ALICE WONDER’S HOUSE, 7 FOLLY BRIDGE, OXFORD
TIME REMAINING: 53 MINUTES
“T hat’s why you hate me so much.” I nod at Lorina and Edith. “I never was one of you.”
In truth, I can’t remember the part of me knocking on their door with a knife in my hand. But I do remember the basement. The horrible circus inside the basement.
“We don’t just hate you, Alice. We loathe you,” Lorina says. “You’re like that itch in the top of my mouth that hurts more if I try to lick it away.”
“Even after being put in the asylum, you still keep escaping to make our lives miserable,” Edith says, totally neglecting that I may have been just a troubled seven-year-old, but that the incidents in the basement—which were their fault—may have turned me into a loon.
“So how did you come up with the circus idea in the basement?”
“Because you told us about the circus in Wonderland,” Lorina says. “Or rather the silly idea that Wonderlanders had crossed over to the real world in the 19th century, and that humans thought of them as mad people and freaks, and sent them to the circus for entertainment.”
“Of course.” I sigh. “That was how I gave you the idea. So you decided to take it up a notch and make a circus out of me in the basement.”
“And it was fun, Alice,” Edith says. “I mean, if you bully someone in the real world, you may get in trouble. But bully a mad girl, wow, that was a million-dollar idea we got away with.”
“Because whatever you were going to say about it, no one was going to believe a lost mad girl who thinks she came from Wonderland.” Edith and Lorina high-five.
The Pillar comes to mind instantly. All his madness, theories, and the harsh ways he treats the people in this world seem just now. How I would like to choke both of them with a hookah’s hose right now. Maybe I was hard on the Pillar. Maybe the twelve people he killed were the likes of Lorina and Edith. Bullies who needed to be put to rest.
At the same time, I stand, contemplating my past and what to do with Edith and Lorina, I realize I am too late again. Why do I always waste time lamenting my true past?
Edith tugs on her gloves and picks up a baseball bat from the floor, while Lorina shoots me an even more sinister look now.
“How about we play that circus game one more time?” she says.
“What?” I grimace, unable to comprehend their thirst for evil.
“Come on, Mary Ann.” Edith plops the bat against her fatty palm.
“What did you just call me?” I take a calculated step back. I was going to lash my None Fu at them when Edith caught me off guard with what she just said.
“Mary Ann.” Lorina sticks out her tongue and shakes her head like a bully teasing a kid on school grounds. “Mary Ann.”
“Why are you calling me Mary Ann?” I am fully aware that this is one of my names in the Alice in Wonderland book, that the rabbit mistakes me for a Mary Ann in the first chapter. But why do they call me by that name now?
What does it mean?
“Oh.” Edith nudges my shoulder with the bat. Lorina fans away. “We didn’t tell you?”
Both of my evil stepsisters wink at each other.
“You also held a pot next to the glinting knife the day you showed up at our door,” Lorina says, still forcing me to step back, closer to the cage’s opening behind me. “A pot with a tiger lily in it.”
“Remember that pot, loony tunes?” Edith swooshes the bat a breath away from my nose. “Inside the pot, there was a necklace, which was probably yours.”
“It belonged to someone called Mary Ann,” Lorina says. “My mother called you Mary Ann then, and you never minded. It was only later when she realized your obsession with Alice in Wonderland that she called you Alice. She thought it sounded better for your adoption papers.”
“And she gave you our last name, Wonder,” Edith says. “Odd how it all fell into place, isn’t it? Our last name being ‘Wonder’ while you think you came from Wonderland.” This part seems to amuse her the most.
“So, I was really Mary Ann in Wonderland?” I mumble.
“Here she goes again,” Lorina tells her sister. “Did you see how bonkers she went, talking to herself about Wonderland again?”
“That’s why we need to see her in the cage one more time.” Edith pushes me harder, the cage against my back now. “Come on, Mary Ann. Entertain us one last time.”
Edith’s push does something to me. Something I was looking for all along: I remember them torturing me in the basement now. Vividly.
It’s an even worse memory than remembering the Mush Room torture. The humiliation. Their friends they invited over to laugh at me. The worst memory a person can relive.
But one thing strikes me the most. In that memory, I’m gripping something behind my back. Something I don’t want them to see. I can feel it in my hand. It’s cold. And small.
“Get in the cage!” Edith roars now.
I close my eyes and don’t respond to her. My closed eyes are the draped curtain of my theatre of life, but they also open up another place in my memory, when I was seven years old.
What was I holding in my hand back then that was important to me?
I can remember I didn’t care about the pain. I only cared about that thing I was gripping.
What was it?
Then I remember seeing buckets in the corner of the room. A lot of cleaning tools next to them. What did I do with those buckets?
Risking the loss of my precious memory, I open my eyes, seeing if the buckets are still in the corner of the room right now.
They are!
Something inside me tells me I hid that precious thing in the back of my head in one of the buckets. Something tells me that this is what all this is about.
I am supposed to find what’s in the bucket.
Edith and Lorina freak out when I aggressively beeline through them toward the buckets. I pull them out of the corner and rummage through them, having no idea what I am looking for, but knowing I will recognize it when I see it.
“What?” Lorina says behind me. “You missed your buckets, Mary Ann?”
“My buckets?” I turn back. “They are mine? Did they mean something to me?”
“The whole world.” Edith rolls her eyes.
“What do you mean?” I insist. “Why did I have them?” I can’t tell them about what I think I hid inside, because I’m somehow sure they shouldn’t know about it.
If only I could remember it clearer now. If only!
“Here.” Lorina holds a broom with the tips of her hand. “Yuck. Hold this.” She gives it to me.
The broom is old. I don’t know why it should mean anything to me. “What is this?” I shout, then take a step forward and almost choke Lorina with one hand. “Tell me what’s going on. What do these buckets mean to me?”
“They were—” Lorina is choking under my grip, so I turn to Edith.
“They were tools,” Edith says.
“Tools for what?”
“Cleaning tools, duh!” Edith says. “Let my sister go.”
I do. I loosen my grip, and Lorina slumps to the floor.
But I don’t even bother. Cleaning tools?
“Yes, Alice.” Edith glares at me. “You were homeless. You were mad. You thought you came from Wonderland. You told us about that stupid circus. And we made fun of you as a kid. And guess what, you were also the maid!”
Both of them laugh at me again.
“That’s why you loved your buckets, soaps, and brooms.” Lorina’s voice is sour but challenging. “Along with your crazy Alice books. You came to us in that dress you wore. Mum wanted to make you one of our sisters, but we insisted you stay the maid you probably were from wherever you came from. Mary Ann, the maid.”
Tears stream down my cheeks, but I try to forget about them. Because my childhood couldn’t have been such a wreck. My existence, mad or not, must have a reason. A noble cause.
I kneel down and look for that damn thing in the buckets. What is it? Please make it something that brings back some of my dignity, my sanity.
And there it is, right in front of me.
I knew it.
I knew that my existence in this world must have a reason.