PAT LOWERY COLLINS

Winner of Boston Author's Club Julia Ward Howe Award for the 2004 best book for children

A Booksense 76 pick for 2003-2004

A NYPL choice for Books for the Teen Age 2003

One of the Grolier forty best young adult novels for 2003

Elected to the 2005 Amelia Bloomer Project list

Review Excerpts:

"Collins beautifully evokes the setting and Helen’s inner voice with her keen sense of rhythm." Kirkus

"As with most YA novels written as poetry, fewer words are used but the impact of each word and the tempo of the narrative drive readers on. An unusual book."
KLIATT - Codes: JS; Recommended for junior and senior high school students. 2003, Houghton Mifflin, 186p.

"This is a tough book that expects a lot from its readers. The terrible secret hidden in the hut may be lost on younger teens or less-sophisticated readers. Nevertheless, this is a powerful and unique book."
Roxanne Burg, Orange County Public Library, CA
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. School Library Journal

"Writing in beautifully crafted free verse that thrums with the rhythm of escape, Collins treads the thinnest line, avoiding terrifying readers with the disfigurement that awaits Helen and yet building tension and compassion. Helen's escape is a jubilant moment of liberation, so powerfully written that it seems to be not just for this character, but for
a tribe, a gender, a race." Leigh Fenly, San Diego Union-Tribune.


CHAPTER ONE

(The lines are broken to fit the space on this page. Words that should appear at the end of a line are placed beneath it.)


Miduna is clicking like a beetle in her sleep
and making little snorts and wheezes
that pinch the dark. The noise
when she thrashes on the palm leaves
is a loud annoying rustle.
But at least I am not by myself in here.
Aman was the only one within
her father's fattening hut for many weeks.
He took her out the minute
that her mother reported to the neighbors
how her belly was now resting on her thighs
when she sat cross-legged.
"Good work," Aman told me
her mother had exclaimed
as she lay her hand upon her head like a blessing.
"You have made us proud."
Aman beams with pleasure when she tells me,
her face so round her smile dissolves
before it pushes out her cheeks.
Her whole family is quite proud of her.
In just four months
she has become as solid and as plump
as her much older sister.
Her breasts now rise
like melons on the vine.
"You will love it, Helen," she had said
upon the day she left the fattening hut.
"Everything you like to eat.
And all you want - rice, yams, beans,
pigeon peas with guinea corn,
your favorite ways for king fish
and red snapper, coconut pudding too.
The whole day long!”

I do like yams and rice, the way my mother
and the other women make them.
My Aunt Margaret, father's sister,
cooks them much too long,
cooks everything too long.
I think that she will not be asked to help,
for she is not included in such things.
I would try to eat
her tasteless plantains and all else
if she would only be included.

The first day here has gone by slowly,
even though my sister, Miduna,
came to stay during the second meal.
She is already married with a baby
who stays close to her
so he can nurse all through the day
while she grows fat.
Miduna spends most
of the time between his feedings
in eating bowls and plates of food
the women have prepared. If she leaves
just a little, all the women are upset.
They say a healthy mother
has to eat as much as possible.
It is her first child and a time for her to spend
in learning how to care for him as well.
When she is fat enough and sure of what
to do for him, she will leave, too.
But I don't like to think of that,
of being all alone in here,
even though Miduna snores.
I have never slept
within a room alone before,
and this room
has been empty for so long
that it feels full of ghosts.
Three sisters have been shut in here
before Miduna and myself. Maybe
it is the ghosts of each young girl.
I remember peeking in at them and wondering
if I could ever sit so still so long.
They seemed much larger versions
of our household god, Hamani,
sitting on his legs within his niche
above the candle fire, cheeks and belly
rosy and as round as a ripe peach.
Sometimes I hid in here with Suba,
the last girl within our family,
one year younger than myself.
But, even then, I knew we did invade
a sacred place, and father always
shooed us out in anger
when he discovered us inside.
It is a larger hut than most
with walls of daub and wattle
washed white inside. It sits
directly on the ground
to keep the women serving here
from climbing up and down into the trees
where many other dwellings rest.
There is an opening high at the top
where I can just make out some twisted branches
and a very tiny square of blue.
The walls slope outward from this opening
and then sweep right down like petals
from the center of a giant flower.
The fire smoke drifts up and out into the trees.
There is a pleasant smell of simmering earth
and of the sweet oaxa burned
to calm the room’s inhabitants.
There is much space around the hearth
in which to place a mat or many mats
whenever there’s a need.
I never looked expectantly
to spending time here
like Aman did in her own father's hut.
I did not dream of it like cousin Ene
who entered with such eager pleasure
when she was but twelve years old.
At the time I was quite young
but wondered afterwards
why no one told me when she did emerge
and why I never saw her since that time.
Our mother said her husband
took her far away. What husband and how far?
Why did she never bring her babies back?
I prayed then I would not
be shut in here so soon.
Miduna was sixteen years
before her fattening,
while I am only fourteen and unready.
I said this to them, but no one listened.
“You reached your moonflow long ago, ” Miduna told me,
as if the onset of my bleeding time
means that I should have been sent here before.
They didn't listen even when Aunt Margaret cried
and made a fist right in my father’s face.
"Just look at you," my mother told her cruelly.
It was not something that I hadn't heard before.
"No husband. No children of your own.
Do we want that for our Helen?"
"She runs too much with that Ashani boy,"
my father said, "and acts just like a boy herself.
We need to slow her down, to feed her the things
that cause a girl to blossom
or, you soon will see, no man will look at her."
Ashani looks at me I want to tell him.
But, of course, a daughter
does not speak so to a father.
And, I think, Ashani is not ready yet
to marry anyone. We have been friends
for all the years I can remember.
Our mothers worked together
as we played beneath their busy feet.
Later they trusted us to roam
while in an elder sister’s care
as if we were obedient pets
that would undoubtedly return.
Suba was often quite content to stay behind.
I do not know a time, however,
when I did not follow
close behind Ashani
except this one,
this long day without a tree to climb
or field to run through, and no caves
or nests of pelicans to search.
Our days of play upon this island
fill my mind with colors and bright light
that break most happily into this darkened room.
They say the island’s shape is like a kingfish
fat behind the gills and narrow at the tail.
Ashani knows each turn and swell of it,
for, as a boy, he was encouraged to explore.
I either had to sneak away to follow him
or wait until all members of my family
were engaged in other things
so I could disappear,
as I have done so many times,
to learn the island’s secrets. In my mind’s eye,
it shimmers like the scales upon a fish,
for there is sun here almost every day
with rain enough to make the flowers glisten
as they grow both beautiful and large.
Miduna’s voice breaks suddenly
into my thoughts
and makes me painfully aware
that I have sat upon this mat
so long my muscles burn.
"When you are fatter," she instructs me,
"you will have a cushion for your legs
which are now skinny as a hen’s. You'll see.
I was so skinny, just like you. Remember?"
I do remember for it was not long ago.
Where did that jumping, running sister go?
The air seems to have swallowed her.