My aunt pulls the comb through my long pale hair. She tells me how much I look like my mother.
I do not care to hear this.
My aunt has told me the stories; that my mother knew things she should not have, that madness came with the messages and she had to flee.
I know she left. All else is excuses.
#
I watch my aunt deboning a fish. I am not allowed to wander the town, even though I am thirteen and grown tall.
And it is as if I can see the dark bloom of pain in her chest. She is humming softly at her task, and she is dust; her cheeks, her dark hair, her long hands; all dust, falling to the ground.
I wail, high and keen, and she drops the knife. She looks at me, and her eyes are wide, but not with surprise; with a kind of knowing, and a slow horror.
My fingernails make crescent-moon marks in my palms. My mouth is stretched wide and I am not sure if I am screaming or singing but I know I cannot stop.
All night I stand and screech like the barn owl that is hunting, late, under the moon.
It is not until the next afternoon, when my Aunt clutches at her arm and topples, that my mouth closes on my shriek and cuts it in half.
I bend and take her limp hand in my own.
Then, quietly, very quietly, I begin to cry.