Whisper (6 page)

Instead, the tears dripped from my nose and pooled in the slits above my lip.

When the wolf 's breathing stopped, I felt like mine started. I sucked air in deeply, listening to the shuddering of Eva's breath as she tried to calm herself. I sat down on the log again and looked at the sick wolf. Jeremia's wolf, its coat silver and tan next to the other wolf's dark pelt, lay down by the dead one and put its muzzle on its paws.

We went to our huts then. I curled around Ranita, her light breath a promise of life after the death we had seen. And even though Ranita slept that night, her stomach full, her body warm against mine, I listened to the low barks of the living wolf by the fire as it said goodbye to its friend.

In the morning Jeremia's wolf was gone, and the dead wolf was stiff. Jeremia dug a hole in our graveyard, where the babies had been buried, and the two of us wrapped the body in a sheet of plastic and hefted the wolf up, bringing it to the grave. In the daylight we could see the damage to the black wolf, and we marveled that it had lived as long as it had. Great red sores covered its body, not only its mouth, and it smelled as though it had been dying for a very long time. It was best dead—even Eva understood that.

The night before my birthday, I sat by the fire pit and played the violin. I could play about five songs, none of them screechy or high-pitched. Nathanael pulled on my fingers sometimes, correcting my movements. He wouldn't tell me how he had learned the violin; he wouldn't tell me why he refused to play anymore or why he watched me now with eyes so narrow and dark, I wondered what I was doing wrong. I had lived with Nathanael all of my life, but I knew more about the village he came from, the one I'd never seen, than I knew about him.

Jeremia sat beside me, carving a piece of wood, his hand never still, his short arm holding the wood in place. I slid farther down the log, closer and closer, so I could smell his nearness, breathe in the darkness of his scent. He reminded me of a hummingbird, fluttering here, hovering there, and then gone. We balanced each other—solid, dependable, quiet me and fast, whirling, dancing Jeremia. Sometimes he would leap about the fire, crazed, intense and full of monkey antics. I would watch him then, quietly and carefully, because his beauty—his supple, lithe beauty—burned with the intensity of a firefly, so wonderful to watch but dangerous to arrest. If I could have, I would have captured him, held him close, but that would have killed him.

The new object Jeremia carved was for my birthday, although he hadn't said so and hadn't given it to me yet. It was a miniature violin, no longer than my middle finger but with details as curved and precise as the larger version. I knew what I would do with it: I'd wear it around my neck, close to my voice box, where it would represent the promise of what my voice could be.

Jeremia put down his tools and looked up into the night. It was too dark to carve—bats flitted against the sky and owls swooped to catch them. I played my mother's lullaby once more and felt the sting in my nose and the glassing over of my eyes. Jeremia grunted.

I set the violin in my lap and brushed the sleeve of my shirt against my eyes. Ranita snored softly. Jeremia looked down into the fire. His shoulders hunched, and I felt his arm tense as it brushed against mine.

“You had fifteen years, fifteen times that she came to visit you.” His voice was low, gravelly. “My parents haven't visited me once.”

He turned his head to look at me. His face, shadowed and blurred, carried a glint from the fire. “You shouldn't cry.”

He stood up, brushed against my knees with his legs and picked up Eva, who had fallen asleep on a mat in front of the fire. I placed my hand on Ranita and felt her warm breath seeping into my shirt. I rocked her back and forth.

He was right. I knew he was right, but I still missed my mother. Is it better to never have known your parents, like Rosa or Eva, or better to have had one brief day a year in which to place all of your hopes?

I woke up and looked out the window. Clouds billowed across the sky. Ranita slept on my chest, her favorite spot. Since we had discovered the rice milk, she awoke only occasionally during the night.

It was my birthday. I wasn't sure I'd get out of bed.

And then I heard the warning—three short whistles and a long one. Someone was coming. My mother. Before I thought that it couldn't possibly be true, I reacted to the pounding of my heart, the shaking of my hands, the rush of my blood.

I jumped up, holding Ranita to me, and ran out the door of my hut. I was so happy, even my fingertips tingled.

It was not my mother who stood in the center of our camp. It was a man and two boys. When I emerged from my hut, the man stepped back, narrowed his eyes and put his left hand on his belt where a knife glinted.

My heart began to slow, and my shoulders started to droop. Now I felt twitchy, like lightning was about to flicker from the sky and set my hair on end.

Both of the boys stepped back and the smaller one crouched, his hands clenched into fists. All three of them made the sign of the cross over their chests. Nathanael stood in front of the man. His arms were crossed and his chin jutted forward. He was standing tall, and his clothes seemed to fit him better than before. He had strength that belied his sixty-nine years. I waited at the door of my hut and tried not to let my fluttering heart and hands wake Ranita.

“That her?” the man asked.

Nathanael said nothing.

“You Whisper?” the man shouted. “Lydia?”

I looked at Nathanael.

“We have come for you. We came to get you,” the man said. He had a prominent forehead and heavy eyebrows that made him look angry. “It was your mother's dying wish.”

I had to take that in for a minute, weigh what his comment meant. My mother's dying wish. She was dead.

I felt the air rush out of my mouth and nose. My stomach clenched. I took a step back and leaned against the door frame of my hut. I closed my eyes and tried not to breathe so hard and fast. I'd thought I'd given up hope, but it had been there all along, and now it burst, shooting shards of glass through my body. I slid down the wall of my hut and sat hard on the ground.

When I opened my eyes, the scene in front of me had not changed. I felt old, trodden upon, worn, and yet no time had passed.

“Does she understand what I'm saying?” The man spoke to Nathanael but looked at me.

“Yes. But I'm not sure I do,” Nathanael said. “What do you want with her?”

“She'll come home with us, help in the house, take her mother's place.” The man peered at me, the corners of his mouth turned up in a slight smile. I thought he was cunning, although he spoke to me as if I were stupid.

“You have shown no interest in her for sixteen years, Belen, and now suddenly when it suits you, you want her back. She's not going.” Nathanael's mouth was pulled straight, tight, and his eyes squinted. The man heard Nathanael's words and turned to look at him.

“I have every right to claim her, which you do not. I want her now, that's what matters, and she'll come home with us.”

The two boys stepped forward and flanked their father. The three of them had the same hair—thin and limp. They had hunched shoulders and rounded limbs. I thought all men were like Nathanael, Jeremia and the messenger, with muscles rippling beneath the skin and flat bellies. These three looked weak in body, but there was a strength to them that resided somewhere other than in their muscles.

I didn't want to go.

“Come, girl. Get your things,” the man said.

Panic started to rise in me and forced me to my feet. My breath came fast, and the beat of my heart matched Ranita's. My father walked toward me. His head was lowered and his upper lip twitched into a snarl. He reminded me of the coyote who snooped around our camp, always wanting, always hungry. I held Ranita tight against my chest.

“You will come with me,” he said. He was two feet in front of me. He looked up and down my body. “Even though I don't want to claim you as blood, you are mine, and you've had sixteen years of freedom, living wild like the animals. Now you will come with me and do your duty.”

Ranita stirred. The man's nose wrinkled.

“That your child?” His mouth turned up in a sneer. “You're sixteen and already a mother. I can see what living here in the wild has done for you. Who's the father? The old man?”

Nathanael coughed, and then he spoke low and slow, as if he were speaking to Eva when she was having a temper tantrum.

“The messenger told me this is Clemente and Maximo's child, although I thought they were too old to have children.”

Belen looked hard at Ranita, raised his upper lip into a snarl and then reached out, grabbing my arm. I wondered why I had ever thought him weak. His grip cut into my upper arm and I tried to yank it from his grasp, but he had become a rock, unyielding and impenetrable. The older boy grabbed the arm of the younger and pointed at Ranita. The younger boy, Mateo, gasped, his hand over his mouth.

“I said get your things. I don't want this other child, this monster and murderer. You come alone. Now.”

I heard rustlings at the side of my hut.
Oh no, please
don't
. I felt Jeremia's anger, like low-lying fog slithering along the ground and wrapping itself around us. Jeremia had not yet felt the power of this man. An encounter between the two wouldn't end well. I closed my eyes and prepared for the impact. Belen was taken by surprise when Jeremia flew through the air and landed with his foot against the man's chest. Jeremia was on top of him, pinning him to the ground, snarling into his face.

When Belen screamed, we heard twigs snapping, leaves rustling, and another man emerged from the woods. He held a knife and crouched low. He ran at Jeremia, grabbed him by the back of his hair and yanked his head up while holding a knife to his throat. He pulled Jeremia's good arm behind his back and forced him to his feet. Jeremia's eyes were red, wild. He growled.

Belen sat up, steadied himself with his hand against the ground and stood. His face was red and puffy. He panted. The two young boys didn't know what to do—they ran to their father, then back to the woods, then crept forward again.

“Kill him,” Belen said, his voice rough and jumpy. He nodded to the man with the knife against Jeremia's throat. Pounding fear pumped through my veins. The very air itself seemed to throb.

I saw the man with the knife to Jeremia's neck look at Belen. I saw him tighten his grip on the knife; I saw the knife press against the skin of Jeremia's throat. Nathanael slid behind the man holding the knife, gripped the man's arm and pulled the knife away from Jeremia's exposed neck. Jeremia whirled around, facing the man with the knife.

Jeremia had no weapon and only one arm. That would not stop him. When Nathanael released the man's wrist and jumped back to avoid the downward slash of the knife, I saw Jeremia tense his muscles and prepare to leap.

I screamed. I hadn't used my voice in so long, it sounded as though it came from the trees, from the sky, squeezed from the sun. Everyone looked at me.

“I'll go with them,” I said.

Jeremia rocked back and forth, his eyes still red, the tendons in his neck standing out like the strings on the violin. When he heard my words, he shook his head.

“You can't leave.”

“Please,” I said, “take care of Eva and Ranita for me.”

In Jeremia's eyes I saw something I had not seen before. It was dark, twisting and filled with yellow swirls. Fear.

“Don't,” he said.

“No one will be hurt because of me.”

Nathanael and the man with the knife swayed opposite each other, their arms out, their legs wide apart. The man with the knife swung it forward, slicing at Nathanael. Nathanael backed up against one of the sitting logs. I saw what would happen, how this would all end, with old Nathanael cut open. With icy hands I touched Belen's arm, and he jerked away from me, rubbing at the spot as though I'd burned him.