Breath and Bones Read Online Free Page A

southern Sweden, had said the word came from her country and meant either “a girl who stays at home” or “a girl of good family.” Given the quality of the blanket and the notorious fact that gravid Swedes often took the short boat ride over to Copenhagen, where mothers’ names were not required for a legal delivery, the note seemed to promise great things. But the sisters found no family portraits, no silver spoons, no precious jewels hidden about the infant’s person; only what one might expect to find in a very ordinary baby’s diaper, and that they gave to one of the novices to deal with. The baby screamed at their inspection, and screamed when she was washed, and nearly took her own head off when she was put to bed with a bottle. The sisters decided to let her cry till she slept, and in the morning they found her whimpering more quietly, but with a mouth stained from blood, not milk. Her tough young gums had broken off the glass nipple.
    Sister Birgit was delegated to pick the splinters from the baby’s lips, using tweezers and the light of a good lantern. She had to dose the squalling patient with brandy to make her lie still.
    She’s nothing but breath and bones
, Birgit thought.
Only breath and bones
. Though it wasn’t true—the baby’s limbs were nicely rounded, her cries lusty—the phrase made Birgit feel tender. It gave her patience.
    In the meticulous work, which took all day, Birgit came to love the little girl. She murmured endearments over the drunken body and torn mouth, and it was then that she shortened the Swedish word to “Famke,” the name that would follow the girl even after her official christening as Ursula Marie. When Famke woke up enough to be hungry again, Birgit would have fed the baby at her own breast, if she could have mustered anything more than prayers. Instead she dipped one corner of Famke’s blanket in a cup of warm milk, freshly bought at the market on Amagertorv, and coaxed the sore lips and tongue to suckle.
    In later years, as the growing girl’s cough turned bloody, Sister Birgitwould accuse herself of having missed a shard of glass somewhere. She fancied that Famke’s lungs were lacerating themselves as they tried to get rid of that last fragment. Though Birgit and many of the other nuns were also afflicted with persistent coughing, she felt, against all reason, that the unusual event of Famke’s infancy was the source of the girl’s affliction—never mind that she bore no other scars. Birgit prayed for forgiveness, and for Famke’s cure, and she nursed Famke all the way to solid food at the age of five months. Thus she made the best possible use of the “good family’s” sole patrimony; the baby sucked the blanket down to meager threads.
    â€œSister Birgit,” the Mother Superior reprimanded her gently in private, “you have become too attached to this one child. You must divide your care among the children equally, as our Lord divides his love among us.”
    Birgit tried to do as she was told. Though she could never give the chaotic horde of orphans the impartial and impersonal affection required by her order, she could offer them the semblance of equal treatment. In everyday life, the life the other sisters shared, she nursed the orphans’ colds and coughs and combed their hair with the impartiality of a Solomon; when a child died, Birgit washed the body and lifted it into its pine box.
    But when she was alone with Famke, Birgit hugged the little girl as tight as she dared, so tight that their bones ground together. Birgit would not have chosen convent life for herself; that had been her parents’ wish, as they’d grown too old and tired by the time their seventh daughter reached adolescence to do anything more for her. Her eighteen-year-old body was starved for physical contact, and Famke’s round little arms gave her the greatest comfort she would ever