Simple Prayers Read Online Free PDF Page A

slightest flourish or the thought that there was anything at all unusual in it, she suddenly said:
    “Rhubarb leaves, in honey water, with small pieces of pinecone.”
    Valentina thought the ghost of her dead mother had come down through the hearth and into the tiny hut, so used was she by now to her daughter's silence. When she realized that it was Piarina who had spoken, and not the flames, she did not express so much as a single syllable of either gratitude or joy.
    “Jesus Savior, Piarina,” she said, giving the girl's head a slight knock so that her fine, wispy hair flew up in alarm. “You scared the breath right out of me.”
    Piarina looked up into her eyes and repeated the phrase. “Rhubarb leaves,” she said, “in honey water. With small pieces of pinecone.”
    Valentina tweaked her ear sharply. “Don't speak nonsense, girl. I'd rather have you mute.”
    Piarina reached up and placed her hands on the red and swollen throat. “Rhubarb leaves,” she said once more. “In honey water. With small pieces of pinecone.”
    She ducked this time as Valentina's hand flew out to whack her, but she would not give up. Over and over, like a prognosticating parrot, she repeated the strange prescription. Finally, in sheer exasperation, Valentina got up, went to the table, mixed some honey in some water, crushed up a few rhubarb leaves, pounded down a pinecone to a fine dust, and stirred it all together.
    “Like having a retarded animal for a child,” she said as she drank down the bitter mixture.
    In the morning, however, when her sore throat and cough had completely vanished, Valentina was of a slightly different mind.
    “How'd you do that, girl?” she asked the delicate child as she peered down into her sleeping face. But though Piarina woke with a start, she did not make a sound. She simply placed her hands against her mother's now cool throat and smiled her glittery, crooked smile. And no amount of Valentina's encouragements (like dropping chunks from the ice block down her torn and baggy tunic) could raise another word.
    Piarina returned to her chores, Valentina to her casual rage. But she was wary of the child now. She stole looks at her when she was bent over strewing calamint in the straw; she sat staring at her for hours after the weary thing had fallen asleep (when Piarina fell asleep she did it literally — she entered into night and dreams with a tumbling intensity that left deep, dark bruises). Something had shifted in Piarina. Something had changed. And Valentina was determined to figure it out.
    One morning, about two weeks after she had cured her mother's sore throat, Piarina woke to find Gesmundo Barbon sitting quietly at the foot of her bed. At first she thought she was still asleep: the squashed face and squat body seemed like the traces of some faded nightmare. Her mother's voice, however, stung her quickly into daylight; no dream could ever reproduce the cutting edge that sound had for Piarina.
    “All right, Siorina Magica. Go ahead. Let's see you find a cure for Sior Barbon.”
    Piarina looked at the gross, lumpy man: his skin had gone yellow, and there were broken splotches on his arms, throat, and forehead. Even at her mother's command she could not bear to look at such an unpleasant sight so early in the morning, so she closed her eyes and slid down until her entire body was safely under the covers.
    “You come right back out here!” shouted Valentina. “Or you'l have to find a cure for yourself!”
    Piarina didn't move. But underneath the covers she closed her eyes, and underneath the covers she concentrated — and eventually her small, thin voice made its way up through the infested blankets like a trickle of steam rising out through a flaw in the kettle.
    “Two large turnips, boiled and diced. A pinch of comfrey, a pinch of mugwort. Mix with vinegar. Chill. Apply to hip and neck.”
    Gesmundo Barbon ran out of the hut before Piarina could resurface, but the next day he sent over six