Stones From the River by Ursula Hegi Read Free Book Online Page B

she said and extended the cloth.
    Trudi hid her hands behind her back, terrified her finger would turn out like Frau Blau’s. She didn’t know if it would be worse to have a crooked finger or a thumb like that of Herr Blau who—during his many years at the sewing machine—had run a needle through his thumbnail, leaving a black crater-shaped puncture.
    “Children have to obey,” Frau Blau reminded her.
    Trudi stared at Frau Blau’s sturdy shoes. The cracks in the leather were magnified by layers of wax.
    “Children have to obey!”
    From the roof came the low, moaning call of pigeons. As Trudi feltFrau Blau waiting, she was glad she didn’t have a grandmother in her house, even if grandmothers baked and ironed and knitted and grew beautiful flowers. Most houses had grandmothers in them. Grandmothers made you finish what was on your plate and told you it was not polite to stare at grown-ups. Grandmothers made you say your prayers and wash behind your ears. Grandmothers could make you do whatever they wanted because they were old.
    Frau Blau patted Trudi’s hair. “Is it because you miss your mother?”
    “Because I don’t want my finger to look like yours,” Trudi blurted.
    “Ach so.”
Frau Blau chuckled and held her crooked finger up between herself and Trudi. “Is that what you think? That it’s from cleaning?”
    Trudi nodded.
    “Oh, but that finger was always like that. From when I was born. Just like you—” She stopped.
    “It was always that way?”
    “Always. You can tell a lot by a person’s fingers. Let me look at yours.” She crouched and brought her face close to Trudi’s hands. Her gray hair was stiff and wavy from the beauty parlor. “See those white specks under your fingernails?”
    Trudi looked at her fingernails. They were the color of her skin, only shiny, and some had tiny white spots.
    “That’s how you can tell how many mortal sins people have committed.” Frau Blau ran one thumb across Trudi’s fingernails. “Now with children … until they reach the age of reason, those specks are just a warning of mortal sins they might commit if they aren’t careful. You have… let me see—five altogether. That means you have to choose five times against the devil. Come—” She straightened with a sigh and, still holding Trudi’s wrist, headed for the kitchen. “Let me warm you a cup of milk.”
    Every morning Trudi would wake with the memory of what her mother had said—
“When I get back, things will be better between us”
—and she’d try to imagine their new lives: her father’s eyes would lose that worry; she and her mother would sit by the river instead of in the sewing room or beneath the house; the three of them would stand in the church square after mass, talking with other families.
    Except, her mother didn’t make good on her promise.
    She never came back.
    And she didn’t recognize Trudi the next time she saw her in Grafenberg. The rattle of her breath forced her neck into an arch on the hospital pillow. Above the metal bed hung a wooden crucifix. Jesus had his fingers spread as if to ward off the nails that held his palms to the cross. It was the only indication of a possible protest: the rest of his body had adapted itself to the shape of the cross as though made for it.
    For over an hour Trudi listened to her mother’s breath, standing frozen, her back to the window, enveloped by the asylum smell of candles and cinnamon. Her mother’s features were distorted with the effort of straining for yet another breath that filled the room and made Trudi feel as though she herself were suffocating. She felt an urgency to know what would happen in her life from now on—every hour, every moment even, because if you knew ahead of time, you could stop bad things from happening.
    When her mother’s dreadful breathing finally stopped, Trudi was relieved at the silence until the nurse bent over the bed to close her mother’s eyelids. The nurse had hairy wrists, and