The Ghost of Hannah Mendes by Naomi Ragen Read Free Book Online

goat’s milk and poured through the sucking horn into Malca’s mouth. Slowly her cries quieted, but then, just as suddenly, her body flailed as if in a fit, until it went as rigid as a piece of wood .
    My mother started to cry, but her father shook her so hard her teeth rattled like pebbles. She sat down in the dust and wiped her eyes in astonishment, watching as her father took out an old gunnysack and wrapped it around Malca so that even her face was covered. Wrapped so, he placed her in the bottom of a beggar’s pouch and buried her in feathers of down .
    Grandfather Isaac was a tall man with a broad forehead and large eyes that seemed always to be amused. She used to think of them as smiling eyes, mother told me. His lips were a calm, generous curve across his handsome chin. But that day when my mother searched his face for regret, kindness, even sorrow, she found only hot, burning coals that flashed through his narrowed lids, and lips that stretched like a jagged wound beneath his mustache. A horror washed over her as she began to understand what had really happened: Her father, her dear father, had been taken from her, and now in his body a demon dwelt .
    For this she had several proofs. First, when she searched for his shadow—the truest proof he was no demon—she could not find it. And second, he took nothing to eat, his tongue rolling in his mouth like those that lap up fire, water, air, and slime. Terrified, my mother ran through the wailing women, screaming her father’s name .
    “Demon fed on fire, water, dust, and slime, release my father’s shape!” she screamed back at the demon who pursued and overtook her. “You will dry up and return to nothing!” she shouted, wondering if she, too, was to be poisoned and wrapped in a gunnysack. But the demon in the shape of her father caught and held her fast, paying no heed to her hysterical cries .
    “All right,” he said in a whisper that was so strangely calm in her ear, a whisper that immediately made her tongue freeze in cold fear. “Maybe I am a demon. But the Portuguese soldiers are bigger devils yet.”
    My mother looked at the Portuguese. They were enormous, dark men in metal helmets that hid their faces. They held sharp swords and their horses snorted and stamped the ground, filling the air with a smoky fog of dust. Vicious packs of barking dogs snapped at their heels. She then decided that the demon was preferable, and held his hand and watched quietly as he counted out the head price to the Portuguese, who then allowed him to carry her and their belongings across the border .
    As she crossed the border, she felt the dull ache of hopelessness fill her. Her mother and baby sister dead, her father possessed, she waited with stoic acceptance for her turn. She wasn’t surprised when the demon began to run toward the forest, dragging her behind him. In the darkness, she waited for him to reveal himself, to see his clothes evaporate and his head go bald, hair sprouting instead over his face and body .
    Behind each dark tree, she could see evil estries lurking, waiting to make a meal of her. Once, she was positive she’d seen the dark coiled hair of Lilith herself flashing among the branches. Lilith, Adam’s first wife, who spent her time sucking away the breath of a hundred babies a day, vengeance against Eve’s children .
    Her heart stopped cold. Suddenly, she bit the terrible hand that gripped her, drawing blood, and ran ahead, hiding behind the pines. To her surprise, the demon-father didn’t try to follow her. Instead, all his attention was riveted on her sister. My mother watched as he spilled out the down and unwrapped the gunnysack, taking out her sister’s motionless form. He slapped the baby’s face very hard, rubbing his hands roughly along her chest and back .
    My mother always stopped at this point in the story, her face flushing red. “I must tell the truth,” she would say. “I did not so much mind seeing my sister peacefully dead,