The Life She Was Given

by Ellen Marie Wiseman

  Lilly’s lip trembled. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

  “You don’t understand. She thought she was being punished.”

  “For what?”

  “For saying she’d make a deal with the devil.”

  “So she locked me in the attic.”

  He shook his head. “No, I did.”

  For a second, Lilly stopped breathing. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. All this time, she had blamed Momma for everything. All this time, she thought her mother hated her and her father was a spineless coward. “Why?” she managed.

  “She wanted me to take you into the woods and leave you there.”

  Lilly bit her bottom lip and closed her eyes. What little strength she had left seemed to slip away. Her mother never meant to lock her away, she wanted her dead. She was beyond cold and cruel, she was willing to murder her own baby. And now she had stolen Phoebe. When Lilly found her voice, it was weak and rattling. “Because she thought I was a monster. And she was ashamed of me.”

  “No, because she thought she was being tested by God. She had made a deal with the devil and you terrified her, not because you were a monster, but because you were perfect. You were without a blemish or a spot, like the sacrificial lamb.” He stepped closer. “Don’t you see? I locked you in the attic to save you. By the time she discovered you were still alive, you were four months old. I warned her to leave you alone or I’d tell everyone the truth. We said you were stillborn. There was a funeral and . . .” He stopped and pressed his fingers into his temple, his brow creased.

  Tears spilled down Lilly’s cheeks. “Why didn’t you do what she wanted? Why didn’t you take me into the woods and leave me there?”

  “Because what she was saying was crazy. I thought she’d lost her mind and would come around after she got over the shock.”

  “But she didn’t. So you left me in the attic.”

  He nodded.

  “Why didn’t you come looking for me after she sold me to the circus?”

  “She said you ran away.”

  “And you believed her.”

  “At first I was afraid she’d done something . . .” He hesitated, then went on. “I kept asking her how you got out and found your way downstairs. She said you knocked her down and ran. She had bruises on her arm and scratches on her cheek.”

  “She was lying.”

  “I realized that when I saw a circus poster in Pennsylvania with your picture on it. I—”

  “You knew where I was then,” she said. “All this time.”

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t want to know if I was all right? If I was happy?”

  He sighed. “Of course, I did. That’s why I came to see you in the medium tent.”

  “That was six years after I disappeared. What took you so long?”

  He shook his head. “You’re wrong. I went to a show at least once a year. You never knew I was there, but I saw you in the freak show. I saw you on the white elephant.” A sad smile played around his lips. “You looked so beautiful . . . and happy.”

  Lilly put her hands over her face. She had been happy. Finally. But then the tornado took the big top and Mr. Barlow sold JoJo and...

  She couldn’t think of anything else to say. She could barely string two thoughts together. The longer they talked, the weaker she grew.

  “You must hate me,” her father said.

  She took her hands from her face and shook her head, weeping openly now. “I loved you, and Momma too, because I didn’t know any better. But when I saw myself in a mirror for the first time and realized there was no reason to lock me up, I hated you both. For a long time. Now, you’re not important enough to hate.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said again. “For everything. I still love you. I never stopped, not for one minute.”

  On watery arms, she pushed herself up again, trying not to disturb Phoebe. “If you still love me, take me to the hospital. Give me back my daughter. Please. You can’t let Momma take her. She’s all I have.”

  He clenched his jaw, his temples pulsing in and out. “And then what, Lilly? What do you think the police would do if they found out we locked you up? What do you think would happen if they found out your mother sold you to a circus sideshow?”

  “I won’t tell them,” she croaked. Her voice was giving out. She fell back on the pillow, breathing hard. “You have to give me a fighting chance. You owe me that much.”

  He moved closer, slowly shaking his head. “I hope you’ll forgive me someday, but right now, the only thing I can do is promise to give your daughter the life you never had. If something happened to me and your mother, who would take care of her?” He reached over Lilly and lifted Phoebe from the bed. Lilly tried to hold on, but she was too weak. Her father pulled away and stood over her, Phoebe asleep in his arms, tears shining in his eyes. “You wouldn’t want her sent to an orphanage, would you?” Before Lilly could say anything else, he walked out of the room and locked the door behind him.

  Lilly threw her head back and screamed until she tasted blood.

  CHAPTER 34

  JULIA

  Spring had appeared by the time Julia’s new house was finished—a modest cottage with a porch swing and windows overlooking the main barn and pasture. The daffodils were up, the apple trees were covered in white and pink blossoms, and the lilac trees were budding. Robins bounced along the muddy grass, and sparrows lined the fences and barn roof.

  On her way across the lawn to the new barn construction site, Julia turned her face toward the sun, hopeful about the future for the first time in her life. But there were still so many things that needed to be done. The new barn was being built where Blackwood Manor once stood, the new fences needed to be put up, and the electricity was being turned on today. And she was thinking about getting a dog or two, maybe a yellow lab and a chocolate one too.

  It was relief in the end, to have the manor gone. Now that she knew the truth, she wanted nothing more than to put the past behind her and start over. Living in the manor would have felt like living in a mausoleum, every little thing a reminder of the hurt and fear she felt as a child, of the guilt she felt when her “father” was drinking, and mostly, of the suffering her mother, Lilly, had endured. It would have seemed wrong to live there, not to mention too hard to live in a place that had witnessed such overwhelming sadness and cruelty. Besides, going through everything would have taken forever—reading all her father’s papers, selling off the antiques, clearing out the attic. More importantly, making a loving home in the same house her mother had been kept prisoner and died in would have been impossible. Now the house and everything in it was gone, destroyed and purified by fire.

  Although she tried not to, she thought about her grandparents a lot. When she told Fletcher what had happened, he said people who were cold and aggressive were not happy people. They treated others the way they did because they were unhappy within themselves. She wasn’t sure if she believed him, but she appreciated his efforts to help. After all, she had been unhappy most of her life, and she always tried hard, maybe too hard, to be kind to others. She had heard the saying that those who hurt others had been hurt themselves. But she didn’t believe that either. She had been hurt and knew how awful it felt, so she tried not to hurt anyone. Maybe some people never learned.

  It was hard to feel sympathy for her grandfather, who let such horrible things happen under his own roof, then drank himself to death trying to forget what he had done to his daughter. It was even harder to find sympathy for her grandmother, who had gotten ridden of one child and raised another without love. She supposed her grandmother didn’t know how to love. That she was born flawed. It was the only explanation that made sense.

  She supposed it was only natural to think often of Lilly. But her heart ached imagining the nightmare she endured, and the life they could have had together if things had turned out differently. She wished she had the picture of herself as a baby on her mother’s lap, smiling and holding the
calico elephant, but it was destroyed in the fire. Claude had no idea how long Lilly survived in the attic after her accident, but a heavy, nauseous feeling came over Julia when she realized it could have been weeks or months or even years. And she had been eating and sleeping and playing all that time, with no clue her mother was living in misery right upstairs. She wondered too what kind of mother Lilly would have been after being treated so cruelly by her parents. She liked to imagine her as a loving, affectionate woman who, like Julia, had learned to be gentle and kind as a result of what others had done to her.

  While waiting for the new house to be built, she stayed in an inn on the interstate and went to the barn every day to work with Claude, Fletcher, and the horses. Bonnie Blue’s foal, Samantha, was growing fast and strong, as was her best friend Molly, the filly Fletcher had brought home. Julia planned to keep them both on the farm for the rest of their lives. And after doing research on the racing industry, she made the decision that no more Blackwood Farm horses would be sold into racing.

  When she wasn’t at the farm, she was at the library doing research on The Barlow Brothers’ Circus and Lilly. Along with the same clippings she had read in her grandfather’s den, she found an article about two circus performers who had tried to steal an elephant. One was her mother, Lilly, and the other was a performer named Cole Holt. They were husband and wife. She also found a horrifying article about the execution of an elephant named Pepper, the same elephant her parents had been trying to steal, and another article about Lilly being injured while trying to save her. But she found no record of what happened to her father, Cole, and he remained a mystery. After reading about Lilly trying to save Pepper, she tried to think of a way to honor her mother’s courage, and the solution came to her a few weeks ago.

  Now, as she reached the new barn, Fletcher pulled in with a horse trailer. She went over to the driveway and waited, trying to ignore the nerves fluttering in her stomach. He got out of the truck and shut the door, grinning like a schoolboy.

  “Do you have them?” she said.

  “Sure do,” Fletcher said. “And there’s more where these came from.”

  He went around the back of the trailer and she followed. He unlocked the ramp, let it down, and reached for her hand. She smiled and took it, and he pulled her up the ramp. Together, they peered into the trailer.

  A dozen fuzzy heads looked up at them, and several soft muzzles reached over the trailer door. Foals of all ages and colors—bays and palominos, chestnuts and paints, and one skinny runt the color of cinnamon—stood, wobbly-legged, in the straw.

  Julia’s eyes grew moist. “They’re beautiful.”

  “And they’re alive because of you,” Fletcher said.

  She grinned and he pulled her to him. Thinking it was a congratulatory hug, she laughed. But then he lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her, hard on the lips. At first she moved away, surprised; then she kissed him back. It was a short kiss, but they both recognized the affection behind it. When they drew apart, they reached in to pet the foals at the same time and smiled.

  Julia’s heart swelled with pride and love and something that felt like joy. For the first time that she could remember, she felt elation. This was the beginning of a new future, and she could think of no better way to live her life than to save these helpless creatures. She and Fletcher and Claude would rescue nurse mare foals and other horses in Lilly’s memory. They would care for them and train them until they were old enough to be adopted into loving homes. In the meantime, the horses would be free to run in the fields, to play and jump and sleep on the grass, and chase away the ghosts of Blackwood Manor.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  During the writing of The Life She Was Given, I relied on the following books: American Sideshow by Marc Hartzman; Shocked and Amazed: On & Off the Midway by James Taylor; Step Right This Way: The Photographs of Edward J. Kelty; and Carney Folk: The World’s Weirdest Sideshow Acts by Francine Hornberger.

  Please turn the page

  for a very special Q&A

  with Ellen Marie Wiseman!

  How did you come up with the idea for The Life She Was Given?

  Believe it or not, the idea started with the image of an old camera hidden inside a mansion. Then I imagined a little girl locked in the attic, which probably stemmed from my love of the book Flowers in the Attic and my fascination with stories about people hiding their “less than perfect” children in a back bedroom. After writing a little bit about a freak show in my third novel, Coal River, I wanted to explore that world further and came up with the idea of the girl in the attic being sold to a circus sideshow. Once those three things came together in my mind, the major plot of the story quickly took shape. When I told my editor the idea, I worried he’d think I’d gone off my rocker. Luckily, he loved it as much as I did.

  Your first three novels tackled important issues: WWII in The Plum Tree, insane asylums in What She Left Behind, and child labor in Coal River. With The Life She Was Given, what looks like a story about child abuse ends up being about animal cruelty too. Did you set out to include the mistreatment of animals this time around?

  Not exactly. And to be honest, I was a little worried I was going too far off my “brand” when I first came up with the idea. But during my research about circuses, I came across an article about Mary the elephant, who was hanged by the neck from a railcar-mounted industrial crane in 1916 for killing an inexperienced trainer after he prodded her in the precise spot where she had a severely infected tooth. I was shocked and heartbroken by her story and wanted to include it in the book because I’m passionate about the humane treatment of animals. And with the recent shooting of the rare gorilla in the Cincinnati Zoo, Mary’s story is still relevant today. Once I added it, along with the connection and commonality between Lilly and the circus animals, it almost felt like that part of the novel took on a life of its own. I always say we can’t be mad at animals for acting like animals, especially when we’re the ones who put them in positions where they feel the need to defend themselves. We’re shocked when we read about children being locked up and beaten, but we do it to animals all the time and don’t understand when they fight back.

  Do you have a lot of contact with animals in your everyday life?

  I have two dogs and four grand-pups. When our kids were growing up we had horses, goats, sheep, rabbits, barn cats, turkeys, geese, ducks, chickens, and numerous rescue dogs. I can’t imagine not having animals in my life.

  What is your creative process like? Do you outline or write by the seat of your pants?

  When I begin working on a new novel, I create a loose outline, partly because deadlines don’t give you the luxury of writing several chapters only to find out you’ve written yourself into a corner. The other reason is that I like to know where I’m going, especially when it comes to the ending. Once I have a solid outline, I start researching the time period to get my facts straight and my timeline correct. I write page after page of notes and put dozens of sticky tabs in my research books in order to quickly reference important information as I work. Not only is research necessary to build a credible fiction world, but it helps me understand what my characters’ lives might have been like, what clothes they may have worn, what food they may have eaten, what their hairstyles may have been, whether their homes would have included the latest inventions—electric lights, a telephone, a motor vehicle, or an icebox. I put myself inside my protagonists’ heads (so far all women) by determining their possible education level and taking into account the freedoms or constraints they might have been dealing with during their lifetime. I try to imagine what their hopes, dreams, and struggles might have been, according to what was important to the women of their time.

  How is Lilly similar to, or different from, the main characters in your other books?

  In The Plum Tree, What She Left Behind, and Coal River, my protagonists are young women denied a normal life during a time of great social change. In The Life She Was Given, Lilly is denied a normal li
fe because she’s locked in the attic, but the outside world doesn’t have a direct effect on her at first. Once she is sold to the circus, however, the economics and level of acceptance of those considered different during that time period affect her greatly. All four characters rebel against doing what is expected of them, Christine against the Gestapo and Nazi ideology, Clara against her father and the doctors at Willard Asylum, Emma against her uncle, the Coal & Iron Police, and the mine owner, and Lilly against Momma and Merrick. All four endure hardship at the hands of others who show little regard for human dignity, yet each refuses to give up hope and does whatever is necessary to improve her situation.

  A READING GROUP GUIDE

  THE LIFE SHE WAS GIVEN

  Ellen Marie Wiseman

  ABOUT THIS GUIDE

  The suggested questions are included

  to enhance your group’s reading of

  Ellen Marie Wiseman’s

  The Life She Was Given.

  Discussion Questions

  1. In the beginning of the book, Lilly has never stepped foot outside the attic of Blackwood Manor. Yet she dreams of escaping and exploring the outside world. What effect do you think being locked up for the first ten years of her life had on her? Do you think it’s possible for a child in that situation to develop normally? When Momma finally lets her out, Lilly is frightened and wants to return to the attic. Why do you think she feels that way?

  2. Julia was brought up believing bad things would happen if she didn’t behave. What effect do you think that belief had on her relationships with other people? Do you think she was a people-pleaser? Why or why not? How do you think she changed over the course of the novel? What were the most important events that facilitated those changes?