Page 5 of Her Wonderful Wonder Bell
A few minutes later I’m just about as stumped as I was before. I didn’t know Valentina well, but she was a nice woman. Always willing to helpa girl in need.
Brigley was nicebeforethe war. He inherited the gum factory and used the money to buy the men’s baseball team, the Wonder Balls. When he went to war, and most of the men in town did too, the Wonder Belles took over for the Balls.
After Brigley got back something changed in him. He was real mean. At first, people thought he maybe had some kind of shell shock or something. That happened to some guys, they got irritable when they returned. Battle fatigue did all kinds of awful things to our boys, but this was different. Darker. Saying not to trust Brigley is the least surprising thing about all of this.
“And you don’t remember how you got in your current…condition at all?” Delia asks.
“I really don’t. I remember our team captain, Cheryl, phoning me for an emergency meeting. And that’s the last thing I recall.” I try again to think of anything after I hung up the phone that evening, but there’s just nothing else. “How long has it been, bythe way? You didn’t say.”
“Oh. I don’t know how long it’s been since you were—whatever happened to you, but it’s twenty-twenty-five now.”
“I must be misunderstanding. You don’t mean theyeartwenty-twenty-five?”
“Yeah. It’s been almost eighty years since you were on that card.” Delia nervously bites the metal ring on her lip.
“The last year I remember is 1946. I missed all that time. Did anyone look for me?”
She slowly shakes her head. “There wasn’t anything about this town even having a women’s team on record. If there was, I would have found it.”
“Someone must have erased us. But why? And now I’m here all alone where I don’t belong.” I look down at my hands. They’re freakish. “Am I even me?”
“I’m so sorry, Pearl.”
“Meow! Pbft!”
My eyes dart to the window where a fluffy, gray face stares at me. The fluffy little beast opens its mouth wide and pats the screen with one white-booted paw. “Meow!”
“Mavis! There you are!” Delia crawls across her bed to the window to let the cat inside. It struts into the room, fluffy tail held high, rubbing on her owner and meowing loudly over and over. “She escaped out the window this morning and I couldn’t find her. I knew she’d come back though. She always does.”
Delia rubs her nose against the cat’s nose, making happy cooing noises. Mavis sneezes directly into Delia’s open eye.
“Eew, thanks Mavis,” Delia groans as she sits up, wiping her face on the end of her t-shirt.
Briefly, I see her stomach. She even has a tattoo there, too! I look away too quickly to make out what it is, but I can’t help but be curious. Strangely, I must admit the secret tattoo on her flat stomach, in those masculine pants, gives me feelings I don’t really need to be having right now. Maybe I’m all confused in the head from the strange events of the day. I certainly shouldn’t be thinking about sex at a time like this.
The cat jumps off the bed and walks over to me. I do love animals, and this one is particularlyadorable. Its ears are long and hanging low like a bunny’s, which I’ve never seen on a cat before.
“You know, the Wonder Belles had a cat named Tubbs. Well, he lived outside, but we called him ours. He sat on the porch of the house where a group of us single gals lived every morning, and we’d scratch his little white head before every game for luck.” I scratch the top of Mavis’s head. “Are you lucky, Mavis?”
“Pbft,” she replies, a very strange sound for a cat.
“Oh, she’s not a cat. She’s acant. I got her at Ruff ‘N Tumble. They sell exotic pets. I got her because she’s awesome at fetch.”
The cant starts to knead my shoe as if she’s making biscuits, but since the shoe is made of paper, it just sort of crinkles noisily. Mavis jumps back, confused. Her pupils grow wide, and her long ears flip backward.
“Oh. She doesn’t look exotic. Cute, just not exotic.” I tilt my head and watch the grey fluff ball watching my shoe.
To my amazement, an additional, long, skinny, almost spider-like leg, with sharp claws on the end, shoots out of eachside of Mavis’s body. Before I can even figure out whether to scream or piddle myself, she springs forward and slashes her claws right through my shoe.
“Mavis!” Delia shrieks as she launches off of the bed.
She grabs the cant and slides her into the hallway, slamming the door behind her.
She kneels before me, inspecting my shoe. “Oh shit, are you okay?”
“I don’t know. It didn’t hurt but it doesn’t look good.”
My paper has several tears where Mavis’s claws shredded it. Everything below my left ankle is tattered ribbons, dangling in the still air. Thinking about it is making me nauseous.
