Wonderland

by Joyce Carol Oates

  The saleslady led Hilda back to the dressing room. “Would you like help?”

  “No.”

  “Let me unhook your dress for you.…”

  “No. I can do it myself.”

  Hilda turned away.

  She tried to close the curtain to the dressing room, but it was not wide enough. For a moment she froze. The space inside her cringed … she had all she could do to keep from counting, multiplying, dividing, imagining a mountain of numbers.… She could imagine a pyramid of numbers that was fourteen feet at its base and eleven feet high.…

  The saleslady was trying to help close the curtain.

  “Nobody will come back here,” she said.

  “Somebody will see me.…”

  “No, dear, really … nobody will come back here.…”

  “Don’t let anybody come back,” Hilda said.

  The saleslady smiled and left. Hilda tugged at the curtain again. But if it closed on one side it was about two inches too short on the other. “Oh, damn it, damn it,” Hilda whispered. She gave up on the curtain and decided to try on the dress. The fitting room was very small, like a cage. She didn’t understand how anyone could dress back here. Mirrors on three sides—she tried not to look into them. It was hard for her to unhook the dress. She had sewn the little hook in herself and now she had trouble getting it undone. Then the zipper. What if the zipper broke? Her elbow bumped against the wall and shocks ran up her arm. “Please, God, let me do this all right. Don’t let Father be angry with me,” she muttered. She had gotten the zipper down and now the dress was around her hips. It was strange that this dress was so tight, when she had made it herself as a joke, just a sack—but, yes, already it was getting tight. She pulled it down over her hips. She held her breath, hoping it would not rip. Then it was safely past her hips and down around her ankles.

  Sweat.

  Now the other dress! She hurried to get it on before someone came back and happened to see her. What if a delivery boy were to come back here? What if Father himself came back? Sometimes the back of her head tingled, she was so certain someone was watching her, and it never did any good to turn quickly and see—knowing that no one was there did not erase the guilty tingling sensation. She got the dress off the hanger and saw with dismay that it looked too small. Too small! She held it up against her body, staring down at it. A green dress with a white velvet bow at the neck, a party dress, it would make her look enormous … a huge cow.… Her armpits itched as if beetles were stinging her.

  “Hildie. Hildie.”

  Her father was calling in a perfectly flat, uninflected voice.

  “Yes, Father,” she cried.

  Ah, to get this new dress on!—she decided against bringing it down over her head and stepped inside it instead. She tugged at it. It was too small at the hips. But she had to get it on, she had to get it on.… Her father was calling. “Hildie. Will you hurry.” She didn’t know if he was really impatient or if he was just teasing. Her cheeks belled out in despair. She wanted only to shut her eyes, go blind and deaf, let her arms and legs float out anywhere, and imagine numbers: a cascade of numbers that multiplied themselves cleanly, without bodies, without substance, needing nothing that was flesh. Numbers.… But she shook herself awake. She was in a fitting room at the rear of Modern Fashions, her father was waiting for her, she had to get this dress up on her body.… She lost her balance and almost fell, she stepped forward abruptly and the dress caught her legs short at the knee.…

  But it hadn’t ripped!

  Slowly, ah, slowly, she drew the dress up. She avoided looking in the mirror. Over her hips, slowly, slowly, but what a bright green it was—too tight—a droplet of sweat fell from her face onto the front of the dress—

  “Hilda.”

  “Yes, Father. Yes.”

  Suddenly the saleslady was back, on the other side of the curtain. “Do you need any help with the dress, Miss Pedersen?” she asked timidly. “I’d be glad to—”

  “No! go away!”

  It was a terrible strain, getting the zipper up. She had to reach up behind herself, her arm twisted, her shoulder contorted … then, suddenly, she felt the dress rip under one arm.… She hesitated. Then she regained her courage and this time she got the zipper all the way up.

  The dress was on!

  She seemed now to be deep inside a body wearing a very tight green dress with a white bow in front.

  Could she breathe? No time for that. The dress was too small, but there was no time, no time—her father’s time was expensive and in the morning they were to fly to the MacLeod Institute—She hurried out to her father, whose suit coat was buttoned tight across his stomach, straining with impatience.

  “Oh, no. No,” he said.

  He shut his eyes.

  Back in the fitting room. Straining, struggling. In a few minutes she was stuffed inside another dress, two sizes larger than the green. Good. This was a brown dress with a small girlish collar. Fiercely she returned for her father’s approval, hunted and panting in a body that had been measured, according to the clothing merchants of the world, as demanding a size 23 dress. Numbers whirled in front of her eyes, on the back of her eyelids, but she did not give in to them. Not yet.

  Her father smiled this time. “Ah, yes, that is much better,” he declared.

  And so the dress was bought. It was only $29.98, in spite of its size.

  Because she had been such a good girl, Dr. Pedersen took her to the Royal for a sundae. She did not mind people staring at them as they walked on the street. Alone, she would have been ashamed—she almost never went out by herself. But she was proud to be with her father, whom everyone knew. She considered slyly how striking they were, father and daughter, how terrible it must be for ordinary people to see them—Dr. Pedersen and his daughter, on the drab ordinary streets of Lockport, New York. The city was not large enough for them. It was not imaginative enough. Hilda felt as if her deepest self would explode, bursting open like a star, like a tiny seed in a speeded-up botany film. She was very happy.

  They each had a sundae. Then Hilda had a banana split, because tomorrow was a special day. She was served the Banana Royal, which cost fifty cents: an enormous dish of puffs of cream, walnuts, dyed cherries, strawberry ice cream, chocolate ice cream, peppermint ice cream, and large bruised slices of banana. It had to be eaten quickly or it would melt. Hilda’s mouth watered with hunger. There was no use now in thinking of numbers, the bodiless purity of numbers, adding up a column fifty digits high, reducing the galaxy of numbers to one—there was no use thinking of anything except the Banana Royal, which had to be eaten quickly before it melted.

  She discovered that she was ravenously hungry.

  As she ate, her father spoke gently: “If anything should happen to me, Hilda, you must remember the strength I have tried to give you. Always remember me like this, Hilda. That way you will always be strong. You will have me inside you, in a way, even after I am gone—inside you, carried around inside you. Do you understand?”

  She stared.

  “Do you understand, Hildie?”

  She nodded. She understood, yes.

  He talked and Hilda nodded as she ate. The ice cream seemed to be making her hungrier. Why was that? Of course she understood what her father was telling her. He knew about the tiny sac inside her, that elastic, magical emptiness that could never be filled no matter how much she ate. It was the size of a universe.

  “It will go well tomorrow, my dear, don’t worry. You are my good, good girl.”

  Her mouth watered like tears.

  The doctors, the professors, greet me with those faces I have come to expect. I stare past them coldly, I don’t talk, I let Father do the talking. There, there is my opponent … I find myself staring at him, my face going bright and tense while the doctors chatter their instructions. It is “Dr. Pedersen” this, “Dr. Pedersen” that. They are anxious to please him. They talk about me, around me, as if I can’t hear.

  Certain facts are stated a
nd restated: This body I inhabit is fourteen years old.

  The man at the other end of the table from me is thirty-four years old.

  My name is Hilda Pedersen.

  His name is Oscar DeMott.

  Father is beside me, always beside me. I glance out at the audience in the little amphitheater—they are doctors, medical students, professors with curious faces. Jesse is sitting in the first row, large as an adult. One of the doctors is introducing us to the group. He is saying something about mimeographed material that has been passed around. Down at the other end of the table sits my opponent—that isn’t a nice word, but it is true—and he looks younger than thirty-four. He stares at me and maybe he thinks I am older than fourteen. Well, we have not chosen our ages. We have not chosen our bodies. Oscar sits humped over in a wheelchair; his mother is sitting beside him, but unnaturally close to him, and she stares down at Father and me. The doctor is talking about Oscar now, who has come all the way up from Gainesville. I pay no attention to this but suck on a piece of hard candy. My mind teases me, anxious to escape. I run up numbers in the shape of a pyramid, as if flexing a muscle, set the pyramid upside-down, then on its right side.

  “—Hilda?” the doctor is saying. He must have asked me a question. I didn’t know that the examination had begun and I can only stare at him. I see in his face that look—that certain look—that everyone shows to me.

  Father answers the question for me.

  A long gleaming table. Ashtrays in front of all of us, even me. The brown dress feels too tight for me already, especially under the arms. Oscar is wearing a new bright blue suit and a striped tie. His mother, a gray-faced stringbean of a woman, is wearing a new yellow dress, obviously bought for this trip. Oscar DeMott: parchment skin, his teeth turned slightly inward and tainted, his nose long and skinny and nervous. I can see tiny hairs in the nostrils. His eyes are shadowed, like bruises. Perhaps he rubs his fists into his eyes. There is a tic in his cheek, hardly visible; I wish I couldn’t see it. I see lots of things. My face tries to make itself smile across the table at Oscar’s face.

  Why isn’t he Jesse, so that we could fight face to face?

  Wired up. We are being wired up, Oscar and me. Lucky that the sleeves of my dress are so short. A strange device is put around my forehead. I ignore it. I ignore the young man who is wiring me up. I am back of my forehead, hiding. Oscar is too close to the surface of his skin, even if he is thirty-four years old and should know better—the tic jumps in his cheek, he seems frightened of the apparatus. They tell him it won’t hurt. “It won’t hurt, Oscar,” his mother whines. She glances out at the audience, embarrassed. The lights glow. I pay no attention to them or to the men in the audience, not even to Jesse; I am dark and safe inside myself, multiplying numbers, crossing them out and multiplying them again.

  “… a casual session, chiefly conversation.… I hope you will look up and speak clearly.…”

  Here we go.

  The doctor is preparing to hold up a large white card with numbers on it. He stoops to get something else and in that instant I notice that there are forty-seven numbers on the card. I add them up at once and say the answer: “Five thousand, nine hundred, and—”

  “Five thousand, nine hundred, and sixty-three,” Oscar interrupts.

  The doctor looks around at us, startled.

  I shut my eyes and say loudly: “Multiplied in a series: four hundred and seventy-three million, seven hundred thousand—”

  “Four hundred and seventy-three million, seven hundred thousand, two hundred—” Oscar cries shrilly.

  —“and ninety-one!” I cry.

  The audience stirs.

  The doctor smiles nervously at us. “I hadn’t intended the examination as such to begin yet,” he says. “First, I thought we might begin with a simple demonstration of your ability to memorize numbers.… However …” He consults something in front of him, a batch of papers. He is uncertain. He must be looking up the answers; but we have already given him the answers. A few seconds pass awkwardly. I unwrap a candy bar and eat it in three swift bites. “Yes … I believe your answers are correct.…” the doctor is saying. “Now, Hilda, can you tell us how you came to your conclusion? Your first conclusion, the addition of those numbers?”

  I crumple up the candy wrapper.

  Silence.

  “Well, Oscar, can you tell us? What were the thought processes you experienced?”

  Oscar wipes his nose with one bony hand and says nothing.

  “Is either of you aware of any process at all?” the doctor asks.

  Oscar and I wait impatiently for the next card.

  “Do you know the answer at once? Does no time at all elapse?”

  Silence.

  Out in the audience someone coughs. I stop looking out there, I turn my mind off. I run the numbers on that white card back and forth in my head, for something to do. Beside me Father sits proudly. He is at the end of the table. On my other side is another doctor, then Oscar and his mother, and at the far end of the table is the doctor who is talking. He is explaining that he would like to begin with a simple test of memorization. He flashes a card—what a joke! I shut my eyes after the first second and begin chanting the numbers. There are seventy-two of them. Oscar joins me, the two of us chanting as fast as we can. I think I finish a little ahead of Oscar.

  The doctor beside me is taking notes.

  “Would you please add up the numbers you have just seen …?”

  Oscar and I give the answer in unison.

  “Correct … yes, that is correct.…” the doctor says. “Now, Hilda, could you comment at all on your performance? Do you know the answer instantly?”

  I shut my eyes and see nothing.

  “Hilda, you are being asked a question,” Father says.

  No. I shake my head.

  “Oscar …?”

  Oscar says nothing. I can sense his impatience.

  “Would you say that this process is at all visual? Do you actually see, in your mind’s eye, the numbers themselves? Or do you simply see the answer? Do you ‘see’ anything at all—or do you simply know the answer?”

  Why does he ask such stupid questions!

  After a few minutes he gives up. He holds up another card for us to memorize and multiply. At once Oscar and I look away from the card, shutting our eyes, and begin giving the answer at the same time.

  “Correct … yes … that is correct.…”

  The audience is stirring. Someone laughs incredulously. I am unwrapping another chocolate bar and my mouth aches to see that it is an almond cluster bar, my very favorite. I can sense people around me, uneasy people. Even Father is uneasy. Out in the little amphitheater some men are smoking. Smoke rises. I am careful not to look at Jesse there in the first row. Am I doing well? Are these people pleased? Father whispers, “Excellent, my dear,” and pats my hand; his hand is like a paddle.

  “… a more difficult type of problem … involving several separate processes.…” the doctor is saying. Oscar and I have only to wait for him to finish all this, to come to the important part: the numbers. All the answers are in us, waiting. We know the answers to all questions. Why does it take these men so long to ask us the questions?

  At last!

  “… the number whose cube minus fourteen, multiplied by seventy-nine is six hundred seventy-one thousand, five hundred and twenty.…”

  Oscar and I give the answer instantly.

  Now we look shyly at each other. He doesn’t look much older than Frederich. He is sallow and sick and skinny; just looking at him makes me hungry for another almond cluster. I make too much fuss unwrapping it and Father has to say, “Don’t be so eager, Hildie,” and I see the eyes everywhere, watching me. I try to hide the candy bar in my lap.

  The wires are uncomfortable on my head.

  “… you will raise to the sixteenth power,” the doctor is saying slowly, reading out from a card, “the sum of the numbers I am going to show you …” and he holds a card up to us c
ontaining eleven numbers. I feel giddy. Oscar and I begin giving the number at once, rattling it off.

  “Yes, that is correct.…”

  A moment of silence. The doctor seems to have lost his place.

  “… these unusual gifts of the mind are often evident at an early age … in both Hilda Pedersen and Oscar DeMott this has been true.…” The doctor talks about us for a while, uncertainly. Someone in the audience puts up his hand; he asks a question; the doctor who sits beside me answers it. I sift through their words and find no numbers, nothing to work with. I stop listening to them. At one point Father answers a question. He speaks for several minutes. Though I am not paying attention, I can sense how interested they are in him, in his answer. I take the candy bar out of my lap and bite into it.

  Now a question begins: “… in an area of 143,658,992 cubic miles, how many units of 14,322 yards long by 443,225 yards wide by 36,115 yards thick …”

  It takes me one, two, three seconds to think about this; Oscar hesitates too. Then we begin giving the answer, almost at the same time. We are both shouting.

  Someone exclaims in surprise but I don’t bother to look up. My heart is pounding. I want to snatch the wires away from my head and get free—I want to run around the table—and Oscar squirms nervously, one shoulder twitching. Another man is being introduced: “Dr. Miles Gordon of the MacLeod Institute will now conduct this examination.…” Who are these people? I am a little confused. Father hands me a chocolate-covered marshmallow ball wrapped in tinfoil. I am starved. Saliva runs in a quick stream down the side of my chin and I have to wipe it away with my hand.

  “The next series of questions will involve …”

  I stop listening and begin again when the question is asked. Now I am so agitated that I have to take off the wires, I can’t stand them holding me down.… So I snatch them off and push my chair back and stand up. I yell out the answer a split-second ahead of Oscar, I think. Father tries to get me to sit down, but I am too excited.

  Great panting breaths. Gulps of this light-hot air.

  Is Jesse watching? Is he proud of me?