Free The Stargazer's Sister by Carrie Brown

skin are less pronounced than they once were, but anyone might recognize her by running fingertips over the pitted skin of her cheeks and forehead. Her mother has declared that with her narrow hips and flat bosom and sticks for legs, it would kill her to bear a child, even if she were one day to wed and conceive.
    Lina knows that the wedding and its celebration that day have made her father worry. She thinks again of Margaretta’s romantic fantasies about the blind old man, his gnarled hand gentle upon Lina’s head.
    “Well, what hope for me then?” She tries to make her voice light to distract her father. “After all, perhaps I will attract the kindly blind grandfather Margaretta always prophesied for me.”
    “I believe it is your only hope,” her father replies. “It is my fondest wish that even if you are advanced in life, an old man might take you for your excellent conversation and your sweet voice.”
    A familiar pain crosses her head behind her eyes at her father’s words. The ghost of the fever, she has come to think of it. Perhaps it will always be with her.
    What is to be said now? She blinks at the fire.
    She thinks for a moment of the vanished Jacob, of how much pleasure her pain would give him now.
    Why had he always hated her so?

    Lina knows there will be no gentle grandfather. She imagines instead an old man with a beak of a nose and a full purse, his breath like spoiled meat, who one day will take her to his home and rap her fingers if she burns his dinner.
    She would rather die.
    “Perhaps if he is wise enough to recognize my excellent conversation,” she says finally, though she knows she cannot disguise the bitterness she feels, “he will not be so bad.”
    Her father’s hand falls to her shoulder.
    “Of course, of course,” he says. She can hear from his tone that he is repentant, that he regrets having spoken to her in such a way, betraying his fear. “You are a fountain of excellent qualities, my dear.
    “Oh, how unjust it all is,” he cries suddenly, “that the best of daughters should be denied a mortal happiness! It is a tragedy!”
    He strikes his thigh with his fist.
    Lina knows her father loves her. She has not wanted to be alone tonight. The wedding made her sad as well. But now she has had enough. She cannot bear any more of this, wants no more of his dramatics. She begins to rise from the floor.
    Again he is immediately regretful.
    “Child, child. Do not mind me,” he says. “I am only a foolish old man. You are beloved to me, my only comfort. You will find happiness, I am sure of it.”
    He takes her hand and kisses it.
    “Don’t worry,” she says. “I intend a different sort of life for myself, anyway.”
    “Of course,” he says. But he is not listening. He does not ask her about this life she imagines, and she is trapped in the life she has, she knows. She is trapped at her mother’s side, condemned to listen to her complaints. She is trapped by the walls of the courtyard and the orchard that ends at the river, trapped by the duties of sweeping and washing and cooking and sewing. All possibility in her life began with her sex, perhaps, and ended with the fever that came to her one night and left her scarred and stunted.

    She has seen no fondness between her parents. She knows, though, for she has seen it between Margaretta’s parents—Margaretta’s father’s hands on his wife’s waist or cupping her bottom when they thought no one was looking—that sometimes there is love between husbands and their wives, that there is love between a blushing girl and boy who dance the Ländler, their arms intertwined, the girl’s face upturned toward the boy’s, smiling.
    But that is not to be her life.
    Hers is not a face to turn toward anyone.
    —
    THE NEXT MORNING she is awakened at dawn by the sound of her mother’s screams and by Hilda’s wailing. She comes to the top of the stairs in her nightdress and looks down. Her mother and Hilda are cringing against the