A Cabinet of Wonders by Renee Dodd

"What do you think it'd be like?" Faye asked, as they left the circle of trailers containing crowds of slumbering carnies and followed the path to the creek.

"What would what be like?" Molly returned, knowing what Faye was asking but hoping her sister would just say never mind, so they could talk about something as far removed from the nightmare as possible.

But Faye didn't say never mind. She asked, "What do you think it'd be like to be cut apart? I bet it'd be horrible. I mean, at first it might be nice to be independent and all, but that wouldn't last long. We'd be miserable. Even if we weren't, I think that pretty soon we'd get pos-i-lute-ly bored. Everything would be half as interesting if we didn't have each other's feelings to feel."

"But we don't have to feel them," Molly said. "Like right now I'm feeling all four of our feet on the grass, but I don't have to. I can block it out and just feel me. All you have to do is to block me out, and you'd know what it'd be like to be separated."

"Nah, it wouldn't be like that. When I'm blocking you out I know that I can start to feel you again whenever I want to. So it isn't like losing something, it's more like not paying attention."

"Why are we talking about this, Faye?"

"I bet if we were cut apart, we'd still think we felt each other sometimes. You know how soldiers who get their leg blown off sometimes think it's still there? They'll get an itch and try to scratch it, but it drives them crazy, because the leg that itches isn't even there anymore? I think that being separated might be like that."

"You're givin' me the screaming meemies."

"I'm givin' myself the screaming meemies."

"So why don't we change the subject?"

Faye shrugged and stopped speaking altogether, which was just fine with Molly. In the ensuing quiet, she could concentrate on their senses, inhaling the bouquet of early blooming crapemyrtles and feeling the satin confetti of fallen blossoms under four bare feet. Even now, out in the cool night air, the twins felt hot and sweaty from panic; the sour smell of their fear mingled unpleasantly with the fresh fragrance of the flowers.

"I wish we had some of that scented soap that Dugan gets us sometimes," Molly said.

"He doesn't get it for us," Faye said. "He gets it for Saffron, only he has to give some to us too, so she'll accept the present."

"No, I think he buys it for us more than her. Doesn't matter, though, since we don't have any now." The small river just a few yards off the lot was called Wild Woman Creek, and Molly and Faye wished they knew someone from the town who could tell them the story behind the name. After carefully folding the blue silk shawl, the twins placed it on a patch of clover beside the broad stream, planning to swathe their naked bodies in the silk when clean. They peeled off their clinging nightgowns, which were custom-made like their dresses, and because they had their hair pinned up in twists to create the pin-curl ringlets which were their current fashion trademark, they had to open the necks of the gowns wide as they lifted them off so as not to catch the hairpins on the lace collars. Then they dropped the sweat-soaked garments to the ground and eased into the cold water.

With the pin-curl twists anchored close to their scalps, Molly and Faye could dip down shoulder deep and splash their faces and necks without wetting their hair. The cold caused the girls' collective goosebumps to multiply and disseminate until bumps occupied nearly every inch of their skin. The stench of fear was gone; they smelled only the flowers, the wet stones at the edge of the creek, and the sweet, astringent tang of pine.

"You're pretty chicken, you know," Faye said.

"So's your old man," Molly said, scowling.

"Naw, it's okay, Moll. Sometimes I'm chicken, too. But mostly I'm braver than you."

"Gee whiz. Thanks."

"Don't get yourself in a lather. I don't mean it in a bad way. I think we were made like this on purpose. I was made braver than you so I can look out for us and make us do the scary stuff we need to do, like getting away from mother. And you're nicer than me, and believe in stuff more than I do, so you can keep us from getting too bitter and cranky on account of the world being so lousy."

Molly's fingers swirled a whirlpool into the cool creek water. She shrugged. "Well, I guess that sounds all right."

"It's the bee's knees," Faye said, nudging her sister with an elbow. "We're a good team."

Molly smiled and nodded.

Before running away from the dime museum and their cruel maybe-mother, Molly and Faye used to daydream about finding a girl's school that would take them in as a charity case. They imagined befriending girls their own age with whom they'd sneak out of school to have adventures and play fun pranks. But it was just a daydream; in truth they knew that the girls would be snobby and mean, staring and pointing without having paid for the privilege. And supposing the place was run by women who felt a great pity for Molly and Faye and decided to try and help them? Then there'd be worse possibilities. Tall grim physicians with ghoul-white skin dressed in funereal black would be summoned to poke at the twins' naked flesh and guess how much of their internal systems were shared, some of the coldhearts wondering aloud if it'd be worth sacrificing one girl to free the other. Molly and Faye had heard stories. They knew what it'd be like. And throughout the callous examination, blades gleaming deep in a black leather bag would wait for a doctor's hand to choose the weapon best suited to slice the sisters apart.

So when Molly and Faye fled the woman they called their mother, they ran not to a silly girls' school, but to the first freak show they could find. Far better to be a Freak in the carnival than to be a Medical Conundrum out in the world. From the very first night the twins found him, Dugan promised that he would protect them from doctors and from their mother, that the circle of his protection would let no one and nothing ever come between the sisters. But now, three years further from childhood and closer to adulthood, the twins yearned to be independent, to prove to Dugan and the world that they were nearly grown women. And yet they knew that being Dugan's little girls helped keep them safe from doctors and mothers, helped keep them free to feel their sharing, not only at the joining place, but all the way out to the tips of twenty wiggling fingers and twenty pink toes.