A midwife kneels next to a woman on a bed, one of the midwife’s hands on the woman’s chest, the other squeezing a bundle between her legs. Everything smells like blood. An infant squalls suddenly off in the corner where an old body hushes it gentle-like.

The Sin Eater sits down. The midwife manages not to touch her but keeps to both her tasks: feeling the heart beating, staunching the blood flow between the legs.

‘The Unseen is now seen,’ says the Sin Eater. ‘The Unheard is now heard. The sins of your flesh become the sins of mine to be borne to my grave in silence. Speak.’

The woman’s chest barely rises, and her lips only make hollow sounds.

‘I sent a boy to the midwife and the sin eater, as you do,’ says the smocked man from the doorway. The husband, he must be. ‘I never thought she’d need it.’

‘My own girl, don’t leave us,’ cries the old body holding the babe. The granddam. The baby shrieks in agreement.

‘I never thought she’d need it,’ says the husband again.

The Sin Eater waits, her ear by the new mother’s mouth, but the lips don’t move.

‘She’s passing,’ says the midwife.

So the Sin Eater names the foods for the Simple Eating, the one for those who depart before the sin eater can hear the Recitation. ‘Salt for pride, cream for envy, leeks for lies of omission, garlic for miserliness and bread for the sin we are born with. When the food is et, your sins will be mine. I will bear them in silence to my grave.’ She starts to make the sign across the woman’s shoulders and hips.

‘Must add dried plum,’ the smocked husband says quick. ‘She was my brother’s wife before mine.’ The Sin Eater nods. It’s incest, even if they are married kin, not blood kin, and just as sinful in the eyes of the Maker. Most folk’s eyes too. I’ve never seen folk who’ve done it. I made jests, same as all the other children, when Lee or some other would do something foolish. Made jests about how her parents must have been sister and brother. I look down at the mother, newly passed. This is what incest looks like. The granddam stares dumbly at her daughter on the bed.

On our way down the road, a boy runs up alongside us. He keeps his eyes straight ahead. ‘Sin Eater’s called to Caris Cooper in Southside,’ he tells us. The Sin Eater huffs her breath. It’s not talking exactly, but it tells the boy she heard. The boy scampers off.

The Sin Eater turns off the main road. We walk until houses get scarcer and gardens commoner. Soon we are in the country. I’m so hungry I feel like a hard fruit’s lodged in my belly. I knot my hands and rub it.