Whisper (8 page)

We reached my family's village, Astatla, in the afternoon of the fourth day. As we progressed through the forest, the pine trees thinned and disappeared, replaced by stunted magnolias that were more spread out, less dense. A thick, rotten smell filled the air. My head hurt from the reek, and my hand moved to cover my nose. Death. Decay. A world filled with rot. My eyes stung. I was hungry, but this smell made me queasy.

I heard the village long before we came to it: dogs barking, children yelling, an occasional shout—and absolute silence from the insects and birds. I had never experienced it before, that silence. It was peculiar and indescribable. The emptiness made my heart feel hollow, lonely, even though there were people everywhere.

We walked along a road now, and as we neared the first houses of the village, I noticed many smells. Some were good smells, like the cooking of soups, but behind those good smells always lay the heavy reek of filth, latrines and unwashed bodies. I could feel my nostrils flare. How could people live under this haze of stench? My hands felt unsteady and continually flew to my throat or clutched at my clothes. I tried to control them.

The wide dirt road was lined with houses constructed of flat pieces of wood that fit together snugly. They had metal roofs. For a minute I felt some excitement—maybe I would be warm, dry and protected. Our huts in the woods, made of sticks, logs and mud, always developed cracks in the winter that let the cold air creep into our blankets and bones.

I'd never seen so many people before and couldn't believe how long the dirt street seemed to be. Children took breaks from playing with balls to stare at me. Women paused as they carried heavy loads of water, wood or clothing and watched as I walked by. I stared also.

Everyone was beautiful, with smooth faces, sealed mouths and unsplit noses. No wonder they thought me a monster. I wanted to cover my face, hide it behind my hand, but instead I looked ahead and met their eyes.

When a beautiful man glanced at me and then glared with narrow eyes, I felt a moment of panic. I'd seen him before—but I knew that wasn't possible. His hair hung to his shoulders in graying black waves, his eyes watched me from beneath dark lashes, and his muscles twisted just beneath his skin. It was Jeremia—Jeremia without a missing arm. Jeremia older. When I walked past him, he hissed. Jeremia released his anger by disappearing for days at a time. I didn't want to know how this man released his anger.

My father's house was near the end of the long street. As we walked, we gathered an audience. I trailed behind Belen, Mateo and David, my shoulders tense, my hands sweaty around the scarf that held my mother's gifts. I followed them to the house but stopped outside the door.

This was where I had been born. This was where my mother had lived. This was where she had baked the bread, cared for the boys, loved, lived, died. The outside of the house was brown. Two steps led up to a faded yellow door, the color of fall leaves. Two glass windows gave the dwelling a face, but I saw no friendliness in its expression. No flowers grew around the house, only straggly clumps of brown grass and a few withered plants, which might have bloomed at one time but were so ragged now that I couldn't recognize them.

Mateo prodded me in the back. When I turned to look, I saw a pack of children gathered behind him.

“Snarl,” he said. “Make that face again. Show them that face.”

My head was so filled with the stink in the town that I couldn't concentrate. I shook my head to clear it and then wrinkled my nose. I felt my mouth pull up, split open from nose to lip, and the children gasped. Mateo pointed a shaky finger at me and shrieked, “See, I told you. I told you.”

Belen stood with his arms crossed while Celso pushed me aside.

“You don't go in the house,” Celso said. He continued to push me, and I submitted to his hands. He was forceful, and as I saw the other men gathered around, I understood why. He was in charge here and must prove this to the onlookers. The house faced the dirt-packed road, and a line of people stood along the edge of the street, watching. There were no trees to hide me. My shield had dissolved, and tears tickled my nose.

“This is where you will stay.” Celso pointed to a structure next to the house.

I didn't understand what it was. This miniature house was low to the ground, with a large opening. A hard black flap fit over the hole in the front. If I curled into a ball, perhaps I could squeeze myself between the walls. I heard laughter ripple like heat through the crowd.

“Doghouse,” someone said.

Doghouse. Warmth crept across my chest, up my neck and into my cheeks.

I crossed my arms and planted my feet. Never in my life had I felt this hungry, this insubstantial. I looked at Celso and then glanced at Belen, standing behind him. I shook my head. My tears would fall any minute, but I would not crawl into a house constructed for animals.

“You'll do as I say, girl,” he said. His hand flew through the air and slapped my cheek. My head snapped back. I felt a burning in my cheeks, but I swallowed the need to crouch low, hold my face, cry and ram my head into Celso's stomach. I had learned that Belen would not stand up for me, so I stood on my own, holding my arms closer to my chest, letting my eyes fill.

“Get in the doghouse,” Celso said through gritted teeth.

I glanced at the line of people watching us. They smirked, their mouths drawn up into petty smiles. I saw no kindness, no mercy, no forgiveness.

Celso was wearing a plaid shirt with shiny snaps down the front and at the cuffs of the sleeves. He opened up the snaps on the cuffs, rolled the sleeves up to his elbows and waited. Maybe I should have gotten into the doghouse. I knew that if I submitted, though, that would be my accommodation forever. I'd had better shelter in the woods.

The blow hit me so hard, I gasped. The world spun around me and tipped; I clutched at my stomach. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't see straight. A kick from his boot landed against my side. Flashes of light twirled around my head.

As the world spun and I hit the ground, I wondered what had happened to the dog, why its home was empty.

When I awoke, it was dark. The line of people had disappeared. Artificial lights shone from the windows of the houses, and I heard the welcome sounds of the forest. Birds screeched, crickets chirped rhythmically, and bats flitted against the sky. I breathed in as deeply as I could without choking on the smell. This, at least, was a world I knew.

I sat up and inched my fingers across my chest and stomach, feeling for wounds. My right leg rebelled. I tried to straighten it, tried to pull my foot forward where I could see it, but it was stuck to the ground. I rolled onto my hands and knees and crept backward. I groped down the side of my leg and yanked my hand back when I touched the cold unforgivingness of metal.

Nathanael, Jeremia, Eva and I used to joke about being trapped in the camp, locked away in our forest jail, but Nathanael had told us as we sat around the fire and played games or listened to stories of the civilized world that he would always choose this forest jail over the town we'd been banned from. Why? we'd asked him. Why choose this seclusion?

“People can be cruel,” he'd said. Perhaps Belen had allowed Celso to chain me to the ground because it was expected, because he was on the town council and had to set an example—even if that example was his own daughter.

I lifted the flap covering the opening to the doghouse and felt inside. A worn, fur-covered blanket that smelled of urine and worms lay crusted and stiff on the ground. The blanket was beginning to disintegrate, becoming one with the dirt, but I pulled it out and shook it. As I wrapped it around my body, I remembered the violin lashed to my back. I pulled the strap over my head and held the case in my hands, weighing it, considering. There was nothing to do, no one to talk to, no baby to care for, no little sister or big brother to tease. Do I feel sorry for myself? I wondered. Do I crawl into the doghouse, curl around myself and weep?

I opened the violin case, fit the violin against my shoulder and began to play. Light and clean, the notes lifted into the air and spoke of me staked to the ground. I didn't play my mother's lullaby or any of the other tunes I'd pieced together. I played a song all my own, and it came to me on the soft wings of bats.

The door to the house opened and a rectangle of light stretched into the street, illuminating the rough, bumpy ground. David stepped out of the house and sat in the doorway, his shadow long and lean. My music mingled with the darkness and brought a bit of beauty back into my life. I don't know when I finished playing, but David was gone from the doorstep by the time I put down the violin, and the moon was hidden behind the houses to the west.

Six

“Get up,” said the voice as a boot nudged my side.

I lay on the ground in front of the doghouse, the disintegrating blanket twisted tightly around me. I turned my head and looked up, squinting into the sky. The sun shone behind Belen's head.

“Get up.”

My body felt cold and stiff. I'd slept on the ground all my life, but it had been layered with blankets. We'd collected them from the messenger's supplies over the years, using them as mattresses and sometimes as coats. Here, on this ground, tentacles of cold had crept into my bones and I was stiff. My chest and stomach hurt where I had been hit. I stood, knees bent, my leg staked to the ground.

“You'll make our meals, do the laundry, clean the house and bake bread to sell. You understand me?” He spoke loudly, as though my distorted features might somehow affect my hearing. I held tight to the blanket around my shoulders. A rumbling, which rose in pitch and shook the ground, started in the distance and seemed to come straight for me. A large rectangular machine turned onto the street where Belen and I stood and made its way toward us, relentless in its approach, as though coming to squash us flat. I stepped back toward the house and as far as the chain on my leg would allow me to go. I held my breath as it approached, but it rumbled by and drove down the street, past many more houses, until it turned left and its roar rattled to a stop. It was, I realized, a truck, with the letters
SWINC
in black on the side. I had no idea automobiles could be so big. Belen continued as though nothing had happened.

“And if you run, the neighbor will shoot you.”

Belen nodded to the house next door, where a woman with a puckered mouth rocked back and forth. She wore a polka-dot top with a flared skirt, and a long gun rested on her legs, a threat that lay dormant and cold. When I looked at her, she smiled at me; she had no teeth.

Belen leaned down to my feet and unlocked the chain around my ankle. The metal fell away, leaving a red indentation in my skin. I fought the urge to bend and rub my leg. He pulled the ratty blanket off me, tossing it back into the doghouse. When I tried to walk, I wobbled, my ankle threatening to give out, but somehow I made it to the front steps, using the railing to pull myself up, and then limped through the front door. Belen walked behind me.

The smell in the house pulled on my memories and made me sway. It was my mother, everywhere. Molasses, cinnamon and lemon. I thought for a minute that I might throw up. I held my stomach and breathed deeply, then stumbled farther into the house when I was pushed.

Mateo and David sat at the kitchen table. They both had plates in front of them, ready to receive food. A third place was set at the table, but I knew better than to think it might be for me. I tried to remember the last time I'd eaten.

“Eggs and bacon in the fridge. Only six people in this town with a stove and fridge, you know. We're out of bread,” Belen said.

David sucked in his breath. Bread meant a mother—a mother lost and gone. They'd lost a mother too, whom they'd known much better than I had. I knew nothing of Belen that endeared him to me, but my mother had stayed with him, maybe even loved him, and had loved her two boys. When I heard both boys sniff and watched them wipe the backs of their hands under their noses, I knew they'd loved her too.

I grasped the metal handle and opened the refrigerator. The gush of cold air against my arms, face and neck shocked me, making me think of fresh morning breezes by the creek, where rancid smells didn't clog the senses. In the summer, we had eaten nothing cold—not the goat's milk or the mangoes. Everything we'd eaten was as warm as the day, but here, the milk stayed cold and didn't curdle in the heat.

Eggs, bacon, milk. I removed these items from the refrigerator after searching for their unfamiliar packaging and turned to the stove. If I was able to cook these things over an open flame, I could certainly cook them on this luxurious device. Nathanael had told me that stoves cooked food so evenly, you didn't have to continuously move the pot to the best spot.

Belen stood beside me and pointed to knobs and corresponding spirals. On the back of the white stove, in black script, was the word
SWINC.
It was on the refrigerator too, dark letters against a white background, just like the lettering on the rumbling truck.