The Wonder by Emma Donoghue Page B

whether the nurse’s fingers happened to be warmer or colder than the patient’s armpit.
    â€œPut out your tongue, please.” By training Lib always noted the condition of the tongue, though she’d have been hard-pressed to tell what it said about the subject’s health. Anna’s was red, with an odd flatness at the back instead of the usual tiny bumps.
    When Lib put her stethoscope to Anna’s navel, she heard a faint gurgling, though that could be attributed to the mixing of air and water; it didn’t prove the presence of food.
Sounds in digestive cavity,
she wrote,
of uncertain origin.
    Today she’d have to ask Dr. McBrearty about those swollen lower legs and hands. Lib supposed it could be argued that any symptoms arising from a limited diet were all to the good, because sooner or later, surely they’d provoke the girl to give up this grotesque charade. She made the bed again, tightening the sheets.
    Nurse and charge settled into a sort of rhythm on this second day. They read—Lib caught up on Madame Defarge’s nefarious doings in
All the Year Round
—and chatted a little. The girl was charming, in her unworldly way. Lib found it hard to keep in mind that Anna was a trickster, a great liar in a country famous for them.
    Several times an hour the child whispered what Lib thought of as the Dorothy prayer. Was it meant to strengthen her resolve every time emptiness cramped her belly?
    Later in the morning Lib took Anna out for another constitutional—only around the farmyard, because the skies were threatening. When Lib remarked on Anna’s halting gait, the child said that was just how she walked. She sang hymns as she went, like a stoical soldier.
    â€œDo you like riddles?” Lib asked her when there came a break in the music.
    â€œI don’t know any.”
    â€œDear me.” Lib remembered the riddles of childhood more vividly than all the things she’d had to memorize in the schoolroom. “What about this: ‘There’s not a kingdom on the earth, but what I’ve travelled o’er and o’er, and whether it be day or night I neither am nor can be seen. What am I?’”
    Anna looked mystified, so Lib repeated it.
    â€œâ€˜I neither am nor can be seen,’” echoed the girl. “Does that mean that I amn’t—I don’t exist—or I amn’t seen?”
    â€œThe latter,” said Lib.
    â€œSomeone invisible,” said Anna, “who travels all across the earth—”
    â€œOr some
thing,
” Lib put in.
    The child’s frown lifted. “The wind?”
    â€œVery good. You’re a quick study.”
    â€œAnother. Please.”
    â€œHmm, let’s see. ‘The land was white,’” Lib began, “‘the seed was black. It’ll take a good scholar to riddle me that.’”
    â€œPaper, with ink on it!”
    â€œClever puss.”
    â€œIt was because of
scholar.
”
    â€œYou should go back to school,” Lib told her.
    Anna looked away, towards a cow munching grass. “I’m all right at home.”
    â€œYou’re an intelligent girl.” The compliment came out more like an accusation.
    Low clouds were gathering now, so Lib hurried the two of them back into the stuffy cabin. But then the rain held off, and she wished they’d stayed out longer.
    Kitty finally brought in Lib’s breakfast: two eggs and a cup of milk. This time greed made Lib eat so fast, tiny fragments of shell crunched in her teeth. The eggs were gritty and reeked of peat; roasted in the ashes, no doubt.
    How could the child bear not just the hunger, but the boredom? The rest of humankind used meals to divide the day, Lib realized—as reward, as entertainment, the chiming of an inner clock. For Anna, during this watch, each day had to pass like one endless moment.
    The child accepted a spoonful of water as if it were some rich wine.
    â€œWhat’s so