The Magnetic Girl. Jessica Handler

others in observing you. This, in turn, arises from how you observe them.”

      Daddy was spellbound by his own voice, a preacher at the pulpit.

      I said, “Yes sir.”

      Please calm down, I prayed. Please lower your voice. Please stand still. My collar was damp, and I couldn’t catch my breath. Drowning might feel like this. My wet palms scraped my skirt, and I picked at a stray thread. Anything to focus. Back when I’d been baptized, I’d panicked under the water, but we came right up into the sun. This time, there was no welcome rush of fresh air. I shifted in my seat, sinking in his words.

      “Why do you think that iron furnace runs night and day outside of town?” he asked. “The railroad men learned about the iron in our soil, and they came in and built pig-iron furnaces.”

      We were going out of this room now, lifting up and away from me. I inhaled, clearing my head, but Daddy snapped his fingers in my face so closely that the air popped.

      “Iron filings get attracted to one end of a magnet, repelled from the other. That’s where timing comes in. You’ve got copper and iron right here under your feet. I’ve told you how they act on each other. In the mind of the regular person, why couldn’t you also have the draw of a magnet in you? You’ve grown up right here, walked the same soil that I’ve tilled.”

      “Copper is in your pebbles,” I said, thinking of his collection of stones, so nice to the touch.

      Daddy applauded. I was getting close to whatever he wanted me to catch on to, but I couldn’t quite grasp it.

      “Copper wire is in the battery, the telegraph, and those lights in France your cousin was crazy for. I read, Lulu. The scientific types call copper a conductor. Copper works magic on iron, Lulu.”

      Suddenly, I knew.

      “You want me to pretend I’m Magnetic,” I said.

      “You are our Magnetic Girl.” He beamed, sweeping his hands in an arc above my head.

      How a person would act magnetic I couldn’t fathom. Pretending I could conduct electricity wouldn’t do anything but make me look stupid. People I didn’t know would laugh and point, just like people I did know. They’d joke to each other about how tall I was, not caring that I could hear them. They’d talk about how my hands and feet were big as bread loaves. I only wanted to be Lulu Hurst, the girl who captivated—Mesmerized—her brother until he could walk and talk and stand tall on his own. Then I would be the girl who could leave.

      “Magnetic reminds people that you’re the conduit for the copper and iron in the earth. If ‘Magnetic Girl’ doesn’t pull people into our parlor,” he said, laughing at his joke, “we can always call you the Georgia Wonder.”

      My mind squeezed out single words at a time. This must be how Leo felt when he tried to talk clearly.

      “Parlor?” I asked.

      “There’s no whoop de do or immodesty, no hazards to anyone’s health or character. We’ll be here in our home, same as with any friend or neighbor coming to call. A more appropriate setting than Sunday School, with you attempting tricks on your teacher.”

      Captivating was no trick. Sometimes captivating stopped the world.

      “Why did Momma say the noises were electrical?”

      Daddy laughed. “Your Momma listens too much to her friend Mrs. Hartnett. That poor lady’s addicted to her Banner of Light séance paper.”

      He snatched at the air like he was catching fireflies in twilight. I’d done that same thing when I was little, reach out and cup my hand around a lightning bug, put it in a jar. I’d do this until I had a jar glowing with trapped life. The living lantern by my bedside cast a thin, otherworldly light while I drifted off to sleep. In the morning, the bugs lay dead from their futile attempts to escape. The green, bright smell they’d had when I caught them had turned to the damp stink of rotten potatoes.

      “People like Mrs. Hartnett will tell you that electrical particles swim in the air, and that’s exactly the kind of person who wants to see The Magnetic Girl.”

      Daddy offered the denuded broomstick to me again, holding the center, the ends pointing to the floor and ceiling. With nowhere else to put my hands, I took each end. He moved the stick as if he were turning a wheel until he had arranged the broomstick parallel to the floor.

      “You will make this lifeless broomstick appear to have a heartbeat and the writhing fury of an Indian cobra snake, power enough to knock a man off his pins. The goal is to raise the question ‘is this merely a household implement, or does this innocent object surge with life?’”

      “It’s just a broomstick, Daddy,” I said.

      “This is no longer a broomstick,” he said. “This is a fancy walking stick: ivory-handled, made of gleaming, polished wood.”

      It was still just a broomstick, but his voice resonated like an echo and I bit my lip to keep from laughing. He didn’t know that talking took away the concentration I needed to captivate.

      He pushed toward me, his hands wide on the broomstick. Afraid he would snap the wood and stumble, I did the first thing that came to me: I grabbed the stick near the center to hold it steady. He pushed toward me, harder. We were playing a game I’d never seen, my father and I, with the broomstick as the prize. He was trying to snap it across the middle, and my job, clearly, was to push back and keep the broomstick in one piece.

      My arms were straight out, palms on the wood and open toward my father’s chest when he released the broomstick. Without his resistance, I tumbled to my knees.

      Daddy leaned against his desk, hands in his pockets. My spine rattled from my tail bone to my jaw. He’d let me fall on purpose. He’d made me fall. The broomstick was still in my hand, useless. I rolled it away from me across the floor and got to my feet.

      “You let go,” Daddy said, accusing me. “You let go and allowed the electrical power coursing through that broomstick to throw you to the ground.”

      My palms burned.

      “You’re thinking I’ve lost my mind, but I promise you I’m sane,” he said. “What’s just happened is my demonstration of the Magnetic Power you’re going to demonstrate on others. You control the cane. They get knocked back by what they believe is its lively spirit.”

      He seemed to think I could knock anyone into a cocked hat any old time. Dale’s scarf was nothing, and the two people I’d captivated were a baby and a childish teacher.

      “You don’t really believe people will accept the idea that there’s power in a stick of wood when all they do is let go of it?”

      He looked right and left, elaborately pretending to check for eavesdroppers. And then he winked.

      “It doesn’t matter what I believe. What matters is what they believe.”

      He waggled his fingers at my nose.

      “You carry Odic foooorce.”

      He sounded ridiculous, and I laughed. We were nearly the father and daughter I believed we would be on that morning a decade earlier, on the porch before the sun rose.

      Over the next week, we practiced every evening after supper. We worked on what Daddy named “tests,” a more serious word than “tricks” or “acts.” A much more scientific word than “captivating,” but that word was my own, and I kept it close to my heart.

      My primary job was observation.

      “Present yourself as if you were wide-eyed, not judging, not thinking, like a newborn baby,” he said as he shaped my arms into a cradle as if I were rocking a baby.

      My holding an invisible baby suggested the terrible mistake I had made, the one he didn’t know. I went rigid from stifling my own fear.

      “What does a baby do?”