Wonder Show

by Hannah Barnaby

  There were no other children her age around anymore, so Portia was the only one there with Aunt Sophia. She was the only one who stood in the road and choked on the dust that rose up behind her father’s truck, the only one who cried dirty tears that night (unless Sophia cried, too, which was very hard to imagine). She was the last storyteller in her haunted forest, and Aunt Sophia was an unkind audience.

  “Nonsense,” she barked. “All that stuff about goblins and trolls. Your mind is ridiculous, Portia.”

  “Don’t you believe in monsters?” Portia asked.

  “I believe in bears,” Sophia replied, “and I believe in the devil.”

  “Those aren’t monsters.”

  “You face them down and then tell me that.”

  Portia imagined her barrel-shaped Aunt Sophia doing battle with the devil and an army of bears, and then thought better of asking if such an event had ever taken place. Even if it had, Sophia would never tell her about it. Aunt Sophia didn’t believe in stories. She believed in practical knowledge, in cooking, in planting a garden, in survival. She believed in staying where God had put her, which was why she agreed to hold on to Portia until Max returned.

  Sophia had meant what she said.

  She wasn’t going anywhere.

  Portia

  Papa said he didn’t want to leave but he had to. Whenever I didn’t want to do something but I had to, it was because Aunt Sophia made me. So I asked Papa who was making him leave, and he said, “Money,” and I got angry because money isn’t a person, it’s a thing, so he wasn’t answering my question.

  Then Papa went to pack up the truck, and he hugged me real tight and said, “I’m gonna miss you so much, little bug,” and I made him let me go because I wasn’t little anymore. I was nine. And he should have known better.

  I think Papa left because there was no more whiskey, and no more music at night. There was plenty of work to do, and we could have done it together. I would have helped, I wouldn’t have argued when Papa asked me to do anything. Even if it was something hard like mend the latch on the sheep pen. But it wouldn’t have been that because there were no more sheep, either.

  I told myself: Papa went to find the sheep and bring them back to me.

  I am going to wait for him every day.

  I am going to be a good girl for Aunt Sophia.

  I am going to learn new stories for when Papa comes back.

  And I am never going to stop waiting.

  The Apple Tree

  It was where Portia did her best waiting, under the apple tree. The tree was not very big, and she liked that because so many places made her feel smaller than she wanted to be. She was shaded from sun and rain there. There was a curve in the trunk that fit against her back like another body, and it helped her remember what it was like to be held, to be safe.

  Aunt Sophia did not hold her. Aunt Sophia took care of her, fed her, kept her clean and dry. Taught her what Aunt Sophia knew how to teach: manners, churchgoing, and cooking.

  There were always apples on the ground, with soft brown spots from falling and sitting still too long. Portia bit into one once, one that looked more perfect than the others, but it did not taste like an apple. It was hard and bitter. She spit out the bite she’d taken and laid the rest of the apple back on the ground, bite side down, so it looked perfect again.

  If she lay against the trunk of the tree and looked up through the branches, she could see only bits of the sky and the clouds passing over the leaves like a moving picture made just for her. When the road was too empty to watch anymore, Portia had this other view to comfort her. When, after a while, that was not enough, she knew it was time to go back inside.

  She was careful with her apple tree. She did not ask too much of it.

  While I Was Waiting (From the Notebook of Portia Remini)

  A partial list of things that happened accidentally in the year I lived with Aunt Sophia:

  1. A small fire involving dining room curtains and candles during an attempted séance to call forth the ghost of William Howard Taft.

  2. A disagreement as to the meaning of the word disagreement between myself and one Miss Eugenia Throgsmorton, Headmistress, Sutton County Day School.

  3. The loss of an entire batch of newly carded wool, which was left outdoors during a rather exciting thunderstorm.

  4. The acquisition of a mild case of influenza, resulting from the exploration of waist-deep sinkholes in the midst of said thunderstorm.

  And the following incidents, which took place in church:

  1. Daring escape by mouse from pocket of my dress.

  2. Similar escape by salamander—same pocket, different Sunday.

  3. So-called defacement of prayer missals, in which certain words were altered in unsavory directions.

  4. Unfortunate misfire of pea from peashooter, leading to the removal of pea from Miss Eugenia Throgsmorton’s ear.

  All of the above were completely unintentional, not to mention unfairly punished.

  Broken Promise

  Aunt Sophia was a hard spirit. She had survived her life because of a stalwart, stubborn refusal to change. Some women are that way, no matter how many sons they lose in a war, no matter how hard they must work after their husbands are carelessly dispatched by a hay baler, no matter how many troublesome girls they take in. Women like Sophia are great rocks in the sea, weathered and worn but never broken.

  When Portia first went to live with Sophia, she thought she would not let herself be changed, either. Portia thought she would be in Aunt Sophia’s house only for a short time. She did not know that her father would go down that open road and not return on any of the days she stood at the front gate and watched until she saw trailing black spots from staring so hard. She thought she should be the first to see him coming, so she gave up climbing trees and writing down stories and doing all the things she loved. She only watched the road. Finally Aunt Sophia got fed up and dragged Portia into the house, and she didn’t stop even when Portia kicked her in the stomach.

  I hate her, Portia told herself. But even then she knew it wasn’t true. Aunt Sophia taught her how to cook and sew, and she let her read any book Portia wanted as long as she spent the same amount of time reading the Bible, which was fine with Portia because the Bible has more than its fair share of gory tales and intrigue.

  Portia once imagined herself as David, with Sophia playing Goliath, and saw herself land that stone directly between Sophia’s eyes so that she dropped dead immediately. Then Portia felt terribly guilty and washed all of Aunt Sophia’s unmentionables without complaining once.

  Did David feel so guilty? After he killed Goliath, did he gently bathe his gigantic body with a wet rag tied to a very long stick? No, he did not.

  It is a terrible curse for a storyteller, to have such a conscience.

  “As long as it takes,” Sophia told Max. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  And she didn’t go anywhere. But Portia did.

  Four years after her father was swallowed in a cloud of dust, Portia turned thirteen, and the old family traits were in full bloom. She was willful, stubborn, and prone to daydreams. She was clumsy. She was emotional. She was, in fact, exactly like her Uncle Hiram, who had been Sophia’s husband and the bane of her existence until he got himself crushed by the hay baler. (“Head in the clouds” was all Sophia said when the men came to tell her the news. She was not the least bit surprised to find herself a widow. Nor was she particularly upset.)

  Sophia decided the best thing for everyone was to install Portia in a place where she would be safe, disciplined, and out of Sophia’s way.

  Like an oasis in the desert, there was The Home.

  “Pack your things,” Sophia said to Portia. They had just finished dinner.

  “Why?”

  “I’ve found a better place for you to live. There are lots of other girls there, and an apple orchard, and a very nice man who will watch after you. Here. Look.”

  Sophia stood up, went to her sewing
box, and extracted a thin slip of paper. As she pushed it across the table, Portia could see a faint picture of a large house surrounded by bold words in newsprint. Words like BETTER LIFE and CARE and HOME. The words smudged her fingers as she pinched the paper between them.

  Portia felt her scalp getting hot. When she looked up, she could see her apple tree through the window behind Sophia. “You’re sending me away?”

  “It’s for the best, dear. You’ll be much happier there. You’ll get an education.”

  It was as if her hair were actually on fire. She itched at her head and said, “But you promised Max you would take care of me. He’s coming back here to get me. I’m supposed to be here.”

  Sophia folded her hands together tightly. “There’s . . . he . . .” She paused, chewing on her words. “I will tell him where to find you. Obviously. And I am taking care of you. I have found a better place for you.” She stood up, hands clenched as if in desperate prayer. “Now, pack your things. We’re leaving in the morning.”

  I’ll run away, thought Portia. But there was no time to plan, and she knew only fools fled into the night without the proper supplies. She had heard too many tales of men mauled by bears, getting lost in the woods, sleeping their way into death when the snow caught them. She would not suffer that kind of end. She would not give Sophia the satisfaction.

  A whole orchard of apple trees. Other girls to climb them with. A kindly man, watching over them like the Holy Father. Portia pictured a friendly, wrinkled face, a snow white beard, a pipe threading sweet smoke into the air. A deep voice telling her stories, tucking her in at night.

  Maybe it won’t be so bad, she thought. And when she woke up in the middle of the night and heard Aunt Sophia yelling in her sleep, Portia smiled and thought, So long, you old witch.

  She didn’t know yet: There are far worse things than witches. Worse than bears. Worse than the devil himself.

  Meeting Mister

  They drove for nearly two hours before they got to Brewster Falls. It was the longest trip Portia had ever taken.

  Aunt Sophia didn’t like for anyone to speak to her while she was driving, and so she and Portia made the journey in silence, except for the constant rattling of the ancient truck that had been left behind by some near-forgotten cousin. Portia entertained herself with visions of the kindly old man who awaited her, and his pipe and the bedtime stories she hoped to hear—her stock of stories was wearing thin, and she couldn’t tell them to herself without hearing Max’s voice.

  Her hopeful imaginings started to sag when they drove through Brewster Falls and it looked exactly like all the other towns they’d gone through already. Portia was suddenly suspicious that Sophia had been driving in circles and this had all been an elaborate trick to scare Portia into behaving better. But then she saw the sign:

  MCGREAVEY HOME FOR WAYWARD GIRLS

  Block letters burned into the wood like scars.

  “What does wayward mean?”

  Sophia coughed. “It means you’ve strayed from the righteous path.”

  For all the times she’d been dragged to church, Portia didn’t think she’d ever been on the righteous path in the first place. She did not imagine that Brother Joshua—unearthly tall and thin, with a waxed mustache and a crooked smile—was at all qualified to lead anyone to Righteousness. Even Sophia seemed not to trust him and pursed her lips when he clasped her hand at the end of services every Sunday. But the real preachers had all joined the westbound caravans, and beggars could not be choosers. Even in God’s house.

  The truck lurched uncertainly onto the dirt road indicated by the sign and quickly came to a fork—downhill, to the right, Portia saw a cluster of small wood cabins and, behind them, the apple trees. They were different than her apple tree. Hers had grown tall and sat heavy over her like a canopy, even now that she was thirteen. These were dwarfish, twisted, and gray. It was halfway through harvest time, and many of the trees stood bare as skeletons, reaching for the cold sky. Uphill, to the left, was a massive dark house with a sharp, staggered roof that looked like the teeth of some huge, mythical beast. Portia had no desire to get any closer, but Sophia, as usual, had other ideas.

  “That must be where the director lives,” she said, and aimed the truck accordingly. When they pulled up in front of the house, the door opened as if by magic, and a man stepped onto the porch.

  He was thin, with well-trimmed black hair and the bearing of a man who believes himself taller than he actually is. His suit was a cold gray, like slate, and there was no expression on his pale face. He matched the house perfectly—his eyes were as black as the shaded windows behind him. He stood with his hands behind his back and waited.

  Sophia heaved herself out of the truck and approached the man. “You are the director?”

  The man nodded, drew one hand from behind him, and extended it to Sophia. “You must be Mrs. Stoller. Charmed, I’m sure.”

  He did not sound charmed at all. He sounded, in fact, like a man who had never been charmed by anything or anyone in his life.

  “You received my letter?”

  “I did,” he said.

  Sophia pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and ran it through her hands like a rosary. “Portia’s not a bad girl, you understand, it’s just that I can’t—”

  “Of course,” he said.

  Sophia sighed heavily and only then noticed that Portia was still sitting in the truck. “Come on now,” she said, her voice heavy with forced sweetness.

  Portia did not move.

  “Yes, come now, Portia,” the man purred. “Come out and meet your new friends.”

  At that, two girls in dark dresses emerged from the side of the house and approached the truck. They stared at her through the open window. One of them smiled. The other ducked her head so that her long yellow hair draped her face like water closing around a stone in a riverbed.

  “Portia,” Sophia hissed. “Now.”

  Slowly, Portia reached for the door handle, pulled it, swung the door open, and stepped into the strange new air. From one corner of the porch, a rusted, empty birdcage shuddered and creaked in the breeze.

  “The girls will show you to your quarters,” said the man.

  The smiling one reached into the back of the truck and retrieved Portia’s bag. “This way,” she said, and started down the path to the orchard and the bunkhouses. Portia glanced at Sophia, who waved her hand impatiently as she turned back to the dark man and began to speak low words that Portia could not hear.

  The yellow-haired girl looked at Portia for a long moment, and then she whispered, “It’s harder if you put up a fight. Just come.” She put out her hand, and Portia didn’t know what else to do but put her own hand in the girl’s palm and follow her. And their hands stayed together as they walked to the dingy bunkhouse that smelled like rotten apples, as they sat on a lumpy bed with scratchy blankets, as a swarm of sad-eyed girls surrounded them.

  And it wasn’t until Portia heard Sophia’s truck driving away that the girl said, “My name is Caroline.”

  Family Traditions

  Family recipes must be kept in your head, Aunt Sophia told Portia once. They are not for writing down.

  But Portia liked to write things down. She was very fond of her own handwriting, and she liked the way everything looked when she wrote it out. When she went back to read what she’d written before, it was as if everything were her idea.

  So she spent part of her modest allowance (which she awarded to herself from Aunt Sophia’s purse) on notebooks and pencils. And she wrote down Aunt Sophia’s recipes and stories she imagined, and over and over again she wrote what she could remember.

  Her mother in a blue coat with a furry collar.

  The soap smell on Max’s neck.

  Knock-knock jokes.

  Aunts in red lipstick and rose perfume, uncles in suspenders and whiskey.

  It wasn’t much and also Portia wasn’t sure if she was really remembering these things or if she was simply writing wha
t she had written before. Still. She kept writing, kept stealing dimes from Aunt Sophia for notebooks and pencils.

  The notebooks were the first thing Mister took away.

  Night Voices

  The one inside Portia said:

  “It’s cold here and everything smells like apples.”

  It said, “I hope Aunt Sophia has one of her headaches right now.”

  It said, “How will Papa find me?”

  The ones outside, in the wind and the rustling orchard, said:

  “Now you belong to us.”

  They said, “No one is coming for you.

  And you know it.”

  Bluebeard

  The Home was a giant on the hill, towering over the bunkhouses, all angles and dark dead window eyes. Mister’s resemblance to it made a certain amount of sense, because he hardly ever left it.

  Mister liked having girls work for him. Long ago, when his mother was alive and still spry enough to enjoy a good party, there had been servants who were trained to run the household like a business: efficiently, quietly, and without crisis. On the day of his mother’s funeral Mister gave each of the servants an envelope with a terse letter of recommendation and a small sum of money and sent them packing. He saw no reason to employ professionals. Not when there was a population of girls so conveniently located at the bottom of the hill.