The Wonder (29 page)

A hesitation. “Mostly.”

“Meaning most of what's there?”

“Everything,” Anna corrected her, “most of the time.”

“But sometimes you can't?”

“It goes black. But I see other things,” said the girl.

“What kind of things?”

“Beautiful things.”

This is what comes of starvation,
Lib wanted to roar. But whoever changed a child's mind by shouting at her? No, she needed to speak more eloquently than she ever had in her life.

“Another riddle, Mrs. Lib?” the child asked.

Lib was startled. But she supposed even the dying liked a little entertainment to help the time pass. “Ah, let me see. Yes, I believe I have one more. What's—what thing is that which is more frightful the smaller it is?”

“Frightful?” repeated Anna. “A mouse?”

“But a rat scares people as much if not more, though it's several times bigger,” Lib pointed out.

“All right.” The girl heaved a breath. “Something that causes
more
fear if it's smaller.”

“Thinner, rather,” Lib corrects herself. “Narrower.”

“An arrow,” Anna murmured, “a knife?” Another ragged breath. “Please, a hint.”

“Imagine walking on it.”

“Would it hurt me?”

“Only if you stepped off.”

“A bridge,” cried Anna.

Lib nodded. For some reason she was remembering Byrne's kiss. Nothing could take that away from her; for the rest of her life, she'd have that kiss. It gave her courage. “Anna,” she said, “you've done enough.”

The child blinked at her.

“Fasted enough, prayed enough. I'm sure Pat is happy in heaven already.”

A whisper: “Can't be sure.”

Lib tried another tack. “All your gifts—your intelligence, your kindness, your strength—they're needed on earth. God wants you to do his work
here
.”

Anna shook her head.

“I'm speaking as your friend now.” Her voice shook. “You've become very dear to me, the dearest girl in the world.”

A tiny smile.

“You're breaking my heart.”

“I'm sorry, Mrs. Lib.”

“Then eat! Please. Even a mouthful. A sip. I beg of you.”

Anna's look was grave, inexorable.

“Please! For my sake. For the sake of everyone who—”

Kitty, from the doorway: “'Tis Mr. Thaddeus.”

Lib leapt to her feet.

The priest looked uncomfortably hot in his layers of black. Had Lib managed to prick his conscience at the meeting last night? His mouth still turned up as he greeted Anna, but his eyes were woebegone.

Lib pushed down her dislike of the man. After all, if anyone could convince Anna of the folly in her theology, it would logically be her priest. “Anna, would you like to speak to Mr. Thaddeus alone?”

A tiny shake of the head.

The O'Donnells were hovering behind him.

The priest picked up Lib's cue. “Do you wish to make your confession, child?”

“Not now.”

Rosaleen O'Donnell knotted her knobby fingers. “Sure what sins would she be after committing, lying there like a cherub?”

You're afraid of her telling him about the manna,
Lib said in her head.
Monster!

“Will we have a hymn, then?” asked Mr. Thaddeus.

“There's an idea,” said Malachy O'Donnell, rubbing his chin.

“Lovely,” gasped Anna.

Lib offered the glass of water, but the child shook her head.

Kitty had sidled in too. With six people in it, the room felt unbearably full.

Rosaleen O'Donnell began the verse.

From the land of my exile

I call upon thee,

Then Mary, my mother,

Look kindly on me.

Why is Ireland the land of exile?
Lib wondered.

The others joined in—the husband, the slavey, the priest, even Anna from her bed.

Then Mary, in pity,

Look down upon me,

'Tis the voice of thy child

That is calling on thee.

Wrath was a spike in the back of Lib's head.
No, this is
your
child, who needs
your
help,
she told Rosaleen O'Donnell silently.

Kitty sang the next verse in a surprisingly sweet alto, all the creases of her face smoothened out.

In sorrow, in darkness,

Be still at my side,

My light and my refuge,

My guard and my guide.

Though snares should surround me,

Yet why should I fear?

I know I am weak

But my mother is here.

Lib grasped it now: This whole earth was the land of exile. Every interest, every satisfaction life could offer, was scorned as a
snare
for the soul bent on hurrying to heaven.

But the snares are in here.
This cabin held together by dung and blood, hair and milk—a trap to hold and mangle a little girl.

“Bless you, my child,” Mr. Thaddeus said to Anna. “I'll look in again tomorrow.”

Was that it, the best he could do? A hymn and a blessing and
off went he?

The O'Donnells and Kitty filed out after the priest.

No sign of Byrne at the spirit grocery. No answer when Lib knocked on his door. Might he be regretting the kiss?

All afternoon she lay on top of her bed, eyes as dry as paper. Sleep was a distant country.

Do your duty while the world whirls,
her teacher ordered.

What was Lib's duty to Anna now?
Deliver me out of the hands of my enemies,
Anna had prayed. Was Lib her deliverer or another enemy?
I'll stop at nothing
, Lib had boasted to Byrne last night. But what could she do to save a child who refused to be rescued?

At seven she made herself go downstairs and have some dinner, as she was feeling faint. Now broiled hare lay in her stomach like lead.

The August evening was stifling. By the time Lib reached the cabin, the dark horizon was swallowing up the sun. She knocked, tight with dread. Between one shift and the next, Anna could have slid into unconsciousness.

The kitchen smelled of porridge and the fire's perpetual blaze. “How is she?” Lib demanded of Rosaleen O'Donnell.

“Much the same, the little angel.”

Not an angel. A human child.

Anna was weirdly yellowish against the dull sheets.

“Good evening, child. May I look at your eyes?”

The girl opened them, blinking.

Lib pulled the skin underneath one eye down to check it. Yes, the whites were the buttery hue of a daffodil. She threw a look at Sister Michael.

“The doctor confirmed it was jaundice when he looked in this afternoon,” murmured the nun as she fastened her cloak.

Lib turned to Rosaleen O'Donnell, standing in the doorway. “That's a sign that Anna's whole constitution is breaking down.”

The mother didn't have a word to say to that; she received it like news of a storm or a distant war.

The chamber pot was dry. Lib tilted it.

The nun shook her head.

No urine passed at all, then. This was the point to which all the measurements were leading. Everything inside Anna was grinding to a halt.

“There's to be a votive mass tomorrow evening at half past eight,” said Rosaleen O'Donnell.

“Votive?” asked Lib.

“Dedicated to a particular intention,” explained Sister Michael under her breath.

“For Anna. Isn't that nice, pet?” asked her mother. “Mr. Thaddeus is offering a special mass because of you not being well, and everyone will be there.”

“Lovely.” Anna breathed as if it required her whole attention.

Lib pulled out her stethoscope and waited for the other two women to leave.

She thought she heard something new in Anna's heart this evening, a gallop. Could she be imagining it? She listened hard. There: three sounds instead of the usual two.

Next she counted the breaths. Twenty-nine in a minute; speeding up. Anna's temperature seemed lower too, despite the heat of the past two days.

She sat down and took Anna's scaly hand. “Your heart's starting to jump. Have you felt it?” Something about the way the girl lay, arms and legs held so still. “You must be in pain.”

“That's not the word,” whispered Anna.

“Whatever you call it, then.”

“Sister says 'tis the kiss of Jesus.”

“What is?” Lib demanded.

“When something hurts. She says it means I've got close enough to his cross that he can lean down and kiss me.”

The nun had meant it as comfort, no doubt, but it horrified Lib.

A rattling breath. “I just wish I knew how long it'll take.”

Lib asked, “Dying, you mean?”

The girl nodded.

“It doesn't come naturally at your age. Children are so very alive.” This was quite the strangest conversation Lib had ever had with a patient. “Are you afraid?”

A hesitation. Then a tiny nod.

“I don't believe you truly want to die.”

She saw such misery in the child's face then. Anna had never let this show before.
“Thy will be done,”
the girl whispered, crossing herself.

“This is not God's doing,” Lib reminded her. “It's yours.”

The limp lids fluttered and finally shut. The loud breathing softened and evened out.

Lib kept hold of the swollen hand. Sleep, a temporary mercy. She hoped it would last the night.

The Rosary began on the other side of the wall. Muted this time; the chanting low. Lib waited for it to be over, for the cabin to settle down as the O'Donnells retreated to their hole in the wall and Kitty bedded down on the settle in the kitchen. The fading of all the small sounds.

Finally Lib was the only one awake. The watcher.
Ever this night be at my side.

It occurred to her to ask herself why she wanted Anna to live through this Friday night, and the next night, and however many nights were left. As a matter of compassion, shouldn't Lib be wishing for this to be over? After all, everything she did to make Anna more comfortable—a sip of water, another pillow—was just prolonging her suffering.

For a moment, Lib let herself imagine bringing on the end: lifting and folding a blanket, setting it down over the child's face, and bearing down on it with all her weight. It wouldn't be difficult, or take more than a couple of minutes. It would be an act of mercy, really.

A murder.

How had Lib reached the point of contemplating killing a patient?

She blamed the lack of sleep, the uncertainty. Everything a muddle and a mess. A swampy wilderness, a child lost, and Lib stumbling after her.

Never despair,
she ordered herself. Wasn't that one of the unforgiveable sins? She remembered a story about a man wrestling with an angel all night and being thrown down over and over again. Never winning, but never giving up.

Think, think.
She struggled to apply her trained mind.
What history has a child?
Rosaleen O'Donnell had asked that in reply to Lib's questions that first morning. But every disease had a story with a beginning, middle, and end. How to trace this one all the way back?

Her eyes roamed the room. When they fell on Anna's treasure chest, she remembered the candlestick she'd cracked, and the dark curl of hair. The brother, Pat O'Donnell, whom Lib knew only from a photograph with painted-on eyes. How had his little sister become convinced that she needed to purchase his soul with her own?

Lib laboured to take Anna's struggle on its own terms. To put herself in the position of a girl for whom these ancient narratives were literal truth. Four and a half months of fasting; how could that much sacrifice not be enough to make amends for the sins of a mere boy?

“Anna.” Only a whisper. Then more loudly. “Anna!”

The child struggled to surface.

“Anna!”

Her heavy lids batted.

Lib put her mouth very close to the girl's ear. “Did Pat do something bad?”

No answer.

“Something nobody else knows about?”

Lib waited. Watched the flickering lids.
Leave her be,
she told herself, suddenly exhausted. What did any of this matter now?

“He said it was all right.” Anna barely voiced the words. Eyes still shut, as if she were still in her dream.

Lib waited, breath held.

“He said it was double.”

Lib puzzled over that. “Double what?”

“Love.” A push of tongue for the
L,
the merest puff of breath, teeth pressed to the lower lip for the
V.

My love is mine, and I am his;
one of Anna's hymns. “What do you mean?”

Anna's eyes were open now. “He married me in the night.”

Lib blinked once, twice. The room stayed still, but the world plunged dizzyingly around it.

He comes in to me as soon as I'm asleep,
Anna had said, but she hadn't meant Jesus.
He wants me.

“I was his sister and his bride too,” the girl whispered. “Double.”

Nausea rose through Lib. There wasn't another bedroom; the siblings must have shared this one. That folding screen she'd put outside the room on her first day had been all that had separated Pat's bed—this bed, his deathbed—from Anna's mattress on the floor. “When was this?” Lib asked, the words scraping her throat.

A tiny shrug.

“How old was Pat, do you remember?”

“Thirteen, maybe.”

“And you?”

“Nine,” said Anna.

Lib's face puckered. “Did this happen just once, Anna—on a single occasion—or…”

“Marriage is forever.”

Oh, the terrible innocence of the child. Lib made a small sound, encouraging her to go on.

“When brothers and sisters marry, it's a holy mystery. A secret between us and heaven, Pat told me. But then he died,” said Anna, voice cracking like a shell, eyes fixed on Lib. “I wondered if maybe he'd been wrong.”