Harriet Wolf's Seventh Book of Wonders Read Online Free PDF

red and puffy. Not a cocooning of our hands—no. We were creating a bond. Ruthie promised to return and save me. I was the one who pulled off the string, attached the small tape tab, and wrote “R. T. and T. T. 1986. Return & Save.”
    Return! This is what I want to say to Ruthie. But do I need saving? Does she?
    As Mrs. Gottleib told me, my mother had a heart attack while stuck in the house’s mouth. I think someone could say that the front door is the mouth, but for me that’s a dimple, and the bay windows are the wide grin. The windows upstairs are the eyes keeping watch over everything.
    Did her heart attack her? Did she attack her heart?
    Mrs. Gottleib said she didn’t have time for silly questions.
    I know the house has no mouths. But I’m in the house’s head. I’m a thought.
    I don’t know much about human hearts, but I do know about bird hearts. For example, heartbeat-per-minute rates: the domesticated chicken, 245; the crow, 345; the house sparrow, 460; the ruby-throated hummingbird, 615 beats per minute!
    Big, slow, unwinged humans? Only sixty to eighty beats per minute. I looked up the human heart just recently, in our set of encyclopedias that take up three full shelves in our wood-p aneled living room.
    Today I feel like a house sparrow: 460 beats per minute.
    Meanwhile, I am injured. Highly injured. I tried to open the window so the house would spit my mother out or swallow her whole—either way, really, because I was in the house’s head—and I gashed my thumb. There was blood.
    Wee-ette was there because she’s always with us even though she’s dead. Wee-ette is my mother’s mother. She died when I was ten, but I love her still. Wee-ette! This is what I sometimes whisper. Wee-ette! Like the call of a black-winged kite or a cardinal in the early morning. When I was little, I tried to say her name, Harriet, which is what my mother called her own mother. But in my child mouth, it came out Wee-ette. She had a desk and a buzzing, clacking typewriter. She let me play with scissors and glue. Wee-ette and I have secrets. We are bound. We have a like mind—that’s what she always told me. Except Wee-ette’s mind would know what to do now. And although she is with me, she doesn’t speak.
    I had been waiting for my mother to come home. I lock the doors and windows when she goes out. The winterized back porch is always locked, jammed with storage, things we don’t want but can’t get rid of. See, the world is vicious, dangerous, and full of suffering. Plus, I’m allergic to most everything out in it.
    But also I keep the house locked because of the seventh book. If I’m left alone with the doors open, a Wolf fan could show up and ask me many questions that are none of their beeswax. One of them once pulled a wisp of my grandmother’s hair straight from her head—ages ago, when she still ventured out. After Wee-ette died, there was a plaque on the house, but this made things worse. On one of the anniversaries of her death, a woman lit candles in our yard and knelt there until my mother told the police to take her away. Unopened boxes of fan mail fill the attic. Mice began to burrow so we burned the mail in the backyard one winter. My mother protects me from these people, but I glimpse them, begging at the door, calling on the phone, plus Mormons who ride bicycles and Jehovah’s Witnesses who do not. I prefer to have the windows open, screens in place, so I can hear the birdcalls better. But I know the rules when my mother is out.
    Why was my mother out? It’s Mrs. Devlin’s daughter’s fault.
    Toaster oven repairs can be dangerous. There can be problems with the electrical cord, main switch, thermal fuse, or solenoid. You may need to recalibrate the thermostat. I know these things because it’s good for a person to have a job and be of use.
    I also know about birds but I don’t know how that makes me of use. I can’t fix a bird’s wing, for example. People think they could fly like a bird