The Wonder

by Emma Donoghue

you and I are the ones preventing Anna from getting nourishment now.” “We’re doing nothing!” “We’re watching, every minute.

“Give us this day our daily bread.”

What about Anna O’Donnell’s daily bread?

Rosaleen O’Donnell froze. Anna shook her head, wordless. Rosaleen O’Donnell straightened up and put her fingers to the girl’s cheek. On the way out, she gave Lib a venomous look.

I Have Suffered.

Earth was such unworthy soil for God’s best specimens, why did he perversely plant them there? What

ASLEEP IN JESUS

Instead of clinging to her last child all the more, perhaps Rosaleen had found her heart frost-burnt.

no more left to give.

used to be against the law for us to bury our own,

“Good for burning,

“You’d set a match to the whole place, I suspect, if it could be dried out first,”

If the Creator can’t prevent such abominations, what good is he?”

“Haven’t people in all times and places cried out to their Maker?”

“Which only proves we wish for one,”

“The Host,

“Her very first Holy Communion, bless the girl.”

Twas no earthly food she wanted for her last

Her last meal; like a condemned prisoner.

“The rag tree at our holy well.”

“They’re for dipping in the water and rubbing on a sore or an ache,” said Anna. “After, you tie the rag on the tree, see?”

“The badness stays on the rag, and you leave it behind. Once it rots away, what was ailing you will be gone too.”

as an intelligent Roman Catholic—about

Someone who could tell Lib if she was losing her grip on reality.

“we learned that the cross was made of dogwood, so the tree only grows short and twisted now because of being sorry.”

“The flowers are like a cross, see? Two long petals, two short,” said Anna. “And those brown bits are the nail prints, and that’s the crown of thorns in the middle.”

“Wouldn’t it be like a little death?” Byrne nodded. “I believe emigration generally is that. The price of a new life.”

“Floating,” said the girl after a long moment. Dizziness?

“Like bells, far off.” Ringing in ears,

“Thirty-three.” “I beg your pardon?” “Just thirty-three times a day,” said Anna.

“That’s how old he was.” It took a moment for Lib to understand. “Christ?” A nod. “When he died and was resurrected.” “But why must you say that particular prayer thirty-three times a day?” “To get Pat out of—” She broke

fury,

Anna might—without even being conscious of it—be trying to make the woman suffer. Fasting against a mother who’d turned her into a sort of fairground attraction.

Anna hadn’t asked to take part in it tonight, Lib noticed; another sign that her strength was beginning to drain away.

“It’s about confession. The girl in the story wasn’t being punished for letting the Host fall,” said the nun, “but for keeping her mistake a secret all her life.”

“When the old woman confessed it at last, you see, she laid her burden down,”

A fast didn’t go fast; it was the slowest thing there was.

“They meant to put down the flesh and raise up the spirit,”

But why does it have to be one or the other? Lib wondered. Aren’t we both?

Always God—the real tyrant in this part of the world.

motherly anxiety can lead to irrational panic, and a touch of self-aggrandizement.”

you hurt anywhere?” “’Tis just”—Anna made a vague gesture around her middle—“passing through.” “Passing through you?” “Not me.” So

The pain wasn’t Anna? The girl through whom the pain was passing wasn’t Anna? Anna wasn’t Anna?

Everybody was a repository of secrets.

One of those yearnings that spring up like weeds in the dry soil of a nurse’s life. Had Lib no respect for herself at all?

The child flinched.

This must have been Pat’s bed, it occurred to Lib; there was no other except in the outshot where the parents slept.

Her eyes traced the indelible stains.

cooling in his little sister’...

“How did you begin again, Mrs. Lib?”