The next day I heard the lock unclick on the outside of the door, and a fist pounded on the wood.
“Breakfast,” Belen said.
I made breakfast, washed the dirty clothes and returned to the house for my next attempt at baking the bread. The batch of yogurt culture I’d made after my failed attempt and after buying fresh milk warmed at the back of the stove. I checked and double-checked the ingredients, kneaded the dough until it stretched and bounced, placed the bowl in a sheltered, sunny area and waited.
I scrubbed the plastic kitchen floor on my hands and knees, weeks of grime dirtying my pail of water, the floor almost as filthy as the packed-dirt floor of our hut. I checked on the bread. I wiped down the walls in the kitchen where greasy splatters and drips of milk had obscured the color—dark blue, I discovered, not gray. I checked on the bread, then washed the living room floor again. By the time I was finished, the bread had risen into a rounded mound that pushed at the towel draped over the top of the bowl. A stirring began in my chest, a tingling sensation that pulled up the corners of my lips and made me giddy.
I punched the rounded mound of dough so it sank back into the bowl and then divided it into four, placing the handfuls of dough into greased bread pans and setting them back in the sun to rise. It was then that I dared believe it was working. I finished the floor in the living room while the dough rose in the pans, pushing against the towel much more quickly this time, as though it had perfected the art of rising. I warmed the oven and put the pans inside. The dough matched the description in the book, and I bit at my finger, a squeak escaping my mouth.
While the bread baked, I moved to the boys’ bedroom and scrubbed until a warm glow rose from the wood floor, giving the room an aura of health and naturalness. I checked the door, looked out the front window, determined that no one was watching and then lay down on one of the beds, my head on a pillow. These boys had probably never experienced an earache in their lives.
I could hear the laughter of children, the sound of Eva dancing in the sun, and I slid off the bed, adjusting the veil over my face. I looked out into the street from the doorway. The bread was baking, the children were laughing, my smile reached my eyes—until I saw what the children were laughing about.
A group of kids had gathered in a tight circle, and I assumed they would kick the can and run as they had earlier, but this time their excitement was focused on something other than a tin object.
One of the boys I’d met at the tree house stood in the center of the circle—the boy with crutches, who had sped away in the grasses as though he’d been chased often. Fabio. I could see his face just above the children’s heads, his lips pulled tight and his eyes wary. A red gash on the right side of his forehead dripped blood down into one eye, yet none of the children helped him. Instead, they laughed and jostled him. It was like my first day in this town, when I’d been chained to the doghouse and put on display.
I glanced to my right, at Djala’s chair. She sat watching, rocking, the gun across her knees. She cackled and rocked, cackled and rocked. I crept down the few front steps and walked carefully, quietly, a silent wolf observing the enemy, making my way to the back of the circle. David stood on the other side of the street. We looked at each other, but he did not come to stand beside me, and I did not ask him to.
Mateo stood in front of Fabio and held the boy’s crutches in his hand. He held them close to Fabio’s outstretched hand and then quickly pulled them away when Fabio reached for them. He laughed like a hyena, a cackle of ill will, a carrion eater waiting for the prey to show weakness and run.
I pushed my way between a girl and a boy, both of whom stood on tiptoe, trying to see into the center of the circle. Sliding between those in the next row, I found myself with only one child between me and Mateo. I stopped, considered a moment and evaluated whether I would become the next target if I disrupted their game. Here in the sun, Fabio looked thin, pale, with hair so black it made his skin seem translucent. His surliness was gone, but a determination remained that I could see in the set of his jaw. The wound on his head was beginning to form a hard crust, and on the other side of his forehead I saw a thin line, a raised scar, from injuries past. Maybe life was better for those rejected and sent to the camp in the woods than for those who remained.
I calculated the distance between me and Mateo and pushed aside the child in front of me. I reached out, grabbed Mateo under the arms, hoisted him into the air, turned him and slung him over my shoulder. Many times I had done this with Eva. Mateo was a bit heavier but not unbearably so, and he wasn’t as muscled as Eva. He felt soft, malleable and puffy around the waist, as though he were made of rising dough. He did not kick as I walked with him back to the house, but he grunted when his stomach pushed into my shoulder. He dropped the crutches.
The children’s laughter changed. Now, instead of laughing at Fabio and his futile efforts to regain his crutches, they laughed at Mateo. When he heard their laughter, Mateo became furious and then began to kick, pounding his fists into my back and pulling at the veil over my head. I held his feet together and endured the fists that pummeled my back like acorns shot from a slingshot.
The veil was off now, but I kept my steady pace. I walked across the lumpy ground of our front yard, glanced at Djala, who raised the rifle at me and offered a gummy smile, and climbed the steps to the house, pushing open the door. The smell in the air had changed from the nutty aroma of baking bread to the slightly smoking smell of bread that had been baking too long.
I was angry as I had never been before.
Mateo continued to pound me with his fists, and now I increased my pace and kicked open the door to his room. I walked to his bed and threw him down on it. He landed on his back, grunting, and looked up at me with startled and fearful eyes. His hands were closed into fists, his face was red and puffy, his breath fast and hard.
“I’m telling Dad,” he screamed. “He’ll chain you up to the doghouse again and pound you until you bleed.”
The heat of anger crept up my neck and into my cheeks. I bit my teeth together hard and swallowed.
“Those kids play with you only because they fear you,” I said.
“I have lots of friends and you don’t have any. I hate you and wish you’d died.”
I walked out of his room, slamming the door behind me, and went into the kitchen. I opened the door to the oven and, with towels over my hands, pulled out the loaves of bread. They had baked too long and were more dense and hard than need be. I sat down on the floor right there and put my face against my knees. Tears softened the material of my brown pants, and I could feel the wet fabric rubbing against my cheek, but I couldn’t stop. Someone came in the house, propped open the door and opened the windows in the kitchen and living room. He closed the door to the oven and draped the veil over my head and knees.
Mateo screamed from his bedroom.
“David, don’t you be nice to her. You saw what she did to me.”
David opened and closed the door to the bedroom. I could hear murmuring in there, a soft conversation that became momentarily loud.
“I won’t do it,” came Mateo’s voice, high and whiny now. “I hate you. Why do you side with her?” Something hard and solid hit the wall, and David emerged from the bedroom. He closed the door behind him and sat in the living room, where he picked up one of the books on baking bread and began to turn its pages.
I lifted my head and wiped my face with the veil. I stood up and washed my hands at the sink. I peeled potatoes, cut up vegetables, prepared a pot of water on the stove and began to add ingredients. Nathanael’s favorite stew would be our dinner tonight, accompanied by bread that was a bit hard.
As the stew began to cook and I added salt, strips of gingerroot and chunks of turnip, I also warmed a pan of milk at the back of the stove and began to gently cook the yogurt culture for my next attempt.
As soon as Belen arrived home, Mateo yelled from his room and began to sob loudly, which made me wonder for just a minute if perhaps I’d hurt him more than I’d thought. David followed his father into the bedroom and closed the door behind them. The loud sobs quieted and stilled, and then I heard only murmuring. When Belen came out of the bedroom, I stiffened my shoulders and waited. He spoke to my back.
“You will not discipline these children. That is my job, not yours.”
The veil rustled slightly from the breeze through the open windows. I stirred the warm milk in the pan and thought about my life in this village so far. Even though I had cooked, cleaned, washed the clothing and made their lives easier, we hadn’t had a single day without conflict. My shoulders were tight and sore from the constant tension, and I’d become hesitant in my actions. Around Belen, I felt like the wolf—not wanting to be touched, wary of his presence and as cautious of his movements as I was of fire.
“You will look at me when I speak to you,” he said and grabbed my shoulder, his fingers digging in. I stared at the floor because I could, because he did not know where I was looking and couldn’t control that, at least.
“Don’t touch him again, hear me? Ever.” His voice was low and deep and his hands twitched at his sides, wanting to swing and slap at me. “Tomorrow Celso returns, and we will discuss the next step you will take. You’ve been troublesome and meddlesome. You are more work than your cleaning is worth.”
He pushed me aside and sniffed the stew on the stove. He dipped the spoon into the pot, lifted it to his mouth and tasted. He dipped again, tasted once more, then dropped the spoon onto the stove beside the over-baked loaves of bread and strode out the door. David sat down on the couch in the living room and continued to read the book, or pretended to read the book, but Mateo never did come out of his room, even when we sat down to dinner. I sat in Mateo’s place, ate at the table with my brother and father and almost felt like I was part of the family. When the bread was dipped into the stew, it tasted quite good and softened nicely. Both David and Belen ate great chunks of it, but neither looked at me and not a word was said.
In the morning I made breakfast and then returned to the lean-to. I wanted to sweep in the daylight, dust the edges of the room before starting this day’s bread making. When I returned to the house, David stood in the kitchen, his hands kneading and turning the contents of a large bowl. His hands were coated in flour, his face had a slight dusting, and his shoulders rotated in rhythm with his hands. I dropped the basket for dirty clothes inside the door and stood beside him in the kitchen. As I watched his hands turning and kneading, the muscles in his arms tensing and releasing, I understood that this was not new to him.
“You almost had it,” he said. “The last batch would have worked if you’d ignored Mateo.”
“You don’t need me to bake the bread.”
“Yeah, we do. Dad doesn’t want anyone to know I’m doing woman’s work.”
I continued to watch his hands and could see the confidence and enjoyment he found in doing this. It soothed me to watch him, and I leaned against the stove.
“But they’ll send you away if you don’t do the bread right, and if you don’t stop making Dad mad.” David’s dough was soft and stretchy, matching the pictures next to the recipe.
“Where will they send me?”
“The city. And I like what you did to Mateo yesterday. He deserved it. He needs it. Mom used to keep him in line, but there’s no one to do that now. I want you to stay here.”
Tense, release. Tense, release. The dough was smooth and malleable, not sticky or flaky. His movements mesmerized me. When a shadow stretched across the square of sunlight from the door, I looked up, blinking, waking from the calming movement of David’s kneading. A dark shape stood in the doorway—I couldn’t see the person’s face with the light behind him, but David stopped his movements, pulled away from the bowl and stood trembling against the refrigerator door. I stood in front of David and waited.
The man took a step into the room, out of the sunlight, and now I could see the heavy brow, thinning hair and deepset eyes of Celso, Belen’s brother. The man who’d chained me to the doghouse. David breathed hard behind me.
“David, David, David,” Celso said, his voice singsong, light and teasing. His eyes didn’t match the tone, though, and I moved closer to David. “I’ve told you before, kid, you’re not cut out to be anyone’s protector, not even your reject sister’s. Making the bread for her, were you?”
A squeak entered David’s breathing, a high-pitched wheeze that sounded almost like the buzzing of the cicada. The rhythmic squeaks began to increase in speed until there was barely a pause between them. David held my arm, and then he slid to the floor, his other hand against his throat, his breath coming in gasps. Celso pushed me out of the way and stood over David.
“And look at you now. Can’t even breathe. Your mother never should have taught you how to bake the bread.”
I turned on the cold water at the sink and ran a cloth under the tap. I knelt next to David and wiped at his face, around his eyes, around his mouth. He stared up at Celso, his eyes huge, his breath ragged. The cool water on the cloth didn’t seem to help, but I kept wiping at his face while Celso watched, a half smile on his face.
“Like brother, like sister. You two are both damaged, he with asthma, you with ugliness.”
I stood then and pushed Celso in the chest so hard I grunted and he fell, landing on his back in the doorway to the house. I bent down again and wiped at David’s face. He could no longer see Celso, but as he watched me, his breath began to slow, began to lose its squeak, and the skin around his lips became pink again instead of blue.
When a shadow stretched through the room, sending its darkness like a blackened cloud over us, I leaped to the side and David raised a hand to shield his eyes. Where I had been the moment before, the flash of a blade came down as Celso swept his knife through the air above David. I crouched now, hands out, and he charged at me, but I leaped aside and ran through the kitchen and out the front door.
I could hear him breathing hard, almost growling, but as soon as my feet touched the grass, I knew I could outrun this man. I could run back to the camp in the woods and never see this village again. But then he would use my running away as an excuse to torment my camp family, and he had probably been tormenting David for years. I slowed my feet, turned and faced the man with the knife.
He charged at me with the momentum of a rolling boulder. He was lumpy and slow with his body but quick and sneaky with his hands. When he ran at me with the knife pointed to my chest, I stepped to the side and he pushed past, but his hand reached for me, grasping my arm and pulling me with him down to the earth, where my shoulder hit hard against the ground. His hold loosened, and I stood quickly.
He rolled, lumbered to his feet and switched the knife to the other hand. His chest heaved, like the dying wolf’s in our campsite. I bent my knees, held my hands out from my sides and waited. David appeared on the small porch, one hand steadying himself in the doorway, the other hand on his chest.
Celso barreled at me, the knife flashing, and cut a groove in the palm of my hand. I gasped and stumbled over the lumps in the grass, falling hard. He came at me again, his face angry and mottled, his knife pointed at me and glinting in the light of the sun. I should have run, escaped to the woods when I’d had the chance.
I curled into a ball, held my hands over my head and waited. When the gunshot came, Celso stopped. Djala stood at the end of her porch, pointing her rifle between me and Celso.
“My eyesight ain’t too good, Celso. Wouldn’t want to hit the wrong person.”
The tendons in Celso’s arms stood out, tense and rigid. He watched Djala, and I stood, tensing my legs for another run or assault or fall.
“Go back to sleep, Djala,” Celso said.
“Think I’ve slept enough today.” She didn’t look at me, but I was pretty sure she was speaking to me. “Don’t know that Belen would appreciate your messing with his little project here.”
“She should be chained to the doghouse.”
“Well, she ain’t.”
They stared at each other, both with jaws set and eyes hard. I didn’t know if Djala was being nice to me or if she was merely protecting Belen’s interests.
I backed up until I felt the steps to the house behind my heels. I looked up at David. His breathing was normal now, his face no longer pinched and blue. Together we went into the house and shut the door. We watched Djala and Celso from the window over the sink in the kitchen. David held out a towel to me, which I wrapped around my right hand. I had been holding my hand up and the blood had dripped from the cut, disappearing into the sleeve of my black sweater. We didn’t hear what was said, but Celso walked down the street and then disappeared between two houses. David put the bread dough in a bowl, placed it in the sunny spot and covered it lightly with another towel.
He stood in front of me for a minute, and we looked at each other.
“The loaves mustn’t burn this time,” he said. Then he left the house, and I watched from the doorway as he dragged his feet in a slow, plodding path through the dust of the road.
When I pulled the loaves from the oven, the top of the bread was a crisp golden brown and the smell in the house breathed of possible success.
Belen walked in the door, followed by Celso, almost tripping over the backs of Belen’s shoes. When I saw the two men together, I wondered if they were twins—same heavy brow, same square body shape, same hooded dark brows—but Belen’s eyes looked away while Celso’s tried to bore holes in my veil. I bit my lower lip while they examined the bread. What had Celso told Belen about the bread? What had Celso told Belen about me, about Djala, about David?
Celso broke one of the loaves of bread open, sniffed the fluffy interior and took a bite. He shrugged his shoulders.
“Not bad. Not as good as Teresa’s, but not bad.”
He sat at the table and consumed a quarter of the loaf of bread. I saw Belen tuck the other loaves into a bag, which he placed in the refrigerator. Mateo came running into the house, David trailing behind, his hands deep in his pockets and his eyes wary.
“We smelled it all the way down the road,” Mateo said. “I want some.”
Belen cut a thick slice, spread it with melting butter and handed the first piece to David. He cut another slice and handed this to Mateo. Then he cut one for himself. David did not breathe deeply and consume the smell of the bread but ate with great bites while watching Celso. Mateo hummed to himself, a tune my mother used to sing to me that spoke of happiness and goodness and maybe some innocence somewhere.
Belen sat at the table across from his brother. He ate his slice of bread carefully. His eyes flickered, never holding still. He appeared to be talking to his bread when he spoke.
“You said she’d make how much, again?”
“In one week she could make as much as Teresa made in a month baking the bread and selling it at the market.” Celso watched me then, his lips pulled up at the corners. “Tell her to take off her veil. I want to see her face again.”
Belen nodded at me.
I stood against the stove in the kitchen. The room felt hot, sticky, the yeasty smell of the bread causing my stomach to groan. His reasons for wanting me to take off the veil didn’t make sense. He’d seen me without the veil when Djala had shot between us.
“Take off the veil,” Belen said.
When I still hesitated, he stood, placing both hands on the tabletop. I slipped the veil off my head, trying to still its fluttering by using both hands. The wound on my hand still bled.
Celso raised his eyelids enough to look at me. He examined me up and down, from the top of my head to my toes. I wanted to look where he was looking. I wanted to understand the knowing look on his face, examine myself from outside my body. What did people see when they looked at me? Why did it feel so different to look out of my own eyes, feel who I was, know who I was, when almost everyone else looked at me with shock and revulsion?
“If she doesn’t make the money sitting on the corner, she can make the money in other ways. Her body is fine. Men pay a lot for young flesh like that.”
Belen jerked his head away from me. Both David and Mateo sat silently, watching this exchange with serious faces and mouths full of bread.
“We never agreed to that,” Belen said. “I’ll not have her used in that way.” He glanced at me, at the two boys, back at Celso, who was watching him. “Begging, yes.”
Celso said nothing. Something stirred in me, something dark and deep. The way he looked at my body, the smell of unwashed skin and smoke that emanated from him, how he spoke through Belen as though I weren’t worthy of his attention—all of this made me see him as a coyote, skittish and devious.
Maybe he hadn’t told Belen about attacking me with a knife, or about David making the bread. Should I say something? Might that make things worse?
“We may not need to go that far. Her face alone should earn you plenty of money,” said Celso. “Or she could work at the SWINC factory in the city. They’ll hire her type there.” He looked at me now with his mouth pulled down at the corners and his eyebrows drawn tight over his eyes, as though I were something filthy, something slippery and rotten. He stood, pushing back his chair and wiping the crumbs from the table onto the floor.
“If you decide to send her, I’ll be here before dawn. Dress her in rags, add some dirt to her face, make her bring that violin she is said to play.”
I forgot for a minute that the veil was in my hand. My lips quivered, and I blinked my eyes. I’d been here for how long? A week? And already they were sending me away. I was too much trouble, too hideous, too incompetent. When I opened my mouth, my voice wouldn’t cooperate. I couldn’t even summon a whisper.
Belen tapped one hand against the top of his thigh. His eyes focused somewhere on my knees and I stood very still, hardly daring to breathe, hoping that he’d allow me to stay.
“Next month,” he said. “This bread will do for now. We can sell it at the store.”
Celso slammed his fist down on the table, the bread popping up and dropping back down. Belen looked at his brother. A froth of white outlined the right side of Celso’s mouth, and his nostrils flared like a wild boar’s.
“She did not bake the bread.”
David sucked in his breath. Would the squeaking begin again, the thrashing about on the floor and the blue lips? We waited, the moment thick and oppressive like the moment before I grabbed the crayfish, when I knew it might erupt, snap at me, hide beneath the rock. Belen looked at David.
“Your mother taught you well, David. Then we don’t need the girl.”
David pushed back from the table and held his hands in his lap. Mateo’s head rotated back and forth, a wary owl, his mouth open slightly. I held the veil in my hand, felt its absence and slipped it back onto my head. They wouldn’t see my tears—none of them would see my tears.
“She will make money for us in other ways, then. If that doesn’t work, she’ll return home, take care of the house, and you will teach her how to make the bread. For now, it will be your job, David, but only for us. You will not sell the bread at the market—that is not a man’s work. When her money comes in from the city, we will hire someone to clean the house. For now, this will do.” Belen’s arm swept out, indicating the cleaned house and all the work I’d done. I should have worked more slowly, made them think they needed me forever. David opened his mouth but did not speak.
Celso crossed his arms above his bulging stomach and tried to smile, but the unused muscles resisted, stretching the corners of his mouth long. “And you, girl, will stay close to me when we travel to the city. You’ll not run, you’ll not attempt anything, or your handsome little friend from the woods will find his throat slit in the middle of the night.” When he said the word handsome, his eyelids fluttered.
Celso reached around me, his unwashed smell overpowering the smell of fresh bread. He grasped the remaining chunk of bread in his meaty hand and brushed his arm against my chest. The floor shook as he exited the house.
Tomorrow he would be my master. Just as I’d begun to get my feet underneath me, to make friends and find support, I would again disappear as I had from the camp in the woods, where dragonflies flew and crickets sang. How many more moves were left for me? Probably more than I cared to know.