Free Whisper by Chris Struyk-Bonn Page B

myself at a creek where women and children lined the banks. The water was dark—brown and murky. I couldn’t see the bottom of the creek. This may have been the same stream that ran through our camp in the woods, but somewhere along the way it had become filthy and rotten, the crayfish so camouflaged by the brown waters that I couldn’t see them skittering along the creek bed.
    The children and mothers quieted for a minute when they saw me approach, but it didn’t take long for the little ones to go back to their play and the mothers to resume their talking. I hesitated before lowering my basket to the filthy water, but the other women scrubbed their clothes in the stream, and the children splashed and played in it, so I settled myself and began the work.
    I liked the chatter around me. It reminded me of Eva and Jeremia—of having friends. My throat felt tight and raw. I should have let myself cry—why not? But I didn’t cry. Not then, anyway.
    When the first pile of clothes was washed, I returned to the house, hung the clothes to dry on the outside line that ran between my father’s house and the neighbor’s, where the woman with the gun waved at me and grinned her toothless grin, and then took the next stack to the creek. Many of the other women were gone when I returned. There was one family there, a mother with two wee ones, and she also left after a few minutes. I didn’t know if she left because I was there or because her toddler had grown sleepy and cranky.
    The sun was high in the sky, beaming its rays onto my head, onto the dark veil that covered me. Usually I welcomed the sun—I didn’t even mind the heat, the enclosing warmth of humidity, but because my hair had fallen forward over my shoulders, the veil was sticking to the back of my neck. It became itchy, scratchy and annoying. I glanced up and down the creek, saw that I was the only one there and took off the veil.
    I folded it carefully and placed it behind me. I closed my eyes, tilted my face to the sun and felt the touch of a breeze against my sweaty neck. My shoulders were beginning to ache, my hands were raw and sore, my upper back stiff from bending. I turned to my work and pulled out a cream-colored slip—the color of a perfect egg. I stopped for a minute with the material in my hand. The thumping of my heart told me what I had, what treasure I had found, and I stood shakily, clutching the slip to my chest, afraid that it might not be real, that it might disappear.
    When the material stayed in my hands, solidifying and becoming permanent, I pulled it away from my body and shook it loose in front of me. It was long and straight, and its smell was wrong—it should have smelled of yeast and cinnamon, but from the depths of the cloth I smelled something dark and decayed. I turned the skirt around, and in the back, right in the center, was an almost perfect maroon-brown sphere. Blood. Dried blood.
    No.
    I pushed the material down into the water, swirled it back and forth, back and forth again. I rubbed the material between my hands and scrubbed the spot between my knuckles. I didn’t even look to see if the spot was gone. I ground and rubbed, twisted and scrubbed, until my arms ached and my shoulders burned. Then I stood and shook out the slip.
    I could still see discoloration—a darker patch on the lightness of the material—but now at least I could look at it. I would always know what had been there, but I could pretend it was something else, like a water mark or dirt from a log she had once sat on.
    The sound of swishing grass whistled on the wind. I stuffed the slip under the other clothes in the washtub and pulled out a different garment. Guilt tickled my nose, making me sneeze, but I tried to reassure myself that I’d done nothing wrong.
    When Belen stepped out of the grasses and stood beside me, I scrubbed the garment in my hands with shaky fingers and with sweat dripping off the end