the skeleton

i see her photograph among the million others. it flashes before my eyes over and over. first just a small part of it, her face or her face hiding behind massive blond hair. she is wearing a bright red sweater. then another one, this time it reveals where she is sitting, in a sort of trench on the side of my house, where the path leading to the apple orchard used to be. she is now turned around and i zoom in on her face. she is a still photograph that begins to speak. it is a documentary style film of reporting on her excavations she has done with her mother. i am only half paying attention to what she says, mesmerized by the images before my eyes. the old birch has strewn its yellow leaves all around and some of her roots are poking out of the dug up sandy walls of the trench. i don't quite understand of yet what she is exactly saying, but then the camera moves in on the side of the wall to where she is pointing. we put her back, she says, after we had excavated her. look here, while she draws an outline with her hand around a skull. she says it was a young girl, but to me it looks more like the head of an animal, a wolf maybe with a very pointy snout. the rest of the bones reveal the body of a child. my mother and i, we returned her to her resting place, she says. but first she had uncovered this small skeleton, and she now has moved into my conscious mind like the remains of a living girl with a story.

the film shifts now back to an earlier time. there is footage of supereight moving images, the ones that flicker with the incoming light. we are at her farm and she is a little girl. she is speaking french and i don't understand her. but i am sensing a menacing presence and her fear of it. i see some animals being killed but i don't remember the kind. my niece meanwhile settles in beside me to watch with me, but i don't look at her, staring at the images. in actuality i don't even see a screen, just the image itself, as if i am part of it and yet removed. the young girl is now standing in front of her house beneath an overgrown glassy outcropping of the roof. on a large farm table before her are lined up living birds, large wild birds, falcons maybe. behind the table sits a man. she calls him uncle. he is a mean looking one, bald and massive with the farmlife having carved deep lines into his face. he places his gigantic hand around the neck of one of the birds and brings down a heavy object upon its head. one strike and it is dead. there are already about twenty dead birds and more living ones awaiting this cruel fate. i want to cover my niece's eyes but then the man's voice starts to rise louder and louder. he is chanting something, i forget the words. but the words are scaring the girl standing beneath the overhang. she begs him to stop. his water-blue eyes diminish her. and so his voice rises more, interrupted only by his deep baritone laughter. her mother and older sister hear the girl crying loudly and rush toward her from inside the house. but she cannot be consoled and cries with tears rushing, her mouth wide open. her throat releases the bitter screams of anguish, and there is more to the story than this.