I was still unused to her speaking of such things so openly. I didn’t know what to say.
‘They won’t risk you making the Wurst go bad,’ she said. ‘Truly. It’s what I do.’
‘Doesn’t your mother know you are lying?’ I ventured.
‘I don’t care if she does. I cannot bear it.’
We set the chest down on the grass and sat on its lid to rest. For a while we said nothing, only caught our breath, wiped our sweating palms against our knees. The day was wide-bellied with sky.
‘It’s the squeal,’ Thea said eventually. ‘I can’t stand to hear them squeal. As much as I know it is inevitable, as much as I know . . .’ She shook her head. ‘There is something broken-hearted in their cry. I hate it. Oh, even the thought of it! I hate to see them die and know it, and cry for themselves.’ She attempted a laugh. ‘It’s awful.’
‘You have a soft heart.’
Her wolfish smile. ‘I can wring a chicken’s neck. My heart can’t be that soft.’
‘But chickens don’t cry.’
‘No.’
‘And it happens quick for chickens. Just a snap.’
‘A crick of bone and they’re gone.’
‘Mm. But a pig . . .’
Thea took a deep breath. ‘A pig knows you have betrayed it.’
‘Not soft-hearted, then,’ I murmured. ‘Pure-hearted.’
Thea stood and pulled me to my feet. ‘Anyway,’ she said. ‘Leave some cloths swimming in a bucket and your mother will not ask questions.’
I did as she suggested, and although Mama made her frustration known, I heard her explain to Papa that I would not be helping. When the hour came to stick Hulda, I made my excuses and crawled into bed and covered my ears with my hands. The waiting was unbearable. I closed my eyes and thought of Thea and imagined her hiding in her own bed, eyes scrunched tight, and pictured her eyelashes upon her cheek. I wondered if Anna Maria made her whip the pig’s blood as my mama usually did, until it stopped stringing together and was ready for cooking. Then I thought of Thea talking of my ‘time’， and how relieved I was to be reminded that she, too, had such a thing, and that my bleeding was not unnatural, was not a symptom of some deep error within me as I had first suspected but was, as Mama had told me, common to all women who might bear a child. It was then that, despite the blanket over my head and my hands over my ears, I heard the commotion of the catch in the sty and, a few minutes later, the shrill, shrieking panic.
During the next two weeks I fell asleep upon a pillow that smelled of smoke, to the sounds of my mother damping the fire and adjusting the height of the hanging sausages. My dreams were filled with meat.
Night is unfurling herself now. The wind has picked up and clouds have blown in over the rising moon. It is growing dark. Through the trees I can make out lights winking across the valley floor. I imagine that I alone remain outside at this hour. Everyone must be at their dinner or prayers now. I picture open Bibles, scrubbed hands, steam issuing from plates of cabbage and potato.
It has been a long time since I held a Bible. Scripture I once knew by heart has become adulterated with my own words so that it speaks to a truth I know more keenly. But if I close my eyes, I can still feel the weight of my family’s black book in my hands. I can picture my name and birthdate written in the back cover in my father’s lopsided handwriting. Proof I entered the world, even if it was to eventually salt the tongues of the apostles with poetry to my own taste.
Our Bible was my father’s lodestone. He cherished it like nothing else in our home. Of course, I can remember it, not only in my mind but in my body. The texture of its feather-light pages against my moistened fingertip. The softness of its leather against my palm. A crux, a key, an anchor. Without my father’s devotion to that Bible I would not be here. Without that Bible, nothing would have happened. I would not be in the cold wind, knees bent to my chest, sitting on this carpet of gum leaves and possum droppings, if it wasn’t for that pumping, papered heart of God.
The final weeks before we departed were an exhausting dance between anticipation and dread, excitement and fear. I remember the constant packing, unpacking and repacking of belongings; the careful placement of axes and irons and drivers, configurations of boots and leather, folding cloth in such a way as to fill all available space, picking over seeds. I remember the whittling down of all we owned to those precious trunks, the home gutted and made strange. Most of all I remember feeling on the cusp of something, as though I were rounding a bend, about to see the horizon before me. As though I was being drawn up and up from a dark bank of sleep, about to wake, about to breathe.