Silent Girl by Tricia Dower Read Free Book Online Page B

water like a fallen leaf. Rosie looked dead.
    Matsi screamed and two older girls swam to her side. One hooked an arm around Rosie’s neck and pulled her toward the ceiling. The other took Matsi’s hand and did the same, making Matsi ashamed. They were braver than she. Stronger, too. They hoisted themselves onto the roof, pulling Matsi and Rosie behind them.
    Matsi clung to shingles as the rain beat her back and her legs and glued her hair to her head. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been outside. The wind sounded like a plane lifting off a runway, perhaps a plane to Vancouver. One by one the brown girls flopped onto the roof and Matsi lay with them like sisters, their bodies a chain, hand locked into hand, those on either side of Rosie gripping her wrists.
    As the wind and rain subsided, Matsi raised her head to a world like nothing she’d ever seen. Houses were drowning. Only rooftops poked out as far as she could see, people-shapes sitting or standing on them. The sole lights were tiny ones like fireflies blinking on and off from those rooftops. She heard a yell here, another there. A helicopter flew overhead and one of the girls called out to it. The pilot must not have heard. Her back began itching, then her arms and her legs. The shingles in front of her seemed to move. The brown girls screamed. The roof was thick with bugs – spiders and roaches in search of higher ground. Someone swatted herself, letting go of Rosie who slipped off the roof. They all wailed then, making so much noise they didn’t hear the boat. Who knows how long it took them to hear Maw-Maw and T-Henry shouting?
    Balancing himself on the big-enough boat, T-Henry stood and held out his arms. “Crawl to the edge. I’ll catch you.” Maw-Maw sat beside him like royalty, her arms spread in welcome.
    Matsi was sure the brown girls didn’t understand T-Henry’s words but they scurried to the edge of the roof and began dropping, one at a time, into his arms. One of the brave, strong girls helped Matsi up, helped lower her into the boat. Maw-Maw wrapped the girls in blankets though the day already was hot. She pressed Matsi to her chest.
    â€œMy poor li’l dahlin. I tell T-Henry, if dey doan get out, it meant to be. If dey do, Maw-Maw gonna be dere, gonna find nudder place f’dose dahlin, gonna start over.”
    As they rode away, Matsi thought about a park near her home with a hill she once loved to climb while her parents watched from below. “Keep going,” they’d call out when she looked around, or “that’s far enough.” They weren’t here now to tell her what to do.
    She stared into the whirling, churning water. All sorts of things spun around before speeding on by – a sneaker, a plastic lawn chair, a dead dog poor thing. A girl could be swept away, too, be carried over rooftops and trees before riding a wave into a lagoon where someone looking for someone else would find her and take her home.
    Matsi turned to Maw-Maw’s bloated face, studied the eyes that never smiled even when the mouth did. She would not dance for that woman again.

Kesh Kumay
    IN A YURT UNDER THE GAZE OF ANCIENT SNOW-TUFTED MOUNTAINS, Kyal huddles beneath a blanket, yearning to escape. Her father, grandmother, and younger sister sleep nearby.
    It is quiet on the jailoo, the northern mountain pasture her family inhabits each May to October. She hears only the sheep calling from her uncle’s pen and the occasional whinny from the horses hobbled in a meadow.
    The greasy smell of boiled mutton lodges in every mat cushioning the dirt floor, every rug padding the walls, and every needlework bag and harness dangling from the slender birch spines of the yurt. The air reeks of unwashed bodies. It’s tougher for Kyal to stomach, each year, after months away at university where she rents a room with a shower down the hall. She aired out her bedding this afternoon, spreading it