They Came to Buy My Sister, So I Went in Her Place as a Boy novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: In My Own Name

I did not look at the ring.

I looked at my uncle, at his wet red mouth and his small eyes.

I thought of him in our yard with the purse in his hand.

"Yes," I said.

The meadow went so quiet I heard the oak creak.

"I have lain with the Bear," I said, in Basque, loud enough for the back stones.

"I did it in his own bed, with my own mouth, and I climbed his stair on my own feet.

"I did it because I told him to."

A man gasped.

Somewhere on the Roncal side a woman said, "God help us."

"I am Itziar Etxeberria," I said.

"I wore my dead brother's coat for five winters to keep my father's flock, because a girl may not hold a flock alone.

"I wore it into the Bear's fortress to keep my sister from being alone in it.

"I did not go there to sell anything.

"I went because my uncle sold her, and I would not let her go in by herself."

I looked slowly round the ring.

"I have not told a lie in front of you.

"He has told you nothing else."

I pointed at Pantxo.

"He says I am a whore, because it is the one thing he can say of a girl that the valleys will hear.

"He has said it of fourteen others, I think, to the buyers.

"He called them wards.

"He called them unwanted.

"He wept at every one."

My voice was shaking at last, and I let it.

"I am not unwanted," I said.

"I am wanted by a man who carried sixty people through two winters on his own flocks.

"He let every one of them think they owed him, because he did not know how to say that he was kind.

"If you want to call that man a Bear, call him one.

"He has held the door open for every person who ever asked to leave it.

"My uncle held the door shut on fourteen girls and made it pay."

I bent and picked up the cap off the grass.

"That is all I came to say."

I stood there with it in both hands.

Then the old house-head of the valley lifted his stick.

"The Etxeberria girl has named a man," he said, in a cracked voice that carried like a bell.

"Let the assembly hear his answer.

"Pantxo Etxeberria."

My uncle opened his mouth and closed it.

I watched him look for tears and find none.

"The paper at the sheepfold," I said.

"Say it.

"Tell them who signed my sister's name over for a debt of eleven hundred francs.

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