Whisper Read Free Page A

and put his arm around her shoulders.
    I pulled the last barb from her hand and then poured water over the wounds. The blood and water mingled, dripping from the webbing between her fingers in dark-red rivulets.
    â€œJeremia is like a cat, Eva,” Nathanael said. “He is moody and angry. He needs to be alone for a while.”
    â€œWhy is he so angry?” Eva asked.
    â€œJeremia is the only boy ever rejected. Even disfigured boys aren’t rejected, but his parents already had four sons, and when he was born with only one arm and couldn’t do the same amount of farmwork as his brothers, they decided they didn’t need him.”
    â€œMy parents didn’t want me either,” Eva said, her sore hand held in her good one. “And Whisper’s dad tried to drown her. We’re all the same…aren’t we? That’s what you always told us.”
    â€œYes,” Nathanael said, “and no. You two are girls. Jeremia is the only boy. He feels it more—this abandonment. Boys are precious and respected—to be rejected means—”
    â€œThat the boy is like a girl,” Eva said, smearing the water around on her face, leaving smudges of mud. “I don’t see what’s so special about being a boy. They smell worse than girls. They fart and burp.”
    Nathanael looked to the sky and laughed. It was a good sound, but he woke the baby, who wailed that nasal, throaty cry that made my throat tighten. I wondered if a mixture of goat’s milk and water would help her sleep.
    I fed the baby a bit of water, strapped her to my chest with the cloth and walked around the fire pit. Her eyes drooped, her mouth opened, her breath slowed. Nathanael took her from me, laid her in the camping chair and handed me the violin. I held it to my shoulder and Nathanael’s fingers pushed against my own, showing me how to create a different note by applying pressure to the strings. I moved the bow with my right hand and changed the positioning of my left-hand fingers. I could do this. It was tricky, but I could do it.
    My fingers fluttered over the strings, pushed here, pushed there. At first a nasal twang screeched from the instrument, but if I pulled the bow just so and held it down, a sweetness rolled from the strings, and I could feel the music pouring out of me. I smiled at Nathanael.
    â€œYes,” he said and looked at me with eyes narrowed, weighing and assessing. I put down the violin, picked up the baby and sang her a simple lullaby, one my mother had sung to me. Soon I would play it for her on the violin.

    The goat’s milk didn’t work. When I first gave it to her, she gulped it greedily, swallowed and demanded more, but when it settled into her stomach, she started to cry and then cried for hours. I burped her against my shoulder, walked her back and forth, felt my own tears joining hers, and then remembered my mother’s lullaby.
    Nathanael was asleep in our only camping chair. His head rested against the flimsy fabric; his mouth was wide open, and he emitted a loud, rumbling snore every few seconds.
    Mornings in our camp were for lessons. Nathanael, who had lived in the village until he was twenty, taught us how to read, how to do math, how to utilize the plants around us. He had lived in the city for three years. When we asked him why, he told us he had been “searching.”
    I set the baby on a bed of layered blankets in my hut and propped her up like a warm sack of flour so that she could still burp if she needed to. Then I opened the violin case. Her crying came in hiccups and shivers, her face a deep, bruised red. I fit the instrument against my shoulder and under my chin as Nathanael had shown me. I held the bow in my right hand and eased it over the strings. I listened for the notes Nathanael had taught me. The sound was so harsh and creaky, the baby hiccupped her crying to a stop and opened her eyes. I tried again.
    The noise the violin made