Excerpts from Forest Song: Little Mother

Laughter gusted from my mouth. Matka Lasu clapped and whooped. Poor Gerda and Heidi simply stared. I tried to stop to explain, but however hard I worked, I couldn’t squeeze out more than a word. I leaned on Gerda, and she thumped onto the arm of the chair with a heap of me sprawled over her lap. She oozed back into the seat, her legs askew over the arm, unable to move because of me. Slapping her thighs, my teacher bent in two and screeched. Heidi caught the giggling bug and succumbed. I rolled away from Gerda’s lap and, aiming for the ottoman, I nudged it from the chair and hit the floor.

Excerpt from Forest Song: Little Mother, p 147

I'd expected the underground staircase to be dark, but, while I couldn't see a lantern or a candle or a torch, light splattered from the lofty root-vaulted roof. I'd expected the air to be musty and dank, but the place smelled of lilies and thyme. I pressed my palm to the dribbling earthen wall then smelled it. It was saturated with the scent.

A hallway, its floor made of roots, rocks, and earth, meandered from the foot of the stairs. And along its rock walls, time-dyed rugged wood doors as tall as cathedrals beckoned me. Dawdling in front of the one nearest me and fondling the knob, I poked my head into the room, ignoring Ma?gorzata's eager prattle.

Excerpt from Forest Song: Little Mother, p 17

I enjoyed my indignation and the hatred it fueled. As Herr Hitler blamed the Jews for each of life’s aggravations, I faulted him for even minor disappointments. Life was easy, robbed of color like the papers Mama brought, when the world was human victims and monsters. Then in August, when Mama brought another Jewish family under cover of the dark of the moon, she lingered while we led them to the fairy settlement then eased herself into a wingback by my hearth. Shooing away the words she really had to say, her frown betraying the lie of pleasantries, she stumbled over small talk while I squirmed. I got up and paced. She continued to chat, her voice battering the walls, her words slurring together in their haste to conceal the truth.

Excerpt from Forest Song: Little Mother pp 123-124

I examined the blue veins reassuringly mapping the backs of my hands. Perfect full moons stopped in mid ascendency on the horizon of my cuticles. A stubby white scar shone on my thumb’s first knuckle. Several pink nicks splattered over my wrist. They were healing too and would also leave scars, and for the first time I felt reverence for the body’s cunning knack of mending life’s big and little tears.

Excerpt from Forest Song: Little Mother p. 278

Suddenly the Nazi menace was as real as a kiln-fired earthen bowl. For the first time I could smell the acrid fear inside the thing. For the first time I staggered under its weight. I wanted to smash it against a stone and watch it shatter into tiny sharp-edged bits.

- Excerpt from Forest Song: Little Mother P 194

Slanting through tree bones, the late afternoon sun gilded the decaying leaves. The woods were as silent as the flat cardboard trees Bozena’s class had erected for their version of Swan Lake. Only my crunching disturbed the forest’s peace. I stopped often to listen to the quiet. At ease in the golden pocket of time where nothing of the war could distract me, I plucked a rosary of random thoughts from my mind and idly fondled them.

- Excerpt from Forest Song: Little Mother p. 205