Read Whisper for Free Online

in the mud, rest our backs against each other for warmth in the night when the chill seeped through our blankets. Something had changed, and even though I was almost sixteen, my birthday only days away, I was not a woman. I had not yet grown breasts, and I had not yet had my period. I knew I was late—Rosa had gotten hers when she was fourteen. But I did know that my feelings were true, and my blood pounded when Jeremia touched me. I wanted that feeling again, his body pressed against mine as snug as bones.

Four
    Our job—Eva’s and mine—was to dry blueberries, wild raspberries and blackberries for the winter months. We picked them in great quantities and laid them on the plastic sheet near the fire. Eva’s job was to scoot away the bugs that liked the berries as much as we did. Eva always forgot and chased after a dragonfly or played her games of pretend. I went through the berries again later in the day and removed what bugs I could find.
    When fruit was growing all around us in the summer, it was hard to imagine how little we’d have in the winter. The air was thick with the smell of sweet berries and oncoming fall. I used to love this time of year because it meant my mother was coming. The air itself breathed her presence, a delicious promise.
    Rosa had hated my mother. I used to dance in anticipation of her coming, and Rosa would swat at my legs, smack me on the side of the head and huff. “Your mother doesn’t deserve your love. She abandoned you. She deserves hate.”
    I had thought about that. I had considered hating my mother, but she had saved me as best she could. When I was born and my father saw my disfigured face, he said, “Devil, witch, stealer of lives” and ran with me to the stream. He held me below the surface of the water, but my mother had chased after him. She pulled me from him, held me tightly against her chest and refused to let my father touch me. I was their first child. Then she gave me to Nathanael, who told me the story when he thought I was old enough to understand. He had wanted to make it clear that I belonged here and not with my family.
    â€œI see my mother one day a year,” I had whispered to Rosa. “Why would I spend that day hating her?” Every time my mother came for a visit, I asked her, begged her, pleaded with her to take me with her, to take me back to the village. She’d tuck my hair behind my ears, smile a half smile, call me Lydia and shake her head. For many years, all I dreamed about, all I wanted, was to go home with my mother, but Rosa told me such dreams were stupid.
    When my mother came, Rosa would stay only long enough to glare at her, snarl a few times and stomp around. Then she’d leave and return when my mother was gone.
    Rosa was still young when she left our camp. Only fourteen. I thought about her sometimes and wondered what had happened to her. She had lashed out at life, and I often got in the way. But sometimes she’d comb my hair until it glowed black and glossy. She’d braid it for me, tenderly and carefully, and I would forget that she’d slapped me the hour before. When she left, I was lonely but also secretly happy.
    I promised to be a better sister to Ranita than Rosa had been to me. I would never hit. I would never torment or ridicule. Rosa had made fun of my whispering all the time. She said it was stupid. “You have a voice—use it,” she’d shriek at me. I hadn’t wanted to sound like her. Ever. My own voice was nasal, airy and distorted.
    My mother never made fun of me. I had her for one day a year, one short day, from early afternoon, when she arrived, to the morning, when she had to leave, and I spent every moment touching her hair, holding her hand, resting the skin of my arm against hers. Did she miss me when she left? Did she miss me as much as I missed her?
    â€œYour father is a very important man in the village,” she told me while combing my