Qalani
I held the shallow wooden bowl as another coughing fit tore through my older sister’s thin body. Kenaya pressed her palm against her ribs, as if trying to hold herself together, though day by day, it was becoming clearer the sickness in her chest was breaking her apart. Against the plain-weave cloth of her unbelted dress, her pale hand trembled. Between each cough, Kenaya inhaled hard, her eyes widening, the muscles in her neck straining as she struggled to take in enough air. I held the basin up, knowing she would cough until she retched, though for days she had only been able to swallow broth a few sips at a time.
My sister had never been this sick before. Usually when she took ill, our mother slept with her in the kitchen. Mama stoked the fire in the earthen stove and boiled water in our biggest ceramic pot, the door cloth pulled tight and secured with heavy stones at the bottom to trap steam inside. In the morning, when I moved the stones and slipped into the kitchen, damp air, filled with the potent mint and pepper of herbs, greeted me. Always before, the pungent steam had opened up Kenaya’s chest and restored her breathing. But now she and Mama had passed ten nights in the steam-laced kitchen.
Kenaya bent over the basin. Breathing through my mouth so the sour smell that rose up wouldn’t make me gag, I put one hand on my sister’s back. I could feel the bony plain of her shoulder blade through the shawls we heaped on her, trying, and failing, to keep the chill away. Illness was stealing her lovely curves, her full cheeks, the beauty she shared with our mother. She spat, the sign it was over. For now. I set the basin down and helped her lay back.
“Mara.” She said my name but didn’t open her eyes. Purple hollows showed beneath them, like shadows settling in the little dips of the land as the sun went down.
“I’m here.” I made my voice soothing, but I hoped she wouldn’t open her eyes. My face never hid anything. If my sister looked at me, she would know the violence that shook her body shook me too.
“Rest now,” I said, tucking her hand beneath the blanket. Before I let go, she squeezed my hand. I squeezed back, but gently. Under her hot skin, the bones felt fragile.
I carried the basin out of the kitchen, inhaling the crisp air in the open yard at the center of our family’s compound. I glanced down. The bowl held a pink-tinged froth; through it curled strands of bloody mucus like sinister red hairs.
Mama came over, trailed by my grandmother, Hachamama. When she looked in the basin, Mama’s face, usually so composed, went slack.
Hachamama took the bowl out of my hands. “Get Qolliri,” she said. My grandmother didn’t tell me to run to the healer’s house, but I did, focusing on how the familiar path up the canyon disappeared under my feet to avoid the panic flickering at the edges of my vision.
I slowed and caught my breath as I approached Qolliri’s one-room house, the only one in the canyon without a pen beside it. The old healer kept no llamas, no alpacas, not even the cuys that bedded down in a furry mass in everyone else’s kitchen. He got his wool in trades, his meat in meals shared in grief or in joy. Qolliri was tending plants in his garden, his face hidden by his wide-brimmed hat woven out of ichu grass, a design not of our Kanas people but that he had adopted in his days as a traveling healer. When he turned toward me, my fear receded. Qolliri had always been able to help Kenaya before.
Thanks for reading this excerpt from my novel-in-progress.
-Rebecca
Rebecca Brams 