Wonderland

by Joyce Carol Oates

  No, that headline had nothing to do with him.

  8

  April, 1941.

  She seemed to be deep inside a body.

  The body was being addressed at its uppermost part, the head.

  “Hilda, are you listening?”

  The head responded by nodding. Yes. Yes. Her father was talking to her in his stern, clear voice, the one he used when he was trying not to scold her. Hilda shook herself, made an effort to get everything into focus. She had to get her brain clear so that she could obey her father properly. Her brain filled with numbers, a blizzard of numbers. They added themselves up into a pyramid, a mountain, then became a single number branched out into other numbers, a sudden crowd of them. She had to get her brain clear of all this so that she could listen to what her father was saying.

  “So your mother will wake you early, around six. That should give you enough time to take a nice bath so that we’ll all be ready to leave around seven-thirty. The plane is scheduled to leave the airport at eight-thirty and we want to have enough time to get there. Is that understood?”

  Shame, that Father should say the word bath in front of Jesse, who was looking down at his plate. Was he embarrassed? It would have been natural for him to be embarrassed, to be forced to think of her, his fat sister, his ugly adopted sister, lowering herself into a tub of hot water.

  “Is it understood, Hilda?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  She noticed how meekly the head nodded at the top of its squat stem and the torso of the body leaned forward, eager and obedient, as if prepared right now to get into that hot water.

  “What are you going to wear, Hilda?” her father asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know.”

  “Did you buy her anything new for the trip, Mary?”

  “She wouldn’t let me. She wouldn’t go shopping,” Hilda’s mother said.

  “Hildie—what is this? Do you want to look bad in New York? Don’t you want to look pretty? Why are you trying to disappoint your father?”

  More talk about her! She blushed and looked down at her own plate. It was clean—cleaned of food—and she automatically reached for more. There was a platter of roast beef just in front of her. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said in a childish little whine. She could not look at her father.

  “She didn’t want me to take her shopping. She refused,” Hilda’s mother said apologetically.

  “Then I will take her myself,” her father said.

  Hilda chewed her meat in silent, burning agitation. Her father would take her shopping himself! Dr. Pedersen shopping with his daughter! She was aware of Jesse sitting beside her, listening to all this, and she wondered what he thought of her. Did he think anything of her? Was he ashamed of her? When they met in the upstairs hall, just the two of them, on their way to their rooms or to the bathroom, meeting accidentally, they glanced at each other with a kind of quick, furtive surprise, smiled shyly, looked away.… What did Jesse think of her?

  “Since you seem to be unable to guide your daughter,” Hilda’s father was saying severely, “I will take her shopping myself. This might at least prevent her from making a bad impression in New York.”

  “But I—”

  Hilda’s father interrupted her mother. “Please don’t annoy me. This discussion has gone on long enough.”

  Food. Bowls being passed. Hand to hand, around the table, bowls passed carefully, as if their contents were living, precious forms of life. Hilda sensed her mother’s distress but she did not look at her. Not that round bell-cheeked reddening face—the face she would inherit—no, she wouldn’t look at it. No. She wouldn’t look up at Frederich, across the table from her. He was no more to her than the boys she sometimes saw out her bedroom window, far out on the street, passing the Pedersens’ iron fence without even glancing at the house. She hated his music, his finicky compositions, big sheets of paper covered with fine, spidery notes and scrawls and lines and signs that looked like code, a crazy code. She hated his wheezing on the stairs, she hated his pale oversized face, the slushy chewing of his jaws. She sensed his pleasure at her being scolded and she hated him. And, right next to her, Jesse sat in embarrassed silence, feeling sorry for her and for her mother both, lumping them together and feeling sorry for them both.…

  Hilda closed her eyes and prayed: Let Father not say anything more. A string of numbers appeared and swung around in her head, like a line of bees. Buzzing. She opened her eyes and continued eating. Jesse now was eating again, wiping gravy off his plate with a piece of rye bread. She saw how neat he was. But he stiffened as her father went on: “During the past year Hilda has not been very cooperative. She is becoming too spoiled, Mary. She makes very little effort to please me.”

  “But I don’t think—”

  “Please don’t pretend to be ignorant of what is going on in your own family,” Hilda’s father said. “She is becoming willful and silly. She embarrassed me greatly by pretending to be sick so that the interview at the University of Pennsylvania had to be canceled—”

  “But she really was sick, I’m sure of it.”

  “Sick! Of course she wasn’t sick.”

  “But—”

  “Of all people, I should know who is sick and who isn’t. And Hilda was not sick. She was pretending.”

  Hilda looked slowly, sorrowfully up to her father at the head of the table. It was true, yes, that she had pretended to be sick, but she had been so nervous. Leave me alone, she prayed, or I’ll wish you dead. But then she stiffened. Ashamed of herself. Guilty. Her father, who knew nothing of these thoughts, was speaking sternly at her mother, ignoring her. He shook a forefinger. They were discussing her, fat ugly Hilda, arguing about her in front of everyone. Now she was being asked a question—her head nodded—yes—her head nodded at the end of its clumsy stem. A head of ordinary size, with a thatch of straw-colored, listless hair, still frizzy from a permanent wave given to her the month before. It was strange that her head was of ordinary size. The skull was ordinary but the flesh packed on it was not ordinary. Everything ballooning. Swelling. Bloated. Upstairs, in her room, Hilda would smirk at herself in the mirror, bunch her fat cheeks up so that, when she released her smile, sharp angry creases showed in her skin.

  “Why else does she appear at luncheon in a dress like that? It isn’t even a dress! A sack—not even very clean—”

  “Hilda dresses nicely for church, Papa. She—”

  “Mary, you must not contradict me. I am speaking of Hilda’s appearance right now. Why does she come to the table in a dress like that? It looks as if she made it herself.”

  Yes, she had made the dress herself, out of several large pieces of cotton. It had started out as a joke, a mockery of a dress, a shapeless bag. Trying it on, she had discovered that it was so ugly that it detracted from her ugliness—really, it was a wonderful dress for her! She had insisted upon wearing it, in spite of her mother’s doubts.

  “Hilda has trouble.… We have trouble finding nice clothes for her.…”

  Her mother faltered.

  “Then I will take her myself, right after lunch. Yes. I want my little girl to look as pretty as possible. Obviously, I will have to take care of this dimension of our domestic life myself.”

  Yes, Father. Hilda and her mother both nodded obediently.

  “I assume that Jesse is equipped for this trip …?”

  Jesse was going along with them. It was the first time in years that anyone had accompanied Hilda and her father on one of her “examinations.”

  Yes, Father. Mrs. Pedersen was demure and eager to agree.

  “And we will all look as nice as possible, won’t we?”

  Yes, yes.

  There

  beneath her heart

  there

  in that small sack of a space where a baby might grow, where the medical books in her father’s library showed that a baby might grow, she lived in secret from them. From all of them.

  She did not need to watch them, to study them. Di
d not need to spy on her adopted brother Jesse. They were there, memorized there, in her, in that secret space. Her father was there, populating the space with his busy face and voice; her mother was there, always, silently and helplessly smiling; Frederich was there, puff-faced, his teeth rotting because he was too lazy to brush them; and Jesse.…

  Jesse: a boy of fifteen. His eyes green and silver, always moving, restless and precise inside his strong facial bones. Freckles on his forehead, a look of childlike innocence, awareness. Yet there was something uneasy about him—a hunted look. Inside that growing face with its clear-cut eyes and its strong nose and mouth there was a child’s face, the precariousness of a child’s face inside the tough enlargement of his flesh. His complexion was good, healthy, tanned. He was the only one of the family who spent much time outside. Sometimes Hilda watched him from the window of her room, safe behind the curtains, as he worked outside with the hired man, digging in her mother’s big flower gardens. He had grown big himself. She paced nervously in her room from about three-fifteen until he came home from school, when she would hurry to the window to frown down upon him, this stranger, this adopted “brother,” who walked along the street with an armful of books, a boy with red-blond hair in which light seemed to streak as if with the agitation of his brain.… She held her breath, wondering if that boy was really going to turn into the gate. Did he live here really? Was his room only across the corridor from her own?

  Sometimes she stared secretly at him and saw that he seemed to be thinking rapidly, his mind racing. It showed on the surface of his skin, which was like the surface of water, rippling and shivering in tiny pinpricks. Yet when he answered her father’s questions he was not nervous at all. He spoke like her father himself, echoing his rhythmic pauses, emphasizing certain words.… It was uncanny, how he drew himself up into a boy who was so precise and articulate, who spoke almost in the voice of an older man. The other day Dr. Pedersen had pursued him for thirty minutes, thirty minutes straight, asking about anatomy, even for verbal diagrams of human anatomy. Evidently Jesse had memorized a book on this subject. They had all sat at attention, letting their food grow cold, while Jesse answered these questions with only the briefest pauses. Hilda had felt her face get cold and hard, hearing all this. Jesse! The surprise of an adopted brother! The soft puffy surface of her skin broke into a dozen frown lines. Why are you making faces? her father had asked sharply.

  She subsided into herself. Eating. All of them eating around her, at peace. She subsided into that secret part of her, as if she were the baby growing inside this immense body, herself the body, nourishing herself. At the outermost level of her flesh there was activity—she was eating. The jaws moved, the teeth ground and ground, there was a coarse, sinewy, dance-like motion to them. It was fascinating, that activity. The lips parted, the mouth opened, something was inserted into the opening, then the jaws began their centuries of instinct, raw instinct, and the food was moistened, ground into pulp, swallowed. It was magic. Around the table, drawn together by this magic, the family sat eating, all of them eating, glowing with the pleasure of eating together, in a kind of communion, their heads bowed as they ate. Hilda watched her father covertly and saw how his nostrils flared with the exertion of eating, his face slowly reddened, a handsome face, sharply handsome inside that pouched, bloated encasement of skin, his eyes sharp and glistening as the eyes of skinny, devilish birds.

  Luncheon was over. They pushed back their chairs, rose from the table, Hilda among them. The bulky flesh called Hilda among them. Up. Chairs back. Walking, going away reluctantly. Dr. Pedersen came to her side and sighed wistfully, comically, sliding one arm through Hilda’s. “You are a temperamental young lady, eh? A sensitive young lady? We must outfit you to your best advantage.”

  Yes, Father.

  The big closet near the front door, where the coats were kept. A smell of redwood. Hilda’s lightest winter coat, held up for her to slide her arms into—but Dr. Pedersen held it a little high, she had to struggle awkwardly to get it on. Hilda wished she could sit back at the table, all day long at the table, blind and deaf, alone, feeling the food quiet inside her as it was being digested and turned into blood and flesh. But no. She must get up from the table, must get dressed for the outside, must face the curious eyes of strangers.

  Her father opened the wide front door and sucked in the chilly air.

  “Ah, excellent! An invigorating day. This is a marvelous inch of history in which we are living, Hildie,” he declared.

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Never mind the pessimistic news broadcasts. Believe only what I tell you. I know how to interpret reality for you,” he said.

  They went out to the big black car.

  “You must allow me to interpret everything for you, as Jesse does. Jesse is a child the way I was a child—watching, learning, grateful for all that is being given him. He understands what it would be like if I were to cast him back into that orphanage—he understands—he appreciates everything. And he is a child the way I was a child, absorbing everything, focusing his mind, his entire being, upon what has been pressed upon him. He will become the complete form of the self I have imagined for him. It’s as if his future spirit and my spirit were in communion, right now. You and Frederich are geniuses, of course. Jesse is not a genius. You and Frederich are supernaturally gifted but you lack courage, you lack direction, you must be more obedient … you especially must be more obedient.… Is this understood?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Yes, you are a genius and that is an awesome responsibility. But you are also a very pretty young lady. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  They were driving down Locust Street now. Hilda wondered: Did her father speak of her as a genius because it was true (newspaper articles on her had always used that word), or because he wanted to wake her up, to reach into that deep private space beneath her heart? Did he know about her secret self, which was not his daughter at all or even a female? Did he know about the self that held back from him, that plotted against him?—she had even smashed a water glass once, wrapped in a towel, with the idea of grinding the glass down fine to put into his food, to kill him!

  Maybe he knew everything.

  Maybe he had made her up, given birth to her himself. Maybe he had sat in that dark inner office of his, in all that silence, and imagined her into being. A genius of a daughter. And a genius of a son. And now an adopted son, whom he obviously loved more than he loved his real children.…

  In the dress store.

  The saleslady’s smile wobbled like Jell-O. “Good afternoon, Dr. Pedersen,” she said. Hilda’s father greeted her cheerfully. He then sat with care in a gold-cushioned chair with curving arms that was a little too small for him. Crossed his legs and rubbed his hands together enthusiastically, as if this little outing into a women’s dress shop was quite an adventure for him. The saleslady brought out three dresses. Very large sizes. Hilda shut her eyes for a moment. At the front of the store two women shoppers were watching.

  “The green dress,” Dr. Pedersen said.