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And when she dared once more, this final time, to ask for her mother, a kindly shake of his head told
her everything.
This was her new life.
It was not a bad one. The room was large and full of breezes. The bed was soft, the
food was plentiful. Servants came and went, bringing some things and taking others away and there
was one woman who was light skinned and clearly not a servant. She came less frequently than the
others. As she looked at the bed that held the girl, her brow lowering as if something displeased her.
The child slid down in the bed and feigned sleep.
Then – on the morning of the third day, perhaps the fourth - the child at last ventured from
her bed. She waited until the room was empty, then she stood, crossed the room, pushed open the
door and found herself in a garden. A beautiful garden. The most beautiful garden she had ever seen.
The entire house must be enchanted, she decided. She had never had a room of her own or even a bed
of her own. But here she had both, and soon enough a new dress, a lovely blue color, and a dolly to
hold. At home her only dolly had been the real baby and he was disagreeable, always crying or
wetting or demanding the limited attention of their mother. But now, for the first time in her brief life,
the girl was the center of attention. The servants fussed over her. When she had eaten a certain plum
pudding with enthusiasm, a duplicate had appeared the next day. One of the women brushed her
snarled mass of brown hair, tied it up in a great bow and turned her toward the mirror.
This must be me, the child though. The farmhouse had possessed no mirror, so this was
the first time she had ever gazed upon her own face. She was quite pretty.
Therefore…why did they not keep her?
The question would torture her for years to come. Because one morning, without
warning, a carriage came. She was bundled into it along with the dolly and the blue dress. Taken to
the orphanage where the blue dress was torn and the doll’s face cracked before the end of the first
week. And there, throughout the years, she had convinced herself that her brief time in paradise had
been no more than a dream.
That was, until a certain day when an older gentleman had called, claiming he needed a
nurse for his wife.
She had been taken to a house. A fine house, certainly, but nowhere near so fine as the
house hidden away in her memory. Is any scene ever quite as grand as our childhood hearts have
painted it? She might not have known it was the same place at all if it hadn’t been for the elephant.
The elephant with five legs.
Her conscious mind began to wage war against her unconscious one. It was entirely
unlikely that she had ever been in this house before. Why would they have sent her away and – even
stranger – why would they have returned so many years later to bring her back? And yet the elephant
greeted her - still beneath his palm tree, still with his great-earred face turned toward her bearing his
rakish smile - as if to say that her exile from this paradise must have been the true dream.
Almost immediately, confirmation came. The brown man was also still there, and still
kind. He did not appear to recognize her, but why should he? More than thirty years had passed since
he had grabbed the shrieking child from the farmyard and the woman standing before him now was a
changed creature. He showed her through the house and spoke words of instruction that she did not
fully understand. But she nodded briskly, as if it all were clear. She attempted to look modest,
grateful, for she knew this was what was expected. Despite her shock and confusion, she came to
understand that a nurse was needed to care for the white woman. The same chilling lady who had
looked upon her with displeasure so long ago, but who was now much older, stooped and defeated by