Free The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits by Emma Donoghue

wish we were all locked up safe for the night. But our father is still at Meeting, and it's all my fault.
    Father is Brown the Postmaster. If there's ever a letter for someone living here, it's he who brings it. Most days he sees to the horses that carry letters through Stranorlar and on to all the other villages in Donegal. He lost a toe in the snow once. It's my job to rub his feet by the fire when he comes home. But not tonight.
    He walked me to school this morning, as it was my first day. And my last, I suppose. Tonight he's gone to see if the Elders will let him address the Meeting and say how ashamed he is for what his daughter did. I pray they won't cast him out.
    I can hear the room filling up with sleep; the little snores, the sighs, the shiftings from side to side. My sisters and brothers hardly know how to move or talk in the dark. They depend on the light so much that once the candle is snuffed out, the greasy air seems to extinguish them too. Night makes no difference to me, except that I can hear better. Tonight I can't remember how to go about falling asleep. My mind bubbles like a spring that cannot be stopped up.
    Words have always been my undoing, I can see that now. It began when I was a small child. The sermon was on eternal damnation, and the new Scottish Minister used words I couldn't understand; they echoed in the rafters. So I tried to fix them in my memory, and afterwards, while the brawn was boiling I asked our father to look them up in the dictionary. I never thought there was any harm in it.
    Since then I've been collecting words, you might say. They help me to get up, say, when I can't find my fingers on cold mornings.
Fingers,
I say in my head, and there they are, wriggling. Tabby is always bringing me words, even if she doesn't know what they mean. This week I have three new ones:
funereal, ambulatory,
and
slub.
Sometimes for a game, Nelly and Catherine make me say all the longest ones I know; if I won't play, they pinch me. My brothers and sisters think words are to be scattered carelessly, like corn in front of hens. They don't know how much words matter.
    Martha, on my left, has curled up like a snail; she has the tail of my nightshirt caught tight between her knees. How can they all sleep so sound when our father is not come home?
    What matters even more than words is how they knot onto each other. Sentences are like the ropes the fishermen throw when they're mooring to land. Sometimes they fray, though. Sometimes I put the wrong words in the wrong places, and other times it's not my fault, they'll not fit.
    The Schoolmaster says there are rules that govern words, and then there are times when you must break the rules. Mr. McGranahan knows everything, or nearly; he knows seventeen times fifty-three. After they come home from school, my brothers say their dictionary and grammar over and over to get them by heart so Mr. McGranahan will not have to take down his ashplant. I whisper the phrases while I'm washing potatoes or playing pat-a-cake to make Billy stop crying. Also I have learned Watt's "Divine Songs" and Gray's "Elegy," as well as the Scottish psalms. I made a poem of the Lord's Prayer once, and Tabby wrote it down and said it right back to me. Tabby's only seven, but she's quick at her books. If I had the money I'd feed her till she grew fat as a pig, and send her to a good school so she could come home and read me Greek and Latin.
    Some days if there's time after bringing the turf in, Eliza or Mary will read aloud:
Susan Gray,
or
The Negro Servant,
or
The Heart of Midlothian.
I take my sisters' turns at spinning the flax, if they promise to read. I hound them to go on as long as the candle lasts. My ears have learned to swallow up every word; I know a novel by heart after three good listenings. My brothers and sisters think me very clever for this, but it's only a trick for getting by. Like Jemmy Dwyer down at the smithy, who lost his right hand to a horse but can tie knots good as