Whisper (10 page)

When I walked between the houses to the street, I saw David and Mateo playing there with some other children. They kicked a can and then ran to hide. Belen stood by the clothesline between our house and our next-door neighbor's, his fists curled into his jean pockets, talking to my jailor. When she saw me standing by the front steps, she held up the gun and pointed it at me. I walked up the steps, feeling that gun aimed at my back, opened the door and went inside.

My stomach felt knotted and tight when I heard footsteps following me into the house. If I was wrong, if I did not have power, then this would not work, and I would again be chained to the doghouse. Sweat began to gather in my armpits.

“Make dinner,” Belen said.

I leaned my hip against the stove in the kitchen and crossed my arms over my chest. He couldn't see my eyes behind the veil, but he glared as though he could.

“I said, make dinner.” His voice was low and dangerous, his eyes almost disappearing beneath his heavy brows.

I didn't move. I bit down on my tongue to control my shaking. He could hurt me—I knew that—and he probably would. I still didn't move.

Faster than I thought possible, Belen crossed the floor between us and slapped me across the face. My head whipped to the side and my crossed arms uncrossed, my hands grabbing the edge of the stove behind me. I closed my eyes for a minute to still the stars that flashed in my head. I adjusted the veil so that it was balanced over my head and draped like a shroud to my shoulders. Belen breathed heavily through his nose, and the vein in his neck bulged. He lifted his hand to slap me again but stopped when I whispered, “Is this how you treated my mother?”

“What? Are you comparing yourself to her?” He dropped his arm, and a barking laugh erupted from him. “Your mother was a saint. You look like the devil. I told you to make dinner.”

“No,” I said. It was a small word, low, strong, surprising.

A flush started in Belen's neck and flowed up into his cheeks. The vein in his neck throbbed, and he clenched his hands into fists. His anger leaked up into his eyes and made the whites red. Suddenly he roared, “You will do as I say, girl.”

My voice was so quiet, I wondered if I'd actually spoken out loud. Everything about me was shaking—even the veil rustled from my trembling.

“I want to stay in the lean-to. If I am chained, I will not bake bread. If I am hit, I will not cook the meals. You may break as many bones as you like, but you will not get anything from me.”

Again Belen's speed surprised me. He grabbed my arm, yanked me to the front door, opened the door and threw me down the front steps. I fell with my hands out, my wrists taking most of the impact, but I rolled quickly so that I could see his next move. Belen stood on the top step, panting and sweating, looking down at me on the ground.

The children in the street stopped playing and clustered together in a protective circle, staring at Belen, staring at me. I heard the lady next door creak out of her chair and take a few steps across her porch. I imagined the gun pointed at me—at me, like I was the wild animal about to rip and tear. Belen retreated inside, slamming the door behind him.

My veil had slipped from my head and lay a few feet away, like someone's discarded shadow. David walked to it, picked it up and handed it to me. I stood up shakily and accepted the veil. Then I hunched down on the front step, my chin on my knees, and waited. The children waited with me, shuffling their feet in the dust, looking at me sideways. The woman next door waited as well, her polka-dot shirt like spots at the corner of my eye. I looked down at the ground and listened to my heart beating alone, no Ranita tied to my chest to regulate the beats. I had now been in this town for about twenty-four hours, and an ache the size of Jeremia, Eva, Nathanael and Ranita had made its way into my core. I wanted friends, a world I understood. I wanted peace.

I felt a tap on my shoulder. David stood beside me, holding my violin. My body ached, too hollowed out to play any music, but I understood his gesture—his proffered token of friendship. I fit the violin under my chin and began to play.

Darkness pushed against me. The sounds of the forest crept back into the town to swallow my loneliness, and the song of the cicada joined my own song when I finally stopped playing. David and Mateo had sneaked behind me into the house long ago, and I smelled potatoes baking. When I put the violin down on the step beside me and rested my chin on my bent knees, the door opened a crack. The strands of a broom appeared, and David's voice whispered, like he was trying to squeeze his voice into a bubble and not out into the night. I looked up to see the tip of his nose and chin lit by the stars.

“Here is a blanket and a baked potato and a broom to clean the shed.”

I accepted the broom, blanket and potato and carried them around the side of the house. The moon was low, only a sliver, and I could see nothing inside the shack, but I swept anyway, tipped the debris out the door and laid the blanket on the ground. It would do for now. When the cooler night temperatures of winter came, I would need more, but maybe David would truly be my friend by then and would help me survive, help me stave off the inevitable earaches and sore throats that the colder weather brought. I made one more trip to the front of the house, collected the violin, my few belongings and the gifts from my mother. I returned to the lean-to, consumed the potato, which at least filled the hole in my stomach, and flattened my mother's slip underneath the blanket. It cushioned me from the hard ground and reminded me of yeast, cinnamon and blood.

When I lay down on the blanket, I smiled. There would be more battles to come, but for now I was sheltered and not on display. As I lay in my tiny house, a sliver of fear worked its way beneath my breastbone, a slippery tickle that made me wonder if perhaps there was more of my father in me than I cared to admit. I felt the tiny violin on the string around my neck. I ran my hands along its edges, felt the smoothness of its back. With the touch of the wood, I floated to my life in the forest, and when I thought about that life, my throat tightened and my eyes hurt. I missed who I had been in that place.

I rose before the sun the next day, minutes before the rumbling began and the huge white truck rolled down our street and stopped around the corner. My urge to follow the truck and understand its business would have to be fulfilled another time, when Belen wasn't watching every movement I made and when trust had been established.

Breakfast was ready by the time David, Mateo and Belen got up. While they ate, I collected their dirty clothes. Then I stood at the stove, reading
The Art of Bread Making.

Today I would finish the laundry on time, return home and bake my first batch of bread. Belen would find nothing to complain about.

Seven

The creek was busy in the morning. I joined the other women and we scrubbed the clothes clean, or at least as clean as possible in filthy water that smelled of chemicals and latrines. I didn't mind washing the clothes, scrubbing them rhythmically while the sun shone on my back and the soft shush of grasses hummed beside me. There was beauty here, if I could ignore the smell of the water.

The same woman as before worked closest to me, the woman with the two little ones. I listened to the chatter of her oldest child, a toddler who busily ran about the bank of the creek, and suddenly I missed Eva with a pain as big as the sun. Eva had been like my little sister, just a baby when she came, and full of talk and energy like this child. She had brought so much life to our little camp. Rosa had recently left, and Jeremia and I were eleven and ten. Sometimes I would hide from him, just because I could, and sometimes he would throw acorns at me because there was no one else. Eva's entrance had offered us a distraction—we were responsible for her, and Jeremia, as the oldest, was especially in charge of her care.

And then Ranita. She had been my responsibility. And I'd abandoned her. I'd abandoned them all.

I ground a shirt between my hands, scrubbing and twisting, burning the energy that would otherwise become tears. This was my life now—my new life—and these people needed me too. Somehow I had to reconcile myself to where I lived and how my days would pass.

I'd done enough laundry the day before that I had little left to do. The woman beside me slowly progressed through her stack of diapers, the toddler constantly distracting her. He waddled too deep into the creek and she pulled him back. He wandered too far into the grasses and she retrieved him. He put his hand on a thistle and she comforted him.

I stepped into the grasses by the side of the creek and tugged out a clump. Using single strands of dried grass to tie the clump together in bunches—a round bunch for the head, individual bunches for arms and legs—I fashioned a roughly hewn doll. I had made these grass dolls for Eva—they never lasted long, but they were diverting for a while.

I stepped over clumps of weeds toward the woman with the baby strapped to her chest. She glanced up at me, and I immediately stopped. She looked fearful, her eyes big and her mouth pulled straight. I held out the doll to her, gestured to the toddler and said in a whisper, “May I give this to him?”

She looked at the doll in my hands and the expression on her face changed. She raised her eyebrows and let the corners of her mouth lift into a small smile. She nodded.

I gave the doll to the toddler and he laughed. He hugged it, held it out to look at again and then marched the doll on its feet across the ground. He sang a song as he squeezed the doll to him, hugging until the grasses squeaked.

“Thank you,” she said around wisps of hair that fluttered like dandelion fluff against her face.

I gathered the washbasin with its dripping contents and balanced it against my hip. When I glanced at the woman, she was still watching me, her head turned to the side. She wasn't much older than me, perhaps two or three years, and she had a softness to her that I liked. Her round cheeks had a bright rosiness, and her arms were plump and healthy. She was the type of person who would feel good to hug—not all angles and sinew like Nathanael and Jeremia. The babies, with their pudgy cheeks, were obviously hers. I could like her, if only she could like me.

As I read through the instructions for baking the bread, I felt doubt. There was so much waiting: for the fermented yogurt to begin its work, for me to knead the dough just right, for the dough to rise again. I came to a specific recipe that looked the most basic—and beside this first recipe I found notes scribbled in the margin. When I saw them, my heart fluttered, and my fingertips pulled the veil from my head and laid it on the counter.

Honest hands are the key to perfect bread.

I had never seen my mother's handwriting before. I could barely make out the scribble, but seeing her words on the paper felt like a small gift, like a glimpse into her secret thoughts. I continued to read.

Make the yogurt culture a day ahead.

I felt sweat on my back. The yogurt culture was necessary for making the bread rise, and I had failed to prepare the ingredients in time. The bread would not be made that day, which meant Belen would once again be dissatisfied with my work. Quickly, my hands shaking and throat tight, I made the yogurt culture according to the recipe and set it to warm on the back of the stove. Then I scrubbed the indoor bathroom from floor to ceiling.