Beware the Little White Rabbit

by Various

  She pulled it out of her book bag and studied its red smile. It looked so much like her childhood rabbit. It even had one ear bigger than the other. When she was little, she would chew on her rabbit’s left ear in her sleep. She rotated the rabbit in her hands. When she reached the label, she gasped.

  ALICE was written in a childhood scrawl. Her penmanship had become much better over the years, but there was no doubt who had written it. She used to label all her stuffed animals with her name.

  Lou had been the boy in the schoolyard many years ago, knocking into her and stealing her most prized possession. He always had those intense eyes. During her elementary school years, anger bubbled to the surface of her emotions any time she thought about the boy who took her rabbit. She always felt like nagging a teacher or principal about the incident, but she was invisible around those adults. They were older now. She could forgive Lou, especially with the difference between the two – he had his own issues, which were bigger than a schoolyard theft, and she had her rabbit…and her freedom. Sorrow washed over her, because he soon would be contained behind the walls of a hospital.

  Alice squeezed the rabbit to her chest. The day he had bullied her, she had felt violated, with a piece of her missing. Now she was reunited with that missing piece.

  The October sky was as crisp as a red apple. The morning light sliced through the overgrown yard, causing every shape and shadow to stand out in high contrast, including the white rabbit.

  At first Alice thought it was a stuffed animal propped up inside a ramshackle hutch with a piece of roofing nailed to the top and hardware cloth stapled across the front. But as Alice approached, she saw that it was, in fact, alive. Its whiskers twitched, its mouth moved as if nibbling a blade of grass, and one ear fell forward rather sloppily.

  “Curiouser and curiouser,” Alice whispered and glanced toward the house. Mrs. Miller had passed away months ago and the house had been vacant ever since, or so Alice had thought. The weeds grew to the tops of her navy kneesocks and tickled the backs of her legs as she hurried past the rabbit and onto Bradford Hills Preparatory School.

  At school Alice kept her head down in the hallways and her nose in a book in class. The rumor mill still churned out stories about Alice’s stepfather, Congressman Shipley, each one more outrageous than the last. The circumstances of a high-profile politician leaving their small town so suddenly, and in the midst of a campaign for re-election, proved too mysterious for anyone to let fade away.

  “I heard her mother caught him with another woman.”

  “I heard it was Alice who caught him, and it was her mother’s sister.”

  Alice didn’t elaborate upon or deny the stories, for as terrible as they were, their speculations were much safer than the truth.

  On her way home from school, Alice cut through the Miller’s backyard again, pausing in front of the hutch to find the rabbit luxuriating in the warm afternoon sun. The rabbit turned its head lazily in her direction and winked.

  She’d spoken very little in the past six weeks, not to her friends, not to her classmates or teachers, not even to her mother. Perhaps it was the bleak loneliness, which perched on her shoulder like a bird of prey, or the most basic need for human connection, which prompted Alice to say, “Hello, white rabbit.”

  The rabbit twitched one ear and replied quite civilly, “White is a human construct.”

  Alice stumbled back and glanced to either side to see if perhaps there was someone who’d uttered those words, but she was alone in the empty yard. Alone with the rabbit. Light-headed, she pressed one hand to her chest to find her heart thumping wildly, a fist hammering to get out.

  “I beg your pardon.”

  Manners were of paramount importance, she’d learned from an early age, and though she despised that tendency in herself, drilled in through years of discipline and countless hours of etiquette, she could not help but be polite.

  “Rabbit is also a human construct,” the rabbit said. “A way for you to organize that which you experience into tidy boxes.”

  Alice felt the ground tilting and leaned against the hutch to keep herself upright. A clammy warmth pressed against her skin. The afternoon heat was causing her to imagine things – and she hadn’t eaten enough that day. That had to be it.

  “Excuse me,” she said to the rabbit, made an awkward bow, and bustled away.

  For the next two days, Alice avoided the Miller’s backyard, taking the long way to school along the tree-lined avenue, but on the third day, she ran late again. Another tardy would earn her a detention, which meant a call home to her mother, a risk she wouldn’t take.

  Alice hurried through the overgrown yard, passing quickly by the rabbit who nibbled quietly on a bit of dry hay. It was only a hallucination, Alice told herself. Just a silly daydream.

  On her way back home that afternoon she dared to take the shortcut again. Intent on proving her sanity, she marched up to the hutch and said, “You’re just a rabbit.”

  “Je ne suis pas un lapin,” said the rabbit.

  Alice froze. The hairs on the back of her neck raised up and her stomach turned.

  “French,” the rabbit said. “I am not a rabbit.”

  A shiver ran down her spine. Alice took a few deep breaths and, pushing her hair back from her face, looked the rabbit boldly in the eye. “How are you doing this?”

  “Do me a favor, Alice. See that over there?” The rabbit pointed with one ear toward a patch of clover. “Bring me some of that green goodness. I’ve had nothing but this bitter, dry stuff for days.”

  Alice glanced from the rabbit to the clover. Perhaps there were more important questions to ask, but Alice said, “How do you know my name?”

  “I know a lot about you, Alice Shipley. Perhaps more than you’d like.”

  Alice cringed at the sound of her last name, because it was his last name, a tie that linked him to her, one she wished to sever. She’d been so careful not to reveal anything to anyone. If the rabbit knew her last name, he must also know about the circumstances of the congressman’s departure, which meant…

  “Do you know about my mother?” Alice asked shakily.

  “She’s not been herself lately. But how could she, after what happened…?”

  Alice’s pulse quickened at the thought of her stepfather. She picked at a scab, one of four parallel cuts on the inside of her arm, just above the elbow where no one else could see.

  “I know about that, too,” the rabbit said quietly.

  Alice pulled down the sleeve of her shirt and glared at the rabbit. “You can’t know about that.”

  “But I do.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Well, then, why don’t you make yourself useful?” The rabbit pointed again at the clover. Alice walked over, collected a few handfuls, and brought them back to the hutch. She searched for a door, but found none.

  “Feed me through the mesh.”

  “Who put you in here?” They must not have known this was a talking rabbit.

  “A most terrible man,” the rabbit said. “He trapped me in his snare. I nearly chewed off my own leg to get out. Then he stuck me in this cage, and I’ve been here ever since.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Perhaps he has a taste for rabbit stew. I do not pretend to understand the habits of your kind. Senselessly cruel, every last one.”

  Alice sympathized. There was not even a teacup of water in the hutch, and a cage was a terrible place to live one’s life. “Where’s the door? I’ll free you.”

  “There is no door,” the rabbit said.

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Does your cage have a door?”

  Alice narrowed her eyes at him. She didn’t appreciate how he turned everything around on her. “Every cage has a door. You must not want to be rescued.”

  “Touché, Alice.”

  Alice crossed her arms and scratched at her scab until she felt a prick of pain, then a trickle of warm blood. Out of
the corner of her eye, she saw a shadow move behind a curtain in the house. She noticed, too, that one of the back windows had been busted, but was now repaired. Someone must live there.

  “Mrs. Miller died months ago,” Alice mused aloud. “Who’s there now?”

  “The terrible man,” the white rabbit said. “Don’t trust him, Alice. Not one bit.”

  His words gave her goose bumps. She did not trust men, any of them. She did not trust women either.

  “I’d better go.”

  “Please come again,” the rabbit begged, his eyes going wide. “No one ever visits me. Only you, Alice. You’re the only one.”

  Alice knew what it meant to be lonely, to feel cut off from the world, to be bound by secrets that were stronger than chains, to be suffocated by them.

  “Tomorrow?” the rabbit asked with a note of desperation.

  “Tomorrow,” Alice replied.

  Since the congressman fled the coop like a fox with a mouthful of feathers, Alice’s mother spent her days watching HGTV. She’d become fixated on redecorating. Her slurred monologues, for she also drank, were punctuated with “distressed cabinetry,” “rehabbed end tables,” “white-washed metal shutters,” and “bold accent walls.” Like a parrot, she repeated whatever catchphrases she’d picked up from the television that day and was, at times, incoherent. In the six weeks since the congressman left, her mother burned through the liquor cabinet and had moved on to the wine cellar.

  Meanwhile, the house itself was in disarray with ripped wallpaper hanging from the walls like shed snake skin. Pastel paint was smeared across surfaces like blood. The dining room table had been haphazardly scraped and its legs truncated to different lengths so it no longer balanced a glass of water. One day Alice came home from school to find that every plate, glass, and teacup had been smashed on the tile floor of the observatory. Alice did not clean it up. The house was treacherous, and it was best to remember it.

  On Saturday morning Alice sneaked out before her mother awoke and used the small amount of money she had left over from pawning a desk lamp to buy carrots at the produce stand. She carried them, wrapped in an embroidered napkin, to the Miller’s backyard.

  “What a lovely surprise,” the rabbit said. “Where’s your usual attire?”

  Alice wore jean shorts, cut off at the knees, and a long-sleeved shirt, both splattered with paint from one of her mother’s episodes. “No school today.”

  “Ahh, but those days are harder, aren’t they?”

  The rabbit’s words carved away at something wooden inside her. “How is it you know so much about me, white rabbit?” Alice insisted on calling him both. Even though “white” and “rabbit” were human constructs, she needed this, at least, to fit inside a box.

  “I’m very perceptive,” he said. “And also very hungry, if you please.”

  Alice squeezed one narrow carrot through the hardwire mesh. She nibbled on another herself. She’d been accustomed to the grass tickling the backs of her legs, but today it was not. The yard had been mowed, the leaves raked and bagged. The lawn was more open without the overgrown grass and weeds. Alice felt like a target.

  “Who cut the grass?”

  “My captor,” the rabbit said. “He ruins everything.” Alice glanced back at the curtains but saw no movement.

  “He’s not here. Probably off dining on the entrails of small, helpless mammals. We’re safe for now.”

  “The weeds will just grow back,” Alice said, more to herself than the rabbit.

  “Weeds will do that,” said the rabbit. “They are very stubborn about surviving.”

  Alice turned her attention to the rabbit. “Are you magic, then?”

  “Do you think I would demean myself to pop out of some fraud’s musty top hat?”

  “You are white,” Alice said.

  “Not entirely. I’ve a spot right here.” The rabbit turned to show her his tail, which was painted with dark fur. “Do you believe in magic, Alice?”

  She chewed on the end of her carrot. She believed in magic before, at a time when she also believed that her mother and stepfather loved each other and cared for her. Her faith seemed to erode so quickly, though she could no longer recall the exact moment. It was a series of small cruelties, which led her to realize that there would be no magic spell, no fairy godmother, and no charming prince to save her.

  “No, I do not.”

  “But you used to.”

  Alice thought of her life before the big house, just her and her mother, sharing a one-bedroom apartment on the wrong side of town. Every night she slept in her mother’s bed, and every morning she awoke to sunshine streaming in through the windows, warm and safe, cocooned in her mother’s love. Perhaps it would be easier to forget that those times ever existed. Then the loss would not be so great.

  Alice shook her head. “I can’t go back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”

  “Indeed,” the rabbit said.

  “So, if you’re not magic, what are you?”

  The rabbit raised itself up and glanced past her. “Popsicles, Alice, I thought he was gone. Don’t say anything that will get us in trouble, understand?” He edged away and propped himself against the side of the hutch. His eyes glazed over.

  “Hey there,” said a deep voice.

  Alice spun around, confronted by a young man near her own age.

  “I thought I saw you out here the other day,” he continued. Alice glanced between him and the rabbit, wondering if he was the intruder or if it was she.

  “That’s funny.” He pointed to the carrot in the hutch.

  “He won’t believe you, Alice,” the rabbit uttered in barely a whisper. “He’ll think you’re mad.”

  “What’s funny?” Alice asked the young man. Her mouth was so dry she could barely speak.

  “You know, the carrot.” He smiled and it appeared genuine, but smiles were slippery things. They had a way of turning into sneers.

  “What are you doing here?” Alice asked. “In this house?”

  “My grandmother lived here. She passed a little while back. My mom and I are fixing it up. We’re thinking about staying for a while. Do you live in the neighborhood?”

  “Don’t tell him anything, Alice,” the rabbit commanded. “What if he follows you home?”

  “Did you put the rabbit in this cage?” Alice asked, steeling herself against him.

  The boy glanced over at the hutch, then back at her. “It was like that when we got here.”

  “He’s lying, Alice,” the rabbit fumed. His ears stood perfectly straight and still. Only his whiskers twitched. “He’s the one who put me in here. You know what it feels like to be deceived.”

  “But how will it get food and water?” Alice asked, trying to catch the young man in a lie.

  He tilted his head, a bewildered look on his face. “You’re messing with me.”

  Alice studied him. His eyes were kind, his face open and trusting, but like smiles and flattering words, a face was a mask and who knew what lay underneath. “I’m not messing with you.”

  “The rabbit’s not real,” the boy said. “It’s a stuffed animal.”

  Alice drew in a sharp breath as panic flooded her. She tried to see what the boy saw, a simple stuffed rabbit, but she did not. And what did that mean?

  Meanwhile the rabbit howled, “I told you, Alice. He can’t be trusted. He’s not like us. He’s an outsider. A stranger. He’ll think you’re crazy. He’ll tell your mother. He’ll – ”

  “Stop!” Alice put both hands on her ears and hunkered down over her knees. The young man placed his hand on her shoulder. His touch terrified her, and she bolted. By the time she slowed down, her legs were rubbery and weak and her lungs burned from exertion.

  She stopped when she reached the train tracks, an old haunt. She sat by the tracks and waited for the train to come. Only it would quiet that voice in her head, his voice, telling her she was stupid, useless, worthless.

  But when it came, the nois
e wasn’t loud enough.

  Nothing was.

  Alice made her way home that evening as the day was bleeding into dusk. The row of mansions that lined her street stood ominously against the darkening sky. Their white columns cast skeletal shadows on the porticos, and Alice felt, as she often did, that the houses were watching her.

  When she reached the end of the cul de sac where she and her mother lived, she found the boy from the Miller house sitting on the curb.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “You dropped this.” He held out her purse. Alice took it and turned it over in her hands.

  “I had to open it to find your ID.”

  “Yes, of course. Thank you.”

  Alice stared at the glittering sidewalk to avoid meeting his eyes. When she was little, her mother said the builders put crushed quartz in the concrete so that the sidewalks would sparkle. Like walking on diamonds, and weren’t they lucky to be living in a place like this? The two luckiest girls in Thomasville.

  “You’re the congressman’s daughter,” he said.

  “Stepdaughter.” She braced herself for whatever rumors he might wish to authenticate.

  “This is a pretty fancy neighborhood.” He glanced around warily, like a criminal, and shoved his hands deep into his pockets.

  “Did you knock on the door?” Alice searched his eyes.

  He hesitated. “I did. Was that your mom?”

  There was no way for Alice to know what condition her mother was in when she answered the door. What he might have seen or heard…

  “Yes,” Alice said softly.

  “She thought I was the painter. She asked me inside – ”

  “Did you go in?”

  “Only for a minute. You’re mother, she seemed…”

  He’d seen the inside of her house. Earlier, he’d caught her talking to a rabbit, a stuffed one apparently. And he must have heard the stories about the congressman. He must think her mad, all of them.

  “She seemed drunk,” he finished.