Whisper (16 page)

“Next month,” he said. “This bread will do for now. We can sell it at the store.”

Celso slammed his fist down on the table, the bread popping up and dropping back down. Belen looked at his brother. A froth of white outlined the right side of Celso's mouth, and his nostrils flared like a wild boar's.

“She did not bake the bread.”

David sucked in his breath. Would the squeaking begin again, the thrashing about on the floor and the blue lips? We waited, the moment thick and oppressive like the moment before I grabbed the crayfish, when I knew it might erupt, snap at me, hide beneath the rock. Belen looked at David.

“Your mother taught you well, David. Then we don't need the girl.”

David pushed back from the table and held his hands in his lap. Mateo's head rotated back and forth, a wary owl, his mouth open slightly. I held the veil in my hand, felt its absence and slipped it back onto my head. They wouldn't see my tears—none of them would see my tears.

“She will make money for us in other ways, then. If that doesn't work, she'll return home, take care of the house, and you will teach her how to make the bread. For now, it will be your job, David, but only for us. You will not sell the bread at the market—that is not a man's work. When her money comes in from the city, we will hire someone to clean the house. For now, this will do.” Belen's arm swept out, indicating the cleaned house and all the work I'd done. I should have worked more slowly, made them think they needed me forever. David opened his mouth but did not speak.

Celso crossed his arms above his bulging stomach and tried to smile, but the unused muscles resisted, stretching the corners of his mouth long. “And you, girl, will stay close to me when we travel to the city. You'll not run, you'll not attempt anything, or your handsome little friend from the woods will find his throat slit in the middle of the night.” When he said the word
handsome
, his eyelids fluttered.

Celso reached around me, his unwashed smell overpowering the smell of fresh bread. He grasped the remaining chunk of bread in his meaty hand and brushed his arm against my chest. The floor shook as he exited the house.

Tomorrow he would be my master. Just as I'd begun to get my feet underneath me, to make friends and find support, I would again disappear as I had from the camp in the woods, where dragonflies flew and crickets sang. How many more moves were left for me? Probably more than I cared to know.

Eleven

The night passed slowly. I listened to the call of the caracara. I heard the squeak of bats as they swooped by the open door. I waited for a dead skunk, for little boys who run shrieking, terrified but thrilled, into the night. No clouds crossed in front of the stars. Nights were cooler now, the air tingly with the scent of falling leaves. I looked forward to the change in seasons. I loved fall, with its brisk temperatures. I especially loved the smell of earth, leaves and rain.

Nathanael, Jeremia and Eva would be collecting wood now for fires on the colder winter nights. They would be drying the fruits, collecting the berries, trapping rabbits and hunting deer to make into salted winter meat. They would be sitting around the campfire, Nathanael telling stories of the river witch who swam through the creek to villages along it and crept into children's huts in the nighttime, taking away their voices. I knew that I'd lived primitively in our camp in the woods, but I also knew that I'd had a good life, free of cruelty. Nathanael had been to the city; he had seen the cars, the huge buildings, the swarms of people, and he had hated it. He had said that only the desperate went to the city—the desperate, the frantic and the rejected.

So he'd stayed with us in the woods and told us of traveling bands of people who packed up their tents, carried them on their backs, moved to a new place and set up their tents once again.

That was me. A nomad. Only I didn't have a tent to carry with me. I had nothing but the clothes on my back, the few items my mother had given me, a cream slip with a brown stain and the violin that could be my voice. Maybe this was my life—maybe I would never know a permanent home again. I thought of running away, gathering my belongings and slinking through the grasses to follow the creek back to our camp in the woods, but I didn't. I would not let them hurt Jeremia. I would not allow Jeremia's father to forget his shame.

Before the sun rose, the shape of a man appeared in the door of the lean-to, the stars obliterated by his presence. His protruding stomach filled the opening, and his body permeated the little room with the smell of ash and sweat.

I was ready for him. I had dressed in all of my clothing: my pants, my mother's slip made into short pants, my mouse T-shirt and the black sweater. I slipped my feet into my brown shoes, draped the veil over my head, left the lean-to and followed him, slinging the violin case over my shoulder and carrying my small sack. The lean-to was not my home. I would miss only David, but the farther I moved away from our camp in the woods, the more lonely and full of holes I felt.

Celso climbed onto a tethered mule at the edge of our village. The mule began a steady trot down the road and I followed, my heart rubbing against the bones in my chest. As we approached the last houses and prepared to step away from this village and forward to the big city, I heard the pattering of footsteps behind me, and I felt a bit of hope that maybe Belen had changed his mind.

When I turned around, David stopped and bent over, his hands on his knees. His breath made the high squeak when he breathed in. As his breathing calmed, the squeak lessened and soon disappeared.

“Here,” he said. He thrust his hand toward me, a lumpy handkerchief tied in a knot hanging heavy in his fist. “May it go well with you.”

And that's when the tears dripped from my eyes, down the sides of my nose. The veil covered my face, the night revealed nothing, and David pushed his shoulders back, breathing deep and clean once more.

“And may it go well with you,” I said as he walked away.

Celso took the bundle from my hands. With blunt, fat fingers he untied the corners of the cloth and opened the square piece of blue material. Inside were three items: a corner from one of the loaves of bread, a small square of cheese and a slingshot.

Celso took the bread from the cloth sack, broke off a chunk and gave me the remaining portion. He handed the other items back to me and resumed his steady trot.

I rolled up a small piece of the bread, made a sticky dough ball and rolled it around on my tongue. I chewed it slowly as I walked. Fresh and soft, moist and grainy. I hoped as I savored the nutty texture that I would discover ways to be more like my mother and less like my father.

The walk through the woods was peaceful and quiet, but the trees were brown, short and stunted. I missed the tall trunks and feathery leaves of my home and the thick vines full of flowers in the underbrush. Celso didn't speak to me, so I listened to a small owl hooting in the trees, I listened to the creek from the village laughing and giggling, I listened to the call of a wolf, and I wondered how I could play these songs on my violin.

We walked from before the sun rose until after it set.

I was grateful for the bread and cheese. Celso had his own lunch, and I smelled the sausage and fried egg he shoved into his mouth with fat fingers, but I didn't want anything from this man. He watched me with searching looks that made me want to disappear inside my sweater.

When the road became so dark that our shadows disappeared, we crunched through the debris on the forest floor, and Celso built a small fire beneath the stunted trees along the path. He tied my hands together with a piece of rope and looped the rope around a tree. The mule he tethered to the same tree, and then Celso wrapped his coat around himself and lay in front of the fire, falling asleep in seconds. I whispered to the mule and it pushed its nose against me. The animal was warm, soft and smelled of grass. I tried to sleep against the tree, my knees bent, my head against the rough bark, my shoulder pushed into the tree until it ached with a dull throb. When my body, so tired from walking all day, finally relaxed and I slept, the soft mumbling of words startled me awake and woke the mule. It whinnied and backed away as far as the rope would allow it to go, and then it pulled, its back legs digging into the ground. I whispered to it, but it had had enough of whisperings.

“Cut it then.”

“Shh, you'll wake him.”

“Hurry up. We'll not have time, at this rate.”

The outline of a head appeared around the side of the tree. Celso's fire had died out long ago. I saw nothing but the flash of stars on bright eyes and the glint of light on teeth. The head drew back behind the tree, and a tugging began. The ropes were being unknotted, and my hands tingled as the circulation returned. When the ropes fell away, I stood, my creaking knees stiff and threatening to collapse, my sore shoulder aching.

“Come,” the voice said, and a person appeared around the side of the tree. I could make out a shape, loose clothing and bare feet that knew where to walk silently.

I glanced back at Celso, a rounded lump on the ground, and touched the mule's nose. Now that the strangers no longer stood by the tree, the mule ceased its pulling and stood calm, its head hanging low. On feet as silent as theirs, I followed these people into the woods.

The brush became a bit thicker as we moved away from the path, and the sounds of the woods intensified. I could hear tree frogs gulping, snakes creeping and the owl calling. An orange glow flickered against the sickly trees, and I followed my rescuers to the spot of light in the woods.

Two girls looked back at me when we reached the small clearing. Both were smaller than me and dirtier, with matted hair that might have been blond and faces so smeared with dirt that their bodies blended into the brown of the trees. They motioned for me to come and sit down by the fire. On the other side of the fire sat two others: a small girl and a boy with large teeth that stuck out over his bottom lip. The two girls I had followed looked normal, appeared to have no blemishes, but the third was tiny, with hands and feet so small they looked like a doll's. I leaned down to her and slid the veil off my face.

“See? See? Didn't I say?” said one of the girls who had untied me.

“Like Kada,” said the other, nodding at me and looking at the tiny girl.

When the tiny girl spoke, her voice was deep, seeming to come from the boy beside her. I looked again and saw shadows under her eyes and lines around her mouth, as though perhaps she hadn't eaten enough or was older than I'd thought.

“Why were you captive?” she said.

I sat on my heels and held the filmy veil in my hands. All of them looked at me, their eyes big, their faces turned to me without fear or disgust. There was no danger here that I could see.

“I must go to the city.”

“And work for him?” The tiny girl dug with a tiny hand into the soft ground of the forest and threw bits of leaves, sticks and bark onto the fire. The pieces popped and crackled when they hit the flames.

“To send money to my family.”

The two girls I had followed laughed. One nudged the other with her shoulder and then covered her mouth with her hand. The other didn't even bother to cover her mouth.

“That's no father that will tie his daughter to a tree,” said Kada.

Nor is it a father who will chain his daughter to a doghouse or kick her in the side or slap her across the head. I knew this. I wasn't traveling to the city for them.

“You may stay with us, with me and my sisters, and with our friend Tollie.” When Tollie heard his name, he smiled so big his cheeks squeezed up and his eyes closed. “We are our own family now.”

“There are others I must protect,” I said, not looking at the two sisters who giggled behind their hands.

“Your responsibility is to yourself,” Kada said and looked at me so hard, with such narrow eyes, that I wanted to drape the veil over my head and hide behind its film. What did she know of my life?

“Then why are your sisters with you?”

“They chose to come. They're not rejected, but they wouldn't tolerate my ill treatment, my caging as though I were an animal.” The tiny girl trembled as she spoke, a compact ball of defiance, her cheeks pink with heat, her mouth tight with hate. “We take care of each other now, but if something were to happen to me, they would save themselves.”

The two girls had stopped their giggling. One of them sat with her head cocked to the side, watching me with one eye, like a macaw. The other looked into the fire with a smile that she never hid. They were about David's age—ten, I would guess. Kada was older.

I stood up and slipped the veil over my head again.

“I will need help with the knots,” I said.

The girl tossed long brown hair that almost reached the ground. She looked into the fire and seemed to speak to the flames.

“We help you escape, and your choice is to return. You will never go far in this world if you don't know how to rescue yourself.”