’t promised me anything. But maybe he’ll have mercy on Pat. And on me too, even,” she added. “Then Pat and I can be together again. Sister and brother.”

There was a weird plausibility to the scheme, a sort of dream logic that would make sense to an eleven-year-old. “Live first,” Lib urged her. “Pat will wait.”

“He’s waited nine months already, burning.” Cheeks still chalk-dry, Anna let out a sob.

Had the child not enough liquid left to make tears anymore? Lib wondered. “Think how your father and mother would miss you” was all she could say. Had Rosaleen O’Donnell had any idea where it would lead when she began the awful game of make-believe?

Anna’s face twisted. “They’ll know Pat and I are safe above.” She corrected herself: “If ’tis God’s will.”

“In the wet ground, that’s where you’ll be,” said Lib, her heel thumping the packed-earth floor.

“That’s only the body,” said the girl with a hint of scorn. “The soul just—” She wriggled.

“What? What does it do?”

“Drops the body, like an old coat.”

It occurred to Lib that she was the only one in the world who knew for sure that this child meant to die. It was like a leaden cape on Lib’s shoulders.

“Your body—every body is a marvel. A wonder of creation.” She fumbled for the right words; this was a foreign language. No use speaking of pleasure or happiness to this tiny zealot, only duty. What was it Byrne had said? “The day you first opened your eyes, Anna, God asked just one thing: that you live.”

Anna looked back at her.

“I’ve seen infants born dead. Others who’ve suffered for weeks or months before they’ve given up the fight,” said Lib, her voice cracking despite herself, “and no rhyme or reason to it.”

“His plan,” wheezed Anna.

“Very well, then; it must also be his plan for you to survive.” Lib pictured the wide famine grave in the churchyard. “Hundreds of thousands—perhaps millions of your compatriots died when you were a tiny child. That means it’s your sacred task to keep going. To keep breathing, to eat like the rest of us, to do the daily work of living.”

She could see only the tiniest shift of the child’s jaw, saying no, always no.

A vast weariness took hold of Lib. She drank half a glass of water, sat down, and stared into space.

At eight that evening, when Malachy O’Donnell came in to say good night, Anna was fast asleep. He hovered, patches of sweat under his arms.

With a great effort, Lib roused herself. As he moved towards the door, she seized her chance. “I must tell you, Mr. O’Donnell,” she whispered, “your daughter doesn’t have long.”