A Small Amount of Darkness

Wanda slammed the front door with such vigor her whole family tree rattled on the living room wall. All her cousin’s faces shook like they were reenacting the last family reunion. She threw her backpack down on top of the shoes she flung off her feet. Her long brown curls bounced as she ran upstairs, skipping every other step, into her room. With another slam of her bedroom door, she dove under her bed off the diving board in her head and pulled out a small black metal box. The box was rusting around the edges and had scribbled writing circling the sides. It resembled cursive but was clearly in a different language. Just as Wanda started opening the lid a knocking came at her door and she slid the box back under her bed. Her mother opened the door with Wanda’s baby brother Joshua, bouncing in her arms.
“Well hello to you too, sweetie. What’s got you all in a flurry?” Thankfully, before Wanda could answer, her mother noticed a ketchup stain on Wanda’s shirt. “Oh Wanda, every day.” With a sigh, she kissed Wanda on the forehead and bounced Joshua out of the room. “I’m going to need that shirt,” her voice faded as she closed the door behind herself.
Wanda shifted gears with a spark of excitement. Reaching back under the bed and pulling out the box, she opened the lid and pulled out a folded piece of notebook paper. She carefully unfolded the paper and read a message scribbled in pencil. The note read;

This is not true. I am just a box.

Wanda sat for a minute and stared at the writing, intent the words would suddenly change or jump off the page and run away. Such an event could not be missed. But after a good minute she threw down the paper like she’d never touched it at all, leapt off the floor like a world class gymnast and went to her desk, where she yanked out a piece of paper from a little pink notebook that said My Little Pony with little purple and blue ponies frolicking across the cover. After giving the matter some good thought, Wanda wrote on the paper;

Do you have secret compartments where little tiny people live?

After folding the paper up and setting it delicately into the bottom of the box, Wanda closed it, shoved it back under her bed and galloped downstairs to watch the afternoon cartoons.

The next day at school Wanda spent half of the math lesson daydreaming about her magic box filled with little dinosaurs or maybe ancient jewels that once belonged to Cleopatra. Her eyes would drag to a close and her head would lurch to a tilt until she’d jolt herself up, electrocuted by consciousness every other minute. In fact, ever since Wanda had found the box in her attic she’d been having these magnificent day dreams. Only at school of course, daydreams know where they’re needed.

About five days ago, give or take a few, Wanda’s lifelong desire to explore the great unknown led her up to the dusty attic where she crawled around the creaky wooden floor boards and sneezed on all the cobwebs at least twice. After digging through mountains of ugly lamps, funny looking purple dress coats with matching bell bottom pants, three blenders, four toasters and several varieties of dipping platters, Wanda discovered a large wooden chest with a key still in the lock. After unlocking the chest and creaking it open with all the strength she had in her little monkey bar-toned arms, Wanda peeked inside. To her astonishment the box was filled with fine linens that looked like they could have been a hundred years old. The pieces of cloth were finely beaded with rich aquas and deep purples. Wanda gently pulled the pieces of cloth out of the box and laid them on the floor like she was cradling a newborn. She picked up a cloth and wrapped it around her shoulders.
After serving at least twenty minutes as the princess of Arabia she bumped into a heavy stack of paper that scattered every which way and she sprawled out to reverse her mishap. In attempts to replace everything as she’d found it Wanda found herself in a dark angled corner of the attic, crawling on all fours smothered in cobwebs. Underneath a piece of paper was a small black mysterious looking box. Something drew Wanda to this box. She wasn’t even sure what yet, but somehow she felt akin with it, small and simple, a little worn, but peculiar none-the-less. Wanda caressed her fingers along the scrawl wrapping the box and held it tightly in her fingers.

It wasn’t until she decided to keep her rock collection in the black box a few days later that she realized its true magic. The morning after she put the rocks in the box Wanda opened it only to find the rocks replaced by a small piece of folded notebook paper that read;

Is this some kind of joke? I don’t fill you with rocks. Please have a little courtesy next time.

When Wanda’s teacher yelled her name for not giving the answer to four times seven, she jerked out of her trance and her cheeks went pink. The laughter from her classmates haunted her all the way home on the school bus. Her only distraction was the anticipation for today’s discovery from the mysterious black box. This time her hands shook as she opened it. Half expecting to see little tiny people smiling and waving up at her, her heart sank when all she saw was another small piece of paper, sloppily folded in the bottom of the box.

What do you take me for? I am but a box, just like any other.

Wanda leaned back against the wall with the note in hand and a sigh in her breath as she thought about how to respond to the box this time. For once in her life ideas didn’t jump out of her head. Little people weren’t crawling out of the box in her imagination anymore. As she dragged her body onto the bed even her toes looked disappointed as they curled under the sheets. Wanda picked up Simon, her favorite stuffed lamb and looked him straight in his beady black eyes. “I’m tired, Simon. I don’t care.” But in the silence that followed her declaration of independence from the box, Wanda got an idea. After tearing another piece of paper out of her rapidly thinning My Little Pony notebook, Wanda wrote;

I was wondering please sir, since you can talk so nicely, that you could maybe make Simon talk to. Simon is my lamb. He likes chocolate and he likes to be scratched under his ears and I know if he could talk he’d have a lot of nice things to say. I understand if you can’t but please sir if you could I would be very happy. P.S. If I could have my rocks back I’d also be very happy about that too.

After saying her goodbyes to Simon, Wanda set him in the box on top of the note and a Hershey’s kiss she’d been saving since last Easter. Simon’s fuzzy white ear stuck out of the box as she closed it and she tried to ignore the fact that he was far too big to for a little black box to handle.
The next morning Wanda woke to her mother practically dragging her out of bed. She’d apparently given up the gentle motherly coaxing sort of wake up call after months of Ok- I’ll- get- up- in- five- minutes- mom. After making Wanda eat every last ounce of oatmeal in her bowl and shoving a lunch sack into her hand, Wanda’s mother kissed her on the head and directed her out the door before she could come up with any kind of sensible explanation why she needed to go back up to her room and retrieve her talking lamb.
“My- umm”
“Honey, I can already hear the bus.”
“But my lamb. Simon’s-”
“Wanda, you haven’t brought your lamb to school since you were in kindergarten. You’re a big girl now. Come on. Get those wheels shifting and the gear turning.”
Wanda circled her eyes as she dragged her feet out to the bus stop. She never understood why her mom said that so often, or what on earth it meant. She grumbled even more when she realized it was Thursday the 2nd. Her day for show-and-tell had finally come and Wanda had the perfect item but the space between her and the box was rapidly widening. She squeezed her fists together as she thought back to the last time it was her turn for show-and-tell. Wanda had brought in her rock collection, which ended up all over the floor after the plastic grocery bag it was in gave out while she was standing and talking in front of the whole class for the first time in her entire life. Rocks danced across the floor in a rainstorm of sound and a ripple of motion. Wanda never did find her favorite rock, the one she had picked up off the ground in the parking lot outside the hospital after her brother was born. It caught her eye because it resembled the shape of a heart.
When show-and-tell rolled around that afternoon, Wanda dreaded her turn. Ironically it wasn’t until then that she realized she could have told her mom she wanted Simon for show and tell. Wanda’s first lesson in the rules of life; you never have the right words when you really need them.
Words would be the first thing to go in this kind of panic.
“Wanda? It’s you’re turn. What do you have for us today.”
Her unbearably cheery teacher, Ms. Willis, tilted her head as soon as she noticed Wanda was forcibly avoiding eye contact by staring at her own shoelaces. Ms. Willis knelt down next Wanda with a soft hand on her shoulder.
“What’s the matter, Wanda? Don’t you have any show-and-tell?”
“I found a pretty purple piece of glass on the sidewalk at my bus stop. But I don’t think anyone will see the purple because it got cloudy and it needs the sun and I don’t want-”
“Wanda? Can I have that piece of glass? It’s very pretty but glass can be dangerous sometimes.”
Wanda reluctantly handed her the glass and looked back down at her feet.
“It’s ok if you don’t have anything. Bobby can go and you can just wait unit it’s your turn again in two weeks.”
Wanda reluctantly whispered “Ok” and thought about all the days that would have to take place before she could finally show the class her box.
“Bobby?” Ms. Willis turned to a grinning little red haired boy who was holding a plastic terrarium in his hand containing a big brown toad moping in a puddle of water.
“It’s your turn, Bobby. You can go up and show the class what you’ve brought.”
Just then the class started whispering and sending shifting glances at Wanda. As she slid down in her seat she could hear someone say the word “rocks”. Her face went red.
When recess rolled around Wanda slipped out the door before the rest of the class as they all huddled around Bobby’s loudly croaking toad. She went directly toward the back of the soccer field and sat next to the fence where she looked out over the wetlands that bordered the school. After a few minutes of reliving show-and-tell, her bad thoughts began to float away, replaced by not only a talking lamb but a walking one as well. It ran with her in the backyard and eventually sat on the desk in front of the class and did a back flip as her classmates all looked on with dropped jaws. But in Simon’s second verse of Mary Had a Little Lamb, a red rubber ball came flying at Wanda’s face. She leaned out of the way as it hit the fence and three boys ran up to her. Their knees were brown with dirt, as well as their cheeks and foreheads.
“Sorry,” one of them blurted in a mocking voice. Wanda could hear the other two boys giggling behind him.
“I didn’t see you.”
Wanda didn’t respond. After giving them a stern glance she looked back out at the wetland.
“Looking for rocks, Wanda? Try looking in your head.”
And with a bout of laughter and a cloud of dust, they ran back out to the center of the field where they continued their scattered game of kickball.

Wanda couldn’t sit still the whole bus ride home and when the bus got to her stop she flew out of it and into the house where she didn’t even remember to take off her shoes. Tracking dirt all the way up the stairs, Wanda dove under her bed and pulled out the box. Half relieved just to see Simon hadn’t disappeared, she cautiously pulled him out and laid him in a comfortable sitting position on the carpet in front of her.
“Simon?” she spoke softly.
“Can you hear me? Can you say hello?”
After nudging him to no avail, Wanda’s excitement deflated right out of her body as she slouched over the box. After pulling out the note she read;

I’m not sure you’re aware but you put a stuffed doll inside of me. What part of that constitutes any kind of favor? If I could bring things to life do you think I would have spent the last thirty years in a dusty attic?

Wanda sat in awe realizing the box had been in her attic almost as long as her mother had been alive. She pictured centuries passing and people in frilly hoop dresses opening and closing the box. But her thoughts quickly turned to the lifeless sheep on her floor. Without warning, Wanda picked Simon up and threw him across the room. He fell between the bed and the wall, wedged like pineapple.
Wanda decided to wait until the evening to respond this time. She needed time to think. She moped down to dinner where she found Joshua in his high chair making funny squeaking noises and slapping his mashed potatoes with a spoon. Wanda went into the powder room and washed her hands. When she came back Wanda’s mother was in the dining room. After wiping Joshua’s face, she asked Wanda how her day at school was.
“Fine.”
“You don’t sound fine. What’s the matter?”
“Nothing… Mom, what makes someone special?” Wanda’s mother put her fork down and gave Wanda a perplexed look. Wanda knew her mother would probably attempt to give her some overanalyzed answer designed just to make her feel good, but she couldn’t keep all these thoughts inside any longer. It took Wanda’s mother a minute to respond. Before she could answer however, Joshua threw his spoon at the table and it landed in the bowl of peas sitting right in the middle of the table between Wanda and her mother. Peas exploded out of the bowl in every direction. There were peas in Wanda’s mashed potatoes and in her iced tea. There was even a pea in her hair. Joshua started screaming and Wanda’s mother spent the next five minutes attempting to calm him down and clean up the peas at the same time.
“Everyone is special in their own way.” Wanda’s mother finally let out, half in a sigh. “Did someone say you weren’t special? Because-”
“-No,” Wanda cut in, and before her mother could fathom any kind of response Wanda leapt off her chair and dashed upstairs to her room. She tore a piece of paper out of her notebook and wrote;

But you must be special. My mom calls my brother special all the time and he can’t even talk.

The moment Wanda woke up the next morning she knew it was going to be a good day. She could smell an autumn breeze coming in through the window as the sun warmed her face. Wanda got dressed and had breakfast with twenty minutes to spare. As she passed the time doodling, something struck her, an idea that is. Wanda pulled the box out from under her bed and stuffed it into her book bag.
There was no day dreaming in Wanda’s head today. She spent a good half of the day in a state of perpetual peace. She didn’t fill her head with any silly ideas about boxes full of ice cream or limitless cotton candy. She greeted all her classmates with a pleasant dignity and sat in her desk with her back straight and her hands crossed. Wanda answered three multiplication problems by choice and didn’t get a single one wrong. As it came time for show-and-tell Wanda’s hand shot into the air before little Kerry Anne could pull her jewelry box out of her bag.
“Yes, Wanda?”
“Ms. Willis? I was wondering if I could do show-and-tell today since I didn’t do it yesterday.”
Without giving the matter any kind of thought, she said,
“Wanda, you know what the rules are. We don’t have time more than four.”
Clutching the box still hidden in her bag, Wanda pleaded as quietly as she could without making a scene,
“Please, Ms. Willis?”
And after a brief silence; “We’ll see how long the first four are. If there’s time after Kerry, Brian, Liz and Daniel, maybe you can go.”
The next twenty minutes crawled across the room. Over decks of baseball cards, under metal race cars and through a large pink hula hoop garnered with silver stars. Wanda pondered what more enjoyable toy Kerry’s plastic jewelry could be molded into after being melted down. And after seventeen agonizing minutes the butterfly’s in her stomach must have been doing a tap dance as the magic words finally drifted out of the teacher’s mouth.
“Ok, Wanda. You can go. But hurry, recess starts in two minutes.”
Wanda pulled out the box and strode to the front of the classroom where she set it on the table in front of her.
“This is my magic box. It’s very special and very old.”
Kids started looking at each other with raised eyebrows and Wanda started fidgeting with her hands.
“See, I can ask the box questions and it answers them. Or I can just tell it things and it responds.”
Whispers started hovering over the classroom and Bobby blurted, “Boxes don’t talk.”
“But this one does!”
“Where’s it’s mouth, then?”
“Bobby, that’s enough,” snapped the teacher.
“It doesn’t speak, it writes to me. That’s how we communicate.”
And as she pulled a brand new slip of paper out from inside the box the whole room burst into laughter.
“Her mom probably put those notes in there.”
“No, it’s real. It talks to me, see?”
“Just yesterday it didn’t think it was special because it couldn’t make Simon talk and I told it that it was special because my mom says my brother is special and he can’t talk.”
And she held the opened note in front of the class. With nothing but a weak wave of laughter, Wanda turned the note around and started reading it aloud.
“What’s wrong with your broth-” simultaneously the bell rang and Wanda stopped talking.

What’s wrong with your brother? Any old bloke can talk. Sounds to me like you come from a family of cretins.

Aside form the Ms. Willis, Wanda was now alone, tears ruthlessly dribbling down her face and onto the piece of paper.
“Wanda, honey, go out and play. Everything’s going to be fine.”
With no reply, Wanda just stood there. Ms. Willis knelt down beside her with a hand on her shoulder.
“I think it’s a very pretty box.”
“It’s a stupid box.”
“A box doesn’t have to be magic to be special.”
“I know.”
And after another silence, Ms. Willis said, “Yes, but I don’t think they do,” as she pointed to all the empty chairs in front of them. “You know what it means to you. That’s all that matters. I think you’re smarter than you give yourself credit for.”
Wanda stuffed the box back in her bag. Ms. Willis didn’t know that she had only just found the box a week ago. It meant nothing to her. Anger was now her only attachment to it. As Wanda wiped her face on her sleeve and started walking toward the door, Ms. Willis interrupted.
“I almost forgot to mention, I found this the other day under the bookshelf when I was cleaning. I believe it belongs to you.”
Ms. Willis handed Wanda her favorite heart-shaped rock. As she took it in her hand she thought of the day her brother was born. Her mother was in the hospital bed and Wanda was visiting her for the first time after the labor was over. As she jumped onto the bed and dug her head into her mother’s pillow, the sterile smell of the hospital was drowned out by the soothing smell of her mother. As her mother tickled her, Wanda fell backwards and lay her head against the foot of the bed. She had been scared for her mother, she didn’t understand quite what giving birth entailed. But she knew now that everything was alright. And then she giggled some more.

Wanda took the stone into her pocket and kept it with her the rest of the day. She didn’t have a particularly enjoyable day. Plenty of classmates giggled and gawked at her the whole afternoon. But Wanda did get through it. And as she slammed the door to her house after school she flung her shoes off with reckless abandon. But instead of heading up to her room she ran to her mother and gave her a hug that could have very well knocked the wind out of her.
“What’s gotten into you?”
“Everything.”

After her mother had gone to bed that night Wanda got up and pulled the black box out from underneath the bed. She put her daisy duck slippers on, tiptoed down the stairs and out the patio door. The air smelled of evergreen trees and the stars twinkled gently in the distant night sky. Wanda’s favorite summertime hideaway was a spot down by the brook that ran along the back of her family’s property line. She knelt down to the water, reached out, gently let go of the box and let it drift away. It bobbed in the breeze as it floated into nothing. And it was magic how Wanda walked away from that box with her head up and her eyes open to the night.