I slept at the feet of Boot and Sack. My one small bed went longways across the end of their big one. If I turned my head in the night and the moon was shining through, I could see the hill of Boot’s feet beside my face. Sack’s feet I couldn’t see but I knew they were there --- no shoes, tipped over, and sleeping.

Every night Sack pulled my blankets tight around me, pressing me down. “Lie still, Hester, not a peep from you, not a wriggle.” Every night I lay on my back looking up through the dark at the gray paint cloud, at its cracks in the shapes of wings, and the white curtain sometimes blowing.

Cat was there and together we’d wait for the bird dream. Cat’s bird dream was hiding in the long grass, a fast chase, and a jump. In my bird dream everything was white without walls. Bird sang and flew and so did I. Then bird became many birds. Every part of me moved with the many birds --- my fingers, hair, and toes all swirled and twirled in bird circles. Which was me and which was bird?

A secret has no sound; it lives in your darkest corner, where it sits and waits. Sometimes it gives a jump or a wriggle but mostly it waits like the spider waits for the fly. A secret grows thick like the ball of web the spider weaves around the fly when he makes the trap. Fly can’t breathe or smell in there --- his world sticks against his face, small as his own eyes.

***

I sat on the floor with Cat. Cat rolled on her back, then jumped for the yellow wool. I pulled it from her and she jumped again. She twisted her body in the air and spun herself around. She ran under the table, then ran back to me. Sack was sewing, her foot pumping the floor pump pump pump, the needle sticking the white cloth stick stick stick. A tickle grew in me.

Yellow wool wrapped itself around Cat’s black paws; she rolled onto her back, wool curled around her tum. It went around and around her until Cat was in a yellow tangle. Every way she moved she tangled more. Cat was playing like the children at Christ’s feet when he made a visit to the marketplace in The Abridged Picture Bible.

The tickle in me grew bigger; it pushed at my nose and mouth wanting to escape. Cat jumped and twisted and fell against me. My mouth was shut tight; I was holding that tickling laugh back because I knew it was trouble. Cat jumped on my lap and then that laugh burst out of me, like a sneeze from my toes up.

I laughed at black Cat turning and turning, her shining black-gray body caught in the net of yellow wool. I laughed and laughed. I couldn’t stop. What went in through my eyes tickled the inside of me and made me laugh louder. I was shaking with it. Sack was up and out of her sewing seat, scissors fell from her knee, she held my chin in her hard sewing fingers, and she shook my face from one side to the other, her two blue eyes looking into mine.

“You laugh like the devil. I swear there’s a devil in you!” The laugh went out of me and wriggled its way into her fingers that were holding my chin. I couldn’t hear it anymore after that; it was hidden somewhere inside Sack. Laughing was the same as crying; it left you empty as air.

A devil in me . . . Is his home in the bone down my back? Does the devil live in the same place in me that the laugh comes from? Somewhere down deep, a place you can’t touch with a finger?

Sack said, “When you’re bigger you can move into the empty room where you will be by yourself.”

“When will that be?” I asked her.

 “When I say,” she said. I walked into the empty room that would be mine when Sack said, and I sat on the floor. Cat was there too. The room wasn’t empty anymore --- it had Hester in it, and Cat. I wondered how many times the hands would go around the face of the kitchen clock above the stove before Sack said.

***

Boot found me sitting there. “You know this is not allowed!”

Sack heard him and came running up the stairs hissing like Cat in a corner. “Don’t you push me, young lady, don’t you do it!” She slapped my ear. It put a ringing bell in my head; the more I listened the louder it got until it was a whole song with words and the bell to go with it. Not a song from Sack’s radio box, not a song that Sack ever heard. It made me smile; it was a secret song just for me.

***

I sat and I sat and I ate what was put before me. Chicken legs, oats and milk, pork and corn, bread and oil. The chicken legs used to be a walking chicken. “Why did it stop walking?” I asked Boot when he was carving. Sack hadn’t come back from folding sheets in the laundry.

Boot patted my head. “Unlucky,” he said. The oil made the bread heavy. I pushed it with my sharp fork.

Sack came back. “Don’t play with your food, Hester, eat it. John, the fire needs wood.” Boot left the kitchen. I put the bread in my mouth but I couldn’t chew. Teeth and tongue said no. The heavy bread filled every space. I couldn’t swallow. Sack was watching, waiting for the bread to go down into the deep of Hester, but it wouldn’t. It stuck.

“Eat it.” There wasn’t anywhere else to look but Sack’s face. The bread took up all the other room. “What are you doing, Hester? I told you to eat your dinner.” Sack had two blue eyes with a pink stain under --- one the shape of a small spider with three legs. The pink spider glowed pinker as Sack watched me with the stuck angry bread. Suddenly her hand was at my mouth and she was digging and pushing at the bread. “Greedy, greedy, you took so much from me!” Her fingers clawed at the insides of my cheeks like Cat clawed at the carpet.

Sack pushed down the angry bread with her fingers. I couldn’t get the air past the bread and fingers. The angry bread filled the room with its shouting no no no! Boot came running back into the kitchen. He pulled Sack off and held her by her shoulders. The pink spider turned in tiny circles under her eye. Sack was shaking. Boot told her to have a lie-down upstairs. He gave me water. I drank the water. “I’m afraid you’ll have to stay there until you’ve eaten it all up,” Boot said. I tasted blood.

Excerpted from One Foot Wrong © Copyright 2012 by Sofie Laguna. Reprinted with permission by Other Press. All rights reserved.