Magic hour: a novel

by Kristin Hannah

  Not a shifting of her weight, not a changing of her arm, not a turn of her head. Not only did she evidence no repetitive or obsessive movements, she was as still as a chameleon. The social worker who had come this morning to conduct the home study to determine Julia’s fitness as a temporary foster parent had been shocked, though she tried to hide it. As she closed her notebook, the woman had thrown a last, worried glance at the girl before whispering to Julia, “Are you sure?”

  “I am,” Julia had said. And she was. Helping this child had already become something of a quest.

  Last night after preparing the bedroom, she had stayed up late, sitting at the kitchen table, making notes and reading everything she’d been able to find on the few true wild children on record. It was both fascinating and wrenchingly sad.

  Their cases all followed a similar pattern, whether they’d been found three hundred years ago in the dense woods of Bavaria or in this century in the wilds of Africa. All of them were discovered—usually by hunters—hiding in deep, dark forests. More than a third of them ran on all fours. Very few had been able to speak. Several of them—including Peter, the wild boy in 1726; Memmie, the so-called Savage Girl in France; and most famously, Victor, the wild boy of Aveyron in 1797—had become media sensations in their day. Scientists and doctors and language theorists flocked to their sides, each hoping their wild child would answer the most elemental human nature questions. Kings and princesses brought them to court as oddities, entertainments. The most recent case, that of a girl named Genie, who, though not raised in the wild, had been subjected to such systematic and horrific abuse that she had never learned to speak or move around or play, was yet another case of media attention.

  Most of the documented cases had two things in common. First, the children possessed the physical ability to speak, but never acquired actual language to any great degree. Secondly, almost all of these former wild children lived out their lives in mental institutions, forgotten and alone. Only two cases, Memmie and a Ugandan boy found living among the monkeys in 1991, ever truly learned to speak and function in society, and Memmie still died penniless and alone, forgotten. She had never been able to tell people what had happened to her in her youth, how she’d ended up in the dark woods.

  One after another, scientists and doctors had been drawn to the challenge these children presented. The so-called professionals wanted to know and understand—and yes, to “save”—a human being totally unlike all others, one who could be seen as more pure, more untouched than anyone born in a thousand years. A person unsocialized, uncorrupted by man’s teachings. One by one they had failed in their quest. Why? Because they cared too little about their patients.

  It was not a mistake she would make.

  She wouldn’t be like the doctors who’d gone before her, who’d sucked the soul from their patients, furthered their own careers, and then moved on, leaving their silent, broken patients locked behind bars, more confused and alone than they’d been in the woods.

  “It’s your heart that matters, isn’t it, little one?” she said, looking up again. As Julia watched, another bird landed on the windowsill by the girl’s outstretched hand. The bird cocked its head and warbled a little song.

  The girl imitated the sound perfectly.

  The bird appeared to listen, then sang again.

  The girl responded.

  Julia glanced at the video camera set up in the corner. The red light was on. This bizarre “conversation” was being recorded.

  “Are you communicating with him?” Julia asked, making a note of it in her records. She knew it would sound ridiculous, but she was seeing it. The girl and the bird seemed to understand each other. At the very least, the child was an accomplished mimic.

  Then again, if she’d grown up in the woods, alone or among a pack of animals, she wouldn’t necessarily make the distinctions between man and animals that were commonplace in our civilized world.

  “Do you know the difference between man and animal, I wonder?” She tapped her pen on the pad of paper. At the gentle thudding sound, the bird flew away.

  Julia reached sideways for the books on the table that served as her makeshift desk. There were four of them. The Secret Garden, Andersen’s Fairy Tales, Alice in Wonderland, and The Velveteen Rabbit. These were only four of the many books donated by the generous townspeople. Early this morning, while the girl was still asleep, Julia had changed her diaper and then searched the boxes for anything that might help her communicate with her patient. She’d chosen crayons and paper, a pair of old Barbie dolls, still dressed for disco, and these books.

  She opened the top one, The Secret Garden, and began to read out loud. “When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle, everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen. . . .”

  For the next hour Julia read the beloved children’s story aloud, concentrating on giving her voice a gentle, singsong cadence. There was no doubt in her mind that her patient didn’t know most of these words and thus couldn’t follow the story, and yet, like all preverbal children, the girl liked the sound of it.

  At the end of a chapter, Julia gently closed the book. “I’m going to take a short break here. I’ll be right back. Back,” she repeated in case the word was familiar.

  She stood slowly, stretching. Long hours spent sitting in this chair, tucked up to a makeshift desk at the end of her girlhood bed, had left her with a crick in her neck. She took her pen—it could be a weapon, after all—and headed for the tiny bathroom that had been built for her and Ellie when they were preteens. It connected to their bedroom through a door by the dresser.

  Julia went into the bathroom and closed the door just enough for privacy. She didn’t want her voice to be lost. Pulling down her pants, she sat on the toilet and said, “I’m just going to go to the bathroom, honey. I’ll be right back. I want to know what happens to Mary, too. Do you think she really hears crying? Do you cry? Do you know what—”

  The girl skidded to a stop in the doorway and shoved the door open, wincing when it banged against the wall. She slapped her cheeks and shook her head. Snot flew from her nose as she blew it, hard.

  “You’re upset,” Julia said in a soothing voice. “Upset. You’re getting angry. Did you think I was leaving?”

  At the sound of Julia’s voice, the girl quieted. She looked nervously at the door, sidling away from it.

  “We’ll keep the door open from now on, but I need to go potty. You know that word? Potty?”

  Perhaps there was the merest flinch at the word, a flash of recognition. Perhaps not.

  The girl just stood there, watching her.

  “I need privacy. You should . . . aw, hell.” None of the social niceties mattered here.

  The girl frowned and took a step closer. She cocked her head in the same way the blue jay had, as if to see things from a preferable angle.

  “I’m peeing,” Julia said matter-of-factly, reaching for the toilet paper.

  The girl was intent now, utterly focused. Once again she’d gone completely still.

  When Julia was done, she stood and pulled up her pants, and then flushed the toilet.

  At the noise, the girl screamed and threw herself backward so fast she stumbled and fell. Sprawled on the floor, she started to howl.

  “It’s okay,” Julia said. “No hurt. No hurt. I promise.” She flushed the toilet again and again, until the girl finally sat up. Then Julia washed her hands and moved slowly toward her little patient. “Would you like me to keep reading?” She knelt down. They were eye level now, and close. She could see the remarkable turquoise color of the child’s eyes; the irises were flecked with amber. Thick black lashes lowered slowly, then opened.

  “Book,” Julia said again, pointing at the novel on the table.

  The girl walked over to the table and sat down on the floor beside it.

  Julia drew in a sharp breath, but other than that, she didn’t react. She went to the nearest chair and sat down. “I thin
k Ellie and I should move Mom’s old love seat in here. What do you think?”

  The girl moved a little closer. Sitting cross-legged, she looked up at Julia.

  Just then, even with her food-stained face and tangled hair, the girl looked like every kindergartner in every classroom at story time.

  “I bet you’re waiting for me to start.”

  As always, the only answer was silence. Those eerie blue-green eyes stared up at her. This time, maybe, there was a hint of anticipation, impatience, even. An ordinary kid would have said Read in an imperious tone. This girl simply waited.

  Julia returned to the story. On and on she read, about Mary and Dicken and Colin and the secret garden that had belonged to Mary’s lost mother. She read chapter after chapter, until night began to press against the window in strips of pink and purple. She was approaching the final chapters when a knock sounded at the door. The dogs started barking.

  At the noise, the girl raced to her potted plant sanctuary and hid behind the leaves.

  The door opened slowly. Behind it, the golden retrievers were crazy to get inside. “Down, Jake. Elwood. What’s wrong with you two?” Ellie slipped past them and slammed the door shut with her hip. In the hallway, the dogs howled pitifully and scratched at the door.

  “You need to get those dogs trained,” Julia said, closing her book.

  Ellie, who had a tray of food, set it down on the table. “I thought getting rid of their balls would make them trainable. No such luck. It’s in the dick.” She sat down on the end of her old bed. “How’s the girl doing? I see she still thinks I’m Nurse Ratchett.”

  “She’s doing better, I think. She seems to like being read to.”

  “Has she tried to escape?”

  “No. She won’t go near the door. I think it’s the doorknob. Shiny metal really sets her off.”

  Ellie leaned forward and put her forearms along her thighs. “I wish I could say I was making progress on my end.”

  “You are. This story is making headlines. Someone will come forward.”

  “People are coming forward. I had seventy-six people in my office today. All of them had lost daughters in the last few years. Their stories . . . their pictures . . . it was awful.”

  “It’s incredibly painful to sit witness to such grief.”

  “How do you do it, listen to sad stories all day long?”

  Julia had never seen her job that way. “A story is only sad if there’s no happy ending. I guess I always believe in that ending.”

  “A closet romantic. Who’d have thought?”

  Julia laughed. “Hardly. So, how did the press conference go?”

  “Long. Boring. Full of stupid questions. The national networks are just as bad. And I learned this about reporters: if a question is too ridiculous to be answered, they’ll ask it again. My personal favorite was from the National Enquirer. They were hoping she had wings instead of arms. Oh, and The Star wondered if she’d lived with the wolves.”

  Thankfully it was a tabloid. No one would lend the story any credence. “What about an identification?”

  “Not yet. Between the X rays, the birthmarks, the scarring, and her age range, we’re narrowing the possibilities down, though. Oh, and your approval came through from DSHS. You’re officially her temporary foster parent.”

  The girl crept out from her hiding place. Nostrils flaring, she paused, smelled the air, then streaked across the room, running low to the ground. Julia had never seen a kid move so fast. She disappeared into the bathroom.

  Ellie whistled. “So that’s what Daisy meant when she said the girl ran like the wind.”

  Julia slowly walked toward the bathroom.

  Ellie followed her.

  The girl was sitting on the toilet, with her pull-up big-kid diaper around her ankles.

  “Holy cow,” Ellie whispered. “Did you teach her that?”

  Julia couldn’t believe it herself. “She walked in on me today, when I was going to the bathroom. The sound of the flushing scared her to death. I would have sworn she’d never seen a toilet before.”

  “You think she taught herself? By seeing you once?”

  Julia didn’t answer. Any noise could ruin this moment. She inched into the room and gathered up some toilet paper. She showed the girl what to do with it, then handed it to her. The child frowned at the wadded up paper for a long time. Finally, she took it and used it. When she was finished, she slithered off the toilet, pulled up her diaper/underwear, and hit the white tape-covered lever. At the flushing noise, she screamed and ran, ducking between Julia’s and Ellie’s legs.

  “Wow,” Ellie said.

  They both stared at the girl hiding in the forest of potted plants.

  In the quiet room, the girl’s breathing was loud and fast.

  “This whole thing just gets stranger and stranger,” Ellie said.

  Julia couldn’t disagree with that.

  “Well,” Ellie said at last, “I need to get back to the office. I don’t know how long I’ll be.” She pulled a piece of paper out of her back pocket and handed it to Julia. “These are Peanut’s and Cal’s home numbers. If you need to go to the library again, they’ll stay at the house with the kid.”

  “Thanks.”

  Julia walked Ellie to the door, let her out, then shut it again. She didn’t bother locking it. So far, the girl seemed terrified of the doorknob.

  She went to the table, where she made a few more notes, then set her paper and pen away.

  “It’s dinnertime.”

  The girl remained hidden in the plants, watching her.

  “Food.” She tapped the tray Ellie had left.

  This time the girl moved. She crept out from the cover of green leaves and came to the table, where she started to attack the food in her usual way.

  Julia grabbed her wrist. “No.”

  Their gazes clashed.

  “You’re too smart for this, aren’t you?” Julia got up, still holding the bird-thin wrist, and moved around to stand beside the girl. “Sit.” She pulled out a chair and patted the seat. “Sit.”

  For the next thirty minutes they stood there, locked in a battle with a one-word soundtrack.

  Sit.

  At first the girl howled and snorted and shook her head, trying to pull free.

  Julia simply held on to her, shaking her head, saying, “Sit.”

  When the histrionics didn’t work, the girl shut up. She stood perfectly still, staring at Julia through slitted, angry eyes.

  “Sit,” Julia said, patting the chair again.

  The girl sighed dramatically and sat down.

  Julia released her instantly. “Good girl.” She washed the child’s hands with baby wipes, then walked back around to the other side of the table and took her seat.

  The girl attacked the food, eating as if it were a recent kill.

  “You’re at the table,” Julia said. “That’s a start. We’ll work on manners tomorrow. After your bath.” She reached down for her notebook and put it in her lap, flipping through the pages while the child ate. Maybe there was an answer in here, but she doubted it. This was a case of questions.

  A paragraph she’d written this afternoon caught her eye.

  A perfect mimic. The child can repeat birdsong note for note. It almost seems as if they’re communicating, she and the bird, although that’s not possible.

  “Is that the answer, little one? Did you see me using the toilet and simply mimic me? Was that a skill you needed to learn in the wild?”

  She wrote down: In the absence of people, or society, how do we learn? By trial and error? By mimicry of other species? Perhaps she learned to learn fast and by observation.

  Julia lifted her pen from the page.

  It felt like half an answer at best. A child who’d grown up in the wild, within a wolf pack or among other animals, would have learned to mark territory with urine. She wouldn’t see the point in using a toilet.

  Unless she’d seen one before, however long ago. Or she recogn
ized a new pack leader in her and wanted to belong. “Who are you, little one? Where do you come from?”

  As always, there was no answer.

  WHILE THE GIRL WAS EATING, JULIA SLIPPED OUT OF THE ROOM AND went downstairs.

  The house was quiet.

  In the carport she found the two cardboard boxes that held the town’s donations. One was filled with clothes. The other held all kinds of books and toys.

  Julia went through everything again, condensing the best, most useful items into one box, which she carried back upstairs and set down on the floor with a thud.

  The girl looked up sharply.

  Julia almost laughed at the sight of her. There was as much food on her face and hospital gown as had been on her plate. The whipped cream/coconut ambrosia fruit salad clung to her nose, her cheeks, and her chin in a white beard.

  “You look like Santa’s mini me.”

  Julia bent down and opened the box. Three items lay on top. A beautiful, lacy white nightdress with pink bows on it, a doll in diapers, and a brightly colored set of plastic blocks.

  She stepped back. “Toys. Do you know that word?”

  No reaction.

  “Play. Fun.”

  The girl stared at her, unblinking.

  Julia bent down and picked up the nightgown. The worn cotton felt soft to the touch.

  The girl’s eyes widened. She made a sound, a low, growling noise that came from deep in the back of her throat. In a movement almost too fast and silent to be believed, she got out of her chair, ran around the table and yanked the nightdress out of Julia’s grasp. Clutching it to her breast, she returned to her hiding place behind the potted plants and crouched down.

  “Well, well, well,” Julia said. “I see someone likes pretty things.”

  The girl started to hum. Her fingers found a tiny pink satin bow and began stroking it.

  “You’ll need to get clean if you want to wear the pretty dress.”

  Julia went into the bathroom and turned on the bathwater, then sat on the edge of the tub. “When I was your age I loved taking baths. My mom used to add lavender oil to the water. It smelled so good. Oh, look, here’s a little bottle of it left in the cabinet. I’ll add some for you.”