Wonder Show

by Hannah Barnaby

  Mother

  Little Girl Lost

  Portia had brought the letter from town with the rest of the mail—it seemed to weigh more heavily in her hand, to slow her bicycle on the road. She knew Caroline had been waiting to hear from her mother, and she knew, too, that Caroline would not be getting the letter she wanted. She never had.

  “I don’t understand,” Caroline sobbed. “Why don’t they want me? I thought they would be proud.”

  “She says they’re happy for you,” Portia pointed out.

  “But why won’t she let me come home?”

  “You’re getting married. Married women don’t live with their parents.”

  Caroline’s shoulders heaved and shuddered like a ship on a stormy sea.

  “You really thought she would come for you?” Portia asked softly.

  “Of course.” Caroline blew her nose into one of the monogrammed handkerchiefs Mister had given her as an early wedding present. Seeing the M for McGreavey brought fresh tears and even louder sobbing.

  “Caroline, please.” Portia wanted to help, but she couldn’t abide such weeping. It didn’t leave any air in the room for practical thoughts.

  “I want to go home,” Caroline wailed.

  “You can’t,” Portia said, as gently as she could. Caroline only cried louder. She cried like a heartbroken child, with her whole body and voice. She was making a tremendous amount of noise. Which brought Delilah trotting in to find out what the story was.

  Caroline tried to explain, Portia translated Caroline’s broken words, and Delilah, as usual, was utterly without sympathy.

  “I don’t see no problem,” she said. “You’re gettin’ married, you’ll have your own money. Whaddaya need your family for? And anyway, they’re the ones that sent you here. You’re better off without ’em.”

  Delilah firmly believed that all of the girls at The Home were better off without the families who had callously abandoned them. Even the girls who had been orphaned. Even Lottie Gillaby, whose parents had been struck by lightning during a church revival, an especially unfortunate event after which no one from the church would take Lottie in, having concluded that her family was cursed.

  “Delilah, don’t you have cleaning to do?” Portia asked.

  “Don’t you have cookin’ to do?” Delilah retorted.

  “Don’t leave me alone!” Caroline wailed. “I don’t know what I’ll do when I’m alone!”

  “You won’t be alone for long,” Delilah said with a lascivious grin. “There’ll be a baby comin’ before you know it.”

  Caroline looked horrified. “There will?”

  Portia shook her head. “No, I don’t think Mister wants any kids of his own, not with all of us around already.” It seemed a weak argument, and in fact, given Mister’s penchant for family history, it was entirely possible that he planned to have a whole herd of children.

  But Caroline had grown strangely quiet. She turned to Portia. “You have to help me.”

  “What can I do?”

  “You’ll think of something,” Caroline reassured her, patting her hand with the damp handkerchief. “You’re smart. I know you’ll think of something.”

  Portia looked at Caroline, her face patchy with tears and misery, and had the sudden urge to slap her. “I told you not to do this. All along I told you this was a mistake, and you didn’t listen to me.” She heard her voice rising, a shrill note creeping into its edges, but she could not stop. “If I was so smart, I would have found a way to get myself out of here by now. I wouldn’t be stuck here with the rest of you. I wouldn’t be cooking and cleaning and working like a slave for that man. I would have found my file and I would have found my father and I’d be living in California or wherever the hell he is!”

  At this, Caroline’s face crumpled, and she covered it with her hands. Her sobs pierced Portia like needles, and she was just about to leave the room when Delilah spoke up.

  “I know where your file is.”

  Portia spun around. “What?”

  Delilah shrugged, smiled proudly. “Shoulda asked me before.”

  Solutions

  There were rooms within rooms in Mister’s house, and closets within those, and crawlspaces behind those. And somehow Delilah had found the most important door in the entire place. In the entire world, as far as Portia was concerned. A door along the staircase that ran down the back of the house, connecting the upstairs hallway to the kitchen below. A door that led into a narrow, dusty, slant-ceilinged room tucked into the easternmost corner, where Mister kept his best secrets.

  Portia wondered later why the door wasn’t locked, why Mister hadn’t tried harder to protect himself. Perhaps he thought wayward girls weren’t so resourceful. Or perhaps he wanted someone to find out what he’d been hiding. Secrets are tricky that way—whatever the cost of revealing them, sometimes the cost of keeping them is even higher.

  Portia would find that out for herself, before long.

  The burden of knowing this particular secret, the door and the room behind it, had become more than Delilah could bear. She was proud of herself for having found it, Portia could tell, and she was all but hopping up and down as Portia explored the contents of the hidden space.

  “Over there.” Delilah pointed. “That’s where he keeps the files.”

  The room was so dark that Portia could barely see where Delilah’s finger was leading her, but as her eyes adjusted, she made out the sturdy shapes of boxes, and then the dark lines of Mister’s jagged handwriting that reminded her of winter branches. L–P 1926, said one. On top of that was D–G 1937.

  “Not very organized, is he?” Portia muttered. How long would it take to find the box with the Rs from 1938?

  Delilah bumped Portia’s shoulder as she wedged herself into the stuffy room. “I left some matches in here somewhere . . . Here they are. Hang on.” Portia heard the scuff of a match strike, smelled the burst of sulfur as a bright flame appeared farther to her left than she’d expected. The room was long, traversing the entire length of the house like a hollow backbone.

  Delilah held something small and dark in her hand. “What does this say?” she asked. Then she hissed as the match burned down to her fingertips. “Dammit!” Another strike, another tiny light. “C’mere and tell me what this says.”

  Portia made her way along the colony of boxes and took the object from Delilah. It was a bottle made of brown glass, half full of liquid, with a dry label that was peeling at the edges. There was a skull and crossbones at the corner. STRYCHNINE, it said in faded red letters. POISON. CAUTION. ANTIDOTE: MUSTARD AND WARM WATER TO VOMIT, THEN COLD TEA OR COFFEE, POWDERED CHARCOAL, SEND FOR A PHYSICIAN. J.E.C.F. HARPER & CO., DRUGGISTS. MADISON, IND.

  Portia read all of this to Delilah (who had to light two more matches to hear the entire label) without asking why she needed to do so. She had long suspected Delilah couldn’t read, ever since she’d found traces of misspelled words in the dirt around the henhouse. MUTHR. FATHR. ILUNOY.

  “Wonder what he’s got this stashed away for?” Delilah jabbed Portia with her elbow. “Maybe he’s got plans to finish us all off, huh?” She did not sound particularly alarmed by this idea.

  “It’s not just for killing things,” Portia told her. “You can use it as medicine. I read about it once. But you have to be careful.”

  An idea had begun to form in the back corners of her mind.

  “You have to be very careful. Use only the smallest amount, and then it doesn’t hurt you. Use a little too much, and it makes you sick.”

  Delilah snorted. “Well, ain’t you somethin’? Some kind of doctor, all the sudden?”

  “Of course not. I’m only saying, there are other uses for it.” Portia slipped the bottle into her dress pocket. They had been here too long—she would return to search the files another time. She pushed past Delilah, retraced her steps toward the door. Then she turned back. “Thank you. For showing me.”

  Delilah shrugged and ducked her head. “You’d do the sam
e for me, I bet.”

  “I wish there was something I could do for you,” Portia said.

  Delilah’s head snapped up again. “Bound to be somethin’ one a these days,” she said. “We’ll make us even, sure enough.”

  “Yes,” Portia said. But she was already occupied with another set of thoughts altogether, with how harshly she had spoken to Caroline. How much Caroline needed her help. The bottle in her pocket. So, unwittingly, she made a promise to Delilah.

  Sometimes promises are even harder to keep than secrets. Promises are easily made—we toss them like coins bound for a fountain and leave them there, under the water, waiting to be retrieved.

  But Delilah never forgot a debt. Especially one that was owed her.

  Wicked Deeds, and a Plan

  Caroline was skeptical, naturally, but Portia was nothing if not convincing.

  “A pinch at a time,” Portia told her. “It doesn’t taste like anything, and he’ll never know it’s there.”

  Caroline frowned. “But it’s poison,” she said. “It says so right here on the bottle.”

  Portia patted her knee reassuringly and peeked at the clock on Caroline’s nightstand. She had a pocket of time before dinner, and she was eager to get back to the secret room. “Trust me,” she said. “It won’t kill him. It’ll just make him sick, rile up his stomach, give him the jitters maybe. If you can’t avoid marrying him, at least you can keep him away from you.”

  Caroline turned the strychnine over in her hands. “But it could kill him, couldn’t it? If he took enough of it?”

  Portia nodded distractedly. “Yes, of course. But you’ll be careful. You won’t give him too much.” She laughed and patted Caroline’s knee again. “You’re not a murderer, right?”

  “No,” Caroline murmured. “Of course not.”

  Wedding Eve

  Portia was dreaming about a bicycle race—she was miles ahead of the pack when a curious sound started coming from her front wheel. A muffled tapping sound. She slowed down, but the tapping continued, even when she stopped altogether at the side of the road. They’ll be coming soon, she thought in the dream. I’ll lose my lead.

  Slowly, asleep and awake traded places, and Portia realized that someone was knocking on her bedroom door.

  “Who is it?” she whispered.

  “Delilah.”

  “What do you want?”

  The knob turned slowly, and the door opened a few inches. Portia could see Delilah’s eyes glittering in the dark.

  “There’s something wrong,” Delilah whispered. “It’s Caroline.”

  It was just like a different kind of dream, the way Portia got out of bed and put her bathrobe and slippers on, the way she moved so surely down the hall to the room Caroline had slept in since her woeful engagement, the way she felt she was moving through water and nothing could hurt her.

  Until she opened Caroline’s door and saw her, twisted like some tortured doll. Gasping for breath. Clutching at the bed sheets as if she were falling like Alice down the rabbit hole.

  Delilah stood there, trembling.

  “What happened? What’s wrong with her?”

  And the night voices came back, suddenly, like old friends she had never loved.

  You know, they said. You know exactly what’s wrong.

  Delilah just shook her head and took a step toward the door.

  “Go get Mister!” Portia hissed, and Delilah ran out.

  Portia’s thoughts were desperate now, trying to know what to do. She wished she were one of those plucky frontier girls in her dime store novels, a girl who could make a poultice out of a flour sack and some mustard. Mustard. She remembered the label on the strychnine bottle. Mustard and warm water . . . powdered charcoal . . . But she didn’t have those things, didn’t know how to use them. There was a glass of water on the nightstand, next to the clock. Portia tried to pour some of the water into Caroline’s mouth, but Caroline coughed it out again and knocked the glass from Portia’s hand. The sound of it shattering echoed in her ears.

  Portia wasn’t a nurse. She wasn’t the witch on the red bicycle. She had nothing in her head for this.

  So she sat on the edge of the bed and held Caroline’s hand, rubbed at it to try to straighten the curled fingers. “Shh,” she whispered, “shh, it’s all right. I’m here. It’s all right.”

  Caroline’s eyes were wild, but her body began to calm itself, and she spoke in a ragged whisper. “Mother . . . I’m sorry . . . I couldn’t . . .”

  “Shh, it’s all right.”

  Delilah came back then, with Mister right behind her. He strolled into the room as if he were calling on a business acquaintance. “What have we here?”

  Caroline tried to shield herself with her hands, but she could barely lift them. Her breath shuddered and dragged.

  “She needs a doctor,” Portia said, as calmly as she could. “She’s sick.”

  Mister ignored her and clucked his tongue at Caroline. “This isn’t any way to behave on the eve of your wedding, darling. What would your mother say?”

  Just then Caroline began to convulse again, worse than before. Her back arched, her limbs flailed as if they were trying to detach themselves from her body, and her eyes rolled back in her head.

  “She’s sick!” Portia cried. “She’s not behaving. Look at her!”

  “I can see what she’s doing,” Mister said, sneering. “And that isn’t all I see.” He bent down and reached under the bed. His hand came back holding a brown glass bottle. The label had a red bar at the top with a skull and crossbones.

  Look, look. The voices hissed and crackled. Look what you’ve done.

  “I see someone found Mother’s medicine.” Still holding the bottle, he leaned over Caroline’s thrashing body and murmured, “Naughty girl.”

  Portia tried to throw herself between them, but Mister grabbed her arm and tossed her to the other side of the room, where Delilah was huddled in the corner, watching Caroline and Mister with huge, unblinking eyes. They stayed there, waiting, watching, as Caroline’s back arched and arms and legs grew quiet, as her rasping breath slowed, and then stopped.

  “No,” Portia pleaded, “no, no! Come back!”

  This time Mister did not stop her. She pushed at Caroline’s chest where she thought the heart might be, hit it with her fist, shook Caroline’s body with all her strength.

  But it was not enough.

  “I suppose I knew this would happen,” Mister said. “She wasn’t ready to leave her family, and they weren’t ready to take her back. For my part, I wasn’t ready to give up their money. Our marriage might have been just the thing for everyone.” He turned and, feigning sadness, said, “Alas, our Caroline took matters into her own hands.”

  Then he grinned and said, “Ah, well. A funeral’s just as good as a wedding.”

  Portia’s skin felt like fire. She wanted to kill this man, to see him suffer, burn, bleed to death, anything. He was the one who should have died. Not Caroline.

  It’s all your fault, the voices said. You gave her the poison.

  Portia’s thoughts fired back. I told her how to use it. To make Mister sick. To protect herself, not to kill herself!

  You should have known she would do this. You put it in her hand. You killed her.

  No! Portia’s mind was reeling, spinning in weakened circles like a top spun by a child. She wanted to cry out, to make the voices go quiet. But she held her tongue. And the voices kept on.

  Murderer, they whispered.

  Murderer.

  The Funeral

  It was dusk, when the processions met.

  A train of battered trucks, patched with rust and the wrong colors of paint, limped up the road like a company of wounded soldiers. They were evenly spaced. Some of them towed silver trailers; others hauled only themselves and the people inside, most of whom were concealed by hats or veils or the falling shadows of the trees.

  A herd of girls in matching gray dresses, silently marching down the road, followe
d a single car that had carried Caroline’s body to the graveyard. They walked together behind the empty car, each one wondering, Would I have done the same thing? What if that was me in the box? For some of them, the thought was not totally unpleasant.

  The carnival and the wayward girls eyed one another with naked curiosity. They recognized themselves as compatriots in some foreign country, a country made of many islands, each one so tiny that it held only one person at a time. The carnies and the girls on the road knew exactly what separated them from other people. They knew, at that moment, precisely how much distance was between them.

  The last truck in the line looked newer than the rest. It was red. Portia watched as it passed. She couldn’t quite see inside because the setting sun cast such a glare on the glass, but there was a thin opening at the top of the passenger-side window, and something flew out of it. It landed in the truck’s dusty wake and lay there like a calling card. Portia felt almost too weary to move, but her curiosity gave her just enough energy to bend down and pick the thing up.

  It was a thin piece of cardboard with a list of names and numbers printed on it. At the top it said MILLER BROS. CIRCUS.

  A memory flashed in her mind, of Max and butter-scented air. Portia slipped the card into her pocket and straightened her shoulders. She watched the red truck as it slid out of sight, stood in the hot, sallow breeze and wished to be a speck in the cloud of dust that followed that slow parade. But she was earthbound. She had never felt so much like stone.

  It was only a sharp bark from Mister that compelled her to move. One foot, the other, and so on, until she reached the unwelcoming maw of the house.

  Mister gave them the afternoon off. Not all of the girls, of course—the apple trees needed pruning and would not wait for mourning. But Portia and Delilah were granted a respite from their duties, which sent Delilah outdoors in search of skipping rocks and gave Portia a chance to further explore the secret file room. After assuring herself that Mister was properly occupied in his office (aided in his work by a fresh pot of tea and an entire plate of dry biscuits), she made her way upstairs, avoiding the third and seventh steps, which creaked. She looked hard at the floor as she passed Caroline’s bedroom. She did not want to remember that now.