The Earth Is Singing Read Online Free

She’s usually snoring in her chair or shelling peas whilst moaning about something or other.
    “She wanted to go out and see what was happening,” says Mama. “I told her to be careful. The streets are not really the place for a frail old woman.”
    She catches my eye and we both break out laughing. There’s nothing frail about Omama, as we both know.
    My smile fades.
    “I need to tell you something,” I say.
    Mama passes me the bagel I forgot to eat at breakfast time. I smear it with cream cheese and smoked salmon and gulp it down. Mama is very pretty, which helps with buying food. Papa always said that she could charm the birds out of the trees, but we don’t have too many trees around here and the birds have been scared off by the bombing and continual fires.
    “I just saw a group of young men being marched away from the Freedom Monument,” I say.
    “Yes?” says Mama. “Soviet prisoners of war, I expect.”
    “No,” I say. “They were not Soviets. They were just boys. And the soldiers were not in German uniforms. They had red armbands.”
    Omama has come in while we are talking. She is regarding me with her bright brown eyes. She is eating pickles with greed, scooping them up and shoving them into her mouth, which is half-open with her two front false teeth on show.
    “That is the new Latvia police,” she says. “Your Uldis has designs on becoming one of those.”
    I am so surprised that a laugh bursts out of me.
    “Uldis is a good person,” I say. “He would never hurt people.”
    I think back to last year. I was in the park with Uldis and a bee flew straight into the top of my ice-cream cone. He spent ages trying to coax it onto a leaf and then put it in the sun so that it could dry out its wings. Together we watched the tiny insect struggle back to life and dart away.
    “Did you recognize any of the young men?” Mama says. “Perhaps they were in training to become soldiers.”
    I picture the group of men in my mind. I see their hanging heads and the look of shame and fear on some of their faces.
    I see the muzzle of the guns shoved into the small of the young men’s backs and for a dizzy moment I actually have a flash of what it must have felt like.
    “Yes,” I say. “I recognized some of them from school.”
    Mama and Omama exchange looks.
    “Dance school?” says Mama.
    I sigh and reach for another bagel.
    “No,” I say. “Ezra.”
    Ezra was the school I used to go to, before the Soviets invaded us.
    “Jews?” says Omama, still chewing. Her eyes never leave my face.
    “I guess so,” I say. I had been so shocked by the guns in their backs that it had taken me a little while to realize this.
    “Where were they going?” says Mama. Her cheeks are bright pink. “Did you see?”
    “Mm,” I say, my mouth full of fish and cheese. “ Aspazijas bulvāris .”
    “My God,” says Mama.
    “Ah,” says Omama. “They were being taken to the prefecture.”
    Mama darts Omama a furious glance and flaps her hands to quieten her but it’s too late. Now I want to know.
    I wait until Mama begins to prepare lunch for later.
    Then I whisper, “Omama – what is happening in the prefecture? Is it bad?” The prefecture is our police station.
    My grandmother fidgets about in the pocket of the black dress she always wears and produces a squashed caramel in a faded gold wrapper.
    “I’m not ten,” I protest, but she forces me to take it before hobbling over to the chair in the corner for her nap.
    Within seconds she is snoring, her head dropped on one side.
    Mama comes in with a new pile of fabric and we spend the rest of the morning cutting and sewing to the endless sounds of cheering and marching outside. Or at least, Mama sews and I cut.
    The Latvian national anthem is played on and off all day along with another song I don’t recognize. This second song is rigid in time and sounds very patriotic. I ask Mama what it is and she snaps off a length of thread with her teeth and doesn’t answer