Trang!”
During the drive Willa tried to think of a way to tell her mom, but what could she say? That she saw a tiny little man and this lady got mad and grew real big, so Willa ran away? Not a chance. The only way out was to walk up to the front door, and as soon as her mom was out of sight, get the heck out of there.
Willa got out of the car very slowly. The house looked quiet, the windows dark.
“See you later, hon,” her mom called.
Willa smiled weakly as she started up the walk. She paused below the willow, glancing up, but Tengu wasn’t in the tree. She looked back. Her mom was still there, waiting until she was inside. Her heart thumped as she tiptoed up the porch steps. At the front door she reached out a shaky hand but just pretended to ring the bell. She’d say there was no one at home, it was a crank phone call. Her mom was still watching as she turned, did a big shrug, and started down the steps again. Behind her the door swung open.
“Come on in, dearie. She’s waiting for you.”
Baz stood in the doorway, eyes narrowed and grinning slyly. Willa was trapped. She was steered inside as her mom waved and drove off.
Baz ushered her into the parlour. Willa stared in shock. It didn’t look like the same room at all. Dirty plates and teacups were perched on every available flat surface, books and magazines were scattered everywhere, the plants were yellowed and droopy. Paintings hung crooked on the walls and broken glass crunched under her shoes.
“This is what happens when a brownie quits.” Willa jumped, her heart in her throat. Miss Trang stood in the kitchen doorway, but she was normal size again. Her hair was neatly tucked into her bun, and though stern, she looked very ordinary.
Willa looked down at her shoes, not sure of what to say. Miss Trang continued. “But let’s not talk about that, shall we? Let’s get right to the reason you’re here. I can’t keep up with the work around here. I need help, and despite my reservations, it was suggested to me that you would be the best choice for the job.” She held up a paper — one of Willa’s posters.
“Will you help us out with the cleaning until we can find another brownie?”
Willa nodded dumbly. And that was how she came to work for Miss Trang.
Willa was hired to come in three times a week, arriving promptly at nine a.m. and leaving at noon. She was to clean the entire main floor — entrance, hall, parlour, dining room, and kitchen — except for Miss Trang’s office, which she was not to enter. Upstairs she had to clean the hallways and the washroom, but was not under any circumstances to go into any of the bedrooms or the library. The backyard and stable (Stable! thought Willa excitedly) were expressly out of bounds. Most importantly, she was not to tell anybody anything about the house or its inhabitants. Miss Trang was adamant about that. “And I will know it if you do,” she said ominously, and Willa believed her. On top of everything else the hourly wage was very generous. Willa began right away.
As she loaded stained teacups into the kitchen sink, Willa took a deep breath and tried to still her trembling hands. She couldn’t believe she was actually there. For weeks she had been dying to know what was going on in this place, and now she had her own key! Willa worked very, very hard at her new job. She tidied up after the oldsters, who left things everywhere. She dusted the many, many knick-knacks — china figurines, exotic lacquer boxes, souvenir spoons from around the world, ornately carved letter-openers, framed photos with the images fading away, collections of pebbles, seashells, and pine cones. She washed legions of teacups, mopped the floors, and scrubbed the windows. And she took great care to water and care for the plants, which slowly perked up and stopped dropping their leaves.
As glad as Willa was for the work, as time went on she was not finding much satisfaction in her job. She wasn’t getting any answers to her many questions, that’s for sure. And she felt terribly isolated. Everyone stayed in their bedrooms while she worked. Even Miss Trang spent the entire time in her office. Willa sometimes heard her muttering to herself in there. She ran into Horace in the hall one day, and he admitted, in a whisper, that they were supposed to stay away from Willa as much as possible. Since her friends were out of town, the only people she had to talk to all day were her mom and dad, and she couldn’t tell them anything at all about the house, because of her promise to Miss Trang. It was all very frustrating.
The only soul she had for company was the bird in the parlour. A small tarnished plaque on the cage read “Fadiyah.” Willa began talking to her, calling her “Fadi.” After all, the bird seemed to be her only friend in the house. Just taking a break and gazing into the bird’s eyes for a moment or two gave Willa that warm, happy feeling she had felt the first time she’d seen her.
Days passed without event. Once she found Baz snoozing on the sofa and had to tiptoe around, cleaning quietly. A couple of times she met Belle wheeling to or from the bathroom, where she loved to take long, long baths, but the old lady always ignored her completely. This made Willa very sad, because there was something about Belle that fascinated her. There was a deep, silent melancholy about her that just broke Willa’s heart. Sometimes Willa could hear her humming up in her room. The sound made her stop what she was doing and listen, transfixed, until it faded away to silence. It was hard to believe that such haunting music could come from that cranky old dame.
In all this time she didn’t catch even a glimpse of the cat that she knew had to be there. There were white cat hairs on the sofa, one cupboard in the kitchen was full of cat food tins, and occasionally she could swear she heard, or felt, a deep thrumming purr coming from somewhere upstairs. Yet Miss Trang had insisted that they had no cat. Why would she want to keep it a secret? Her mind reeled with this and other questions.... Why was there a padlock on the doll’s house in the parlour? Why did the brownie leave? How did a bunch of old people come to be living in a house with a magic brownie? Nothing made any sense. Willa was desperate to know the full story of the house, but she wasn’t about to pry or break any of the rules, because she sure didn’t like it when Miss Trang got angry. No, she was determined to stay on the woman’s good side from now on. Of course there was no rule against keeping her eyes and ears open, and that’s what she did.
One grey and dreary day Willa was mopping the second floor hallway. One wall was lined with large windows looking out onto the back garden, and as she wrung out her mop Willa stared out at the view. She could just make out the stable, a crumbling, ivy-covered stone building at the back of the rather large property. The rest of the yard was an overgrown mess of vines, shrubs, huge oak trees, and rose bushes gone wild, so it was hard to see what else might be back there. She was just trying to picture how it might have looked in days gone by when she heard a soft tapping sound behind her.
The hallway was empty. The sound came again. She moved quietly down the hall until she reached the library door. Tap, tap. She looked up. A slender branch poked out from the top of the tall door, sporting three droopy yellow leaves. The leaves were tapping gently against the door. One of them detached and fell to the floor at her feet. She picked it up. It was dry and cracked in her hands. Willa had carefully brought all the other plants back to life, and now she desperately wanted to water this poor thing. She wasn’t allowed to enter the library, but Miss Trang had gone out to buy the groceries, and it would only take a moment....
She refilled her watering can downstairs in the kitchen (since Belle was in the bathroom, as usual) and returned to the library door. She pushed it open. It was dark, there was nobody in sight, and she could see the plant in the corner right beside the door. Carefully keeping her feet planted in the hallway, she leaned in and poured water
