Free Alice I Have Been: A Novel by Melanie Benjamin Page B

sister was tremendously disappointing; I couldn’t suppress a sigh.
    “That’s wonderful,” Mr. Dodgson said. Ina simply shrugged, then turned back to me, snub little nose in the air, as if I smelled as distasteful as I must have looked to her.
    “Alice, what on earth are you wearing?”
    “Doesn’t she look marvelous?” Mr. Dodgson said, before I could open my mouth. “I had an idea for an unusual photograph, as you can see, and Alice has been most cooperative.”
    They stood side by side, close but not together, and looked at me. Almost naked in my torn dress, I felt exposed, betrayed—and then, suddenly, alarmingly, powerful. It was I they were looking for; it was I they were looking at; it was I, clad in nothing but rags, whom Mr. Dodgson had dreamed of.
    Not Ina.
    Suddenly I was proud, I was defiant, I was sure . Sure that it was I who drew Mr. Dodgson to our house, time and time again, causing people to gossip, Mamma to fret, Pricks to sigh and be ridiculous—Ina to pale and quiver and act so maddeningly.
    Ina was sure, too. Perhaps I should have been afraid of that, but right then, wild and powerful and victorious , I was not. I placed my hand on my hip, held my hand out—the little gypsy girl who wasn’t to be pitied, after all.
    “Hold it,” Mr. Dodgson breathed, as he ran to the camera and shoved in the plate holder. “Don’t move—that’s perfect!”
    I wouldn’t; I couldn’t. For I was looking right at Ina, standing next to Mr. Dodgson. Looking at her face, mouth open, face pale, eyes red-rimmed, entire body quivering. She stared at him; she stared at me. Storing it all away, she didn’t utter a word.
    Neither did I. I didn’t have to. I had won.
    “Forty-five,” Mr. Dodgson said, and replaced the lens cover with a loud snap—happily unaware that he was the prize.
    “I won’t forget this, Alice,” Ina hissed, blinking her eyes furiously, as he disappeared inside the dark tent. “I’m still older than you. You’re only a child, after all. I’ll make him see.”
    “He already does see,” I shot back, understanding more than Ina, for once.
    I held my breath as Mr. Dodgson packed away the glass plates, for they were fragile; I did not want the evidence of this day to crack or break or vanish in any way. I wanted to live on, always, as the beggar girl, his gypsy child, wild and knowing and triumphant.
    What I did not understand, despite all my newly acquired wisdom, was that others might not see me—might not want to see me—that way, too.

Chapter 4
•  •  •
    A S WISE AS I WAS AT AGE SEVEN, IT WAS NOTHING COMPARED to how very much I knew as I passed eight, then nine; ten, then eleven.
    At eight, I began dancing lessons, organized by Mamma with a few other Oxford children whom we weren’t encouraged to otherwise befriend. However, learning to dance a quadrille would have been impossible with just the three of us.
    At that age I also realized that even though spinsters were supposed to be treated kindly, in actuality everyone talked about them behind their backs and complained about how much money it cost to support them.
    At nine, I began to learn French, courtesy of a plump don of languages who favored mauve vests and insisted upon kissing us on both cheeks, even though he always reeked of sardines.
    It was around this age, too, when I discovered that it was useless to try to convince governesses that even if “little girls can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar,” the truth is one can catch the most flies with horse manure. Governesses, I was learning, were not concerned with practicalities.
    At ten, I was started on Latin, taught by a don who was as musty and ancient as the language he taught; when he opened his mouth, I always expected to see cobwebs and dust come flying out.
    I also realized, at ten, that somehow there was always a “servant problem.” If only to provide ladies of a certain class a topic of conversation on which to agree.
    At