Siberia by Ann Halam Read Free Book Online

woman sitting by me, with a hard square face. She had a uniform, and a nurse’s cap on her head, so I knew I was in the hospital. “Mama?” I said. “Where’s my mama?”
    “Yourmamawillbeallowedtovisityouatvisitingtime,” said the fat woman, in a grumbling, monotonous voice, all the words running together.
    “When is visiting time?”
    “Next week.”
    I found out later that Mama had tried to rescue me. But I had been taken to the hospital from school, on Nicolai’s tractor, before she knew what had happened, and afterward she didn’t have a chance of getting me out. My kneebone was cracked, and my shinbone too. They weren’t bad breaks, they were what are called greenstick fractures: but the doctor didn’t treat them properly. He wrapped my whole leg in thick plaster, and made me stay in bed for weeks. He gave me medicine that made me sleepy and weak; and Mama had to increase her quota to pay toward my treatment.
    Nobody trusted the Settlements Commission doctors, who traveled around the wilderness, visiting the useless Prison Settlements hospitals that were supposed to be a sign of how good the government was. Anyone who was really sick or hurt did their best to stay at home. There were women among the ordinary prisoners who knew about herbal medicines. In our Settlement there was also Mama, and Madame Imrat, and the proud gentleman who had been a surgeon: who would give good advice, at least. But I didn’t get any of that. I don’t expect the hospital doctor meant to cripple me. He just didn’t know much.
    I was in a room with four beds called Children’s Orthopedic Ward. I could read the notice from my bed, and spent hours wondering about that strange long word. Most of the time I was alone. It was very cold, as winter came on, much colder than in the cupboard-bed I shared with my mama. I lay and watched the snow fall, and thought of the wilderness that stretched forever out there, like an endless dream. What about the great journey Mama had planned? How could I walk hundreds of miles? How could I cross the wilderness?
    It would never happen now.
    The end-of-winter blizzards were blowing when they let me go home. I could get about by then, though I had to use my ugly crutches. My right leg was like a thin white stick, with a strange bend in it. Mama helped me to practice, and soon I could walk fairly well. In March, on my birthday, I limped out to the potato patches on my own. It was tough, but I made it.
    I sat among the dwarf willows, by the place where we had buried Nivvy. I thought about never being able to run, ever again. I was ten years old, but I felt a million years older. If only I had listened when Mama told me to let Rose get the high marks. If only I hadn’t been so proud. I saw my life stretching ahead of me, into the dim desert of being a big teenager, and I knew that Mama and I would never run away, that was just a daydream. I would live in the Settlement, in the dirt and cold, forever and ever. And now I was a cripple too.
    The blackthorn hedge, that someone had planted out here for a windbreak, was half buried in spring snow: but there were flowers opening on some of the thorny twigs. Mama had told me that blackthorn is one of the trees that remember. It tries to live the way it did before the winters were so cold and so long. I thought of the sour little plums, called sloes, that people gathered to flavor their homemade liquor. That suits me, I thought. Stupid flowers that try to grow in winter. Bitter fruit.
    I went back to school. My leg dragged, but nobody laughed at me as I limped to the seniors’ end. When I sat down, Storm reached across from the desk he shared with Soldier, and shoved a package of furry exercise-book paper into my hand. There was a piece of real chocolate inside; I don’t know where he’d got it from.
    The smell was amazing.
    “What do I have to do for this?” I asked, not looking at him.
    “Nothing,” muttered Storm, not looking at me. “It’s . . .