Harriet comes home to the smell of gingerbread and has mixed feelings, mostly good ones, about Perdita’s sudden taking up of the mantle. The fruit bowl in the kitchen was empty when Harriet left, but now there are three oranges in there, and a note propped up against them. The note may be in Perdita’s handwriting, but Harriet isn’t certain. It’s been a few years since she last had a note from Perdita, and she remembers the note very well, though she’s a bit hazy on the specific event the note was a reaction to. That note, in an envelope addressed to Mother, had read: You! You’ve embarrassed me for the last time. Grandma’s going to raise me, so don’t ever talk to me or come near me anymore. P.S. Thank you for the food and lodging to date.
Harriet can smile at the memory now, but when she received the note, she cried so much a bystander could’ve given their hands a good rinse beneath her eyes. She cried so much that Perdita got scared she’d make herself ill and relented, dragging Harriet into her bedroom so she could watch as every item in her suitcase was laboriously unpacked. What about the note before that . . . oh dear. Not as upsetting, but still cause for concern: On this, the day that Jesus was born, I curse you . . .
Notes from Perdita make Harriet nervous, three oranges or no three oranges.
She picks up the note with tongs and sets it aside, calls out, “Perdita?” and frowns when there is no answer. She looks around the kitchen, smelling gingerbread but seeing none. The oven’s empty, but she sees a hedgehog-shaped silicone mold on the pastry board beside her rolling pin, and there is a bowl by the sink with a little dough still left in it. Ever precise, the girl had made just enough dough for one gingerbread hedgehog with three little dots left over, an ellipsis of dough. Harriet squashes one dot with her finger and tastes it, is proud for a moment. Saline, saccharine, piquant, all proportions correct. But then there is an aftertaste that shouldn’t be there. This throb in the tongue, as though the flesh is swelling and shrinking around the site of a sting . . . she tries Perdita’s phone again.
There’s a pause while the call connects, and then she hears the phone nearby. The flat is very quiet just then, so the vibrations are like hail rattling against the windows. Harriet follows the rattling to Perdita’s bedroom door, which she’s only able to open part of the way—what, what on earth is this, what is she looking at? Oh. A limb—an arm—inflexible—a doll’s. It blocks Harriet’s view of the bed, and its fingers are closed around Perdita’s phone. The arm belongs to the doll named Prim, and Prim’s shoulder joint almost shakes itself out of its socket until the ringing stops. Harriet only has to jam her shoulder up against the door one more time before Prim’s grip buckles and she falls so that Harriet can step over her. Lollipop and Bonnie are kneeling on the bed on either side of Perdita, Bonnie shielding Perdita’s head with her tiny trees, Lollipop’s palms open: We couldn’t stop her. Perdita’s skin is cold. Her head lolls to the side, and that side of the mattress is awash with the vomit that’s spilled from her mouth. When Harriet lifts her up, her plaits whirl into a knotted gray halo. The girl lies meekly in Harriet’s arms as she phones for an ambulance. The paramedics will come too late. There are seven staircases—
Perdita convulses, and convulses again. There is no more vomit, but there is bloodstained excrement. She has a pulse, and then she doesn’t have one, and then she does. The convulsions stretch the skin of her throat. It looks as if she’s holding a bubble of air in there, or a giant marble. A voice speaks from the throat bubble. Not Perdita’s . . . it’s the croaking of a toad. Harriet holds her—Oh, please, please, please. She opens the front door; her voice carries down the stairwells, and her neighbors station themselves along the banister, their arms held out for her daughter. Perdita croaks and cackles as she’s passed from person to person; her journey to the first floor is only a little slower than a fall would’ve been.
* * *
—
AT THE HOSPITAL MARGOT tells Harriet that, on the whole, it’s probably better to have sons. Daughters are enigmatic minefields of classified information, she says.
Harriet would like to act as if she hasn’t heard any of this but can’t help blurting out: “Are daughters the only ones who fit that description?”
Margot pats her on the head. “I knew you’d say that.”
“But really, I . . . suppose Perdita was a boy . . . wouldn’t you be sitting here tutting and telling me about the trouble with sons?”
Margot nods and folds Harriet’s hands between her own. Eye to twinkling eye, a look passes between them.
“You knew I’d say that too?”
They keep their fingers linked as they’re told that the hospital’s still working on identifying exactly what Perdita’s imbibed. They’ve ruled out pills; her symptoms are closer to those exhibited by two mushroom foragers who’d recently been brought in with amatoxin poisoning. Both had survived and made partial recoveries, though one had permanently lost his eyesight and the other . . . Doctor Li avoids Harriet’s gaze and repeats that both patients survived and made partial recoveries. Harriet has read her name badge: Doctor Li is not a Harriet but a Meizhen.
There’s a terraced square just outside one of the hospital’s exits, and Harriet and Margot take turns leaving Perdita’s side in order to walk around and around this square, passing haggard-looking escapees from bedsides bleaker than the one the Lees have left. These bench-sitters are all cried out and are holding a variety of objects—a cigarette, a bottle of Lucozade, a cup of coffee—not really doing anything with them, just looking them over. Each object is held ceremoniously, its function purely symbolic for now. Harriet throws away a wedge of her data allowance on an urgent group Skype chat, turning to the PPA to try to find out if anything has happened at school. She can’t assume that their kids don’t talk to them. But she’s reluctant to say “Perdita” aloud; at a time like this, scant reception of the name could push its bearer off the edge of the world. Harriet’s hands shake a lot when she tells the PPA that Perdita’s had an accident and Gioia says: “Perdita . . . ?”