Paper Dolls (21 page)

I rub the sleep from my eyes and see a house. A big house. But this is not my house. This is not the house grandfather promised me.

“Daddy?” I call. No one answers.

I’m in a wicker chair with a big fluffy blanket. My feet trip over each other when I stand. My leg hurts. I hobble along the river and see grandfather and a lady in a pale pink uniform talking. Grandfather looks different. His gray hair has changed to white. He and the lady don’t even notice me as I step closer. I squirm into the hollow of a tree that stands just behind them. The hollow squashes me horribly, which makes me even crosser, as it seems that I should have fit easily in here.

“….things must necessarily change," the woman tells grandfather. She sounds odd and wears a funny pink cap. She could be a nurse but pink is a silly color for a nurse to wear. Perhaps she’s a pretend-nurse. At one time, I begged mother to buy me a nurse outfit, so I could look after daddy when he was sick. But she didn’t buy it.

“Yes, of course,” says grandfather. He brings his thick eyebrows together, making a v-shape in between his eyes.

The woman fidgets with her hands. “She suffered an enormous shock after the crash. It’s not clear whether there’s permanent brain injury or not. There’s no way of telling whether she will ever be normal again. She appears to believe she’s no more than around five years old. There’s some scattered memories from her older years, but for the main part, her mind has regressed to the past."

"I'll take good care of her." His voice is weary. He doesn’t like this woman and neither do I.

"Mr. Fiveash, with all due respect, I don't think you understand the gravity of the situation. She needs specialized care in a proper institution."

Grandfather holds up his huge hands. “No granddaughter of mine shall be placed in an institution."

Granddaughter? But I am his granddaughter. Are they talking about me?

"Her mental state is delicate to say the least and could well worsen,” asserts the woman.

"I'll not have her taken away. Circus folk look after their own."

Grandfather’s words make me feel safe. I don’t like this woman and want her to leave. Her voice is like needles.

Someone stands at a window, high above. Audette stares out with nastiness on her face, like an extra-sour lemon. I don’t like her either. She crushed my dolls.

The woman and grandfather step past the tree. Grandfather’s eyes dart down to the tree hollow. He struggles to get down on his knees in front of me. His blue eyes crinkle at the edges. He has a strange scar on his forehead. He looks older. So much older, like he is sick and about to die. Hot tears well in my eyes.

“Jess-of-mine,” he croons. “I thought you were sleeping.”

“I was but the sun woke me,” I say grumpily.

“I should have moved you into the shade, but you looked so peaceful. What do you think of the house?”

“Whose house is this?”

“This is your house, Jess. It was built while we were both in the hospital. You fell asleep on the car trip here this morning.”

“This is not my house. Where’s the swimming pool?”

“It gets too cold here to put in a pool, Jess.”

“And where’s the lake gone? This is all wrong.”

“We couldn’t stay there, in the house by the lake. We had to come somewhere where you could be safe.”

“Well I don’t like it. And where’s daddy?”

His forehead creased like he was going to get angry but his eyes just looked sad. “Your father… can’t be here. Please come out of there now.”

The woman crosses her arms and gives a warning glance to grandfather, which she thinks I don’t see.

Grandfather points up to the window that Audette stuck her ugly face out of a minute ago. “That’s your room. You get the best view in the whole house."

“My own bedroom?”

“Your very own bedroom.”

The woman in the pretend-nurse outfit tells me her name is Sister Daniels, and helps me inside. She holds my elbow as we walk up a polished staircase. She doesn’t really help much, but does a lot of fussing. Grandfather follows. He proudly points the way to the room. The room has a four-poster bed and a dollhouse with miniature people in it.

Below the window, trucks drive in on the dirt road and across a wooden bridge.

I sit on the stool by the dresser and brush my hair. There is no mirror here. There’s no mirror anywhere in the bedroom. My hair is longer than it was yesterday. It’s never grown so fast before. Mother usually braids my hair when I’m practicing for the circus, so that it doesn’t get caught anywhere. But we are not with the circus today. And mother isn’t here.

“I need a mirror,” I tell grandfather.

“There’s no mirrors in the house, Jess. Except for the other bedrooms, and you are not to go in those. None of us need mirrors—they are the source of much unhappiness when our souls don’t match the image we see. A piece of glass can tell us nothing, and I want you to remember that.”

I know grandfather is wise and I don’t question his words.

“Where’s my mother?” I ask.

“I’ll explain everything later,” says grandfather.

I don’t like it when he says that. A picture draws itself in my head. I don’t want to see it, because I know it’s bad. Like when I peeked at the pictures Henry keeps in a trunk and I saw ugly things. But this is different, even worse.

I see my mother. She’s at the bottom of a mountain. She’s tangled in something, something like a chair with wheels. All squashed like a bug and smashed and covered in blood.

It’s not nice to think bad things like that about people. I want to lie down. I step over to the bed and curl up there. I rock and sing to myself. I have to shut out the pictures in my head.

The next minute I hear screaming, and I want it to stop. But the more I want it to stop, the louder it gets.

Grandfather puts a hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay, Jessamine. I’m here. I’m here with you. Everything will be alright.”

I realize the terrible screaming is coming from me. I need to stop it
. What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with me?
I clasp my arms around my knees. A terrible pain wells up inside. I think I am going to die. My breaths quicken. Nurse Daniel hastens to give me a small white tablet and a glass of water.

After a few moments, I’m floating. But the hurt is still there.

I step into sleep, dreaming of blood.

For days, I stay in the bed, moving in and out of sleep. I have a fever and dreams. And neither daddy nor mother come. Only grandfather and the pretend-nurse come. Trucks drive in and out and everything sounds noisier when you are trying to sleep.

Every day, the nurse forbids me to come downstairs, but tonight, grandfather insists I am well enough to have dinner with everyone.

Audette and Henry are already seated at the table. Audette has her people-face on—the face she uses when people are around. She always scowls at me when we are alone together. She wears a frilly pink dress with spots on it that look like measles.

Sister Daniels charges at me with a thermometer and takes my temperature. “Still more than a touch too high.” She twists her mouth and shakes her head.

“Now, now,” says grandfather. “It’s a warm night and I can’t see the harm in her moving about a bit.”

“But her lungs are delicate. They sustained quite a bit of damage in the accident and you must be careful with her.”

“What accident?” I tilt my chin at grandfather.

He frowns at the nurse. “That’s enough. And she’s fine.”

“Yes, I know.” The nurse made a tut-tut sound. “You are circus folk and circus folk are tough.”

Grandfather winks at me. “I’m glad we finally understand each other, Sister Daniels.” He doesn’t answer my question about the accident.

Sister Daniels sits down with us to dinner. The maids bring out a roast, with large helpings of corn and potatoes. Sister Daniels eats more than I’ve ever seen anyone eat, while Audette picks at her food like it isn’t nearly good enough. Henry eats in the way he always does—as though he’s sitting in the grandest restaurant eating the grandest food. He keeps complimenting the maids, which makes Audette’s eyes narrow into slits.

After dinner, the nurse says she has a headache and must
retire
to her room. Before she leaves, she says I must return to my room too. Grandfather sighs and nods in my direction.

I skip away to the stairs, but I don’t go any further. I’m tired of being in my room. Grandfather, Henry and Audette go out to the front porch while the maids pile up dirty dishes at the table. I wander through the kitchen and out through the side door, then steal around to the porch.

Creatures shriek and roar in the dark. As though the animals from a thousand circuses have escaped. I huddle behind a potted plant. Henry and grandfather smoke cigars together. Audette sits at the table, painting her nails with long strokes.

“In any case,” grandfather tells Henry, “I won’t be longer than a month.”

Henry blows a long stream of smoke into the night. “We’ll manage.”

“I want to be certain you’re taking this seriously. They may come through her to get to me. Or they may even suspect she knows more than she does. If they come, she must remain hidden. Henry and Audette, you are the only family besides Jessamine that I have left. You must take good care of her."

I hate it when grandfather talks about things I don’t understand.

"Uncle, you know I will." Henry leans his head back as though examining the stars.

“These are dangerous people. Whoever set the bomb off on the train is willing to do anything, at any cost to human life.” Grandfather taps his cigar on the small table.

Audette blows on her long fingernails. Red paint glistens on them. "Well of course. Scary stuff. The kid will be in safe hands with us. I hate to mention this now… but we will need some sort of means for her upkeep, and that of the house…."

"I will leave plenty of funds to cover all expenses.” Grandfather’s voice is short and sharp.

They keep talking but I can’t hear more, because my head is swimming. I can hear a ripping of metal, can feel myself being thrown and tossed as a train falls from its tracks. Screams, yells, shouts. And my mother twisted inside the strange chair. And blood, so much blood…

I slip away. I don’t want to know any more of their words.

“Jessamine, I have to go away.”

I can only make one sound. “No…”

“I’m afraid there’s no way around it. There is something I must do. It will only be for a short while.”

“Take me with you.”

“You’ve been ill. You’re in no condition to travel.” He closes his eyes and his shoulders slump a little. “There’s some things I need to tell you.”

I sit up on the pillows. I am very sure I don’t want to hear what grandfather has to say.

“First of all, I want to you to know you’ll be okay when I’m gone. Henry and Audette are here. Also Nurse Daniels. They are all here to take care of you. You don’t need to worry. I know that things seem very confusing right now, but they won’t always be that way.”

“I won’t stay with them. I want to be with you.”

“I know… I know. But I need you to be safe. And I can’t keep you safe where I am going. But I am going to keep you extra safe while I am gone. I want you to come and see.”

He takes me by the hand. I swing my legs from the bed. They feel better. My leg is not nearly so sore. My hand feels strangely big in his, and I am as tall as his shoulders. I feel wrong. Perhaps the nasty nurse is giving me medicine that makes me big sometimes.

I push my feet into my slippers and go with him. It doesn’t matter I am still in my nightdress, he tells me, because there is no one here to see. Everyone else is asleep.

We walk through the grounds to the big shed. There is nothing inside the shed but what looks like a big lid sitting on the ground. Grandfather bends down and twists the lid backwards and forwards, then takes my hand again and we stand on it. The lid goes straight down—like an elevator—to a dark cave.

“Why are we going in here?” I hold tightly to grandfather’s arm.

“Just trust me.” He smiles down at me.

We have to climb down a ladder just to get to the floor of the cave. Lots of grandfather’s things are stored here. Circus things. Like someone picked up the entire circus and broke it in pieces and put it in here. Even grandfather’s car is down here.

He turns on a series of big lights and I can see a tunnel ahead.

“Why are there tunnels down here? They weren’t made by a big spider, were they?”

“No.” He chuckled. “The tunnels here were made by an old volcano. But don’t worry, the volcano’s lava went through here a very long time ago. We don’t need to worry about it coming back.”

I still don’t like it here. The tunnel smells old, hundreds of thousands of years old. We walk for a long time, until we come to something large and round. It is one of the carousels from the circus. We step through it into a brightly-lit area.

“Go! Look!” he says.

We walk down a corridor made of rock. Carpenters hammer together cupboards in what looks like a kitchen. A big table and huge chairs have already been built.

“For you to have tea parties, Jess,” he says.

He takes my hand and we walk further down the corridor. I peek inside a large crack in the wall—so large even grandfather could fit through it. The cave inside is dark and awful and smells like dead plants.

“Come on.” He pulls me by the hand. We walk to the end of the corridor. “There’s something I need to show you first, and after that I have some surprises to show you.”

At the end of the corridor, the path goes left and right. To the right is a horrible tunnel with no lights. I don’t want to go that way, but that’s the way he goes.

He shines his torch around the slimy walls. “See? Nothing scary here.”

After a short distance, I am happy to see a rock wall blocking our path. But grandfather presses on a jutting rock and a secret door scrapes open. My heart bangs as we walk what seems to me a very long way.