If I could only tell those girls, “Oh, I was only playing a trick on Dale. She’s so easy to fool, bless her, that I couldn’t help myself,” they would laugh sweetly and rest their arms across my shoulders. They’d invite me to their homes, where the walls were freshly painted and the cushions plump, and we’d take a refreshing jaunt in the buggy after dinner.
“Momma said that what happened in my bedroom came from electrical orbs, and I regret to tell you that I neglected to speak up and so let my mother make a false statement. There was no electricity or work of the Lord. The scarf was also my doing.”
No, I’d never leave here. I would watch Leo all his days and marry some fellow who’d never been anywhere and had no wish to travel. I’d set up a home with him, and itch for the rest of my days for the freedom that came from doing what no one else around me could do.
“I pray that you will understand and forgive me, and I remain, Your loving cousin Lulu.”
I blotted the letter and handed it to Daddy. He would make me change it, probably more than once as a lesson, and then carry it into town during the week to mail.
He took the letter and leaned toward me across his desk. Instinctively, I leaned away.
“When you were six,” he said, “I found you outside before dawn. I was on the way to milk the cow and nearly tripped over you sitting on the porch steps. You told me that you wanted to hear the sun come up. You had gotten yourself dressed, even tied a ribbon in your hair, and there you sat.”
I remembered. He’d gone pale when he saw me.
“I wanted to holler at you,” he said. “Get up, be useful, go fetch some water or feed the dogs, don’t sit like a stone, but you were sitting exactly like a stone, looking to the distance, one hand on each knee, your little back straight as a board.”
I remembered thinking that when the sun rose, he would hear it, too.
“When you finally did move,” Daddy said, “you asked could I hear it. I heard birdsong, and I’m sure the cow was shifting around in the barn. You were close to crying, Lulu, and when I reached for you, you pushed me away.”
I remembered the torn-open feeling when I understood that no one else knew what it felt like to be me.
“Your hands were hot as melting candle wax that morning,” Daddy said, shaking his head. “I only wish I’d been honest with myself on that day about the power that you and I can wield together.”
With this small recognition, waves of stories poured from me. I told him about reaching into Dale’s trunk in the moments she’d turned her attention to her beloved hat box, and how I wadded up her scarf and shoved it into my blouse just for fun. I told him about captivating the fox and saving Leo from the animal’s attack, about Mr. Campbell, about how Mrs. Wolf wrote that I could learn to undo the damage done to Leo. I told him about how when I learned to do that, time would go backwards to the days when we were happy, and no one looked at me as if they couldn’t remember why I was there.
Daddy rose and turned to the bookshelf. I talked faster, distracting myself from the gap where The Truth of Mesmeric Influence should have been. He picked through the books on his shelf, pulling one out, sliding it back, examining another. First, the leather-bound Bible, then worn almanacs that dated back to 1866, the year he came to Georgia from Tennessee. One after the other, the collected words of Shakespeare, two hymnals. Daddy spoke quietly, his back to me.
“Yours were careless actions,” Lulu,” he said. “You say you can stare into someone’s eyes, make them believe one foolish thing or another that they already had buried in them, but that’s not real power.”
What did my father know of power, of the beauty in stopping time? Because of the book that all but jumped into my hands.
“Why do you have a book about Mesmerism?”
“Why I have any of my books isn’t your concern,” he said, selecting a slender cloth-bound volume from his shelf.
“While you were writing, I got to thinking. You seem to be allowing yourself to become a liar and a thief. However, in the right hands, those same skills can be shaped into a gift.”
“Thank you,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say.
“You’ve got a gift,” he repeated, “and all gifts are God-given. Even the thief and the gambler are skilled at their trades, although we know that their duty is to overcome sin and turn to good works.”
“Yes, sir,” I said. Had the Devil risen out of the floor right then, I would have offered him coffee.
Daddy smiled, the real, wide smile of the days before we moved to the farm, the days when we were four whole people. He passed the book over to me. The cover showed a turbaned man whose eyes were drawn to look like they glowed. Lightning shot from his brow. Modern Marvels of Alchemy paraded above his head in gold and black lettering. He was foreign and malevolent, and he was magnificent.
“This is what you’ve made an attempt at doing,” he said. He looked at the turbaned man on the book cover as if he were a long-lost friend.
“Science, Lulu. You’re going to learn science in the evenings, not some made-up hoodoo. Science is the tool with which we will forge your gift into a beneficial influence.”
He looked at the turbaned man again.
“There’s not a single excuse why some woman in Ohio with a stick has to hog the whole vista of public distractions. God has clearly given us a mission.”
The floor had opened, and I was glad for my chair.
Daddy rose from his chair and came to stand beside me.
“It’s no shame for a man to ask for God’s help,” Daddy said. He stroked my hair, making me flinch. I never enjoyed the feeling of being touched.
“Mrs. Wolf writes about healing, Daddy,” I said, working hard not to shake off his hand. “She helped souls recover from their troubles.”
Daddy crouched at my side and I was six years old again, waiting for the sun to rise, for both of us to hear the sound. For the briefest moment I feared my father would weep.
“Lulu, when I was a boy, I fell under the spell of a charlatan who held me spellbound. But I loved that person who preached that if a person is in balance, the fluids in his body travel evenly around their conduits. If a man should be unfortunate in these conduits, he falls ill, or he loses his loved ones. He becomes a victim of poverty.”
When Daddy stood, his knees cracked.
“Those magnetic fluids between the poles must be balanced, this person said.”
“Because he read Mrs. Wolf,” I answered, certain.
Daddy laughed.
“This person believed themselves right, and I swore so, too, but I was a little boy then. What I’ve learned since is that the common person will believe anything if it’s wrapped up in bows. Those of us who value our honest character are asked to be vigilant in approaching the slender line between devotion and deception.”
Daddy had never spoken about his past. His parents were dead, he had no brothers or sisters, no aunts or uncles. The delivery of this story alone was extraordinary. I would get no more today, maybe ever, and I averted my eyes, uncomfortable for us both. Outside, a crow called. In the kitchen, Momma chattered to Leo while she banged around at the stove. I should be there, keeping him busy, listening to him. Leo didn’t like being talked at.
“God has sent a message to me through you, my oldest child,” Daddy said. “It’s become your duty, Lulu, to study up on this gift you have. Through your hands, if we remain vigilant and honest, He will bring our reward.”
My