Free Among the Wonderful by Stacy Carlson Page A

Eyes widening, hand rising to her mouth.
    “They’re still arriving,” the woman murmured. But the girl rushed forward, tripping over her own feet and quickly regaining balance.
    “I’m Caroline.” Breathless, the girl craned up.
    “Ana Swift.” The girl was as tall as my waist, probably ten or twelve years old.
    “I’m so glad to meet you.” The girl gave a little bow. “Where did you come from?”
    “Pictou, Nova Scotia, originally.”
    “Would you like to sit down?” Caroline waved at the tiny chairs.
    Her mother took a step forward as if to stop her, but the girl gave her a stern look, and she wilted. Now the woman was not only unsettled by my presence but also embarrassed to be following her child’s example. “Well, yes. Do come in. I’m Mrs. Charity Barnum.”
    The chair was not sturdy enough; I sat on the edge of the love seat, supporting myself partially with my legs. It is my usual custom in these situations to ensure that my full weight never rests on other people’s furniture. Mrs. Barnum went for tea, and Caroline sat across from me.
    “You’re very tall.” The girl walked to the chair I’d rejected and sat down primly.
    “Oh, you can do better than that, can’t you?”
    She swung her legs delightedly. She seemed no different from other children, with her bold, somewhat refreshing manner. I meet at least as many children as adults and I’ve come to depend on them to simply blurt out one of several variations on the sentence Caroline had just uttered.
    “It must be strange. There are two others. Tall, like you. One’s from China. They live next door to each other, down the hall. The two last rooms. They arrived on the very same day. Tuesday, I think it was. But it was the first time they’d met.”
    “Mr. Barnum is your father?”
    “Yes. We moved into the museum a month ago, but Mother refuses to unpack her things.” Caroline gestured to the suitcases with her foot. “We couldn’t keep our apartment.”
    “Why not?”
    Caroline leaned toward me. “My sister’s sick,” she whispered, her smile fading as she pointed to the back room. “In there. It costs
money
. My mother” — she leaned forward even more — “is going to have another baby. But Papa is going to come back with a lot of money.”
    Mrs. Barnum returned with a pot of tea and cups. Shakily, she set down the tray and sat down herself.
    “Well,” she said. She glanced somewhere below my collarbone before looking at her lap.
    “I just arrived.” The decent thing was to try, for just a few minutes. You’re always over my shoulder, Mother.
They will see themselves in you
. But do they see something good? Something that they want to see?
    Caroline poured the tea. “The best time to see the museum is at night when everyone’s gone. That’s the very best.”
    “Hush, Caroline.”
    We sat in silence. How long could Mrs. Barnum bear it, this stillness with me in the middle of it? Caroline had handed me a teacup and saucer. I had not taken a sip and did not intend to. The teacup was absurd in my hands. I was not working. I would not entertain them.
    No one broke the silence and within it I awakened from acertain fogginess of mind. I do not know how long I’d been in it. There’s been a haze ever since they put you in the ground, Mother, but this is different. Maybe it’s that sense of half belonging that I feel in a place like this. The emotion facilitates a certain stability, a certain focus of intention that makes me look up suddenly, wanting to have something, like a hobby or a pet. But it’s a strange deception, the idea of a community of anomalies. The feeling crumbles when I examine it. No, this feeling must be a simpler vigor, perhaps chemical in nature, born in the silence between Mrs. Barnum, glaring from behind her tea, and me. I came awake when the silence stretched on too long. I felt no need to fill it but I knew Mrs. Barnum did. I didn’t need to do
anything
. She didn’t expect me to behave